Moving on out

Hi. I'm moving this blog to a new location: http://www.davetill.com/blog/. Please update your links, notify your neighbours, etc.

Everything on this blog - posts, comments, tags, the lot - should have successfully moved over to my new home. (I've removed and disabled commenting here, since this version of the blog is now obsolete.)

I am moving the blog because I want to have it on my own space, where I have complete control over it. And I want to use the WordPress technology, which has more features than Blogger.

Goodbye for now!

Not a good idea, parts 1 and 2

This afternoon, I was exiting the subway at the west exit of the Bloor-Danforth subway platform. This is the exit that bypasses the Yonge-University line and goes straight up to Yonge Street. Because this exit isn't used much, you use a revolving gate instead of a turnstile to exit.

If you're not familiar with the TTC's revolving gates, let me see if I can describe one to you: it's like a revolving door, except that it has horizontal metal bars instead of glass panels, and there's a barrier to keep people from revolving all the way around and back into the station. The basic idea is that it lets people out but doesn't allow people in. Got it? A friend of mine used to call these gates "people strainers".

When I got to the exit gate, a man was just getting through it. After he left, he felt compelled to put the gate back in the condition he found it, so he abruptly stopped its motion as I was about to enter. He wasn't being malicious - it was just an instinctive act of tidying up. But I have no idea what he was thinking. Had I been in the gate, I probably would have been somewhat injured, as I would have been people-strained.

I looked at him, politely but questioningly, as if to say, "Dude - what the?" He looked startled, and then rueful. And then he realized that this exit didn't lead to the Yonge subway, and slunk back in. Just another day on earth...


I was surfing the net tonight, and ran across a site claiming to list the bird courses offered by Canadian universities. (Of course, "bird" in this context means "easy".) I looked up the list for my alma mater, the University of Waterloo, and discovered that the data there is not entirely reliable: CS 452 - Introduction To Real-Time Programming is listed as a bird course. As the recommendation puts it, "Easiest course ever! Earning credits for playing around with trains, how easy is that!?"

When I was in school, taking this course meant that you had no life for four months, as you were doomed to spend all your time in the lab. I avoided it like the plague.

Cool pictures

Yesterday, while searching for random images, I ran across Today's Inspiration. This blog discusses illustrations from the 1940s and 1950s. If you're into this stuff (as I am), you should check it out.

And I know I've mentioned it before, but Shorpy, The 100-Year-Old Photo Blog also totally rocks my world.

Attack, attack, attack!

I'm watching the baseball game this afternoon, and I've seen three attack ads from the Ontario Progressive Conservatives in the last two innings. They all hammer on the same point: Dalton McGuinty has broken his promises.

The problem with this is that I already know what Dalton McGuinty has done. What I want to know is what John Tory is likely to do. These ads don't give me any help with that.

Politicians on tour, and Thomas Frank's view of the market

We're in the middle of a provincial election campaign in Ontario. Whenever there's an election in my part of the world, I stand a good chance of having many of the candidates come right to my door. This is because I live in a 21-story building - campaigners can get the message out to dozens of people without having to travel too far. And those candidates that I don't meet in person in my building are likely to be waiting, campaign literature in hand, at Broadview subway station on a weekday morning, hoping to catch commuters on their way to work.

My current sitting MPP, Peter Tabuns, holds the record for most visits. I've met him three times now: once for the current election, once for the by-election in which he got his seat, and once when he was helping a candidate for the most recent Toronto municipal election. You have to give him credit for getting himself out there.


Just re-read the following, from Thomas Frank's "The God That Sucked", and found it thought-provoking enough to quote here:

The market is a god that sucks. Yes, it cashed a few out at the tippy-top, piled up the loot of the world at their feet, delivered shiny Lexuses into the driveways of their ten-bedroom suburban chateaux. But for the rest of us the very principles that make the market the object of D'Souza's worship, of Gilder's awestruck piety, are the forces that conspire to make life shitty in a million ways great and small. The market is the reason that our housing is so expensive. It is the reason our public transportation is lousy. It is the reason our cities sprawl idiotically all across the map. It is the reason our word-processing programs stink and our medicine costs more than anyone else's. In order that a fortunate few might enjoy a kind of prosperity unequaled in human history, the rest of us have had to abandon ourselves to a lifetime of casual employment, to unquestioning obedience within an ever-more-arbitrary and despotic corporate regime, to medical care available on a maybe/maybe-not basis, to a housing market interested in catering only to the fortunate.

My own belief is that, somewhere down the line, something went wrong with the free market system. Ideally, the market should provide quality goods for customers, a decent living wage for employees, and a fair return for investors. Right now, the market seems to be only providing the latter. How do we fix this?

Go home

If you're fond of mashups, you might want to know about this: Mark Vidler of Go Home Productions has put his entire catalogue up on the Web for downloading.

(Mashups, as you probably know already, are the result of two or more songs mixed together.)

Maybe you can get too much exercise

Something I keep forgetting: if I go for a long walk, and then sit on a public transit vehicle for half an hour, I get one or more sore thigh muscles. They hurt like a son of a bitch at times. And how do you rest a sore muscle when sitting or lying down aggravates the injury? Argh.

Anyway, enough whining. Yesterday, I received not one, but two registration notices for the upcoming election: one for me, and one for somebody I've never heard of, who apparently lived at my address some time ago. Since I've lived where I am for over 6 1/2 years, and somebody other than the name on the other notice lived there before me, I'm wondering where the provincial electoral officers are getting their voters lists from.


The University of Waterloo (my alma mater) is trying to sell me life insurance (emphasis theirs):

Please remember - the comparison-shopping has been done for you. We proudly recommend this plan as one special alumni advantage you can't afford to overlook. And, because the whole idea of insurance is protection against the unexpected at any time, now is the time to act.

How do they decide where to put the bold-facing?


I think it's kind of cool that the Canadian dollar has now reached parity with the American dollar. For one thing, it means that if I buy any books, I'm going to buy them online with American sellers and save a whole whack of money. (An increase in cross-border shopping will no doubt lead to Canadian retailers lobbying for heavy customs duties on imported purchases. They may be doing this already.) But I wonder: if the Canadian dollar keeps appreciating, will we have to throw away all our American spare change?

For years, Canadian retailers have treated American pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters as equivalent to Canadian: it's too much of a hassle to sort between them, and the difference between the currencies was never too great to worry about. But if an American quarter suddenly becomes significantly less valuable than a Canadian one, will people start refusing to take them?

Down comes the curtain

I don't think I've ever seen summer end so abruptly. At 4:00 today, it was about 29C and sunny, and people were swimming in my building's pool. I am writing this just before 6:30, and it's now 14C and raining. It's as if the show has ended and Mother Nature has pulled down the curtain: it's time to go home, everybody.

Away, my songs

This morning, I got another meaningless spam message. The subject header was "hcjqx", which suggests that somebody was testing out their spambombing software.

Here's the message, in its entirety:

Traces of those deep cuts lie thickly upon
Again awaken from your being gone to find
Point, after all, when finally one reaches
Preface to the 1948 Edition
to matter, for the flushed boys are muscular
Is it almost honey, is it snow?
The winged winds, captives of that age-old foe
Away, my songs, must we goat balls hit again and again toward her offspring

It's spam poetry, is what it is. I love it. The second and third-last lines rhyme, even.

Humour and stoplights

Here's some advice for you: if you're looking to buy a humour book, there's an easy way to tell whether a book is likely to be bad. If you can tell from the title of the book what its comic premise is, it's probably not worth buying.

For example, 103 Uses For A Dead Politician is likely to be bad, whereas Three Men and a Boat is more likely to be good (which it is).


For a pedestrian, the corner of Broadview and Danforth is very frustrating. If you just miss a light, you have a long wait ahead of you. For example, if you're standing on the southwest corner waiting to cross Danforth:

• First, there's the advance green from Danforth to Broadview. During rush hour, this is long enough to send about 10 to 12 cars through the intersection.
• You then have to wait a long time as the through traffic travels on Danforth before the light finally changes.
• Then, there's another advance green for traffic turning left from Broadview towards the viaduct.
• If a streetcar is going through the intersection on the advance green, the advance green won't change until the streetcar is through, even though the streetcar isn't turning.
• Finally, the light goes green on Broadview, and pedestrians can cross. Though not for very long.

It's a minor annoyance, I know. But a lot of people cross Broadview just north of the lights, and I'm convinced that part of the reason for this is that the light takes so long to navigate.

Letter of complaint

Lately, I've been playing a lot of Scrabble on the Internet, thanks to Facebook's Scrabulous application. After having played, well, rather a lot of games, I've noticed that there are quite a lot of vowels in the Scrabble letter set. Which led me to write a letter of complaint.

