Things They Should Study: what circumstances or conditions lead people to be blinded by popularity?

As I wrote about in my previous post, this whole plastic bag thing reminds me of elementary school group work, because in both cases I have a better solution than what's popular, and it's being automatically written off because it isn't the thing that's popular. I find this particularly irritating because I have to suffer the consequences of the worse solution despite having come up with a better solution and duly communicated it to all involved.

As I also mentioned in my previous post, I am able to convince people to use, or at least try, my ideas far more often than would be attributable to pure chance. In my previous post, I took this as a sign that my ideas are not without merit and I'm not entirely incapable of being convincing.

But what if people are more likely or less likely to be blinded by popularity under certain circumstances or conditions? What if there was some common condition present in my elementary school classrooms, in LCBO leadership, and in Toronto City Council that wasn't present in my workplaces and my high school and university classrooms?

One thing I have noticed, although it's possible this is subject to confirmation bias, is that others seem more likely to be blinded by popularity in cases where it is not logistically possible for me to implement my idea myself. In my job, I can do things my own way unless specifically instructed by my boss or a client to do otherwise. I don't need others to agree, I just need the people who can boss me around not to disagree. Nevertheless, nearly every idea I share in the workplace gets at least tried by at least one person. And, of all my ideas (not just in the workplace, but in life in general), the ones that get picked up the most are my mnemonics, and it makes literally no difference to me whatsoever if other people use them.

But when it comes to something like changing plastic bag policy, which I can't in any way make happen by myself and am dependent on governments and retailers to implement, I'm automatically dismissed because I'm advocating for something other than the most popular idea.

What if there's something in here that's indicative of a broader pattern of when people are open to ideas vs. being blinded by popularity?

A flaw in my elementary school education

As I've blogged about many times before, the reason why I'm so incredibly frustrated about attempts to ban plastic bags (first from the LCBO and then from Toronto) is that I already came up with a better solution to the stated problem. I solved the problem, I communicated the solution to the appropriate people, but, because the influential people aren't listening to me, I still have to suffer the inconvenience of their suboptimal "solution".

This reminds me of elementary school.

In elementary school we did a lot of group work, for the ostensible reason that it would teach us how to work with others in the workplace. I was one of the top students, but I was also one of the least popular students. And it would often happen in our group work that I would know the correct answer or the correct approach, but my group wouldn't listen to me because I'm not cool. (When I say "the correct answer", I'm referring to cases where there is a single objectively-correct answer or approach. How to calculate the area of a polygon. How to spell a word. What a French sentence says.) So then the work we turned in would have mistakes in it, and I'd get a worse mark than I would have gotten if I'd done the work myself. Apart from gym class, all the worst marks I got in elementary school and middle school were for group work, where the rest of my group would drag me down by disregarding my correct answers.

I always maintained that this doesn't actually prepare us for working with others in the workplace, because in the workplace there's a boss. The boss makes the final decision, and has the ultimate responsibility for the outcome. If I think I have a better idea than my boss, I speak my piece and then she decides. If she decides against my idea and I end up being right, she's the one who faces the consequences and I have better credibility for next time. I don't face negative consequences when my good ideas are not accepted.

But this plastic bag thing is just like elementary school group work. I'm looking at nuances and natural user behaviour patterns and non-intrusive approaches to optimizing the usage cycle, but the popular kids just want to blindly barrel through like a bulldozer shouting "BAN IT!", just like my classmates in elementary school who disregarded my explanations of order of operations and insisted on blindly barrelling through our math questions in the order the numbers appeared. And, like in elementary school, I still have to suffer the consequences of their poor decisions even though I know a better way to do it.

This made me realize there was a flaw in my elementary school education. Our group work was supposed to teach us how to get work done as part of a group. This should include how to convince others that your better ideas are actually better than the popular ideas. But they never actually taught us how to do this. They just threw us in groups and assumed we'd learn. No teacher ever actually explained to us how to get around this blind devotion to popularity. They just operated under the assumption that we'd automatically figure out how to solve these problems from working in groups, but that never happened. And now I'm 31 years old and unable to convince my governments to take a nuanced approach to an issue that will affect everyone every day.

At this point, you might be thinking "Maybe you're just generally unconvincing and don't have good ideas." But I do have good ideas and am able to present them convincingly in many contexts. In the workplace and in group projects in university, my ideas have been used quite often, either based on their clear value or based on the credibility I've developed by demonstrating my skill and expertise. Family and friends most often at least give my ideas serious consideration. Mnemonics I created in high school language classes are still used to this day, and my teacher even gave them to other teachers to use in their classes. I've even been able to get my dentist to try out my ideas when working on me, and he now has a better way of taking impressions for patients with small mouths and strong gag reflexes.

But I've never figured out how to get past blind following of popularity. And I think my teachers did us all a disservice by assuming that just working in a group would teach us how to overcome these pitfalls.

Spiting Rob Ford: ur doin it wrong

Dear Toronto City Council:

I totally get wanting to stick it to Rob Ford. I'm no fan of the man myself. He came into work early on his very first day to cancel Transit City, which (as I explained to him in email shortly after his election) would hurt me more than any other government policy enacted in my lifetime. With that action, he lost any further benefit of the doubt I might have given him, and, before we even get into policy quality, I'm not above enjoying a little flicker of schadenfreude every time he's defeated.

However, by banning plastic bags in Toronto, you've just ensured his next election victory.

What you've done is introduced an inconvenience that people will notice every day, and that Ford opposed. Every single time someone ends up buying more groceries than they planned for; every single time someone opens the hall closet and their stash of those bulky annoying "reusable" bags that it's never actually convenient to use falls on their head; every single time someone needs to get shoes repaired, go to the farmer's market and buy clothes all in one trip; every single time someone runs out of garbage bags because they keep forgetting to buy garbage bags because they've never had to buy garbage bags before in their life because their grocery bags have always done the job, this irritant you've introduced will come up and slap them in the face.

As we know, Ford appeals to voters who don't closely follow the details of municipal politics, who don't have (or don't care to have) a broader view and are more likely to vote on things that affect them personally and directly. We saw this in the last election, with people swayed by groundless claims that a subway could be built quickly and cheaply, or by the prospect of saving a measly $60 a year on vehicle registration tax (an amount so negligible that they wouldn't even notice if $60 were pickpocketed from their wallet over the course of a year.) If spin and catchphrases and negligible cost savings could win him an election, imagine what a tangible daily irritant will do!

There are many things you could do to spite Rob Ford that will also make life easier and more fun for Torontonians. You could restore the library and bus services that were cut. You could build more bike lanes. You could extend Pride funding. You could build all of Transit City in its original form.

Or you could solve this whole plastic bag debacle by requiring stores to give away biodegradable plastic bags. As I've blogged about many many many many many times before, biodegradable bags would make environmentally optimal behaviour effortless. You don't have to remember to bring your reusable bags, you don't have to remember to buy garbage bags. You just go to a store and buy stuff without thinking about bags, and they give you a biodegradable bag. Then, when you get home, you reach for the nearest plastic bag to use for garbage, and it's biodegradable. You'd have to go out of your way to put plastic into the landfill. And, as an added bonus, it would spite Rob Ford because he's not so very into the City telling businesses how they can do business. You could also do so by extending the organic waste collection program to highrises, which will spite Rob Ford by costing money to implement, and do way more to address your ostensible goal of reducing the amount of waste that goes to landfills than a plastic bag ban would.

Journalism wanted: who are these people who throw plastic bags away and what are their motivations?

People who are opposed to plastic bags claim two different problems:

1. They fill up landfills.
2. They litter the streets.

Both these alleged problems baffle me, because I cannot fathom how they could possibly happen in any appreciable quantities.

1. Everyone I know uses their plastic shopping bags as garbage bags, or to clean up after their pets. If they didn't use plastic shopping bags for this purpose, they'd have to purchase garbage bags for the same purpose, and the total amount of plastic that ends up in the landfill would be the same. (Some people have stopped getting plastic shopping bags since they introduced the five cent fee, but they buy plastic garbage bags instead so the total landfill plastic they are generating is still the same.)

But since people keep complaining about plastic bags in landfills, that would suggest that a significant number of people are bringing their purchases home in plastic bags, throwing the bags straight into the garbage, and presumably buying separate garbage bags for garbage and to clean up after their pets.

Who are these people? Why do they do it this way? Why do they not find plastic shopping bags suitable for their garbage and pet clean-up needs?

2. When you have a plastic shopping bag, it's because you've just purchased something and need a bag in which to carry it home. You need your plastic shopping bag the entire time you are outdoors, because it is being used to carry your purchase. Your need for the plastic bag doesn't stop until you get home. So how on earth does a plastic bag turn into litter?

