I recently had a disagreement over a word. I thought that it was neutral, linguistically unmarked, and derived directly from the verb in question (analogous to how a cook is a person who cooks, or a grave-digger is a person who digs graves). But my interlocutor thought it was negative, and wanted us to use a less negative word, but couldn't actually suggest one. I wasn't able to suggest one either, because I didn't feel that the original word was negative (or positive), and it's very difficult to come up with a synonym that has a different degree of a characteristic that's absent in the original word. It would be like if someone asked you to provide them with a cake recipe that's less extroverted, or a career path that's not quite as purple.
In any case, the problem was that we were at an impasse over whether this word had this connotation, and there was nothing either of us could to to prove our position to the other.
Proposed solution: a dictionary of connotations. You look up a word, it tells you all the positive and negative connotations. In this situation, we could have looked up the word to see definitively if it has the connotations in question, much like how you'd look up a word in the OED or the Petit Robert if you're disagreeing on the meaning.
It would also be useful in preventing inadvertent racism. Most of the racist things I've uttered in my life have been because I didn't know they were racist, because I don't spend much time around people who are being racist so I don't know all the slurs and stereotypes. (The remaining times I've been racist have been when I learned some non-neutral words for concepts without having learned the neutral words, so I didn't have the vocabulary to express what I wanted to neutrally.) It would be enormously helpful to have a reference where we can check these things without having to google for racism.
Friday, April 12, 2013
Thursday, April 11, 2013
Why is a single provider for chaplaincy even an option?
Headline in the Globe and Mail: Corrections Canada seeks a single provider for prison chaplaincy services.
Why is this even an option? By which I mean, before we get into matters of religion or philosophy or principle, does an organization that's capable of serving as a single provider for nationwide prison chaplaincy services even exist? If so, why? Given that Corrections just started doing this, who are their other clients?
They'd essentially have to be a multidenominational temp agency for clergy. Is there such thing? Or is someone going to scramble to put one together as the result of this announcement?
Why is this even an option? By which I mean, before we get into matters of religion or philosophy or principle, does an organization that's capable of serving as a single provider for nationwide prison chaplaincy services even exist? If so, why? Given that Corrections just started doing this, who are their other clients?
They'd essentially have to be a multidenominational temp agency for clergy. Is there such thing? Or is someone going to scramble to put one together as the result of this announcement?
Tuesday, April 09, 2013
Why don't you get the bends when you ride the subway?
From an article about digging the tunnel for the Eglinton LRT:
So why don't people have to go through decompression to ride the subway?
The tunneling crews that built New York City’s subways and sewers around the turn of the last century only spent part of their shifts digging tunnels.
Half their workday was devoted to decompression, so the urban miners working beneath the earth wouldn’t die from “the bends,” the atmospheric pressure-related illness that afflicts deep sea divers if they surface too quickly. It meant that every shift had to have two crews on at once — one digging, one decompressing.
So why don't people have to go through decompression to ride the subway?
Monday, April 08, 2013
The day I did surgery on a lamp
I was sitting curled up on the couch, reading by the light of the lamp on my end table. I finished my chapter and got up to make dinner, pulling the cord of the lamp to switch it off.
And the cord came right out of the lamp and ended up in my hand.
Since the lamp was new and I'd have to buy a new one anyway, I figured I'd try to fix it. Nothing to lose, right? So I unplugged it, took out the lightbulb, and started unscrewing anything that would unscrew and tugging anything that would tug. Eventually, I had a nice little row of lined-up lamp parts, and I could see where the string had come from. There was a bit of string still in there and attached to the switch, so I tried to tie the broken-off end to the remaining bit. However, it was a bit of a tight squeeze and I couldn't get my fingers in, or manoeuvre it with tweezers. So I tugged and twisted some more until I could see where and how the remaining bit of string was attached to the lamp, and then realized that it was a relatively simple matter to pull it out and replace it with a new and longer piece of string.
By this time, my neat little row of lined-up lamp parts had gotten disorganized, so I had to go through some trial and error and logic to figure out how to put it back together. But my efforts were ultimately successful, and the lamp now turns on and off when I tug the new piece of string! Now I just need to figure out how to reattach the decorative little dangly piece that normally hangs from the string, but that's easier because it's outside the lamp and the lamp is still functional even with the decorative little dangly piece.
This was absolutely amazing to me, because it was literally the first time in my entire life that I've fixed something without either having instructions or having first been in some way taught how to do it! Even my tech support skills, which include figuring out software from scratch, are based on a broadly-applicable methodology.
I blogged before about my experience figuring out how to assemble and disassemble a desk chair (for which I did have instructions, mediocre as they were). This was similar - I looked at it, fiddled with it a bit, stepped away, came back with new inspiration, all over the period of a couple of days. This is especially amazing to me because I literally could not figure things out like this when I was younger (e.g. in my teens). I either would or wouldn't know how to do it, but no further enlightenment was forthcoming.
I had no idea that it was even a possibility for these kinds of cognitive skills to actually improve with age after adulthood is reached! This gives me a lot of hope for the future that I may still have the ability to improve and gain skills in areas I never before thought possible.
And the cord came right out of the lamp and ended up in my hand.
Since the lamp was new and I'd have to buy a new one anyway, I figured I'd try to fix it. Nothing to lose, right? So I unplugged it, took out the lightbulb, and started unscrewing anything that would unscrew and tugging anything that would tug. Eventually, I had a nice little row of lined-up lamp parts, and I could see where the string had come from. There was a bit of string still in there and attached to the switch, so I tried to tie the broken-off end to the remaining bit. However, it was a bit of a tight squeeze and I couldn't get my fingers in, or manoeuvre it with tweezers. So I tugged and twisted some more until I could see where and how the remaining bit of string was attached to the lamp, and then realized that it was a relatively simple matter to pull it out and replace it with a new and longer piece of string.
By this time, my neat little row of lined-up lamp parts had gotten disorganized, so I had to go through some trial and error and logic to figure out how to put it back together. But my efforts were ultimately successful, and the lamp now turns on and off when I tug the new piece of string! Now I just need to figure out how to reattach the decorative little dangly piece that normally hangs from the string, but that's easier because it's outside the lamp and the lamp is still functional even with the decorative little dangly piece.
This was absolutely amazing to me, because it was literally the first time in my entire life that I've fixed something without either having instructions or having first been in some way taught how to do it! Even my tech support skills, which include figuring out software from scratch, are based on a broadly-applicable methodology.
I blogged before about my experience figuring out how to assemble and disassemble a desk chair (for which I did have instructions, mediocre as they were). This was similar - I looked at it, fiddled with it a bit, stepped away, came back with new inspiration, all over the period of a couple of days. This is especially amazing to me because I literally could not figure things out like this when I was younger (e.g. in my teens). I either would or wouldn't know how to do it, but no further enlightenment was forthcoming.
I had no idea that it was even a possibility for these kinds of cognitive skills to actually improve with age after adulthood is reached! This gives me a lot of hope for the future that I may still have the ability to improve and gain skills in areas I never before thought possible.
Thursday, April 04, 2013
Router update
In follow-up to my previous questions about routers, I ended up getting a Linksys N300 for no especially good reasons, and I discovered a few things:
- Nearly all, if not absolutely all, of the routers currently commercially available are wifi-capable
- You can turn off the wifi from the software
- You can also limit the number of users who connect to the router in the software. The default setting was 50, but I limited it to 2 since I'm only connecting two computers.
These last two things mitigate my wariness of having a wifi router. I don't particularly need wifi, so I didn't really want to deal with having to secure an unnecessary wifi network. But being able to turn it off and to limit the number of users makes me feel more secure.
One thing I haven't figured out: I can change router settings via software by going to a specific 192.*.*.* IP address. However, this only works on my primary computer (i.e. the one I used to set up the router. It doesn't work on my secondary computer, even though it's connected to the router too. Is it supposed to be this way, or should I be able to reach the 192.*.*.* address with my secondary computer too?
- Nearly all, if not absolutely all, of the routers currently commercially available are wifi-capable
- You can turn off the wifi from the software
- You can also limit the number of users who connect to the router in the software. The default setting was 50, but I limited it to 2 since I'm only connecting two computers.
These last two things mitigate my wariness of having a wifi router. I don't particularly need wifi, so I didn't really want to deal with having to secure an unnecessary wifi network. But being able to turn it off and to limit the number of users makes me feel more secure.
One thing I haven't figured out: I can change router settings via software by going to a specific 192.*.*.* IP address. However, this only works on my primary computer (i.e. the one I used to set up the router. It doesn't work on my secondary computer, even though it's connected to the router too. Is it supposed to be this way, or should I be able to reach the 192.*.*.* address with my secondary computer too?
Buying happiness: resilience
I was going to close out my Buying Happiness series by writing about how money buys resilience, but the fourth letter-writer in this Carolyn Hax column: does it much better than I ever could.
I'm having computer problems again (I'll blog about them more fully once they're resolved) and they're now far less terrifying. Even if I can't coax the desired behaviour out of my computer, I have my work computer, I have my old computer (which doesn't work super well, but can still do safe mode with networking), and I have my wifi-capable ipod and an open wifi network in my building's lobby (plus one in my very own apartment as long as I can keep my personal computer alive for long enough to turn on the wifi on my router). I can research my problem, I can access my comforts and my friends, and, if absolutely necessary, I can swallow the cost of a new computer that will meet my needs for at least a year. So what was an ordeal when I was in university is, at best, an item on my to-do list. Surely a huge step towards happiness!
People with plenty of money have crummy luck all the time, too, but it’s just an inconvenience for them. My parents are millionaires. Last week their heater, car, and garage door broke. So what?
If they were poorer, each problem would’ve caused two more problems. People living on the edge are vulnerable to every mishap in a way that is catastrophic. It’s very hard to break the cycle. You need a string of good luck that lasts for years.
By the way, I’ve always tried to live within my means and got hit with the housing crisis in a perfect storm that reduced me to zero. So I’m not saying here that poorer people are doing something wrong; it’s just about having more than enough money to be able to recover.The first time I ever had serious computer problems was terrifying. I was in university, I needed the computer for work and play and social life, and I couldn't possibly afford a new one. Fortunately, Dell's warranty support saved my ass, but the prospect of being computer-less was terrifying.
I'm having computer problems again (I'll blog about them more fully once they're resolved) and they're now far less terrifying. Even if I can't coax the desired behaviour out of my computer, I have my work computer, I have my old computer (which doesn't work super well, but can still do safe mode with networking), and I have my wifi-capable ipod and an open wifi network in my building's lobby (plus one in my very own apartment as long as I can keep my personal computer alive for long enough to turn on the wifi on my router). I can research my problem, I can access my comforts and my friends, and, if absolutely necessary, I can swallow the cost of a new computer that will meet my needs for at least a year. So what was an ordeal when I was in university is, at best, an item on my to-do list. Surely a huge step towards happiness!
Monday, April 01, 2013
Things Google Should Uninvent: "results for similar searches"
I've noticed a new thing on Google search results lately, called "Results for Similar Searches". If it doesn't think my search query has a lot of results, it comes up with other similar combinations of keywords that would get more results, and puts them on the bottom half of the first results page.
The problem is, this feature has never once been helpful to me. For example, I was searching for an individual. I won't use the real name here, but my search was analogous to jon smythe toronto. So Google, under "Results for Similar Searches", kept giving me results for things that were analogous to john smith toronto or john toronto or even john smith. Which is not what I needed. I spelled the individual's name correctly. I put "Toronto" to limit results. I chose my search terms quite deliberately. Cluttering up my first page of results with similar terms that produce unrelated results just pisses me off.
As another example, in an attempt to clarify Reddit's April Fool's joke, I googled reddit what do all the hats mean. The "Results for Similar Searches" contained what do all caps mean and what does many hats mean (the latter in the context of wearing several hats in one's job, i.e. fulfilling many roles.) Neither of these were remotely relevant. I was looking for a chart that would give me a meaning of each of the little hat flare icons that you could put on people's Reddit usernames. But even if you didn't know what I was looking for, it should be clear that the presence of the word "reddit" in my search was important. Even if I had meant one of those two similar searches and had misspoken "caps" into "hats" or "many" into "all the", I wouldn't have typed "reddit" unless I meant it for a reason.
I've complained in the past about how Google's attempts to "help" me interfere with my attempts to use it as a corpus for linguistic research, but this is worse because they're interfering with searches for actual information. Usually Google's predictions are helpful (I don't even worry about typoes when I'm searching, and I actually use their autocorrect system when I'm doing medical translations and can't read handwritten medication names - I just type what I think I'm reading, and Google tells me what I really need), but this one is useless and disruptive, taking up valuable space on my first page of results that could otherwise go to actual results of my actual search.
I hope Google will eliminate this alleged feature, or at least fix its predictions so they're as useful as its usual autocorrect.
The problem is, this feature has never once been helpful to me. For example, I was searching for an individual. I won't use the real name here, but my search was analogous to jon smythe toronto. So Google, under "Results for Similar Searches", kept giving me results for things that were analogous to john smith toronto or john toronto or even john smith. Which is not what I needed. I spelled the individual's name correctly. I put "Toronto" to limit results. I chose my search terms quite deliberately. Cluttering up my first page of results with similar terms that produce unrelated results just pisses me off.
As another example, in an attempt to clarify Reddit's April Fool's joke, I googled reddit what do all the hats mean. The "Results for Similar Searches" contained what do all caps mean and what does many hats mean (the latter in the context of wearing several hats in one's job, i.e. fulfilling many roles.) Neither of these were remotely relevant. I was looking for a chart that would give me a meaning of each of the little hat flare icons that you could put on people's Reddit usernames. But even if you didn't know what I was looking for, it should be clear that the presence of the word "reddit" in my search was important. Even if I had meant one of those two similar searches and had misspoken "caps" into "hats" or "many" into "all the", I wouldn't have typed "reddit" unless I meant it for a reason.
I've complained in the past about how Google's attempts to "help" me interfere with my attempts to use it as a corpus for linguistic research, but this is worse because they're interfering with searches for actual information. Usually Google's predictions are helpful (I don't even worry about typoes when I'm searching, and I actually use their autocorrect system when I'm doing medical translations and can't read handwritten medication names - I just type what I think I'm reading, and Google tells me what I really need), but this one is useless and disruptive, taking up valuable space on my first page of results that could otherwise go to actual results of my actual search.
I hope Google will eliminate this alleged feature, or at least fix its predictions so they're as useful as its usual autocorrect.
Sunday, March 31, 2013
Things They Should Invent: use the names of companies as synonyms for their bad employment practices
The pinnacle of branding is when your brand is used as a generic, like kleenex or xerox or google.
So let's leverage this and start using the names of companies as the generic for their most famous bad employment practice.
Got screwed out of your pension? You got nortelled. Got your telework status suddenly revoked? You got yahooed.
So let's leverage this and start using the names of companies as the generic for their most famous bad employment practice.
Got screwed out of your pension? You got nortelled. Got your telework status suddenly revoked? You got yahooed.
Saturday, March 30, 2013
Things Google Should Invent: unclick that link
Google tracks click-throughs. You can see this when you right-click on a link in search results. Rather than the link of the target page, it gives you http://www.google.ca/url?[insert alphanumeric sequence here].
