Zap2it vs. TV Guide online TV listings

For as long as I can remember, I've been using zap2it.com as my primary TV guide.  They could be customized to my TV provider so they'll tell me what's on the channels I actually get and they tell me the actual channel number (unlike the TV listings in the newspaper, where they say it's on channel 5 in the listings and then I have to look it up in the chart to see that channel 5 is really channel 6 on my TV).

However, Zap2it's advanced search function recently stopped working, which makes it significantly less useful to me.  For example, as you may have noticed, I'm an Eddie Izzard fan, so I like to know when Eddie's going to be on TV.  So I'd use Zap2it's advanced search function to search for "Izzard" under "Cast & Crew", and I'd get a list of every program Eddie's in for the next two weeks.  In the absence of this function, I'd have to either look up every single entry on Eddie's IMDB page separately (which is a wee bit inconvenient) or miss opportunities to see Eddie on TV (which cramps my style).

Fortunately, it turns out TVGuide.com's listings aren't powered by Zap2it (as many TV listings are), and they have celebrity-specific listings (like this) that fulfill the function for which I'd previously been using Zap2it's advanced search (and with a much nicer interface too - TV Guide lists every appearance in chronological order, whereas Zap2it would only list the titles of the shows the performer appears in, and I'd have to click on each one to see when it's on.)  However, I've noticed a variety of pros and cons of each system:

- TV Guide lets you add movies, or even celebrities (which basically means anyone with an IMDB entry - Jane Austen is in there), to your watchlist, whereas Zap2it only lets you add TV shows.  This means that, on Zap2it, if I want to watch The King's Speech, I need to search for it every couple of weeks to see when it's on, while on TV Guide I can just add it to my list and they'll let me know.

- TV Guide's celebrity pages also show you episodes of TV shows that have that celebrity in it, whereas Zap2it's show you every episode of any TV show that has that celebrity in it.  For example, Wil Wheaton has been in a few episodes of Big Bang Theory.  If I look him up on TV Guide, it will show only the episodes of Big Bang Theory in which he appears.  However, if I look him up on Zap2it, it will show Big Bang Theory as a whole, even if the episodes he appears in aren't airing any time soon.

- Unfortunately, TV Guide's watchlist is set up so that it only shows you the next instance of each list item, which is problematic when the item added is a celebrity, who may appear in multiple movies or TV shows. So if Eddie's in one show tomorrow morning and another tomorrow afternoon, the watchlist will only show me the one he's in tomorrow morning (unless I click through to his individual page).  But it will still show me the next airing of King's Speech even if it's a week from now.  In comparison, Zap2it's "My Calendar" function is set up like a calendar, and tells me which things are on each day. (Unfortunately, it's only limited to TV shows, not movies or celebrities or other search results.)

- TV Guide allows you to add as many channels as you want to your "favourites", so you can have a grid that consists of all the channels you get.  Zap2it limits you to 100 (which is frustrating when you get more than 100 channels but nowhere near all the channels).  Note to Zap2it: it's not about wanting to watch my "favourite" channels, it's about what's on the channels I get in my cable package. If I just wanted to watch my favourite channel, I'd turn the TV on to that channel.

- However, TV Guide's watchlist shows you what's on all the English-language channels offered by your cable provider, even if you've meticulously set up your favourite channels list.

- The problem is the "English-language" part - TV Guide doesn't show non-English channels (even if they're part of a basic cable package) in those celebrity-specific page.  If Eddie is on a French channel, I'll never know unless I try to deliberately search for the French title of everything he's ever been in.  Note to TV Guide: some people who speak English do speak non-English languages too!

- Another advantage of TV Guide's watchlist is there's a checkbox that says "New Airings Only", so you can only see episodes that aren't reruns.  This is useful if you're interested in  new episodes of the Simpsons, for example, but don't want to be informed of every single rerun.

- A disadvantage of TV Guide in general is it doesn't show the end times of programs in search results - you have to look them up in the grid.  This is particularly annoying for movies.  It will tell you that the runtime of a particular movie is 120 minutes and it will tell you that the movie is on a 9:00, but it won't tell you whether it's on from 9:00-11:00 or 9:00-12:00.  As we all know, such things do vary because of editing for television and commercial breaks.

- I think both systems could use a more robust category function.  Zap2it used to have a particularly good one, where one of the categories was Fitness.  So I used this to find exercise programs on TV (my preferred method of exercising).  But they later eliminated the category.  (When I switched to Rogers I started using my on-screen guide for this, but lately it's less useful because they're putting entirely too many things in the Fitness category, like reality shows about people giving birth and programs about alternative medicine, so I have to click on every unfamiliar title to see if it is in fact a fitness show.)