I understand how litter happens - you cease to need one of the things you are carrying for whatever reason, it's more trouble than it's worth to carry a specific thing around until you encounter an appropriate receptacle. But I cannot picture any situation in which this might happen with a plastic bag. I cannot envision how you might cease to need the plastic bag that contains your shopping. Throwing a plastic bag on the ground makes as much sense as emptying your purse of its contents and throwing the purse on the ground. That just...doesn't happen.

But enough people to reach my ears are complaining about plastic bags being litter. So who are these people littering with plastic bags, and what kind of situations are they in that they're carrying a plastic bag but don't need it? Or does this mean our landfills don't work?

I'd really like to see some actual answers from the people who do these things, because I just cannot picture how they happen. It would also be interesting to know what percentage of the population does these things.

What do urban planners do in the private sector, and why is this even an option?

From an article about why urban planners apparently don't want to work in Toronto:

He calls his interview in Toronto a “positive experience;” even so, he was smart to go back to Lotusland, where he works as a planner in the private sector, and as president of the Council for Canadian Urbanism.

and:

Councillor Adam Vaughan (Trinity-Spadina), a noted planning wonk, says Toronto’s lack of investment in its planning department turns off applicants.

“Every good young planner jumps ship because it’s better pay, better hours and more respect from clients if they work in the private sector.”

What on earth do urban planners do in the private sector? Why and how does private sector urban planning even exist? How can a private company plan a city? Doesn't urban planning inherently need to be done by the people with jurisdiction over planning the city?

It seems to me that private-sector urban planning would be analogous to a company whose business model is to barge in and tell people how they should renovate their houses. But, since these things exist, clearly I'm missing something. Can anyone explain to me why and how private-sector urban planning exists?

Dear Blogger: stop redirecting me to a profile creation page when I'm logged into a non-Blogger google account

I have more than one Google account. One of them I use for this blog, the others I use for other purposes. My other Google accounts don't have associated Blogger accounts because I don't use them for blogs.

Lately, when I go to blogger.com while signed into another Google account, I get this page (click to embiggen:



This page wants me to create either a Google+ account or a Blogger account associated with my other Google accounts. It doesn't give me an option to log out and log back in as my Blogger identity. To do that, I have to go back to google.ca and sign out.

But it gets worse.

When I try to read blog comments, I'm also getting redirected to the account creation page. This includes comments on my own blog, which I quite deliberately permit people to comment on without being logged in. While the radio buttons for commenting anonymously still exist, it won't let you get as far as the comment field without having a blogger account. (Readers with non-blogger Google accounts: you can still view the comments by clicking on the permalink in the post time at the bottom of each post.)

But it gets worse.

The cookies Google/Blogger are using are too persistent, even within the internal logic of this new strategy. When I try to go to blogger.com logged into the wrong account and then go back to google.ca to log out, blogger.com doesn't remember that I've logged out and takes me back to the account creation page. I have to go to google.ca, log out, log into the Google account associated with my blog, and then go back to blogger.com.

And this last time that I logged out to get the screenshot above, even that didn't work. I logged out on google.ca, logged in to my Blogger account, went to blogger.com, hit the account creation page even though I was already logged into an existing Blogger account, and ultimately had to go to my own blog and click on the Blogger icon on the top left to get into my Blogger dashboard. WTF?? Once I hit this horrible account creation screen, it starts popping up everywhere and hindering useability.

So, Blogger, here's what you need to do:

1. When people hit something they need a Blogger account for, like logging into blogger.com, give them a page where they can log in OR create an account.

2. When people hit something they don't need a Blogger account for, like viewing comments, don't try to make them to log in or create an account.

3. Make this screen less persistent, so it doesn't keep popping up illogically just because the user it it once.

This is hindering useability. It's a struggle to log into my own blog. Please fix it now.

Update: Now the same problem is happening with the "Sign In" link at the top right corner of my blog. I'm not signed in, I click on it to sign in, and it doesn't let me sign in, instead trying to get me to create an account under the other google identity I have logged in. #FAIL

Buying happiness: summer skirts and dresses

I always feel frumpy and gross in shorts, so every hot day for my entire adult life I've been wearing skirts and dresses exclusively. They have many advantages:

- They're cooler. The breeze can blow up in between my thighs (right up to my ribs if I'm wearing an empire-waisted dress). I can be fully covered with less of the material actually touching my body. This is the best-possible balance of all of the advantage of being naked and all of the advantages of being clothed.

- They're attractive and femme. When I was a kid, and our summer vacations had us playing tourist in cities, I always felt particularly awkward and out of place in my suburban tourist shorts and t-shirts and running shoes. But I always feel like a proper grown-up city lady in my summer skirts and dresses.

- They make it very easy to look pulled together. In almost any of my summer outfits (with the exception of my long cotton hippy skirts), all I have to do is put my hair up (default for the summer anyway), choose a pair of shoes with heels (which I almost always wear anyway), put on big sunglasses (which I always wear outdoors in the sun anyway) and I look very close to glam. My "It's hot out and I feel fat" dress would fit right in at a wedding with the right hair/makeup/accessories, but it also wouldn't look out of place walking down the beach. I even wore it the second time we saw Eddie Izzard, after discovering at the last minute that I was too bloated to comfortably wear the outfit I'd originally planned, and I felt confident that I looked Eddie-worthy. None of my cool-weather outfits are that versatile!

- They're FUN! Skirts twirl and blow around in the breeze, and I can comfortably carry off flower prints in skirts and dresses that I'd feel frumpy wearing on a blouse with pants.

I've learned that I don't get tired of skirts and dresses (I'm still regularly wearing the skirts I bought when I first started my current job nine years ago), so whenever I see one I like, I try it on, and if it's reasonably flattering I buy it. My skirts pair nicely with plain fitted t-shirts and camis in solid colours, and the look is classic enough that I don't need to worry about any one piece going out of style. I still hate hot weather, but I never feel ugly and gross any more thanks to my summer skirts and dresses.

Analogy for my non-thankfulness philosophy

I previously blogged my theory that we should not feel thankful for basic human rights or basic standard of living, instead feeling entitled to such things and taking them for granted.

Today my shower gave me an analogy:

Suppose I'm about to get married, and you ask me why I was going to marry that particular person. Starry-eyed, with little hearts circling around my head, I answer "Because he never hits me!"

That's not a good reason, now is it? Of course, it is something one should expect in a spouse. But it's so baseline that we should be taking it absolutely for granted and not even noticing it.

Now let's suppose I'm so genuinely thankful that my husband doesn't hit me that I express this at the slightest provocation. My husband might start to develop the sense that he's doing me a great favour by not hitting me, so he might feel less inclined to do me other favours like not flushing the toilet when I'm in the shower, or wearing headphones if he's going to stay up gaming on a night before I need to get up early for work the next morning. If a friend asks me for relationship advice, I might say something like "Does he hit you? No? Then what more can you ask for?", completely disregarding the fact that she's more comfortable and relaxed when she's alone than when her man's around. If I have a child, I might try to instill what I consider good relationship sense in her by talking about how thankful I am that my husband doesn't hit me and how important that is in a relationship. And, by doing this, I might be making her feel like she's being too picky for rejecting a prospective spouse whose life goals are incompatible, because she feels like she should just be grateful he doesn't hit her.

In short, what influence I have would be lowering the expectations of the people around me, encouraging them to accept lower standards. Whereas if I take for granted that he doesn't hit me, I'll instead be gushing starry-eyed about how how he's the best friend I've ever had and how I'm a better version of myself when I'm around him. What influence I have would encourage those around me to seek out similar compatibility in their relationships. And my hypothetical child, having grown up in a context where being hit by one's spouse is unheard of, would react with utter disbelief the first time she hears of such a thing. "He HIT you??? WTF? People just don't DO that to people they love!"

While The Men Watch is a flawed concept

Recently in the news: something called While The Men Watch, which purports to be sports commentary for women who aren't into sports.Some argue that it's sexist because it assumes that men are watching sports and women aren't, but there's an even bigger flaw in its core concept:

The flaw is the idea that you need special programming just because your partner has appointment television that you're not interested in.

Most people are competent adults with more than enough things that they have to do and want to do. If your partner is watching something on TV that you're not into, it's not like you're sitting there twiddling your thumbs. All the things that you have to do and want to do still exist.

For example, yesterday after work I made some very yummy pasta with asparagus and alfredo, watched a couple episodes of HIMYM (I'm catching up on the series lately), read the newspapers, caught up on my twitter feed and my google reader, sent a message of support to Eddie Izzard and checked out what kind of press he's getting after having to abandon his latest marathon challenge, watched the new Springsteen video, chatted with a friend and admired her latest baby videos (My Favourite Little Person, who is now six months old, can eat corn on the cob despite not having any teeth!), stripped the bed and washed the sheets, indulged in some fanfiction, enjoyed a few chapters of the Eve Dallas book I'm currently rereading, and played Sims a bit. No big deal, just a regular at-home evening, unwinding from the workday.