The problem with this is when you click on a link that looks promising, but it turns out not to be what you're looking for. Google still counts that as a click-through, even though it's an unhelpful result.
I'd like to have the option of, when I go back to the search results to find something more useful, clicking a little checkbox next to the unhelpful link that says "This isn't what I was looking for with this search," so Google can learn from this.
They did once have a thing where you can ban certain websites from your personal search results, but that's way more drastic than what I'm thinking of. For example, perhaps a search for "Jon Doe" "University of Toronto" turns up the Facebook page of a Jon Doe who lives in Toronto, but it isn't the Jon Doe who's a prof at U of T. That doesn't mean I never want to see search results from Facebook again. That doesn't even mean I never want to see this particular Jon Doe again. It just means that this is not the Jon Doe I'm looking for with those keywords.
It's also possible that Google might be able to track when we return to the search results and select another result. The problem is that doesn't tell them if the first thing we clicked on was unsatisfactory, or if we're just looking for further information. (If I'm researching/hiring/stalking Jon Doe, I'm not going to stop at one search result.) Allowing us to inform Google when individual results aren't what we were looking for will clarify this ambiguity.
The problem with this is when you click on a link that looks promising, but it turns out not to be what you're looking for. Google still counts that as a click-through, even though it's an unhelpful result.
I'd like to have the option of, when I go back to the search results to find something more useful, clicking a little checkbox next to the unhelpful link that says "This isn't what I was looking for with this search," so Google can learn from this.
They did once have a thing where you can ban certain websites from your personal search results, but that's way more drastic than what I'm thinking of. For example, perhaps a search for "Jon Doe" "University of Toronto" turns up the Facebook page of a Jon Doe who lives in Toronto, but it isn't the Jon Doe who's a prof at U of T. That doesn't mean I never want to see search results from Facebook again. That doesn't even mean I never want to see this particular Jon Doe again. It just means that this is not the Jon Doe I'm looking for with those keywords.
It's also possible that Google might be able to track when we return to the search results and select another result. The problem is that doesn't tell them if the first thing we clicked on was unsatisfactory, or if we're just looking for further information. (If I'm researching/hiring/stalking Jon Doe, I'm not going to stop at one search result.) Allowing us to inform Google when individual results aren't what we were looking for will clarify this ambiguity.
Friday, March 29, 2013
Can you mail a package to a baby in Australia?
I really wish Not Always Right had a comments section after reading this story, where a plot point is an apparent Australian post office rule that only the person whose name is on the package is allowed to pick up the package.
I've sent My Favourite Little Person a number of things in the mail over the course of her life, and I always put her name on the package and address her in the second person in the enclosed note. Her parents have told me they appreciate this, because it respects her humanity. She's small and preverbal, but still deserves to be addressed as a person.
However, she would not be able to pick up a package. She can't sign for it, and she doesn't even have photo ID. So if she lived in Australia and I addressed the package to her, would it be forever caught in limbo because she's a baby?
I've sent My Favourite Little Person a number of things in the mail over the course of her life, and I always put her name on the package and address her in the second person in the enclosed note. Her parents have told me they appreciate this, because it respects her humanity. She's small and preverbal, but still deserves to be addressed as a person.
However, she would not be able to pick up a package. She can't sign for it, and she doesn't even have photo ID. So if she lived in Australia and I addressed the package to her, would it be forever caught in limbo because she's a baby?
Tuesday, March 26, 2013
Can you recommend a Google Reader replacement with visual notification?
One function I really like about Google Reader is that, when I'm signed in, the Google Reader icon on my Google toolbar turns green when there are new posts waiting for me in Reader. Because this exact functionality was not available in Chrome when the Google toolbar stopped being compatible with Firefox (which was also a dick move on Google's part, BTW), I stopped upgrading Firefox at version 10.
I'd really like to duplicate this functionality in whatever I end up replacing Google Reader with, i.e. I'd like a visual cue when there is new reading material waiting for me. I don't need (and would prefer not to have) something that pops up every single time a new post arrives, I just want to be able to know when something new is present so I don't have to keep checking back.
I use Firefox as my primary browser. I'm willing to upgrade my Firefox, but I don't want to switch to Chrome because I'm losing trust in Google.
Can you recommend anything? Or, conversely, have you tried any Google Reader alternatives that don't have this feature so I can avoid them?
I'd really like to duplicate this functionality in whatever I end up replacing Google Reader with, i.e. I'd like a visual cue when there is new reading material waiting for me. I don't need (and would prefer not to have) something that pops up every single time a new post arrives, I just want to be able to know when something new is present so I don't have to keep checking back.
I use Firefox as my primary browser. I'm willing to upgrade my Firefox, but I don't want to switch to Chrome because I'm losing trust in Google.
Can you recommend anything? Or, conversely, have you tried any Google Reader alternatives that don't have this feature so I can avoid them?
Sunday, March 24, 2013
Post your router recommendations here
I am looking into buying a router for the purpose of connecting two computers to my (Rogers) cable modem at the same time. I intend to connect them by ethernet, not wi-fi. I have no objection to the router being wi-fi capable, but I'd like the option of disabling its wi-fi so I don't have to worry about securing a wi-fi network that I don't even need. I don't anticipate needing to connect more than two computers at once.
I'm asking about routers because that's what the internet tells me I need to connect two computers to the cable modem at once, but if you know of another, better way to do it, please let me know.
Also, if there's a particular router that you recommend not using, I'd appreciate knowing that as well.
Anonymous comments welcome.
I'm asking about routers because that's what the internet tells me I need to connect two computers to the cable modem at once, but if you know of another, better way to do it, please let me know.
Also, if there's a particular router that you recommend not using, I'd appreciate knowing that as well.
Anonymous comments welcome.
Thursday, March 21, 2013
Google Reader cancellation braindump
Silos
I use RSS feeds to follow websites, newspaper columnists, webcomics, blogs, comment threads, livejournals, tumblrs, fanfiction, and YouTube channels all in one convenient place. Before I joined Twitter, I also used it for Twitter feeds. This saves me the trouble of having to go to each website separately to check for updates. By nudging the internet away from RSS feeds, Google is encouraging the siloing of the internet. Each of these things has its own mechanism for following within the website. We use RSS to follow them all in one convenient place. But weakening RSS and creating the perception that it's obsolete might drive websites to neglect it and move towards a more siloed approach, trying to force you to follow each website only from within that website. (I've actually noticed that with YouTube lately - if I use youtube while logged into a google account, it has suddenly started acting as though that's a youtube account and encouraging me to make a channel, even though my youtube use is entirely passive and I have no interest in having an actual account. The few youtube channels I do follow, I follow with RSS.)
Social media
Some of the commentary I've read suggests that RSS is less necessary now that we have social media. I don't understand this line of thinking. The people I'm connected to on social media do often provide interesting links, but they're a supplement to, not a replacement for, my own Google Reader. My Google Reader contains the things I want to read - specific bloggers and websites and columnists and communities and comics and fic authors that I've decided I want to read to completion, and be informed as soon as they update. I'm not just looking for something to read, I have specific things I want to read. So how does it happen that someone thinks having self-curated reading material is inferior to just reading whatever their friends happen to link to? Do they not have their own preferences? Are they really bad at determining what will be interesting to them?
Novelty
Google's decision to kill both Google Reader and iGoogle seems to be because newer things exist. I blogged about this before regarding their decision to kill iGoogle, where they seem to think people are going to stop using the Web because apps exist, and stop using regular computers because tablets exist. I dislike this because the newer things don't meet the same needs. (Even if I had a tablet, I wouldn't use it to translate or blog or play Sims.) I've also noticed this reflected in search results themselves. Google searches seem to prioritize newer information over older information, even when you're not searching by date, which can be irritating if you're trying to determine the origin of something. They don't even have the option of reverse sort by date, so you can quickly and easily find the origin or the first recorded occurrence of something.
Permanence oblige
Google is 15 years old, which is massive in internet time. (I myself have been using the internet regularly for under 20 years.) It has been the best search engine for all this time. Gmail is 9 years old, which is also a significant period in internet time, and it has been the best webmail provider for all this time. Even for people who are supposed to be techy and of the moment, a gmail address is perfectly respectable in a way that a hotmail address never quite was. Because Google has been the very best for so long, it is the closest thing the internet has to permanence, stability, longevity. And, because of it's permanence, stability and longevity, it has a greater duty of reliability and dependability than some random startup. If you want to be an essential part of people's internet experience, you have to create enough stability that people can feel safe taking the risk of making their internet experience dependent on you. Google is losing some of this credibility.
Evil?
Google Reader and iGoogle are my primary gateways to the internet, and now Google has cancelled both of them. This makes me fear for the future of Gmail and Blogger. (Or search, for that matter).
There is a petition to save Google Reader here.
I use RSS feeds to follow websites, newspaper columnists, webcomics, blogs, comment threads, livejournals, tumblrs, fanfiction, and YouTube channels all in one convenient place. Before I joined Twitter, I also used it for Twitter feeds. This saves me the trouble of having to go to each website separately to check for updates. By nudging the internet away from RSS feeds, Google is encouraging the siloing of the internet. Each of these things has its own mechanism for following within the website. We use RSS to follow them all in one convenient place. But weakening RSS and creating the perception that it's obsolete might drive websites to neglect it and move towards a more siloed approach, trying to force you to follow each website only from within that website. (I've actually noticed that with YouTube lately - if I use youtube while logged into a google account, it has suddenly started acting as though that's a youtube account and encouraging me to make a channel, even though my youtube use is entirely passive and I have no interest in having an actual account. The few youtube channels I do follow, I follow with RSS.)
Social media
Some of the commentary I've read suggests that RSS is less necessary now that we have social media. I don't understand this line of thinking. The people I'm connected to on social media do often provide interesting links, but they're a supplement to, not a replacement for, my own Google Reader. My Google Reader contains the things I want to read - specific bloggers and websites and columnists and communities and comics and fic authors that I've decided I want to read to completion, and be informed as soon as they update. I'm not just looking for something to read, I have specific things I want to read. So how does it happen that someone thinks having self-curated reading material is inferior to just reading whatever their friends happen to link to? Do they not have their own preferences? Are they really bad at determining what will be interesting to them?
Novelty
Google's decision to kill both Google Reader and iGoogle seems to be because newer things exist. I blogged about this before regarding their decision to kill iGoogle, where they seem to think people are going to stop using the Web because apps exist, and stop using regular computers because tablets exist. I dislike this because the newer things don't meet the same needs. (Even if I had a tablet, I wouldn't use it to translate or blog or play Sims.) I've also noticed this reflected in search results themselves. Google searches seem to prioritize newer information over older information, even when you're not searching by date, which can be irritating if you're trying to determine the origin of something. They don't even have the option of reverse sort by date, so you can quickly and easily find the origin or the first recorded occurrence of something.
Permanence oblige
Google is 15 years old, which is massive in internet time. (I myself have been using the internet regularly for under 20 years.) It has been the best search engine for all this time. Gmail is 9 years old, which is also a significant period in internet time, and it has been the best webmail provider for all this time. Even for people who are supposed to be techy and of the moment, a gmail address is perfectly respectable in a way that a hotmail address never quite was. Because Google has been the very best for so long, it is the closest thing the internet has to permanence, stability, longevity. And, because of it's permanence, stability and longevity, it has a greater duty of reliability and dependability than some random startup. If you want to be an essential part of people's internet experience, you have to create enough stability that people can feel safe taking the risk of making their internet experience dependent on you. Google is losing some of this credibility.
Evil?
Google Reader and iGoogle are my primary gateways to the internet, and now Google has cancelled both of them. This makes me fear for the future of Gmail and Blogger. (Or search, for that matter).
There is a petition to save Google Reader here.
Saturday, March 16, 2013
Buying happiness: quality housing
My apartment was brand new when I moved into it, nearly six years ago. It has many improvements over my previous apartment (which was built in the 1970s). I have big windows (and I face east and am above the building next door), so I enjoy direct sunlight that helps my circadian rhythms. I have a washer and dryer in my actual suite, which means I don't have to schlep down to the basement three times per load of laundry, or hoard quarters and loonies, or worry about what I'm going to wear while I do laundry. I have a dishwasher, which means that my least favourite chore (apart from exercise and pest control) is completely eliminated. And, speaking of pest control, I average one bug a year here, compared with one bug every two months in my old place and several bugs a month in student housing. Since a bug equals a panic attack, this is a revelation. Making rent is always tight, and I can't think of anything I'd rather be spending it on.
This is why I will never be convinced that money can't buy happiness. I've bought a near-elimination of panic attacks, and of the tedium of two major chores, as well as a sunlight pattern that helps adapt my circadian rhythms to the realities of everyday life.
All of this sounds disgustingly privilegey, but this is why I'm so opposed to the N2 rent increase exemption - it puts the quality of life I enjoy further and further out of the reach of more and more Ontarians (which might include me eventually if I hadn't bought a condo - my rent has always increased at a greater rate than my salary). I've benefited so much from buying this happiness that I want to to be affordable to everyone.
This is why I will never be convinced that money can't buy happiness. I've bought a near-elimination of panic attacks, and of the tedium of two major chores, as well as a sunlight pattern that helps adapt my circadian rhythms to the realities of everyday life.
All of this sounds disgustingly privilegey, but this is why I'm so opposed to the N2 rent increase exemption - it puts the quality of life I enjoy further and further out of the reach of more and more Ontarians (which might include me eventually if I hadn't bought a condo - my rent has always increased at a greater rate than my salary). I've benefited so much from buying this happiness that I want to to be affordable to everyone.
Monday, March 11, 2013
Complaints about baby toys: alphabet blocks
A while back, I had the idea of getting My Favourite Little Person some alphabet blocks. That way, when she begins to approach literacy, they'll have a toy in the house that people can use to make words and demonstrate phonetics whenever the spirit moves them. And, in the meantime, she can make towers and knock them down, which is always entertaining.
So I went to a toy store and looked at their alphabet blocks, but I was very disappointed to discover that the picture on each the block didn't correspond with the letter on that block. So I went to another store and looked at more blocks, and, again the picture didn't correspond. Eventually I decided to put off the alphabet block purchase until she was older (she was under a year old and completely pre-verbal when I was looking at alphabet blocks), and she ended up getting some alphabet blocks form someone else in the interim. But the ones she owns don't have pictures that correspond with the letters either.
Why do they even make alphabet blocks where the pictures don't correspond with the letters? Someone at some point in the design process has to decide which pictures go on which blocks, so why not choose something that starts with that letter?
The first block should have the letter A, the number 1, and an apple. The second block should have the letter B, the number 2, and a ball. And they should continue with this pattern all the way to Z, with duplicates of the more common letters so people can use them to make actual words.
This isn't complicated. It probably takes more thought to come up with another system. So why not maximize their educational value?
So I went to a toy store and looked at their alphabet blocks, but I was very disappointed to discover that the picture on each the block didn't correspond with the letter on that block. So I went to another store and looked at more blocks, and, again the picture didn't correspond. Eventually I decided to put off the alphabet block purchase until she was older (she was under a year old and completely pre-verbal when I was looking at alphabet blocks), and she ended up getting some alphabet blocks form someone else in the interim. But the ones she owns don't have pictures that correspond with the letters either.
