Sunday, January 31, 2010

A depressing post to start off February

The year is some point in the 90s. The place is my parents' house. The doorbell rings. For some reason, I answer. An impossibly tiny little boy is standing there, his mother a safe distance behind him. He looks up at me with terrified eyes and asks (in a voice that's almost incomprehensible for it's frightened shyness and childish lisp) if he can go into our backyard to retrieve his ball.

Remember how scared I was when I had to ring next door's doorbell and ask them the same thing, I tell him of course he can, and next time he doesn't have to ask, he can just go get it. I then inform my parents that Mr. & Mrs. Next Door's grandkids hereby officially have permission to retrieve a ball from our backyard whenever necessary. Since homeowners aren't actually the big scary monsters that small children with lost balls imagine they are, my parents shrug and continue about their lives.

I just learned that a couple of years ago, that boy, who had since grown into a teenager, died of a sudden and unexpected medical complication. The information I have suggests he was in no pain and just quietly passed in his sleep, but his life was cut short far too soon.

I didn't know him at all. My only interaction with him was that one time he rang our doorbell. But I am strongly, inexplicably, disproportionately grieving for that little boy who was scared to ask a stranger if he could get his ball back.

Edited to add: I've been trying to figure out why this saddens me so much, and I think I've worked it out. I identified with the little boy who rang our doorbell. The world was full of big, scary grownups who had unpredictable and unspoken rules. You were completely at their mercy and sometimes they might get mad at you even when your actions were completely innocent (like if your ball went in their yard). Even if they didn't actually get mad at you that often, it felt like they could at any point. The little boy did grow into a handsome and accomplished young man, but he died at an age when, for me at least, the grownup world was still big and scary and unpredictable. I'm mourning for the fact that that impossibly tiny little boy may never have gotten to enjoy the feeling of safety and security that comes with adulthood.

Saturday, January 30, 2010

The one pedestrian law that needs changing

Via Traffic Services:

The only time you are allowed to enter onto the road way at a signalized intersection is when the pedestrian control facing the direction you want to travel indicates a walk symbol. If there is no pedestrian control, you can only enter the roadway when the green light is on for the direction you want to travel.

If the don't walk symbol is illuminated either flashing or solid, you can not enter onto the roadway. You must remain off the roadway until a walk symbol is on.

If there is a countdown timer with the don't walk symbol you can not enter the roadway.

The flashing don't walk symbol, solid don't walk symbol and countdown timer are only indications that the lights are about to change and if you are on the roadway, you better get off before cross traffic commences.


We need to get this rule changed. It's illogical, unreasonable, and vaguely insulting. The countdown timer tells us exactly how much time we have. We can therefore use it to make certain that we have enough time to get across the street. For example, I cross Yonge St. several times a day, and I know with absolute certainty that it takes me 11 seconds to do so at my normal walking pace. Therefore, if there are 15 seconds left on the timer, I have time to get across safely. (You might be thinking "But that's only 4 seconds leeway!" Yes, but it's 36% more time than I need, plus I still do have the option of speeding up from my normal walking pace.) I've seen a 30-second timer on a 2-lane street. What's the point of that? What is gained by keeping people on the sidewalk for a whole nother light cycle when the timer is clearly showing they have far more time than they'll ever need?

Before the timers were installed, I'd occasionally take my chances with the flashing hand, and sometimes I'd end up still in the crosswalk when the light turned red. When the timers were installed, I started timing myself and soon gained a good sense of how many seconds it takes me to cross any given street. Because of that, I enter the crosswalk when the hand is flashing far more often, but I have never - not once - found myself caught in the crosswalk on red on a timed light. The timers give me the information I need, so I'm not gambling.