Dear manufacturers of the popular board game "Scrabble":

I have been a satisfied user of the English alphabet for many years. Each and every one of the 26 letters is like my own personal friend. (Except for J, with which I have had a running feud for some time.) But I love consonants and vowels with equal fervour. Which is why I am writing this letter to you: why, oh why, is Scrabble so vowel-drenched?

Now, don't get me wrong: vowels are important. After all, you cnt wrt ndrstndbl sntncs without them. But the Scrabble tile bag has been overloaded with no fewer than 42 vowels.

This means I'm always stuck with letter combinations such as AIIAUOI. I become so frustrated that I want to feed my tiles to an AI (a three-toed sloth) or fling my game into the AA (a type of lava flow). This stress is not good for my blood pressure or my disposition.

If you do not correct this imbalance immediately, the resulting global level of frustration could be devastating. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Now, if I can only figure out where to send it.

Insult on top of injury

Today, I went down to the laundry room to - you guessed it - do my laundry. Somebody had pinned a note to the laundry room noticeboard:

This basket was stolen from us in this laundry room about 3 weeks ago. If it's you who took it, I hope you're enjoying it.

Presumably, a picture of the missing basket had been included with the note. By the time I saw the note, the picture of the basket had been stolen too. I wonder whether the two thefts were by the same person.

Assistants of manager

As I think I've mentioned before, I love spam written in badly fractured English. I got this one today:

Manager Assistant

A big international company with great experience and potential is looking for assistants of manager because of growing of its business.

We will be happy to see you in our team if you fit our requirements:

You must:

• Be creative
• Be honest
• Have an access to the Internet
• Have a possibility to check you e-mail several times a day
• Be a citizen of the US

That last requirement rules me out. Rats.

Bleh

We are experiencing a smog alert in Toronto as I write this. It's pretty bad today: this morning, it took me several minutes to cough the gunk out of my lungs. The air both inside and outside my apartment is like bus exhaust.

According to the Environment Canada web site, the Air Quality Health Index is 6, which represents Moderate Risk. If this is Moderate Risk, I'd hate to see High Risk.

And, in sort-of-related news, Prime Minister Stephen Harper is blaming Canada's environmental record on the Liberals. Again.

Odd conversation

I just had an odd conversation that went something like this:

(phone rings)

CALLER: Hello, is [some name other than mine] there?

ME: No, sorry, I'm afraid you have the wrong number.

CALLER: I'm calling on behalf of John Tory. I'll try again another time.

(hangs up)

I assume that the poor caller is on autopilot after having called about six zillion numbers this afternoon, which is why she said she'd call back. It's too bad she didn't have the correct name: I would have found it interesting to hear what she had to say about Tory and the Tories, even though I am not likely to vote for them.

("Tory and the Tories" would make a great band name. You could picture them covering "At The Hop" at party conventions, or something.)

Semolina Pilchard climbing up the Eiffel Tower

I have always been fascinated by spam that isn't trying to sell me something. Why does it exist? By random accident? Because of bored high-schoolers who've gotten hold of software from somewhere and want to try it out? What gives?

For example: yesterday, I received a spam email with the subject header "pritchard". The message, in its entirety, was:

venison

The spoofed address was from somewhere in France, if that helps. Which it doesn't.

Perhaps it's a secret message. Or the true meaning of life. Venison. Now I know.

Toronto life

I was at the North York Centre library today, and found some old Toronto Life magazines from the late 1960s. Some of the more interesting items that I found in these magazines include:

• A June, 1967 article entitled "Where would Canada be without Toronto to hate?" Some things change, and some things stay the same.
  
  
• A February, 1968 profile of Mel Lastman, back before he entered North York politics:
  
  But do you know Mel Lastman? Probably not. Mel Lastman is a shy, self-effacing appliance dealer until he steps into a phone booth and emerges as (Shazam!) The Bad Boy.
  
  
• A November, 1966 portrait of Barbara Amiel.
  
  
• The society pages always described married women using their husband's names, as in "Mrs. John Smith".
  

But what caught my attention the most was an ad in the May 1967 issue that advertised a new luxury apartment complex. The ad featured a drawing of a charming executive couple, and this copy:

Are you old-fashioned enough to accept the idea of a morning stroll to the office? You'll meet an awful lot of people doing exactly the same thing. You know, they smile a lot more too.

The apartment complex offered the following amenities:

• Private health club and gymnasium
• Tennis, squash and shuffleboard courts
• Indoor pool in each building
• Own shopping centre
• 20 acres of parkland
• Two outdoor Olympic-size pools
• Artificial skating rink
• A full-time recreation director
• Putting green
• Adult-only living (no children allowed)

And what was this New Utopia, you might ask? None other than St. James Town.

I sometimes wonder whether the huge condominium blocks currently being put up are running the risk of a similar fate.

Tory versus Tory

On the weekend, I was walking on King Street near Parliament and saw this election poster:



Clearly, somebody has decided that the John Tory name will sell better in Toronto than the name of the party to which he and Ms. Taylor belong. This ad refers to the Progressive Conservative party only once: "PC" appears, in small print, at the right of the dark blue line under the stylized John Tory signature at the bottom left of the ad. (Ms. Taylor's web site does contain a copy of the PC logo, and is in proper Conservative blue.)

I'm not sure that emphasizing "John Tory" over "Progressive Conservative" is going to be an effective campaign strategy, for one obvious reason: he's named Tory, and his party is nicknamed the Tory party. Clearly, John Tory's destiny was to preside over the Tories. (Of course, given this logic, I should be working in retail.)


On a totally unrelated subject: I think I've mentioned this before, but I find it frustrating that healthy food costs more than crappy food. If I want to eat cheaply, the easiest way to do it is to go to my local pizza outlet, which offers a medium pepperoni for $6. Of course, this has enough calories to choke a horse and enough nutrients to sustain an ant, but it's cheap.

Something's wrong here

According to two Toronto Star articles, the residents of Toronto are simultaneously:

• Enduring $30 million in transit service cuts this year and, possibly, $100 million in cuts next year.
• Subsidizing the other parts of the country by paying $11 billion more in federal and provincial taxes than the amount that is spent in the city.

I don't want to seem like a whiny complainer (actually, sometimes I do), but something seems wrong with this picture.

When I am feeling pessimistic, I sometimes think that the only thing that will change the funding picture in Toronto is some sort of catastrophic infrastructure failure. Until then, Toronto's plight will be ignored - or, worse, secretly enjoyed.

You lost me at "hello"

A call I got this afternoon (call display tagged it as "LONG DISTANCE"):

Me: "Hello?"

Recorded voice: "I'm sorry, that was an invalid response. Press 1 to learn how to lower your interest rates..."

Me: [click]

They'd probably have more success if "Hello" was a valid response. Or if they ducked their heads in a vat of steaming sulphuric acid. Either one works for me.

No doctor direction needed

I love spam written by people for whom English is obviously a second, or possibly third, language. Here's one I got today:

Dear [deleted]:
For years now I have been umaking use of your prescription services for all of my medicines. I was procuring from the purchasing US pharmacy and paying a little fortune for my doctor recommendation. Then I got clever and initiated buying from your Canadian firm. I didn't even need a doctor direction to order from you. You have saved me in detail above 10,800 dollar in the last five years. Your assistance are fast, consistent, you put forward larger than 2000 medical drugs and your excellence is 2nd to none.

Your blissful customer,

Jim J
Omaha Nebraska

Click here to establish saving on your medical instruction:
[deleted]

And spammers are trying a new trick to get people to view their website: bogus mailing list verifications. Here's one I got the other day:

We are glad you joined Bartenders Guide.

Membership Number: [deleted]
Your Login ID: [deleted]
Your Password ID: [deleted]

Please keep your account secure by logging in and changing your login info.

Use this link to change your Login info: [bogus link to IP address deleted]

Enjoy,
Internet Support
Bartenders Guide

I haven't tried following the link, as I figure it'll be something I definitely don't want to see.

I've been screened

Because I have my resume on monster.ca at the moment, I'm getting a lot of phone calls and email messages from IT recruiters. Many of these recruiters screen potential candidates by asking how many years of experience each candidate has with a particular software application. (For example: "For how many years have you been using FrameMaker?")

I'm not sure that this is the most effective way to winnow through a pile of resumes. Screening questions such as this reduce the field to two groups of candidates:

• The rare few people who have exactly the right amount of experience with each software application
• People who are willing to lie when asked screening questions

I suspect that there might be more people in group B than in group A.

I think I see a connection

Today, I read a fascinating article titled Debtor Nation. According to this article, the United States is consuming more than it is producing: last year, the difference was $850 billion. This is close to the total annual output of Brazil, the tenth-largest economy on the planet.

Two statements in the article caught my attention. One was this, from page 2:

Between 2000 and 2005, even as the U.S. economy grew 14 percent in real terms, and worker productivity increased a remarkable 16.6 percent, workers' average hourly wages were stagnant. The median family income fell 2.9 percent.

