Tuesday, June 30, 2009

I think smaller favours are bigger than bigger favours

Several times on the internet I've seen parents say that the difference between parents and non-parents is that parents would risk their lives to save their kid. Of course we know that isn't true - I think most people would risk their life to save a kid. A kid falls onto the subway tracks, people aren't going to stand there doing nothing. I once ran out into traffic to save a teddy bear tossed there by a baby who was too little to know better, and there were at least three people on that sidewalk also moving to go after the teddy bear. Poor kid shouldn't have to lose his best friend just because he's too little to understand natural consequences and the laws of physics.

So yeah, risking my life to save a kid, of course, no question. But no way in hell I want to have to wake up early in the morning and sit around a rink watching hockey practice.

You sometimes see similar things in the Star's Acts of Kindness section. Sometimes you get people telling stories of, for example, a little old lady who has these thuggish-looking young men living next door, but these guys totally helped her and called 911 and stayed with her when she had a fall one icy winter's day, and maybe even shoveled her walk for her after that. And these guys would probably be like "Yeah, of course, basic human decency, you'd do the same for my grandmother." But, at the same time, they might not want to turn down their music when they're having a party.

You'd totally do CPR on someone who you'd never kiss, or never even want to have small-talk with in the checkout line. If your friend had their wallet stolen, you'd totally press a wad of cash into their hand to tide them over until they can get a replacement debit card, but you'd hide the last chocolate bar in your office stash so they don't mooch it. You might neglect to look up from your book at each subway stop so as not to have to give up your seat for a senior with a cane, but if there's an emergency and you have to evacuate the train into the tunnel you will totally see to it personally that they get out safely.

So maybe the smaller kindnesses are more generous than the bigger kindnesses?

Why power centres instead of malls?

I read in Spacing (of all places) that they're replacing Centre Mall with a big-box power centre.

This has me wondering why power centres are considered superior to malls. (Obviously they are considered superior, because malls were invented/popularized first. They wouldn't have come up with power centres if they thought malls were superior.)

When you go to a power centre, you're going to only one store or to the specific stores on your list. It's set up so that you're probably going to drive from store to store, and you have no particular reason to go into any stores that you weren't planning to visit.

However, in a mall, you walk past a whole bunch of stores, and they're usually open onto the common areas with the contents very visible so you can just sort of drift in and browse casually. You see a shirt you like, you end up wandering into a store you weren't planning to go into at all.

If I were a retail business, I'd certainly want to be set up in a way that encourages passers-by to come in and have a look around. So why do businesses think big box is better?

Sunday, June 28, 2009

Wherein I receive an education

A conversation with someone who had a bit of a different upbringing than I did led me to the following realization:

I am politically aware primarily because I read newspapers. It's more complicated than that - I take in far more political information than just what's in the Star and the G&M mostly because of the internet, a good part of my ability to dissect and analyze spin comes from my job, but at the root of it all is newspapers.

I read newspapers because my parents read newspapers. We always had them around the house, I'd pick them up to read the comics and, as I grew older, gradually expanded to other sections of the newspaper, until I was reading the whole thing in middle school.

My parents read newspapers because their parents read newspapers.

I've always been assuming a certain amount of basic knowledge about political and current event just by virtue of being an adult. But I was talking to someone - a perfectly competent adult - to whom it never occurred to seek out newspapers regularly because they'd never had them around when they were growing up so they were never normalized.

I don't know what to do with this.

Delightful

When Sim-Eve goes to serve hot beverages, the command is "serve delightful hot beverages." When she goes to take a bubble bath, the command is "take delightful bubble bath."

When Sim-Roarke goes to do these things, the commands are "serve hot beverages" and "take bubble bath," respectively.

I wonder why Eve gets "delightful" in her commands? I can't see any characteristics she had that might make her go in for delightfulness.

I only have the one household going at the moment and don't especially want to start another just to solve the mystery of delightfulness. We'll see what kinds of commands their kids get when they grow up. (Q: You're CF, yet you're giving a canon-childless couple kids? A: Yes, it makes the game more interesting.)

Things They Should Invent: internet karaoke server

Imagine if, instead of being isolated local units, all karaoke machines were hooked up to the internet. Then there's a central database of karaoke music (with paid subscriptions), with youtube-calibre bandwidth.