And all of that is exactly what I'd be doing if I had a partner watching a hockey game in my living room. And all of that is perfectly targeted to my needs and interests. Why do they think they can do better? Why do they think we think we need them to?

Opposition to a casino in one's own neighbourhood is a public space issue

In the news today: a poll showing that people are more likely to oppose a casino if it's in their neighbourhood.

The media is generally interpreting this as either NIMBYism, or as a sign that people don't want gambling to happen near them.

But I don't think that's the whole story. I think it has more to do with the physical structure of a casino and its interface with the streetscape.

I have the impression that the casino they're talking about is meant to be rather large, to draw tourists from all over and also to host live performances. Casinos are traditionally designed to be windowless, so gamblers are less aware of the passage of time. So this has me (and, likely, your average citizen) picturing a big windowless box with a giant parking lot - a dead zone without eyes on the street replacing what is currently a bustling street full of shops and patios.

That sort of thing doesn't fit in most Toronto neighbourhoods. Most of our streets are already full of homes and businesses where people live and work and shop. When we picture a casino in our neighbourhood, we wonder what healthy, thriving buildings that we use every day would have to be torn down. I blogged before about how I find myself hating a development that plans to tear down businesses that I use all the time, and this is for a developer who's building a condo in my neighbourhood - exactly what I'm in the market for! Imagine how much more opposition would come to tearing down things people use all the time to build a casino, which most people use very rarely, if ever.

The locations being discussed for a casino (Ontario Place, Woodbine, etc.) are already separate from the streetscape and the day-to-day functioning of neighbourhoods. Either there's enough space to build it without tearing anything down, or they'd be replacing one tourist-magnet entertainment complex with another tourist-magnet entertainment complex. It has no impact on most people's day-to-day lives.

But if you take the hypothetical scenario into the respondent's neighbourhood, suddenly an implicit part of the question is "Do you want to replace some existing functional aspect of your neighbourhood with a casino?"

Asking people if they want a casino in their neighbourhood is akin to asking if they want a racetrack, or an amusement park, or a zoo, or a football stadium, or an airport, or a large hadron collider. If you say no, it isn't necessarily because you're opposed to any of these things as general concepts. It may well just be because you're already full.

Why does textspeak still exist?

My cellphone is five years old, and it still has predictive text (T9). Today's phones are equipped with full keyboards and autocorrect, which is even better. These technologies both make it easier to write real words than to write fake words. If you type a real word, it will guess the word for you and you don't even always have to type all the letters. But if you want to type a fake word, you have to teach the device the word.

More and more communications are being typed on phones as opposed to keyboards, which means that more and more communications are being written with a device that makes it easier to type a real word than a fake word.

So what's up with people who still use textspeak for everything?

I know that sometimes you need to shorten things to keep it under 140 characters for platforms like twitter or SMS, but on sites like Failbook or Damn You Autocorrect I keep seeing people who are using textspeak systematically, for everything, even on platforms that don't have a character limit.

Why are they putting in all the extra effort?

Things They Should Invent: require advertisers to make good on any offers they spam you with

From time to time I receive a flyer in my mailbox from my telecommunications provider, promoting a service I already use at a lower price than I'm currently getting. The fine print says this offer is only available to new customers.

I think this should be illegal. I think, because they arranged to have the offer put directly in my personal mailbox, the offer should be available to me personally. Any company that contacts you directly (by mail, phone, email, direct message, or any other medium) with an offer should be required to give you that offer.

This wouldn't necessarily have to apply to mass media advertising, like on TV or in newspapers. But if each individual has their own copy of the ad that has been sent directly to them personally and landed in physical or virtual space that is under their personal control or their household's control - so that you can say "This is my copy of this ad" - the advertiser should be required to make good on the offer.

Questions Downton Abbey needs to answer

I'm finally caught up with Downton Abbey, and there are some things I'm wondering.

1. How is Ethel supporting herself? Ethel was fired from her job as a housemaid when she was caught having sex with one of the soldiers. She and her baby are shown living in a tiny, dingy cottage and being brought food from Downton Abbey by Mrs. Hughes. She's clearly shown as impoverished and unemployable, so how is she even still living? We have seen hints of mechanisms for people to receive food, clothing and toys through charity, but how is she paying her rent? Who is her landlord who agreed to rent a house to someone unemployable, and why?

2. What's Sybil's day-to-day life now like? The Christmas Special mentioned that Sybil had married Branson and is now pregnant, which also means she's living at best a middle-class life after having grown up in the manor. How is she adjusting? Even though she learned some basic cooking and housekeeping when she trained as a nurse, there must be some things she wasn't expecting or wasn't prepared for - a Sybil equivalent of the Dowager Countess's "What is a weekend?" moment.

3. When are the maids going to get new dresses? In one of the post-war episodes, the ladies mention that more recent fashions (shorter skirts, less fitted bodices, corsets irrelevant) are more comfortable and better for moving around in than old fashions. "The old clothes were all very well if one spent the day on a chaise longue, but if one wants to get anything done, the new clothes are much better." But the maids' and the nurses' uniforms are still the old dress, with the full skirt and the hourglass figure designed with corsets in mind (even if they aren't actually wearing corsets underneath). I know that people didn't just replace perfectly functional clothes back in those days, but it does seem rather foolish to have the people who have to actually do physical labour wearing less practical clothes than the nobility.

Why are we resistant to the idea that we might have privilege?

Reading Scalzi's Lowest Difficulty Setting and the follow-up got me thinking. People are generally quite resistant to the idea that they have any sort of privilege. Their (and my) automatic, knee-jerk response tends to be "What? No I don't!"

But why is this?

I can tell you why I'm resistant to it. I'm resistant to it because for the vast majority of my life I was being given the message that I'm lucky about and should be thankful for things I didn't care about, many of which I didn't even like. For example, my parents would take us on stressfully long family vacations - whole summers lost to fighting off carsickness while having zero privacy - and tell me that I should be grateful that I get to travel. When we were travelling, my parents tried to save money by never eating at restaurants, instead taking us to a supermarket and telling us to pick out what we wanted to eat for dinner. But we never had a fridge or a stove or a microwave (and often not even a kettle), or even dishes or utensils. I'd ask if we can go to a restaurant because I'd been yearning for days for a nice big salad and a steaming plate of pasta, and they'd tell me I should be thankful we have food at all. My father went through this phase where he calculated that if they hadn't had kids they could drive a Mercedes instead of a Honda so he told us that we should be thankful they made that sacrifice and decided to have us. But, on top of the fact that I'm intrinsically nihilistic, this was during the worst of my bullying; I, and everyone else involved, would have been far happier if they'd gone for the Mercedes instead. (Even now, if I hadn't been born I obviously wouldn't be around to care, and I seriously doubt my parents would be postmenopausally regretting not having an overly-introverted, socially-awkward daughter with a non-lucrative career path and a lifestyle that rejects their values.)

So, because of all this, any sort of hint or insinuation that I have some sort of privilege or advantage or some other thing I should be thankful for evokes this feeling of all this stressful shit that I didn't even want to deal with in the first place piling up my tetris blocks and if they'd just left me alone I could go be alone in my room with a book and be much happier.

But these are all my own personal neuroses, stemming directly from specific feelings and experiences in my own life. None of this is broadly applicable to the general population.

So where's it coming from for everyone else?

Plot hole in my childhood

All too often, my parents dragged us along to do boring grownup stuff like shop for new windows for the house or pick out appliances. There was nothing for us to do - we wouldn't have known how to participate even if we'd wanted to - so we just had to stand around for hours and hours while they had boring conversations we didn't understand about stuff we didn't care about.

So why didn't they tell us to bring a book?

You've got two kids who don't get along with each other, being dragged along for time-consuming boring grownup stuff, both of whom are voracious readers. We would have been quite content to sit quietly and read. In fact, the reason why I resented being dragged along so much is because I really just wanted to be alone in my room with a book.

What is gained by having your kids be bored rather than quietly amused?

Wherein visualization works for me for the only time in my life

A few weeks ago, I saw an absolutely disgusting image on TV. It caused me to switch off the TV, curl up in a fetal position, and stim. I'm tense and wringing my hands just writing this. The image was burned in my brain, and I knew it would be there forever. I knew it would sit there haunting me as I tried to fall asleep and it would come to me in my dreams for years to come.

This was the worst possible time for this to happen. It was during the few days when I thought I was going to be buying a condo and was nervous about doing something so big and important and completely unknown to me, which also coincided with the busiest time at work when everything absolutely had to get done by the day before Condo Day. I was carrying an unhealthy amount of stress and nerves as it was, and literally didn't have room to handle this disgusting image.

I had to do something, but there was nothing to be done. So I did something that I knew would never work: picturing the image as printed on a piece of paper, I reached out with my hands, mimed crumpling up the piece of paper, and threw it away over my shoulder.