Why do they even make alphabet blocks where the pictures don't correspond with the letters? Someone at some point in the design process has to decide which pictures go on which blocks, so why not choose something that starts with that letter?
The first block should have the letter A, the number 1, and an apple. The second block should have the letter B, the number 2, and a ball. And they should continue with this pattern all the way to Z, with duplicates of the more common letters so people can use them to make actual words.
This isn't complicated. It probably takes more thought to come up with another system. So why not maximize their educational value?
Friday, March 08, 2013
My experience with Staples
I needed to replace my desk chair and Staples was having a good sale I went into the store and tried out a chair that looked promising, and I didn't perceive any problems with it so I decided to buy it.
Because their delivery times coincide exactly with my normal work hours, I called their 800 number to ask if it was possible to schedule a delivery for a specific day (i.e. an upcoming day when I was schedule to work at home). The very nice man who took my call told me that it was, and took my order right then and there. I was very impressed that I could just call them up and ask for what I want and get it, and thought that their "Easy!" advertising was actually true.
The delivery happened as scheduled, and the delivery people were super nice. The chair came in a box, disassembled, and I found the assembly instructions were less helpful than they could have been. They told which pieces to attach to each other and where to attach them, but they didn't always make it clear how. (More about the assembly and disassembly experience here, framed as a cognitive experience.) I assembled it over a period of several days (I could have done it in an hour or two if I'd had to, but I would have gotten extremely frustrated), but the assembly was ultimately a success.
But once I got it assembled and sat in it for a couple of hours, I realized it was ergonomically unsuitable. The arm rests were higher than my elbows on their lowest setting, and the bulge in the seat back that's meant to support the lumbar spine was taller than my lumbar curve, so it was forcing my back to curve forward not only in the lumbar spine where it naturally curves forward, but also in the bottom portion of the thoracic spine where it naturally starts curving back towards my back. (I'm 5'7", with long legs and a short torso.) I didn't notice this in the store because I was just looking for whether lumbar support is present - it never occurred to me it might be too big.
So I called the 800 number again to ask about the possibility of returning the chair, and I was very happy to hear that not only was I allowed to return it, but they could pick it up from me and schedule the pick-up on the day of my choosing. So I chose my next day off work (which was close to the end of the 30-day return period), and disassembled and repackaged the chair, again over a period of days.
On the day of the scheduled pick-up (a Friday), I pushed the box containing the chair over to the door of my apartment (it weighed about 50 pounds, so I couldn't lift it in the box - I could easily roll the chair on its wheels and lift and carry it short distances when it was assembled in chair form, but the box was too big and unwieldy), made sure my phone line was not in use all day so I'd be able to buzz the pick-up guy in, and settled down to wait. But he never came.
I called the 800 number, and the very nice lady who answered verified that they did have a pickup scheduled, told me that this very rarely happens, and rescheduled the pickup for the following Tuesday. (I was very, very fortunate that my boss let me work at home on the Tuesday on such short notice.)
On the Tuesday I worked at home, again keeping my phone line clear, again not leaving the apartment even for a second between the 9-5 window. But the pick-up guy never came.
I called the 800 number again. The very nice man who answered empathized with my situation, gave me a $20 credit for my trouble, reassured me that I would still be allowed to return it even though we were going beyond the 30-day return period because they had a record of the saga and it clearly wasn't my fault, and rescheduled my pick-up for the Friday of that week. (Again, my boss went above and beyond by allowing me two short-notices work-at-home days in a week.) I also reported the problem to Staples via Twitter, and got a voicemail from another very nice lady confirming that my pickup had been scheduled for the Friday and giving me a different 800 number to call if there should be any problem.
Then, just to complicate things, I got home from work on Thursday to find a voicemail from the pick-up guy, saying he was there to pick up my chair and would come back the next day. This caused a brief panic that the pick-up had been scheduled wrong, but a very nice person at the 800 number confirmed that it was in fact schedule for the Friday.
On Friday, I worked at home, one again kept my phone line clear and stayed in the apartment, and the pick-up guy came as scheduled. He was super nice and took the box away with no fuss even though it was packaged less perfectly than I'd received it.
So here's what I've learned:
- I do not recommend using Staples if you're going to be dependent on their delivery and/or pick-up service and being at home on a weekday is difficult for you. I get the impression that the delivery service is more intended to serve businesses, where there's someone in during business hours every day anyway and if they come the next day instead of the scheduled day it isn't a huge deal. I should add that Staples would also have accepted my return if I brought it into a store, but that was logistically impossible for me because I don't have a car and couldn't lift the box. If you normally have someone home during the day, this problem won't affect you. If you can handle the transportation for the product in question yourself, this problem won't affect you. But if you're not normally home on weekdays and the combination of the nature of the product purchased and the transportation options available to you makes it impossible for you to get the product to or from a store, you might want to look into other stores to see if there are better options out there.
- I do not recommend this Staples Multifunction Task Chair if you're under maybe 5'9". The armrests were too high on their lowest setting and the lumbar spine support was too tall/long for my 5'7" short-torsoed body.
- If you struggle with assembling Ikea furniture, you will probably find it difficult to assemble Staples chairs. The instructions are less detailed than Ikea instructions. The pieces are also rather heavy. I could handle it, my grandmother wouldn't be able to handle it. My parents could probably handle it, but someone with back problems could hurt themselves. However, you might also look into whether the store provides an assembly service. I seem to remember from my initial research a thing where you can pay an extra $10 or $20 and they'll assemble it for you, but I can't currently confirm its existence, and I'm not sure whether I found it on a US or Canada Staples site.
I should add that throughout this ordeal, every single customer service person I dealt with was awesome, and the delivery people were super nice as well. It's just the customer service people in their call centre had no way of making the delivery truck actually come to me, so it caused me quite disproportionate inconvenience. I really appreciated how I could call their 800 number and, with minimal to no hold time, talk to a human being, asked for what I wanted in words, and have them arrange for it to be done. I didn't have to make a special request or game the system, I just asked and they what they do to make it happen.
Except that it didn't always end up actually happening. And that unfortunate disconnect between the superb customer service in the call centre and whatever was going on with the truck is the only reason why this isn't a glowing review and is instead an epic saga.
Because their delivery times coincide exactly with my normal work hours, I called their 800 number to ask if it was possible to schedule a delivery for a specific day (i.e. an upcoming day when I was schedule to work at home). The very nice man who took my call told me that it was, and took my order right then and there. I was very impressed that I could just call them up and ask for what I want and get it, and thought that their "Easy!" advertising was actually true.
The delivery happened as scheduled, and the delivery people were super nice. The chair came in a box, disassembled, and I found the assembly instructions were less helpful than they could have been. They told which pieces to attach to each other and where to attach them, but they didn't always make it clear how. (More about the assembly and disassembly experience here, framed as a cognitive experience.) I assembled it over a period of several days (I could have done it in an hour or two if I'd had to, but I would have gotten extremely frustrated), but the assembly was ultimately a success.
But once I got it assembled and sat in it for a couple of hours, I realized it was ergonomically unsuitable. The arm rests were higher than my elbows on their lowest setting, and the bulge in the seat back that's meant to support the lumbar spine was taller than my lumbar curve, so it was forcing my back to curve forward not only in the lumbar spine where it naturally curves forward, but also in the bottom portion of the thoracic spine where it naturally starts curving back towards my back. (I'm 5'7", with long legs and a short torso.) I didn't notice this in the store because I was just looking for whether lumbar support is present - it never occurred to me it might be too big.
So I called the 800 number again to ask about the possibility of returning the chair, and I was very happy to hear that not only was I allowed to return it, but they could pick it up from me and schedule the pick-up on the day of my choosing. So I chose my next day off work (which was close to the end of the 30-day return period), and disassembled and repackaged the chair, again over a period of days.
On the day of the scheduled pick-up (a Friday), I pushed the box containing the chair over to the door of my apartment (it weighed about 50 pounds, so I couldn't lift it in the box - I could easily roll the chair on its wheels and lift and carry it short distances when it was assembled in chair form, but the box was too big and unwieldy), made sure my phone line was not in use all day so I'd be able to buzz the pick-up guy in, and settled down to wait. But he never came.
I called the 800 number, and the very nice lady who answered verified that they did have a pickup scheduled, told me that this very rarely happens, and rescheduled the pickup for the following Tuesday. (I was very, very fortunate that my boss let me work at home on the Tuesday on such short notice.)
On the Tuesday I worked at home, again keeping my phone line clear, again not leaving the apartment even for a second between the 9-5 window. But the pick-up guy never came.
I called the 800 number again. The very nice man who answered empathized with my situation, gave me a $20 credit for my trouble, reassured me that I would still be allowed to return it even though we were going beyond the 30-day return period because they had a record of the saga and it clearly wasn't my fault, and rescheduled my pick-up for the Friday of that week. (Again, my boss went above and beyond by allowing me two short-notices work-at-home days in a week.) I also reported the problem to Staples via Twitter, and got a voicemail from another very nice lady confirming that my pickup had been scheduled for the Friday and giving me a different 800 number to call if there should be any problem.
Then, just to complicate things, I got home from work on Thursday to find a voicemail from the pick-up guy, saying he was there to pick up my chair and would come back the next day. This caused a brief panic that the pick-up had been scheduled wrong, but a very nice person at the 800 number confirmed that it was in fact schedule for the Friday.
On Friday, I worked at home, one again kept my phone line clear and stayed in the apartment, and the pick-up guy came as scheduled. He was super nice and took the box away with no fuss even though it was packaged less perfectly than I'd received it.
So here's what I've learned:
- I do not recommend using Staples if you're going to be dependent on their delivery and/or pick-up service and being at home on a weekday is difficult for you. I get the impression that the delivery service is more intended to serve businesses, where there's someone in during business hours every day anyway and if they come the next day instead of the scheduled day it isn't a huge deal. I should add that Staples would also have accepted my return if I brought it into a store, but that was logistically impossible for me because I don't have a car and couldn't lift the box. If you normally have someone home during the day, this problem won't affect you. If you can handle the transportation for the product in question yourself, this problem won't affect you. But if you're not normally home on weekdays and the combination of the nature of the product purchased and the transportation options available to you makes it impossible for you to get the product to or from a store, you might want to look into other stores to see if there are better options out there.
- I do not recommend this Staples Multifunction Task Chair if you're under maybe 5'9". The armrests were too high on their lowest setting and the lumbar spine support was too tall/long for my 5'7" short-torsoed body.
- If you struggle with assembling Ikea furniture, you will probably find it difficult to assemble Staples chairs. The instructions are less detailed than Ikea instructions. The pieces are also rather heavy. I could handle it, my grandmother wouldn't be able to handle it. My parents could probably handle it, but someone with back problems could hurt themselves. However, you might also look into whether the store provides an assembly service. I seem to remember from my initial research a thing where you can pay an extra $10 or $20 and they'll assemble it for you, but I can't currently confirm its existence, and I'm not sure whether I found it on a US or Canada Staples site.
I should add that throughout this ordeal, every single customer service person I dealt with was awesome, and the delivery people were super nice as well. It's just the customer service people in their call centre had no way of making the delivery truck actually come to me, so it caused me quite disproportionate inconvenience. I really appreciated how I could call their 800 number and, with minimal to no hold time, talk to a human being, asked for what I wanted in words, and have them arrange for it to be done. I didn't have to make a special request or game the system, I just asked and they what they do to make it happen.
Except that it didn't always end up actually happening. And that unfortunate disconnect between the superb customer service in the call centre and whatever was going on with the truck is the only reason why this isn't a glowing review and is instead an epic saga.
Thursday, March 07, 2013
Things Foodland Ontario Should Invent: "If you like...then you might like..."
My very favourite apples are Cortlands, which aren't available all year, and my second-favourite are McIntosh, which are available nearly all year. I make do with Paula Reds and Ida Reds during the summer gap, but I don't like those ones nearly that much. I actively dislike Red Delicious and similar varieties. I find Granny Smith too tart and Honeycrisp too crisp.
Currently, the Loblaws I usually go doesn't have either Cortlands or Macs. Metro had Cortlands up until this week (although they were the kind in the bag rather than the kind in the bin), and now they still have Macs. (This is an interesting reversal - usually Loblaws more reliably has produce I like better.)
However, I've noticed in both supermarkets a sudden influx of apple varieties I don't recognize. There may well be apples I like among these new varieties, but I have no way of knowing which ones, and I don't much fancy the idea of buying and eating a bunch of apples I don't like just in case one of them meets needs already met by existing varieties.
I think Foodland Ontario could help me with this.
Foodland Ontario's mandate is to encourage people to buy local produce. Surely helping us discover new things we like falls within this mandate! Foodland Ontario is also basically the "official" source of information about produce varieties. If there's such thing as tasting notes for apple varieties, they'd be the ones who have them.
So they should take the information they have about all the different apple varieties, and use it to make a grid, or a flowchart, or a nifty little interactive website where I can input the fact that I like Cortlands and Macs and dislike Red Delicious, and it would tell me what other varieties I'm likely to enjoy. The more varieties you can give your opinion on, the better results it could get - so if you do find yourself going through the produce section doing trial and error, it can help you pick better next time.
Currently, the Loblaws I usually go doesn't have either Cortlands or Macs. Metro had Cortlands up until this week (although they were the kind in the bag rather than the kind in the bin), and now they still have Macs. (This is an interesting reversal - usually Loblaws more reliably has produce I like better.)
However, I've noticed in both supermarkets a sudden influx of apple varieties I don't recognize. There may well be apples I like among these new varieties, but I have no way of knowing which ones, and I don't much fancy the idea of buying and eating a bunch of apples I don't like just in case one of them meets needs already met by existing varieties.
I think Foodland Ontario could help me with this.
Foodland Ontario's mandate is to encourage people to buy local produce. Surely helping us discover new things we like falls within this mandate! Foodland Ontario is also basically the "official" source of information about produce varieties. If there's such thing as tasting notes for apple varieties, they'd be the ones who have them.
So they should take the information they have about all the different apple varieties, and use it to make a grid, or a flowchart, or a nifty little interactive website where I can input the fact that I like Cortlands and Macs and dislike Red Delicious, and it would tell me what other varieties I'm likely to enjoy. The more varieties you can give your opinion on, the better results it could get - so if you do find yourself going through the produce section doing trial and error, it can help you pick better next time.
Tuesday, March 05, 2013
"It's just gas."
There exists the idea that newborn babies don't really smile to show that they're happy, it's just their face happens to land in that position sometimes. A common explanation is "It's just gas."
I can't tell you if this is true or not. There are people on the internet who confirm this statement and saying that it's a common misconception that babies really smile, and there are people on the internet saying it's a common misconception that babies don't smile and they totally really do.
But the pervasiveness of this idea that babies don't smile means that once upon a time someone discovered it or thought they discovered it, and then they - and many other people - perpetuated the idea.
Why would someone do this??
If you, as the adult, think the baby has smiled at you, you're happier. You feel "Awww, she likes me!" and that brightens your day. Your happiness may make the baby feel happier, safer, or more relaxed, or it may be neutral, depending on how well the baby can read your moods and how much they affect her moods.
