Possible conflict between Windows 7 Service Pack 1 and iTunes (and possibly Sims 3)

Short version: iTunes 10.2.2.14 wouldn't sync or restore my iPod (3rd generation touch) after I installed Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (KB976932) on May 28, 2011. Uninstalling the service pack made the iPod useable again. I don't yet have a solution to allow the two to coexist.

Blow-by-blow: On Sunday I was heading out to do my errands, only to notice that my iPod thought it had no songs on it. Weird. When I got back home I tried to sync it, only to have iTunes tell me it couldn't detect the iPod and it needed to be restored. I was rather wary based on my past experiences with restoring this iPod, but I didn't see a choice.

As I'd suspected, it got stuck in recovery mode, giving error code 6 every single time (unlike my previous attempts, when it would change it up a bit. I tried all the usual stuff - restarting iTunes, rebooting the computer, switching USB ports, switching cables, updating USB drivers (they were already up to date), reinstalling iTunes, turning off security software. When I looked up error code 6, it said the problem might be with a registry entry called TCPWindowSize, but the regedit search function found no such entry. The iTunes diagnostic found everything fine, except that it claimed it couldn't detect the iPod.

I ended up going to the Apple store (lesson learned: get an appointment. The schedule looks empty during the day, but fills up after work) and getting them to restore my iPod. But then when I got back home and tried to load it up with music again, it wouldn't work. It kept freezing only a few songs in (e.g. 20 or 30 songs into my nearly-5,000 song playlist), then telling me it couldn't load the song in question because of an "unspecified error" (with error codes 0xE800801C, 0xE800400C, or 0xE800400B), then telling me it couldn't read the disk of the iPod. I set about removing variables, but the best I could get it to do is load 48 songs by a single artist, which completely defeats the purpose of an iPod. I tried restoring an older backup of the iPod, but it froze around 85% of the way in. The iTunes diagnostic said that iTunes Helper was not running, despite the fact that I've never disabled it on this computer. Restarting and reinstalling iTunes didn't help. Googling around the problem, I found suggestions to disable certain USB controllers in the Device Manager, but that only made my USB ports stop working. Another googled-up suggestion was that my music might not me loading because my iPod was restored on a Mac at the Apple store and I have a PC at home, so I held my breath and restored it again. And, once again, was faced with error code 6. I think this is the point where I broke out the wine.

With visions of having to schlep back to the Apple store with my oversized PC laptop in tow and insisting that they get my iPod to sync MY music, I finally remembered that the beginning of these problems correlated with a large Windows update. So I went back into Windows Update and uninstalled recent updates one by one, trying to restore the iPod in between. After I removed Service Pack 1, my iPod finally restored successfully, and allowed me to reload all my songs by restoring a previous backup.

The next logical step would be to disable automatic syncing in iTunes and then reinstall the service pack, but I haven't gotten there yet.

In general, this little iPod has given me more trouble than any other piece of technology I've ever used in the past 30 years. But I suspect this problem might have been with the service pack, because of two other things that happened at the same time.

1. Sims 3 had an update while all this was going on, so I installed it, but the installer crashed just before it finished. I was caught in limbo between the old version and the new version, and had to reinstall the game from scratch.

2. Before I uninstalled the service pack, I tried to do a system restore. That didn't work either due to "an unspecified error (0x80070005)."

I can't be certain that these two problems were due to the service pack because I didn't troubleshoot thoroughly enough to eliminate variables, but as it stands I'm hesitant to reinstall the service pack. At the moment I'm just glad my ipod works (I get edgy and stimmy without music in my ears, and having to go to sensory-overload places like malls and Apple stores makes it worse), but I'll update if I figure out anything new.

Plot hole in my childhood

From time to time when I was a kid, I'd be sitting there, reading a book, minding my own business, and some grownup would walk in and say "Turn a light on!"

I'm now the age that my parents were when they had children, and this doesn't make any sense to me whatsoever! How does it even occur to a person? You walk into a room and...evaluate the suitability of the light levels for some activity you aren't even planning to engage in? Why would you think that a person who knows full well how to operate the lights wouldn't adjust the lighting levels if they were uncomfortable? Why would you think you know the appropriate lighting level for someone else to engage in an activity you're not doing when you don't have their eyes and aren't engaging in their activity?

At the time I chalked it up to grownups being weird, but in retrospect I'm baffled!

The other scars of bullying

Sometimes when I tell people that I was bullied, and that "just ignor[ing] it" didn't make the bullying stop (at least not for years and years and years), they respond with something like "But it made you stronger, right?"

No, it didn't make me stronger. It fucked up my interpersonal interactions until well into my twenties. But I haven't figured out a way to successfully explain this to people who want to impose the "made you stronger" narrative on my life.

Fortunately, Rachel Simmons, author of Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls, can explain it more articulately than I can:

These girls described feeling unfamiliar with the most basic rules of relationship, things taken for granted by any socially adjusted person. They no longer feel certain of what makes people angry or upset, not to mention how to tell when someone is feeling that way. Their emotional radar is incapacitated. This can turn a girl into a cautious ghost of her former self, stifled and silenced by fear.

This fear is felt by degrees among girls who struggle with everyday conflict. One of the chief symptoms of girls' loss of self-esteem is the sense of being crazy, of not being able to trust one's own interpretation of people's actions or events. Did she just look at her when I said that? Was she joking? Did she roll her eyes? Not save the seat on purpose? Lie about her plans? Tell me that she'd invited me when she hadn't? The girls I'd interviewed confirmed a similar unrest, the disturbing belief that what they were sure they knew or saw wasn't that at all, but was in fact something quite different. In discord between girls, gestures of conflict often contradict speech, confounding their intended targets.

I always felt like society was operating on another secret set of rules that was completely different from what I was being taught, and I had to guess what was really expected of me. This feeling didn't start to go away until I was in my mid-20s, a decade after the bullying ended, and nearly 200% longer than it lasted. This is what bullying does to people.

What if all political candidates had to work with exactly the same funding?

In the news lately has been the Conservative government's desire to get rid of the $1.75 per vote subsidy, leaving only fundraising to pay for election campaigns.

I've been thinking about what I like and dislike about election campaigns, and I think I'd like it better if fundraising wasn't even allowed. I'd rather have all candidates in each race allocated the exact same amount of money, with wouldn't be enough for a particularly lavish race, and strictly limited in the kind of donations they're allowed to accept.

Whatever the amount of money is, it should limit candidates to communicating with voters (in person, online, by phone), having an office, and handing out/mailing printed materials. No assholic TV commercials, no ridiculous promotional stunts, no rallies or parties apart from election night itself. (I'll allow lawn signs too, although I think they're silly and we'd be better off without them.) There would be budget for the minimum staff necessary, at the going rates for seasoned professionals. (This leaves the candidate with the option of larger paid staff who are less experienced.)

The amount each candidate receives should be commensurate with the realities of the riding. For example, candidates in downtown Toronto can probably get everywhere by transit and don't need a car, whereas a private plane would be a necessity for candidates in Nunavut. However, the Toronto candidates would probably have to pay more for office space.

No one would be allowed to donate money to election campaigns. Candidates would not be allowed to use their own money for campaign stuff. (They'd probably be allowed to buy themselves suits etc., but they can't pay for their own domain name - that has to come out of campaign funds.) People cannot make in-kind donations (i.e. no donating free printing for flyers). The only donation allowed is volunteering one's time. I haven't decided yet whether donating one's own professional services should be allowed or prohibited.

The goal here is to put all the campaigns on rather minimalist equal ground and leave the candidates with not much to do but dialogue with voters. This would leave us (and the media) with nothing to focus on but issues and candidate-voter relationships, which would make the whole thing a lot more pleasant for everyone.

"Setting up personalized settings for: Windows Desktop Update"

I just installed the latest Windows 7 service pack, and, after I rebooted, my computer gave me a message saying "Setting up personalized settings for: Windows Desktop Update", and then stayed on that message for quite a long time. I was certain the computer was frozen, but I was in the middle of exercising so I decided to wait until I was done to do anything about it.

It turned out the computer stayed on that message for 15 minutes. Then the screen turned black and, again, stayed there for quite a long time. Again, it seemed frozen, but the mouse moved and the numlock key still worked, so I decided to give it some time. The screen stayed black for about 12 minutes. Then Windows finished booting up as usual.

So the moral of the story is: if your computer appears to freeze on "Setting up personalized settings for: Windows Desktop Update" or on the black screen that comes after, give it a really long time before you decide that it's frozen and interrupt the service pack installation. My computer is only 5 months old, so if your computer is older than that it might take even longer than the 15 minutes. (I guess the other moral of the story is don't install service packs if you're going to need the computer right away - wait until you have some time.)