Ticketing someone for entering a timed crosswalk where they clearly have enough time just because the hand is flashing is akin to ticketing someone for doing 80 in an 80 zone just because there's a 50 zone further up the road. I would very much like to know exactly which piece of legislation this falls under so I know which elected representative I should write to to get it changed. Until we can make that happen, I hope the Toronto Police will use their professional judgement and discretion and only issue tickets on flashing timed crosswalks when the pedestrian hasn't made good use of the timer and has ended up still in the crosswalk on red.

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Multi-purpose analogy

This is an analogy for a) people who insist that they should be able to use offensive language (as opposed to "politically correct" language) without people taking offence, and b) people who insist that they shouldn't have to edit their translations to eliminate double entendres that aren't present in the source text. (And, as usual, I'm not referring to any of my co-workers here.)

It's like meeting a guy name Richard and insisting, despite his protests, on calling him Dick.

My bad idea radar

Several times in my life, I've heard an idea that was really verging on too complicated or too outside my expertise for me to understand, but my brain and my guts and my instinct just rebel against it, certain that it must be wrong. "Wait," I cry out, "How does that possibly make any sense???" The problem is these things are truly beyond anything I'm remotely qualified to have a knowledgeable opinion on. Often, I know so little about them that I can't even articulate why they seem like bad ideas to me. If this world is at all logical, the people who came up with the idea should very much know exactly what they're doing, and it just isn't making sense to me because I'm not smart enough or knowledgeable enough to understand it. And, in fact, if I mention to a subject-matter expert that it doesn't make any sense to me, they get all condescending and treat me like I'm an ignorant fool.

Here are some ideas that have triggered this reaction:

- The kinds of investments that caused the current economic crisis
- The idea of buying a house as an investment with the assumption that housing prices have nowhere to go but up
- The dot-com boom
- NATO's military presence in Afghanistan
- The US military presence in Iraq
- World War I*

I know very little about economics or real estate or investing or international relations or warfare. By all rights, anyone who actually does these things should know exponentially more than me. But in all these cases, years after my instincts rebelled against the idea and I spent days' worth of showers trying to wrap my brain around them to little success, it became apparent and/or generally socially accepted that they were bad ideas.

Now you're asking "But surely sometimes something seems like a bad idea to you and ends up being a good idea?"

I can think of one such case:

When I first moved into my current apartment building, I asked if the whole building switches over between heating and air conditioning, or if we can switch our suites individually. It often gets hot outside during the period where the landlord is still legally obligated to provide heat. So if it gets hot in April, can I turn on my A/C? "No, you can't turn on your A/C in the winter," the rental agent said, "But you can turn on the heat in the summer!" Yeah, like that really helps!

Turns out it does help. The law requires the landlord to maintain a temperature above a certain threshold from September to June, which functionally means that they have to have heating available. But because we can have the heat on in our individual suites even when the building as a whole is switched to air conditioning, that means the landlord is free to switch the building to A/C whenever the weather gets hot, regardless of date, because their legal requirement to provide heating is still fulfilled.

So that is the only case I can think of where my bad idea radar has led me astray. Every other time it worked. So now I tend to trust it.

So why am I blogging this? So that next time something triggers my bad idea radar, I can just link to this explanation without having to go off on a whole tangent about why I trust this gut instinct even though it's illogical.

*You're thinking "Um, WWI kind of already finished well before you got here." In this case, this reaction was triggered when I learned in history class that the war was caused by the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand. I could not imagine at all how that would trigger a war, but my history class just proceeded merrily along as though that made perfect sense. It took me several years and a lot of hard-core research to determine that it did in fact make as little sense as I thought.

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Question for non-Canadians

I'm asking non-Canadians because you're more likely to be able to give an objective opinion without any explicit or subconscious partisan bias, but Canadians can answer too if you want. Anonymous comments are welcome, but please indicate if you're Canadian or not.

Faced with the Haitian catastrophe, [Canadian Prime Minister Stephen] Harper directed traffic in an impressive, speedy and efficient fashion. He got right on the file, sent the appropriate ministers and departments into overdrive, and pushed international buttons – as in Canada playing host yesterday to a hastily assembled international conference on Haiti. Those who have been critical of a certain lassitude in Canadian foreign policy should take note and give credit.

