Wesley Crusher

I've recently been reading and enjoying podcasts of Wil Wheaton's Memories of the Future, and I'm particularly enjoying seeing his thoughts on the character of Wesley Crusher.

This also has me thinking about Wesley Crusher from an adult perspective and man, I gotta say: WTF?

Wesley Crusher made sense to me the first time around. I was in my preteens surrounded by adults who were far more idiotic than they should be. If Wesley hadn't existed, my fledgling attempts at fan fiction (although I didn't yet know it was called that) would have had to invent him. (Although I would have invented him as a curly-haired girl.)

But the thing is, Wesley Crusher wasn't invented by an adolescent fanfic author. He was invented by Gene Roddenberry, who was very much a full-fledged adult at the time. (I think he was well into his 60s?)

Looking at it from an adult perspective, I'm really surprised an adult writer would come up with a teenage Mary Sue for use in an adult context. You need to infiltrate Hogwarts? Sure, bring out the 17-year-old transfer student. But you're on a starship? Why not a newly minted ensign, fresh out of the Academy, who quickly rises through the ranks? If you need them to be a wunderkind, they could have also done a PhD in Warp Theory alongside.

I wish we had more information on why exactly Gene Roddenberry's Mary Sue ended up being a teenager.

Remembrance Day blogathon

One thing I've always hated about life is that if you don't go around gloating about what you're doing, people assume you're ignorant.

When I was in Montessori school, I wanted to play with these beads, but the teacher wouldn't let me because she said you had to be able to count to 10 to play with them. I could totally count to 10 - I could count to 100! But back then, at the age of 3 or 4, I didn't realize that she wanted me to show her I could count to 10, and just slunk off sad and confused.

When I was in Grade 2, I got really frustrated with how slowly my classmates read aloud. So rather than wait for them to struggle through a sentence, I'd read ahead and see how the story ended, then go onto the next story in the reader. By the time it was my turn to read, I was three stories ahead and had no idea where we were. So when it came time to put us into reading groups, my teacher put me into the blue group, which was the second-lowest. I was confused and rather humiliated, as I felt like I could read fluently. Eventually my parents intervened and I was bumped up to the green reading group, which was the highest, but not until after they'd all finished learning how to do cat's cradles.

When I was in Grade 7, a girl at my school was diagnosed with cancer, and some of her friends started raising money so she could buy a wig. I gave a significant amount of money to this fund - something like $5 or $10 when my weekly allowance at the time was $2 or $3. Then I came home from school and my father said he was writing his yearly cheque to the United Way, and asked if I'd like to add a donation. I said no thank you. So I got a lecture on why you have to be charitable. I really resented being treated that way just because I preferred to do the right thing quietly and humbly without gloating (I was still Catholic at the time and this was a virtue - c.f. Luke 18: 9-14 the parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector) rather than giving money to an organization that seemed to spend an awful lot of money on giving its donors public bragging rights. (Which, incidentally, is the reason why my father has since stopped donating to the United Way.) That grated so much that since then I have only ever made anonymous charitable donations.

I got to thinking of all this because tomorrow is Remembrance Day. Remembrance Day is one of those things where people assume I'm ignorant when I don't go around holding forth at length about what's inside my head. It all started when I was in high school and our school band provided music for our local cenotaph ceremony. For four years (I wasn't in senior band in Grade 9), I saw the whole ceremony firsthand, from live on "stage". And the more I saw of it, the less comfortable it was. It seemed uncomfortably glamourous, with too much emphasis on the fact that the veterans were heroes and not enough on the waste and horror and pointlessness of war. (I've written some about that glamourization here.) I wasn't getting any sense of "Never Again," but I was detecting certain connotations of "and if you join the military, you can be a hero too!" So after high school I quietly stopped wearing a poppy. I knew Remembrance Day was really important to various people for various reasons and didn't want to be an ass about it, but I just didn't feel right playing along myself. I have since done a lot more research, especially about WWI (which was the original reason for Remembrance Day), and the more I learn the better I feel about my choice not to participate. The problem is, the standard assumption when I don't wear a poppy is that I'm completely ignorant of my history. In reality, when I was ignorant I was proudly wearing my poppy over my heart and hoping those old men in the navy jackets (who were OMG HEROES!) would notice that I remembered to say blow not grow.