Dear Windows Update designers: a percentage complete/time remaining progress bar at that point in the installation would be helpful.

What if they taught noblesse oblige in school?

I first learned about the concept of noblesse oblige in sociolinguistics class, when we were studying U and Non-U. To give us some context, the prof talked to us about the British conceptualization of old money (generally title nobility) vs. nouveau riche. The most memorable example she gave was that titled nobility would wear an extremely good quality cashmere sweater that they bought 20 years ago, while nouveau riche would ostentatiously buy the trendiest new clothes every year. I found the noblesse oblige concept appealing, and try to work it into my own life on the few occasions when I can find an opportunity to do so.

A number of things recently have made me wonder "Haven't they ever heard of noblesse oblige?" Some of this comes from politics, some of it comes from my recent readings on bullying theory. Most recent was from this article:

At one Southern school, some popular kids keep the price tags on their clothing so that classmates can see that they paid full price at a nondiscount store.

WTF? Haven't they ever heard of noblesse oblige?

Actually, they probably haven't. I first met the concept in an upper-year university sociolinguistics course, so why on earth would I think schoolkids should have heard of it?

But wouldn't it be useful if it were a more widely-known concept? What if they taught it in school?

Obviously they can't teach it as a thou shalt - that would come across as lecturey and sanctimonious and would never work. It would have to be closer to how I was introduced to it, simply "This is a thing that exists. Nobility does it."

So how would you do that? First thing that comes to mind is in a novel. For one or more of the books everyone reads in English class, pick something where noblesse oblige is a plot or character point. Appealing protagonist characters demonstrate noblesse oblige, and unappealing antagonist characters fail to do so. It wouldn't be the whole moral of the novel, just an underlying thread, like how entails are an underlying thread of Jane Austen novels but the books are far more than just a lecture on the follies of entails. That would introduce people to the concept of noblesse oblige in a non-lecturey way, and maybe the idea would stick with some people and help make the world a better place in the long run.

"Feminization"

This train of thought has been festering for a while, but it started with this article about how there are fewer male students in veterinary school, a phenomenon that researchers refer to as "the feminization of veterinary medicine".

I recently something similar in language. Apparently male (Anglophone) students are hesitant to study French because they perceive it as being "for girls". You also often hear it spoken of in reference to elementary education. Apparently boys get less than enthusiastic about reading etc. because it's being modeled and encouraged by (primarily female) teachers, which apparently makes boys thing it's "for girls". Again, the word "feminization" is often used to describe this phenomenon.

The word "feminization" makes it sound like the thing is being made more feminine. But that isn't the issue. The thing isn't being made feminine, the thing is exactly what it has always been. The issue is that a previously neutral thing has started being perceived by boys as feminine (presumably because girls are doing it), and this makes boys not want to do it. So the real problem is that boys don't want to do things that they perceive to be "for girls."

But can we as women even do anything about this? It seems like an internal characteristic of male culture (insofar as it's even remotely useful to think of male culture as something homogenous), and I can't imagine that anything that women might say or do would make a difference.

Teach me how to burn .avi to DVD

Has anyone out there successfully burned an .avi file to a DVD so it can be played in a DVD player? If so, what exactly did you do? Windows DVD player says it can do it but it doesn't work (it reads the resulting DVD as blank)

The internet has entirely too many suggestions and they're all different, so I'm looking for first-hand experience. Has anyone out there done this successfully?

My Wii Fit chickened out on me today

In some of the activities in Wii Fit, you can "challenge" your trainer to see who can do the most reps. Since your trainer is actually a cartoon, that really means that she'll say she's tired and can't do any more after a few more reps than you managed to do the last time you challenged her.

So today I clicked on the jackknife challenge, fully expecting to do about 60 reps. The trainer popped up and said "I'm a little off today. Why don't you come back again later to challenge me?" Then it returned to the menu without putting me through any jackknives.

Isn't that weird???? But, you know, I kind of like it when a computer gives me an unexpected excuse not to do an exercise. It's the exercise equivalent of a snow day!

Why OHIP should cover telephone prescription renewals

From a Globe and Mail column, explaining why doctor's offices have to charge for telephone prescription renewal. OHIP doesn't cover telephone renewals, and the article explains why doctors would lose money if they didn't bill for them:

Something as simple as a prescription refill, he points out, takes about 15 minutes of physician and support staff time. The chart is retrieved, taken to the doctor’s office, where it must be read. A decision is made to renew and a note made. The prescription must faxed or phoned in, then the chart re-filed.

All these things need to be done if the patient comes into the office too. But, on top of this, support staff time is needed to book the appointment and check the patient's health card and exchange basic pleasantries when they arrive. The patient sits in the waiting room, thus being exposed to and becoming a vector for whatever contagions any other patients may have. The patient exchanges basic pleasantries with the doctor, is asked if there are any changes to their health, probably undergoes a basic examination since they're there anyway, and might have an unrelated but quick and simple question to ask while they're there. This all takes up more time and resources (and actual appointment slots), and because it involves presumably non-contagious patients going to a medical office (which is more likely to have a higher concentration of contagious patients than the general population) it slightly increases the possibility of contagion, which is a worse public health outcome and increases the burden on the health system. On top of that, the patient probably has to take time off work to come into the office, which costs the patient and/or the employer money and reduces the patient's economic productivity for that day.

In short, in-person renewal is a greater burden on the system than telephone renewal. The difference is small, but for each and every factor in-person is a greater burden than telephone. The only time in-person renewal is superior is when the doctor needs to examine the patient before writing or renewing the prescription. Therefore, OHIP should cover telephone (or even internet!) renewal in addition to in-person renewal, because it is better for society.

Why Gay-Straight Alliances in Catholic schools are consistent with the teaching of the Church

Recently in the news, a number of Ontario Catholic school boards banned Gay-Straight Alliances in their schools. But I recently stumbled upon something that suggests the permitting Gay-Straight Alliances is more consistent with the Church's teachings than forbidding them.

Straight out of the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

2358 The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God's will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord's Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.

2359 Homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection.

A Gay-Straight Alliance is a source of the support of disinterested friendship, respect, compassion, and sensitivity for those faced with these trials and difficulties. In a Catholic and educational context, it (like any other Catholic school-related organization) can be used to help students fulfill God's will in their lives and gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection.

To forbid a Gay-Straight Alliance is unjust discrimination, which is quite specifically contraindicated in the Catechism. Moreover, it is an outright failure of the schools' duty towards their students. All Catholic school students are, by virtue of being unmarried, currently called to chastity, and, by virtue of adolescent hormones, currently subject to temptation in this regard. Within the internal logic of the Catholic church (and, especially, the current pontiff's inclination towards moral absolutism), the situation of queer students is morally equivalent to the situation of everyone else. So why should their school, which is entrusted with their mental, social, and moral development, deny them the respect, compassion, sensitivity, unity, support, friendship called for in the Catechism to help them fulfill God's will in their lives and gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection as called for in the Catechism in the face of what the Catechism defines as trials and difficulties?

Questioning the illegality of assassination

I was surprised when reading Noam Chomsky's reaction to Bin Laden's death to learn that assassination is illegal under international law. This surprised me, because all-out war can be perfectly legal under international law, and war is far messier and hurts far more people than assassination. I googled around and it seems to be true, and I also have a vague memory of in 2001 when Canada was first going to occupy Afghanistan, asking why we couldn't just assassinate Bin Laden instead and being told that that's illegal.

I think we need to rethink this. It just doesn't seem right that it would be illegal to, say, send in a small team of spooks to neatly assassinate Gaddafi, but World War I was perfectly legal. Why should it be legal to kill thousands, even millions, of soldiers and civilians and destroy infrastructure and livelihoods, but illegal to sneak into some despot's compound and off him in his sleep?

I'm certainly not saying that people or countries should be allowed to kill people and then get a get out of jail free card by calling it assassination, or that assassination is even objectively a good thing, at all, ever. I'm just thinking it might be a less unpalatable shade of grey than full-out military action.

In his article, Mr. Chomsky says:

We might ask ourselves how we would be reacting if Iraqi commandos landed at George W. Bush’s compound, assassinated him, and dumped his body in the Atlantic.

And his point, that the American people would not be best pleased with that development, is, of course, correct and valid. But I suspect the American people would be even less pleased if war were declared on the whole country and millions of innocent civilians found themselves bombed out and under military occupation when the occupying force really just wanted that one guy.