You could have, quite literally, all the songs in the world. That would make karaoke night interesting.

Saturday, June 27, 2009

Things They Should Study: the economic impact of rain on Pride

It's supposed to rain tomorrow, so I'm sure as hell not going to the parade. And I'm sure I'm not the only one thinking that.

Pride is one of the events that brings in the most tourism dollars, and some of those tourists are coming from day-trip distances and therefore can easily stay home if the weather sucks. Someone should study the economic impact of the rain tomorrow.

New Rule: maintain mental "last updated" metadata

I was once in a conversation with a member of my parents' generation who had quite a number of very loud opinions on what constitutes responsible sexual behaviour. As the conversation progressed, it became apparent that they were unaware of the existence of dental dams, or that anyone had ever thought of addressing that particular need. Now this individual doesn't need that information for their own personal life - they've been married since before AIDS. They had all the sexual health information they need. However, it never occurred to them that this information may not be up to date.

We've all heard of things like this happening. Grandparents who put their newborn grandchildren to sleep on their stomachs instead of their sides (or whatever you're supposed to do now - don't rely on childfree bloggers for advice on how to avoid SIDS!) because that's what they do with their own children. People making declarative statements about how the school curriculum works based on what it was when they were in school. I'm probably guilty of this myself in ways I'm not even aware of. To use a fake example (because I'm obviously unaware of the real ones), I haven't given a moment's thought to HPV since I got Gardasil - I haven't had any reason to think about it. For all I know they have a test or a treatment now, but I'm still walking around with the assumption that there's no treatment and no way to tell if it's dormant but contagious.

So what we all need to do is be aware of when the information in our brain was last updated. You know how the files in your computer have a "last updated" attribute, so you can sort them by which is newest? We need to keep that in our brains, so as not to spread misinformation or make fools of ourselves.

Popes' names

Popes' names translate. Emperor Popeatine is Benedict in English and Benoît in French. John Paul II was Jan Pawel in Polish.

I wonder when they started doing this? It's hard to figure out, because we translate them retroactively. Pope Benedict XVI is Benoît in French, and we also call Pope Benedict I who reigned in the 500s Benoît in French. But I seriously doubt they translated his name in the 500s. I don't think they were quite so very concerned about localization at that time. So when did this convention begin?

Apartment listings: ur doin it wrong

For the purposes of a blog post, I was trying to figure out how much a three-bedroom apartment goes for in Toronto. So I went to a rentals website, searched for three-bedroom apartments in Toronto, and sorted the results by price, lowest to highest.

The first page was full of results that were impossibly low. Literally impossible - it wouldn't cover the property taxes on that property. So I clicked on some of these listings, and discovered that they were in fact for one bedroom in someone's house. They'd just listed it that way because it's a three-bedroom house. WTF?? Has it not occurred to these would-be landlords that the tenants are looking for how many bedrooms they'll get, not how many you have?

So I proceeded past these into higher prices. This set of prices looked reasonable for a one-bedroom in Toronto, but surely you can't get a three-bedroom for that little? If you can, my current and last apartments are egregiously over-charging, even taking into account that this is a better neighbourhood. So again I clicked on some listings that were representative of this price range, and found that they are listings for the entire building. Suites from bachelor to three-bedroom were available, and they'd indicated only the lowest of the range of prices, under "Starting from...". That's totally unhelpful. If I actually needed a three-bedroom apartment, I'd need to know how much the three-bedrooms go for.

Between these two issues, I went through six pages of useless information before I gave up. And I'm not even looking for an apartment, I just want to know about how much they cost!

Friday, June 26, 2009

The perfect mash for this week's twitter trends



(Aside: why do the police at 2:20 have the word "POLICE" written on their shields in English instead of Farsi?)

Shamelessly yoinked from Antonia Z's twitter feed.

Everything you ever wanted to know about same-sex marriage in Toronto

Presumably in honour of Pride, the Toronto Star's Map of the Week has all kinds of cool data about same-sex marriage in Toronto.

