Poo(p)

I was googling about various digestive-related things, and, since Google generally knows what I need and I don't always act like a grownup when no one is watching, I was phrasing my queries very childishly.  For example, "How long does it take food to turn into poo?"  (Answer: an average of 2 days)

I soon noticed that Google's autocomplete was always using phrases that contained the word "poop", not "poo". For example, if you type "My poo is" into Google, you'll get a drop down full of autocompletes saying "My poop is" every colour of the rainbow.

People who have done more research than me suggest that "poop" is USian, and "poo" is more British.  A site:.ca google (which, I realize, is not the most precise research method ever) gives 298,000 hits for "poo" and 198,000 for "poop", so it seems that "poo" is more preferred in Canada.

However, even if you go to google.co.uk, the autocomplete still suggests "poop" when you type in "poo".  "Poop" also turns up in the google.fr and google.pl autocompletes. (Google.de and google.es retain "poo".)

Which one do you use?

Reconstructing Shakespeare

Dear Prudence,
My girlfriend and I are having a disagreement. I posed to her the following hypothetical situation: Would you rescue from fire and certain destruction the last surviving copy on earth of the complete works of Shakespeare or a single puppy? My girlfriend says that she would rescue the puppy because the puppy is a fellow living being. She is highly educated and claims to have great respect for Shakespeare. But I think my girlfriend’s choice is the wrong one. I would rescue the Shakespeare, not just because of the aesthetic enjoyment we get from his work but also because of all the moral insight it provides us (including possibly the insight that enables the concept of animal rights in the first place). We’ve argued a lot about this. I cannot take her answer seriously, but I find it rather disturbing nonetheless. She never rejected the hypothetical question out of hand or said that the two things aren’t even comparable. She says that preserving a living conscious thing is more valuable than preserving Shakespeare. My girlfriend loves animals, especially her poodle, and is a die-hard vegetarian. I am, on the other hand, obsessed with Shakespeare and rather neutral toward animals. What is the best way for us to diffuse this situation?

A silly letter, to be sure.  But this got me thinking: if we lost all written copies of Shakespeare, could we reconstruct it?

Of course we could.  There are enough people wandering the earth right this minute with bits of Shakespeare memorized that we could get it back within a matter of hours.  Just reassemble all the most recent casts of every play, have them perform their parts, record and transcribe it, you'll be done before last call.

So let's make this harder: we've lost all written copies of Shakespeare, all living people have lost any knowledge or memory we've ever had of Shakespeare (to the extent that we don't even remember that we've lost it), and we've also lost all academic and educational works dedicated to the study and analysis of Shakespeare.  Could we reconstruct it?

We could certainly get a lot, because Shakespeare is everywhere.  The plot of Hamlet was reiterated in the Simpsons, Archie comics namedrop "wherefore art thou" and "to [verb] or not to [verb], that is the question", and Shakespeare is specifically mentioned in many works in all different kinds of media.

I even once read a young adult novel that explicitly stated that West Side Story is a modern adaptation of Romeo and Juliet. So from that one book that I read in elementary school alone, the people of this mythical post-Shakespearean people will learn that there was once a play called Romeo and Juliet with a plot vaguely resembling that of West Side Story.  Surely there must be other works that specifically mention that something is from Shakespeare too.

This post-Shakespearean population would also quickly catch on to the fact that "wherefore art thou" and "to [verb] or not to [verb]" sound like they come from something, and that a guy talking to a skull and a guy with some kind of disability saying "my kingdom for a horse" are somehow existing tropes, and scholars would try to trace their origins.  I wonder how much they could reassemble?

A public apology to Eddie Izzard

Dear Eddie Izzard,

During one of your May 2010 shows at Massey Hall in Toronto, you asked the audience who or what Massey Hall was named after.  Various people shouted out various things, and, to our utter delight, you picked up on our answer of "Vincent Massey."  You asked who he was, we replied "Governor General", you asked what that was, we replied "Queen's representative", and then you segued neatly into your thoughts on the monarchy, pausing only to remark that some guy on the other side of the audience kept randomly shouting out "Tractors!"