Perhaps it would be useful for international law to create a framework inside which assassination can be legal. Perhaps countries who want to assassinate someone could go before an international court and get an assassination warrant. (Q: But then wouldn't the target know they're about to be assassinated? A: Are there any plausible targets for assassination who aren't already assuming someone wants to assassinate them?) As a starting point, I propose that, in any situations where war or other military occupation would be legal, targeted assassination should also be legal (and military action should not be a prerequisite to targeted assassination.) Perhaps, before military action could be considered legal, the initiator should have to justify why targeted assassination isn't an option.

I'm certainly not under the impression that military actions normally stick to the letter of international law in the first place, but nevertheless, even if just for form's sake, the action with the less harmful outcome should be just as legal as the action with the more harmful outcome.

The mystery of Reitmans Comfort Fit pants

This year, Reitmans Comfort Fit pants have a tag on them suggesting that you try wearing a size smaller than your regular size, "for a smoother fit that will hug your waist".

But the pants are already smaller than last year!

I know it's the pants and not my weight because I still have the ones I bought last year. Last year's size 13 currently gives me a generous, and perhaps even roomy, fit in the thighs and seat, in more of a 90s aesthetic. This year's size 13 is fashionably snug in the thighs and seat. This year's size 11 makes my hips and thighs look like sausages, even fatter than I look naked.

I can understand making the pants narrower in keeping with this year's aesthetic. And I can understand encouraging people to maybe try on a size smaller to get a look that's more in keeping with this year's aesthetic. But why on earth would you do both? What could that possibly achieve except make your customers feel fat?

Things They Should Invent: measure the non-NIMBY vote

In Local Motion, there are two stories of excessively NIMBY behaviour. In one case, a family put up a fence in their yard so the kids could play safely, and the neighbours objected because the norm in the neighbourhood was not to have fences. In another, a family wanted to tear down their old house and build a new accessible one to accommodate member of the household's disability, and the neighbours objected because of the historical nature of the house being torn down.

Both of these cases ended up having public meetings held about them, and it occurred to me that this is inherently unfair. Do you want to go to a public meeting about the Jones's fence? If you think their fence is an outrage, your answer is going to be "Hell yeah!" But if you don't care either way about their fence, your answer is going to be "Of course not, I don't care if the Joneses build a fence!" The vast vast majority of the neighbourhood might be completely indifferent, but the Joneses still find themselves in a public meeting facing dozens of angry opponents. No one is going to bother to go all the way to a public meeting and stand up in front of people just to say "Really, I do no care one bit," but most of the neighbourhood probably feels this way.

Non-NIMBYs often truly don't care, and may even think the issue is none of their business. This makes them harder to count, but we really do need to come up with a way to have the indifferent vote counted without requiring too much effort by the indifferent.

How to make me conservative

I've been watching Johnathan Haidt's TED talk on the moral roots of liberals and conservatives, and I realized that I actually have quite a lot in common with conservatives. I don't have a high level of openness to new experiences. I like things that are familiar, safe, and dependable. Mr. Haidt says that liberals "want change and justice, even at the risk of chaos" and conservatives "want order, even at cost to those at the bottom." I don't necessarily want change, except when it's necessary for justice or to improve things. I wouldn't say "at the risk of chaos", the strongest I'd go is "at the risk of reasonable sacrifice." I rather like order as well (although not when it's code for authoritarianism), just not at the cost of anyone - especially not those at the bottom! Overall, I like the rut I'm in and would very much like to stay here. My politics come from my personal desire not have my comfy rut taken away, and my socialist value that anyone who would like to do so should be able to enjoy the same benefits from the status quo that I do.

The more conservative people around me seem to think that I should be more conservative, and based on Mr. Haidt's theories it seems like the potential is in me. So why am I not there?

I've been thinking about this for a while, and I think it comes down to two things: the status quo is not satisfactory, and there is sufficient will among people who identify as conservative to change the aspects of the status quo that I find positive to make me nervous. I am naturally inclined to unquestioningly accept the status quo, and to fiercely cling to the aspects of it that I see as positive. Elimination of threats to positive aspects of the status quo is the most likely way to make me conservative.

So what does that mean in specific terms?

1. Good jobs for all Employment gives me money which buys me my comfy rut. If I could be confident that my earning potential (along with that of people I care about, people I identify with, and people I look at and think "there but for the grace of god go I") is not going to vanish due to circumstances beyond my control, I could feel safe and secure enough to be conservative. However, as long as the status quo is moving towards contract hell for all, I will be disinclined to protect the status quo.

2. Maintain our rights Everything else that I value about the status quo can fall under the broad category of retaining our existing rights, and everything that I want to change can be defined as either expanding existing rights to everyone, or restoring rights that were eliminated in living memory. I feel secure because I have access to all the tools I need to remain childfree, and I want that available to everyone. I feel terrified that the police could just round up everyone who happened to be in a particular area of a public street during the G20, and I want to go back to a world where that couldn't happen. If I could be confident that my rights (along with those of people I care about, people I identify with, and people I look at and think "there but for the grace of god go I") are not going to vanish due to circumstances beyond my control, I could feel safe and secure enough to be conservative. However, as long as the status quo includes people very loudly trying to take them away, I will be disinclined to protect the status quo.

Things They Should Invent: Vote "Yes, but..."

Sometimes elected representatives will vote against a measure when they approve of its general direction, but don't think it goes far enough.

For example, suppose the status quo is that people have to buy their own widgets at retail prices, which is really hard on the poor. Widgets are a necessity of life, but they really are awfully expensive. An integral part of the Purple Party's platform is that the government should provide free widgets to everyone. However, the Purple Party is not in power. The Yellow Party is, and they have just tabled a bill to provide a 10% widget rebate to help citizens pay for the cost of widgets.

The Purple Party would consider this bill a step in the right direction, but nowhere near sufficient. Under the current system, they may well not vote for it. However, I propose that they should have the option to vote "Yes, but..." on the bill. "Yes, but..." is understood to mean "We do not consider this bill an adequate solution and it is not our intention to consider this issue closed. However, because this bill is an improvement over the status quo, we will support it until something better can be implemented." It counts as a yes when they're counting up all the yeas and nays, but also makes it clear that the Purple Party does not consider this sufficient. That way, the Purple Party cannot in the future be accused of supporting the Yellow agenda, and the Yellow Party cannot in the future claim that their bill had the full support of the House. And the people can at least get a 10% rebate on their widgets until the Purple Party can get a better bill through.

To use a real-world example, as I blogged about before, it has been reported that Canada may get in the way of royal succession reform because apparently "Canadians aren't interested in a debate on the monarchy." If a "Yes, but..." option existed, Canada could vote "Yes, but..." on gender-blind primogeniture, saying "While we agree that this is better than male primogeniture, we don't necessarily agree with this whole monarchy thing in the first place and reserve the right to dissociate ourselves at some point in the future." No need for a big messy debate no one wants, no one's views go unrepresented, and the right thing gets done.

I think this concept would be very useful, but "Yes, but..." is a stupid name. Taking suggestions for better names.

My traditional post-election test of the Hill Knowlton predictor

Click here for a projection of the 2011 election outcome made with the actual 2011 popular vote numbers.

It predicts Conservative 166, NDP 70, Liberal 36, Bloc 35, Green 0, Other 1.

You can click on the map to see what it predicts for your own riding.

Posting this video on Star Wars Day is mandatory

More information please: post-election edition

1. I can haz poll-by-poll data? I'd very much like a map like this for the 2011 results. I found the swing within my own riding less predictable than I'd prefer, so I'd like to be able to look at poll-by-poll results and see where it's happening, and perhaps figure out why.

2. Whither riding predictions? I, and many others, use riding predictions when considering the possibility of a strategic vote. There were more predictors available this election than ever before, but their margin of error is also higher than ever before. What happened? How can they be made better? I'm glad to see that many of the predictor sites are already doing post-mortems. Hopefully, we'll have better predictions available next time. (Or, like, a fair voting system that makes strategic voting unnecessary...)

3. Whither Stéphane Dion? One interesting development last night is that Michael Ignatieff lost his seat, but Stéphane Dion kept his. And this in a context where the Ignatieff Liberals lost a huge quantity of seats, and the NPD, whose policies were closer to Dion's, gained a huge number of seats. I always found the transition from Dion to Ignatieff rather odd. Dion was there, quiet, unassuming, with a platform that showed some degree of thought and innovation, and suddenly out of nowhere the media started reporting that he was dislikable. Even weirder, they started reporting that his accent is difficult to understand, when even the staunchest (and actively anti-Liberal) Anglos I know told me they have no trouble with it. (Direct quote from someone who lives in a small town where I've never heard anyone speak English with an accent: "It's not like we've never heard an accent before!") Then, there were almost immediate reports that Ignatieff was the frontrunner for Liberal leadership, even though there was no sign of this other than media reports. But Dion has survived, and Dionish policies have thrived. What will Dion's role be in the future?