Currently I'm using Zap2it's calendar and basic search results primarily but TV Guide's more advanced search results and celebrity pages.  I'd probably switch back to using Zap2it exclusively if they reinstated the advanced search function and let us add movies, celebrities, and search results (i.e. anything with Star Trek in the title rather than having to add each Star Trek separately) to the calendar.  I'd probably switch to TV Guide exclusively if the watchlist was truly chronological, if they included non-English channels in search results, and if they included program end times in search results.

I'm glad that the two systems complement each other and mostly fill in each other's gaps, but it would be awesome if one of the sites (or both, or a third, completely new site) could add the features it's missing so it meets all the needs I've listed here.

Machine translation FAIL

One of the things I like to test translation software with is formal French complimentary closings.  French uses long, gorgeous, wordy passages where we'd just say "sincerely" in English, so it's useful to determine whether the software recognizes the function of the text.  I was recently demonstrating this, and got the following result (click to embiggen):

For those of you who don't read French, the phrase input here is a French complimentary closing, appropriate to a formal business letter. With the exception of one serious error, the English is a reasonable literal translation.

There are two problems here, one macro and one micro.

The macro problem is that the French is a complimentary closing, and the English is not.  English complimentary closings are things like "Sincerely," or "Yours truly," and that's how this sentence should be translated.  The actual words don't matter; the message is "This is to indicate that I am ending the letter in the prescribed letter, and the next thing you see will be my signature."

And the micro problem is that, on a word-for-word level, it translated the French "Madame" (i.e. Ms. or Ma'am) with the English "Sir", thereby addressing the recipient as the wrong gender.  Not only is this clearly unacceptable, it's something even the most simplistic machine translation should be able to handle. Even if an individual text in their corpus got misaligned, they should have some mechanism to recognize that "Sir" is not the most common translation of "Madame". Even a calque of the French ("Madam") would be a better translation than "Sir", which is a sure sign of a particularly bad translation. I'm quite surprised to see this happening in 2013.

Happy birthday, same-sex marriage, happy birthday to you!

Today is the 10th anniversary of the legalization of same-sex marriage in Ontario!

I've already blogged the best tribute I can write to it here.

Dog euthanization ethics

In the Toronto Star's ethics column, a reader wrote in pondering the ethics of euthanizing a dog whose medical bills have become prohibitive.

I'm not going to presume to rule on the question itself, but I take issue with a couple of things in the columnist's answer:

The real question is: Is it ethical to spend so much money — and put yourself in debt — to keep a dog alive?

The answer is no.

I don't think you can go so far as to say it's not ethical, even if you can't afford the money.  It may be ill-advised, but ill-advised spending isn't unethical.  Mr. Gallinger previously wrote that Chief Theresa Spence's hunger strike is perfectly ethical, because we're allowed to make self-sacrifices for what we consider to be a good cause.  If sacrificing one's own health is permissible, surely sacrificing one's finances is equally permissible!

But you still have to pay for housing and food, so where would this six grand come from? Money you might otherwise give to help other human beings?

OK, I take back what I said about sunshine listers. Regardless of economic status, anyone with an extra six grand does far more good spending on starving kids, AIDS research, a cure for cancer — rather than a dog unable to discern the difference between kibbles and a baseball.

Again, spending money in a way that does less good than it possibly could isn't unethical. At best, it's suboptimal, as are many things in life.  Holding people to the standard that spending money in ways that don't optimally help other people is unethical would be untenable.  It would even make charitable donations to all but the single most optimal charity unethical!

I'm not a person who would say that you must never euthanize a pet or must prolong its life über alles - I'm pro-euthanasia even to the extent that I want to it be available to me and those I care about - but you should be able to make a solid argument for why it's not unethical to euthanize in a particular case without fudging the definition of "unethical".

Also, I'm surprised that neither the columnist nor the letter-writer got into the question of trying to find another home for the dog.  If you're so uncertain about putting the dog down that you're writing to an advice columnist, why not post on Craigslist "Free to a good home: awesome doggie with an unfortunate habit of eating balls and then requiring expensive surgery" and see if you get any takers?  Worst case, you've still got the same decision to make, but you can feel better about having explored every possible avenue.

Why board up houses when you're going to tear them down anyway?

A group of houses on my street have been bought by a developer who plans to tear them down to build condos.  I have no objection to that - it's a highrise neighbourhood.  However, they've boarded up the windows of the houses, which makes them look run down and derelict and creates a dead zone on the street.  (This is particularly frustrating since they hadn't even submitted their development application to city hall when they started boarding the houses up, so they created this dead zone without making any progress towards renewal.)