Mr. Harper announced that the government, over and beyond its own aid commitment, would match Canadians' contributions up to $50-million. When Canadians donated more than the government anticipated, he scrapped the matching limit. The result, thus far, is that Canada has made the largest per capita commitment to Haiti. And the military was dispatched there, despite repeated claims that it had already been “overstretched” by Afghanistan.

On orphans and refugees, his government walked the appropriate line between additional humanitarian efforts (as in expediting the arrival of orphans) while not creating a dangerous precedent by throwing open the country to every Haitian who might want to emigrate.

So when a grim humanitarian crisis arose, in Canada's part of the world, with a sizable Haitian diaspora already here, Mr. Harper produced a pitch-perfect response backed by swift and serious action.


My question: objectively speaking, is that actually an impressive achievement for a leader of a country? Because I've been interpreting it as just doing the job properly without messing anything up. I assumed such a response was well within the reach of anyone with the leadership skills to be the leader of a country, and the resources of a whole country at their disposal.

It's like how if a rocket scientist successfully launches a rocket, it isn't a particularly impressive achievement. Most of us can't do that, but basically they're just doing their job right without messing up.

Is effective international crisis response similarly routine, or is it more impressive than I think it is? If the leader of your country responded similarly (and they may well have in fact done just that - I haven't been tallying crisis response by nation) would you be impressed, or would you just consider it basic competence?

Monday, January 25, 2010

Why your translator is asking you all those questions

The second item in the Reverso English-French dictionary entry for "outsider":

(without links to company) personne f recrutée à l'extérieur
Fiorina is the first true outsider to run the company.
Fiorina est la première PDG de la société recrutée à l'extérieur.


A literal translation of the French sentence is "Fiorina is the first CEO of the company recruited from outside." Not exactly the same as the English sentence, but a smooth, natural, and easily-understandable way to express the concept, which is what you're looking for when using that dictionary.

But you'll also notice that the translator who wrote the French sentence knows more information than is given in the English sentence. They know that Fiorina's title is CEO. They know that the reason she is considered an outsider is specifically that she was recruited from outside the company (as opposed to, say, not being a member of the Stonecutters). Oh, and they also know that she's a woman, as evidenced by "la première PDG" (if it were a man, it would say "le premier PDG").

As you can see by the Reverso entry, the English word outsider doesn't have one single equivalent concept in French. None of the other words given would communicate the right idea. (étrangère would imply that she's from another country; tiers implies third-party, which makes no sense because as CEO she's no longer a third party; and le outsider is specific to an athletic context, implying that she's a poor shot to win.) So to accurately communicate the message of the sentence, the translator needs information about the overall context.

So this is why your translator might call you up one day and ask about the genders of various people mentioned in the text, or how one thing mentioned relates to another, or a bit of background information on the situation. They want to be able to construct a text that will effortlessly tell the target-language audience exactly what the source text tells the source-language audience. If you don't answer their questions they'll have to guess, and the translation might not end up meaning what you want it to mean.

I redesigned the economy in the shower this morning

We start with a cradle-to-grave guaranteed income, let's say $20,000 a year (indexed). However, if you are employed, then the employer gets some or all of that money. A certain level of employment is defined as "fully employed". Let's say "fully employed" is a non-temporary job paying least $40,000 a year (indexed) with full benefits a defined-benefit pension. If you are fully employed the employer gets your $20,000, but you don't care, because you make way more than that and have benefits and a pension. If you are less than fully employed (lower pay, or no benefits, or temp work), you get part of the $20,000 and the employer gets part of the $20,000. The ratios would be such that it's never more profitable for the employer to provide less than full employment, and the worker never loses money by working more. I'm willing to consider the possibility of designating a temp or non-benefit job as "fully employed" at a higher salary threshold, but it has to be high enough that it doesn't discourage employers from providing benefits or secure employment.