And, from page 4:

Households that used to be saving about 10 percent of their income as recently as two decades ago are now saving nothing. But, says Richard Cooper, "We don't know how to make Americans save more."

I don't claim to be an economist (as my posts earlier this month prove, rather conclusively), but I'm thinking this: if U.S. workers' wages were to grow at the same rate as the economy and their own productivity, they might be able to save a bit more.

Fixing the Toronto transit system

The Globe and Mail web site is currently running a web-exclusive article on why and how to rebuild the Toronto transit system. The author of the article, Michael Warren, is a former general manager of the TTC.

One paragraph in this article caught my attention:

The city is asking millions of federal and provincial taxpayers who don't live here to help fix Toronto's ailing transit system. To succeed, it will have to give them value for their money.

As it happens, the city is not asking for money from taxpayers outside of Toronto. Torontonians pay federal and provincial tax too, and lots of it - we pay far more than we get back. What we're asking is that more of the money we give to other levels of government be spent in the city.

The misguided belief that other Ontario taxpayers are being asked to subsidize Toronto is one of the reasons why Toronto's infrastructure is not well funded. Ontarians who hold this belief are wondering - understandably - why they should send money to Toronto when their own communities have plenty of problems that need to be dealt with.

There's no question that Toronto is in serious trouble:

• The city is about to be forced to implement steep service cuts because it has no major source of revenue other than property taxes and transfers from other levels of government.
  
• Toronto is surrounded by huge tracts of suburban sprawl, which appeared during a time when urban planning was seen as interfering with free enterprise. This sprawl is oil-dependent, energy-inefficient, and impossible to provide cost-effective public transit for.
  
• The federal government is not interested in investing in Toronto (to put it mildly). Presumably, they'd rather spend money in places that are likely to vote Conservative.
• The provincial government doesn't want to take back any of the fiscal responsibilities downloaded onto municipalities by the Mike Harris government. An election is coming soon, and the provincial Liberals don't want to spend any more money than they have to. Also, any election-related spending would be more politically effective in suburban swing ridings.

This situation is not likely to change until Toronto's infrastructure suffers a noticeable, and paralyzing, breakdown. And, even then, things aren't likely to change unless this breakdown affects Canadians outside of Toronto.


I haven't gotten a lot further in the economics textbook I'm looking at. I'm up to Chapter 7 ("Consumers, Producers, and the Efficiency of Markets"), and that's only because I've been skimming over a lot of the more complicated graphs.

At the end of this chapter, the book offers a word of warning:

To conclude that markets are efficient, we made several assumptions about how markets work. When these assumptions do not hold, our conclusion that the market equilibrium is efficient may no longer be true.

Some of these assumptions are:

• That markets are perfectly competitive - in other words, no single buyer or seller controls any market.
  
• That the outcome in a market matters only to the buyers and sellers in that market. (This assumption eliminates concerns such as the effect of pollution.)
  

The tricky question now becomes: under what circumstances are these assumptions invalid? As I see it, people who are politically left of centre tend to believe that these assumptions seldom are true. People who are right of centre tend to believe that the "invisible hand" of the marketplace normally works well. (But, then again, I'm only on Chapter 7 of the book. I'm at the "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing" stage.)

Pigeon-on-pigeon action

I just spotted two pigeons on my balcony. I think they were getting it on - I didn't look too closely, but they were certainly rather close to one another.

I shooed them away: not because I am prudish, but because I am generally trying to make the pigeon population relocate to somewhere other than my balcony. I hate cleaning up pigeon poop.

(The Toronto pigeon population has migrated recently: I've been living near Broadview and Danforth for six and a half years now, and this is the first year I've seen pigeons here.)


Oh, and I saw the Goodyear blimp drifting north of the city about an hour ago. For some reason, I thought this was kind of cool.

Networking and bad manners

I'm currently subscribing to a few job search-related mailing lists. These lists usually aren't very helpful. When not providing advice on how to create a killer resume, they're relentlessly flogging web sites that provide a way to send your resume to zillions of employers and recruiters at once.

One of these mailing lists sent me an email this morning describing the supposedly effective use of a networking cover letter:

The networking cover letter is a flexible hard-working tool that will help you reach the individuals in your life who can assist you the most--family members, friends, neighbors, colleagues, and professional acquaintances. And also consider all the people in each of their lives. Ask your friends and relatives for their employment leads, referrals from their circle of influence, and for personal introductions, as well.

Get started quickly by creating a master list of the names of everyone who comes to mind. Look at your collection of business cards. Flip through association rosters and other directories, e-mail address books, and all lists of groups you are affiliated with. Then write or e-mail a networking cover letter to each person on the list, asking for help.

And the Workopolis career site discusses how to use networking to get referrals, and emphasizes the need for persistence:

Getting referrals is essential to developing a network, so don't give up until you have at least two names of other people who might help you in your job search. You can get referrals from virtually anyone, but only if you are persistent in asking for them. Here are three questions that will generally get you one or more referrals, but often only after you ask the second or third questions:

1. Do you know of anyone who might have an opening for a person with my skills? If no, then,
2. Do you know of anyone else who might know of someone who would? If still no, then,
3. Do you know someone who knows a lot of people (in this or that field)?

Get used to asking each of the three questions until you get what you want - either a lead for a possible job opening, or the names of two people who might be of assistance to you in your search.

Perhaps I was raised in too genteel a fashion, but to me all of this sounds awfully like bad manners. Sure, you might get some job leads this way, but I can't help but think that persistent questioning will leave behind a trail of scorched earth. It seems almost as bad as being an Amway salesman: your friends stop being your friends, but instead become "contacts" or "leads". The world becomes one giant market and nothing more.

Mind you, my fastidious attitude might be the reason why I'm not employed right now. As one saying I've seen in several places puts it, "Either networking or no working." At present, I seem to have chosen the latter.

Comparative advantage and exploitation

(Note: edited slightly after rereading.)

I've gotten yet a little further into Mankiw's Principles of Economics, and I am fascinated by the concept of what he calls "comparative advantage". As I understand it, the basic concept of comparative advantage is that everybody benefits if each of us gets to do what he or she is best at. (Or, to use the definition provided in the book: "The producer who gives up less of other goods to produce Good X has the smaller opportunity cost of producing Good X and is said to have a comparative advantage in producing it." Well, okay, then.)

To use the example provided in the book: Tiger Woods might very well be the best lawn mower in the world. But it would be a waste of Tiger's time to have him mow his own lawn. Instead of spending two hours mowing the lawn, Tiger could spend those two hours making a television commercial, which would earn him more money. He'd be better off hiring the boy next door to mow his lawn for him.

According to the book, the boy next door wins too if he earns more money mowing Tiger's lawn for two hours than he could any other way. If he could earn $20 working at McDonald's for two hours, and Tiger is willing to pay him more than $20, it's a win for both Tiger and the boy next door. Everybody wins, and this is why trade is beneficial.

However, I was wondering something. The book makes the following statement:

As long as Woods pays [the boy next door] more than $20 and less than $10,000, both of them are better off.

True - but what if, instead of the boy next door, the person being hired is a poor peasant in a third-world country? His condition is so wretched that almost any wage at all would be an improvement. If an employer notices his situation and hires him for a below-subsistence wage to work in a maquiladora, is the employer exploiting the peasant? At what point is it not good enough to leave someone merely better off than before?

Occasionally hit a soft spot?

I've read a bit more of the Principles of Economics textbook: I'm now in the middle of Chapter 2 ("Thinking Like An Economist"). This chapter includes the following, from a commencement address given by Robert D. McTeer Jr., the former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas:

Economics majors understand the non-intuitive reality that real progress comes from job destruction. It once took 90 percent of our population to grow our food. Now it takes 3 percent. Pardon me, Willie, but are we worse off because of the job losses in architecture? The would-have-been farmers are now college professors and computer gurus...

So instead of counting jobs, we should make every job count. We will occasionally hit a soft spot when we have a mismatch of supply and demand in the labor market. But that is temporary.

Several things struck me when I read this:

• Does "job destruction" (as McTeer calls it) always lead to real progress? That's what happened throughout the 20th century, but there's no reason to believe that this is going to keep happening. Eventually, there might not be any more technological advances that create jobs. What happens if the labor market winds up needing only 3 percent of the computer gurus it has now, and there's no place for them to go?
• How long do these occasional soft spots last? They might very well last for the lifetime of the people whose jobs are destructed. If this is the case, the soft spot only goes away when the destructees themselves go away and are replaced with new, freshly trained workers.
• If new jobs are created, will they be created in North America? Or will they be created in India or China?

And: according to a table in the same chapter, 93% of economists are opposed to rent control and trade barriers. Apparently, one purpose of this textbook is to "help you understand the economist's view of these and other subjects and, perhaps, to persuade you that it is the right one." Hmph.