Why would you board up houses that you're going to tear down anyway?  Are you worried that someone will break in and start wrecking them before you can start wrecking them yourself?  Why not just put plain solid white cheap blinds/curtains in the window (or even board them up on the inside with a piece of wallboard or something else white) so they won't look so conspicuously abandoned to passers-by?  That would actually probably reduce the likelihood that people would mess around with them - if you see a house with the blinds closed and no one going in or out at that exact moment, you assume someone is home and just not going in or out at that exact moment.  You'd have to pay close attention and perhaps even stake it out to notice that it's empty, whereas the boards make it look abandoned from a distance.

I don't care that they're tearing down houses or that they want to build a big condo tower, but I really resent that they're doing this in a way that makes it look so empty and abandoned.  My neighbourhood feels very safe at all hours of the day and night, and this is because it's alive. There are people walking around, going in and out of homes and shops and restaurants.  When I'm walking around alone after dark, if I ever feel unsafe, I can duck into any of the many businesses that are still open or even into another residential building if I can manage to follow someone in.  If a bad guy is following me, they don't know where I might be going, which door might have witnesses behind it who are expecting me.  But these boarded-up houses are clearly not where I'm going.  They clearly don't have someone inside waiting for me.  They're just a dead zone that doesn't contribute to the life of the street.

Why go to all the trouble of boarding up the houses and making them look derelict when you could just do nothing and leave them looking unremarkable?

Diluting shredded paper

They make paper shredders that shred paper to different sizes, and the smaller it shreds the paper, the more expensive the paper shredder.  Presumably this is because it would be harder to reassemble the paper if it's shredded smaller.

I find myself wondering if you could also make it more difficult for someone who wanted to reassemble the paper by diluting the shredded paper.  What if only 10% of the paper you shredded was important documents that actually needed to be shredded, and 90% of it was random unimportant documents?

What if you physically mixed up the shredded paper before dumping it in recycling?  What if you put shredded paper from the same batch of shredding in multiple recycling containers?

Before I owned a paper shredder, I'd rip up sensitive documents and put parts of them (usually the parts with my name) in with my kitchen garbage.  I figurde if someone is going to dig through the dumpsters and try to reassemble my documents, I can at least make it as unpleasant as possible.  What if you put a portion of the shredded paper in the green bin?  (Apparently paper in the green bin is allowed - my parents use newspapers to line their organics garbage can, then throw the whole piece of newspaper in the green bin with the garbage enclosed.)

I don't know if the additional security gained from doing any of these things would be worth the effort, but it's fun to think of ideas.

Lesen auf Deutsch

I'm currently reading a book in German (Der Knochenmann by Wolf Haas, published in English as The Bone Man - no spoilers please, I'm only partway through).  This is noteworthy because I haven't done any long-form reading in German in 13 years, and even then German has always been a difficult language for me to read.  When I was in school, I'd be sitting there with my dictionary looking up every single word I don't understand, then using my grammar rules to decode how the elements in the sentences relate to each other.

But I was surprised to discover that now it's much faster going!  Not because I understand more German, but because I seem to know intuitively which parts I don't need to understand.  Based on the words I do understand and my knowledge of how a novel works, I can tell "Okay, this is a soccer game, these few paragraphs are describing gameplay, anything I don't understand is soccer-related, no need to look stuff up." So I skim over those paragraphs with little understanding except that the local team won and the goaltender was awesome, and don't reach for my dictionary until we're back into the main plot.

Similarly, I find I'm not analyzing the grammar to figure out how the elements in a sentence relate to each other.  I'm thinking "How would these elements relate to each other logically?" and only digging down to the grammar if the logical interpretation doesn't make sense in context.

Surprisingly, this works!  I looked up an English excerpt to make sure I haven't missed anything important, and I haven't! Everything I glossed over contained exactly what I expected it to! It could be I missed a gun on the mantlepiece, I don't know yet, but worst case I'm surprised by the ending rather than seeing it coming like I usually do in mysteries.

I think this is all a result of translation brain.  When you're translating, you have to render not the words per se, but rather the truth of what the text is saying.  The vast majority of the time, it doesn't matter whether the author of the text used a word that translates as "however" or "moreover", what matters is whether the relationship between the two ideas in question is "however" or "moreover".  (I've always thought fill in the blank exercises for linking words would be useful for translation students.)  It doesn't matter that the source text used the pluperfect, what matters is which tense most accurately represents the idea being expressed in the target language.

So after 13 years of thinking this way (coincidentally, the same amount of time since I last read in German - my last German class was the year before my first translation class), I seem to have developed intuition for which unknown words or syntax is ripe with meaning and which parts will end up saying exactly what I'd expect them to say.

So why isn't it acceptable to submit the same paper for multiple courses?