I've only just learned we gave you completely incorrect information.  Vincent Massey was in fact Governor General of Canada, but in the 1950s.  Massey Hall was built in the 1890s, before Vincent Massey was even born. Its construction was funded by Hart Massey, Vincent Massey's grandfather, with a family fortune made by, among other things, manufacturing tractors.

I apologize unreservedly for giving you incorrect information and causing you to repeat it publicly as though it were fact.  All I can say is that it simply never occurred to us that Massey Hall might not be named after the most famous Massey, after whom so many other things are named.   Obviously I should have been more careful.  When we see you again in November, if you should choose to pose any questions to the audience, I promise to only answer if I'm certain, not if I just think I have a logical extrapolation from common knowledge.

I would also like to apologize profusely to the people who were saying "tractors".  You were completely right and we were completely wrong, and yet we stole your moment from you and made your Eddie Izzard experience less perfect. I truly do hope you'll be able to get your own moment in November.  Maybe Eddie will ask the same question again (it seems like the sort of thing that might be part of a standard show-opening arsenal), and you can give your answer and we'll all get a different choose your own adventure.

An idea for "Bad Guy Trying to be the Good Guy" in last week's Carolyn Hax chat

From last week's Carolyn Hax chat:

Several years ago, I abruptly and unilaterally ended an 18-month relationship. I stand firm with my reasons, but my (kind and lovely) ex was understandably upset. We haven't spoken since. I still feel guilty, but that's my cross to bear. Despite a happier relationship since then, I'm pretty sure that The Ex hates my guts. Here's the problem: in a few months, I expect to see The Ex at a mutual friend's event. Being in proximity will be unavoidable. I want to send The Ex an email, saying that I'm sorry how things ended and that I'd like us to be at least cordial at this event, and that I'm willing to keep my distance if they don't want to talk to me. Part of me thinks this is sensible and will allow both of us to enjoy this event without apprehension. The other part of me thinks this email will just sound condescending and melodramatic. What is the kindest way to approach this situation?

I have an idea for something LW can do to be kind to The Ex without imposing on them: don't bring a date to this event.

If The Ex is still in some way hung up on LW, seeing LW with a date will make the event more difficult for The Ex. Not bringing a date will eliminate that difficulty.

If The Ex in is an emotional place where they would get some schadenfreude out of seeing LW dateless, especially if The Ex has a date, then not bringing a date will give The Ex the gift of coming away from the event feeling that they won.

At this point, people usually point out something to the effect that other people's relationships aren't about you and it would be unhealthy for The Ex to be having any of these feelings.  But, be that as it may, they are feelings that do sometimes occur in some people.  If The Ex is having them, LW can give The Ex the best possible experience by not bringing a date.  And if The Ex isn't having any of these feelings, then LW's actions are irrelevant either way.  In any case, not bringing a date will have either a positive or neutral effect on The Ex, without imposing on them in any way.

On top of that, not bringing a date will attend to LW's emotional needs as well.  LW seems to feel the need to do some sort of penance.  Going to the event solo would do that, and it would be generally in line with a natural consequences penance too.  One of the impacts of LW's decision to abruptly and unilaterally leave The Ex is that The Ex was suddenly deprived of the benefits of having a date to wherever they'd normally go with a date. In addition to the various logistical inconveniences of going solo, it's publicly visible, and often feels like a humiliation when you're in mourning for the relationship and can't even answer the question of "What happened?"  So, by not having a date with them, LW experiences that inconvenience and public visibility, perhaps even that sense of humiliation depending on their emotional state.  Then they will come away feeling they have done penance without ever actually bothering The Ex.

In short, if LW doesn't bring a date to the event, any emotional needs that can be affected by LW's actions will be affected positively.  Anyone who has no emotional investment in LW's actions will not be affected either way.  Positive or neutral impact, no imposition or unwanted contact.

How spanking hurts

My parents spanked me when I was a child.

I haven't admitted that before because I'm painfully ashamed of it.  (So ashamed of it I can't bring myself to open comments on this post. If you circumvent this by using other posts, you will be banned.)  I've been sitting on this post for years, and could never bring myself to actually post it.