Children also get $20,000. However, some of the money goes to their parents/guardians, and some if it goes into an account to save for their education. The kids get to keep a relatively small amount (perhaps increasing each year) that basically functions as an allowance. When they turn 18, they start getting the full $20,000 a year. (Thus emancipating them from their parents). If they go to postsecondary right out of high school, the money in their education account is used to pay tuition and any other school-related fees. Three ideas for if they don't go to postsecondary, in ascending order of paternalism:

1. They get access to the money in the education account outright.
2. Every year, they get access to an amount of money equal to the average tuition fee that year. (Of course, if they do choose to go back to school, they get their full tuition paid even if it's higher than the average.)
3. The education account is rolled over into a retirement savings account that will pay out an annuity in retirement.

So overall, citizens are more financially secure, consumer confidence increases, government social spending is at a steady and predictable level regardless of economic conditions, employers are more motivated to create and maintain Good Jobs, the aspects of the childcare problem that can be addressed by throwing money at the problem are addressed, education is affordable, and young adults are able to emancipate themselves from their parents and launch whenever they feel like it.

Sunday, January 24, 2010

The problems with the Test The Nation IQ test

1. The time limit is per question. In real IQ tests, the time limit is for the section or for the whole test, so you can speed through the easy questions and take your time on the harder ones.

2. Because you're taking the test at home on your computer, you can talk out loud, which is completely unlike real IQ tests. I have an auditory memory, so this is enormously helpful to me. As a result I got 49/50 questions right, which places my IQ at 144 (on a scale that goes up to 150).

Oddly, the question I got wrong was in the Memory: Images section, in which I was certain I'd gotten everything right. I look forward to the answers being posted so I can see which one I got wrong.

Of course, the main reason I did so well in the memory sections (other than being able to talk through the scenes out loud) is that I've taken enough of these tests that I know exactly what kinds of questions they might ask. Really all this proves is I have good test-taking skills.

(The test is here.)

Building a better protest rally

The problem with protest rallies is ultimately they are boring and not particularly productive. You're standing there in a crowd while the people on stage tell you stuff you already know, then you walk around a bit and make noise so people notice you. Not especially fun or interesting, and doesn't achieve anything other than visibility.

I do get that visibility is the point. A big loud crowd of people gets attention and makes it clear that a lot of people feel strongly about the cause. Critics are likely to dismiss petitions, email campaigns, facebook groups etc. far more readily than an actual crowd of people. But instead of just showing up and making noise and shouting at each other stuff we already know, we should do something, make something, create something, help something. Surely we can make better use of thousands of intelligent, engaged Canadians than just being extras in a crowd scene!

So here's what our Something has to be:

1. Tangible: The value of the crowd is its tangibility, and we need to retain that. If everyone showed up in Yonge Dundas Square and left their mittens behind, that would show how many people were there (problem: then we'd all have to buy new mittens).

2. Visually impressive: Close to 10,000 people is a lot of people. It's "Holy shit, look at all those people." The Something has to be similarly visually impressive. For example, if everyone put their business card in a jar (problems: not everyone has a business card, and not everyone is free to take political action in their employer's name) that wouldn't be visually impressive - 10,000 business cards isn't really a lot. If everyone left their mittens behind or brought a can of food, that wouldn't be particularly visually impressive either - it would look like a lot, but it wouldn't be "Holy shit!" But if everyone brought a live squirrel and released it in Yonge Dundas Square (obvious problems: how do you catch and transport a live squirrel? Plus it's cruel to squirrels), the reaction would be "Holy shit, look at all those squirrels!"