From The Ethicist:

When I was in college, I’d sometimes write a single paper that would satisfy assignments in more than one course. For instance, I once wrote a paper on how “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” expressed satire; I submitted it for assignments in both my poetry course as well as my completely separate satire course. I did not disclose this to either professor. When I share this with people, half call the practice cheating, and the other half call it genius. My niece told me it would certainly be grounds for expulsion at her college. In my mind, I was adding a level of intellectual complexity to my studies. Was this an ethical practice, or was I cheating?

The all my universities made it quite clear that this is not allowed, but I've never understood why. It's your own work, so why does it matter if you've done the work a little earlier before the deadline than perhaps they anticipated? 

Some people in the comments thread suggested that it's because schools want you to do a certain amount of work to get your degree, but I don't think that's actually the case. You get your course credits, and by extension your degree, by demonstrating mastery of certain material or skills. They evaluate this mastery through projects and exams, but the amount of work you put in is irrelevant.  If you can knock off an A+ term paper in half an hour, you have clearly mastered the material and deserve your A+.  Conversely, if you do the standard amount of work - even if you do twice the standard amount of work - but still can't produce a paper that meets the standards for a passing mark, you haven't mastered the material and don't get to pass. If you can prove to both professors that you have mastered the material of their respective courses by turning in the same piece of work, the fact remains that you've mastered the material.

Other commenters suggested that a single paper could not possibly meet the needs of two assignments, and, before we even get into the question of ethics, would need to be rewritten from the other perspective to be suitable for the other course.  This may well be true, but that doesn't make it a question of academic ethics.  If a student chooses to submit a project that doesn't meet the project requirements as perfectly as perhaps it could, they'll get a lower mark.  Voilà, natural consequences.  No need to bring the code of ethics into it.  

The professor who taught my humanities gen. ed. course, an older, bearded, sweater-wearing gent who called male students by their surnames and female students "Miss Surname", had a policy that you can go to the washroom whenever you wanted during the exam, unescorted.  His reasoning was that if you can find answers in the washroom, more power to you.  His exams were designed so students have to analyze and to make cogent arguments supporting their point - things you can't put on a crib sheet.

Similarly, the attitude should be if you can reuse work, more power to you.  If schools want to discourage this, perhaps they need a more robust anti-requisite system, or more stringent academic standards, or a system that permits students to test out of courses where they've already mastered the material. But if you have two courses that are asking students to submit similar assignments to prove similar bodies of knowledge, then there's no reason not to permit them to do the same work.  And manipulating the academic code of ethics to ban this so they don't have to address flaws in the curriculum is kind of, well, inethical.

Analogy for why you don't need to give up your stuffed animals

I previously blogged about how when I was a kid I thought I'd need to give up my very favourite stuffed toy just because none of the adults around me used stuffed toys, but once I grew up I realized that you don't ever need to give them up, even if you don't need to use them any more.

Today my shower gave me an analogy:

As we grow up and grow older, we need our parents'  help less and less.  When we're well into adult life, sometimes months or even years go by when we don't need their help at all.

But we don't respond to this development by murdering them, or by casting them off on an ice floe to die.  We respond by leaving them mostly to their own devices while we handle our own problems without interrupting their well-deserved retirement. But (as long as they're still alive) we still retain the option of going to them if we need their help.

Dr. Morgentaler

When Dr. Morgentaler was awarded the Order of Canada, I wrote:

What astounds me about Dr. Morgentaler is he had no particular reason to become an abortion activist. It didn't affect him personally, he was older when he got into it (late 40s, if I remember correctly), no one would have noticed if he hadn't done anything. No one would have said "Hey, you, Mr. middle-aged holocaust-survivor doctor man, why aren't you loudly and publicly performing a controversial medical procedure for which you could be sentenced to life in prison?" If he had just quietly gone about his family practice, no one would have cared. But he stepped up

In a discussion of the age at which people learned about abortion, I wrote:

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

I didn't know that at the time, but my 10-year-old self needn't ever have worried about having to gestate her rapist's baby.  Because Dr. Morgentaler stepped up, long before I knew such things existed, I - and millions of others like me - have no reason to lie awake at night pondering whether starvation would be sufficient to induce miscarriage or whether self-harm would be necessary.

Help write the next New Rules: Natural Consequences Edition!

I have a series of posts called New Rules: Natural Consequences Edition, in which I propose natural consequences rules for various behaviours that really should have consequences.

There's one behaviour for which I really would like to introduce natural consequences, but I haven't been able to think of anything yet.  That behaviour is:

Lying to people about their own thoughts, feelings, motivations, or experiences.

This is probably my greatest pet peeve, so I want to give it a really good consequence.  But nothing is coming immediately to mind.  Any ideas?

Living in the future

Sometimes, when I'm walking down the street, I look around and imagine what a person from the past would think of what I'm seeing and doing and experiencing.  What would look familiar to them and what would look impenetrable to them?  Which changes would they think are a miracle and which ones would they think are a tragedy?  How would this live up to their expectations for the year 2013?  Would they be disappointed by the lack of flying cars, or amazed at the computing power in our handheld devices?