If you think the baby likes you in general, you're more likely to want to engage with her, and more often, so you can see her smile again. Engaging with the baby is good for her social development and her language development, and will probably help her get to know you better and build trust with a loving adult. Plus, if you genuinely feel that the baby likes you, you're more likely to respond sympathetically to her. When she's crying, you're more likely to go "Awww, poor baby!" rather than "Shut up, you ungrateful little brat!" This will make her feel safe and secure and loved, which is good for her long-term social and psychological development.
In short, thinking that the baby has smiled at you makes life a little happier for everyone and, even if it's not true, there's no downside. Conversely, if you think any sign of affection from the baby is just instinct or fluke or gas, the best possible outcome is neutral, and the worst is neglect.
So why would someone do science with the goal of proving that the baby doesn't really like you? Or, if they discovered this by accident, why would people work so hard to perpetuate it? Even if the truth is that the baby doesn't actually like you because she's too young to like you, there's nothing lost and a certain amount gained by being deluded into thinking she likes you.
I can't tell you if this is true or not. There are people on the internet who confirm this statement and saying that it's a common misconception that babies really smile, and there are people on the internet saying it's a common misconception that babies don't smile and they totally really do.
But the pervasiveness of this idea that babies don't smile means that once upon a time someone discovered it or thought they discovered it, and then they - and many other people - perpetuated the idea.
Why would someone do this??
If you, as the adult, think the baby has smiled at you, you're happier. You feel "Awww, she likes me!" and that brightens your day. Your happiness may make the baby feel happier, safer, or more relaxed, or it may be neutral, depending on how well the baby can read your moods and how much they affect her moods.
If you think the baby likes you in general, you're more likely to want to engage with her, and more often, so you can see her smile again. Engaging with the baby is good for her social development and her language development, and will probably help her get to know you better and build trust with a loving adult. Plus, if you genuinely feel that the baby likes you, you're more likely to respond sympathetically to her. When she's crying, you're more likely to go "Awww, poor baby!" rather than "Shut up, you ungrateful little brat!" This will make her feel safe and secure and loved, which is good for her long-term social and psychological development.
In short, thinking that the baby has smiled at you makes life a little happier for everyone and, even if it's not true, there's no downside. Conversely, if you think any sign of affection from the baby is just instinct or fluke or gas, the best possible outcome is neutral, and the worst is neglect.
So why would someone do science with the goal of proving that the baby doesn't really like you? Or, if they discovered this by accident, why would people work so hard to perpetuate it? Even if the truth is that the baby doesn't actually like you because she's too young to like you, there's nothing lost and a certain amount gained by being deluded into thinking she likes you.
Saturday, March 02, 2013
How to organize hair accessories
I was sorting through a drawer, and I noticed it contained a lot of loose hair clips, and a lot of loose hair elastics. I was considering getting some kind of container or organizing device, and then I had a brainstorm:
I grouped all the like clips together, then I wrapped all the like hair elastics around each bundle of clips. The elastics keep the clips together in bundles, and the clips provide something to wrap the elastics around without stretching them out, so they won't rattle around loose and sink to the bottom of the drawer.
This takes up less space than any organizing device, the hair accessories are far more readily visible in the drawer than when they're loose, and I can tell what I own at a glance.
I grouped all the like clips together, then I wrapped all the like hair elastics around each bundle of clips. The elastics keep the clips together in bundles, and the clips provide something to wrap the elastics around without stretching them out, so they won't rattle around loose and sink to the bottom of the drawer.
This takes up less space than any organizing device, the hair accessories are far more readily visible in the drawer than when they're loose, and I can tell what I own at a glance.
Friday, March 01, 2013
Thoughts from advice columns: assuming panhandlers have a kitchen
DEAR ABBY: I spent the afternoon running errands. As I left the shopping center, I saw a young couple with a baby and a toddler holding a sign requesting help with food, as the husband had just been laid off. I drove past, then considered the children and circled back.
I had no cash with me, so I stopped and offered them our family's dinner -- a jar of premium spaghetti sauce, a pound of fresh ground beef, a box of dried spaghetti, fruit cups that my children usually take to school for treats, and some canned soups I occasionally have for lunch.
Imagine my surprise when the couple declined my generosity. Instead, the man strongly suggested that I should go to a nearby ATM and withdraw cash to donate to them because they preferred to select their own groceries and pay their phone bills. What are your thoughts on this? -- GENUINELY PUZZLED IN AUSTIN, TEXAS
What surprises me most about this letter, and Abby's response, and all the comments I've seen made on it in the places where people normally comment on advice columns, is no one seems to notice that she gave a family who's panhandling a bunch of food that requires a kitchen to prepare it. You can't assume that panhandles have a kitchen! Everything but the spaghetti sauce and the fruit cups is inaccessible without cooking equipment, and the spaghetti sauce and the fruit cups cannot be eaten in anything remotely approaching a dignified manner without utensils. (And that's before we even get into possible medical issues - if I were to eat enough straight spaghetti sauce to assuage my hunger, I'd require medication that costs $3 a day to keep my body from destroying itself.)
This family may or may not have been in genuine need, it may or may not have been a scam, and they may or may not have an actual home. But I'm very surprised that LW was so taken aback that panhandlers would decline an offer of raw meat that she felt the need to write in to Dear Abby, and I'm very surprised that no one else seems to have glommed onto this fact.
Tuesday, February 26, 2013
Spoilerrific Downton braindump
Warning: this post contains spoilers for all of Downton Abbey to date.
- So why did O'Brien have it in for Thomas all this season anyway? If the show told us, I've forgotten.
- I think making Robert basically incompetent at his job of being Earl of Grantham is a good and interesting direction for the show to take. In the first two seasons, many people criticized the character for being too perfect - kind and benevolent to everyone. But having him be incompetent (and a wee bit out of touch) while continuing to be kind and benevolent makes him far more interesting. It's also an interesting contrast with Ethel: Robert is incompetent but gets to retain his position and will live in luxury for basically the rest of his natural life; Ethel made one mistake, and is socially deemed unemployable and reduced to prostitution.
- Although I'm surprised that Ethel didn't just take off for some other part of the country and claim to be a widow. They'd just had a war and an influenza outbreak, I'm quite sure there were many young widows with small children.
- I'm disappointed that we'll never get to see Sybil's everyday life in Ireland. It would have been so interesting to see how she adjusted. Even with her nurse training, she probably would have had her own "What is a weekend?" moment. For example, she's probably never done laundry (it was time-consuming in that era, and I doubt they would have had trained nurses doing hospital laundry when any untrained person could have done it) and she's probably never gone grocery shopping.
- I really don't get why Robert and the Dowager Countess were so put off by the prospect of Edith marrying an older man and therefore having to nurse him through his dotage. So what if she does? Basically, she'd be earning her pension. It's the early 20th century British nobility equivalent of taking some tedious administrative job in a university so your kids will have drug coverage and a dental plan. And, I just realized, Robert had his own marriage of convenience, which worked out splendidly!
- (Speaking of, they should make a Downton prequel that covers the early days of Robert's and Cora's marriage. A benign marriage of mutual convenience has got to be an interesting interpersonal dynamic, and not something we often (if ever) see in fiction.)
- This means Sir Anthony Strallan's "I'm leaving you at the altar for your own good" thing was a triply dick move. First, because Edith gets to decide for herself what her own good is, thank you very much. Second, because he's denying her the opportunity to earn her pension. As of the time of the wedding, Downton was broke and the family was going to downsize. Sir Anthony still had his fortune. His refusing to marry her because he thought she could do better would be like that university administrative job refusing to hire you because they unilaterally decide that this job wouldn't be your passion. And third, he's leaving Edith dependent on her family. Which doesn't just mean she's dependent on her parents, it also means that, once her parents die, she'll be dependent on Matthew and Mary. Imagine being financially at the mercy of your least favourite sibling for the rest of your life! Leaving someone in that situation is certainly not noble, Sir Anthony! In fact, the noble thing for someone in Sir Anthony's position to do for someone in Lady Edith's position would be to marry her even if he isn't attracted to her but they get along reasonably well enough for a marriage of convenience.
- At the very very least, Edith should have gotten breakfast in bed the morning after she was jilted at the altar!
- I really want to know the internal logic of this "married women get breakfast in bed" rule! How did they come up with it and why? Surely getting dressed and going downstairs is just as difficult for an unmarried woman! Also, why don't they share with their husbands? We saw several scenes of a woman eating breakfast in bed and chatting with her husband while he gets dressed to go down and eat breakfast. I don't know about you, but if my spouse were right there with food while I was getting ready to go get food, I'd certainly stop getting ready and start eating off their plate! I also wonder if women who have been married but now aren't (widows and divorcées) get breakfast in bed. Maybe we'll learn next season...
- I think we needed a bit more "show, don't tell" about how many men of the daughters' generation died in WWI. Sybil mentioned once that it seems like every man she's ever danced with is dead, and Edith told Robert that it's ridiculous to object to her marrying someone older because so many of the men of her generation died, but we haven't actually seen this. William (the footman who married Daisy) died, the father of Ethel's baby died, and...that's it for named characters, I think. Maybe a scene where they're organizing some major social event for the first time since before the war, and a huge chunk of their guest list is dead? Too bad they jumped right from 1918 to 1920 at the end of season 2, so now they can't really address this any more.
- I really do think they've had time moving too quickly in this show. We've had 9 years in three short seasons! I kind of get why they didn't want WWI to last more than 1 season, and they had to make the last xmas special take place nearly a year after season 3 for obvious plot reasons, but if we keep up this pace they'll have to kill off the Dowager Countess from old age in a season or two!
- I really want to know what Mary's medical problem was! A "small operation" that restores female fertility and could be successfully diagnosed and carried out in the year 1920. And, whatever the problem was, it presumably didn't interfere with the mechanics of sex, because if it had then Matthew wouldn't be worrying that the problem might be him. Anyone have enough medical knowledge to figure out what this was? Theory: maybe it isn't a real condition at all and is just a plot device.
- I had the misfortune to learn that the actor who plays Matthew was leaving the show before I even started watching Season 3, so the whole plot of the Season 3 xmas special seemed glaringly projected to me. I knew where they had to end up, so the foreshadowing and such seemed completely unsubtle.
- Why oh why oh why did they have to name the latest new maid Edna? We already have Edith and Ethel for me to get mixed up. Why introduce yet another two syllable old lady name that starts with E? (I know they're probably old lady names because of the era, but we also have names like Mary and Anna and Matthew.)
- So why did O'Brien have it in for Thomas all this season anyway? If the show told us, I've forgotten.
- I think making Robert basically incompetent at his job of being Earl of Grantham is a good and interesting direction for the show to take. In the first two seasons, many people criticized the character for being too perfect - kind and benevolent to everyone. But having him be incompetent (and a wee bit out of touch) while continuing to be kind and benevolent makes him far more interesting. It's also an interesting contrast with Ethel: Robert is incompetent but gets to retain his position and will live in luxury for basically the rest of his natural life; Ethel made one mistake, and is socially deemed unemployable and reduced to prostitution.
- Although I'm surprised that Ethel didn't just take off for some other part of the country and claim to be a widow. They'd just had a war and an influenza outbreak, I'm quite sure there were many young widows with small children.
- I'm disappointed that we'll never get to see Sybil's everyday life in Ireland. It would have been so interesting to see how she adjusted. Even with her nurse training, she probably would have had her own "What is a weekend?" moment. For example, she's probably never done laundry (it was time-consuming in that era, and I doubt they would have had trained nurses doing hospital laundry when any untrained person could have done it) and she's probably never gone grocery shopping.
- I really don't get why Robert and the Dowager Countess were so put off by the prospect of Edith marrying an older man and therefore having to nurse him through his dotage. So what if she does? Basically, she'd be earning her pension. It's the early 20th century British nobility equivalent of taking some tedious administrative job in a university so your kids will have drug coverage and a dental plan. And, I just realized, Robert had his own marriage of convenience, which worked out splendidly!
- (Speaking of, they should make a Downton prequel that covers the early days of Robert's and Cora's marriage. A benign marriage of mutual convenience has got to be an interesting interpersonal dynamic, and not something we often (if ever) see in fiction.)
- This means Sir Anthony Strallan's "I'm leaving you at the altar for your own good" thing was a triply dick move. First, because Edith gets to decide for herself what her own good is, thank you very much. Second, because he's denying her the opportunity to earn her pension. As of the time of the wedding, Downton was broke and the family was going to downsize. Sir Anthony still had his fortune. His refusing to marry her because he thought she could do better would be like that university administrative job refusing to hire you because they unilaterally decide that this job wouldn't be your passion. And third, he's leaving Edith dependent on her family. Which doesn't just mean she's dependent on her parents, it also means that, once her parents die, she'll be dependent on Matthew and Mary. Imagine being financially at the mercy of your least favourite sibling for the rest of your life! Leaving someone in that situation is certainly not noble, Sir Anthony! In fact, the noble thing for someone in Sir Anthony's position to do for someone in Lady Edith's position would be to marry her even if he isn't attracted to her but they get along reasonably well enough for a marriage of convenience.
- At the very very least, Edith should have gotten breakfast in bed the morning after she was jilted at the altar!
- I really want to know the internal logic of this "married women get breakfast in bed" rule! How did they come up with it and why? Surely getting dressed and going downstairs is just as difficult for an unmarried woman! Also, why don't they share with their husbands? We saw several scenes of a woman eating breakfast in bed and chatting with her husband while he gets dressed to go down and eat breakfast. I don't know about you, but if my spouse were right there with food while I was getting ready to go get food, I'd certainly stop getting ready and start eating off their plate! I also wonder if women who have been married but now aren't (widows and divorcées) get breakfast in bed. Maybe we'll learn next season...
- I think we needed a bit more "show, don't tell" about how many men of the daughters' generation died in WWI. Sybil mentioned once that it seems like every man she's ever danced with is dead, and Edith told Robert that it's ridiculous to object to her marrying someone older because so many of the men of her generation died, but we haven't actually seen this. William (the footman who married Daisy) died, the father of Ethel's baby died, and...that's it for named characters, I think. Maybe a scene where they're organizing some major social event for the first time since before the war, and a huge chunk of their guest list is dead? Too bad they jumped right from 1918 to 1920 at the end of season 2, so now they can't really address this any more.
- I really do think they've had time moving too quickly in this show. We've had 9 years in three short seasons! I kind of get why they didn't want WWI to last more than 1 season, and they had to make the last xmas special take place nearly a year after season 3 for obvious plot reasons, but if we keep up this pace they'll have to kill off the Dowager Countess from old age in a season or two!
- I really want to know what Mary's medical problem was! A "small operation" that restores female fertility and could be successfully diagnosed and carried out in the year 1920. And, whatever the problem was, it presumably didn't interfere with the mechanics of sex, because if it had then Matthew wouldn't be worrying that the problem might be him. Anyone have enough medical knowledge to figure out what this was? Theory: maybe it isn't a real condition at all and is just a plot device.
- I had the misfortune to learn that the actor who plays Matthew was leaving the show before I even started watching Season 3, so the whole plot of the Season 3 xmas special seemed glaringly projected to me. I knew where they had to end up, so the foreshadowing and such seemed completely unsubtle.
- Why oh why oh why did they have to name the latest new maid Edna? We already have Edith and Ethel for me to get mixed up. Why introduce yet another two syllable old lady name that starts with E? (I know they're probably old lady names because of the era, but we also have names like Mary and Anna and Matthew.)