I wonder whether Mr. Mankiw will suggest an alternative to rent control that achieves the goals that rent control is supposed to achieve:

• Decent housing for the poor at a reasonable rent.
• A liveable downtown: if rents become too high in a downtown area, the poor are forced to move out to the burbs (thus creating commuting problems) or sleep on the streets. This has the effect of hollowing out city centres, as has happened in many American cities.
  

Or do 93% of economists just kinda hope that the "invisible hand" will somehow make it all work out without anybody having to do anything about it? I look forward to finding out.

Market power and "Running The Numbers"

Recently, I got a copy of Mankiw's Principles of Economics out of the library. (Some light summer reading! Yay!) I'm only 11 pages into the book, and he's already made two statements that I don't agree with:

• Seat belts cause more harm than good (p. 8): The book cites a 1975 study by economist Sam Peltzman, who states that auto-safety laws have produced fewer deaths per accident, but more accidents and more pedestrian deaths. According to Peltzman, this is because drivers who buckle up drive faster and less carefully. The general idea, of which seat-belt laws are a specific case, is known as the Peltzman Effect.
  
  Peltzman's claim that seat belt usage has had an adverse effect on safety is disputed by a paper by Steven D. Levitt and Jack Porter. An article by David Sklansky in the Harvard Law Review also states that Peltzman was mistaken.
  
  
• Rent control policies are harmful (p. 10). I won't argue this point here, other than to point out that nobody is building new apartments any more because builders can get a greater return on their investment by building condominiums. Rent control, or the lack of it, has nothing to do with it. As soon as the condo market becomes glutted - which should happen reasonably freaking soon, given how many of the damned things are going up in Toronto - builders might consider building apartments again.

Page 11 of the book contained a useful definition that I had not heard before: market power. This, according to Mankiw, is "the ability of a single person (or small group) to unduly influence market prices". Mankiw states that well-designed public policies can improve market efficiency if market power is present (which I agree with).

Extremist ideologues would probably make the following claims about market power (neither of which I agree with):

• Certain leftists would claim that market power is the inevitable result of unregulated capitalism.
• Certain right-wing extremists would claim that those who have achieved market power have acquired it because they deserve it. If you don't like it, the argument goes, why not go out and work hard and acquire some market power of your own? (To which I used to reply: success requires talent, opportunity and luck, as well as effort.)

Anyway, I'll keep reading the book, and see if I can pound any more useful information into my mush-like brain. If I do, I'll keep you posted.


Photographer Chris Jordan has created a series of photographs, called "Running The Numbers", which uses large photographic prints to illustrate American rates of consumption and other facts. For example, he has created a photograph of 9 million child's building blocks, which is equivalent to the number of American children with no health insurance coverage in 2007. He has also created photographs of:

• 8 million toothpicks, representing the number of trees harvested every month to make paper for mail-order catalogues;
• 2 million plastic beverage bottles, which is the number of these bottles used by Americans every five minutes;
• 65,000 cigarettes, representing the number of American teens hooked on tobacco every month;
• 11,000 jet trails, which is the number of commercial flights in the U.S. every eight hours;
• 426,000 cell phones, which is how many phones are retired in the U.S. every day;
• 29,569 handguns, which is the number of gun-related deaths in America in 2004;
• 1.14 million brown paper bags, which is the number of bags used in the U.S. every hour;
• 60,000 plastic bags, which is the number of plastic bags used every five seconds.

The most startling photograph is his Cans Seurat, which is a reproduction of a Seurat painting made from 106,000 aluminum cans. This is the number of cans used in the U.S. every thirty seconds.

Are the spammers watching me?

After writing a spam-related post with the title "Timing is everything", it was disconcerting to see a spam message this morning with the header "Timing, perfect."

Today's message wasn't just sent to me, so I think it's a coincidence. But I'm still feeling like I'm being watched. Cue the Twilight Zone music.

Timing is everything

I got this spam in the mail today:

Hello my friend!
I am ready to kill myself and eat my dog, if medicine prices here (site name deleted) are bad.
Look, the site and call me 1-800 if its wrong..
My dog and I are still alive :)

Kill himself and eat his dog?

(Sorry I haven't been writing much here - I'll try to do better as soon as the temperature in my apartment goes lower than, say, 86 degrees. And as soon as I get off my sorry butt and write more.)

A small achievement

I got my electricity bill on Friday, and discovered that, somehow, I have become more energy-efficient:

• My July 2007 reading was 438 kWh consumed; July 2006 was 480 kWh. (This is for two months.)
  
• The May 2007 reading was 406 kWh; May 2007 was 449.

The only things I can think of that I am doing differently are:

• I'm using energy-efficient light bulbs instead of the old-style incandescent bulbs.
• I unplug my VCR when I'm not using it.

That's pretty much it. I'm not sure how this translates into a 10% saving. But I'm willing to take credit for it.

Worst. Scammer. Ever.

I got this in my email just now (all errors theirs):

You are receiving this message, due to you protection, Our Online Technical Security Service Foreign IP Spy recently detected that your online account was recently logged on from am 67.120.175.197 without am International Access Code (I.A.C) and from an unregistered computer, which was not verified by the Our Online Service Department.

If you last logged in you online account on Tuesday July 24th 2007, by the time 5:42 am from an Foreign Ip their is no need for you to panic, but if you did log in your account on the above Date and Time, kindly take 2-3 minute of your online banking experince to verify and register your computer now to avoid identity theft, your protection is our future medal.

It concludes with this:

Because email is not a secure form of communication, please do not reply to this email.
Notice: You can acess your account from a foreign IP or country by getting am (I.A.C) International Access Code, by contacting our local brances close to you.

Attention, hackers: phishing scams work better when you use correct spelling and grammar!

Second Cup is hazardous to your health

So I went to a Second Cup in the Annex tonight to write, since I was at loose ends. (I do not always lead an exciting life.) I bought a hot apple cider so that I could sit at a table outdoors. They served it at a temperature so hot that I literally could not hold it for more than a second or two, even with the protective cardboard padding around the cup.

When I told the counter person this, he put the cup inside a second cup (aha! hence the name!) . This made it possible to hold the container for a few seconds. I could manage to carry the cup to my table without burning the skin off my hand, provided I transferred the cup from one hand to the other frequently, and held the cup at its very rim.

But this was a difficult undertaking because the cup had also been filled to the very top. Had any of its contents been spilled while I carried the cup, hand to hand, to my table, I would likely have been very severely scalded. It took all of my motor skills to successfully manage not to do this. I don't think I ever want to order an apple cider again.


A friend of mine forwarded a message from the Toronto Humane Society - apparently, they're full to bursting with lost or unwanted pets. Here's the relevant excerpt:

You’ve helped the animals in the past. Please help them again right now. If you’ve been considering adopting a new pet, don’t delay. Do it today. Do it this weekend. If you know anyone – friends, relatives, neighbours – who are thinking about sharing their life with a new dog, cat or rabbit, tell them to come to the THS immediately.

We need to find homes for at least 200 cats and 50 dogs this weekend. Each and every one of these animals is an innocent creature put at risk for the simple crime of being homeless. Help the animals. Act now.

(For the record, I can't adopt a pet: I'm allergic to dogs and cats.)

Damn, they're persistent

I have call display, which means I don't ever have to deal with telemarketers. But it also means that some telemarketers are persistent: when I don't answer the phone, they keep trying.

During the last couple of days, I've gotten a bunch of calls from a newspaper call centre and from a 1-866 number. Here are the call times for each:

Newspaper call centre:
July 17, 12:41 p.m.
July 17, 5:50 p.m.
July 18, 9:53 a.m.
July 18, 4:27 p.m.
July 18, 6:34 p.m.

1-866 number:
July 17, 2:57 p.m.
July 18, 10:15 a.m.
July 18, 3:39 p.m.
July 18, 7:20 p.m.

I'm willing to outwait them as long as necessary, but I hope that some poor minimum-wage earner isn't being forced to keep calling me until I answer. Or, worse still, isn't going to get paid until he checks everybody off his list.

The American dollar is sinking like a rock

Recently, I renewed my subscription to Mechapixel, a cool web site where people create strange and wonderful images with Photoshop and talk about all sorts of interesting stuff. The site is in the United States, so I have to pay in U.S. dollars.

When I renewed today, the Canada/U.S. exchange rate was 1 Canadian dollar = 0.933799 U.S. dollars. At the start of April, 2007, when I last renewed, the exchange rate was 1 Canadian dollar = 0.842931 U.S. dollars. This means that the Canadian dollar has gained 10% against the Yankee buck in less than three months. Whoa.

Transit geekery

I found some web sites this morning that are eye candy for transit geeks: Transit Toronto and Mike's Transit Stop. Both of these sites contain lots of images of old TTC route maps.

Some of the old maps are fascinating: the May, 1964 map shows what has to be the shortest TTC route in history. The Gerrard 38 bus ran on Gerrard Street from Main to Bingham, which is a distance of ten blocks, or less than three-quarters of a mile. It would take about 15 minutes, tops, to walk the entire length of the route. That driver must have been bored to tears by his job.