The argument for sterilization before marriage

One of the barriers people face in getting sterilized is "But what if you get into a relationship with someone who wants kids?" As we CFers know, that's a deal-breaker. We don't want to be in a relationship with someone who wants kids, period.

But, as we also know, some breeder types think we can be talked out of or are going to grow out of being childfree (we're not) so might enter into a relationship with a CFer anyway, only to write angsty letters to Dear Abby years later when they find we were telling the truth.

Therefore being sterilized before you've found your life partner is a good idea, because it serves as an automatic breeder filter. Even if your future reproductive plans don't come up in conversation early on (You can't exactly do "Hey, do you, um, want to go get a cup of coffee or something?" "Sure, but I'm not going to bear your children."), it will come up in the birth control conversation. ("I've had Essure, but we'll need condoms at least until we both get tested.") No one will ever be under the impression that you could be convinced to breed, and it will therefore save everyone a lot of angst.

Open Letter to Firefox

Dear Firefox:

Please let me have different Google accounts logged in in different browser windows. Internet Explorer lets me do that!

Thursday, June 25, 2009

Umbrellas

I recently switched to a larger purse, so I bought a larger umbrella. (Don't worry, it's not one of those huge ones that takes up the whole sidewalk.) My previous umbrella folded up nice and small, but it was a bit smaller than I'd have liked when open.

Today I was walking through a sudden cloudburst and thinking that maybe I should have put my old umbrella in my purse too, then I could give it to one of these people running around with no umbrella. Yeah, it's a bit small, but it's far better than nothing.

I've also been wanting to get one of those rainbow umbrellas that were all over Pride last year, but I'm not seeing them around anywhere this year.

So these thoughts converged to come up with the following:

Find yourself a nice homophobic community. Get a bunch of rainbow umbrellas - the size that can fold up into a purse. On a rainy day, send people out on foot with one (not necessarily rainbow) umbrella to protect themselves from the rain and a few rainbow umbrellas in their purse. Then they should offer their "spare" umbrellas to random umbrellaless people, just as good samaritans.

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Sexy tune

Video is irrelevant, it's just the only way I could get a full embed.



I couldn't find a video of it being performed, but I picture the clapping/snapping/stomping rhythm section being performed as an intricate playground clapping game.

Conspiracy theory of the moment

Because I like making up conspiracy theories:

What if the LCBO was never actually have labour relations problems, they just needed a sudden injection of cash?

Why you need Anglophone translators, even for easy language combinations

Click here

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Analogy for why you might want a tubal even if your husband has a vasectomy

When reading about the couple who was denied a tubal even though they had two children and their family was complete, one of the most frequent comments I noticed was people saying the husband should get a vasectomy instead.

I know a vasectomy is far less invasive than a tubal, and I know it is a solution that works for a huge number of couples. But some people might still want a tubal even if their husband has a vasectomy.

Here's why:

Suppose some evil bad guy has given you a bomb. For plot purposes, you can't just put down the bomb and walk away - it is somehow attached to you in a way that you, personally, are unable to remove. So you call the bomb squad for help.

The bomb squad arrives and tells you you're in luck - this bomb isn't going to go off by itself, it will only go off if exposed to open flame. So the bomb squad goes through your home and removes ever source of open flame. They remove your barbecue and your fireplace and your lighters and your matches and your candles and everything else in the house that might produce or require open flame. Then they say "Okay, no more sources of open flame, you're safe."

Now, by strict statistics, the vast majority of people aren't going to be inadvertently exposed to open flame. There are no sources of open flame in your home, and if you ever see any open flame anywhere else, you're going to run in the opposite direction.

But you still want them to get rid of the bomb, don't you?

Labour relations

First two questions, then some worrying, and probably some other random stuff along the way because I'm not particularly organized today.

Question 1:

Price was uppermost in the mind of a woman who identified herself only as a bar owner on Ossington Ave.

"If I opened a bar in the United States, a bottle of vodka would cost me five bucks and I'd sell a cocktail for $4.25," she said hotly.

"Here a bottle of vodka costs $35.26 and I still have to sell a cocktail for $4.25, and I have to pay a 10 per cent liquor tax and GST, and I have to go through all these hoops for licensing."