It worked. Temporarily.

Then it came back.

So I crumpled it up and threw it away again.

I had to do this maybe half a dozen times, but I was eventually able to fall asleep without the image haunting me or invading my dreams.

The next day and the days that followed, the image kept popping into my head. I kept crumpling it up and throwing it away. It never stayed away permanently, but it always went away for a little while. After some time passed, the image had faded somewhat. It's still present (I never, ever, ever forget things that are visceral or emotionally-laden) but it has faded far more than I would have expected it to by now.

The visualization shouldn't have worked. I don't even believe in visualization. But it worked.

But I don't think it will work again unless I'm in similar distress. I read a while back about a concept called a "psychological immune system", where your brain protects itself against things that are just too much for it. That's never happened to me before, but I think that's what was happening here. But, for some bizarre reasons, it worked this one time. Freaky.

Recommendations

I'm filling out a customer satisfaction for a grocery store, and it asks me how likely I am to recommend the store to family or friends.  And, of course, the answer is "highly unlikely".  Not because there's anything wrong with the store, but because why would I recommend a grocery store?  I go there because they're near me and sell groceries.  If you're nearby, I'll say "That's where the nearest grocery store is."  If you're not nearby, I'll assume you want to go to one of the multiple comparable stores that's closer to you.

A website that sells undergarments contains very detailed descriptions of its bras, and solicits user reviews. The reviews include a checkbox for whether you'd recommend that bra to others.  But why would I recommend a bra to others?  Even if it works fantastically for me, that's meaningless to other people.  It's such a person item that I would never presume that my experience is in any way applicable to others, or vice versa.

This is something I've been noticing an awful lot lately - reviews and feedback asking you if you'd recommend the thing in question to others, without any regard for whether recommending that genre of thing is even appropriate or relevant.  What's up with that?

False goals

One bit of conventional wisdom that has been omnipresent since I first heard of it in middle school Guidance class is that you should set goals. They gave us a worksheet where we had to write down five short-term goals, five medium-term goals, and five long-term goals.  So I dutifully wrote down things like completing my science project, passing my next piano exam, and graduating.

But those weren't actual goals.  Those were just things I was supposed to be doing at the time.

For most of my life, I haven't had actual goals.  I wanted to finish high school and go to university because...that's what people usually do at that age, and I couldn't think of anything better.  I wanted to get a job because...I didn't have one.  The vast majority of things I could have described as goals were just following the script.  I achieved these goals, of course, but that's because I basically took something I was already going to achieve within an appropriate timeframe by proceeding through life normally and thought of it as a goal.

It's not like I'm following the script at the expense of my real goals either.  Most of the time there isn't actually anything there.  For most of my life, there's been nothing on my bucket list.  There's nothing on it now.  There have only ever been two things on my bucket list, and no more than one has ever been on the list at a given time, with large gaps before, in between, and after. (The two things were losing my virginity and seeing Eddie Izzard - which points to another problem: my genuine goals are rather more dependent on the cooperation of others than typical goals are.)  Most of the stuff that I might put on a goal list (buy a condo? get promoted?) is stuff where it wouldn't hurt if I didn't achieve it.

Right now I'm reading a book on success factors (which I might blog about once I'm done), and it talks about how people who are highly goal-oriented tend to be more successful than people who are less goal-oriented.  And when I googled some terminology found in that book, the entire first page of google results was articles talking about how you won't ever be successful in life unless you very deliberately set goals and then work to achieve them.

But what if your goals aren't even real?  How does that fall into this goal-setting philosophy?

How does the Crown have access to people's mental health diagnoses?

A series of cases occupying the country’s highest courts has cast a spotlight on Crown attempts to probe the personal backgrounds of prospective jurors, potentially undermining the sanctity of the jury system.

[...]

The most contentious case involves a 2007 murder trial in Barrie, Ont., where the Crown was privy to private, background information about the mental health, age and driving records of many of the 280 citizens in the jury pool.  

Important question: how did the Crown come about information about people's mental health? That's medical records.  Does the Crown also know that I have GERD?  Does it know that I had strep throat at xmas?

And here's why everyone should be worried about it, even people who have never sought mental health care: in my experience with mental health care, I didn't just talk to my mental health care provider about the specific issues that are in the DSM.  I also talked to them about my parents' personality traits and my partner's sexual proclivities and the pros and cons of being friends with my friends.  So if mental health information is somehow available to the Crown, any information about your interpersonal relationships with anyone you might know who has sought mental health care should logically be available by the same means.

False savings

For consumable products that I use regularly, I tend to clip coupons and watch for sales. However, I've noticed that a lot of coupons (and even some sales) are useless, because the products in question are regularly on sale for significantly less.

For example, I recently had a coupon to save a dollar on a multipack of kleenex (not necessarily Kleenex-brand kleenex, but some brand or another). However, even after the coupon, the price came to approximately a dollar a box. Meanwhile, between the two grocery stores and two drug stores I frequent, there's always some brand of kleenex on sale somewhere for 49 cents a box.

Today I saw a beauty product I use on sale for $8.99, so I bought three.  The receipt told me I'd saved $12, since the regular price at that store was $12.99.  However, the regular price of the same product at a different store is $9.99.  So while I did save money and it was the right time to stock up, I only saved $3.

I'm always finding coupons to save a few dollars on certain brands of make-up that I use.  And those brands of make-up are always about half price on ebay.

I don't go out of my way to comparison-shop, I just happen to live and work in high-density neighbourhoods containing several stores that sell things I regularly buy.  But even then, it took me about seven years of living on my own before I started noticing these patterns.  I can imagine how people in lower-density areas or people with children to take care of in addition to doing their job will be even less likely to notice these patterns.

How much extra money are stores making because customers fall for these false savings?   And what other false savings might I not be noticing?

My child-self's problem with princesses

Some people think the presence of princess characters in children's media are problematic, thinking that they might lead kids to value being pretty and waiting around to be rescued by Prince Charming.  For me they were problematic for other reasons, but I couldn't articulate it until I read a blogger's experience interviewing Julie Andrews about princesses in children's media.

And so I asked Julie Andrews (JULIE ANDREWS!), and Emma, who happened to be there with her own young daughter, how we raise strong, confident independent girls in a culture that’s so saturated with princesses.
I asked really nicely, I promise.
And their answers were terrific.
Because they didn’t talk about tiaras. Or even princes. They talked about values.
-Princesses are involved in charitable causes
-Princesses are kind
-Princesses are patrons of the arts
-Princesses make their friends feel good about themselves.

This was problematic for me when I was a kid. When I was very young, I didn't perceive the key characteristics of the Disney princesses and other similar fictional characters to be that they were pretty or that they were rescued by their prince.  I perceived it to be that they were Very Very Good.  The general moral that I got from the stories is that girls who are Very Very Good - they were patient, they were cheerful, animals loved them, they were proactively helpful, they never lost their temper - got to live Happily Ever After.

And this made me feel bad about myself because I'm not Very Very Good.  I'm not terribly cheerful - usually the best I can do is copacetic. I try hard to be good, but sometimes I lose my temper.  I don't know how to make people feel good about themselves.  I'm not good at seeing ways to be proactively helpful.  I'm not bad and I'm not mean, but the best I can do is just quietly stay out of everyone's way and not hurt anything.  I'll never have what it takes to be Very Very Good.  So I'll never get to live Happily Ever After.

On top of that, it wasn't just the princesses who were Very Very Good. Most, if not all, of the female protagonists I encountered at a young age were Very Very Good.  Since I'm not Very Very Good, that made me feel insecure in my femininity.  As I've blogged about before, I take after my father, I'm not very feminine-looking and was even less so without the benefit of puberty and makeup, and before I grew my hair long I was constantly mistaken for a boy.  My parents discouraged me from wearing skirts and (in a way that's rather similar to today's parents hand-wringing about princesses) tried to encourage me towards less girly pastimes and media consumption.  This led me into this weird cycle of self-loathing where I thought my parents didn't want me to do girly stuff not just because I'm not pretty enough but because I'm not Very Very Good, and I also thought I was going to turn into a boy because I'm not pretty enough and because of other misunderstandings of how human anatomy works, and I though that my inability to be Very Very Good was a sign that I must really be a boy.  But I didn't want to be a boy, I want to be a girl!  (And for those of you just tuning in, I'm female-born and cisgendered.)

Unfortunately, I don't think this trend of Very Very Good protagonists is going to go away.  Adults want kids to be good, so it makes sense that they'd keep producing children's media where Very Very Good = Happily Ever After.

But children's media could help produce more children who are closer to Very Very Good by teaching kids how to be Very Very Good, perhaps by showing characters who are working on it.  How do you make your friends feel good about themselves?  How do you be patient and never lose your temper?  How do you be proactively helpful? The stories I read as a kid portrayed these characteristics as innate, but they're actually things people can learn and work on.