Then today I saw an article about a revamped citizenship guide that would include "greater emphasis on Canada's military history and on the poppy as a symbol of remembrance and of Canada’s sacrifice in the First World War." That made me go "Huh?" because "sacrifice" implies that it's to achieve some goal, and the more I learn about WWI the less I agree with that assessment. I started reading up on it shortly after I finished university, when I realized that I didn't actually understand why it happened. Yeah, yeah, yeah, assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914. But how does that lead to a war? So I read and read and read, and the more I read the more I came to realize that it was a pissing match. Countries were declaring war on each other because they wanted to go off and have a jolly good adventure or because they didn't want their penises to fall off. It didn't need to be a war, even under standards by which it is sometimes necessary to have wars. And young men, unaware of the hell that awaited them, went off to enlist to have a jolly good adventure with visions of dashing uniforms and shiny buttons dancing in their heads - the very kinds of images the heroic glamourization of our local cenotaph ceremony might give an impressionable young person.

I learned in History class that initially Remembrance Day was created by WWI vets (then Great War vets) with this very sentiment - that war was senseless and wasteful and foolish and Never Again. It wasn't a jolly good adventure, it was hell. So thinking about this, I found myself wondering if it was more important to real-life WWI vets that they be viewed as heroes (even if it meant WWI being seen as worthwhile) or that future generations see just how pointless war is (even if it meant that the vets don't get treated as heroes). Unfortunately, the last WWI vet in my family died when I was like 10 years old, and I wasn't quite at the point where these questions occurred to me yet. (I was still early enough in my education that I was all proud of myself for memorizing 14-18 and 39-45.)

But I did think of a story my grandmother once told me about the first time she voted. When she was young, the voting age was 21 (although apparently soldiers and vets under the age of 21 were also allowed to vote.) So by the time she was allowed to vote, she was already married with one small child and another one on the way. After a long day doing housework and chasing a toddler while heavily pregnant, the last thing she wanted was to squeeze her swollen feet into shoes, corral the toddler into a stroller, and walk all the way to the polling place. But when she told her husband this, he freaked. It was the maddest she'd ever seen him in their two years of marriage. He said this is what he fought for in WWII - this is what his buddies died for - so she was damn well going to go and vote. So she did, and is now very vociferous about making sure her descendants vote.

The goals in the other branch of my family were much more prosaic. They had spent the last several generations getting buffeted back and forth between German occupation and Russian occupation (with some of my ancestors having been, legally and honourably, conscripted on both sides at different points during WWI). All the surviving members of this branch of the family were civilians in occupied Europe during WWII and caught behind the iron curtain in its aftermath. For them, what Canada stands for is food - not having to wait in line for bread, supermarkets fully stocked whenever you want. I can best honour these ancestors by eating well and being strong and healthy, which is neither here nor there. (They'd also like me to be a devout Catholic and sprog lots of adorable babies, but we have to be realistic here.)

Interesting as this all is, I can't spend tomorrow eating and voting, not least of which because there aren't any elections for me to vote in tomorrow. (Things They Should Invent: hold elections on Remembrance Day to honour what our dead soldiers were fighting for?) So I thought some more about this. What were my ancestors actually, in real life, not in political spin, sacrificing for me to have?

I ran through a number of ideas, and then it came to me: freedom of expression. What I'm doing right here and now. I'm sure my ancestors living through and/or fighting against various flavours of fascist oppression in Europe would be quite gratified to know that any thought, idea, or experience I wish to share I can instantly post where the whole world can see it.