But yesterday, I saw a lady spanking her child. 

I wanted to run over and stop her.  I wanted to run over and tell her how it affected me, the unintended consequences that coloured my whole relationship with my parents and could have been disastrous if bad things had happened in other areas of my life.

But I was too chicken.

So, as penance for not stopping that lady's destructive habits, I'm going to lay bare my shame.  Here is what I learned from being spanked by my parents:

First, I learned that if someone is doing something you don't like, you should hit them.  Seemed logical.  But then I'd get in trouble if I hit someone else.  So what I learned from that is that my parents are great dirty hypocrites (although I didn't know that word yet). 

One problem with spanking specifically is that it's a smack to the bum.  Your bum is a private part - I learned that very early on.  People aren't supposed to touch your private parts, and if they do you're supposed to respond with "It's my body and I say NO!"  I learned that from a little orange book my parents read to me when I was probably under three years of age.  So the next time my parents wanted to spank me, I said "It's my body and I say NO!"  But that didn't stop the spanking.  From this, I learned that the rule about private parts being private wasn't actually true.  There was some kind of secret other rule that I didn't know and they wouldn't tell me.

For the majority of my life, I've had a sense that the actual rules of society aren't what I'm being taught they are or shown they are - there's a secret other set of rules that I'm left to guess without any guidance.  This feeling has hindered me for decades - sometimes to the extent where I'd receive clear, specific instructions from teachers or employers and automatically assume that wasn't actually what they wanted - and I'm quite sure at least part of its root is in spanking.

Because spanking violated at least two of the major rules I was taught, I concluded that my parents' rule system was inherently injust.  Therefore, I decided that whenever they issued a punishment that I considered injust, it was logical to punish them for it.  I would sabotage things in the house, return to the prohibited behaviour when I wasn't going to get caught, or otherwise stealthily do things that made life more difficult for my parents.  The possibility of punishment being a natural consequence of my actions never occurred to me - it was quite clearly an injustice that I had to counter. 

More importantly, because spanking violated at least two major rules, I concluded that my parents either enjoyed doing it, or enjoyed seeing me hurt and humiliated.  This meant I didn't tell them when someone else was hurting me or humiliating me.  The people hurting and humiliating me were my peers, but this statement would have held even if it was a teacher or other authority figure.  Because my parents had shown me that they like to engage in violent, unwanted, humiliating physical contact with my private parts, if another adult - or anyone at all, for that matter - had tried to touch my private parts in a way that was violent, unwanted, and/or humiliating, I would have assumed that my parents thought I deserved it (and perhaps would punish me even more for being someone who deserves it) so I would never have dared tell them and in fact would have taken active steps to keep it secret from them.  Fortunately, I never found myself in this situation, but, if I had, they results would have been disastrous.

In short, spanking completely eliminated my parents' trustworthiness and credibility in my eyes. It never once even occurred to me that they might want to protect me from outside threats.  It never once even occurred to me that they might have my best interests in mind.  It never once even occurred to me that there might be a good reason for any rules they set out.  It never once even occurred to me that if I was having a big problem with other adults I could go to them.  I never saw them as an ally, always as a threat or an obstacle.  All in the name of...what?  I don't even remember what the alleged infractions were that I was being spanked for in the first place!

I've told all this to a few people before, and one response I often get is "Kids don't think that way or draw such far-fetched conclusions."  So I'd like to make one thing perfectly clear: this is what my actual child-self actually thought and concluded, in real life, based on the input available. It's articulated here in more adult terms than I could express at the time to make it clearer, but it is the absolute truth of my child-self's thoughts, feelings and conclusions.  This isn't child psychology, this isn't parenting theory, this isn't social engineering, this isn't political correctness.  This is what an actual, real-life child actually learned, in real life, from being spanked.

Dear lady spanking your daughter on Roehampton Avenue, in front of the construction site, between 2:30 and 3:00 p.m. on Saturday, August 17: are these the lessons you want to teach her?