There's recent research (I'm pretty sure I read it in Malcolm Gladwell, but the specific source escapes me) that kids who think good grades are the result of hard work get better outcomes than kids who think good grades are the result of innate intelligence. I think something similar could happen if virtue were presented as the result of work rather than as innate, as something you have to think about rather than something that comes automatically.

Teach me about the Canadian Forces drug plan

Reading this article, the following description of a drug program the Canadian Forces is considering cutting struck me as odd:

Within government, officials have expressed concern for years about the rising cost of the wildly popular Viagra program, which saw members limited to six of the little blue pills a month — at a cost of between $15 and $22 per pill.

The article gives the impression that the Canadian Forces have a Viagra program that is separate from their ordinary drug plan.  Is this actually the case, or are the numbers quoted above just what happens when you apply the ordinary drug plan to Viagra?

In any case, I think it's inappropriate for Viagra (or any other drug) to get special treatment.  It shouldn't have a special program, it shouldn't be specifically cut back.  Choices of specific medications should be between doctor and patient, and drug plans should cover what the doctor prescribes.  To prioritize or pick on specific drugs because they make someone's inner 12-year-old snicker makes you no better than Arizona. 

Things They Should Invent: give the collections of closed government libraries to Google

Apparently they're closing government libraries.  Which is a problem in and of itself, but more distressing is that some of the collections might get thrown out:

Transport Canada's library is now closed, too, with seven workers informed Monday their jobs are obsolete. They will now spend months packing up and told CBC News much of the collection will soon be in the trash.

[...]

Some archives are being tossed because there is no central library and so many departments are closing their libraries.

Solution: any materials that would otherwise be thrown out should be given to Google. 

Yes, giving public assets to a private corporation is generally not a good practice.  However, if they are otherwise going to go into the trash, giving them to Google will at least preserve the information.  It won't be properly catalogued like in a library, but they can scan and index it like they do with Google Books, and at least it will be searchable. 

They could also probably be convinced to index the English and French versions of documents in parallel, since that will add to the corpus they use for Google Translate (which definitely needs the help - I recently saw it translate "Bill Cosby" as "projet de loi Cosby"!)

From the point of view of Google, this would be a major donation, so I'm sure the government could negotiate an agreement whereby in exchange for the donation Google commits to indexing it and making it searchable and accessible to everyone.  It would cost nothing, and protect our public assets rather than destroying them.

The Queen's hats

When I was younger, I thought the Queen looked disproportionately frumpy, by which I mean that, even taking into account her age and the styles of the day and her need to dress conservatively, she looked frumpier than she should given all these factors.  But in the past decade or so, I stopped thinking this.

Looking at this retrospective of her hats, I realize why.  Brimmed hats are much more flattering on the Queen than brimless hats, but it seems she's only started wearing brimmed hats in the past decade or so.

Based on what I've read of the Queen's fashion strategy, this is probably for utilitarian purposes. She wants people to be able to see her, and a brimless hat shows her face much better.  Unfortunately, it also adds a dozen years and makes her look mean.

However, in the past decade or so, the royal milliners seem to have solved the engineering problem of designing a brimmed hat that still shows enough of the Queen's face so she can be photographed.  Well done, but I'm kind of surprised that it took 50 years to achieve that.

Best story ever

A while back, I stumbled upon a blog by a woman who was raised in a fundamentalist christian household and grew up to marry a minister and have lots of children in quick succession.  I found the author sympathetic and engaging, and was soon reading it regularly because I was just so interested in a life that's so different from my own. 

This blogger has recently posted the most amazing story - and the most romantic real-life love story - I've ever heard of. I highly recommend reading the whole thing, start to finish.

How to cool the Ontario housing market without hurting ordinary people

Recently in the news: Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney wants to cool the housing market.

This made me think of subsection 6(2) of the Ontario Residential Tenancies Act, which states:

(2)  Sections 104, 111, 112, 120, 121, 122, 126 to 133, 165 and 167 do not apply with respect to a rental unit if,

(a) it was not occupied for any purpose before June 17, 1998;

(b) it is a rental unit no part of which has been previously rented since July 29, 1975; or

(c) no part of the building, mobile home park or land lease community was occupied for residential purposes before November 1, 1991. 2006, c. 17, s. 6 (2).

Section 120 of the ORTA applies to the guideline rent increase, which means that properties that were built or started being rented out after 1998/1975/1991 (as applicable) are exempt from the rent increase guideline, and the landlords can raise the rent by however much they want.

So to cool the housing market, they should either remove this exemption, or place a time limit on it like there was in 1992.

From the point of view of an ordinary person hoping to break into the housing market simply to purchase a place to live in, the problem with the housing market is investors. They have lots of money and go in buying up condos en masse to rent out and perhaps later flip, taking them away from those of us who need to be prudent and evaluate a unit from the perspective of "How would I feel about pouring my life's savings into this and living here for the rest of my life?"

If the exemption from the guideline rent increase is eliminated, rental properties will be less attractive investments. It wouldn't make them completely unattractive investments, but a limit in how much you can increase rent where no such limit existed before should cool the market a bit by making investors more cautious.

But this will not make condos any less appealing to ordinary buyers looking for a home for themselves.  It will simply take some of the investors out of the market and leave more units for the rest of us.

It will also have the advantage of improving long-term affordability of newer (and therefore better-quality and more energy-efficient) rental housing, thereby making better housing more accessible for everyone.

Metro has changed its cash registers for the worse

Metro recently changed their cash register software.  Previously, when a sale item was scanned, the regular price and the discount showed up on the screen immediately.  Now, the discounts don't show up until all the items have been rung in.

This is a problem.  It's no longer possible for a cashier to scan an item to see if it's on sale, or for customers to check that what they think on sale is in fact on sale until all the items are scanned and packed. And if it turns out the item isn't actually on sale and you don't want it (or don't want as many) at the full price, the process of unscanning and returning them will take even longer if left to the end of the checkout process.

This must also be annoying for the cashiers.  I wouldn't be surprised if, several times a day, customers go "Wait, I thought that was on sale!" and the cashier has to stop what they're doing and reassure the customer that it is in fact on sale and the discount will show up at the end of the transaction.  And I'm sure some more demanding customers won't be happy with that explanation and arguments will ensue. 

This change has no appreciable benefits and causes mild to moderate annoyance and inconvenience for everyone involved.  I have no idea what Metro was thinking when they introduced this system, but I hope it's undoable.

Who are these people and why do they live in Toronto?

“I know Rob Ford. He is a far more tolerant individual than many of the people attacking him. Ford’s problem isn’t homophobia, nor does he have a hidden agenda to take away gay rights. His concern is that his participation in a Pride event, particularly the parade, will tick off his political base. But Ford needs to remember his base consists of a lot more people than social conservatives.” - Adrienne Batra, former press secretary

The precedent of the Mayor of Toronto participating in Pride is over 20 years old.  If there are in fact people who are so vexed by a mayor doing this part of the mayor's job that they wouldn't vote for that person for the job of mayor, why are they still living here?  Nearly everywhere else has a smaller, quieter Pride (and there are probably still some smaller towns that don't have a Pride).  Surely they'd be more comfortable elsewhere?

What if Barrett's esophagus isn't actually a problem?

I previously came up with the idea that medical science should come up with a way to install stomach lining in the esophagus to protect it against acid reflux.

In some reading I was doing today, I discovered that the changes to the esophagus that constitute Barrett's esophagus are actually making it closer to stomach lining than to esophageal lining.

So what if Barrett's esophagus isn't a problem?  What if it's just the esophageal equivalent of a callous?

The reason why Barrett's esophagus is even a thing is that it's considered a precancerous condition, in that a large percentage of esophageal cancer patients have Barrett's esophagus.  Because of this, a diagnosis of Barrett's esophagus triggers a more active esophageal cancer screening protocol.

But I really am beginning to suspect that Barrett's esophagus itself isn't actually a problem, it's just a correlation.  Fortunately, science does seem to be working in that direction.  Most of the papers I see recently emphasize how few Barrett's esophagus patients (usually stated at only 1%) go on to develop esophageal cancer, and science does seem to be looking at it as correlation instead of causation.  Hopefully researchers will focus on better pinpointing the actual root cause that differentiates that 1% within the next 10 years and spare me any unnecessary scoping.

Mnemonic wanted

Does anyone know a mnemonic for correctly identifying when to use "consist of" and when to use "consist in"?

I know the theoretical difference between the two.  "Consist of" is "to be made up of"; "consist in" is "to have as its main or essential part".  The problem is that every single time I try to apply that logic to a sentence, including the sentences used by credible reference books as examples for "consist in", my logic comes up with "the meaning there is clearly "to be made up of", therefore the correct answer is "consist of."