So tomorrow, in honour of the sacrifices made on my behalf, is blogathon day. Not about Remembrance Day, about everything and anything. A massive deluge of thought, belief, opinion, and expression. Hopefully I'll get to posting everything that's festering in my brain and my drafts folder, but if not there's at least gonna be a whole lot of words. My ancestors who sacrificed on my behalf probably wouldn't be thrilled with everything I have to say, but I'm sure they'd love the fact that I'm able to say it like this.

So that's what I'm doing tomorrow, and after much reflection I feel it is appropriate. However, I really resent the fact that if I don't explain this whole story, people will interpret my well-thought-out tribute as just playing around on the internet, ignorant of the significance of the day. That's almost as irksome as being put in the blue reading group and missing out on learning cat's cradle.

How privilege works?

I was shocked recently when I found out that someone I know who is older than me, more educated than I am, and has successfully raised multiple children to adolescence didn't know how vaccines work. I'm not talking anything complicated, just the basic fact that it introduces a small, controlled amount of the virus in question so your immune system learns to recognize that and knows how to fight it. (I know that it's more complicated than that and they don't always use the actual virus in question, but you see what I'm saying in general terms, as a very rudimentary description of the concept.)

This shocked me because I learned how vaccines work when I was a kid, probably around the age of 4. My mother explained it to me (in a simplified, child-appropriate way like my explanation above) so I would understand why I had to get a needle.

I was so surprised that a proper grownup didn't know this basic fact of life that I got talking with my mother about it.

Mom: "Well, not everyone has as much education..."
Me: "I didn't learn this from education, I learned it from you when I was like 4. Where did you learn it from?"
Mom: **thinks** "I learned it from my father when I was a kid and had to get a needle."
Me: "And where did Grandpa learn it from?"
Mom: **thinks** "He must have learned it in university."

So because my grandfather studied various science in university like 65 years ago, this piece of knowledge has, in our family, gone from being higher scientific education to conventional wisdom passed on from parent to child, like nursery rhymes and bible stories and household hints. It doesn't feel like privilege, it doesn't feel like rarefied scientific knowledge, it doesn't feel like a concept that you have to go to university to learn. It's just something your mommy tells you when you're a kid, like how to braid your hair.

My maternal grandfather has 16 direct descendants - 4 children and 12 grandchildren - and all of us have known how vaccines work since childhood. Any children we might have or might ever be responsible for will also know how vaccines work since childhood. Even if none of us had ever pursued higher education, we'd all still be in possession of this information that originally comes from higher education, whereas our peers who don't have an ancestor who learned about vaccines in university don't have this information before it comes up in school

I also find myself wondering how this relates to Lareau's concept of entitlement. Simply by growing up in a household where my parents could explain the reasons behind necessary medical procedures, I get the idea that I'm allowed to know the reasons behind any medical procedures I might be ordered to undergo. I'd totally ask for an explanation if ever instructed to undergo a medical procedure I don't understand, and I wouldn't even feel like I'm exercising entitlement in doing that. But perhaps if you grew up getting a needle because you have to, because they won't let you go to school if you don't, perhaps limited to the explanation "It's so you don't get the flu," you might be accustomed to undergoing medical procedures you don't fully understand, and it might never even occur to you to ask for an explanation. Then when you have to take your children to the doctor, it's totally "Because I said so" or "Listen to the doctor, he's a doctor."

What happens to unemployed youth when they stop being youth?

These past few months, I've seen a number of articles on youth unemployment, generally referring to people under the age of 24 and often talking about people who have never been employed. Some of these articles have been to the effect that these unemployed youth are hanging around making trouble and generally being up to no good (read in a "Kids Today! Get off my lawn!" tone of voice.)