Can any USians confirm that a bottle of vodka costs $5? I assume we're talking approximately 750 mL, which Google tells me is about 25 oz. I'm thinking if that was actually true, it would be far more common knowledge and it would be WAY more common to bring back your absolute maximum quota of booze every single time you cross the border. I've heard that it's cheaper in the states and people do bring back booze sometimes, but not to the extent that that price difference would result in. I blogged previously that media outlets should fact-check reader mail before printing it - maybe they should also fact-check statements like this in quotes that they run. It isn't right that a person should be able to get a statement like that printed as though it's fact, and decline to use their name in the process.

Also, I've noticed multiple times in the comments threads people pointing out that there are all kinds of great wineries in Niagara, and we Torontonians are probably just too snobby to come down and enjoy them. WTF? It's nothing against Niagara wine at all - I drink it all the time. It's just most people, most of the time, want buying wine to be a straightforward errand, not a day trip that you have to travel two hours each way for. Would you want to have to come up to TO every time you want alcohol?

Anyway, my question is: is it true that you can get a bottle of vodka for $5 in the US?

Question 2:

WTF is up with all the media reports of illegal dumping? This is the second day of the garbage strike. There is no scheduled garbage collection on Mondays. If they hadn't announced the garbage strike, people would be only just starting to notice that garbage has been collected. But on the front page of this morning's G&M, there's a picture of a pile of garbage bags described as an impromptu illegal dump. That picture must have been taken yesterday. If garbage collection had been going normally, that garbage wouldn't even have been collected until at least today. Someone here is overreacting - either people are going "OMG! Garbage strike! I must immediately illegally dump my garbage!" without even waiting to see if it resolves within the first couple of days, or the media is vastly overreporting/over-sensationalizing alleged illegal dumping.

***

Meanwhile, I'm terrified. Not by the strikes (although the prospect of a prolonged garbage strike with no alcohol available is kind of scary for someone with my phobias), but by the attitude of the public. There are so many loud people who seem so vehemently opposed to anyone making a decent living. They seem to genuinely and truly want all these people - LCBO workers, daycare workers, even garbage collectors - to be among the working poor, floating through contract hell. They seem to actively think that it's outright wrong for these workers to be making a decent working-class living, something where you can rent a small house in a safe neighbourhood, go to the dentist whenever necessary, buy your kid some skates for xmas and take them to Canada's Wonderland in the summer. This terrifies me, because if they want these people to be poor, they also want me to be poor. I'm far less important and have a far easier job than a garbage man! They just haven't noticed me yet because my job is to be invisible. (Yeah, I know, all this blogging doesn't help.)

When I was in university, I was earning under the LICO and living within that amount. I had scholarships, most of tuition was taken care of, but, like most students, I was really scrimping everywhere possible for living expenses. There were things crawling out of my walls and causing me panic attacks. For a couple of years I used now-defunct free dial-up internet services, living with constant uncertainty as to whether I'd be able to get online. I rationed my cheese intake, because cheese is expensive. If I'd ever had a dental emergency, I wouldn't have been able to afford to get it dealt with but for the fact that I was still on my parents' insurance.

I was happy then because I was living on my own for the first time, but I don't want to live like that again. I want the security of knowing nothing is going to crawl out of my wall. I want to turn on my computer and have the internet be there. Hell, I want to have a computer - like if mine dies, I want to be able to replace it! I want to be able to eat cheese whenever I feel like eating cheese. I want to be able to get regular dental care. I want air conditioning. I want to make birth control decisions without cost being a factor. I want to wear women's shoes and make-up and bras in my correct size. And, yes, I want all that for city and LCBO workers too.

I know many people in the world don't get to live at that level, but here in Toronto in the 21st century, it isn't really so much to ask. I'm not asking for diamond-encrusted platinum, I'm not even asking for a car, I just want to be able to continue to make a living that allows me these small comforts. But these loud angry people who begrudge the garbage men a paycheque that allows them to buy their kids skates will, as soon as they notice I exist, want to send me back to having things crawling out of my walls. I don't feel safe.

I'd like to see a study of the people who begrudge others a safe, steady living for a solid day's work. What do they do for a living? What's their financial situation and career history like? What are some examples of what they think are appropriately-compensated jobs?