Anyone know any tricks for landing on the right answer when you're at a philosophical impasse?

How M 3-12 is setting back all of society

The real problem with M 3-12 is encapsulated in this image:

I've recently been working on my primary client's two most important projects of the year.  There are some awkward-to-translate phrases that keep popping up, and I'd really like to reflect and brainstorm on them and come up with something that sounds smooth and idiomatic in English to improve my client's credibility in the eyes of the English-language audience they're trying to convince.

I heard on the radio this morning that Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney thinks the housing market needs to be cooled.  My shower gave me a few ideas that might actually cool the housing market without harming ordinary citizens and would solve some other problems that exist in the Toronto housing market at the same time, and I really want to get that refined and blogged.

I've been reading about various strategies used in schools today to make kids less inclined to bully, and I think some of them might not work and might actually do more harm than good.  I want to sit down and work on explaining my child-self's visceral "That won't work!" using my adult articulateness and post it here so the people with the ability to change anti-bullying programs can google upon it and keep it in mind when refining their programs.

But I don't have the time and mental energy to give to all these things, because I have to give that time and energy to fighting for the same scope of medical care that was available to my mother when she was my age.  My mother!  Who is old enough to collect CPP!

When reading the first few paragraphs of this post, you were probably thinking "So what? That's nothing special.  Everyone has ideas that they want to work on and perfect."

And that's my point exactly.

Everyone has a few ideas in their head that they want to work on.  Most people probably have more than I do, since I'm so far on the introvert side of the scale.  We think about these ideas, let them fester, brainstorm, journal, talk them over, try things out, and eventually arrive at something that's new or innovative or an improvement on the status quo or otherwise helps make our little corner of the world better.  That's how society progresses.

But now that we suddenly have to put all this time and energy and effort into a tedious rehashing of what was settled a generation ago, we have less time and energy and effort to put into the new and improved and innovative.  And this is slows down the progress we make as a society.

Simple demographics show that the majority of Canadians are potentially affected by or care about whether abortion is available when needed.  Even if you are one of the few who isn't affected and doesn't care, you can still see how it will slow us down to have so many people have to drop everything and focus on the old and redundant.

 With some regularity, the news reports that Canada has to improve its productivity and innovation.  How can we be expected to do this when those in power keep forcing us to rehash the same old thing?  This is detrimental to everyone, regardless if they'll ever need to end a pregnancy.

How to make me hate a new condo in my neighbourhood

I've always been baffled by the trend of dissing condos, and enthusiastically embraced every condo they've built in my neighbourhood in the near-decade I've lived here. They're homes! For people! My neighbourhood is awesome, so I'm glad that more people will get to enjoy it. What makes my neighbourhood awesome is that its density allows all kinds of different businesses and amenities to thrive here, so more people will create more demand and lead to even more new and interesting businesses and amenities. And, on top of all this, one of those condos might end up being just right for me.

But I was rather pissed off when I saw signage today suggesting that this is actually getting built. So why does this one condo piss me off when all the other thrill me? Because of the following quote from the developer, taken from the article linked above:

“What a ratty block of what I consider to be one of the premier addresses in the city,” says Mr. Sonshine.

The architecture of that "ratty block" isn't particularly ratty. It's your standard 19th century Yonge St. lowrises and doesn't deserve to be maligned any more than any other part of the city does. But, more importantly, the content of that "ratty block" is an integral part of my neighbourhood. I use the businesses and amenities in that block all the time, and they're a key part of my sense of "I love this neighbourhood, it has everything!"

All the other condos, including the much-NIMBYed Minto towers, have presented the neighbourhood as a feature. But (as demonstrated by the article as a whole, not just that one quote), this developer seems to have less respect for the existing neighbourhood, seeing it as something to be knocked down and built over. And if they don't respect our neighbourhood, will they do anything to find a home for our local pub in the new development? Or the used bookstore? Or the kitchen store? Or that one video store that's actually good? Losing these businesses would make our neighbourhood less convenient, which is a major blow in a neighbourhood that we chose for its convenience. All of this makes me - a pro-condo neighbourhood resident - inclined to oppose the building.

And it also makes me - in the market for a condo in the neighbourhood - disinclined to even consider buying from this developer.

More information please: why do people who think catechism is inappropriate for children send their kids to Catholic school

Recently in the news: parents who are opposed to a Catholic school brochure that describes homosexuals as "objectively disordered". My (and, likely, many others') first reaction was to roll my eyes. The "objectively disordered" wording comes from the Catechism of the Catholic Church. So my first thought was "If you don't like the teaching of the Catholic church maybe you shouldn't be sending your kids to Catholic school!" But this is a glaringly obvious question - the first one that comes to mind when one recognizes or learns that the objectionable phrase is taken directly from catechism. So why did the reporter not ask that question and put the answer in the article? It does mention in passing that one of the mothers is Catholic, but that actually raises more question than it answers. If she's Catholic, she's more likely to already be familiar with the catechism, which means that she's identifying with this religion despite the fact that it considers her "objectively disordered". But she doesn't consider this teaching of the religion she identifies with appropriate for her kids? What leads a person to lead their life in such a self-contradictory way? It makes the parents look foolish to present these contradictions without explanations, and the Star is doing them a disservice by printing this story without answering these questions.

Things They Should Study: most essential petroleum derivatives

I previously theorized that we should stop using petroleum for fuel so that our planet's limited petroleum reserves will be available for plastic. After all, lots of important things (computers, sterile medical equipment, hygienic food packaging) are made of plastic.

Someone should study and quantify this. Which things that are made of plastics and other petroleum derivatives most need to be made of these non-renewable materials? Do we even have a way to manufacture computers or keep syringes sterile without plastic? Is it possible but unwieldly? Is it possible and reasonably user-friendly but expensive? Or are there whole functionalities that we'd lose out on without plastic?

Now that I think about it, they could do this with fuel too. Electric cars are possible, renewable power generation is possible, but do we even have a renewable option for jet fuel? If so, how feasible is it?

Once they've done all the research and quantified everything, they can put it all in order of the importance of petroleum to the product and the importance of the product to society, and we'll have a better idea of whether we're really making the best use of our non-renewable resources. They could also use this information to target research into finding renewable replacement for petroleum derivatives. If, for example, there's some key medical application for which we don't yet have any alternative, maybe they should work on that first.

Random thoughts on Downton Abbey and noblesse oblige

1. Some people have criticized Downton Abbey for having the nobility be kindly and decent towards their servants, saying that this didn't reflect real-life conditions for many servants at the time. However, the Crawleys' sense of noblesse oblige does have an enormous advantage in this work of fiction, in that it allows other stories to be told. A cruel relationship between the nobles and the servants would be the primary conflict, and therefore that story would insist upon being told. And this story would have to be told at the expense of the smaller stories we all enjoy like the courtship of Anna and Bates, Gwen's attempts to become a secretary, or the day Mrs. Hughes' old beau came back and proposed. It wouldn't be Downton Abbey then, it would be Dickens. And if we wanted Dickens, we'd read Dickens.

Harry Potter wouldn't work the way it does if Hogwarts was an abusive boarding school or if Harry hadn't promptly made good friends. Ugly Betty wouldn't work the way it does if Betty's family wasn't supportive. And Downton Abbey wouldn't work the way it does if the Crawleys were cruel to their servants.

2. I previously came up with the idea of teaching noblesse oblige in school. Because presenting it as a Thou Shalt isn't going to work, I suggested that it should be explained as background information to a novel read in class. Downton Abbey isn't a novel, but it is a work of fiction where noblesse oblige could be presented as background information. Of course, the questions remain of how it would fit into the curriculum, and whether there are any characters that would be appealing enough to students for them to want to emulate.

3. The village of Downton has a small hospital, which is funded by the Crawleys. But the Crawleys' estate would be broke if it weren't for the fact that the Earl married a rich American. So if he hadn't been able to find a rich wife ~30 years ago, the people of Downton wouldn't have a hospital today.

There are some people in real life who think public services shouldn't exist and charity should fill the need instead. This is a good example of the flaws in that plan.

Fishing with bait in Sims 3

Since a game update a few months ago, it's been impossible to fish with bait in Sims 3. The Sim will walk up to the water, and the fishing action will just end without any fishing happening.

I've just discovered that, if your Sim is capable of fishing in a swimming pool (i.e. they're a child or have the childish or insane traits), they can fish with bait in the swimming pool. However, I still don't know how to make them fish with bait in regular water, or to get the people in charge of game updates to fix this problem.

Socially awkward penguin moments

1. Guy behind the counter hands me my pizza. "Enjoy your lunch," he says. "Thanks," I reply, "You too!"

2. The guy in the elevator is small-talking me, in a way that makes me think he's practising his English. However, his dog is adorable, so I take it as price of admission for petting the dog.