What I'm wondering: Okay, so there are people under 24 who are unemployed and may never have had a job and perhaps are making trouble and being up to no good instead. So what happens to them when they turn 25 and age out of this youth demographic and into the broader 25-54 demographic? Obviously they don't magically find a job on their 25th birthday. So it seems like we have or are going to have soon a significant group of people in the 25-30 range who have never had a job. What happens there? Do they eventually manage to integrate into the workforce? (If so, how?) Or are we eventually going to have people in the 30-35 age range who have never been employed? Do the commentators who think unemployed people under 24 are making trouble also think that unemployed people 25-30 are making trouble? Unemployed people 30-35? If not, what causes them to stop making trouble?

Things They Should Invent: car seats for dogs

Based on the people I know who have both cars and dogs (a small sample), it seems standard operating procedure is either to put your dog in the car, perhaps tell him to sit, and leave him to his own devices, or to put your dog in the crate and put the crate in the car, perhaps securing it with the seat belt.

They really should invent either a car seat-type device for dogs, or a crate-specific way of securing the crate (similar to how baby seats attach to the car), or something so that Mr. Puppyface doesn't get hurt if there's a car accident.

I'm a bad evil terrible person and this post is in horrible taste

But I keep thinking of this:



"There's people with guns out there, sir."

Post your window-washing advice here

Here is my (outdoor) window-washing technique:

Washing with water and vinegar from a bucket using a sponge, working vertically. Follow each column with a squeegee, follow the squeegee with drying with paper towels.

This has worked better for me than using Windex (and, obviously, better than without a squeegee and without drying).

But it still leaves streaks, which, because I have big windows, sometimes makes it worse than if I hadn't washed my windows at all.

If you can wash windows without leaving streaks, how would you improve on my technique? (Note that I don't have access to a hose or any of the usual outdoor equipment.)

Questions for grownups

1. Are "funny" greeting cards getting less funny? I found they were funnier when I was a teenager. One could argue that my sense of humour has become more sophisticated, but I never found fart jokes and saggy boob jokes funny, not even when I was 9. (This round of birthday card shopping, I saw THREE separate cards with pictures of/references to bras and a caption about "have an uplifting birthday." THREE! Between that and the early xmas decorations and leftover Halloween stuff waiting to jump out and scare me, I am officially no longer accepting any more Scorpios in my life.)

2. Do people place holds at the library way more now than before the advent of the internet? When I was a kid, I'd go to the library, browse the shelves, and check out whatever appealed to me. Now, I have an epic hold list, and whenever I hear of a book that piques my interest I add it. I assume this difference is due to the fact that I can readily place holds on the internet, but there's the possibility that it's just child vs. adult reading habits.

The Amazon.ca / Eddie Izzard mystery

So I pre-ordered Eddie Izzard: Live from Wembley on Amazon.ca. The release date was yesterday. Normally when I preorder something from Amazon I receive it on the release date, or worst case it ships on the release date.

Then I receive an email from Amazon saying that there's a delay in my order, and the new ETA is Nov. 18 - Nov. 23. I appreciate the notice, but I'm super curious as to what exactly happen. Did they run out? Is there a flaw in the distribution chain? A brief perusal of the fandom doesn't turn up any other instances of this happening. Is it just me?

And to add to the mystery, there are now two Eddie Izzard: Live from Wembley DVDs on Amazon.ca: one released yesterday, which I ordered, and one with a January 2010 release date. I can't find any evidence of this second DVD with the January release date from any other retailer, including US Amazon.

This is all very odd. I've never had anything like this happen with Amazon, or with Eddie's material, or with preordered new releases of any sort.

Things They Should Invent: lemon creme brulee pie

Meringue doesn't taste like it looks like it should taste like.

However, creme brulee tastes like meringue looks like it should taste like.

So why not combine lemon and creme brulee and have something that tastes like what lemon meringue pie should taste like?

Places where I don't think you should shop

This is a continually-updated list of places where I don't think you should shop:

- overstock.com
- Shopper's Drug Mart
- Leon's
- Starbucks
- Carlton Cards
- Indigo
- Kitchen Stuff Plus
- Yonge Eglinton Centre
- Ikea
- Canadian Tire
- Sheppard Centre

Q: Why don't I think you should shop at these places?
A: Because they're doing xmas advertising and/or decorations too early.

