Sugar sugar

I got this in my mailbox today:

Fact is, when taken correctly, Viagra works for most men. Studies show that it works for up to 4 out of 5 men (versus 1 out of 4 on sugar pill).

Three comments:

1. How, exactly, do you take Viagra incorrectly? Do you shove it up your nose, or what?
2. "Up to 4 out of 5 men" includes 0 out of 5 men. I'm just sayin', is all.
   
3. One out of four men obtain increased performance from a sugar pill? "I've got a hot date tonight - I think I'd better go pick up some sucrose tablets and some chocolate glazed Timbits."
   

Think big, butt out, and death to toads!

Just got this message in my email:

Do you want to possess the whole world?
Try our Penis Enlarge Patch and you will be the master of the universe.
[URL deleted]

Make your dick longer than the Great China Wall with Penis Enlarge Patch.
Who writes this stuff?


According to the Globe, the latest anti-smoking crusade calls for a ban on all smoking in multi-unit apartment buildings. This would mean that apartment dwellers would not be able to smoke in their own homes. A survey, mentioned in the article, stated that half of all apartment residents have been subjected to second-hand smoke, and 70% of those people objected to it.

I feel sorry for people who are subjected to second-hand smoke. (I feel even more sorry for people who are subjected to second-hand late-night noise. I am so grateful that I have quiet neighbours.) But how can you enforce this legislation? Will every smoker have to move to a single-family home? How is this going to work?


The Globe also had an article about an Australian group dedicated to the killing of cane toads, which were introduced there in the 1930s and have caused considerable damage to the environment. The article also had a link to a cane toad website, which proudly announces (at the time of writing) that 27857 toads have been captured.

Big Brother Bill is watching you

I updated my copy of Windows XP this morning. It seems to have installed "Windows Genuine Advantage Notifications". The screen that appeared at the end of the installation process greeted me with this grim message:

Thank you for validating your copy of Windows! Validating allows you to enjoy the full capabilities of Windows and helps you confirm that the software installed on your PC is authentic and properly licensed.

Microsoft is continually improving our anti-piracy technology. Your system may be revalidated periodically in order to take advantage of new information available from Microsoft that can help protect you against new forms of counterfeiting.

Wow. They install software to detect piracy, plan on snooping regularly, and try to claim that this benefits me? That takes nerve. (Erm... I was enjoying the full capabilities of Windows already. Unless this provides access to new hidden capabilities of Windows that I didn't know about.)

Look, I see where they're coming from. If you make your living selling software, you don't want pirated copies floating about, and I don't blame them for wanting to try to detect copyright violations. But to try to pretend that this actually benefits the consumer? Why not just be up front about it? "We want to track down and eradicate copies of Windows that haven't been paid for. If you want to use Windows, you have to let us do this. Take it or leave it."

And you have to wonder: what happens if something goes wrong with their piracy detection software, and it starts falsely flagging legit copies of Windows as pirated?

I don't have any pirated software on my machine, which is why I let this particular vampire into my home. (Why pirate software when there's so much good open-source software out there for free?) But I wonder what Microsoft will try to do next, and how it will affect my computer's performance. Oh well - eventually, I will be able to afford a Mac, and all will be well.


I just started reading Planet India, by Mira Kumdar, and ran across the following:

The world economy is undergoing a major reorganization that is rebalancing jobs and capital investment toward Asia. Information and communications technologies have created an environment where the only jobs that have to remain local are those that require face-to-face interaction. All others can be outsourced to a remote location leveraging digital technologies. Alan S. Blinder, a professor of economics at Princeton University, calls this the third industrial revolution. [...]

Blinder believes that the ultimate dimensions of the third industrial revolution "may be staggering." Though it is neither possible nor desirable to reverse a revolution, I share Blinder's conviction that "the governments and societies of the developed world must face up to the massive, complex, and multifaceted challenges that offshoring will bring." At this point, they are not. In the United States, workers whose jobs have been lost due to offshoring are left largely to their own devices.

Confess! Confess!

Today, I saw this fascinating sentence in a long article in the Globe and Mail on the effects of alcohol:

In 2004, 79.3 per cent of Canadians confessed to drinking, which, contrary to our growing obsession with fitness and diet, is nearly a 10-per-cent jump from a decade ago.