Pictures of text

I recently clicked on a trending topic hashtag related to some drama or another in teen pop music fandom (#beliebersareherefordirectioners - I didn't bother to look into what exactly happened to trigger the creation of that hashtag), and I noticed an interesting phenomenon. A huge percentage of the people using this hashtag were writing out fairly long messages in the Notes function on their iphone, then tweeting a screenshot of the message.  Here's the first example that came up when I searched for it just now.

This is fascinating.  This fandom is so entrenched in a medium that only allows for short textual messages that they use images of text to convey longer messages rather than switching to a more conducive medium.

We've seen this before, with the "we are the 99%" signs.  At the time I saw it described as a faster and easier alternative to videos, but it's still longer to produce and no less easy to read than actual text. And some people seem to use it quite often on facebook, sharing images of text - even if it's just a brief saying - rather than typing out the text as a whole, which in most cases would totally fit in a facebook status.

The beliebers obviously chose this method so they could share longer-form messages while achieving their goal of trending on twitter.  And I suspect the sharing mechanisms of facebook and tumblr are more conducive to sharing photos than straight-out text.  I also suspect some of the 99%ers were deliberately trying to add a human face to their stories, although others chose to obscure their faces.  In any case, the goal of sharability within the technical limitations of the social network seems to be great enough that it leads people to engage in the objectively ridiculous act of posting a picture of text rather than just typing out the text.

This has me wondering if someday someone is going to invent a new social media network with robust sharing functions that positions its niche as allowing you to share long-form text.

Brother DCP-7060D: a printer that works

I previously bought an inkjet printer simply because I needed a printer-scanner combo immediately and that was the cheapest one readily available that was small enough to comfortably carry home.  However, it quickly became apparent that a laser printer would be a better fit for my needs, so I decided that when the inkjet ran out of ink, I'd rehome it and replace it with a laser printer.

I looked through the Consumer Reports recommendations for all-in-one laser printers (fun fact: you can access the Consumer Reports subscriber website with your Toronto Public Library card! All you have to do is log in through here!) and a lot of them were huge.  The smallest one (and only one with a remote chance of fitting into the space where I needed it to fit) was the Brother DCP-7060D.  It turned out there was an incredibly good deal on it on NewEgg, so I bought it.

I've had it for a month, and I love it because it does its job exactly right every single time with no fussing or drama!  I plug it into the computer, the USB detects it and installs the drivers and it's ready to go without any intervention on my part. I press print, it prints. I want two-sided printing, it auto-duplexes. I accidentally press print when it isn't plugged in or turned on, it prints once it's plugged in and turned on.  I press Cancel Job, it cancels the job.

It hasn't once given me any stupid error messages or freaked out for no reason or otherwise failed to do exactly what it's supposed to do. This is the first personal printer I've owned that I can say that about!

I recommend it unreservedly if you have the budget and the space and don't need colour printing.

Options for Gmail's "new compose"

I'm completely baffled that Gmail seems to think we want to compose our messages in a little window that hovers over our inbox where you can still see the inbox in the background (even in "full screen" mode).  I've been using email for half my life and not once have I thought while composing a message "You know, it would be really convenient if I could see my inbox right about now!"

However, I have discovered a couple of options for if you find having your inbox in the background distracting:

1.  Ctrl+click on the Compose button.  This will open the compose window in a new tab, with no distracting inbox in the background.

2.  Use Basic HTML view.  You can get to Basic HTML view by clicking on the link at the bottom right of the Gmail loading page (the one with the horizontal blue bar) or by going to https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=html. Basic HTML view still has a normal compose page.

Eddie Izzard Canadian tour (and how to convince Massey Hall to sell you tickets)

Eddie Izzard is touring Canada in November and tickets just went on sale with the presale code BEES.

To buy from Massey Hall, you need to go to the Massey Hall site (not Ticketmaster), create an account, and log into the account with BEES in the presale field.  Then navigate through the calendar to the date you want (November 13-16) and that's where it will give you the link to buy.

It wasn't working earlier today when the presale started, but it just worked for me.