3. Practical and feasible: So suppose everyone showed up at Yonge Dundas Square, stood there and knitted a scarf, and then we left all the scarves on the ground, carpeting the entire square. Tangible and visually impressive, but the problem is not everyone knows how to knit. If everyone got in a car and drove around really slowly with a sign on their roof tying up traffic, that would be tangible and visually impressive, but would severely reduce the numbers because you can't assume everyone has a car. But if we all showed up and drew chalk outlines of our bodies (problems: symbolically inappropriate for this protest, dependent on the media being willing to go to the trouble of photographing it from above) that would be extremely feasible. Leaving your mittens behind might be impractical enough to deter people, but bringing a can of food is generally doable (the problem being that 10,000 cans of food aren't that visually impressive.)

4. Productive and helpful: The ideal would be for the protest to have some lasting positive impact, beyond political awareness. That would give us more of the moral high ground and be good PR vis-a-vis people who are wary of protests in general. The squirrels and the slow-driving cars would just annoy people (and squirrels) so we wouldn't want to do that. The scarves, the mittens, and the cans of food could all be donated somewhere where they'd do some good. It would be even better if the Something could be permanent, like building Habitat for Humanity houses (problem: even if a tract of Habitat for Humanity houses springs up overnight, it isn't obvious to the non-expert how many people were involved).

While writing this I came up with the idea of everyone coming to the protest site and building a small (like 1 or 2 feet high) inukshuk. But that's not super-feasible and not particularly productive. (Where would we get rocks from? How would we make it visually apparent what the inukshuks represent? Plus critics would say that maybe just a few people showed up and built many inukshuks each, and it would annoy people if we cluttered up Yonge Dundas Square with inukshuks.) Plus I don't know whether 10,000 small inukshuks in Yonge Dundas Square would be visually impressive or not.

Then I had the idea of building inukshuks out of nonperishable food, and after the protest is over donating all the food to a food bank. Questions: is it architecturally feasible to build an inukshuk out of nonperishable food, and would the amount of food required be generally affordable? How much trouble/annoyance would it be? What would we do about critics' inevitable allegations that maybe it was just a small number of people building a large number of inukshuks? And would it be visually impressive?

Any other ideas?

Saturday, January 23, 2010

When and how did entails stop existing?

Several Jane Austen novels are based on the concept of entails, where an estate could only be inherited by a male heir, and daughters were left with nothing (making it necessary for them to find husbands, thus triggering the entire plot of a Jane Austen novel). In at least some of the cases (Pride & Prejudice, Sense & Sensibility) the fathers of the family couldn't do anything to change the entails. Even though they were the boss of the estate, their hands were completely tied by the legalities of the entail, and they had no way of seeing to it that their daughters were provided for.

So what I'm wondering is, how did it come about that entails no longer exist? If they're so wrapped up legalities that the people in charge of the estates did not have the power to change them, how did they get changed?

Being safe

I was reading some statements from a politician who is more right-wing than I'm comfortable with, and I found myself whimpering at the screen "But I just want to be safe!"

The policies being described would make people have to struggle to earn a living where now we merely have to work. They'd make aspects of life that are currently effortless somewhat difficult, and/or hinder work that is currently being done to make difficult aspects of life easier. Similar political opinions often want to weaken the safety net that will catch us if we fall, making it easier to end up in grinding poverty and harder to climb back out. That makes me feel less and less safe.

What makes me feel safe is if I can be a good girl, do what I'm supposed to, go to work and do my job well, pay my bills in full and on time, don't be a dick to people, don't do anything too stupid, and that's enough to keep life from getting worse. The policies I was reading about would result in life being worse even if people are good and do what they're supposed to. I can't feel safe in a world that works like that.

People who are the same flavour of right-wing as the politician whose statements I was reading tend to be opposed to taxes. It's not something I feel myself - taxes have always felt negligible to me, but then I don't make enough money to be in a very high tax bracket, so I do get that it might feel different if you're in a high tax bracket.

What I'm wondering: do taxes make them feel unsafe, the same way the policies I was reading about make me feel unsafe? Or is it something other than feeling safe?