Confessed? What the? Yes, I admit it! I have consumed the evil grape! I have affected my brain chemistry by ingesting mind-altering liquid substances! Oh the shame of it all!

More seriously: it's true that alcohol-related accidents and deaths are no joke. And it's sobering (so to speak) to read that even moderate amounts of alcohol lead to an increased likelihood of breast, colorectal, mouth, larynx, throat, esophageal and liver cancer. Oh, joy. But perhaps some of the more preachy health professionals might want to remember one fact: even if we take perfect care of ourselves, we're all going to die eventually anyway.

Or as someone I was talking with once put it recently: "Every hundred years - all new people!"

The world has gone mad, Part CXXII

According to USA Today, Boston Red Sox slugger Manny Ramirez is apparently auctioning his barbecue grill on eBay. It's a JENN-AIR grill, and it cost Manny $4000. According to the article, the highest bid is over $20,000. Bidding was scheduled to close on March 28th.

I just checked, and eBay has removed the grill from their web site - possibly because the bidding was getting too frenzied. But, fear not, Manny fans: other enterprising capitalists are offering a photo of Manny beside his ex-grill (personally signed by the seller!) and an I Bought Manny Ramirez's Grill T-shirt.

If anyone is looking for me, I'll be hiding quietly in the corner, whimpering.


I was in a cranky mood today when heading home on the subway, and I was thinking: if Stephen Harper was given the chance to redesign the Canadian flag, what would it be? My first thought:

• He'd replace that horrible Liberal red with safe, reassuring Conservative blue. A deep blue, representing the many appealing lakes and rivers that abound in our great nation.
• And the maple leaf would be replaced by a silhouette of a happy family next to their suburban home, providing a pictorial rendition of the Tories' ideal swing voter.

Some political commentators, more cynical than I am, believe that the Tories' new budget is part of an election ploy. This plot goes something like this:

1. Produce reasonable budget. (Okay, it's a bit too heavily skewed towards working-class families, but what the heck: they deserve the break.)
2. Find excuse to call election: a vote on the Clean Air Act would do it.
3. Use planned budget as talking point in election platform.
4. Obtain majority government.
5. Implement the real budget, whatever it is.

I don't believe this conspiracy theory, as I think that Finance Minister Jim Flaherty really wants to help out working-class families (since his riding, Whitby, contains a lot of them). But the problem with too much of an emphasis on tactics is that everything starts to appear tactical - even honest attempts to actually govern the country.

Bah. I think it's time for me to go take my brain for a wash. I'm altogether too grumpy today.

The way they were

Found a wonderful link today, courtesy of Metafilter: Shorpy, The 100-Year-Old Photo Blog. This is a collection of photographs from the past, usually of people at work. Many of these people are very young.

Here is the caption for this picture of Eugene Dalton, taken in November, 1913, in Fort Worth, Texas:

For nine years this 16-year-old boy has been newsboy and messenger for drug stores and telegraph companies. He was recently brought before the Judge of the Juvenile Court for incorrigibility at home. Is now out on parole, and was working again for drug company when he got a job carrying grips in the Union Depot. He is on the job from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. (17 hours a day) for seven days in the week. His mother and the judge think he uses cocaine, and yet they let him put in these long hours every day. He told me “There ain’t a house in ‘The Acre’ (red-light district) that I ain’t been in. At the drug store, all my deliveries were down there.” Says he makes $15 to $18 a week.

17 hours a day, seven days a week. For $15 to $18.

First the Greens, then the Blues

Liberal leader Stéphane Dion has spent a lot of time thinking about and talking about the environment. According to a recent Globe and Mail story, Dion's newest climate change plan calls for a cap on industrial greenhouse gas emissions, with companies being fined for every tonne they emit above the cap.

My first thought when I read this story was that Dion was making a tactical error. By producing a plan so soon, he was just providing ammunition for Stephen Harper and his band of tacticians. The Tories will now have weeks to craft exactly the right flavour of spin. (If spin can have flavours. Mixing metaphors is fun for the whole family.)