On a personal note, this is very exciting for me because I'm completely unspoiled for this show.  For Stripped, I was convinced he wouldn't come to Canada so I sought out bootlegs, and by the time he finally came here I knew the material already - but I was still belly laughing for three hours straight!  This time I have no idea what's coming, so I'll be seeing new Eddie Izzard material for the first time in five years (!) and I'll be seeing it live and in person!

What if myopia makes your social skills worse?

Last night as I went about my evening routine, I took off my glasses to wash my face, and then didn't bother to put them back on to take my garbage to the garbage chute.  As I walked back from the garbage chute, a small group of young men whom I didn't know emerged from one of the other apartments.  I looked in their direction and realized that without my glasses, I couldn't read their facial expressions.  I wasn't sure if they were making eye contact with me or if they were giving me a smile of acknowledgement or if their head just happened to be turned in my direction.

Because of this, I felt I didn't know how to respond appropriately.  I don't like to greet strange men with more enthusiasm than they greet me, but I do like to return neighbours' greetings in kind unless there's a specific reason not to.  Without my glasses on, I couldn't see his face clearly enough to gather the necessary information.

I wonder if this is why I have poor facial expression skills in general? 

I've always been nearsighted, but we didn't catch it until I was 12 or 13.  Maybe in the formative years of my life, I simply didn't receive information from facial expressions, so maybe I don't look there for information as much as other people, and am not as accustomed to using facial expressions to communicate because I'm not as accustomed to them being informative.  I do remember in elementary school, my mother mentioned that she recognizes people primarily by their eyes, which baffled me because I recognized people primarily by their hair.  That would make sense based on my eyesight - eyes are smaller and more detailed, but hair is larger and quite often has a specific shape and a contrasting colour.  (Since I was a child at the time, my peers didn't drastically change their hair nearly as often as people do in adult life.)

When I was walking down that hall last night without my glasses on, I felt a bit frightened and intimidated because I couldn't read the strange men.  This is similar to the sense of fear and intimidation I felt about everyone when I was a kid.  In retrospect, I wonder if it's just because my eyesight didn't allow me to read people?

A royal baby watcher on why the royal baby watch was pointless

As I've blogged about before, I find the royal family interesting because they have this really bizarre job that they have to do and it's interesting to me to see how they do it.  I'm also interested in fashion, so I will totally click through for a picture of a female royal, just to see how they've costumed themselves for this bizarre job.

Despite the fact that I'm childfree, I also think babies are interesting.  They're all little and cute, with these ridiculously tiny (but fully functional!) hands and feet, and it's interesting to me to see what they can do and to speculate on what they must think about what's going on around them.  I will totally click through to see a picture of a baby.

So that makes me totally the target audience for royal baby media coverage, which I unrepentantly consumed when the time came.

However, I think it was a complete waste of time to have media staking out the hospital for weeks and weeks in anticipation of the birth, because there was no story to be had by doing so.

Don't get me wrong, I do think the royal baby is news, objectively speaking.  Under the current system, he's third in line to be our head of state.  His identity is approximately as relevant as the identity of a political party leader. (But he's much more adorable to look at!)  On top of that, there is public interest.  When you've got a large chunk of your audience wanting to know biographical information about a public figure, it is appropriate to report it.

The thing is, what is there to know about a newborn in the first day of their life?  Their name, gender, date and time of birth, weight and length, whether they're healthy, and what they look like.  That's literally all there is.  There isn't any more yet because the poor kid hasn't been around long enough yet.  Even his parents aren't yet able to answer questions like "Is he a good sleeper?" or "How's he nursing?" because they haven't had enough time to find out yet.

All they could get by camping out in front of the hospital was pictures of the baby and maybe a soundbite or two of royals charmingly expressing appropriate delight at the birth of the baby.

All of which the palace would have released anyway.

All that time and effort and sitting out in the hot sun, and it made no difference to us as the interested audience. It just took up a lot of airtime and column inches on "no baby yet", all of which could have been better spent on something else.  We still would have gotten all available information through official channels, and there was simply no other information to be had.