Things They Should Invent: vaccine in pill form

Wouldn't it be easier and save a whole lot of time and drama if we could all just administer our own vaccine? Problem: I don't know about you, but I don't know how to administer an injection.

So what they should be working on: vaccine in pill form or some other self-administrable form.

Alternative: come up with a way to teach people self-injection as a matter of course (in school? by family doctors?)

Currently wondering: outside of mass vaccination contexts, if your doctor writes you a prescription for a particular vaccine or some other medication that has to be administered by injection, are you allowed to inject it yourself if you know how (e.g. you're a medical professional yourself or whatever?)

Blast from the past

When I was a kid I thought this was a plausible situation:

I wonder if the Disney princesses are princesses for the same reason children's protagonists have to be underparented

I often see complaints that Disney is setting a bad example for little girls by having all their protagonists be princesses.

I wonder to what extent this is a plot requirement?

In general, protagonists in children's literature/TV/movies are underparented. This is basically a plot requirement. You can't get into many interesting adventures when your lifestyle involves being driven to playdates in a minivan.

I wonder if the Disney princesses also have to be or become princesses for similar reasons?

For example, being a princess enables Pocahontas and Ariel to run/swim around singing and daydreaming, which leads to them having adventures and meeting their men. If Pocahontas was a prole, she'd probably be too busy tanning hides and farming corn, and if Ariel was a prole she'd probably be too busy doing whatever the mermaid equivalent was. The stories are about how they get to have adventures and defy family convention, and they simply wouldn't have room to do that if they weren't princesses, just like how if they wouldn't have room to do that if they weren't under-parented.

Cinderella and Belle had to become princesses to give them a happily ever after within their historical contexts. Cinderella had to escape from her family to have a happily ever after, and the only way to really do that was to marry. An alternative would have been to have her marry some sweet peasant boy and then her life is full of hard work but happy, but to make that look like a happily-ever-after they'd also have to have some rich, hunky, evil prince type who also wants to marry her. And there's also the problem that Cinderella's family of origin is somewhat upper class and could likely block a marriage to a peasant boy, whereas they couldn't possibly block a marriage to a prince.

Belle actually did want to avoid an undesirable marriage to Gaston, but the only options available to her would be for her father to create a successful invention, or for her to marry someone else. And she does this in an unconventional-for-fairytales way by a) seeing Gaston as an undesirable mate despite the fact that he's conventionally attractive, b) falling in love with a man (Beast) who isn't conventionally attractive. (Yes, he tranforms back into a conventionally attractive man at the end, but a) that's the perfect metaphor for how love works, and b) you couldn't expect them to consummate their marriage with him in beast form.) Watching it as a kid, I interpreted it as she had the open-mindedness to go for the non-attractive guy that everyone is shunning rather than the popular and attractive but evil guy, and is thereby rewarded with a happily-ever-after that includes love and security and no longer being dependent on the success of her father's capricious inventions.

(Snow White and Sleeping Beauty are also often included on the list of Disney princesses that are problematic, but I don't remember enough about the Disney versions of this story. I don't think I ever saw the Disney Sleeping Beauty, and all I took away from childhood viewings of Snow White is the dwarves' general silliness. The romantic subplot wasn't of interest.)

I should add that, watching these movies as a kid, I never perceived the protagonists' beauty as an essential part of why they got their happily-ever-after. I perceived it as because they were sweet and kind and charming. So that did make me feel a bit bad because I'm not and never will be that sweet and kind and charming, but I was already getting that guilt from catholicism. And the fact that they were princesses was no more unrealistic than the fact that the protagonists in all my children's and young adult books could run around without parents.

Things They Should Study; how does cultural prioritization of self-sufficiency affect employment rates and the economy as a whole?