Sunday, February 24, 2013
Things They Should Invent: track your delivery truck online
I spent Friday waiting at home for Staples to come and pick up the chair I'm returning. (They never did, and they won't be able to find out what happened until Monday. I'll be posting a full review of my experience once it's over.) I was told that the truck would come sometime between 9:00 and 5:00, and they couldn't give me a narrower window.
Because of this, I had to spend the whole day ready for the truck to come. I couldn't use the phone because I had to keep it free for when they buzzed me. I took the phone into the bathroom when I had my shower and rushed through my shower as quickly as possible so as not to get caught in the shower when they arrived. I wanted to run down to the corner store to pick up more milk, but I couldn't in case I ended up not being home when the truck came.
GPS technology exists, and tracking GPS location via internet exists, so why don't they use this to make a website where we can log on with our tracking number and they'll tell us where the truck we're waiting for is? If it's out in Scarborough, I probably have time to have a shower or run to the store. If it's 2 blocks away, I might want to wait.
Apart from privacy issues, I do see how this might cause some customer relations problems. People might be sitting there watching their truck get closer and closer and then make an angry phone call to customer service if it make a turn that takes it in a direction away from them, even if it's following its route normally. So I also have some alternatives in mind:
- Tell customers the minimum estimated time for the truck to reach them. For example, if the truck would reach you in 10 minutes if it dropped everything and drove straight to you, the website would tell you that. This would be phrased in a way to make it clear that it may be way more than 10 minutes, and it would come with a big loud disclaimer to that effect.
- If the truck has a regular route, tell customers how far into the route they are and how far into the route the truck is. For example, "You are 75% of the way through the truck's normal route. The truck is currently 20% of the way through its route."
- Show customers the truck's normal route on the map. So if it goes all the way down the south side of the street and then comes back up the north side of the street later, the map would show that. Might reduce angry calls from customers who just saw the truck on the other side of the street and then it drove away.
- Give a time estimate, based on the scheduled route and the truck's current location, and include a loud disclaimer to the effect that this is about as reliable as the estimated download time on your computer.
In any case, some information either already exists or would exist if they'd put GPS on the trucks. Giving us whatever information is available would make the prospect of an eight-hour delivery window far less tedious, because even if we couldn't tell when delivery is imminent, we could at least tell when it isn't imminent.
Because of this, I had to spend the whole day ready for the truck to come. I couldn't use the phone because I had to keep it free for when they buzzed me. I took the phone into the bathroom when I had my shower and rushed through my shower as quickly as possible so as not to get caught in the shower when they arrived. I wanted to run down to the corner store to pick up more milk, but I couldn't in case I ended up not being home when the truck came.
GPS technology exists, and tracking GPS location via internet exists, so why don't they use this to make a website where we can log on with our tracking number and they'll tell us where the truck we're waiting for is? If it's out in Scarborough, I probably have time to have a shower or run to the store. If it's 2 blocks away, I might want to wait.
Apart from privacy issues, I do see how this might cause some customer relations problems. People might be sitting there watching their truck get closer and closer and then make an angry phone call to customer service if it make a turn that takes it in a direction away from them, even if it's following its route normally. So I also have some alternatives in mind:
- Tell customers the minimum estimated time for the truck to reach them. For example, if the truck would reach you in 10 minutes if it dropped everything and drove straight to you, the website would tell you that. This would be phrased in a way to make it clear that it may be way more than 10 minutes, and it would come with a big loud disclaimer to that effect.
- If the truck has a regular route, tell customers how far into the route they are and how far into the route the truck is. For example, "You are 75% of the way through the truck's normal route. The truck is currently 20% of the way through its route."
- Show customers the truck's normal route on the map. So if it goes all the way down the south side of the street and then comes back up the north side of the street later, the map would show that. Might reduce angry calls from customers who just saw the truck on the other side of the street and then it drove away.
- Give a time estimate, based on the scheduled route and the truck's current location, and include a loud disclaimer to the effect that this is about as reliable as the estimated download time on your computer.
In any case, some information either already exists or would exist if they'd put GPS on the trucks. Giving us whatever information is available would make the prospect of an eight-hour delivery window far less tedious, because even if we couldn't tell when delivery is imminent, we could at least tell when it isn't imminent.
Thursday, February 21, 2013
Things the Library Should Invent: subscribe to author or series
A while back, I read and enjoyed Daughter of Smoke and Bone. I
then googled it and learned that a sequel was in the works, but the
title and release date of the sequel hadn't been announced yet. Then I
forgot about all it.
Fortunately, the sequel (entitled Days of Blood and Starlight - I
haven't read it yet so no spoilers please) turned up on some of the Best
Books of 2012 lists, so I was reminded of its existence and added it to
my holds list. However, if it hadn't been
mentioned in an article I read, I would never have thought to look it up
again and would miss the opportunity to spend more time with the
characters.
The same thing keeps happening with the Dexter series. I forget to
look for new books and discover two have been written since I last
checked, or I check for new books and find that there aren't any. I'd
also be interested in reading whatever Malcolm
Gladwell happens to write next, but he hasn't published in 3 years. I
also think I'm going to keep reading the Inspector Gamache series once I
catch up, but I don't know whether it's on a predictable publication
schedule.
I don't want to subscribe to all the authors' newsletters, because
in many cases I’m not actively involved in the fandom so I don't want
all the promotional material about book signings and paperback release
dates and media appearances. I just want to
be informed when there's a new book to add to my holds list.
I think the library would be able to help me with this.
I'd like to be able to select an author or series out of the
library catalogue, and have it automatically add any new title from that
author or series to my holds list. Users who subscribed first get
placed on the holds list first, and users would have
the choice whether to add the title in active or inactive mode. That
way I don't need to keep googling every author I'm interested in, then
keep searching for upcoming titles until they show up in the library
catalogue, and perhaps the library would have better
data on interest in upcoming titles.
If this is all too complicated, maybe the library could just send
out automated email alerts when a new title from an author or series you
subscribe to has been added to the catalogue, and users could add it to
their holds list themselves.
Tuesday, February 19, 2013
Best (incorrect) logic ever!
This article about when humans figured out that sex makes babies contains my favourite piece of logic ever:
[...] anthropologists studying the same group [of Trobriand Islanders] learned that semen was believed to be necessary for the “coagulation” of menstrual blood, the stoppage of which was thought to eventually form the fetus.I absolutely love how, even though that's incorrect, it's still a completely logical conclusion to draw from available evidence. And, even though their understanding of the processes was wrong, any actions they might take based on this conclusion will still be correct (i.e. if you want to make a baby, have sex).
Sunday, February 17, 2013
Thoughts from The Antidote: anti-procrastination
As I blogged about yesterday, I recently read The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking by Oliver Burkeman. I think his thoughts on anti-procrastination are interesting. As usual, any typos are my own:
The problem with all these motivational tips and tricks is that they aren't really about 'how to get things done' at all. They're about how to feel in the mood for getting things done. [...] The most common response to procrastination is indeed to try to 'get the right emotion': to try to motivate yourself to feel like getting on the with the job.I'm not sure to what extent this is applicable to me (I'd describe my procrastinatory feelings as "I don't WANNA!", not "I don't feel like it" or "I'm not motivated") and I haven't yet figured out how (or whether) to actually apply this in my own life, but I think it's an interesting and refreshing perspective.
The problem is that feeling like acting and actually acting are two different things.A person mired deep in procrastination might claim he is unable to work, but what he really means is that he is unable to make himself feel like working [...] This isn't meant to imply that procrastinators, or the severely depressed, should simply pull their socks up and get over it. Rather, it highlights the way that we tend to confuse acting with feeling like acting, and how most motivational techniques are really designed to change how you feel. They're built, in other words, on a form of attachment - on strengthening your investment in a specific kind of emotion.
Sometimes, that can help. But sometimes you simply can't make yourself feel like acting. And in those situations, motivational advice risks making things worse, by surreptitiously strengthening your belief that you need to feel motivated before you an act. By encouraging an attachment to a particular emotional state, it actually inserts an additional hurdle between you and your goal. The subtext is that if you can't make yourself feel excited and pleased about getting down to work, then you can't get down to work.
Taking a non-attached stance towards procrastination, by contrast, stats from a different question: who says you need to wait until you 'feel like' doing something in order to start doing it? The problem, from this perspective, isn't that you don't feel motivated; it's that you imagine you need to feel motivated. If you can regard your thoughts and emotions about whatever you're procrastinating on as passing weather, you'll realise that your reluctance about working isn't something that needs to be eradicated, or transformed into positivity. You can coexist with it. You can note the procrastinatory feelings, and act anyway.
Saturday, February 16, 2013
Thoughts from The Antidote: feelings as weather
I recently read The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking by Oliver Burkeman. It contained some ideas that made a lot of sense and some ideas that made very little sense, and I'm going to blog about some of each.
The first idea of interest came from the author's description of his experience at a Buddhist mediation retreat. Any typos are, as usual, entirely my own doing:
Everything I've encountered before in my life about meditation left me with the impression that you're supposed to make the clutter in your mind go away. I've also heard (quite often in advice column forums) the idea that our feelings are a choice, and you can choose not to feel a certain way or not to let something bother you.
I've always found this idea quite useless, because no one can ever explain how to do it. (They always say something along the lines of "Just tell yourself not to feel that way any more", as though I can just tell myself something and make myself listen. That approach never works for me because I know that I'm just me telling myself in an attempt to make myself feel a certain way and there's no inherent truth or authority in any of it.)
But I find the weather analogy much more useful. It passes, but that doesn't negate the fact that it exists and its impact is real. To a certain extent we use clothing and other such measure to adapt to weather, but sometimes we just decide it's better to hide out for a while. Hiding out is not unreasonable, as long as you can get done what you need to get done, and adapting your behaviour when you do go outside is not unreasonable and sometimes outright responsible. No one would expect you to disregard the weather or will it away - and you do get to take a snow day when conditions warrant - but when you face weather that everyone faces on a regular basis, or when you face a certain kind of weather with some frequency, you need to figure out what to do to adapt.
As I've gotten older and better at life and more certain of what does and doesn't make me happy, I've also been able to purchase items that not only help me adapt to the weather, but also make me happy. I have an awesome red coat and cashmere sweaters to keep me warm through the winter, a cheerful yellow umbrella and funky Fluevog boots to keep me dry in the rain, breezy skirts and dresses to keep me cool in the summer, and a beautiful, well-built apartment to keep the outdoors out and the indoors in.
The emotional equivalent is basically what I was doing with my 2008 New Year's resolution, where decided to start systematically using worldly comforts to get through dark emotional times rather than push through on willpower alone. I've gotten better and better at it, and now I know to just buy a pre-emptive bag of chips for PMS week, or pop in an Eddie Izzard DVD the moment I get home from working on an emotionally difficult translation.
This is far better for inner peace and happiness than trying to power through it or will it away, plus it actually feels true to me, unlike every other emotion management principle I've encountered. However, I don't see why meditation is remotely necessary to achieve this outlook.
The first idea of interest came from the author's description of his experience at a Buddhist mediation retreat. Any typos are, as usual, entirely my own doing:
Sounds and smells and tastes, after all, are just sounds and smells and tastes, but thoughts, we tend to assume, are something much more important. Because they come from within us, they feel more essential, and expressive of our deepest selves. But is that true, really? When you start meditating, it soon becomes apparent that thoughts - and emotions - bubble up in much the same uncontrollable, unbidden fashion in which noises reach the ears, smells reach the nose, and so on. I could no more choose for thoughts not to occur than I could choose not to feel chilly when I was woken by the ringing of the morning bell at five-thirty each day - or, for that matter, than I could choose not to hear the bell.
Seeing thoughts as similar to the other five senses makes non-attachment seem much more approachable as a goal. In the analogy most commonly used by contemporary Buddhists, mental activity begins to seem more like weather - like clouds sand sunny spells, rainstorms and blizzards, arising and passing away. The mind, in this analogy, is the sky, and the sky doesn't cling to specific weather conditions, nor try to get rid of the 'bad' ones. The sky just is. In this the Buddhists go further than the Stoics, who can sometimes seem rather attached to certain mind-states, especially that of tranquility. The perfect Stoic adapts his or her thinking so as to remain undisturbed by undesirable circumstances; the perfect Buddhist sees thinking itself as just another set of circumstances, to be non-judgmentally observed.
Everything I've encountered before in my life about meditation left me with the impression that you're supposed to make the clutter in your mind go away. I've also heard (quite often in advice column forums) the idea that our feelings are a choice, and you can choose not to feel a certain way or not to let something bother you.
I've always found this idea quite useless, because no one can ever explain how to do it. (They always say something along the lines of "Just tell yourself not to feel that way any more", as though I can just tell myself something and make myself listen. That approach never works for me because I know that I'm just me telling myself in an attempt to make myself feel a certain way and there's no inherent truth or authority in any of it.)
But I find the weather analogy much more useful. It passes, but that doesn't negate the fact that it exists and its impact is real. To a certain extent we use clothing and other such measure to adapt to weather, but sometimes we just decide it's better to hide out for a while. Hiding out is not unreasonable, as long as you can get done what you need to get done, and adapting your behaviour when you do go outside is not unreasonable and sometimes outright responsible. No one would expect you to disregard the weather or will it away - and you do get to take a snow day when conditions warrant - but when you face weather that everyone faces on a regular basis, or when you face a certain kind of weather with some frequency, you need to figure out what to do to adapt.
As I've gotten older and better at life and more certain of what does and doesn't make me happy, I've also been able to purchase items that not only help me adapt to the weather, but also make me happy. I have an awesome red coat and cashmere sweaters to keep me warm through the winter, a cheerful yellow umbrella and funky Fluevog boots to keep me dry in the rain, breezy skirts and dresses to keep me cool in the summer, and a beautiful, well-built apartment to keep the outdoors out and the indoors in.
The emotional equivalent is basically what I was doing with my 2008 New Year's resolution, where decided to start systematically using worldly comforts to get through dark emotional times rather than push through on willpower alone. I've gotten better and better at it, and now I know to just buy a pre-emptive bag of chips for PMS week, or pop in an Eddie Izzard DVD the moment I get home from working on an emotionally difficult translation.
This is far better for inner peace and happiness than trying to power through it or will it away, plus it actually feels true to me, unlike every other emotion management principle I've encountered. However, I don't see why meditation is remotely necessary to achieve this outlook.
Friday, February 15, 2013
I am pleased to report that my brain still works!
One time when my grandmother was in the hospital, before she was diagnosed with Alzheimer's but after she's started showing what we recognize in hindsight to be the symptoms, I had the idea of getting her the gift of a demographically-appropriate sitcom series on DVD, so she'd have something funny at her fingertips at all times. I mentioned this idea to another family member with the idea of brainstorming which sitcom series she'd like best, and was told that this might not be a good idea for a gift because she has trouble working her DVD player. It seems she lost the ability to learn how to use new technology. She'd follow step-by-step instructions if someone wrote them out for her, but she lost the ability to look at the menu items or the manual and read and think and figure stuff out.
This led me to develop the fear that I will one day lose the ability to learn.