So I was walking down the street, thinking these kinds of thoughts, and I saw a Future Shop.

And I found myself wondering what people from the past would think of the fact that, in the future, we have a Future Shop! 

It seems like something out of a mid-20th-century scifi B-movie, doesn't it?  "I need a new space phone.  Better go to the future shop!"

When you add in the mid-20th-century retroish vertical signs on some of the urban locations (like this one) it almost comes across as something created in the 1950s in an attempt to fit into the future as imagined in that era. (Even though the internet tells me it was founded in the early 80s, and most stores don't have those retroish signs - they seem to be used where the stores open right onto the sidewalk instead of into a parking lot as they do in most big box locations.)

Evoluent Mouse-Friendly Keyboard

I was having some mousing-related ergonomic issues, so I went and bought the Evoluent Mouse-Friendly Keyboard.

Ergonomically, it does the job fantastically.  I started using it in mid-March (and started working at home in April) and haven't had any ergonomic owies whatsoever!

My only complaint is I really wish the spacebar extended about a centimetre further to the right.  In the existing configuration, the right edge of the space bar lines up with the space between the J and K keys, which means that my right thumb lands right on the very end of the spacebar.  (Unfortunately, my Grade 9 typing class, which I took for an easy A as I already knew how to type, drilled into me the habit of using only my right thumb for the spacebar, so using my left thumb greatly slows me down and creates hilarious typos.)  I understand that the abbreviated spacebar is a result of trying to cram all the assorted crt-alt-delete-insert-windows keys into the bottom row so the keyboard doesn't need extra columns for all those keys like you have in a standard keyboard

One thing that hasn't caused any problems but seems a bit worrisome is that the keys are very shallow and the mechanisms seem kind of delicate.  This means that if a crumb gets into the keyboard, you can feel it under the key right away and it's more likely than with a standard keyboard to interfere with typing.  This is good in some ways, because you can detect and remove crumbs immediately rather than having them accumulated like they do in deeper keyboards, but it always seems like the keys are so delicate that something might snap when I'm prying them off.  Nothing has snapped yet, so I have no empirical evidence supporting this claim, but it is a general feeling I get. I will update this if anything actually goes wrong, so if I haven't updated it's just me being paranoid so far.

However, it does have a one-year warranty, and it seems to have completely eliminated the sporadic ergonomic issues I was previously experiencing, so even if it turns out it is more fragile than other keyboards, I'd say it's still worthwhile overall.  (Although I'd still very much prefer that it be made to last.)

How to study the impact of gender imbalance on future generations.

I previously came up with the idea that they should study how gender imbalance (in this case, resulting from heavy wartime losses of the male population) affect future generations.

I think I have an idea about how one might actually study this.

For pre-21st-century wars, compare countries with heavy military losses with countries with heavy civilian losses. The US and Canada, for example, did not have combat happening within their country.  So we would have lost a greater proportion of men, whereas countries like Germany and France and Poland would probably have had more gender-balanced losses.

So if someone wanted to study this phenomenon, they could look at military and civilian death tolls, put countries in order of postwar gender imbalance (perhaps with the help of postwar censuses), and then look at various outcomes over the course of generations.

Things They Should Invent: multiple customizable email alerts

I have visual and audible email alerts for both my personal and my work email.  In general I'd rather have the alerts than not, but what I'd really like is to get alerts only for emails that are important.

For example, in my personal email, I'd like to get alerted about personal communications from family and friends, ebay auctions that I've won or been outbid on, and anything from my banks, my apartment building, or my condo that require immediate action.  I don't need to get alerted about "Here's our newsletter!" or "Sign this petition!" or "This is to confirm that you made the paypal purchase that you made literally 2 seconds ago."  I'll look at those things later, but I don't need to interrupt what I'm doing to look at them.

Similarly, in my work email, I'd like to get alerted about new assignments, emails from clients, and specific personal communication from my team.  I don't need to be alerted about "Here's the employee newsletter!" or "This is just to let you know that I will be away Friday." Again, I'll look at them later, but they don't require my immediate attention.

Gmail has a function where they automatically mark certain email threads as more important, and it works reasonably well if you put in the effort to train it (I did briefly and was happy with the rate at which it was learning, but then I got lazy and stopped using it.)  So why not pair this up with Gmail Notifier so it notifies you only when you get an email that meets "important" criteria?  Or perhaps give you a different kind of beep for the more important emails?

Outlook allows you to create all kinds of finicky rules, so why not allow you to create rules defining what kind of alert the program gives you?  You could tell it to give you the "important" alert if you get an email from certain senders or in reply to an email that you yourself have sent.  If you can convince your colleagues to use good subject lines, you could get one kind of alert for "FYI" emails and another for "For Action" emails.

