Wisdom

Today is artificial limbs day

Today I saw four different people with artificial limbs. Weird coincidence.

I also saw a lady in a wheelchair wearing mad crazy awesome red stiletto sandals that no human being could possibly walk in. Which is fine, because she's in a wheelchair. Makes me wonder why more people in wheelchairs don't wear awesome shoes.

Another stupid thing I can't stop laughing at

FAIL!

Did any of the pharmacy staff address you by name?

One of the questions in the Shoppers Drug Mart customer survey is "Did any of the pharmacy staff address you by name?"

I'm really curious about which answer they're going for here. All the various customer service training I've had encourages you to address people by name, but as a customer at a pharmacy I'd prefer not to be addressed by name for privacy purposes. The pharmacy area is kind of out in the open, and I'd rather not give random people in the store the opportunity to match up my name with what medication I'm taking. Not that it's especially secret - I'm pretty sure I've mentioned every prescription I've ever had here - but it's the principle of the thing. They shouldn't be giving them customer service rules that could possibly compromise patient privacy.

But maybe they know that. I'd assume they're not entirely stupid. Maybe they're asking to make sure no one called me by name. At any rate, I don't want to be called by name and I don't want to get anyone in trouble, so I always mark it as no, no one addressed me by name, then clarify in the comments that that's what I prefer.

(Aside: because I know being called by name is a customer service technique, it always puts my shields up. Miss Manners says it's required by etiquette, but it just seems pure phoney to me. If someone addresses me by name when it isn't strictly necessary, I assume they're trying to play me somehow. And because of this, I rarely address other people by name when not necessary, except in customer service situations.)

Quidquid germanus dictum sid altum viditur

Solo by Thomas D. and Nina Hagen:



I don't know why, but this song gets me every single time, no matter where I am or what I'm feeling or wht else is going on when I hear it. The part that gets me the most is Nina Hagen's chorus:

Du hast mein Herz geklaut,
Ich weiß nicht, ob du's gewusst hast,
Du Schuft hast es getan,
Hab dich geliebt, als ob es keinen Morgen gibt, bis der Morgen kam

This part always reaches its hand down my gullet like something from an Itchy and Scratchy cartoon and stirs up my blood and phlegm and bile like nothing else has since Shakespeare's Sonnet 29.

So what does it mean?

You broke my heart
I don't know whether you knew that
You cad, you did it
I loved you like there was no tomorrow until tomorrow came.

It doesn't work nearly so well in English, does it?

When I was in uni, it was fashionable to aspire to literary translation, but I completely wrote it off as an option. This is why. Translating the meaning? Dead easy. Translating the connotations? 100% is not always possible, but I can consistently exceed 90%. Translating the beauty? Not gonna happen.

Today's rainbow

Maybe one day I'll get so bored of seeing rainbows that I'll stop posting every one I see, but that hasn't happened yet. I think we can conclude that if you face east you'll see more rainbows than if you face west (in Toronto at least).

Edit: OMG, I just noticed, it's just barely a double rainbow! You can see the second rainbow very faintly above the first one, arcing out of the top roof of the building on the very right. I didn't even notice that IRL!

A clue in the Sitemeter/Internet Explorer problem

I am running WebWasher Classic with IE 7, and I can still access websites with Sitemeter on them. However, I cannot access the Sitemeter site itself. Whatever the problem in the code is, WebWasher blocks it. That's the best I can do at the moment, but the solution is in there somewhere.

So that's why I didn't realize my blog was not accessible through IE - because it was just fine for me. Sorry about that. I'll be removing my Sitemeter code as right after I post this.

If you have a blog or a website and you want people to still be able to read it with IE, remove your sitemeter code. Pass it on.

Update: as of 5 pm, it seems to be working normally now.

Criminology

You know how sometimes the most obvious most suitable consequence for a particular crime (either as punishment or to prevent the crime from happening again) is something the criminal justice system can't do? The offender should have the choice between the logical, natural consequence that's normally outside the scope of the criminal justice system, and whatever the standard sentence for the crime is. Standard sentences shouldn't be inflated to coerce offenders into choosing the logical, natural consequence, it should be a free choice where they can go with whatever they prefer.

The first thing that comes to mind for this is castrating sex offenders. I don't know if the castration would mitigate whatever psychopathic tendencies they have (it might vary from case to case?) but if it actually would prevent them from re-offending, why not put it out there as an option? The other case that comes to mind was one from a while back where a lady killed her baby through neglect because she was too stupid to take care of a baby. I forget the details of how the kid died or whatever so I can't google it up, but I distinctly remember that she honestly did not grok that her baby would die if she neglected it. Now the logical thing to do would be to sterilize her, wouldn't it? That's way outside the jurisdiction of the criminal justice system, but if she had a free choice in the matter and chose sterilization, then everyone would be better off and there would be no chance of recidivism.

I'm sure there are some examples that don't involve cutting people's genitals off, but I can't think of any offhand. Psychoanalyze that at your leisure.