Transit lovers, or riders, should also check out Steve Munro's web site and the TTC's route schedules page.

Dear Emplyee (sic)

Got this in my email yesterday:

Dear Emplyee,

Our International Corporation has a variety of high-paid positions available at the moment. We are proud to offer you an interesting, respectable position in a field of Financial Services. If you are a honest, responsible and hard-working person we would be glad to do business with you.

Our company is a respectable international organization. We believe that the success of our company depends on maintaining high standards of business conduct, integrity, safety, quality and respect for people and the environment in everything we do.

We are working honestly. We will never ask you to pay or invest something. You work - we pay for the result. We will never ask you to provide us with your private information such as credit card number or your bank requisites.

There are no geographical limits for our employees. People from all over the world are welcomed. No degree is required in order to join us. We value educated people very much but we believe that there are a lot of perspective persons without any degree. We have position for everyone.

Most of people who is working as our local representative for 2-3 years has embodied all their financial dreams in a reality. They know that working with us is a right way to acheive the financial success.

Okay, they're honest, and they don't want my bank requisites. But what do they do?


Yesterday was a sad day: Ed Mirvish is dead.

A little tip for sex spammers

I got this in my email just now:

Hello! I am tired today. I am nice girl that would like to chat with you. Email me at [email deleted] only. Wanna see some pictures of me?

The problem: the email message was from "Emerson Brown". Hint: if you want to increase traffic from lonely guys (and, presumably, do nefarious things to their computers), make up a woman's name for the email header. You're welcome.

Conservatism and democracy

One of the things I like least about our current sitting Prime Minister is that he tends to act as a lone wolf, not bothering to consult with others before making his decisions. The latest example of this was reported in the Globe today: apparently, Mr. Harper is planning on making announcements in Saskatchewan and Nova Scotia without even notifying their provincial premiers that he is planning on dropping by. Presumably, this lack of notification is because the premiers are feuding with the federal government over resource revenues.

This is not the first time that Harper has acted without consulting with other stakeholders, the electorate, or anybody else. And I wonder: why do conservatives tend to dislike consultation? Why does democracy seem to annoy our Prime Minister?

I thought of one possible answer yesterday. Fiscal and social conservatives probably don't trust the people very much. Without a restraining hand to stop them, the reasoning goes, people would give themselves all kinds of goodies that Canada can't afford to pay for. So they have to be kept from doing this. In this view, the prime minister serves as a responsible parent, giving the people what is best for them, even if it is not what they want.

The problem, of course, is that the "responsible" parent might not be all that responsible, or might have an agenda of his own.

The back of beyond

Today, I got a spam message with the subject: "Improve Your Front Teeth Without Embarrassment". The text padding with this message included the definitions of the following words: contradistinction, ululate, crapulous (which is to be sick from excessive drinking), parvenu, manse, uxorious, megalomania, verdant, and Ides.

The Ides of a month (as in "beware the Ides of March") is, according to my spam, the fifteenth day of March, May, July and October, and the thirteenth day of every other month. (Wikipedia confirms this.)

The message also included the following, which reads like free verse poetry to me:

Multiple Intelligences Inventory - a snapshot in time of an individual's perceived MI preferences
They can also become skillfull designers and layout artist.
people and the Earth in shitty positions eg. poverty are in
The back of beyond

(By the way, I would have trouble improving my front teeth, with or without embarrassment: I lost them when I was 12, thanks to a softball accident.)

Short shameful confession

I confess: when I go to buy milk, I look in the back of the milk section to find the container with the newest expiry date.

Sudden uncharitable thought

A thought just occurred to me: I suspect that many of the people who downplay the importance of fighting climate change are not impacted by hot weather.

If someone lives in a luxury condo and works in an office tower with underground parking, he or she can avoid the weather entirely, going from an air-conditioned home to an air-conditioned parking garage to an air-conditioned car to another air-conditioned garage to an air-conditioned workplace.

This reminds me of a way to divide the world into three groups, which I may already have mentioned in this space:

• Those who can hire people to clean up their messes for them
• Those who have to clean up their own messes (I'm in this group)
  
• Those who have to clean up other people's messes for a living

Lottery tickets, the pennant race, and the need for hope

(Note: this also appears on the Batter's Box Interactive Magazine web site. Which explains the "bear with me - this is about baseball" comments.)

Recently, I figured out why people buy lottery tickets.

I once believed people played the lottery because they weren't smart enough to calculate the odds. Since the chances of winning are so poor, the rational choice is always to keep your money in your pocket. For this reason, I thought of the lottery as a tax on stupid people.

(What does this have to do with baseball, you ask? Bear with me two more paragraphs, please.)

It occurred to me the other day that most lottery purchasers are fully aware that the odds are stacked against them. But lottery tickets offer hope: after all, somebody has to win the big prize. And many people have no rational source of hope in life, so they go to their local lottery retailer to buy some irrational hope. A few dollars a week for a little bit of hope is a tradeoff many people are willing to make.

(There's baseball in the next paragraph. I promise.)

Baseball fans, being human, need hope too. As I write this, virtually every team in the majors has at least a slim chance of making it to the post-season. And almost all of those who are out of contention have some talented young players who offer hope for next season. (There are exceptions. If you're reading this, and you're an Orioles fan, all I can say is: I'm so sorry.) This hope - that something wonderful is going to happen some day, and we're going to get to be a part of it - keeps us watching the games, writing to web sites like this one, and generally caring about baseball and the Blue Jays. And caring and hope are Good Things.

And this is why I don't like the output of certain Toronto baseball columnists. It's not because they're cranky and sarcastic - many of the best people are cranky, sarcastic, or both. And it's certainly not because they write negative things about my beloved Blue Jays: diehard fans often bash the Jays harder than even the meanest-spirited writer does. No, the reason I don't like what certain writers write is because they seem to see their job as Myth Debunker, or Reality Therapy Specialist.

These writers believe that it is their duty to explain, clearly and rationally, why the local team hasn't a snowball's chance in hell of succeeding. (You've seen those dreary calculations: "The Jays have to play 46-5 ball between now and the end of September, while everybody else plays .500 or worse, to have even a slim chance of making it to the postseason. Where they're likely to be stomped by the Yankees anyway. Have a nice day.") When they do this, they are trying to take away my hope. That is why I don't like them.

And there is hope, by God. Sure, the odds are against the Jays. The Jays need to have several bats wake up all at the same time. There are a lot of teams ahead of them. And George Steinbrenner needs to keep his wallet tightly chained. But these things could happen. The Jays could win, and so could your lottery ticket. Hang in there; don't give up.

Notes from suburbia

Today, I went for a job interview that took me north of the city, and I wound up having lunch at the Steeles and 404 mall (known, grandly, as The Shops) and then walking south. I noticed three things:

1. The men's washroom at The Shops featured a sign that warned me that this facility was monitored 24 hours a day. This leads me to wonder: who on earth would want a job staring at a men's washroom all day long? Do they put out "help wanted" ads for that? And who would be given the thankless task of monitoring the washroom in the middle of the night?
   
   There's something kind of weird about having someone electronically watch you while you, erm, do your business. (I suppose they probably don't actually have a human being staring at a screen - it's probably a computer that has been programmed to detect unusual behaviour. Still... whoa.) Is the women's washroom monitored as well? If so, do they have one monitor of each sex to prevent cross-gender monitoring and all that that entails?
   
   
2. It will be very difficult to transform some of the newer suburbs into denser, more greenhouse gas-friendly urban environments. For one thing, most arterial roads in new suburbs are designed exclusively for the efficient movement of cars: there are no houses, apartments, condos, small stores, parks or anything connecting to them other than feeder streets. There's literally nothing there.
   
   
3. Buses belonging to suburban transit systems are inevitably larger, newer and nicer than the equivalent TTC buses. This isn't knocking the TTC: the suburban systems can afford better buses because they receive greater per-user subsidies than the downtown system.
   

I'm a quality resource!

Today, one of my online job search agents sent me a notification about an opening for a "Quality Technical Writer". Ordinary technical writers need not apply: they demand Quality! I could nitpick here and point out that one way to define "quality" is as a synonym for "trait" or "attribute": laziness and inefficiency are qualities. But there's no point in that.

And, a while back, I saw an ad that stated that it was looking for a "resource". Perhaps I'm feeling cranky this morning, but I hate being thought of as a resource (or an "asset"). It makes me feel like I'm an expendable commodity to be used and then discarded when no longer needed.

No free market without government

I'm currently reading Air America: The Playbook. One of the articles in this book, titled "Attack of the Killer Corporations" and written by Thom Hartmann, makes a point that seems obvious once you think of it: you can't have a free market without a government to back it up.

Here's Hartmann on the subject:

For a market to exist, there must first be a legal concept of private property and private property ownership. This requires laws that define what ownership means [...]

