Anyone know the nitty gritty details of sterilization?

With both Essure and tubal ligation, the Fallopian tubes are made impassable, so the ova can't get from the ovaries to the uterus.

But these procedures do nothing to prevent the ovaries from releasing ova. So where do the ova go?

Things I want to blog about but am currently too tired

- Why current electoral boundaries are a disservice to the highrise-dwelling residents of Yonge & Eg.

- Joe Fiorito's latest column on the Nunavut seal hunt

- A post that should be interestingly theoretical and philosophical but I can't get to stop sounding whiny.

- An oversight in the Ontario Residential Tenancies Act that is forcing long-term tenants into a lower quality of life.

- The translation problems of violence

- Why parents need to model benefit of the doubt

- Things the Toronto cycling lobby should do

Make a request, and I'll blog that one first.

Look at the baby sheep!

BAAA!

Can dogs read humans?

The other day, a puppy who didn't know better tried to use me as a chew toy. I didn't particularly mind because he was adorable and fixed all my blood pressure problems, but nevertheless I withdrew whenever his teeth got me because it wouldn't do to give him the idea that biting people is acceptable.

Later it occurred to me that it might be helpful for training if humans acted like they're in pain every time the puppy gets them with his teeth. (It wasn't actually painful IRL, it was just...teeth.) That might help teach him that biting isn't good.

But could a puppy read humans enough to tell that they're in pain and this is bad? And would he care that they're in pain and interpret it as bad that they're in pain?

Or, conversely, could a puppy read humans so well that he could tell that we're exaggerating the pain and think "What a bunch of drama queens!"

Either I don't have an original thought in my head, or I should be a political advisor

1. Last fall, I analyzed Stéphane Dion's CTV interview. Yesterday, the CBSC came to the same conclusions as I did. For obvious reasons, mine's more focused on linguistics and theirs is more focused on broadcast standards, but it's the same thesis.

2. In March, I came up with the idea of including the harmonized sales tax in the sticker price. Today it was reported that the Ontario government is pondering whether to do just that. (I'm not sure why the article is framing it so negatively - as a consumer, I'd certainly find it more convenient.)

3. Yesterday I came up with a conspiracy theory. The Globe and Mail's Andrew Steele came up with the same thing. (Thank you anonymous commenter.)

Conspiracy theory, anyone?

Because it's fun to make conspiracy theories:

What if the federal gov't recently announced that the deficit is going to be higher than predicted to create for themselves an excuse to cut social programs?

For In Death fans

Stephen, a contestant on today's episode of Jeopardy, is TOTALLY McNab!

Acting

The first couple of times I see something on TV, I don't normally notice the acting because I'm following the story. But then when I revist something much later, I notice acting that I wasn't appreciating before.

For example, Hugh Laurie (i.e. the tall one) here:



And OMG Brent Spiner! This scene is a bit cringy out of necessity, but he's playing the role of an emotionless android trying to figure out courtship rituals. Okay, yeah, whatever. But it's so much more amazing once you consciously think that the actor inside this android is a real person with a sense of humour!

Tarted up and kicking ass

Train of thought originating from a post on Broadsheet where a guy was surprised when a girl who was dressed fashionably knew stuff about finance.

I found that weird, because while not all the fashion people I know are into finance, all the finance people I know are into fashion. They're the ones with the money, so they're the ones with the most kick-ass shoe collection.

But this reminds me of something I've been mulling over recently. I really enjoy being all girled up and being highly competent at the same time. Like the total enjoyment I get is greater than the sum of the enjoyment of being girled up and the enjoyment of being competent. Lugging stuff around in killer heels, or translating technical specifications in while wielding cleavage, or dissecting a computer with manicured hands - it all makes me feel slightly more kick-ass and accomplished than is really deserved.

Thinking about this article, I think I've figured out why: because it's surprising to the very type of people who would be surprised by it. It makes anyone who would underestimate me realize that they're underestimating me, all without saying a word.

Current musical obsession

Midnight Special - Creedence Clearwater Revisited

Things They Should Study: queue strategy

At the grocery store, suppose at one register there's one person with 10 items, and at another register there's two people 5 five items each. Obviously the register with only one person in line will be faster because they only have to go through the paying dance once.

But what if the choice is one person with 12 items vs. two people with 5 items each? What if there's two people with 5 each vs. three people with 1 each? What about one with 12 vs. three with 2 each?

In calculating which line is moving fastest, each person who has to pay must create a delay equal to a certain number of items. Someone should do a study and work this out so we can all have efficient queue strategy.

Things They Should Study: does external racism hinder people's career paths?

Some of my co-workers and I have recently been dealing with an external individual who is less helpful and cooperative than we would like. My own personal interactions with this individual have been notably less unpleasant than those of my colleagues.

This seemed very odd to me. Normally, in life in general, if anyone is going to get an unpleasant response, it's going to be me. I'm not particularly charming or persuasive or authoritative or otherwise able convince people to do what I want them to. All the other people involved here have both better people skills and more authority than I do. And yet somehow I elicited the least unpleasant reaction, the reaction that was nearest to being cooperative.