But then I realized that the Tories aren't the Liberals' only enemy right now (if you want to look at it from that perspective). The Liberals are also worried about the potential rise of the Green Party. The Greens are far more likely to take votes from the Liberals and NDP than they are from the Conservatives. A surging Green Party would split the liberal-progressive vote, which could lead to more seats for Harper.

Recall that the Ontario PCs never managed to obtain 50% of the vote in either of their majority wins. The non-conservative vote was split between the NDP and the Liberals, while there was no significant conservative alternative to the Tories.

When you look at it this way, emphasizing the environment makes perfect sense for the Liberals. Before they can take on the Conservatives, they first have to neutralize the Greens. Coming up with a tough climate change policy could do just that.

Your bank is not your buddy

So I got a statement this week from TD Canada Trust, where I keep my RRSP and my chequing account. Apparently, they're changing some fees as of May 1 of this year; needless to say, these fees aren't decreasing. For example, stop payment fees are rising from $10 and $15 to $12.50 and $17.50. And the cost of a small safety deposit box is rising from $35.00 a year to $42.50, which is an increase of 21.4%.

You can't really expect banks to behave in any way other than they do; as author Walter Stewart once put it, your bank is not your buddy. Still, I'd be happier to live in a world where bank service fees rose at a rate less than or equal to the rate of inflation. Right now, we're living in a world where money is being transferred at an increasing rate from ordinary consumers to banks (or to the owners of bank stocks). Oh well. As the old saying goes: them that has, gets.

One of us needs to get out more

An article in today's Globe about Finance Minister Jim Flaherty contained this fascinating comment: "Among my Toronto friends, I don't know anyone who worries about paying their monthly bills; I do in Whitby."

Clearly, Mr. Flaherty and I are in different social circles. I know a whole bunch of people living in Toronto who worry about paying their monthly bills - or, to be accurate, not paying their monthly bills. One of us needs to get out more. Probably me.


The Globe also reported that the Toronto Transit Commission has announced plans to build light rail all over the city. If other levels of government come through with funding, the city hopes to build light rail along Kingston Road, Yonge from Finch to Steeles, Eglinton west from the St. Clair line to the airport and Don Mills Road from Steeles to the city centre, and from the Sheppard subway to the Scarborough Town Centre.

My first thought: I like the idea, but I don't see the federal government paying for any of this, and I'm not sure that the provincial government will either. It's worth noting that the TTC pays more of its expenses with revenue from the fare box than any other public transit system in North America does: according to a 1999 article in Eye magazine, 80% of the TTC's costs are paid for from fares. Comparable percentages for Chicago, Atlanta and Los Angeles are 50%, 35% and 33%.

Okay, that makes it better

I discovered a new euphemism today. A job posting for a short-term contract for a technical writer stated that one of the writer's duties would be taking notes at process meetings. In an attempt to make this sound more appealing, this was referred to as "scribing".

Now it's the employers' turn

On Monday, the Globe and Mail will be featuring a Q&A session on the Talent War. As the introduction to the session puts it:

Remember the days when you'd post a position and just wait for the resumés to pour in, when job-hunters had to sell themselves to you? Well, those days are long gone. According to Manpower, 40% of companies worldwide are having trouble hiring talent. In Canada, that number jumps to 66%. Everybody's vying for the same pool of workers, and that means it's up to you to sell your organization to them, not the other way around.

Organizations that are having trouble finding talent could do two things:

• Pay people more.
• Train people more.

Many large companies are trying to keep wages and salaries as low as possible, and are offering outlandish salaries and bonuses to their top executives. Maybe they could consider changing their pay structure a bit? This isn't some kind of pinko socialism: it seemed to work fine back in, say, the 1980s.

And, way back in the day, employers used to find bright people and then teach them what they needed to know. Now, you're expected to have a specialized degree and skill set and several years' experience before you are even considered for a position. (I got into my current field, technical writing, by sort of moving sideways into it from software development. That wouldn't be possible now, as entry-level technical writing positions are filled by people with degrees in technical writing.)

Many employers have gotten used to the job market being weighted in their favour, and have no idea how to actually adapt to another environment. I find that I don't feel sorry for them. Over the past few years, I have had to get used to what most of us have had to get used to: minimal or non-existent job security, and less pleasant working conditions. Now, perhaps, it's time for employers to maybe have to evolve a bit, too.