This requires laws defining property, ownership, and terms of exchange. It requires legislatures to enact and fine-tune these laws as times and circumstances change. It requires courts to interpret the laws and adjudicate them. It requires police to enforce them and prisons to hold those who defy them.

Hartmann goes on to say that there are two schools of thought about how governments should create and mediate marketplaces: unrestrained free-market capitalism and compassionate capitalism. Unrestrained capitalism, according to Hartmann, leads to a feudal society in which people and governments are controlled by a few wealthy, powerful men. And this is happening now:

We are quickly shifting toward a corporate-run state in countries all over the world. It appears "free" and even allows elections, albeit only among candidates funded and approved by corporate powers, held on voting machines owned by those corporate powers, and marketed in media owned by those corporate powers.

Which reminds me: I am grateful that, in Canada, election ballots are counted by hand. Did you know that the chief executive of Diebold, a company that manufactures voting machines, is a committed Republican?

Busted!

I was looking at Warren Kinsella's blog this evening, and found this, which was originally written by Christine McMillan:

John Tory and Mike Harris together again… but shhhh, don’t tell!

North Bay - - Tonight John Tory and Mike Harris are sharing a stage and a toast to their plan to take Ontario backwards to the days of deficits, division and cuts. But shhhh. Don’t tell.

Current Conservative leader John Tory is in North Bay for a fundraiser with former Conservative leader Mike Harris.

But the Conservatives have gone out of their way to avoid any media noticing or being allowed to take any pictures.

The Conservatives are so desperate to keep the ghost of Mike Harris in the closet that they even barred a Liberal from purchasing a ticket.

Tonight Tory and Harris will raise a glass to their attempts to divide Ontario with private schools and private health care. Shhhh…

Even after all this time, the very idea of Mike Harris causes my blood pressure to rise. He seemed to take politics so personally: he gave the impression that he actually hated welfare recipients, teachers, Liberals, Torontonians, the arts, anyone who opposed him...

Why do conservatives of all stripes tend to fight dirty?

Elvis lives!

Tonight, I'm listening to 3WK, an Internet radio station, while I vaguely geek about on my computer. While I've been here, they've played two covers of old-school Elvis Costello songs. matt pond PA covered "Green Shirt", and Crosstide covered "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding?" They're both great versions of great songs.

Rock.

This caught my attention

Something just caught my attention: according to the Globe, a survey of 10 major urban centres indicated that the average homeowner spent more than $11,000 on renovations in 2006. The total was over $17.3 billion in renovations spending.

Most people who renovated apparently did so because they wanted to "add value or to prepare to sell the residence."

Preapproved to receive 58302

The spam just keeps on coming. Here's one I got this morning:

As a business you have been preapproved to receive 58302 USD TODAY!

No hassle at all, completely unsecured.
There are no hidden costs or fees.
Worried that your credit is less than perfect? Not an issue.

Give us a ring, now..

[number deleted]

Turn your dream, into a reality, is that not worth two minutes of your time?

[number deleted]

For a moment Geoffrey Alliburton was not sure who the old man at the door was, and this was not entirely because the bell had awakened him from a deepening doze. If the police come, it may raise suspicion, but Id rather have them suspicious than have them drive up to the house and hear you making a big cockadoodie fuss.

Rats. Making a big cockadoodie fuss is pretty much what I do best.

And how did they decide on exactly $58,302?

Moving towards the centre?

The other day, the Globe reported that Ontario Progressive Conservative leader John Tory is attempting to position his party as more moderate than in the days of Mike Harris. If he can succeed in doing this, he might recapture the majority that the party held during the days of Bill Davis.

To do this, he will need to reassure voters that the PCs intend to remain moderate, come what may. If the Ontario Tories start to slide in the polls, there will always be the temptation to release the Visigoths and turn the party hard right again. (Recall that Ernie Eves started off trying to moderate his party's platform.)


Here's a link I first saw many years ago, which I really liked then and still like now: Letter to the Smithsonian.

Wandering books and drunken Torontonians

Yesterday, I was eating breakfast at a diner on the Danforth, and somebody gave me a book that had been deliberately left there as part of a project called BookCrossing. The idea is this: if you don't want a book any more, you assign it a unique number, leave a note in it, and then "release it into the wild".

If you find a wild book, you can enter its number into the BookCrossing registry and learn who left it and when. The book I got is a copy of Pierre Berton's "The National Dream", which is the first of a two-part history of the building of the first Canadian transcontinental railroad. I've read it, but a long time ago, so I am reading it again.

In passing, the book describes the Canada of the 1870s. Apparently, there wasn't much to do but work, argue about politics, go to church and drink. Especially drink. According to Berton:

Alcohol in the [1870s] was both the national pastime and the national problem. Half of all arrests in the Dominion were for offences connected with liquor. Toronto had more than five hundred saloons, dispensing whiskey at two cents a shot. Barn raisings, picnics and work "bees" of all kinds were lubricated with barrels of what the flourishing temperance movement was calling "demon rum". Delirium tremens was a common ailment. Special police were needed in the cities to trundle staggering workingmen off to jail, while others were left insensible or prostrate in the mud of the streets.

Since Toronto in the 1870s had a population of roughly 50,000, this meant there was one saloon for every one hundred people.

The blame game

Saw this fascinating comment from Stephen Harper (courtesy of The Reader):

Prime Minister Stephen Harper told an international audience Monday that Canada will not meet its Kyoto accord targets but can be a model for the rest of the world in battling climate change.

Harper blamed the previous Liberal government for years of foot-dragging and said it is now impossible for Canada to meet Kyoto without destroying its economy.

"Frankly, up to now, our country has been engaged in a lot of 'talking the talk,' but not, 'walking the walk,' when it comes to greenhouse gases," Harper told a business audience in Germany.

"Our predecessors in government committed our country to the Kyoto protocol ... and then they did nothing to achieve this goal."

Grrrr. While the Liberals deserve to be taken to task for their poor record on the environment, Harper is, as usual, just looking for another way to beat up his political opponents. Let's be honest: if the Liberals had actually done anything about climate change while Harper was in opposition, he would have accused them of damaging the Canadian economy and/or favouring Central Canada over the oil-producing regions of the country. There would have been attack ads on the subject. And the National Post would have consumed entire forests of trees writing articles questioning whether humans are having an effect on climate change.

Besides, blaming the Liberals is getting to be tiresome, given that the Conservatives have been in power for nearly 18 months now. Why not blame Wilfrid Laurier or Mackenzie Bowell while you're at it?

And, for crying out loud, could our Prime Minister please stop bashing his political opponents when speaking to an international audience? They aren't interested in hearing about Canadian internal political affairs.

Um, yeah, okay

I got this in the mail this morning:

Dear University of Waterloo Alumnus,

You are part of a select group of alumni - established professionals who can choose any credit card they want. That's why I am extending a personal invitation to you to enjoy the benefits of the University of Waterloo Platinum Plus MasterCard credit card.

Dudes, you so need to update your database.


On a totally unrelated topic: I've never understood why subway escalators seem to be shut off at random intervals. I was at Greenwood station this morning, and the escalator from the westbound platform was not working. This meant that an unfortunate older woman had to slowly hoist herself up one stair at a time.

I am beginning to think that some subway patrons like to shut off the escalator when they get to the top. Why? Just because they can, and because they like to annoy people.

Wikinomics, Part 1

So I finally got hold of a copy of Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything from the library, after reaching the top of the waiting list. One of the basic premises of the book is outlined in this paragraph, at the bottom of page 19:

The pace of change and the evolving demands of customers are such that firms can no longer depend only on internal capabilities to meet external needs. Nor can they depend only on tightly coupled relationships with a handful of business partners to keep up with customer desires for speed, innovation, and control. Instead, firms must engage and cocreate in a dynamic fashion with everyone - partners, competitors, educators, government, and most of all, customers.

I can easily see how a firm that accepts ideas and effort from millions of Internet users has a competitive advantage over one that only employs in-house brainpower. But my question is this: how will individuals survive in this new work environment? Sure, we might find new exciting ways to work in the Web 2.0 world - but we still have to live, eat, and pay bills in the old-fashioned world. I don't see yet how it will be possible to earn a living using Web 2.0 technology (unless you're one of the lucky few who builds the next YouTube or Facebook).

I'll keep reading the book - maybe it has answers to this rather difficult question.

(For more ideas on this subject, you might want to check out Rohan Jayasekera's Web 2.0 blog.)

Humongous disversification

Got this in the mail today. All spelling mistakes are theirs, not mine:

Accept a large decrease on your prescriptoins

honorable sorts, top-notch quality.

humongous disversification, including laborious to find drugs
No doc ordinance required.
Private with No waiting space or appointments esential

Purchase in bundle and Save! when in addition

Dating for nobs and snobs

Are you startlingly beautiful or staggeringly wealthy, and still single? Here's the place for you!