So I was thinking about why this could be, and one theory that crossed my mind is that the individual in question might be racist. Of all the people involved, I am the only one with a name that sounds English.

Understand, I have no way of knowing if it actually is racism. There are a number of plausible explanations, I have no other hints of racism, and it would be a stupid way for this individual to be racist anyway. But that is an idea that occurred to me, so I started logicking the idea to its natural conclusion.

Let's suppose, for the purpose of this blog post, that this individual is in fact racist and is responding better to me for that reason. A pattern would develop, and people would start to notice that I can consistently get the best response from this individual. And suppose some other racist externals turned up, and also responded better to me for purely racist reasons. This would lead people to believe that I'm good at handling difficult externals. Co-workers might pass difficult externals off to me because I get better results. Racist externals might prefer to and in fact seek out to deal with me. And then if a promotion comes up for a position that involves dealing with externals, I'd end up being the natural choice. Not because I'm objectively better than my co-workers, but because of factors beyond anyone's control.

I wonder to what extent problems like this hinder people's career paths. Even if your employer is completely fair and equitable, if some of your customers or vendors or suppliers are biased against you, you're going to have a harder time doing your job well.

Someone should study this.

Things They Should Invent: poisonous window screens

Window screens are meant to keep bugs out, which is a good thing. But sometimes bugs just walk around on the screen, which is yucky and a bit scary because it seems like they might at any time figure out how to make their way through the holes in the screen.

Solution: make window screens poisonous to bugs. They touch them, they die. That will keep them out!

(Of course, non-poisonous ones would still need to be available for households where small children or pets might decide to lick a screen.)

YouTube language settings problem

In an attempt to achieve more language-neutral browser behaviour, I added multiple languages to my browser's language settings.

Problem: YouTube consistently and automatically sets its interface to the third language in my list. I've experimented, I've shifted things around in the list, it's always the third language. The first two are English and French, which YouTube does speak, but it skips right to the third.

Weird, eh?

Why students should be encouraged to use Wikipedia

A lot of people tell students they shouldn't use Wikipedia when researching stuff for school.

I think they're missing out on a golden opportunity to teach critical thinking.

Wikipedia is hugely helpful. Even in my professional life, I find it's quite frequently the best resource for quickly and easily getting a general overview of a topic. However, it is of varying quality and is sometimes edited by people who have agendas.

Students should be taught how to how to identify good information vs. questionable information vs. propoganda in Wikipedia. They could, for example, take an article on a topic that interests them and analyze its quality. Go to the sources to see if they check out, do linguistic analysis for biais and spin, look at the discussion page and history and see if there are any edit wars going on and describe how that affects the current state of the article.

It's a live, real, and immediately applicable tool for not only teaching critical thinking, but showing students its importance.

Then, once they've learned all that, they shouldn't be discouraged from using it for research; they should be expected to understand that it isn't the alpha and the omega, and marked accordingly.

Does oil decompose?

As we all remember from elementary school science class, crude oil is made of decomposed dinosaurs.

Question: if we left it in the ground, would it decompose further?

If it will decompose further, why doesn't plastic decompose? Plastic is made from oil.

If it won't decompose further, does that mean that other organic matter (mulch, compost, dead bodies in cemetaries) won't fully decompose either?

Things They Should Study: six degrees of separation strategy

The original six degrees of separation study was within the United States - the source people were in Kansas or somewhere conceptually similar, and the target person was in Boston or somewhere conceptually similar. This got me thinking that it would be interesting to do an international study involving people in completely different parts of the world. For example, I might be asked to get a letter to someone in Turkmenistan.

So then I got thinking about how I could get a letter to someone in Turkmenistan, and I came up with three separate strategies. The first would be to get it as close to Turkmenistan as possible. I would do this by sending it to Poland. However, people's connections tend not to be geographical beyond the very local level. (For example, I don't know anyone who lives in Barrie, so getting a letter to Barrie would be just as much of a crapshoot as getting it to Turkmenistan.)

The second strategy would be to try professional channels. If my target is a classical musician, I send it to someone I know who's a classical musician. However, your professional network doesn't necessarily reach your whole profession. (I couldn't reach a translator in Turkmenistan any more easily than I could reach a classical musician in Turkmenistan).

The third strategy would be to cast as wide a net as possible by sending it to the person I know who knows the most people. This seems like a better idea, but I'm still basically throwing darts blindfolded.

So thinking about all this, I think it would be interesting to do a study to see which strategy is most effective. All the source people would get three letters to send to one target person. They'd be instructed to send the first letter as close as geographically possible to the target (with all subsequent recipients instructed to do the same), the second as close as professionally possible (with all subsequent recipients instructed to do the same), and the third to the one person they know who knows the most people (with all subsequent recipients instructed to do the same until they can see in their network a direct path to the target.) I'm sure the results would be fascinating.