Further to my previous thoughts about cultural prioritization of self-sufficiency stemming from Big Sort, I find myself wondering about its economic impact.

For example, my parents think it's decadent to buy lunch at work every day and think people should bring lunch from home. I think it's an annoying waste of time to make lunch at home and much prefer to buy it. If everyone thought like my parents, there'd be far few fast food places, food courts, coffee shops, delis, etc. So those food service jobs wouldn't exist, so there'd be less demand for wholesale food suppliers and bulk purchases of paper napkins, so there'd be less work for commercial delivery drivers, etc. etc. etc. If everyone thought like me, there'd be more of these jobs. I'm not an economic expert, but it seems to me that it might affect the broader economy.

Similar, in my family we do our own taxes or each other's taxes. Taxes are done within the "tribe" (in the sense of tribe that I coined in my Big Sort post). If everyone worked like us, there'd be no call for businesses such as H&R Block. However, because there are people who think it's a valid option to pay someone else to do your taxes, this whole business sector exists.

Given the geographical trends in attitudes towards self-sufficiency, I find myself wondering if they correlate with employment rates. Is there less employment in places that place greater priority on self-sufficiency because people are doing for themselves or keeping it within the tribe?

The trick to studying this would be you'd have to control for the fact that urban areas (which place less priority on self-sufficiency) have more jobs as a matter of course. That's how they got to be urban areas. If you build, say, a steel plant, all the jobs are going to be at the steel plant. The workers probably aren't going to live right next door to the steel plant (they do tend to get a wee bit smelly), but they may well end up sorting themselves into certain other neighbourhoods depending on whether they do or don't prioritize self-sufficiency.

How department stores can get my business

Apparently department stores are trying to make a comeback.

Here's how they can get my business: organize the women's clothing section by clothing type, not by brand.

When I'm shopping for clothes, I'm looking for, say, black pants. I don't care which brand, I don't care which line, I don't care which carefully-selected marketing demographic, I want black pants.

The way department stores are currently arranged, they have a section for every brand. This means I have to wander all over the floor, looking at the pants rack in every single section. This is annoying and time-consuming.

Meanwhile, when I wander into Reitman's or Smart Set, I can go to the side of the store with the more career-oriented clothes, look at all the pants in that section, and that's that. Even at Winner's (which I also find annoying to shop because the racks aren't easily scanable), I just have to look through the racks labeled "pants".

So if you want me to shop at your store, put all your career wear in one section, and arrange the displays so they're easily scanable. I want to walk up, take a look, and immediately have an idea of the range of black pants available, regardless of brand. Then I'll happily go through the racks for the specific items that pique my interest.

Astronauts and dogs and Twitter

1. Astronaut Leland Melvin appears to have had a formal astronaut portrait taken with his big gorgeous dogs! I'd love to have been behind the scenes in that photo session.

2. Astronauts Scott Kelly and Ron Garan, currently in Moscow, found a stray dog...on a train!

Why I am madly in love with Sheldon from Big Bang Theory

(Gloating: I totally caught the translation error in the subtitles at 2:07 - Poodle just confirmed it for me. This is noteworthy because I don't actually speak Portuguese.)

The other problem with the Omar Khadr situation

Why is Omar Khadr in prison in the first place? Because he allegedly threw a grenade that mortally wounded a US soldier.

I know nothing of the legalities and technicalities of the situation, but the fact that a person can be arrested for allegedly attacking invading/occupying soldiers who are attacking them offends my sense of fair play.

It would be like going into a paintball game with a fully loaded paintball gun and shooting paintballs at people, and then pressing assault charges when they shoot paintballs at you. It would be like starting a game of dodgeball on the playground, and then running tattling to teacher "Waaaah! She threw a ball at me!"

If you're going to send soldiers into other countries and have them go barging into buildings trying to capture people, you have to assume they're going to get shot at or have grenades thrown at them or whatever. If you don't want your soldiers to get shot at, don't go around making war zones.