Friday, January 22, 2010

Worst. Dear Abby Letter. Ever.

Last letter in today's column:

DEAR ABBY: I'm having a dispute with my husband. He thinks that you screw in a lightbulb clockwise. I disagree. I say counter-clockwise. Which of us is correct?


Um, why not grab the nearest lamp and check for yourself?

Life imitates Star Trek

Synthehol!

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Wherein a foreigner who knows nothing about privatized health insurance tries to fix the US health insurance system

What if US health insurance companies weren't taxed on their earnings, and were instead taxed on the value of the claims they decline? If they pay in full every claim submitted to them, they won't pay any taxes. If they pay none of the claims submitted to them, they have to pay taxes on the full amounts of all the claims submitted to them.

Other problems I've heard of are a) insurance premiums being too expensive, and b) patients being refused insurance coverage at all because they are or have been sick. So in addition to taxing the amounts of any claims that are refused, they should also tax the amounts of any insurance premiums above a certain percentage of the client's income, and there should be a penalty for every applicant they refuse to cover, equal to either the cost of their average client or the cost of their most expensive client (I can make arguments for both).

Now the obvious flaw here is that taxes are never 100%, so the insurance companies would still be saving money by doing whatever they want. It's possible that anti-tax sentiment would provide sufficient motivation, but you can't make policy on the assumption that people are that stupid. So the next step is to use any money collected through this coverage denial tax to create an insurance fund for people who can't get or afford coverage elsewhere. So basically the insurance companies are paying the insurance premiums of people they refuse to cover.

I think they either did or were talking about making a rule in the states where every citizen has to buy health insurance, so it would be perfectly logical to tweak legislation at this point to make that more feasible. And if the insurance companies don't want to pay any denied-claim tax and just want to revel in unbridled capitalism, all they have to do is provide their services to anyone who asks at a fair price.

Monday, January 18, 2010

Adult material?

Via Slap:

[Canada Post's new] policies, which came into effect just over a year ago, now mandate that all “sexually suggestive” admail—even commercial mail that is explicitly addressed to the recipient—be clearly labelled as adult material, thwarting all attempts at discretion. This includes all images “that are suggestive of sexual activity,” as well as text that “describes sexual acts in a way that is more than purely technical.”


Technically, as per the letter of the law, that would include romance novels. That would include fashion magazines if they contained some of the more provocative perfume ads. If "images" includes video, that would include DVD box sets of most (if not all) the Golden Globe nominees for Best Drama. None of which is porn. It is intended for adults, yes, but you can buy romance novels in a grocery store, and see images suggestive of sexual activity by channel-surfing after 10 pm.

What were they thinking when they wrote this definition?

Sunday, January 17, 2010

Open Letter to the Toronto Star

Dear Toronto Star:

How come an article that gets a graphic content warning on your website appears on the front page, above the fold, with no content warning in your print edition? What is your reasoning here? What scenarios did you have in mind when imagining that online readers might require a content warning but print readers would not?

Sincerely,

A reader who prefers to avoid graphic content at the breakfast table

Why does the military do disaster relief?

Mentioned frequently and matter-of-factly in the news is that the military is sending search-and-rescue and other disaster-relief teams to Haiti. Which is very much a good thing.

However, this is making me wonder how it came about that the military has disaster relief in its skill set in the first place. We accept it as a given, but if you think about it, it's rather odd for an organization originally intended for warfare to develop humanitarian expertise. Not questioning its value - I'd much rather have them doing disaster relief than making war - just wondering how it happened.