Properly implemented, this would allow people to have all the benefits of email alerts with none of the disadvantages.  So why don't we have it already?

Thoughts from advice columns

My husband and I are preparing our wills. We have two adult children: a daughter who is more successful than we are, and a son, who has been down on his luck for years. He also has three young children to educate. Everyone, including our lawyer and close friends, tells us that we should leave our money to them in equal shares to avoid hurt feelings. But that doesn’t seem right. Our son needs the money. Still, we don’t want to hurt our daughter. What would you do?

An option would be to leave everything to your grandchildren, perhaps in trust for their education if you should pass away when they're still underage.  This would be perfectly just, it would (if you die relatively soon) spare your son the expense of educating his children, and it would help mitigate any negative impact for the children of having a father who is down on his luck. If the daughter should have children, they'd inherit too, but if she doesn't I can't imagine a more-successful-than-her-parents childless auntie begrudging her nieces and nephews an inheritance from their less-successful-than-her grandparents, unless she's the sort of person to begrudge anything and everything, in which case you're no worse off.

Dear Miss Information,

I dated a guy about two years ago pretty seriously, and at the time we were on track to be engaged. Blah blah blah, it ended really badly. We haven't spoken since, even though I found out through mutual friends that he has been asking about me for months if not years. Finally, that has died down, and we've both moved on with our lives, I think. Here's the problem: I'm now dating a woman (oh, I'm a girl, if that wasn't already clear.) She and I are really happy together. I guess I've always identified as "bi," but it never came up when I was dating the guy. So this isn't that surprising to me, but apparently it is to him. I think one of our mutual friends told him I'm with Anna now, and supposedly he's been really freaked out about it.

A very close mutual friend is getting married in about a month, and my girlfriend is coming as my plus-one. I know he will be there with his new girlfriend (The friends who told me he was freaked out also filled me in that he's dating someone from his work), and I want to avoid hurting him further. How do you tell someone, "I'm gay now, but I wasn't when I was with you"? And really, we haven't spoken in about two years, so how much responsibility do I even need to take for "letting him down gently"? I'm just really, really, REALLY dreading this wedding because of having to see this ex. What do I do?

 (This letter is from the Miss Information column in Nerve.  The column itself is fine, but Nerve sometimes has NSFWish ads and pictures around the column text.  You can see the original here, or see a fully SFW version in CF Abby here.)

Anyway, as to the actual question, I think if I were in the guy's position, I'd find it something of a relief if it turned out the person I love who left me did so because they had come to the realization that they wanted a same-sex relationship.  That would make me confident, more than anything else I could possibly imagine, that it wasn't anything I did wrong and that there wasn't any diligence on my side that could have saved the relationship.

Individuals can face criminal charges when they pose as nurses or policemen. But what about people posing as meteorologists? A B.S. in meteorology is a science degree. But many broadcast meteorologists are not meteorologists at all; they hold a mail-order certificate offered by some schools instead. Is it ethical for TV stations to give just anyone the title “meteorologist”? NAME WITHHELD

Before we even get into the question of whether a certificate from an education institution should be completely disregarded as credientials, I don't think anyone is actually under the impression that the people on TV are actually doing the forecasting.  Weather forecasts are made using data from Environment Canada (or, since this is a US column, whatever the US equivalent is), and then they either reiterate the Environment Canada forecast or input the data into their own computer model that they bought from somewhere.  The people on TV are just reading the forecast, and I don't think anyone thinks otherwise.

Talking to children

Introducing myself to babies

The first time I met my new baby cousin (technically my first cousin once removed - his mother is my cousin) I formally introduced myself.  I told him my name, explained how we're related, and told him that I'm very pleased to meet him and hope we can become friends.  My parents laughed at me for doing this, but I do it anyway because it only seems polite.  I see part of my role as a non- parental adult as modeling normal and healthy interpersonal interactions for kids, and the normal adult world, people don't just walk up to you and start touching you apropos of nothing.  I figure I should do my bit to normalize this standard of behaviour.

I'm cheering for my baby cousin.  I want him to grow up to be strong and smart and happy, and have an easier and more pleasant life than I have.  It's possible that I might not always like Baby Cousin.  He's going to grow up to be a little boy, and little boys aren't my very favourite demographic.  At various points in his life, he might think farts are funny or think an appropriate response to the presence of a spider is to keep it in a jar as a pet, all of which is the kind of behaviour I prefer to avoid.  But even if I do end up not liking him for a period of time, I will still be cheering for him.