All tactics, all the time

This morning, I wrote this on the comments page for this Globe article:

The problem I have with Stephen Harper and his Tories is that it's all tactics, all the time. The goal of his legislation is to make him and his party look good; any benefit to the country is an accidental by-product.

Get an opportunity

As I think I mentioned earlier, I earn my living as a technical writer. The other day, I wrote this sentence:

A key store contains the private key and its corresponding public key certificates.

(I'm not exactly Shakespeare, especially when I'm at work.) I was using Microsoft Word, and I noticed that Word's grammar checker had flagged the word "its". I was curious, so I right-clicked on it. The program was suggesting that I replace "its" with "it's". No wonder kids today can't write or spell or any of that other good stuff.


I've recently put my resume back online on various job boards, as I will be looking for work in April. So far, I've gotten a few contacts from people who obviously either can't read or don't bother checking too closely: even though I stated on my resume that I am unavailable until April, all the offers I've seen so far are looking for people who can start right away, preferably right this second. Which also leads me to wonder: doesn't anybody do any long-term planning any more?

And I've gotten my first daily double: today, I had two different recruiters from the same firm contact me about the same job. Oops, I shouldn't call it a "job" - I should use the term all the recruiters use, and call it an "opportunity", as in "Take this opportunity and shove it." Or, as the Silhouettes once sang, in a song recorded before even I was born:

Sha na na na, sha na na na na
Sha na na na, sha na na na na,
Sha na na na, sha na na na na,
Sha na na na, sha na na na na,
Yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip
Mum mum mum mum mum mum
Get an opportunity
Sha na na na etc.

4 to 6 weeks, or maybe not

Amazon.ca is confusing me. (Granted, that's not hard to do.)

A couple of months ago, I ordered three baseball books from them. One of these books wasn't scheduled to be published until this month. Because I'm trying to stay within budget (ha!), I selected the cheapest shipping option, which meant that I was willing to wait until all the books were ready and then have them shipped together.

Several weeks go by, as expected. Then, three things happened:

• On February 28th, they decided to ship two of the three books in a separate shipment (not charging me extra). I guess they figured I'd been waiting long enough, and was about to go postal or something.
• Earlier this week, they sent me a message saying that my third book had been delayed, and that I wasn't going to receive it for 4 to 6 weeks.
  
• They sent me a message today saying that they had shipped the third book.

I'm happy to receive the book, but I'm thinking that maybe these guys need to send some memos to each other or something.

War is Peace, Cars are Transit

So I noticed today that Stephen Harper has announced a $1-billion Toronto-area transit initiative. According to the CBC's article on this initiative, it includes money for four projects:

• The extension of the Spadina-University subway into York Region;
• Bus rapid transit or dedicated bus lanes in outlying areas;
• Building an eastern extension to the 407 toll road;
• Extending Highway 404 almost to Lake Simcoe.

Clever observers will notice that the last two projects have nothing to do with public transit at all, but are extensions to existing superhighways. According to the article, Harper said that "gridlock harms the environment and causes strain on families as those in the Greater Toronto Area face some of the longest commutes in North America". How, exactly, is building more highways that feed into the city going to fix this problem?

And I can't help but think that the dedicated bus lanes aren't going to help much. Either the roads are widened to make room for the bus lanes or they aren't. If they aren't, this makes the gridlock problem worse for drivers. And even if they are, nobody will use them: in dormitory suburbs, people aren't going to want to walk all the way from their homes to the nearest arterial road to catch a bus, even if it is in a dedicated lane. They'll just stay in their cars, won't they?

My opinion is that this is a political masterstroke. Notice that, except for a few lucky residents in northwest North York and the long-suffering students of York University, nobody in Metro Toronto benefits from this new initiative. The primary beneficiaries are residents of 905-belt swing ridings, who are, right now, trying to decide whether to vote for Harper in the upcoming federal election.

But this new initiative effectively shuts Toronto up - if anybody living here complains about poor transit service again, Harper will loudly trumpet that he has just committed one billion dollars to transit funding in the Toronto area. To the rest of the country, Toronto, Markham, Vaughan, Mississauga and so on are basically one large urban sprawl that they think of as "Toronto", so he'll get away with this. Torontonians won't be fooled, but it's not as if the Tories are going to win any seats in the city anyway.