(Sorry I haven't written here much - I'm trying to do more creative writing. And it mostly sucks. Sigh.)

Why is CityPulse ignoring the Blue Jays?

Recently, I've noticed something strange about the CityPulse news screens in Toronto subway stations.

On these screens, there's a small amount of screen real estate dedicated to sports scores, which allows people waiting for the train to catch up on how things are going in the American League and elsewhere. I've noticed something strange: the sports score window never shows the score of any Jays game in progress. The screen cycles briskly through the other American League games, the National League games, and the NBA or NHL games that are still going. But the Jays score is deliberately left out.

Why is that? Are the Jays scores considered important enough to put on the main screen? Or is this some sort of weird struggle between the twin media empires of CHUM/City and Rogers? What is going on here?

Hmmm

A sign that the housing boom in Toronto has reached an extreme: somebody is building luxury townhouses across the street from the Connaught streetcar loop (on Queen Street). According to the sign, these houses will cost about $450,000, despite the fact that they will be right next to a site on which streetcars will be whining and screeching 24 hours a day.

The positive explosion of condos and townhouses (or, as they're usually called, "townhomes") must mean that there are a whole lot of people with hundreds of thousands of dollars to spend. Which leads me to my next question: where did I go wrong?

Try the veal

I was cleaning out an old box of papers today, and found the following list of artists scheduled to appear at the Foxwoods Resort Casino, in Ledyard, Connecticut, during June and July of 1997:

June 4: Donald O'Connor
June 6: Kathy Mattea
June 7: Tower of Power
June 8: George Jones
June 10: Miss Connecticut Pageant
June 15: Live Boxing ESPN (Don Diego Poeder vs. Terry Ray)
June 16: Kingston Trio
June 18: Live Kick Boxing (Jeff "The Duke" Roufus vs. Pat Smith)
June 20-21: Victor Borge
June 22-23: Randy Travis
June 24-25: The McGuire Sisters
June 26-27: Crosby, Stills, Nash
June 28: Jay Leno
July 7-8: Sawyer Brown
July 9-10: Joe Walsh
July 12: Frankie Avalon, Fabian, and Bobby Rydell
July 15: Marty Stuart and Lee-Roy Parnell
July 18-19: Engelbert Humperdinck
July 20: Jeff Foxworthy
July 24: Patti LaBelle
July 25-26: Willie Nelson
July 30-Aug 3: Barry Manilow

What I got in my mailbox this morning, Part 2

According to my bank, my Visa card rate is apparently lower - down from 18.5% to 10%. I received this reduction because I am a valued cardholder in solid financial standing. Gosh, I never knew. (Solid financial standing. Ha ha ha. Sorry, I digress.)

The letter informing me of this happy news contained two fascinating sentences. Number one:

And you can feel secure, because while the Prime Rate may fluctuate over time, the Prime Rate portion of your total annual interest rate will never rise above 9%.

I hate to be churlish, but what about the other portions of my total annual interest rate? I'm now being offered Prime plus 4% as my annual interest rate - presumably, the 4% could rise to 5, 6, or whatever.

And then there's this:

Now that you have this new lower rate, you could consider doing some of the things you may have been thinking about - such as upgrading your home entertainment system, taking a weekend getaway to visit family or friends or perhaps buying a new computer.

Nice try, Mister Visa Dude, but I am not going to buy anything large until I can afford it. (Tentatively, this is scheduled for 2010 or my senescence, whichever comes first.)

What I got in my mailbox this morning

So I got something strange and unusual in my snail mail this morning. It was postmarked from Austin, Texas, and was two copies of a pamphlet by Wayne Alan Brenner called "Five Simple Steps To Greater Joy In This World Of Sorrow".

The steps, summarized, are:

Step One: Let this document fall.
Step Two: Empty your mind of all unkind thoughts.
Step Three: Call your best friend.
Step Four: Drink a glass of water.
Step Five: Pass this document to the next person you see.

The back of each document (and the envelope) contain an official-looking form with three check boxes to choose from:

This document is known to be
_ Gravitationally Secure
_ Gravitationally Corrupt
_ Currently Untested

Verified in strict accordance with the Revised Manual of Gravitational Assurance, Chapter 6, Paragraph 11, Second Edition of June 2001.

Then there's a signature and a stamp.

I'm not sure why someone went to the trouble of sending me this, or what it's about. If you're curious, Wayne Alan Brenner's website is here. And here is an excerpt of Steps One and Two. (If you're reading this, and you sent the pamphlet to me, please let me know!)

I didn't know that

Today's fascinating fact is courtesy of a Globe and Mail article on desktop dining:

Opting for a bite at your desk can save time during a hectic work day, but there's an unhealthy downside to eating at your desk. And it has nothing to do with the lingering smell of a co-worker's tuna sandwich or microwave popcorn. Desktop dining could leave you feeling ill, lethargic, and carrying a few more pounds than you'd like.

Consider this: the average desktop is home to 100 times more bacteria than a kitchen table and 400 times more than the average toilet seat. That's what a team of microbiologists from the University of Arizona learned when they measured bacterial levels inside offices located in New York, San Francisco, Tucson and Tampa.

The five most germ-contaminated spots were (in order) phones, desktops, water fountain handles, microwave door handles and keyboards. The office toilet seat had the lowest bacteria levels of the 12 surfaces tested.

Which reminds me of a germ-avoidance tip I once read: don't bother worrying about public toilet seats, but never, never shake hands with your doctor.

The 100-Year-Old Photo Blog

I don't know whether I've mentioned this before, but I love this site to pieces.

The site is currently displaying a picture of a pawn shop that was taken in 1899. Their motto: "You Can Pawn from a Shoe String to a Locomotive". This picture is now my desktop background.

Handcuffs?

So the latest fuss in Canadian politics is that they've arrested someone who allegedly leaked the Conservative government's climate change plan. According to the Globe's article on the arrest, the arrested man - a temporary worker who is part of an anarchist collective - was led away in handcuffs.

Sure, the man deserves to be fired if he did what they say he did: leaking confidential information is uncool. And, I suppose, he might even deserve to be arrested, if he broke a law. But: isn't it overkill to put him in handcuffs? Did they think that he posed a threat if he wasn't cuffed? Or were they trying to set an example?


My beloved Blue Jays are going into the toilet, and I am sad. That is all.

It's better to be lucky than smart, part 26

This afternoon, I decided to go rollerblading for a bit. I put my blades on, and was about to head out the door. I then realized that I'd forgotten my keys, so I went back to get them. As I went back, I noticed that I had forgotten to do up the velcro strap that goes around the middle of my right boot. Had I gone out the door with the strap hanging loose, I probably would have tripped on it and injured myself.

This is the third time I've been lucky to avoid serious injury on my rollerblades. The first was when I was on my old blades, and the right wheel seized up while I was on the Beach bike path. Luckily, I was travelling very slowly when it happened. Otherwise, I would have had to decelerate from several kph to zero instantaneously, and would likely have ruptured something.

The other time was several years ago, when I tried to find a route through the Beach that didn't involve going along Queen Street or Kingston Road. It's doable, barely, but there are a lot of steep hills and streets paved with stone instead of asphalt. As I headed down Pine Crescent, I started going too fast to be able to stop, and there were no nearby lawns on which I could decelerate. Desperately, as I rounded the corner onto Pine Glen Road, I grabbed a nearby hedge, and used it to slow myself down enough to successfully stop and sit on a nearby stone wall. I was unhurt, and the hedge wasn't seriously damaged. Now, whenever I'm in the neighbourhood, I make a point of seeking out that hedge, as it saved me from a fate best only imagined.

Accept a gigantic concession

Here is some spam I received yesterday. I think it's for an on-line pharmacy:

Accept a gigantic concession on your medicine
faithful types, five-star quality.
gargantuan array, including Hard to find drugs
0 prescription essential.
Private with No waiting quarters or appointments prerequisite
attain in compass and Save! notwithstanding in addition

I now have a new Life Goal: to attain in compass and Save!

I also got a message which is either a bizarre manifesto or output from a random text-generation program. Here is an excerpt - decide for yourself:

Sane doctors don't fight each other, not for economic motive, not for
general security motive respecting exact national and international rules;
in any conflict almost one fighter is mentally insane. Communists and
nazists are either mentally insane, or they got the reason. Kamikaze bombers
are severe maniacs and agents of devil, enemies of their own god, lord of
medicine.

"Egyptians kill gays but children are not born gays: egyptians corrupt then
kill children, using facts indicated as crimes by their actual penal code"
This is an example, told with impressive and exact words, of something that
can happen in this reality and that medicine must avoid to happen.
It is the description of "case A" that with the genetic case, the "case B",
describes the all possible existable cases, also the "predisposition plus
activation" case. Why slapping child isn't a crime and a mania ?