My baby cousin has many many adult cousins (his mother and I have 12 mutual cousins, and she also has cousins that aren't related to me, plus his father has his fair share of cousins as well), and I'm absolutely certain that all of us are cheering for him, as are his grandparents and great-grandparents and great-aunts and great-uncles and the other random people in this new family's orbit. If he finds himself in the same room as an adult by virtue of that adult's relationship with his parents, that adult will be cheering for him.

My parents also have many many cousins.  I met quite a few of them at various family events when I was a kid, but I didn't understand who they were.  I don't know if it wasn't explained to me or I just didn't retain it, but I didn't understand that they were my parents' cousins the same way my cousins are my cousins.  I didn't understand who they were or why they were talking to me - they just felt like strange grownups, so I was wary of them the way I'm normally wary of strange grownups.  The thought never once crossed my mind that they might be cheering for me.  Why would they be?  They're just strange grownups.

But maybe if some of them had taken a moment to speak to me directly and tell me their name and how we're related,  to shake my hand and tell me they're happy to see me, maybe I would have felt that I was in the safe presence of loving adults rather than surrounded by strangers.

Elevator buttons

One thing I've learned from living in highrises is that small children love to push elevator buttons! You can push them and they light up and they make the whole elevator move!  So I play along.  If I find myself in an elevator with a small child, I ask them if they can do me an enormous favour and push the button I need for me.  Then I thank them for being helpful.

I don't claim any child development knowledge beyond having been a child and basically I'm doing this because it entertains me.  But I'm wondering whether or not it's actually a good idea.

On the positive side, I'm engaging them as human beings in their own right rather than talking over their heads to their parents, I'm modelling "please" and "thank you" and general polite discourse, and, of course, I'm giving them an opportunity to press more buttons!

On the negative side, perhaps it's a bit condescending to gratuitously give someone a job to do that I can just as easily do myself on the assumption that they'll enjoy doing my menial tasks. (I've been in situations where I suspect people were doing that to me during my adult life, and I didn't appreciate it.) And, on top of that, I am a stranger. I know children do have to learn to interact with strangers and I am a harmless stranger so perhaps I'm a good person to for them to practise on (although I shouldn't go barging into interactions on the assumption that I'm harmless - I must continue to recognize that I'm a stranger), but I'm not sure if I should be setting the precedent that they should be doing unnecessary favours for strangers just because it amuses the stranger.

I've encountered kids who were absolutely delighted when I asked them to press a button for me, but that doesn't mean it's right.  My child-self would have wanted to curl up in a ball and hide, but that doesn't mean it's wrong.

Things They Should Invent: needs-based telecommunications technology funding for seniors

As I've mentioned before, I'm watching my grandmothers age and deteriorate and become more dependent on their children and caregivers.  And, as I watch this happen, I'm thinking about how I'm going to handle the same situation without anyone to take care of me.  And one thing that strikes me is that I could handle it better in some respects because I'm comfortable with technology.  If I couldn't manage grocery shopping for myself, I could order from grocery gateway.  If I couldn't remember to take my meds, I could set up a series of alerts.  My grandmothers aren't up on using today's technology, so they're dependent on their children to do these things.

However, it's not just interest and technological aptitude that keeps them from using technology, it's also cost.  My grandmothers retired in the 1980s, calculating their expenses based on expenses that existed in the 1980s.  They couldn't have anticipated the eventual need for $40 a month for internet or a data plan, plus the major capital investment of a new computer or device every few years.  Even if they'd be interested, they probably couldn't afford it.

If retirement still exists when I'm a senior, the same thing will probably happen to me.  If I retire when I'm in my 60s, I couldn't possibly budget for the evolution and cost of technology over the next 30 to 40 years.  (And if retirement doesn't still exist when I'm a senior, I'll have to hoard money even more because I have to assume 20 years of incompetence based on my family history of Alzheimer's, so I won't be able to afford to keep up to date.)

So I propose that all senior citizens should get a needs-based financial supplement of some sort (a discount or a rebate or free services or something) to keep them in up-to-date telecommunications technology, by which I mean both devices and data/internet plans. I don't have specific dollar amounts in mind at the moment, but the funding should be enough that it's an absolute no-brainer to keep up to date.

I also think the program should start at age 65, even though 65-year-olds are perfectly capable of keeping themselves up to date if they have any interest in doing so.  The reason for this is that elders seem to lose their ability to learn new things as they deteriorate and lose their faculties.  They need to form habits and keep current before they start losing their faculties, so they can coast along on their existing knowledge once they lose the ability to learn.   For example, my one grandmother lost the ability to learn about 10 years ago.  If she had computer skills that were current to 2003, she wouldn't be able to  use an iphone, but she could still order her groceries online. 

I'm sure it would be an expensive program, but it would help keep people living in their own homes and independently for longer.  By any standard, tech is cheaper than housing.

A better way to schedule preventive medical care?