I don't like Stephen Harper's policies, but you've got to give him credit: he's smart. He's like George W. Bush, but with brains.

More weather geekery

As I think I mentioned earlier, I'm a bit of a weather geek. During one of my stretches of unemployment, I obtained a copy of Environment Canada's weather records CD-ROM, and created a PHP/MySQL interface to the Toronto weather data. This means I can look up weather records and stuff. (I repeat: I am a geek.)

Today, as I write this, it is -22C at Toronto Pearson Airport. According to the records, which go back to 1937, this is the second-coldest March 6th in history. The all-time champ is March 6, 1948, when the temperature dropped to -27.8C. There must have been a weather front going through: the high that day was -1.1C.

I also want to give a shout-out to March 6, 1944: the low temperature that day was -21.1C, and the high was 3.3C. And there was 8.1 mm of rain. People going to work would have needed three layers of sweaters and an umbrella. Fortunately, the cold snap came before the rain: on March 5, the low was -21.7C. March 7 was normal. If it had been the other way around, the entire city would have turned into one giant skating rink.

While I'm playing with my weather records program, here's a couple more weird weather facts for March (these are all from downtown Toronto):

• Most rain on a March day: 43.7 mm on March 19, 1881. That's more than an inch and a half of rain!
• Most snow in March: 40.6 cm on March 27, 1870.
• Warmest day in March: 26.7C on March 28, 1946.
• Warmest day in the first ten days of March: 21.3C on March 9, 2000.

I remember that last day very well - it was great, but it seemed very weird, as if something had gone wrong and we were due to pay for it. And we did: according to the records, two days later there was 10 cm of snow. I can hear the winter gods laughing from here.

Not the sharpest knife in the drawer

So I bought one of those Yogurt Parfait thingies from McDonald's today. The person who packaged it wasn't the brightest of bulbs. He or she put the yogurt in, put a little circular piece of cardboard on it to seal it, sprinkled the nuts on it, then put the plastic dome on top.

Since you're a clever person, you probably will have figured out that steps 2 and 3 should have been done in the opposite order.

I had no idea

The Star reports today that nearly 5000 homes and businesses remain without power in Toronto after Thursday's storm. Many of these homes are in the Playter Estates district of Toronto - near Broadview and Danforth. The article includes this photo of a downed power line on Playter Blvd.

I live about a block or two west of the subject of this article. She and her family are about to face their third night without power. All their food has gone bad. About 300 other residents of the neighbourhood also lack power, including many vulnerable seniors.

All this misery within a few hundred yards of my safe, comfortable apartment home. I feel very lucky.

Two kinds of people

Here, for posterity's sake, is the weather forecast for this evening:

Snow at times heavy and local blowing snow changing to freezing rain mixed with ice pellets this evening then to rain near midnight. Snow and ice pellet amount 10 to 15 cm. Wind east 50 km/h gusting to 70. Temperature rising to plus 1 by morning.

It feels really good to be inside in a nicely heated apartment, typing in comfort. How did our pioneer ancestors survive this and stay sane?

I was thinking today (a dangerous practice, but I indulge in it every once in a while). As I see it, there are three kinds of people in the world:

• Those who can get other people to clean up their messes for them
• Those who have to clean up their own messes
• Those who have to clean up other people's messes

I think about this whenever I go to eat lunch in a food court. There's always one or two people around whose job it is to empty the garbage bins, wipe the tables, clean gunk off the plastic trays, and otherwise fight a never-ending onslaught of untidiness. They're always required to wear spotless uniforms, as they're Representing Their Company. They're being paid squat. And the rest of us depend on people willing to do this kind of work.


I figured out another way to divide people into groups as I was walking to get groceries after work. Traffic was backed up in all directions due to the weather, but there were some people out there who were still trying to get somewhere in a hurry, and were honking their horns in an attempt to get the world to do their bidding. This leads me to divide humanity into two classes:

• People who feel a sense of entitlement, as if the world owes them something
• The rest of us

The trick is to spot the people in the first group as soon as possible.