Ten good things

Here's a list of ten things I would have trouble doing without, listed in no particular order.

1. Call display and voicemail. I don't have to deal with newspaper call centres, recruiters, telephone solicitors, or anybody else unless I want to. My friends realize that if they're calling from a number I don't recognize, I probably won't answer the phone.
   
   Basically, I don't like the telephone. I prefer to either meet face-to-face, which allows for periods of silence, or send messages or email, which gives me time to think of what I want to say.
   
   
2. Solitude. If I spend too much time by myself, I get weird and cranky. But if I'm around people too much, I get frazzled. I need downtime to function.
   
   
3. Portable radio. Essential for listening to Blue Jays games when I'm away from home.
   
   
4. Cellphone. I just got one this year, and I don't use it much. But I no longer have to stay at home and wait for important phone calls.
   
   
5. iPod Shuffle. Another new toy (which superseded my old iPod after its battery life dropped to less than an hour, fully charged). Sometimes, you just have to have the tunes.
   
   Now if I could only figure out why my computer and iTunes don't work well together. I think it doesn't work properly if iTunes has already been started when I plug the iPod's USB cable in. But that's just a guess.
   
   
6. Knapsack. Carries everything I need: books, radio, cellphone, notebook, pens, umbrella and/or sunscreen (depending on weather), etc. etc. I do not travel light.
   
   
7. High-speed Internet. For a geek, this goes without saying.
   
   
8. Sunscreen. I'm white bread. I burn in less than half an hour on bright, sunny days. And I love to be outside. So I'm an SPF 30 kinda guy.
   
   
9. Headphones with volume control. I don't care whether I have great sound quality, but I need the ability to easily change the volume. My MP3s are not at a consistent volume level, and I don't want to have to fiddle with the controls on my iPod, as they're too hard to reach.
   
   
10. Prescription sunglasses.
    
    Side note: I can't imagine ever wearing contacts, even though I've never found a pair of glasses I look good in (I have a big nose, high cheekbones, and sunken eyes). Sticking things in my eyes? I don't think so. I'd probably poke myself into blindness.

Honourable mention goes to my digital camera: I've had a Nikon D70S for a little over a year now, and I love it. The only problem with owning a good camera is that I have no excuse any more: if I take a bad picture, it's not my camera's fault, it's mine.


Here's a sad story about a man who fell for a Nigerian bank scam.

Two's company

Here is a partial list of synonyms for "breast", as used on the Mr. Skin web site:

mam
meat bullet
boobage
melon
perky popper
globe
rack
hooter
dumpling
pair
jujube
teat
tit
tittable
nip
lactoid
peek-a-boob
bean
hoot
hootage
hooterage
ta-ta
na-na
upper asset
apple
juggage
knob
berry
chest-berry
coco-nip
jug
jub
jubby
donut
balloon
sweater-kitten
meatbag
montezuma
pleasure-mountain
twin
bazooka
stonker
funbag
puppy
cleavage
sweet pea
casaba
topper
lugnut
breasticle
flotation device
floater
snoob
schloob
peekie
palooka
McRiblet
sweaterbeet
shadoobie
poky
can
wazoob
bomb

By my count, that's 63. Yikes.

My favourite is probably "upper asset" - it sounds like a description of a condominium.

Spam skribita en Esperanto!

Now I've seen everything: I just got spam written in what I believe is Esperanto. Here's the text of the message:

Gxuste novaj manioj, treege sukcese kaj efektive aldonigxinte al liaj malnovaj krimaj inklinoj, igis lin fari tiun krimon.

Here's a translation from an Esperanto to English translation site:

Just new manioj, extremely succeedally and in fact having finished being addinging to his un-new criminal inclinations, caused him to do that crime

Okay. Now I know.

Well, that was no fun

I was watching the Raptors game tonight, and yes, that was a royal whupping. But I'm wondering: how did New Jersey lose so many games this year?

During the regular season, the Raptors employed a simple approach to success:

• Give the ball to Chris Bosh.
• Wait for the opponents to double-team him. (If they don't double-team him, he drives to the basket and scores.)
• Kick the ball out to the perimeter.
• Move it around to the open man, who then scores.

New Jersey seem to have found a way to defend this. They use their point guard to serve as the second defender on Bosh, and keep everybody else guarded. Bosh then has no alternative but to pass the ball back to Ford or Calderon. Because Bargnani is still getting up to speed - and is still learning the game - the Raptors have nobody else who can beat a defender one-on-one. So they have no scoring options available except to settle for long jumpers from their point guard.

On offense, Vince Carter has suddenly started trying his hardest. When he is on his game, he is impossible to stop one-on-one. Carter has been very effective from behind the 3-point line; if the defender moves out to prevent this, Carter then blows past him and scores. And if the Raptors double-team Carter, the Nets have been good at finding the open man. And if the Raptors rotate their defense well enough to cover everybody, they usually leave Kidd with enough room to sink 3-pointers. How can you defend all of that?


On a totally unrelated subject: the other day, I saw a woman wearing a T-shirt with the following message: I gained 20 pounds in 3 months. Ask me how.

Sunshine is good for you

I've always enjoyed being outdoors in the spring and summer. There's something about the bright sunshine that just makes me happier. Every year, I feel better in April and May, and worse in September through November. But I've always wondered: am I putting myself at risk by being outdoors so much?

According to an article in today's Globe and Mail, I've been doing it right all along: being outdoors in the summer sun is, apparently, a very effective way to fend off all kinds of cancers. It's effective because sunshine causes the body to generate vitamin D - and, if this article is to be believed, regular doses of this vitamin have more of an effect on reducing cancer incidence than stopping smoking does.

The article also points out that a shortage of vitamin D leads to an increase in multiple sclerosis, juvenile diabetes, influenza, osteoporosis and bone fractures among the elderly.

For years, Canadian health officials have recommended staying out of the sun to minimize the risk of skin cancer. But, if these studies are to be believed, this is a poor tradeoff: skin cancers are usually easily treatable and are virtually never fatal (which I know from personal experience), while cancers whose occurrence can be reduced by vitamin D are much more deadly.

No kidding

According to the Globe, support for the Conservatives is slipping. According to a poll conducted by the Strategic Counsel, the Tories are at 36 percent, which is roughly their level of support in the last election. The Liberals are at 30 percent, the NDP at 13, and the Greens are now up all the way to 12.

Allan Gregg, the head of the Strategic Counsel, said this about the Tories: "They tend to get good solid marks on management issues and economic questions, but when you get into the social or ideological issues, they find themselves offside with mainstream Canada." Yup.

Joe Clark? Never heard of him.

Saw this in an email I got from The Career Digest, a career-related newsletter:

Fears of looking too young or too old are common among workers on both ends of the age spectrum. To help counteract the prejudices of hiring managers, co-workers and bosses, career counselors suggest that you highlight skills rather than age. Steps could include excising your graduation date from your resume, dressing differently, or taking care not to make references to world events that betray your age.

Why aren't they?

Today's Globe and Mail featured an article calling for the resignation of Canada's Defense Minister, Gordon O'Connor, over allegations that Canadian prisoners in Afghanistan that are handed over to Afghan authorities are subsequently tortured.

One thing I noticed when reading the article: the detainee transfer agreements signed by Britain and the Netherlands give these countries permission to check on the welfare of the prisoners they have transferred. The agreement signed by Canada apparently does not. And I'm wondering: why not? Why aren't the Canadians allowed?

The article goes on to point out that international law makes it illegal to facilitate torture in any way - which is something that the United States government might need to remember, too.

Sunshine and the environment

Yesterday was the first real day of spring, after about 117 consecutive cloudy days. The sunshine looks different during the spring and summer months: the light is brighter, and all the colours are sharper. It's like living inside an Edward Hopper painting.

And the weekend is supposed to be sunny and warmer, with highs of 21C, 22C and 23C. I guess we're bypassing April completely this year: after two months of February, we're going straight into June.


On the national political scene, the latest fuss is over Environment Minister John Baird's claim that Bill C-288, which forces compliance with the Kyoto Protocol, would cause significant damage to the economy. According to the Globe and Mail, Baird stated that 275,000 Canadians would lose their jobs, gas prices would jump 60 percent, and natural gas prices would double.

However, Baird apparently has not provided any figures to support his claims, and his report has not factored in the positive benefits of employing green technology (which could save money and create new jobs).

I think it's obvious that compliance with Kyoto would cost money in the short term. And the benefits of green technologies would take some time to kick in. This probably does mean that the economy would be adversely affected. But, if the environmentalists are right, something has to be done now, or the effects of climate change would cause greater harm to the economy later. (What if, for example, coastal cities all over the world are flooded by rising ocean levels?)

This all reminds me of another quotation from Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. He once suggested that the following message should be carved into the Grand Canyon, as a message to civilizations from other planets: "We probably could have saved ourselves, but we were too damned lazy to try very hard ... and too damn cheap."