"What do you do?" he asks me, as the dog sniffs my hand.
"I'm a translator," I reply, scratching the dog behind the ears as her tail wags furiously. "What do you do?"
"I'm a dog-walker," he answers.

I think that's the first time I've ever asked anyone what they did while they were actually doing their job before my very eyes!

Why would you throw puppies in the garbage, even if you are cruel and heartless?

In the news today, some guy put a bunch of puppies in a suitcase and threw them in the garbage. (Happy ending, adorable pictures.)

I don't understand why a person would do this. And by that I don't mean that I can't imagine being cruel to puppies (although that's true too). What I mean is, even if you take disrespect or hatred for puppies as a given, I don't understand why you'd do it this particular way.

If you're too lazy to take them to a proper shelter and don't care if the dogs survive, why not put them outside and close the door, leaving them to their own devices?

If you want to kill them, why not kill them? Why abandon them somewhere where you won't be able to get whatever pleasure killers get of watching them die yourself?

If, for whatever reason, it is important to you to throw them in the garbage, why go to all the trouble of putting them in a suitcase first? Putting six puppies in a suitcase sounds difficult.

If you're trying to avoid other people finding out that you're getting rid of puppies, why not let them loose? They might wander off or chase a squirrel or be picked up by someone who's in the market for a puppy, and end up somewhere where they can't be traced back to you. Or, if they do hang out near your home even though you've let them loose, you can claim that they could have come from anywhere and chased a squirrel over here, and you don't know anything about them.

Or, as my co-worker pointed out, why not post an ad on Craigslist saying "Puppies for sale"? People actually pay significant money for dogs!

Putting them in a suitcase in the garbage is a sub-optimal way of achieving whatever the goal of someone who would do that sort of thing might be.

Notes on comments

1. Some people were unhappy that the email follow-up comments option disappeared. It seems to have re-appeared for me when I enter the comments already logged into my Blogger account. Is it back for you too? (I didn't actually do anything, it just showed up).

2. Blogger's spam filter has recently sent a couple of perfectly legitimate anonymous comments into my spam folder. I restored the comments in question, and I'll have a look at my spam folder whenever I'm looking at my comments (although I don't check comments every day). However, I'm reluctant to turn off the spam filter, because it catches huge quantities of actual spam. Anonymous comments are still welcome, but you might have better luck getting through with one of the other options. If you check "Name/URL" (which is right above "Anonymous"), you can enter the name of your choice, including Anonymous.

Why would you want to spend advertising money to encourage people to pray anyway?

Recently in the news, TTC ads telling a (fictional) child of drug users that they should pray as a solution to their problems.

I have to assume that the people placing these ads think they're altruistic, because whether or not people pray have no possible impact on the advertisers or their church. They must think that praying will help people, so they're taking out these ads encouraging people to pray.

But people who are able to pray - which probably includes everyone for whom invoking Jesus would be effective - are already aware that prayer is an option. And those who aren't aware that prayer is an option (and are open to a new religion) wouldn't know how or why to pray.

Therefore, this ad doesn't tell anyone anything they don't already know, while not telling those who it wishes to take action how to take action.

Why would you spend money on that?

***

I also just noticed that the "child" in the ads is saying "Dear Jesus" and "Thank you for hearing my prayer". Which means that they're already praying! So the ad responds to a prayer by telling the kid to pray? That's a wee bit assholic.

Further analogy for why "demisexual" is problematic

I blogged before about why I dislike the term "demisexual". The analogy I made in that post (what if parents of only one child were described as semi-parents?) is likely effective for communicating why the term is problematic to people to whom the term doesn't apply, but today in the shower I realize it isn't quite apt for those of us to whom the term does apply, because of its focus on the idea of having fewer partners than average. The number of partners is less important (to the analogy and to the concept) than the nature of the relationship.

So here's another analogy that reflects that:

Some people really like to have home-made, sit-down meals. They like to choose fresh, organic, high-quality ingredients, prepare multiple dishes from scratch, set the table, sit down, and savour.

Not everyone does that. It takes work and it takes time. You aren't going to get your dinner as quickly or multi-taskably as someone who is content to scarf down whatever's handy while catching up on Twitter. For those of us who are happy to scarf down whatever's handy, it sounds downright tedious and rather old-fashioned, and we bristle if anyone suggests we should change our perfectly contented lifestyle and start preparing full sit-down dinners when prepared foods and pre-made salads and take-out are readily available.

But no one would ever suggest that the people who like to prepare full sit-down meals have any less interest, enthusiasm, or passion for food.

When Google is very good at its job

1. There's a bacterium whose name reminds me of the phrase "helicopter pilot", but I couldn't remember its name. So I googled helicopter pilot bacteria. Second search result: helicobacter pylori.

2. They invented a new musical instrument recently, but I couldn't remember its name. All I remembered was that when I first saw it, I thought "That looks like a keytar mated with a bassoon." So I googled looks like a keytar mated with a bassoon. First search result: Eigenharp.

How to teach literary analysis: don't let students read ahead

As I've blogged about before, I hated and was terrible at literary analysis when I was in school. Despite getting respectable grades in lit classes in three languages, I just didn't feel that analysis added anything to the reading experience or understand what on earth it achieves apart from giving us fodder for academic essays. I'm done the story, why dissect it so tediously?

I didn't start to truly grok literary analysis until I entered the Harry Potter fandom. I started reading Harry Potter shortly before the fifth book, and people on fan sites were using literary analysis to figure out what would happen later in the series. That made far better sense to me: we're looking for clues to solve a mystery!

Back in school, as a diligent student and a voracious reader, I'd always read ahead in the books we were studying. But my Harry Potter experience made me realize that this actually made learning how to do literary analysis more difficult for me. I'd be far ahead of the chapter we were discussing in class and simply wouldn't care about dissecting it, I was more interested in finding out what would happen next. Or I might even be finished the book and on to the next while we're still discussing the early chapters, at which point I most often simply didn't care. I'm done the story, let's move on!

But in my Harry Potter fandom, we couldn't move on - the books we needed to move on hadn't been written yet! So we'd analyze instead. And it was fun! It was my happy place for years!

So how could this be duplicated in the classroom, to not only teach literary analysis but convey the purpose and pleasure of it?

My idea: don't let the students read ahead. Earlier on, in grades 9 and 10, this could take the form of not allowing the books to leave the classroom, and doing the actual reading (or perhaps listening to an audiobook and reading along) in the classroom as part of class time. Then, at the end of every chapter or at every logical break, go over discussion questions that are geared towards using analysis to figure out what happens next. The teacher would have to make it clear that you don't get points for guessing or knowing what will happen next, but rather for having a logical analysis. A thesis that turns out to be factually incorrect but is impeccably argued with the information on hand should get just as many points as a thesis that perfectly predicts the outcome. (This is a problem I had in school - some teachers liked it when departed from the standard interpretation and backed it up with cited evidence, but other teachers docked points for not coming up with the standard interpretation.) Once they've finished the book, the teacher could go back over what clues in the book should have made it possible to guess what was going to happen.

After doing one or two books manually in the classroom so students can learn what they're looking for, they wouldn't have to do all the actual reading in the classroom. Instead, they could move to a system where you simply have to answer some questions at the end of each chapter before reading the next one. This could even be achieved electronically - answer the questions on an online form that emails the answers directly to the teacher, and doing so unlocks the next chapter. This would enable diligent students and those who are enthusiastic about the subject matter to work ahead at their own pace rather than being held back by their peers. (I didn't have this option in high school. While I had the book and could read ahead - and, being a diligent student, did so - I had no idea what we'd be discussing in class so I couldn't keep an eye out for it. Then I had to go back over something I'd already read to look for symbolism etc., which made an already uninteresting process outright tedious.)

If they do this with several books over a period of years, gradually loosening restrictions on reading ahead, by the end of high school the students should get to a place where they're automatically noticing and questioning the right things as they read through, the same way that people notice clues and try to guess whodunnit when reading a mystery novel.

I know that literary analysis is not limited to figuring out what's going to happen, but focusing on what's going to happen next makes the subject matter far more interesting, relevant and compelling to those who aren't already interested. "Remus and Tonks are totally going to hook up - look at all the parallels in the scenes where they were introduced to Harry!" is far more interesting than "Let's compare and contrast the scenes where the supporting characters were introduced to Harry." It's the English-class equivalent of using casino games to teach concepts in stats class.

Bad (and inconsiderate) condo sales strategy

There's a specific pre-construction condo I'm interested in. I recently received floor plans, but no prices. However, googling around for prices per square foot, I found unofficial information suggesting that the units I'm interested in will be out of my price range. So I mourned my condo and waited for official word.

On Thursday, I received an invitation from a broker whose list I'd signed up for to a VIP preview to be held today. I asked if he had prices, so I wouldn't waste both his time and mine on something I'm priced out of. He said the builder was releasing them at the VIP preview.