A couple of years after this, My Favourite Little Person was born. Watching her play with toys and learn how to operate her body and figure out how the world works, I came to the realization that she is learning at rate several orders of magnitude greater than I am. Her parents have told me stories of how she'd have a play date with another baby and watch the other baby play with toys in a new and different way, then have her nap, wake up especially eager to return to her toys, and start emulating what the other baby was doing. Her little brain literally assimilated the information during her nap! Once, when she was 8 months old, I watched her banging two rings from her ring stack toy together, as though she was trying and failing to fit one ring through the other. Watching this, I realized that she couldn't tell by eyeballing it that the one ring wouldn't fit inside the other - but she was literally in the process of learning this right before my very eyes! And, I noticed, she was only trying to fit the smaller ring through the bigger one, never vice versa. So, even though she couldn't tell by sight that the one ring wouldn't fit inside the other, she had already learned that smaller things fit inside bigger things and never vice versa!
This led me to realize I've already lost some of my ability to learn, because it has been a very long time since I've observed the world around me and figured out how things work and developed new skills like MFLP does every day.
I recently bought a new desk chair (from Staples - excellent customer service so far but I wasn't happy with the product. I'll blog about this more once the return process is completed). It came disassembled, so I had to assemble it. To add to the challenge, the instructions weren't as good as they should be - they showed what connects to what where, but there was no how. Then, after sitting in the chair for a couple hours, I came to the realization that it was unergonomic for me (it actually made my back hurt), so I had to figure out how to disassemble it and get it back into the box, for which there were no instructions.
So to work out this chair, I had to inspect it, see what kinds of shapes and sizes there were and how they might fit into each other, try various things, see that they didn't work, and analyze why. I had to look at the parts that were already together and analyze why they were there (e.g. "There's something blocking this piece, there's a screw here, could the screw be blocking that piece?"), look at my existing desk chair and extrapolate, and come up with ways to use my body and other objects in my apartment to lift and move heavy pieces into the position I wanted them, and then, when disassembling, to force them to come apart. I had to take breaks and return to it, I'd sometimes go to bed and wake up the next morning with inspiration I needed to master the next step.
In short, I learned how to assemble and disassemble this chair the same way MFLP learns things.
So I can still learn!
I knew I can still learn things academically, by reading about them or taking classes. I knew I could still learn how to use computer software the usual way. But can't remember the last time I learned how something tangible works by observing its properties, experimenting with it, and figuring it out, the way MFLP does. I'm quite relieved to learn that I can still do it.
This led me to develop the fear that I will one day lose the ability to learn.
A couple of years after this, My Favourite Little Person was born. Watching her play with toys and learn how to operate her body and figure out how the world works, I came to the realization that she is learning at rate several orders of magnitude greater than I am. Her parents have told me stories of how she'd have a play date with another baby and watch the other baby play with toys in a new and different way, then have her nap, wake up especially eager to return to her toys, and start emulating what the other baby was doing. Her little brain literally assimilated the information during her nap! Once, when she was 8 months old, I watched her banging two rings from her ring stack toy together, as though she was trying and failing to fit one ring through the other. Watching this, I realized that she couldn't tell by eyeballing it that the one ring wouldn't fit inside the other - but she was literally in the process of learning this right before my very eyes! And, I noticed, she was only trying to fit the smaller ring through the bigger one, never vice versa. So, even though she couldn't tell by sight that the one ring wouldn't fit inside the other, she had already learned that smaller things fit inside bigger things and never vice versa!
This led me to realize I've already lost some of my ability to learn, because it has been a very long time since I've observed the world around me and figured out how things work and developed new skills like MFLP does every day.
I recently bought a new desk chair (from Staples - excellent customer service so far but I wasn't happy with the product. I'll blog about this more once the return process is completed). It came disassembled, so I had to assemble it. To add to the challenge, the instructions weren't as good as they should be - they showed what connects to what where, but there was no how. Then, after sitting in the chair for a couple hours, I came to the realization that it was unergonomic for me (it actually made my back hurt), so I had to figure out how to disassemble it and get it back into the box, for which there were no instructions.
So to work out this chair, I had to inspect it, see what kinds of shapes and sizes there were and how they might fit into each other, try various things, see that they didn't work, and analyze why. I had to look at the parts that were already together and analyze why they were there (e.g. "There's something blocking this piece, there's a screw here, could the screw be blocking that piece?"), look at my existing desk chair and extrapolate, and come up with ways to use my body and other objects in my apartment to lift and move heavy pieces into the position I wanted them, and then, when disassembling, to force them to come apart. I had to take breaks and return to it, I'd sometimes go to bed and wake up the next morning with inspiration I needed to master the next step.
In short, I learned how to assemble and disassemble this chair the same way MFLP learns things.
So I can still learn!
I knew I can still learn things academically, by reading about them or taking classes. I knew I could still learn how to use computer software the usual way. But can't remember the last time I learned how something tangible works by observing its properties, experimenting with it, and figuring it out, the way MFLP does. I'm quite relieved to learn that I can still do it.
Thursday, February 07, 2013
Things They Should Study: are facial expressions informative on people who normally cover their face?
Recently there was a Supreme Court decision about whether people should be forced to expose their faces when testifying in court. This case originated with a rape victim who wore a niqab and was called upon to testify against her attacker.
One of the ostensible reasons given for wanting witnesses to uncover their faces is that facial expression are thought to be informative in assessing the witnesses' credibility.
But is this also the case with people who are accustomed to covering their faces? If a certain method of communication is never available to you, would you be able to use it - and use it in the way the audience is expecting - if it were suddenly made available? If you only ever used it in private and intimate settings and were suddenly called upon to use it in public, in front of an audience, and under scrutiny, how would your performance be read by people who use it every day?
I know someone who immigrated to Canada as a toddler. He learned English quickly and easily like one does at that age, but he also retains the language of the old country, which he uses to talk to his parents and such. However, because he left the old country at such a young age, he still speaks the other language like a toddler. He has a childish accent, and he's less articulate and nuanced than you'd expect of a successful adult. If he were called upon to testify in court in the language of the old country, his testimony would not reflect his actual credibility, because he's not accustomed to using that method of communication in the way the jury would expect. Similarly, I find myself wondering if the facial expressions of someone who normally covers their face might also fail to reflect their actual credibility because they aren't accustomed to using that method of communication in the way the jury would expect.
I myself don't have a very expressive face, and my natural inclination is to keep it neutral. When I was a kid, people would always say things to me like "You look disgusted" or "Don't glower at Mrs. Neighbour like that" when I wasn't intentionally doing anything with my face, or feeling any of those emotions being attributed to me. I later learned how to modulate my face in the way that's expected - a skill I was still mastering well into adulthood, because quite a lot of it I learned from Eddie Izzard - but it still isn't natural behaviour and doesn't come to me easily. It's like telephone voice or a firm handshake - a performance I can put on, but not a natural reflection of my thoughts and feelings. However, I'm not sure whether I'd be able to maintain the performance in so stressful a situation as testifying against my rapist, and if I can't maintain the performance my expressions may well be misinterpreted, like they were when I was a child, and be detrimental to my credibility through no fault of my own.
So if it could go so badly wrong for someone like me who has always been in a face-exposing culture, imagine how badly it can go to someone who isn't accustomed to their facial expressions being scrutinized and is suddenly having their credibility assessed based on something that they have never before had interpreted as informative!
I hope someone can actually do research and get scientific data on this, because the only thing I can imagine more terrifying than being forced to expose more of your body than you're comfortable with when testifying against your rapist is then having him set free and your credibility called into question because the jury is assuming you're more fluent than you are in a form of communication that you never use.
One of the ostensible reasons given for wanting witnesses to uncover their faces is that facial expression are thought to be informative in assessing the witnesses' credibility.
But is this also the case with people who are accustomed to covering their faces? If a certain method of communication is never available to you, would you be able to use it - and use it in the way the audience is expecting - if it were suddenly made available? If you only ever used it in private and intimate settings and were suddenly called upon to use it in public, in front of an audience, and under scrutiny, how would your performance be read by people who use it every day?
I know someone who immigrated to Canada as a toddler. He learned English quickly and easily like one does at that age, but he also retains the language of the old country, which he uses to talk to his parents and such. However, because he left the old country at such a young age, he still speaks the other language like a toddler. He has a childish accent, and he's less articulate and nuanced than you'd expect of a successful adult. If he were called upon to testify in court in the language of the old country, his testimony would not reflect his actual credibility, because he's not accustomed to using that method of communication in the way the jury would expect. Similarly, I find myself wondering if the facial expressions of someone who normally covers their face might also fail to reflect their actual credibility because they aren't accustomed to using that method of communication in the way the jury would expect.
I myself don't have a very expressive face, and my natural inclination is to keep it neutral. When I was a kid, people would always say things to me like "You look disgusted" or "Don't glower at Mrs. Neighbour like that" when I wasn't intentionally doing anything with my face, or feeling any of those emotions being attributed to me. I later learned how to modulate my face in the way that's expected - a skill I was still mastering well into adulthood, because quite a lot of it I learned from Eddie Izzard - but it still isn't natural behaviour and doesn't come to me easily. It's like telephone voice or a firm handshake - a performance I can put on, but not a natural reflection of my thoughts and feelings. However, I'm not sure whether I'd be able to maintain the performance in so stressful a situation as testifying against my rapist, and if I can't maintain the performance my expressions may well be misinterpreted, like they were when I was a child, and be detrimental to my credibility through no fault of my own.
So if it could go so badly wrong for someone like me who has always been in a face-exposing culture, imagine how badly it can go to someone who isn't accustomed to their facial expressions being scrutinized and is suddenly having their credibility assessed based on something that they have never before had interpreted as informative!
I hope someone can actually do research and get scientific data on this, because the only thing I can imagine more terrifying than being forced to expose more of your body than you're comfortable with when testifying against your rapist is then having him set free and your credibility called into question because the jury is assuming you're more fluent than you are in a form of communication that you never use.
Monday, February 04, 2013
Things They Should Invent (or not): reverse gift registry
The way a gift registry normally works is you make a list of all the things you want and people buy them for you.
The problem with that is you still have to shop. For me, shopping is the worst part. I hate having to go out and look at stuff and figure out which thing best meets my needs. The fact that other people are paying for it is very nearly negligible compared with the tedium of having to do the actual shopping.
If I had a gift registry, I'd want the opposite. I'd want to make a list of everything I need or want - simply describing it in words without having to provide any information on style or model or where to buy it - and as their present to me people would go out and shop for it. They wouldn't even have to buy it, I'd be happy to use my own money. It's the shopping that's the hard work.
Problem 1: There's nothing to stop people from just picking out any old thing without regard whether it meets my needs. For example, I want an desk chair that is ergonomically perfect for my body. When I mention this to people, they tell me the name of a store that sells desk chairs and suggest I go there and sit in some chairs. But that doesn't help me at all. I already know the way to get a desk chair is to go to stores and sit on chairs, and for me that's the difficult and annoying part. They're basically restating the problem as though it's a solution. And there's nothing to stop people from doing that with the reverse registry - not actually doing proper shopping, just naming a product that exists and declaring the job done.
Problem 2: I'm never going to be on the receiving end of a gift registry, so with this invention I'm just making my job harder.
The problem with that is you still have to shop. For me, shopping is the worst part. I hate having to go out and look at stuff and figure out which thing best meets my needs. The fact that other people are paying for it is very nearly negligible compared with the tedium of having to do the actual shopping.
If I had a gift registry, I'd want the opposite. I'd want to make a list of everything I need or want - simply describing it in words without having to provide any information on style or model or where to buy it - and as their present to me people would go out and shop for it. They wouldn't even have to buy it, I'd be happy to use my own money. It's the shopping that's the hard work.
Problem 1: There's nothing to stop people from just picking out any old thing without regard whether it meets my needs. For example, I want an desk chair that is ergonomically perfect for my body. When I mention this to people, they tell me the name of a store that sells desk chairs and suggest I go there and sit in some chairs. But that doesn't help me at all. I already know the way to get a desk chair is to go to stores and sit on chairs, and for me that's the difficult and annoying part. They're basically restating the problem as though it's a solution. And there's nothing to stop people from doing that with the reverse registry - not actually doing proper shopping, just naming a product that exists and declaring the job done.
Problem 2: I'm never going to be on the receiving end of a gift registry, so with this invention I'm just making my job harder.
Saturday, February 02, 2013
Things They Should Invent: bundle buggies and wheeled luggage that follow directly behind you
Picture a person walking down the street pulling a bundle buggy or a wheeled suitcase behind them.
The buggy/suitcase isn't directly behind them, it's off to the side, on the side of the hand they're using to pull it. (Look at the people pictured here.)
This is inconvenient in crowded pedestrian areas, because your buggy takes at least half a "lane", if not a whole lane, so it's harder for people to pass you. It's also harder for you to pass others, because you take up more than a lane of space so you need more passing room. I've also noticed that, in a crowded grocery store with narrow aisles (**cough cough METRO cough**), something about the way it corners causes bottlenecks when the user is turning in or out of an aisle.
Solution: design buggies and luggage so that they follow directly behind the user's when the user is walking. Off the top of my head, the best idea I have is that the handle should be shaped like a J, L or sideways Z (but with right angles rather than acute angles). So the part of the handle you grip is at the side of the suitcase rather than in the centre (thus enabling the suitcase to follow directly behind you), but there's some kind of framework/architecture to cause the force to be exerted from the centre of the suitcase or from the whole front of the suitcase evenly, so that it will roll straight.
This would make users of wheeled luggage and bundle buggies less annoying to their fellow pedestrians and make life easier for everyone.
The buggy/suitcase isn't directly behind them, it's off to the side, on the side of the hand they're using to pull it. (Look at the people pictured here.)
This is inconvenient in crowded pedestrian areas, because your buggy takes at least half a "lane", if not a whole lane, so it's harder for people to pass you. It's also harder for you to pass others, because you take up more than a lane of space so you need more passing room. I've also noticed that, in a crowded grocery store with narrow aisles (**cough cough METRO cough**), something about the way it corners causes bottlenecks when the user is turning in or out of an aisle.
Solution: design buggies and luggage so that they follow directly behind the user's when the user is walking. Off the top of my head, the best idea I have is that the handle should be shaped like a J, L or sideways Z (but with right angles rather than acute angles). So the part of the handle you grip is at the side of the suitcase rather than in the centre (thus enabling the suitcase to follow directly behind you), but there's some kind of framework/architecture to cause the force to be exerted from the centre of the suitcase or from the whole front of the suitcase evenly, so that it will roll straight.
This would make users of wheeled luggage and bundle buggies less annoying to their fellow pedestrians and make life easier for everyone.
Friday, February 01, 2013
Thoughts from advice columns: the lady who walks her girlfriend on a leash
We live in a family-oriented neighbourhood in the heart of our city. Dozens of kids ride bikes, play soccer and so on while adults chat and watch. Last summer, one of my neighbours (with three sons) told me he saw a woman walking her girlfriend on a leash. I told him he must have been fantasizing. Sure enough, a woman with long dreads and multiple piercings (I’d seen her before; she rents a basement apartment on the street) came around the corner walking her girlfriend on a leash. We’ve seen it many times since then, in the middle of the day. My four-year old daughter asked me why the lady was wearing a leash. I told her that she was pretending to be a dog and that the other lady was playing the owner. My daughter loves inventing her own play scenarios and easily accepted my explanation. This has been going on since last summer, so it’s obviously a happy, long-term relationship. But I don’t love having to explain S&M role-play to my four-year old and would appreciate if the dog-walking happened after, say 9 p.m. What would you do?