*****

The following is a quote from Successful Dog Adoption by Sue Sternberg. Any typos are my own.

Behaviourally adoptable dogs get adopted more quickly than the problem or unadoptable dogs, so the shelter gradually clogs up with the problem or unadoptable dogs. [...] May dogs who start out as behaviourally adoptable dogs wil, over time, deteriorate in the shelter/kennel environment, becoming less and less adoptable with each passing day. [...] The more aggressive, "kennel crazy" unadoptable dogs there are, the quicker the behaviourally adoptable dogs deteriorate because of the heightened state of arousal and aggression in the kennels, until they're all lunging at the front of their cages.

That sounds exactly like my young offenders theory!

*****

Speaking of (young offenders, not dogs), I have a question for people who think Omar Khadr should be punished on the basis that he was wherever it was that he was:

How could he have gotten out of that situation?

I have been 15 years old and taken to a foreign country by my parents, and even with an additional 12 years' life experience and 20/20 hindsight, I have no idea how I could have gotten out of there. How do you plan your escape without unmonitored internet access? How do you buy a plane ticket when you don't have a credit card? How do you flee when you haven't learned to drive yet? How do you get through customs without parental consent to travel? What if your parents are holding onto your passport for safekeeping? How do you judge whether local authorities will assist you or whether they'll just return you to your parents as a runaway? How do you carry this all off with the minimal (if any) pocket money a 15-year-old generally has on them?

People are talking like it's the most obvious thing in the world that he made a fully informed choice to be there, and while I agree that he may well have been able to grok the politics and moral impliciations at that age, I simply cannot see any way that he could have left the situation.

Explain this to me please. Give me specifics, give me logistics, give me solutions to all the problems I've mentioned above. I don't see it at all, help me out here.

And then, once you've explained it, perhaps publicize the procedure to help other teenagers who find themselves forced into untenable situations by their parents.

Hot wet dirty hardcore prescriptivism

"...aux adjoints aux directeurs généraux..."

I paused, leaned back, folded my arms and smirked.

My text prattled on for a moment before it realized I had stopped, then turned and looked at me questioningly.

I raised an eyebrow. "Do you realize what you just did?"

My text furrowed its brow, mentally replaying the last couple of phrases, until a look of realization dawned. "Oh shit..."

I leaned forward, making my voice low and dangerous. "And you realize what I have to do to you now?"

My text just stared up at me, wide-eyed.

I smiled evilly. "Come on, you know I don't make the rules," I said, wielding my usage handbook. "And besides," I added, googling up several hundred precedents, "Everyone's doing it!"

My text still didn't look convinced.

I leaned in close and whispered "Listen, just between you and me, I've never had an opportunity to do this before." I looked it right in the eyes. "Don't you want to be my first?"

My text's eyes were still wide and apprehensive, but it nodded its assent.

"Excellent." I licked my lips. "Now just sit back and relax, and I'll do this as gently as I can."

I reached down, warily at first but soon gaining more confidence, and typed "...the Directors General's assistants."

A simple mission for Improv Everywhere

Burst into this song on the subway. Multiple times, on different subways, all throughout the day.

Also, someone totally needs to start a Toronto branch of Improv Everywhere.

Open letter to religious people trying to say nice things to atheists

Telling an atheist that you're sure they'll find god soon is a dis. I know it doesn't sound that way to you. I know you think you're saying "This great and wonderful thing that changed my life will happen to you soon!" But to an atheist whose atheism came from careful thought (and I don't know any whose didn't, although I'd imagine it could also be the result of growing up in a household without religion), it sounds like anything from "Soon you'll see that I'm right and you're wrong!" to "Soon you'll come to realize what a wonderful man your abusive ex is and go crawling back to him!" Just...don't say it.

Edited to add the most obvious analogy in human history: religious people, how would you feel if smiling and enthusiastically told you that I'm sure you'll lose your religion soon?

How to get my organs

Dear Government of Ontario:

So you want my organs. Great, I want to give them to you! Here's a law you can pass to make sure that happens:

If you have clear consent from the prospective donor, don't require consent from the next of kin.

I have a health card, driver's licence, donor card and will all indicating that I want my organs donated. I also have some relatives who are kind of irrationally uncomfortable with organ donation and cannot necessarily be trusted to dispassionately carry out my wishes in their time of grief. Depending on the circumstances, these relatives may end up being my next of kin when I die.

Why give them the chance to veto my wishes to the detriment of the greater good? Why put some doctor in the position of having to talk them out of their irrational grief-fuelled preferences in order to carry out my wishes and serve the greater good?

There's going to be a lot of public opposition to presumed consent. I doubt there's be nearly as much public opposition to preventing people from overriding their loved-ones' clearly set out wishes.

Where exactly are you from with that dialect anyway?

Lacey on Corner Gas says soda (instead of pop). But she also says Tranna (instead of Tor-on-to.)

Does that combination of markers even exist in any known dialect? Any Canadian who's had enough US influence on their dialect that they're going to say soda to a bunch of hosers in Saskatchewan is NOT going to say Tranna.