4. Whither Quebec separatism? Conventional wisdom on the Anglo side of things is that the defeat of the Bloc means the death of Quebec separatism. But it occurs to me that, as some time passes, a Conservative majority might fan the flames of Quebec separatism. Quebec went overwhelmingly orange, with very little blue. Their collective values much further left than the Conservative Party's. With the MPs who represent Quebec unable to get play for the wishes of their constituents, and tax dollars tied up in projects they don't support, Quebec might feel held back and oppressed by the federal government and increase its desire to get out. It occurs to me that Canada's last Conservative majority (Mulroney 1988-1993) led to the creation of the Bloc in the first place.

Voter's Resources

This post is post-dated. If the date and time indicated for this post have not yet passed, there may be new material below it.

Getting Started

Election Day is May 2!

First, go to the Elections Canada website and type in your postal code to find out your riding, your candidates, and where to vote.

If you have not received your voter information card, you can still vote on election day, you just need to take ID.

Your employer has to give you enough time off to ensure that you have three consecutive hours off during polling hours.

Issues

The platforms:

Bloc Quebecois (If you can't read French, click here for an English PDF)
Conservative Party
Green Party
Liberal Party
Libertarian Party
New Democratic Party


To help you figure out which party is best for you:

CBC Voter Compass
Political Compass: compare your results on the test with the Canadian political parties chart

Note that the two compass sites use different scales and their Y axes are the inverse of each other. Your results will not fall in the same place on both compasses - if they're in the same quadrant, something is very wrong.

Strategy and Predictions

My "How to Vote"
My "Where to Vote"
My "How to Vote Strategically"

Riding-by-riding predictions to help you with strategy:

- The Election Prediction Project
- Hill and Knowlton Election Predictor. (You need poll data for this. The site provides some, more is available all over the media.)
- DemocraticSPACE
- ThreeHundredEight (riding predictions in the right-hand column)
- LISPOP
- Project Democracy is designed specifically for those considering a strategic vote against the Conservative party. If this includes you, it might be of use. If not, stick to the other predictors.
- Too Close To Call

Other interesting sources

- How did your neighbourhood vote in 2008?
- Pundits' Guide
- Election Almanac

This post will be updated through to Election Day as I find more information. Do you know of anything else that should be included here? Are any of the links dead? Let me know in the comments!

Campaign roundup

Signs seen: Liberal, although it was taken down after the vandalism started. Saw a Conservative sign AFTER I'd voted.

Mailings received: Green and Conservative

Canvassers seen: zero

Answered my tweets: NDP, Liberal, and Green

This year's election night drinking game

Drink every time a riding changes hands. Go!

Voted!

Bright new green leaves just beginning to bud on the trees, diverse people walking around the neighbourhood. It looked like a condo ad, which is rather a propos. Despite the fact that there was a bit of a lineup for people who didn't have voter cards, I right breezed in and out with my own voter card. It was literally as quick and easy as humanly possible.

BUT: I didn't see ANY doggies today! This is a horrible sign! Usually petting a dog means a good election outcome and I was planning to be really assertive about approaching dogs today, but I didn't even get an opportunity!

Let's brainstorm ways to vote effectively while ignorant

The most common reason I hear for people not voting is ignorance. They don't feel familiar enough with the issues or the overall situation, but they aren't about to accept spin or partisan statements at face value. This is actually the reason behind the one time I chose not to vote. The 2000 municipal election happened just weeks after I'd moved to Toronto, and I didn't feel like I had any objective sense of the political environment. If, hypothetically (because I forget what the actual issues were), one candidate said that TTC service is woefully inadequate and needs to be improved regardless of the cost, and another candidate had said that the city was in dire financial straits and we need to cut back on TTC service to survive, I could not have determined which one was true because I'd only been there a couple of weeks and was still excited by the novelty of a subway. Even a thorough reading of the platforms and media coverage wouldn't have led me to be able to make a fully-informed vote.

General social consensus is that everyone should vote. But if you feel like you aren't fully informed, maybe it isn't a good idea. What if you fall for some spin and vote wrong?

So let's brainstorm some ways that people can make good use of their vote if they're currently too ignorant to vote informedly. I have a few ideas, but I'm hoping you guys can help me come up with more.

1. Vote for your #1 issue. What one thing that falls under this level of government's jurisdiction has the greatest impact on you, personally? OR, what one issue that falls under this level of government's jurisdiction to you feel is most important at a societal level? Consider focusing on this issue, reading a variety of comment from a variety of sources until perhaps you feel you can read between the lines on this issue, and either voting for whoever will do the most good in this one area, or against whoever will do the most harm in this one area. Note: I do NOT recommend this approach if you don't have a #1 issue at this level of government and have to kind of stop and try to think of one.

2. Vote in support of someone you care about. Is someone you care about more affected by the outcome of the election than the average citizen? Do they work for, or in a field that falls under the immediate jurisdiction of, this level of government? Are they dependent on a program that falls under this level of government, or affected by the absence of a program that this level of government should be providing? Ask them how they think you should vote. I only recommend this approach if you care enough about this person that you genuinely don't mind putting aside your own needs in favour of theirs. Unless you are closely aligned on all political issues, it's possible that the party they recommend voting for won't be the same as you would have chosen on your own.

3. Vote for an individual candidate you like. Do you find any of the candidates in your riding particularly appealing? Maybe one of them is especially responsive to your questions. Maybe one of them makes you think "THAT's the kind of person we need in public office!" If this is the case, and you don't feel capable of voting on policy, consider voting for the individual. Two caveats for this method: 1) Read the candidate's platform (and, if they've held public office before, voting history) to make sure they're not unacceptable. 2) Try to talk to the other candidates and give them a chance to impress you too, so you don't vote for someone solely on the basis of having being the first to canvass you.

Those are all the ideas I have at the moment. Anyone have any more?

Help, I'm trapped in an echo chamber!

As I've mentioned before, elections are my favourite sport. But because I love following them so closely, reading between the lines of platforms, thinking about strategy, I've lost the ability to view them like a regular everyday person who isn't especially into elections. I just can't put myself in their shoes.

The last couple of elections, I've heard pundits say "Voters will do X in response to Y", and thought "There's no possible way the general populace is that stupid!", only to find out after election day that someone I thought I liked and respected (and sometimes even someone who's supposed to be smarter than me!) did X in response to Y. I don't know what to do with this.

Sometimes people catch a glimpse of an election-related headline and get an incorrect idea about something. And by incorrect I mean empirically verifiable as false. But if I respond with a nice readable media article, they assume it's just spin or bias. And if I respond with links to primary sources, they don't want to read all those boring documents anyway. I keep encountering people who aren't political junkies and who are voting wrong (and by "wrong" I mean "in a way that does not help achieve what it will achieve, when voting differently would help achieve their goal") and I don't know how to get through to them.

And yes, I realize that not being able to put myself in the shoes of people who aren't political junkies when I haven't always been a political junkie meets my own definition of assholery. I just can't figure out what to do about it.

How I trick myself into eating healthier

This is a recent discover and it's working well, so I thought I'd share it.

A while back I was visiting family, sitting in the kitchen chatting while dinner was being prepared. Some cut-up veggies were placed on the table within my reach, and I mindlessly scarfed them all down while chatting. I didn't particularly want them, they were just there within reach, so I ate them all.

So I decided I need to channel that into my everyday life. I already buy pre-made salads, but I don't always end up eating them. So what I decided to do is when I get home, I have to put some salad in a bowl and put a fork in it. (I am permitted, but not required, to add dressing, and any salad-appropriate ingredients I fancy.) I then put the bowl by my computer. I'm not allowed to turn on the computer unless there's a salad sitting by it.

I don't have to eat the salad. I can start preparing whatever I'm craving or go straight for the chips. But it's there, within reach, while I stare at the screen. So I end up eating it mindlessly, which fills up my tummy and leaves less room for less healthy food.

How to vote if you're a pessimistic disillusioned cynic

Some people feel like all the parties and politicians are idiots, so it doesn't matter who they vote for or they can't imagined voting for anyone.

Here's what you do if you feel that way: rather than voting either for the best party or against the worst party, vote either for the party whose fuck-ups will hurt the least, or against the party whose fuck-ups will hurt the most (depending on your personal preferences and the prevailing situation in your riding.)