I think LW's response to her daughter is perfect and nothing more needs to be said.
However, I was surprised when David Eddie said, in his reply:
I mean, I think you’ve handled your daughter’s questions in a very elegant and clever fashion, so far. But as time goes by, she may come to doubt what you’ve told her – or some older kid will tip her off. And she may resent you for that [...]
I can't imagine the daughter resenting the mother for her answer, because her answer is perfectly true. Yes, it's simplified and unnuanced, that doesn't make it wrong. When I was a kid, before I learned where babies come from, my mother would mention in passing that the male of the species has to fertilize the female of the species to produce young. (I'm pretty sure this first came up in the context of chickens and eggs, but for as long as I can remember I've known it to apply to all animals.) When I got a bit older and my mother read Where Did I Come From? to me, I didn't feel resentful or betrayed to learn that the fertilization is done with the penis. I just thought "Oh, so that's how it's done. Kinda gross." and moved on.
Tuesday, January 29, 2013
Flawed analogies for street harassment
There are some people in the world who think catcalling and street harassment aren't actual problems. For the purpose of brevity, I'll call them harassment minimizers (HMs).
Sometimes, when the HMs are male and straight, they'll make some comment like "I don't know what you're complaining about, I'd be thrilled if whenever I walked down the street, groups of women would shout how hot I am and how much they want to have sex with me."
However, this is a flawed analogy.
What do we know about the harassers? We know two things:
1. They're harassing people.
2. They're male (because they've only ever been male in my experience, and this conversation only ever happens with male HMs talking about male harassers).
We know nothing else about them because all the harassment is in the way of us knowing about their hopes and dreams and aspirations and deepest innermost souls.
If I were to evaluate the harassers as viable sexual candidates, I'd see one benign factor and one dealbreaker. The fact that they're male is benign; the fact that they're harassers is a dealbreaker.
If a straight male HM were to evaluate the harassers as viable sexual candidates, he'd see one benign factor and one dealbreaker. The fact that they're harassers is benign (since, being a harassment minimizer, he doesn't see harassment as a problem); the fact that they're male is a dealbreaker (since the HM is a straight male).
So the HM's analogy where he'd be happy to have women shouting at him in the street is flawed, because he's taking the one factor that's a dealbreaker for him and changing it to something that isn't a dealbreaker for him.
For the analogy to be sound, he needs to retain one dealbreaker factor and one benign factor. Therefore, the more apt analogy would be to keep the characters and behaviours the same. So a straight male HM trying to analogize himself into the shoes of someone being harassed by male harassers should also envision himself being harassed by male harassers.
To change the gender to female would be like if I said "I don't know why it bothers you to have strange men on the street loudly speculating on your sexual proclivities and rudely propositioning you, I'd be thrilled to have kind, gentle, charming, gallant men expressing their esteem for me in ways that I feel are wholly appropriate and not at all uncomfortable."
Sometimes, when the HMs are male and straight, they'll make some comment like "I don't know what you're complaining about, I'd be thrilled if whenever I walked down the street, groups of women would shout how hot I am and how much they want to have sex with me."
However, this is a flawed analogy.
What do we know about the harassers? We know two things:
1. They're harassing people.
2. They're male (because they've only ever been male in my experience, and this conversation only ever happens with male HMs talking about male harassers).
We know nothing else about them because all the harassment is in the way of us knowing about their hopes and dreams and aspirations and deepest innermost souls.
If I were to evaluate the harassers as viable sexual candidates, I'd see one benign factor and one dealbreaker. The fact that they're male is benign; the fact that they're harassers is a dealbreaker.
If a straight male HM were to evaluate the harassers as viable sexual candidates, he'd see one benign factor and one dealbreaker. The fact that they're harassers is benign (since, being a harassment minimizer, he doesn't see harassment as a problem); the fact that they're male is a dealbreaker (since the HM is a straight male).
So the HM's analogy where he'd be happy to have women shouting at him in the street is flawed, because he's taking the one factor that's a dealbreaker for him and changing it to something that isn't a dealbreaker for him.
For the analogy to be sound, he needs to retain one dealbreaker factor and one benign factor. Therefore, the more apt analogy would be to keep the characters and behaviours the same. So a straight male HM trying to analogize himself into the shoes of someone being harassed by male harassers should also envision himself being harassed by male harassers.
To change the gender to female would be like if I said "I don't know why it bothers you to have strange men on the street loudly speculating on your sexual proclivities and rudely propositioning you, I'd be thrilled to have kind, gentle, charming, gallant men expressing their esteem for me in ways that I feel are wholly appropriate and not at all uncomfortable."
Thursday, January 24, 2013
Things the Library Should Invent
1. Automatically set your holds list to "inactive" after you have a certain number of books in transit
I add every single book that I think will be of passing interest to my library holds list, so I usually have somewhere between 40 and 50 books on the list. However, I don't want them all to come in at once, because I won't have time to read them all. So, once I have enough books checked out, I set all the remaining books on the list to "inactive". This means I keep my place in the hold queue for each book, but the library won't send it to me until I set it to "active" again. (If I should reach the front of any book's queue, the library will send it to the next person in the queue until I reactivate it.)
When I start running low on reading material, I reactivate my list. However, I still don't want all the books on the list to be waiting on the hold shelf for me, I only want a few at a time. This means that when my list is back in active mode, I have to monitor it throughout the day. Recently I reactivated my holds list with the intention of getting about 5 more items. However, I neglected to check it for about three hours, and when I finally did check it there were 10 items in transit for me, which is entirely too many since we can only keep them for 3 weeks and I do have a full-time job.
I would love for the library to provide the option of having your holds list automatically deactivate once you have a certain number of items in transit and on the hold shelf. This wouldn't be mandatory, of course, but I'd love to be able to tell the computer "Send me 5 more books - whatever comes in first - and then don't send me anything more until further notice."
2. List series name and number at the beginning of the book title field
When I read a series, I add the whole thing to my holds list at once and set them all to inactive. Then, when I'm reactivating my holds queue, I only activate the next book in each series. This way I can read the books in order without having to wait for a long line for each.
The problem is that the title field of the library catalogue listings doesn't include the series number, or sometimes even the series name. So when I'm reactivating, I need to remember which series are in my list, google up the reading order for each, and scroll through my list of book titles to find the next book in each series.
I'd like the library catalogue to list the series name and number at the beginning of each title, so it's visually obvious which titles belong to which series and what order they go in. You sort by title, and all the series are laid out for you.
For example, I'm currently reading the Inspector Gamache series. The next book in line is listed in the library catalogue as "The cruellest month". This isn't informative - I don't know where it is in the series, and, when I'm scrolling through my whole holds list, I don't even know that it's part of the Inspector Gamache series as opposed to being a standalone novel. If, instead, they listed it in the title field as "Inspector Gamache #3: The cruellest month", it would be readily apparent what this book and whether or not I want to reactivate it at any given time.
I wonder if it might also be possible to combine these two ideas and tell the computer "Activate the next book in each series, plus all non-series books. Send me the first five that come in, and then deactivate everything." They'd need to put additional fields in their database for "Is this book part of a series?" "Series name" and "Series number", but that does seem like the sort of thing a database can handle.
I add every single book that I think will be of passing interest to my library holds list, so I usually have somewhere between 40 and 50 books on the list. However, I don't want them all to come in at once, because I won't have time to read them all. So, once I have enough books checked out, I set all the remaining books on the list to "inactive". This means I keep my place in the hold queue for each book, but the library won't send it to me until I set it to "active" again. (If I should reach the front of any book's queue, the library will send it to the next person in the queue until I reactivate it.)
When I start running low on reading material, I reactivate my list. However, I still don't want all the books on the list to be waiting on the hold shelf for me, I only want a few at a time. This means that when my list is back in active mode, I have to monitor it throughout the day. Recently I reactivated my holds list with the intention of getting about 5 more items. However, I neglected to check it for about three hours, and when I finally did check it there were 10 items in transit for me, which is entirely too many since we can only keep them for 3 weeks and I do have a full-time job.
I would love for the library to provide the option of having your holds list automatically deactivate once you have a certain number of items in transit and on the hold shelf. This wouldn't be mandatory, of course, but I'd love to be able to tell the computer "Send me 5 more books - whatever comes in first - and then don't send me anything more until further notice."
2. List series name and number at the beginning of the book title field
When I read a series, I add the whole thing to my holds list at once and set them all to inactive. Then, when I'm reactivating my holds queue, I only activate the next book in each series. This way I can read the books in order without having to wait for a long line for each.
The problem is that the title field of the library catalogue listings doesn't include the series number, or sometimes even the series name. So when I'm reactivating, I need to remember which series are in my list, google up the reading order for each, and scroll through my list of book titles to find the next book in each series.
I'd like the library catalogue to list the series name and number at the beginning of each title, so it's visually obvious which titles belong to which series and what order they go in. You sort by title, and all the series are laid out for you.
For example, I'm currently reading the Inspector Gamache series. The next book in line is listed in the library catalogue as "The cruellest month". This isn't informative - I don't know where it is in the series, and, when I'm scrolling through my whole holds list, I don't even know that it's part of the Inspector Gamache series as opposed to being a standalone novel. If, instead, they listed it in the title field as "Inspector Gamache #3: The cruellest month", it would be readily apparent what this book and whether or not I want to reactivate it at any given time.
I wonder if it might also be possible to combine these two ideas and tell the computer "Activate the next book in each series, plus all non-series books. Send me the first five that come in, and then deactivate everything." They'd need to put additional fields in their database for "Is this book part of a series?" "Series name" and "Series number", but that does seem like the sort of thing a database can handle.
Tuesday, January 22, 2013
Things They Should Invent: baby improv
My Favourite Little Person, who turned 1 in November, loves to talk. She holds forth at length about the issues of the day, uttering surprisingly long and complex sequences of phonemes, complete with modulation, intonation, and gesticulation, that have everything in common with fluent human speech except for the fact that I don't understand a word of it. However, it is great fun to have a conversation with her anyway, asking her questions, seeing how she responds, ascribing intention and motivation to her vocalizations.
It occurs to me that this would be a good improv game.
You put a babbly baby on stage with the improv players, and cast the baby in a key role in the scene. For example, if the scene is set on a ship, the baby is the captain. Then the other players have to play out the scene in response to whatever the baby happens to say or do.
It would have enormous entertainment value, although I suspect most parents aren't willing to volunteer their babies as props in improv shows.
It occurs to me that this would be a good improv game.
You put a babbly baby on stage with the improv players, and cast the baby in a key role in the scene. For example, if the scene is set on a ship, the baby is the captain. Then the other players have to play out the scene in response to whatever the baby happens to say or do.
It would have enormous entertainment value, although I suspect most parents aren't willing to volunteer their babies as props in improv shows.
Monday, January 21, 2013
Things eBay Should Invent: sort by price+shipping per unit
Normally, I sort eBay search results by price+shipping, lowest to highest. However, sometimes there are some sellers who are selling only one of the item, whereas others are selling it in a pack of two or four. The pack of four might be a better price per item, but it isn't going to show up on the first page of my search results.
I'd like eBay to provide the option of sorting search results by price+shipping per unit. So if widgets cost $2 each (including shipping), but a lot of four widgets costs $7, the $7 lot of four will appear above the $2 single widgets.
I'd like eBay to provide the option of sorting search results by price+shipping per unit. So if widgets cost $2 each (including shipping), but a lot of four widgets costs $7, the $7 lot of four will appear above the $2 single widgets.
Sunday, January 20, 2013
Turns out the North is actually empty
A while back, I asked "Is the North actually empty?" I'd seen maps that suggest large swaths of completely uninhabited land, and I was wondering whether they're genuinely empty or just sparsely populated.
Today I stumbled upon this cool map of North America showing a dot for every person reported in the Canada and US censuses. Based on this map, it appears that large swaths of the North are actually completely devoid of human habitation. You can zoom in and get a full page of white, with no dots whatsoever.
That's awesome, in both senses of the word.
Today I stumbled upon this cool map of North America showing a dot for every person reported in the Canada and US censuses. Based on this map, it appears that large swaths of the North are actually completely devoid of human habitation. You can zoom in and get a full page of white, with no dots whatsoever.
That's awesome, in both senses of the word.
Friday, January 18, 2013
Things They Should Study: proportion of childfree vs. non-childfree people who change their minds
I've blogged before about how I used to want to have children, but then grew up to realize that I am in fact childfree.
Conventional wisdom is that people who are childfree may well change their minds (which is why it's so hard for those of us who have never had kids to get sterilized), but I find myself wondering if it might be the opposite.
Your worldview is first formed by your surroundings when you're a kid. You first think that your surroundings and experiences are baseline human reality, and then gradually your worldview broadens as you grow up and learn more.
And, when you're a kid, the primary adults in your life are, necessarily, adults who are raising children. So your very first impression of what you consider to be baseline human reality is that adults raise kids.
To arrive at the idea that you never want to have or raise kids, you have to put thought into the matter and question the basic assumptions you grew up with and conceptualize a reality that you may never have actually witnessed. Critical thought goes into it - it's not a decision made mindlessly.
Because of this, I wonder how many people who are childfree actually change their minds compared with those who previously wanted children and then changed their minds. This would be interesting to research.
Conventional wisdom is that people who are childfree may well change their minds (which is why it's so hard for those of us who have never had kids to get sterilized), but I find myself wondering if it might be the opposite.
Your worldview is first formed by your surroundings when you're a kid. You first think that your surroundings and experiences are baseline human reality, and then gradually your worldview broadens as you grow up and learn more.
And, when you're a kid, the primary adults in your life are, necessarily, adults who are raising children. So your very first impression of what you consider to be baseline human reality is that adults raise kids.
To arrive at the idea that you never want to have or raise kids, you have to put thought into the matter and question the basic assumptions you grew up with and conceptualize a reality that you may never have actually witnessed. Critical thought goes into it - it's not a decision made mindlessly.
Because of this, I wonder how many people who are childfree actually change their minds compared with those who previously wanted children and then changed their minds. This would be interesting to research.
When the fans ruin a fandom
I've been watching and enjoying Big Bang Theory for several years (thank you Poodle!). After I watch a new episode of any TV show, I like to have a look at TV review sites to see what they have to say.
Apparently, a while back, the TV show Community was scheduled in the same timeslot as Big Bang Theory. When this happened, fans of Community started infesting the comment threads of Community reviews, dissing everyone for watching Big Bang Theory instead of Community.
I found this put me way off the idea of watching Community, especially since it was in the same timeslot as Big Bang Theory. Why would I forgo something that I know I enjoy to watch something whose most remarkable feature that I've seen is that its fans go into spaces dedicated to discussing other shows and diss people for discussing the shows to which the spaces are dedicated?
However, the Comedy Network recently started airing Community in syndication, so I decided to watch it and see what all the fuss is about. I found I enjoyed it, and I'm now caught up on the whole show.
But, even though I enjoy the show, I have no interest in participating in the fandom because of the fans who kept intruding upon Big Bang Theory space. Because my experience with the fandom is people who come barging in on something I'm enjoying and dissing me for enjoying it and telling me to do something different instead, I don't want to spend time with those people or participate in their activities.