How to promote safer teen sexual behaviour: put the clitoris on the map

The sex ed I received in school was thorough and very informative, but it was focused entirely on preventing pregnancy and STD transmission, with no information about sexual pleasure. As a result, I didn't come away with any knowledge of specific sex acts, and I didn't learn about the clitoris there.

My parents had the good judgement to give me a book about "your changing body" that included slightly more sex ed information, including the location and function of the clitoris. It was quite the revelation, but I'm not sure if it was common knowledge among my peers. I remember in Grade 12 a classmate did her World Issues presentation on female genital mutilation, and she did think it was necessary to briefly mention in passing what the clitoris actually is. She most likely had a larger sample size than I did from which to determine how fluent in the geography of the vulva our classmates would be, so it is likely that a significant number of people did not know about the clitoris. Obviously everyone learns about it eventually, but it seems that a significant number of people spent several years of their sexually-aware life without knowing about the clitoris, and this was at the same age where the general social goal is to reduce risky sexual behaviour.

The sex ed I received, both at school and at home, was very reproduction-focused. It started with where babies come from, and moved on into birth control and STDs in a broader context of how to manage your changing body. That did make sense - my 10-year-old self who still thought boys were yucky didn't need to know much more than if a penis goes in your vagina you might get pregnant. However, because of this necessary focus on penises going into vaginas, and the tacit and societal implication that sex is like the ultimate in pleasure, we came away with the idea that penile-vaginal intercourse is the ultimate in pleasure. (I know this is all very heterocentric, but that's how my sex ed was. And because I'm extrapolating from my childhood sex ed, this blog post as a whole is probably going to come out heterocentric.)

However, as we all know, you can have a lot of fun stimulating the clitoris and for many women it is more pleasurable than vaginal penetration. And we also know that penetrative sex acts are higher risk than non-penetrative sex acts. So if sex ed gives people the idea that the ultimate in pleasure is a non-penetrative act, they will be more likely to go for that non-penetrative act instead of higher-risk penetrative acts.

So here's how to do it: include the clitoris on the diagram. In my sex ed, we had to memorize diagrams of the male and female reproductive organs and learn the function of each part. Simply include the clitoris on the female diagram, say that its purpose is to provide physical pleasure, and leave it at that. Yes, it's not immediately related to reproduction, but neither are the prostate or the vas deferens or the labia majora or the fallopian tubes, and we had to learn all those. No need to go into great detail, just mention it in passing like you do the vas deferens, along with the idea that it's the place to go for sexual pleasure, all before most of the kids have started experimenting sexually.

Then when they do start experimenting sexually, they're going to want to spend some time on the clitoris. Not all time is going to be spent on the clitoris, obviously, because the boys are still going to want the odd orgasm, but girls who are after orgasms and the boys who want to be sex gods (as opposed to the boys who just want to stick their penis in something) are going to go stampeding towards the clitoris. And as teens tend to have more limited time and opportunity to spend on sex, the more time that is spent on the clitoris means less time will be spent on penetration.

There is a school of thought whereby penile-vaginal penetration is not to be engaged in before marriage but other sex acts are acceptable, and this overlaps a school of thought wherein people are not to be taught how to protect themselves from STDs. Mentioning the clitoris here would be particularly beneficial, because unprotected cunnilingus and frottage and manual stimulation are much lower-risk activities and are certainly safer than unprotected saddlebacking.

Simple knowledge of the existence and function of the clitoris will get a large portion of teens interested in engaging in low-risk sexual behaviours when they do have the inclination and opportunity for sexual activity. There's no need to change sex ed, no need to talk about technique, no need to change whatever values are conveyed. Just make sure that this one part of the human anatomy is included and labelled on every anatomical diagram, just like the vas deferens, and nature will take its course.

Things They Should Invent: language-neutral browser settings

A Google search led me to a French-language government page, and a dialogue box popped up helpfully noting that my browser settings had English selected as primary language and asking if I'd like to go to the English version of the page.

I can totally see how that would be helpful for normal people, but I was looking specifically for terminology that could be found on the French-language page.

I have the same problem with Google. It localizes its results to the user's interface language, with the assumption that if you're using Google in English you'd probably prefer English-language results.

Again, extremely helpful for normals, but hinders my terminological research. Every time I want to verify whether a term is idiomatic in a given language as opposed to being a calque from another language, I have to change my Google interface to the language in question.

Solution: a language-neutral browser setting. In the bit where you set your language preferences, there's a "Neutral" choice. Web sites read this and make no effort to accomodate your language preferences, instead letting you read whatever language you've landed on. Google reads this and delivers language-blind results.

The vast majority of people in the world could ignore this and go about their lives normally. But the few of us who need it could make use of it, and the result would be better quality translations, terminology, and linguistic research for everyone. It would also slow the anglicization of other languages because it would neutralize the annoying habit of US English being considered a default and enable us to land upon phraseology that is more idiomatic in other languages.