This idea was inspired by this post by Galloping Beaver. Galloping Beaver's post is partisanish, in that it focuses on the fuck-ups of one specific party and points out that another specific wouldn't make those kinds of fuck-ups, even if they do make other fuck-ups.

But this can easily be extended to a non-partisan approach towards all parties. Look at each party, look at their policies and their records and their many many flaws and how they generally spin themselves, and figure out what kind of fuck-ups each specific party would make if they don't end up giving anyone a pleasant surprise and just end up being their usual incompetent and/or malicious selves. Decide which set of fuck-ups is the worst and which is the least damaging, and then vote either against the worst or for the least worst. You're using your vote for disaster mitigation. No idealism necessary.

Brilliant Ideas That Will Never Work: require healthy food to be sold in larger-than-single servings

I previously came up with the idea of requiring unhealthy food to be available in single servings, so people don't find themselves eating more than they'd like because they have leftovers.

What if we also did the opposite and required healthy foods to be sold in larger quantities?

For the purpose of this idea, "healthy" means food where the percentage daily value of bad nutrients (saturated and trans fat, sodium, cholesterol) is significantly lower than the percentage daily value of calories, and the percentage daily value of at least one good nutrient (vitamins, fibre, etc.) is significantly higher than the percentage daily value of calories. ("Significantly" would have a specific numeric value, but I don't have the knowledge to come up with something realistic.) "Serving" means the amount used to calculate the nutritional information in the black and white box on the label.

Perishable healthy foods must be sold in packages of a minimum of two servings, which is still a perfectly reasonable amount for a person to eat in one sitting. Non-perishable healthy foods must be sold in packages of a minimum of six servings, which is either a massive pig-out for one person, or dinner for two, or a meal or two of leftovers.

Produce can continue to be sold as it occurs in nature. (In other words, you can still buy just one apple rather than being forced to buy two.)

The purpose of all this is to get people to fill up on healthier foods, and get healthier leftovers into people's fridges. If your store-bought salad is a double serving, you'll still eat the whole thing, and have less room left for potato chips. If you have leftover high-fibre multigrain pasta with organic sodium-free tomato sauce, you'll probably eat another serving sometime this week instead of ordering pizza.

The reason why this is categorized as Brilliant Ideas That Will Never Work rather than Things They Should Invent is that it has a couple of flaws. First, it's possible that restrictions on how healthy foods can be sold and packaged might make manufacturers and sellers of healthy foods decide it's too much work and just get out of the healthy foods business anyway. We really should be making it as easy as possible to make healthy foods available. Second, in the cases of foods that can have both healthy and unhealthy variations (such as the pasta and tomato sauce example above), the unavailability of smaller sizes (especially if we also require unhealthy food to be sold in single servings) might make people who don't want leftovers make unhealthy choices.

But still, it would be awesome if we could pull it off.

The weird thing about social conservatism

All economic policy needs to be implemented on a societal level, so it makes sense for that to be part of politics. Social liberalism needs at least tacit consent or utter indifference from government - they basically need to not make laws that meddle in people's private lives, and eliminate any such laws that are still on the books.

But social conservatism doesn't require any government involvement at all. Citizens are free to be as socially conservative as they'd like, regardless of whether this behaviour is enshrined in law.

As an example, the most socially conservative thing about me is I am monogamous. As it happens, I live in a culture and a city and a neighbourhood where casual sex is socially acceptable and freely available. But this in no way hinders my being monogamous. Regardless of how much casual sex is permissible and available, I can quite easily not avail myself of it. Similarly, I'm vegetarian, but meat is freely available and socially acceptable. I'm carfree, but cars are readily available and socially acceptable. I can quite easily live this way without asking the government to outlaw meat, cars, and casual sex. It wouldn't even cross my mind to ask the government to outlaw things that I'm not into.

And yet there are a lot of very loud people who try to do just that. Where is this coming from?

Why "Canadians don't care" is a good reason to promptly sign onto royal succession reforms

I was really surprised to see this:

Britain’s Telegraph newspaper reports that Canada has expressed opposition to changing any legislation that would alter the principle of male primogeniture — the custom that makes the firstborn son of a prince or king heir to the throne, even if the child has an older sister. The report did not specify who in Ottawa opposed such a change.

When asked Monday about the government’s opposition to the change, Conservative Leader Stephen Harper said Canadians aren’t interested in a debate on the monarchy.

“The successor to the throne is a man. The next successor to the throne is a man,” Harper said during a campaign stop in Yellowknife, N.W.T. “I don’t think Canadians want to open a debate on the monarchy or constitutional matters at this time. That’s our position. I just don’t see that as a priority for Canadians right now at all.”

Because, speaking as a Canadian, it seems to me that if Canadians don't want to open a debate on the matter and don't see it as a priority, that's a damn good reason, for this particular issue, to simply rubber-stamp the changes and let them go through without fuss.

As I mentioned before, Prince William has a weird job, where one of his duties is to have a biological child with his lawfully wedded wife. In fact, as soon as the vows are uttered, that becomes the most pressing of his duties. Not that it's desperately urgent - they're only 28 - but, as long as either the Queen or Prince Charles is alive, anything else that might fall under the purview of Prince William's duties could either be done by someone else or could be skipped entirely, even within a system where royal duties are generally deemed necessary. This is the one thing in the world that he can't fob off on someone else, and where the deadline (presumably Ms. Middleton's menopause) is absolute.

If your duties included producing a biological child within marriage, and you were a 28-year-old independently wealthy newlywed, you'd probably want to get around to it sooner rather than later, just in case you do have trouble conceiving or there are some other unforeseen health problems.

However, the royal couple basically has to wait until the succession question is resolved before they can start their family. If they have a daughter before the debate is resolved and then a son at a later date, things would get even more complicated. The sensible thing to do would be to wait a bit until everything is sorted.

The rules of succession affect all the Commonwealth countries, the rules of succession affect the royal couple's family planning, and the royal couple's family planning affects all the Commonwealth countries. Therefore, any delay in implementing changes to the rules of succession puts the entire Commonwealth on tenterhooks.

That's a really assholic thing to do out of indifference, isn't it? If we don't want a constitutional debate, let's not have one. Let's just cheerfully and promptly sign onto perfectly reasonable changes like making succession gender-blind. People who don't care still won't care, and people who do care can then get on with it..

At this point, some people are thinking "But I don't even want a monarchy!" Totally reasonable position! And you're absolutely free to keep on working towards extricating Canada from the monarchy. But it will be a long process, and everyone affected by changes in succession will still be there and still be affected by it after we leave. So why make things difficult for them if we're leaving anyway? All we'd be doing by signing onto the succession changes is saying we agree that gender-blind primogeniture is better than male primogeniture. This in no way precludes believing that no monarchy whatsoever is even better.

And yes, it is true that we already have the next two generations of heirs apparent to the throne. But, with the youngest heir apparent about to marry, it is the natural time to start thinking about the next generation. That's why it particularly surprises me that Stephen Harper of all people would act like this is unimportant and undeserving of Canada's attention. Monarchists tend to be conservative, and Stephen Harper is the leader of the Conservative Party. His base includes the people who think this is important, and we're in the midst of an election where Mr. Harper's strategy seems to be to focus heavily on his base. All he'd have to do is remain open to signing onto this innocuous change whenever it happens to come before the Commonwealth. Instead, he's telling the monarchists in his base that this issue that's important and time-sensitive to them (and of no concern either way to those who oppose them) doesn't even deserve enough of his time to put his signature on a pure ceremonial formality.

Refusing to sign onto succession changes because you're anti-monarchist is like a parent refusing to sign their kid's report card because they think a five-year high-school curriculum would be better. It's like the custodian of the building where the polling place is to be located refusing to open up on election day because they think the first-past-the-post system is suboptimal. It just stalls things for people who have a job to do and a deadline by which to do it.

The only valid reason for any reaction other than promptly signing onto the changes is if you genuinely believe that male primogeniture should be kept. (And is there anyone, anyone at all, who actually thinks that in a country that has had a female monarch for 127 years of its 144-year existence?) If it's simply a question of indifference, sign the paper and stop delaying things for the people who do care.

Weird solution to ipod stuck in recovery mode

Last weekend, itunes offered me a software update for my 3rd generation ipod touch. Unfortunately, it froze while installing the software, and itunes told me I'd have to restore the ipod.

I clicked on the restore button, it went through the process, and I got a pop-up saying it had been restored to factory settings. But then I got another alert in itunes saying the attached ipod was in recovery mode and it would have to be restored. So I tried restoring again and got error code 37.