Saturday, January 16, 2010

Things They Should Invent: celebrate functional fashion design

If you've ever had the pleasure of owning a particularly well-designed piece of clothing, you'll know that they work with your body to make your shape look better than it is. Well-placed design features smooth out any lumpiness, make your torso look sleek and your breasts look high, and use your hips to create a general impression of sexy curves rather than pear-shaped endomorphism. I had the extreme good fortune to find two such dresses in the past year (name-dropping to give credit where credit is due: dresses by Calvin Klein and Adrianna Papell respectively, both found at Winners) and was very impressed by the thought that went into the designs. It was like engineering or architecture! I came away with a profound appreciation of the talent that goes into good fashion design.

However, haute couture doesn't really work this way. The outfits on a fashion show runway are pure artistic expression by the designer, and the models are specifically chosen for having figures and features that aren't going to interfere with the clothes.

Fashion magazines do sometimes do articles on dressing to enhance or conceal certain aspects of your figure, but they place the responsibility on the wearer to find clothes that work for them. It's presented as a way to improve the wearer's shopping skills, without lauding the designers for designing helpful clothes.

This does make sense from a practical perspective (the person reading the magazine is the wearer, who presumably does want clothes that work for them), but I think it's unhelpful overall. People often worry that the use of extremely skinny fashion models leads to body insecurity and eating disorders among the general population. I'm wondering if it isn't the skinny models per se, but rather the fashion hierarchy that celebrates haute couture where models are chosen not to interfere with the clothes as the pinnacle of design achievement, while actual well-designed clothes that work well on real people are seen as more downmarket. This leaves people feeling insecure because their body won't serve all the clothes, whereas in reality the clothes should serve the wearer. Good interface design makes it obvious where to click, rather than requiring users to RTFM. Good architecture or engineering works with how users are going to naturally use the structure, rather than requiring a change in user behaviour. Good fashion design - the work that is celebrated as the pinnacle of fashion design - should be similarly user-centric.

I'd love to see a piece in Vogue where big-name designers make clothes for real people. Not magazine "real people" - flawlessly attractive people whose hips happen to be slightly bigger than their bust, or size 12s being dubbed "plus-size models". I'm talking about people who are as conventionally attractive as Susan Boyle. Get top designers to design clothes specifically for these real people to wear in real life, and present it as a celebration of real design skill.

Alternatively (or in addition), there could be a TV show akin to Project Runway where the designers are given real-life design problems. The subjects could be real people, or they could be more extreme real-life issues (like that one house makeover show where they renovate houses for families with special-needs octuplets or whatever). Up-and-coming new designers could have challenges like making a functional and attractive wardrobe for someone with a colostomy bag, or creating flattering workout wear for a 60-year-old triathlete who has to train outdoors in the Canadian winter, or designing clothes that a transgender person could wear throughout their entire transition. This show would have to be done well (i.e. not stooping to presenting the subjects as a freakshow), but I think it would be enormously valuable both for the body image of the general public and for the design profession to present functional user-centric problem-solving as the pinnacle of exemplary fashion design.

Foolish pricing decision from Rogers

In October, I received an email from Rogers offering me a significantly better price on my existing home phone service. Being the procrastinative sort of person that I am, I didn't get around to switching to the new package until December. It was a good decision and I came away feeling like I won (which I never do when dealing with telecommunications.)

Yesterday, I got a letter from Rogers saying that the price of my phone package was increasing by $3. My first visceral reaction was "Dude, WTF????" I haven't even had a full billing period on my new phone package yet! I felt completely baited and switched!

And to make matters worse (for Rogers), in that same day's mail there was also an offer from Bell where the big bold number at the top of the page was now marginally lower than the new price with Rogers.

Of course, having been a consumer of telecommunications for several years, I had the sense to step back from my initial visceral feeling of being cheated to run some numbers and read some fine print. And it turned out that I'm still marginally saving money with Rogers and the fine print of Bell's offer pushes its price marginally higher than Rogers'.

But I have to wonder, what kind of a business decision was that on Rogers' part? If they had just made the home phone offer $3 higher in the first place, I would have come away feeling like I've won. Why even introduce this opportunity for customers to feel baited and switched?