Today my doctor told me that pap smears are no longer included in annual physicals.  This isn't the thing where pap smears are now once every three years, it means that they're apparently now considered a completely different test.  Because doctors aren't allowed to bill for more than one issue per appointment, this means that if I want an annual physical and a pap smear, I have to make two appointments.  Apparently OHIP is kind of cracking down on multiple issues in one appointment, and auditing doctors to make sure they don't treat patients for what they weren't booked in for.

I was googling around the idea, and apparently the intention is to cut back on the tests and examinations done during annual physicals because they've found that the tests have little to no benefit for healthy people.   Apparently studies have found that the people who diligently go in for annual physicals tend to be a healthy demographic for whom the tests don't turn up anything because they're healthy. Meanwhile, the less healthy people are already going into the doctor regularly for all their various health problems, so there's little benefit to a schedule physical this month if they just saw the doctor last month and are going to see the doctor again next month.

Which I'm fine with.  Because I don't actually want an annual physical.  Or a pap smear.  What I actually want is my birth control pills.

For my entire on-the-pill life, an annual physical and/or pap smear has been the gauntlet I have to run to get my birth control prescription renewed.  This doctor books physicals far in advance, which I didn't know at the beginning, so I called when I had a month of birth control left and was told it would be six to eight weeks.  When I told them I was running out of birth control, they booked me in for an appointment, where they gave me a three month prescription and then scheduled me for a physical, which I had to have before I could get a whole year's worth.

I don't think this is unique to my doctor.  At various times I've read discussions about whether birth control pills should be available over the counter, and in them doctors have said one of the reasons they like them to be prescription is it gets a sizeable proportion of their patients in for their annual physicals.  (You may remember we discussed how 1/3 of all Canadians use prescription contraception.)

Without getting into the (important) question of whether a physical is in fact necessary for birth control, this gave me a broader idea of how they can make the health system much more user friendly for patients and doctors.

Step 1:  Completely abolish annual physicals
Step 2:  Completely abolish the one issue per appointment rule
Step 3:  Create a system where whenever you come into the doctor for a specific issue, you also get all the preventive tests and examinations you're due for, based on your specific medical situation, and any other care your doctor feels you need.

So, in my case, I'd call the doctor when I'm running low on birth control pills.  The receptionist (perhaps with the assistance of a computer program designed to track these things) would see that it's been 12 months since I had blood work so I should probably get it done again, but it's only been 34 months since I had a pap smear so I'm not due for that.  Then it would book appointment length accordingly.  (Perhaps it could also add some extra time to the appointment if the patient hasn't been to the doctor in X months.) 

The doctor then sees me to renew my birth control pills, and also offers all the tests and examinations for which I'm overdue, and offers any other care that he feels would be appropriate.  And I am permitted to decline tests and care that are unrelated to the birth control pills and still receive my pills.

This will make things easier for the patient.  No more having to keep track of your preventive care schedule and call the doctor and make the right kind of appointment.  You just call the doctor when you need to go to the doctor, and they'll give you all the care you need, not just for this one issue but for everything.

It will also make things easier for the doctor.  You treat the patient in front of you for everything they need treating for, without worrying about whether it falls under the issue for which they made the appointment.  You can use your professional judgement without worrying about administrative matters.

And it will save the health system a little bit of money by creating a scenario where patients get their preventive tests and examinations sometime after their due, rather than right on the button of when they're due.  The current system normalizes coming in every 12 months for various examinations.  But if it's 12 months plus whenever the patient has an issue for which they need to see the doctor, some patients will be coming in after 14 months, some patients will be coming in after 2 years.  The healthier the patient, the bigger the interval between when they come in.  But it's self-selecting, so the patients are still getting care whenever they request care.

Of course, doctors can still have patients with chronic issues or high risk factors come in on a regular basis for monitoring.  And they'd still have the option of influencing the frequency with which patients come in with the length of the prescription they issue.

This leaves the question of whether anyone would slip through the cracks.  Under this model, anyone who wants to see the doctor for a specific issue will see a doctor when that specific issue arises.  Anyone with a chronic issue or high risk factors or complex needs who needs regular monitoring will get regular monitoring as required by their doctor. Anyone who takes medication on a regular basis will see the doctor whenever they need their prescription renewed. 

So that leaves people who don't have any specific issues for periods of over a year, don't have any ongoing medications, and don't have any conditions that need monitoring, as well as people who don't go to the doctor when they have an issue they need to go to the doctor for.

I think the people who don't go to the doctor when they have an issue aren't going to go for preventive annual physicals, so this wouldn't affect them.  So that just leaves people who don't have any specific reason to go to the doctor during periods of over a year.  Things They Should Study: is there anyone who's healthy enough to fall into this group but unhealthy enough that they have something just waiting to be caught by their annual physical?