Thereafter followed multiple attempts at troubleshooting and restoring. Rebooted computer, tried different USB ports and cables, updated USB drivers, did a hard restart on the ipod (pressing and holding the two buttons), tried updating itunes, tried disabling my security software, nothing worked. Sometimes I'd get a message saying it had been restored followed in quick succession by another message saying the ipod was in recovery mode, sometimes I'd get error code 37

Then, on my final attempt, just as my next step was to google up the nearest Apple store, I accidentally discovered that when the message saying the ipod has been restored to factory settings pops up, you have to click OK. It says this message is going to disappear in 10 seconds so I'd just been letting it go. But when I clicked OK, the ipod restarted normally and it was fine.

So the moral of the story is: click OK on your itunes pop-ups rather than waiting for them to disappear.

Why not voting doesn't send a message

Sometimes you hear people say that they choose not to vote in order to "send a message". But there's a problem with that strategy:

Suppose you're the most responsive politician in human history. There's an election, and, yay, you win! Then you notice that, say, 30% of the eligible voters didn't vote. Being the most responsive politician in human history, you're insightful enough to think that maybe they were trying to send you a message.

But what specific message were they trying to send you? What can you do to address their concerns?

You have no way of knowing, do you? For that matter, you have no way of knowing how many of them are trying to "send a message" as opposed to having moved out of the riding or died since the last enumeration or gotten hit by a bus on the way to the polling place.

The way to send a message to politicians is, quite literally, to send them a message. Email them about your specific concerns when they're campaigning, and again after they're elected. On top of this, you can sign (or start) petitions or otherwise engage in activism about your specific concerns, and work towards electoral reform if it addresses your concerns.

But choosing not to vote will achieve nothing. The only message is sends is "Meh, whatever you guys want is fine."

Survey methodology FAIL

So apparently the Do Not Call list is working.

The Harris Decima telephone study of 2,035 Canadians on the registry, commissioned by the Marketing Research and Intelligence Association — the industry organization that represents pollsters and research groups — found that eight in 10 consumers report getting fewer such calls.

Yeah, brilliant. Telephone survey to see if the Do Not Call list is working. Know what demographic's missing from that survey? People who are so annoyed by unwanted calls that they screen. And I can tell you firsthand, as a member of this demographic, that I don't feel that the list is working well enough.

How to communicate: state fact before opinion

One serious communication error I see people making quite often is stating their opinion in response to a request for facts, without first providing the requested facts.

To take a recent example, I was mildly interested in the recent possibility of the US government shutting down, basically because I wanted to see what would happen if it did shut down, but on the day of reckoning I unexpectedly had to work so I wasn't following the news. A couple of days later, I realized while I was out and away from the internet that I hadn't checked to see what happened. So I asked the people at the table with me if the US government ever did end up shutting down. (Turns out it didn't, in case you weren't following the story but are now curious.)

"Why would the US government shut down?" asked one person who hadn't been following the story.

"Because the Democrats couldn't get their act together," said another person, who apparently had very strong opinions on the matter.

Now before we even start thinking about the accuracy of this answer, the problem is that it wasn't in any way useful to the questioner. The real question being asked is "Under what circumstances could the US government shut down? That sounds like a big serious thing to happen, and I don't think we have anything equivalent here." (And since we were all Canadians having this conversation in Canada, it should have been obvious to all involved that it was a question of how their government differs from our in this respect.)

So the opinionator not only failed to answer the questioner's question (by providing no information on how the US government might shut down), but also failed in sharing their opinion and convincing the questioner of the validity of their opinion, because the questioner still doesn't have any information about the process as a whole or the what exactly the Democrats did or failed to do.

A more effective and useful communication approach would have been to first describe how, in the US, the government cannot operate if the budget is not approved in time, then give a brief overview of the current situation and the positions of the two parties. Only then is it useful to get into the effectiveness of a particular party's approach.

This would also have the advantage of making the opinionator look knowledgeable and informed, rather than making them look like a comment thread loudmouth as jumping straight to opinion is inclined to do.

Why do politicians want to appear popular?

During election campaigns, politicians try to get people to put up signs showing support for them. And recently on twitter, there were some accusations being bandied about of candidates setting up fake accounts to make it look like more people were talking about them.

Which makes me wonder: why do politicians want so much to appear popular during election campaigns?

Your instinctive answer is probably "Because being popular is good, duh!"

But think about it as a voter. If the party you most strongly oppose appears very popular, wouldn't you be more inclined to vote strategically to defeat them? If the party you most strongly support appears very popular, wouldn't the idea of staying home on election day be more tempting?

I can see why parties that are considered fringe might want to look more popular, so they can be considered viable mainstream candidates. But if you're already a mainstream candidate, I can't imagine how appearing more popular than you actually are would help get out the vote in your favour.

Historical portrayal of beauty and insecurity

Conventional wisdom is that people have more body insecurity today because such high standards of beauty are depicted in the media. But I find myself wondering whether this happened even more in the past.

I've blogged before about what it felt like to be a hairy preteen in a world where no other girl or woman around me was hairy. During one of those hairy preteen years, my family went to England. We went to a lot of museums and art galleries there, and I saw a lot of nude paintings (nothing sexual - renaissance/classical era Serious Art). I had never seen nudity before. I had seen women nursing, and I knew from knowing where babies come from that men have penises and that I would get pubic hair when I got older, but I went from never having seen full nudity before to seeing dozens of depictions a day.

And it made me feel ugly, because none of the women in the paintings were hairy like me. Some of them had pubic hair, although many didn't, but there were absolutely no depictions of the armpit hair that was currently troubling me. From this, I concluded that it was unnatural for a woman to have armpit hair, and I must be some kind of freak of nature.

This all came to mind with Elizabeth Taylor's recent passing, when the news was full of gorgeous old black and white pictures of her. She looked flawless in these pictures, because people tend to look more flawless in low-definition black and white. My most recent driver's licence photo was black and white, and my skin looks perfect in it! If I'd ever been in a position where I was comparing myself to a black-and-white Elizabeth Taylor, I would have felt hideous because my own real-life skin has flaws that I and everyone else can see.

But with current high-definition photography, you can see more of the actor's or model's flaws. Off the top of my head, in Ocean's Twelve you can tell that Catherine Zeta-Jones has acne scars under her makeup. She still looks gorgeous, of course, but the fact that her skin isn't 100% flawless is visible in the high-definition photography where it wouldn't be in Elizabeth Taylor's black and white days. I'm seeing flaws that I can identify with in portrayals of beauty on screen, which I wouldn't have seen in the 1950s watching Elizabeth Taylor, or in the renaissance period looking at Botticelli's Venus.

On top of this, there's the fact that we have access to more beauty and cosmetic products and technology today. In the renaissance era, I wouldn't even have been able to bathe regularly, to say nothing of removing my body hair with any degree of long-term effectiveness. But in the 21st century, I can be clean and shiny, and shave or wax or tweeze or bleach or epilate anything I want on a daily basis - plus there are dozens of businesses in my neighbourhood alone where they'd be happy to do a more professional job for an amount of money that I probably have in my bank account right now. I have a tube of touche eclat in my purse right now, they sell medical-grade foundation in my local drugstore, and I'm fully aware of the wonders of photoshop. The gap between beauty portrayed in the media and what I can achieve with the resources available to me is narrower than it has ever been.

So did people in the past have insecurity about their physical appearance because of media depictions? If not, why not? And why would it be happening today?

Let's all watch a baby lamb learn to walk

Why you shouldn't report graffiti on private property to 311

I recently saw at the bottom of a City of Toronto ad a friendly little note saying "If you see graffiti vandalism in your neighbourhood, call 311."

Doesn't that sound helpful? After all, we all know that 311 is extremely helpful. So doesn't it sound like the nice 311 people will send some nice helpful city workers (maybe these guys?) to clean it up.

But it turns out that if the graffiti's on private property, you'll just be getting the property owner in trouble.

According to the City of Toronto website:

When City staff enforce compliance with the graffiti bylaw they try to provide owners with as many ways as possible to comply.

An bylaw officer will educate the property owner or occupant about the issue and require graffiti removal. The officer may issue written notice. The owner is given fixed time period that they have to comply (remove the graffiti), e.g. 72 hours. If the owner provides justifiable reason for not complying within an appropriate period of time (cannot paint when it is raining, freezing, etc.), the bylaw officer will adjust the complying period.

Note: If the property owner does not comply within the specified compliance period, the City will remove the graffiti and the cost will be added to the tax roll.

Therefore, if you report graffiti on private property, by-law officers will come and force the property owner to remove it promptly, and if they don't they'll be forced to pay for it.