Not only that, but the annoyance of the Community fans who ran around intruding upon and dissing Big Bang Theory fans has triggered my "Don't let them win" reaction. Even though I enjoy Community, I now wouldn't even consider signing a petition to save the show, because I don't want this assholic fan behaviour to get results. And, if Community once again airs opposite Big Bang Theory, I will watch Big Bang Theory in my time zone and Community time-shifted, just to spite them.
Apparently, a while back, the TV show Community was scheduled in the same timeslot as Big Bang Theory. When this happened, fans of Community started infesting the comment threads of Community reviews, dissing everyone for watching Big Bang Theory instead of Community.
I found this put me way off the idea of watching Community, especially since it was in the same timeslot as Big Bang Theory. Why would I forgo something that I know I enjoy to watch something whose most remarkable feature that I've seen is that its fans go into spaces dedicated to discussing other shows and diss people for discussing the shows to which the spaces are dedicated?
However, the Comedy Network recently started airing Community in syndication, so I decided to watch it and see what all the fuss is about. I found I enjoyed it, and I'm now caught up on the whole show.
But, even though I enjoy the show, I have no interest in participating in the fandom because of the fans who kept intruding upon Big Bang Theory space. Because my experience with the fandom is people who come barging in on something I'm enjoying and dissing me for enjoying it and telling me to do something different instead, I don't want to spend time with those people or participate in their activities.
Not only that, but the annoyance of the Community fans who ran around intruding upon and dissing Big Bang Theory fans has triggered my "Don't let them win" reaction. Even though I enjoy Community, I now wouldn't even consider signing a petition to save the show, because I don't want this assholic fan behaviour to get results. And, if Community once again airs opposite Big Bang Theory, I will watch Big Bang Theory in my time zone and Community time-shifted, just to spite them.
Things Google Should Invent: show the number of results with verbatim search
Way back in university, one of my translation profs mentioned a concept called a "Google vote". If you're trying to figure out which of several constructions is more commonly used, a quick and dirty method is to do a Google search for each and see which one has the most hits. It isn't always 100% reliable (Sometimes there are regionalisms, and sometimes a sequence of words doesn't mean what you intend it to mean. For example, when I was researching this post and googling for "prom baby", most of the hits were "Prom, baby!")
Since then, Google has become more flexible in response to search terms, using conjugations and declensions and synonyms in an attempt to help lead users to what they're looking for. All of which is useful if you're searching for information, but less useful if you're using Google as a linguistic corpus.
Fortunately, Google has also introduced the Verbatim search function. Do your search normally, then, on the results page, click on "Search Tools". Then, under "All results", select "Verbatim". This makes Google search for exactly what you typed, without trying to help you.
For example, the inspiration of this post is that I was trying to figure out if the present indicative of the verb that gives us "dissing" and "dissed" is "dis" or "diss". Normally, Google results would show them interchangeably on the assumption that they're both intended to mean the same thing. So, to do a Google vote, I used the Verbatim functions so I would only get results for "dis" or "diss", not for both.
The problem is that Google doesn't show the number of results on the Verbatim search results page like it does on other search pages, which renders my Google vote useless. This is particularly irritating because the vast majority of the times I use the Verbatim function, the hit count is part of the information I'm seeking.
Dear Google: please put the hit count on all results pages, just in case someone needs it. You know the number of hits, so why not just serve it up?
Since then, Google has become more flexible in response to search terms, using conjugations and declensions and synonyms in an attempt to help lead users to what they're looking for. All of which is useful if you're searching for information, but less useful if you're using Google as a linguistic corpus.
Fortunately, Google has also introduced the Verbatim search function. Do your search normally, then, on the results page, click on "Search Tools". Then, under "All results", select "Verbatim". This makes Google search for exactly what you typed, without trying to help you.
For example, the inspiration of this post is that I was trying to figure out if the present indicative of the verb that gives us "dissing" and "dissed" is "dis" or "diss". Normally, Google results would show them interchangeably on the assumption that they're both intended to mean the same thing. So, to do a Google vote, I used the Verbatim functions so I would only get results for "dis" or "diss", not for both.
The problem is that Google doesn't show the number of results on the Verbatim search results page like it does on other search pages, which renders my Google vote useless. This is particularly irritating because the vast majority of the times I use the Verbatim function, the hit count is part of the information I'm seeking.
Dear Google: please put the hit count on all results pages, just in case someone needs it. You know the number of hits, so why not just serve it up?
Saturday, January 12, 2013
What bugs me about Apple products
What I don't like about Apple devices is that whenever I have trouble with them, there's very few things to do. With PCs, there's always at least half a dozen options, ranging from rebooting to tinkering in the registry, but with every Apple problem I've had it's always power off and back on, do a restore, and go to the genius bar, who inevitably tell me they can't do hardware support because isn't a new device.
That's my second annoyance - hardware support and spare parts simply cannot be obtained through official channels for non-new devices, not even for money. In contrast, Dell is quite happy to sell me spare parts and tech support for anything I've ever bought from them, even if it's out of warranty. They don't always have the best prices, but they're at least willing to provide it. At Apple that isn't even an option - the best they can do is give you a discount on a new device or a replacement of the same kind of device.
This focus on novelty also extends, most irritatingly, to software and operating systems. If you restore your ipod, it automatically installs the latest software, and there's no possibility of rolling it back. If one of your apps isn't compatible with the new iOS or it's otherwise worse than the previous version, you're stuck. In comparison, Windows lets you uninstall any updates and service packs without even having to do a system restore (although that's totally an option). I could even take my old Windows 98 CD and install Windows 98 on my current computer. Microsoft wouldn't support it any more, but it's not like they have technological measures in place to stop me.
Apple's general philosophy seems to be that the products are intended to just work without the end user having to worry about fixing them. But I've had my fair share of problems, and not being able to get at the guts like I can with my PCs is irritating.
That's my second annoyance - hardware support and spare parts simply cannot be obtained through official channels for non-new devices, not even for money. In contrast, Dell is quite happy to sell me spare parts and tech support for anything I've ever bought from them, even if it's out of warranty. They don't always have the best prices, but they're at least willing to provide it. At Apple that isn't even an option - the best they can do is give you a discount on a new device or a replacement of the same kind of device.
This focus on novelty also extends, most irritatingly, to software and operating systems. If you restore your ipod, it automatically installs the latest software, and there's no possibility of rolling it back. If one of your apps isn't compatible with the new iOS or it's otherwise worse than the previous version, you're stuck. In comparison, Windows lets you uninstall any updates and service packs without even having to do a system restore (although that's totally an option). I could even take my old Windows 98 CD and install Windows 98 on my current computer. Microsoft wouldn't support it any more, but it's not like they have technological measures in place to stop me.
Apple's general philosophy seems to be that the products are intended to just work without the end user having to worry about fixing them. But I've had my fair share of problems, and not being able to get at the guts like I can with my PCs is irritating.
Friday, January 11, 2013
Why would you write a newspaper article if you don't have enough to say?
Recently in the news: school board director Chris Spence plagiarized parts of an article he wrote for the Toronto Star.
Here's what I don't get: if he had to resort to plagiarism, why was he writing a newspaper article in the first place? Unlike students who plagiarize, he didn't have to write an article. It wasn't an assignment. He wouldn't flunk if he didn't do it. Unlike Margaret Wente, it wasn't his job. He has a whole job that, I'm sure, keeps him fully occupied. How did it even occur to him to write an article if he had so little to say that he had to plagiarize?
I'm pretty sure that people have to proactively submit op-eds to newspapers rather than the newspaper soliciting them, so he could have just not done it and no one would have noticed. Even if the paper did solicit an article from him, he could have just said "I'm terribly sorry, but I'm afraid I'm just too busy with my duties as director of TDSB to write an article. However, I'd be happy to give an interview."
So why did he do it?
Here's what I don't get: if he had to resort to plagiarism, why was he writing a newspaper article in the first place? Unlike students who plagiarize, he didn't have to write an article. It wasn't an assignment. He wouldn't flunk if he didn't do it. Unlike Margaret Wente, it wasn't his job. He has a whole job that, I'm sure, keeps him fully occupied. How did it even occur to him to write an article if he had so little to say that he had to plagiarize?
I'm pretty sure that people have to proactively submit op-eds to newspapers rather than the newspaper soliciting them, so he could have just not done it and no one would have noticed. Even if the paper did solicit an article from him, he could have just said "I'm terribly sorry, but I'm afraid I'm just too busy with my duties as director of TDSB to write an article. However, I'd be happy to give an interview."
So why did he do it?
Sunday, January 06, 2013
Poll: how old were you when you first learned about abortion?
How old were you when you first learned that abortion is a thing that exists, and in what context did you learn about it?
I'm asking because I've heard stories of people (especially, but not limited to, catholic school teachers), both in the present day and when my peers were kids, lecturing kids about the evils of abortion when the kids were at an age when I myself hadn't yet even heard of abortion, and I find myself wondering if these lectures would end up teaching the kids that it's even an option.
I don't remember exactly when I first learned about it. I know it wasn't specifically mentioned in the sex ed I received from my parents or my schools, and I can extrapolate from what I know of my learning curve that it wasn't in my sex ed book.
I learned how pregnancy happens around the age of 8 or 9, I reached menarche at 10, and I learned (on a theoretical level, fortunately) that rape exists at 10 as well. So, starting at the age of 10, I had a quietly ever-present fear of being forced to gestate my rapist's baby, and hadn't the slightest clue that pregnancies could be terminated. (I was thinking solely in terms of a rapist because I was still years away from being able to even imagine wanting to have sex voluntarily, even in a distant and hypothetical future.)
Several years later, I read something (I don't remember if it was an article or a work of fiction) where a girl who was pregnant thought that if she skipped rope for hours and hours, she'd have a miscarriage. (I don't remember if she actually tried it or if it actually worked.) This was my first exposure to the idea that miscarriage could be induced. I was relieved to learn that such a thing might be remotely possible, and started brainstorming other ways to force myself to miscarry so I wouldn't have to gestate my rapist's baby. I considered the possibility of simply stopping eating and drinking, thinking that if it didn't cause a miscarriage it would at least kill me, and, by extension, also gave some thought to suicide as a solution. I was probably under the age of 16 when this happened, because I don't remember looking up ways to induce miscarriage on the internet and I'm pretty sure I would have if I'd had internet access at the time.
I became aware of the existence of abortion, as a medical procedure, sometime before the end of high school. Weirdly, I don't remember any single moment of relief at the realization that you can just go somewhere and get it done professionally. There was a time when I knew it existed but didn't know the details of the laws governing its accessibility (I remember mentally debating whether it would be more effective to tell the doctor that I would commit suicide if I couldn't have an abortion or to actually attempt suicide, completely unaware that you don't need to convince them of that particular level of desperation) but I figured it out by the time I was in university.
All of which is to say that if, in middle school or early high school, someone had lectured me about the evils of abortion, they would have been teaching me that it is possible to end a pregnancy and that it is possible to do so with a proper medical procedure. And if someone had taken my child or teenage self to an abortion clinic to protest, they would have taught me "This is where you can go to get an abortion." It's likely this information is more accessible to the youth of today, but some of the stories I heard that inspired this post were about people who were older than me, who surely would have learned a thing or two about how to get an abortion if lectured on the evils of doing so in Grade 6.
What about you? When and how did you learn that abortion exists? If people had lectured your young teenage self on the evils of abortion, would they have been teaching you about its existence?
I'm asking because I've heard stories of people (especially, but not limited to, catholic school teachers), both in the present day and when my peers were kids, lecturing kids about the evils of abortion when the kids were at an age when I myself hadn't yet even heard of abortion, and I find myself wondering if these lectures would end up teaching the kids that it's even an option.
I don't remember exactly when I first learned about it. I know it wasn't specifically mentioned in the sex ed I received from my parents or my schools, and I can extrapolate from what I know of my learning curve that it wasn't in my sex ed book.
I learned how pregnancy happens around the age of 8 or 9, I reached menarche at 10, and I learned (on a theoretical level, fortunately) that rape exists at 10 as well. So, starting at the age of 10, I had a quietly ever-present fear of being forced to gestate my rapist's baby, and hadn't the slightest clue that pregnancies could be terminated. (I was thinking solely in terms of a rapist because I was still years away from being able to even imagine wanting to have sex voluntarily, even in a distant and hypothetical future.)
Several years later, I read something (I don't remember if it was an article or a work of fiction) where a girl who was pregnant thought that if she skipped rope for hours and hours, she'd have a miscarriage. (I don't remember if she actually tried it or if it actually worked.) This was my first exposure to the idea that miscarriage could be induced. I was relieved to learn that such a thing might be remotely possible, and started brainstorming other ways to force myself to miscarry so I wouldn't have to gestate my rapist's baby. I considered the possibility of simply stopping eating and drinking, thinking that if it didn't cause a miscarriage it would at least kill me, and, by extension, also gave some thought to suicide as a solution. I was probably under the age of 16 when this happened, because I don't remember looking up ways to induce miscarriage on the internet and I'm pretty sure I would have if I'd had internet access at the time.
I became aware of the existence of abortion, as a medical procedure, sometime before the end of high school. Weirdly, I don't remember any single moment of relief at the realization that you can just go somewhere and get it done professionally. There was a time when I knew it existed but didn't know the details of the laws governing its accessibility (I remember mentally debating whether it would be more effective to tell the doctor that I would commit suicide if I couldn't have an abortion or to actually attempt suicide, completely unaware that you don't need to convince them of that particular level of desperation) but I figured it out by the time I was in university.
All of which is to say that if, in middle school or early high school, someone had lectured me about the evils of abortion, they would have been teaching me that it is possible to end a pregnancy and that it is possible to do so with a proper medical procedure. And if someone had taken my child or teenage self to an abortion clinic to protest, they would have taught me "This is where you can go to get an abortion." It's likely this information is more accessible to the youth of today, but some of the stories I heard that inspired this post were about people who were older than me, who surely would have learned a thing or two about how to get an abortion if lectured on the evils of doing so in Grade 6.
What about you? When and how did you learn that abortion exists? If people had lectured your young teenage self on the evils of abortion, would they have been teaching you about its existence?
Tuesday, January 01, 2013
Things They Should Study: does exercise have the same benefits for those whom it angers?
There's a lot of research about how exercise is allegedly good for non-physical things, like mood or cognition.
Articles about this research often state as a given that exercise makes you feel good emotionally and boosts your mood.
However, for me, exercise makes me angry with no positive mental or emotional effects. I've blogged about this before, and over the years it has attracted the attention of others who are angered by exercise.
Someone should study whether exercise has the same alleged non-physical benefits for people whom it angers as it does for the general population. What if being made angry by exercise is a sign that it doesn't have those benefits for you?
Articles about this research often state as a given that exercise makes you feel good emotionally and boosts your mood.
However, for me, exercise makes me angry with no positive mental or emotional effects. I've blogged about this before, and over the years it has attracted the attention of others who are angered by exercise.
Someone should study whether exercise has the same alleged non-physical benefits for people whom it angers as it does for the general population. What if being made angry by exercise is a sign that it doesn't have those benefits for you?
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