So this morning I set an alarm, put on make-up and nervously went off to a place I've never been before to make a major purchase that I've never made before.

I walked in, was handed a price list, and discovered I was priced out of the units I'm interested in.

That was a waste of time! Why on earth didn't they just release the prices with the floor plans so people who can't afford it are selected out? Who is served by making people who can't afford it come all the way in to the sales office and tie up the time and attention of brokers and sales reps before they can learn that they can't afford it?

This was especially annoying for me because, being a shy and awkward sort of person, I get very nervous about doing new things where I don't know what to expect, to the extent that I feel it in my bowels and my acne and my dreams. The two days' warning they gave me was enough time to spend being nervous, but not enough for the nerves to dissipate and for me to come to terms with what I may or may not have been about to do. So I spent the past two days carrying these nerves, having fretful and interrupted sleep, with my cystic acne and my digestive system in overdrive, and all this during the busiest time at work. The tetris lines kept piling up until I was jumpy like a shy puppy on a subway. And I could have been spared all that if they'd just released a price list with the floorplans!

My first thought was that this model is really inconsiderate to introverts, shy people, aspies, the socially awkward, bullying victims - anyone for whom going into a strange place likely to be staffed by slick strangers and not knowing what awaits you is an ordeal. So at first this blog post was going to be about how energetic, extroverted real estate people for whom going somewhere new and meeting new people and making big money deals is a fun adventure (because, if it weren't, they probably wouldn't have gone into real estate) are making it unduly difficult for the rest of us.

But, on top of that, it's also inconsiderate to anyone who works or has other specific obligations or already-made plans on Saturdays, anyone who needs to arrange childcare if they're going to go do something grownup like buy a condo, anyone who lives a significant commute away - basically anyone who doesn't keep their Saturday wide open or full of easily-cancellable plans.

So all these people have to go through the stress and inconvenience of being in a specific place in a specific time on very short notice not even to buy a condo, but just to find out whether or not they can afford it.

It serves no one to make people who simply do not have enough money and mortgage space come into the sales centre. It would be far more convenient for all involved to let those who can't afford it select themselves out. So why not do that? What can possibly be gained by forcing people to schlepp all the way to your location just to find out your prices?

What Facebook should do about employers who demand prospective employees' Facebook passwords

Facebook should put a clause on their terms of service stating that users may not share their password with anyone else without first informing Facebook that they intend to do so. They should create a special form you can fill out for the express purpose of informing Facebook that you intent to share your password with someone. This form should request enough data that Facebook will be able to find that individual's Facebook account.

Then Facebook should use this information to either a) ban all employers reported through this mechanism, or b) set all their privacy to the lowest possible setting without the option of raising it back up.

Fair warning would be set out in the terms of service ("By using this service, you agree to.."), and they could use selective publicity to very loudly announce that you have to report to Facebook if your employer requests your password while being more discreet about the consequences for the employer. Facebook already has a reputation for changing privacy settings and terms of service on its users, so it may as well use this precedent for good.

Wherein I receive an astounding act of social generousity

Something funny happened to me the other day.

It was warm and sunny out, and I was walking down Yonge Street wearing a simple black outfit and these shoes.

A lady standing with a group of people nearby left her group, headed over in my direction, walked up to me, and said:

"Where did you get such UGLY shoes?"

This was hilarious for a few reasons.

First, she left her group to come tell me my shoes are ugly. Rather than just pointing and laughing with her group or taking a stealth photo to share on facebook, she interrupted her day and sought me out to tell me my shoes are ugly. If the sight of someone walking down the main street of a major city in mildly unconventional footwear so vexes you that you have to stop what you're doing and intervene, I don't think you're going to make it in the city.

Second, her dress and appearance had no particular redeeming qualities. She was a poster girl for the concept of "she's let herself go". She was probably a poster girl for this concept ten years ago. Her clothes were ill-fitting and poorly made walmart-wear of the sort that you can't tell if they're from last summer or last decade, her shorts were riding up between her legs exposing her cellulite, and her hair was cropped short and plastered flat against her head with no hint of having been washed or combed in the past 24 hours. Normally when I see someone who takes so little care with their appearance I think nothing of it, simply assuming they have better things to worry about. But this lady had proven that she clearly doesn't.

Third, these shoes have gotten me the more compliments than anything else in my life, and by "anything" I mean not just fashion choices but actual achievements as well. Even if you do think they're ugly (and that's entirely your prerogative), they are a clear fashion win, moreso than anything else I've ever worn.

Between my bullies and my judgmental family members I've received more than my fair share of disses in my life, but I've never received one that was so off-target from someone who was so very clearly less cool than me. That made the whole thing utterly hilarious and not at all hurtful, and I left the interaction with a smile on my face.

I didn't blog about this when it first happened because I've been getting great mileage out of it. I've told it to all different people, and it gets a laugh every time and we all leave the conversation with smiles on our faces. But this morning in the shower I realized that this random shoe-hating lady has actually given me a very generous gift: a hilarious story!

The story works fantastically because it makes me look good ("My shoes are so awesome they offended some frumpy judgey lady, and I handled the situation with complete sangfroid!") and it makes whomever I tell the story to feel good about themselves ("At least I'm nowhere near that awful!"). If I were the kind of person who liked to brag about my personal possessions, this would give me the perfect opportunity to show off my awesome red shoes.

In fact, every decision that lady made pertaining to our interaction improved the story. By opting not to make any effort with her appearance that day, she made certain that I wouldn't feel any insult and added humour to the story, bolstering my audience's feeling good about themselves upon hearing the story. (It wouldn't be nearly so effective a story if she had been more conventionally attractive.) And by cleverly phrasing her question as "Where did you get such ugly shoes?" she gave me the perfect set-up for a good reply (a big smile and the name and location of the store). If she'd chosen to phrase it "Your shoes are ugly," I probably wouldn't have been able to immediately come up with an appropriate reply (something along the lines of "Thanks, you too!") She was generous enough to sacrifice her appearance, face (in the sociological sense), and dignity so that we may live in a world that contains amusing anecdotes.

So thank you, shoe-hating lady, for your noble sacrifice. It has brought amusement to dozens of people.

Teach me about the internal logic of Catholic school dress codes

Thursday was a day to break records and rules. With the temperature in the GTA within a smidgen of an all-time high, students at St. Mary Catholic Secondary School were excited to wear shorts on one of the few days of the year they could ditch their uniforms.

But around 11:30 a.m. Wednesday, vice-principal Paul Perron’s voice crackled from the speakers: no shorts, no khakis and no ankle socks on Thursday.

The article focuses on the shorts ban and the hypocrisy and asshattery of banning shorts on a civvies day when it's going to be hot out, but I'm more interested in why on earth they'd ban khakis and ankle socks. Within the school's internal logic, what on earth would their reason be for banning khakis or ankle socks?

Khakis are conservative, non-trendy long pants that are maybe a shade dressier than jeans, and in fact many schools and other organizations include khakis as part of their uniforms. I'm not even sure if teenagers today would wear khakis unless they're trying to dress more grownup. (They were trendy when I was a teenager, but now even my peers don't wear them that much and I feel a bit frumpy and out of it when I wear them.)

The kind of socks being worn are utterly irrelevant if you're already wearing long pants (which they must be, given the prohibition on shorts), so I cannot fathom why the administration even thought of this.

I'm not saying the shorts ban is reasonable, but it's not an uncommon rule for a dress code so, apart from the act of declaring a civvies day and then giving it a dress code, it doesn't particularly surprise me. But the ban on khakis and ankle socks completely baffles me and I can't even begin to speculate what their intention is. Any ideas?

What if buses stopped at every other stop?

This idea was inspired by the comments thread here (but is unrelated to the post itself). People were discussing how some transit routes have stops relatively close together, which slows things down because the vehicle has to stop so much. Some suggested spacing stops further apart, others thought that this would place too much of a burden on people with mobility issues.

But what if we kept all the stops, but had each vehicle only service alternate stops. The first bus of the day would stop at the first, third, fifth etc. stops, the second bus of the day would stop at the second, fourth, sixth etc. stops. Each individual bus would travel the route faster (which would make this technique useful for bus routes that are most often used to travel all the way across town or connect to the subway), and any user who carries a cellphone (to check NextBus) and for whom walking to the next bus stop is feasible would not be inconvenienced at all.

Just visualizing it in my head, it also seems like it would reduce bunching, although I can't actually prove that to you. For this reason, it also occurred to me to apply it to streetcars, but I don't think they can pass each other on the tracks. Transfers would be a problem under current policy, but the transfer policy could be easily changed.

This wouldn't work with infrequent bus routes, but if you've got a bus every 10 minutes it should increase convenience for the majority of users without too much inconvenience for the remaining users. Of course, the question is whether we want to be conveniencing the able-bodied on the backs of those with mobility issues, even if overall it is for the greater good.