The property owner is already the victim. They already know they have to get rid of the graffiti, and they're probably already trying to figure out how to clean it off or scrape up the money to get someone else to do it. Sending by-law officers around to nag them is unproductive, and, frankly, a dick move.

The City cleans up graffiti on City property, so reporting that is productive. But I would strongly recommend not reporting graffiti on private property. I'd much rather live in a city with graffiti around than live in a city where victims of crimes get nagged by law enforcement to recover faster.

What if schools were evaluated on long-term results?

I was reading this article on the problems with standardized tests, and it got me thinking about more effective ways to evaluate education. And it occurred to me that the true measure of education is long-term results.

For example, my high school was rather proud of the fact that 80% of its graduates went on to university. But what percentage made it past first-year university? We don't know. If, hypothetically, only half of us made it past first-year university, there's probably something wrong with the high school. And a high school where only 60% go to university but they all graduate is probably doing better.

Obviously, there are many problems with using long-term results. You'll lose track of some people, and you're more likely to lose track of students who have slipped through the cracks. It doesn't signal problems until it's far too late to do anything about them. It introduces the likelihood that outcomes will be affected by variables beyond the school's control.

But still, it seems relevant. It would be so useful if they could figure out a way to incorporate long-term outcomes as part of the evaluation.

How to Vote Strategically

This is part of my Voter's Resources post.

Some people vote for the party whose platform they find most suitable (the Best Party). Other people try to prevent the party whose platform they find most harmful (the Worst Party) from being elected, by voting for the party that's most likely to defeat the Worst Party (the Compromise Party). This is called strategic voting.

The most important thing about strategic voting is that your strategy has to apply to the reality in your riding. The media feeds us national polls for breakfast every day, but they're not directly relevant. Regardless of what the rest of the country is doing, your vote will only be used to elect your own MP. If your riding is already disinclined to elect the Worst Party, there's no point in a strategic vote - you'd just end up making the Compromise Party look more popular than they really are.

So here's what to do if your priority is stopping the Worst Party from winning:

1. Ask yourself: "If I don't vote, who's going to win in this particular riding?"

If the answer is a party other than the Worst Party, vote for the Best Party. If the answer is "the Worst Party" or "it's too close to tell," go on to step 2.

2. Ask yourself: "If I don't vote, who's most likely to defeat the Worst Party" in this particular riding?

This is your Compromise Party. Read their platform. If it's acceptable, vote for the Compromise Party. If it's not acceptable, vote for the Best Party.

Remember: ignore the national polls; think only about the situation in your riding!

So now you're thinking:

"But how do I figure out what's going to happen in my riding?"

There are many many resources this time around. Check them all out and see what they say about your riding.

- The Election Prediction Project
- Hill and Knowlton Election Predictor. (You need poll data for this. The site provides some, more is available all over the media.)
- DemocraticSPACE
- ThreeHundredEight (riding predictions in the right-hand column)
- LISPOP
- How did your neighbourhood vote? (If you're voting strategically, you still have to look at the whole riding rather than the individual polls, but this is still interesting)
- Project Democracy is designed specifically for those considering a strategic vote against the Conservative party. If this includes you, it might be of use. If not, stick to the other predictors.
- Too Close To Call

Prediction sites update constantly, and I will be updating this list as I find more prediction sites, so check back again closer to election day.

Who is the target audience of coalition scaremongering anyway?

Apart from the fact that coalitions are perfectly normal and constitutional in our form of government and scaremongering about the possibility of a coalition shows ignorance of how our system of government works and insults the electorate's intelligence, and apart from the fact that they're talking about coalitions instead of policy, leading me to wonder if there's a dearth of policy, the weird thing about all this coalition scaremongering on the part of the Conservative Party is that I can't imagine why it would lead to any additional Conservative votes.

Because the scaremongering focuses on the possibility of coalition of Liberal, NDP, and Bloc following a minority Conservative win, I'm going to focus on that model in this post.

If your politics align most closely with the Conservative Party's, you're going to vote Conservative anyway. No impact.

If your politics align most closely with the Liberal Party's, you might prefer for there not to be a coalition because you'd rather have a purely Liberal government. However, if the Liberal party wins the election and forms a government, they wouldn't need a formal coalition because they'd already be in government. However, if the Conservatives win, you'd rather have a coalition than not because then (assuming seat ratios follow historical patterns) you'd have a Liberal-led coalition government. So either way it would be best for you to work towards getting Liberal votes. Any Conservative votes would make it less possible for your party to get its policies implemented.

If your politics align most closely with either the NDP or the Bloc, and assuming based on current polls and historical outcomes that you're not going to form a government, a coalition would give your party more power, so it would be a good thing. Insofar as a potential coalition might affect your vote, you might choose to cast an Anything-But-Conservative strategic vote if you live in a tight riding so as to prevent a Conservative majority and thus make a coalition more possible. But nothing would be gained by voting Conservative.

So who's the target audience of all this? Who would be likely to vote Conservative because of the prospect of a coalition who isn't doing so already?

Things They Should Study: income range for which additional tax credits would actually make a difference

All this election talk of tax credits makes me wonder how many people they're actually useful for.

People at the low end of the income scale hardly pay any tax anyway, and most of what they do pay gets refunded, so they wouldn't achieve any additional savings with additional tax credits.

But the more money you have, the more the savings from a tax credit become negligible. For example, I currently don't feel the tax credit I get for my TTC Metropass. If it disappeared, I wouldn't notice. However, I still feel my RRSPs. Someone who makes ten times what I make might not feel their RRSPs either.

Tax credits whose goal is to modify behaviour (fitness, home renovation) tend to apply for things that require a certain amount of disposable income. If your budget is so tight that you just can't find room for a kickboxing class or a new kitchen, you aren't going to be able to benefit from these.

And, of course, the more tax credits you already have, the less impact any additional tax credits will have. When I was in university, my tuition deduction and educational tax credits were huge (relative to my income at the time - now they'd be nothing more than a nice little bonus). But because of this, any additional credits would have been useless to me. I was already paying no taxes and getting money back, there was nothing left to deduct!

So someone should do research: for what segment of the population are tax credits useful, and for what segment are they useless? How big do they have to be? How many people have room for those kinds of expenditures in their budgets?

Wherein the Toronto Star makes me ashamed to read it

I was shocked, ashamed, and rather disgusted to see this article in the Toronto Star, where reporters staked out public figures' homes to see if they were participating in Earth Hour.

First of all, Earth Hour is arbitrary and symbolic. No one is hurting anything by failing to participate. (Yes, they are using a normal hour's worth of electricity. Our infrastructure can handle that, and that's within the scope of perfectly normal and customary human behaviour in our society.)

Second, all the people they were picking on were quietly sitting at home minding their own business. As I've blogged about before, the big problem with Earth Hour is that anyone who chooses to quietly sit out and go about their own business in the privacy of their own home is lit up like a beacon. That, in and of itself, is reason enough to question the ritual.

Third, the public figures whose homes they were visiting have not to my knowledge, within reach of my google-fu, or in any way cited in the article endorsed Earth Hour. Instead, they're people the Star thinks should be endorsing Earth Hour. This isn't a story of hypocrisy or anything, at best it's a story of quietly opting out.

Fourth, the public figures weren't even home! The people in the homes were their families (in at least some cases their minor children), who are private citizens and thereby fully entitled to sit quietly at home without participating in the public events of the day.

But, most crucially, this is the Toronto Star. It's a Toronto newspaper and it's a broadsheet newspaper, and by printing this story it has egregiously failed in its mandate as both. If we wanted busybodies constantly judging and shaming us for not living up to their arbitrary standards, we wouldn't have moved to the city. If we wanted sensationalized pearl-clutching finger-pointing, we'd be reading the Sun.

If their goal was to make their readers ashamed to be seen with a copy of the Star, they have succeeded.

Rerun: Deciding where to vote (for students)

The substance of this post is a rerun from 2005.

University students can often swing it so they can vote either in the riding where they're going to school, or in the riding where they grew up/where their parents live/where their "permanent address" is.

Since this election's advance polls are in April (when most people are still at school) and election day itself is in May (when many students are back at their parents', or gone elsewhere for summer jobs) I've decided to post this early so you can decide where to vote and make plans accordingly.

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Where to Vote:

1. If one of the ridings is a really close race, vote in that riding. If both are close, vote in the riding with the closest race. If neither is really close, follow the instructions below.

2. Of the parties running candidates in your riding, decide which one has the best platform that comes closest to meeting your needs and your vision of the country (hereafter the Best Party). Then decide which one has the worst platform that is furthest from meeting your needs and deviates the most from your vision of the country (hereafter the Worst Party). You are judging the parties as a whole, not the individual candidates in your riding. Assess each party individually without regard to possible strategic voting - that comes later.