The only possible explanation is an American upbringing, followed by a move to Toronto in late adolescence/early adulthood (giving her enough time living in TO to start calling it Tranna, but not feeling any peer pressure to stop saying soda). But if Lacey were USian, I'm quite certain we would have heard about it on camera. At the very least Oscar would have complained at some point.

Wow.

I want half a million dollars next time someone makes lewd comments about me!

Actually, if the payout were automatic every time you get lewd comments, I think most people could support themselves that way. Just walk around, go about life, and every once in a while you run into some dickhead and get half a million dollars. It wouldn't even need to happen that many times to get you set for life.

Reminder: how to boycott the olympics on the internet

With the olympics starting to make the front page, I thought I should post a reminder.

If you feel like you should be boycotting the olympics but can't manage a full boycott, here's how to boycott them on the internet.

Quote of the day

"it's unusual for dogs to care for tiger cubs, but it does happen."

Wherein I become one of those boring people who talk about muscles

1. My previous miracle fitness discovery was to put the newspaper on the floor and read it while I do push-ups. I've made another discovery: bustle around all evening getting things done and finally get everything done and get into your pyjamas and you're about to go to bed and then remember that you haven't done your pushups for the day yet and have an argument with yourself ("But I'm in my jammies and my bed is so comfy!" "But I've been making progress and don't want to lose momentum now!") and then put a book on the floor (because you've read the newspapers already) and decide to just get the fucker over with real quick so you can go to bed without guilt.

My personal best set - of the day and of my lifetime - was 23 in a row. (Despite all this, my arms still look the same and I haven't noticed any improved strength or anything IRL.)

2. There's this Tide commercial where this overly-perky lady gets way too enthusiastic about washing the tablecloth. I always noticed that she has mad crazy arm muscles, moreso than you usually see on TV commercial actresses, and seems to be dressed to show them off. I thought this was interesting because to have arm muscles like that she'd have to put in mad crazy gym time, which would peg her this really driven goal-oriented GO GO GO type of person, which is entirely consistent with the character. So I thought it was really clever casting to find an actress for whom these minor details of her physique epitomized the character, even though it's just for 30-second detergent commercial.

Then I found out that it isn't some anonymous actress from central casting in the commercial, it's Kelly Ripa, who was cast because she's a celebrity (apparently she's on some talk show or something with this other chap who's been in one or two other things?), not because her look perfectly epitomizes the character.

Make your own microloans

In case you haven't heard of it yet, Kiva is a site where you, yes you personally, can provide microloans directly to entrepreneurs.

The Toronto Star has an article about it.

Remember 0.7%? Run the numbers on that, then go to Kiva and take a look around.

Things They Should Invent: ask the commenters on ratings sites questions

My regular doctor is on a long-term leave of absence, I don't know why, and I have mixed feelings about the doctor who's replacing her. And I'm going to need to get my prescription renewed within the next three months. So I was looking up the replacement doctor on RateMDs.com, and someone said that he's a bad doctor for women's health issues, and that he prescribed her (presumably it's a woman) unnecessary treatments. Now when I read bad at women's health, my first concern is whether I'll have difficulty extracting birth control pills from him. Other commenters have described him as a bit judgemental (and he administered my last Gardasil and seemed a bit judgy about it, despite the fact that I had already discussed it extensively with my own doctor and had already started the treatment), so this makes me worried that I might have to jump through hoops to get my pills. But the same commenter (and others) also suggested that perhaps he overprescribes, which is a good thing for me since what I want is a prescription. Plus in my googling I found him on a website of health care providers for people with HIV/AIDS, and it seems to me that a doctor who would advertise/allow himself to be advertised to people with HIV/AIDS wouldn't be the kind of person who would give someone shit for a routine birth control prescription.

So I really wish I could ask some of these commenters to elaborate on how, exactly, they think he isn't a good doctor for women's health issues. If they don't like how he's treating their menopause or infertility, or if he's quick to prescribe oral contraceptives for endometriosis or something, then at least I'd know I don't have to worry. But if other people have had trouble extracting pills from him, I'd like to know so I can make a backup plan. (My backup plan for if my regular doctor ever mentioned "Hey, you know, you've been on the pill a long time, that's not always a good thing" was to say "All right then, let's talk about Essure" but that might not work as well on a judgemental male doctor who's not good with women's health issues.)

Also, I recently saw an article somewhere suggesting that pharmacists should be allowed to prescribe in simple cases. I would love that! (Or nurses, or nurse practitioners.) The vast majority of my doctor's appointments in my adult life have been about the pill, and it's almost always routine. (And when I've wanted to switch pills, they look stuff up in a book before writing the prescription anyway.) My doctor also has patients with chronic conditions and complicated pregnancies and sicknesses that want immediate attention and degenerative disabilities and, presumably, HIV/AIDS. Is it really necessary to take up an appointment slot for "Everything's fine, blood pressure's decent, more pills please"?