3. Based on your own needs and your own vision for the country, decide whether it is more important to you that the Best Party win, or that the Worst Party does not win.

4. If it's more important to you that the Best Party win, vote for the Best Party in the riding where the Best Party is least likely to win.

5. If it's more important to you that the Worst Party not win, and the Worst Party has a chance in either of your ridings, vote for the party most likely to defeat the Worst Party in the riding where the Worst Party is most likely to win.

6. If the Worst Party doesn't have a chance in either of your ridings, vote for the Best Party in the riding where the Best Party is least likely to win.

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To determine which party is most likely to win in which riding, check out the Election Prediction Project and DemocraticSPACE. More resources will likely become available as the election progresses. I'm going to be making a Voters' Resources post closer to election day, I just wanted to get this up early so people can make plans.

Update: I'm now collecting links to riding predictors here.

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From Elections Canada:

- Your options for different voting methods (election day, advance polls, special ballot
- How to register to vote in your preferred riding.

How to make corporate tax breaks create jobs

I previously blogged a rather complex idea to make corporate taxes support social services, with the ultimate goal of encouraging job creation.

I think I've come up with a simpler solution: make payroll a tax deduction. All money that companies pay to their employees in pay and benefits is deducted from their taxable revenues. If a company has $10 million revenues and pays $5 million in payroll, they're only taxed on the remaining $5 million.

Further idea but more complex: different tax rates for employers with different employment conditions. Employers that pay less, have fewer benefits, use a greater percentage of contract workers etc. have to pay a higher tax rate, and companies that provide more stable employment get a lower tax rate. Perhaps there could be a grace period of several years for new businesses just starting out, because obviously you can't provide a pension plan when you're two people working out of a garage. I think small businesses could also use the loophole of the owner drawing as a salary any profits the business makes.

Why polls are stupid

I'm really surprised what a big deal the media makes of polls, because they're very nearly irrelevant. The percentage of people who would vote for a specific party doesn't directly affect the number of seats that party gets. What's important is the distribution of those people among different ridings. Because the person with the most votes in each riding gets that seat, and the party with the most seats gets first dibs at forming a government.

Example:

There are 308 ridings in Canada. For mathematical simplicity, let's say there are 100,000 voters in each riding, and 100% voter turnout.

The Purple Party gets 51% of the votes in 155 (or just over half) of the ridings.
51,000*155=7,905,000
So the Purple Party received 7,905,000, and holds 155 of the 308 seats in Parliament, thus forming a majority government.

Meanwhile, the Yellow Party receives 100% of the votes in 100 (or just under one third) of ridings. 100*100,000=10,000,000
So the Yellow Party received 10,000,000 votes, but holds only 100 of the 308 seats in Parliament. The Purple Party still gets to form the government.

However, polls would have shown the Purple Party polling at about 25%, and the Yellow Party polling at about 32%.

I chose these numbers for mathematical simplicity, but there's room for a lot of variations in between. For example, because we have at least four parties running in each riding (and often more), the Purple Party could easily have won with something like 35% of the vote in 155 ridings, which would only show up as about 18% in a poll. There are entirely too many variables.

To be effective, polls would have to poll each riding. Which would be hella useful for people considering a strategic vote! But as it stands, polls of the country as a whole are uninformative. Please stop reporting on them as though they were useful!

More information please: are suspended police officers allowed to take other work?

They want to stop paying police officers who are suspended.

One important question I haven't seen addressed anywhere: are suspended police officers allowed to take on other work?

Things I know that lead me to wonder this: some employers prohibit their employees from taking on other work, or restrict or vet the work the employees can take on. This most often happen in positions of public trust and responsibility, in public sector positions, and where there is potential for conflict of interest. Police officers fall in all three categories. I have no idea if there are restrictions on outside employment, but it certainly seems plausible.

If suspended police officers are not allowed to take on outside work, or if the restrictions or approval process for such employment make it impracticable, then it isn't appropriate to suspend them without pay before they've been found guilty. I fully and vocally support getting risky officers off the street, but we don't want them (or their dependents) to starve to death or lose their homes!

And it's possible that, in borderline cases, the grave threat to the officer's and their family's security and quality of life posed by a suspension without pay would lead the powers that be to choose not to suspend them. If you know that a certain officer just bought a house and has a baby on the way, and you can maybe get away with not suspending them, you might choose not so as not to imperil a young family at a vulnerable time. Whereas if they're suspended with pay, they're off the streets where they can't hurt anyone until the situation is resolved.

Another question this article raises:

Every year in Ontario about 50 police officers are suspended with pay. The current rules allow officers to collect full salaries while under suspension, an expense that adds up to about $5 million annually.

That's $100,000 per suspended officer. That seems high. How much do police officers get paid, and how long does the typical suspension last?

The problem with making an It Gets Better book

When I read that they're making an It Gets Better book, I had a visceral negative reaction. At first I thought this was because I don't like the idea of making money from It Gets Better. But, upon further reflection, I think it's more complicated than that.

The internet already contains all the It Gets Better stories, and will continue to contain any new stories that people come up with. However, a book will only contain some of them. A book also costs money, whereas we're paying for the internet regardless so it doesn't cost anything to look at It Gets Better online. So with the book you have to pay more to get less.

But on top of that, there's also the problem that a book is indiscreet. In an interview, Dan Savage told the story of a 15-year-old girl, closeted from her parents, watching It Gets Better videos on a borrowed iphone under the covers at night. A book would be less useful to that girl. The iphone she can turn off, or quickly switch over to facebook or something. But a book is right there, rather large, with a title. Meddling parents are likely going to find it. My parents let me read whatever I want, but they still knew what I was reading. And I knew (or could easily find out) what they were reading. Books are far more difficult to hide, so they're less useful to the people who need It Gets Better the most.

Now, I do think it's useful to curate It Gets Better. And I do actually think text is a better format than video. A text-only website is even easier to read discreetly, and if your internet time is limited or monitored you could easily copy-paste stories to read elsewhere. Save them on a USB key with a name like "English Essay Notes.doc", or save them as text files and read them with an ebook reader app on your ipod touch. But this would be better achieved with a website that allows people to submit their stories and readers to vote them up or down, similar to Not Always Right, would do the job better.

Basically, the book format adds nothing but a price tag, and does nothing to help the people for whom it hasn't get Gotten Better. I can see how some marketing guru whose job is to look for the next big internet phenomenon to turn into a book would land on this idea, but as a former member of the target audience of this project, it just seems crass to me.

Weird jobs and royal nuptials

This is old, but I love this moment. Lady Gaga meets the Queen:



It's interesting to me because what we have here is two people with very different, very weird jobs. Both of their jobs involve very deliberately attracting certain types of publicity and drawing crowds wherever they go. Both of their jobs dictate how they dress whenever they go out in public. The Queen has to fulfill ceremonial roles; Lady Gaga has to write and perform catchy pop songs. The Queen wears that particular hairstyle to accommodate hats and crowns, and wears colourful clothes to people can see her. Apparently her hemlines were once decided by committee, and they sew weights into the hems of her skirts so she doesn't have a Marilyn Monroe moment. Lady Gaga has to wear things that are more outrageous than whatever she wore last, and no doubt her diet, exercise regimen, and beauty routine are dictated by costuming requirements. Both of them also have to make their audience feel good. The Queen is known for making people feel like she's genuinely interested in them, and a key part of Lady Gaga's public persona is that she loves every one of her little monsters, no matter how much of a freak or geek the rest of the world thinks they are. I find all of this fascinating, and am intrigued by any glimpse into the everyday life of the individuals behind these public personas.

And this is why it surprises me that so much media coverage of the upcoming royal wedding has been spinning it as a fairytale romance. Because it's so much more interesting if we think about it as a pragmatic arrangement! Prince William has a weird job, part of which requires that he marry a non-Catholic woman and have at least one biological child with her. He knows this is a job requirement, and so does everyone he comes in contact with, including any prospective bride. By the conventions that currently govern British royalty, their relationship, their careers, their religion, their fashion choices, and their family planning are considered in the public interest. What's that like? What's it like to embark upon a marriage knowing that it means you'll have to be publicly charming for the rest of your life? What's it like to know your firstborn child's will never be their own? Isn't this all interesting? Isn't it far more interesting than a simple love story?

The whole fairytale romance thing was debunked with the previous generation of royals, and it does everyone a disservice to maintain that mythology. The idea of a couple of modern, educated twenty-somethings whose lives are dictated by this bizarre job they have to do with antiquated conditions is far more interesting. Why not focus on that?