The folly of measuring calories in exercise

Sometimes people talk about calories in terms of how much exercise it would take to burn them off.  There has even been talk of putting the amount of exercise needed to burn the calories on menus. I think this is a red herring, because it might lead people to believe that you have to exercise enough to burn off all the calories you consume.

This isn't the case.  A lot of calories (probably even the majority of our caloric intake) are burned by our baseline metabolism and the activity of everyday life. When I had my dysphagia incident a couple of summers ago, I was being as sedentary as possible to preserve what precious few calories I was able to consume. I didn't exercise at all, I took elevators and escalators instead of stairs, I took the subway to the next stop instead of walking. Despite that, I still lost about a pound a day because of the calories burned in the course of everyday life.

I'm concerned that if you present food to ignorant people in terms of hours of exercise to do, they might think that in order to be healthy, they have to go out and jog for three hours to burn off their dinner.  Then they might feel the need to exercise the point of unsafeness, or to eat unhealthily little, or otherwise deliberately exercise off a greater percentage of their caloric intake than necessary and thereby not leave enough for everyday life.  (And, of course, non-ignorant people can calculate how much they need to work out for themselves.)

Faking it

Dear Carolyn: 

In the mid-1990s, when I was 22 and my brother was 18, our family took a Caribbean cruise. It was fun, but not so much fun that I cared to go back again.
Now that my parents are in their late 60s and retired, my mom has gotten it in her mind that all four of us should take another cruise together as a family. They have even offered to pay. 
 
Aside from not having an interest in the cruise, I am also not interested in taking a family vacation. I am single and in my late 30s, and a family vacation smacks of desperation, a way of saying, “Oh, how sad, he didn’t want to go by himself, so he went with Mommy and Daddy.” Also, traveling anywhere with my parents is never a simple process (I suppose that can be said of a lot of people, though). In short, a cruise might be a vacation for my parents, but it would be anything but one for me.

I have repeatedly explained that neither a cruise nor a family vacation (wherever the destination) interests me. Nevertheless, the badgering continues. 

For the record, I take my own vacations, usually by myself. I also see my parents about once a month, so it is not as if I ignore them and am being “guilted” into a vacation. Any thoughts?

 I was surprised to see not only Carolyn, but also a huge number of people in the comments, suggest that LW would regret not going on the cruise after their parents die, because they'd feel bad about missing an opportunity to spend time with their parents.

This surprises me because if you asked me in a vacuum "What if they die and you don't get to spend any more time with them?" my immediate visceral answer would be "Then it's even more important not to spend what time we have left together doing something that makes me resent spending the time with them."

This also makes me wonder if there are people who actually enjoy spending time with their loved ones doing something that their loved ones don't actually have interest in doing.  Because I hate it!  It makes me feel so awkward and just want to run away and go home.   When I was a kid, my parents would sometimes on their own initiative try to take me to something that I was interested in but I knew they had no interest in, and it just felt awful and cringey and dreadful, and generally not worth doing at all.  Even when I invite my friends to do something that I'm not completely sure if they're into, and they accept my invitation of their own free will,I still find myself worrying in the back of my mind that they might not actually be into it. So, in this context, I just can't fathom how someone can enjoy an activity if their loved ones don't actually want to be there and are going along just to humour them.

Actually, I wonder if there's a correlation between this group and the people who want others to go through the motions of being religious?  As someone who takes religion seriously (which is why I left the church and started living as an atheist in the first place), I've always felt it's terribly insulting to the deity to go through the motions and not mean it.  But if there are people who genuinely enjoy having their loved ones go through the motions of things they actually hate doing, maybe they'd think their deity would feel the same way?

The tale of the GO bus skeptic

The scene: I'm sitting in a GO bus, putting on my seabands in the hope of warding off motion sickness.

Guy next to me: "What are those things?"
Me: "They prevent carsickness. I put them on my wrists, and this sticky-outy plastic bit presses into an acupressure point that relieves nausea."
Guy next to me: "Those are a scam, you know!  They're totally unproven, they don't do anything at all, it's all in your head!"

Now, it is true that I can't say for certain that the seabands work.  I've never thrown up while wearing them, but I also haven't thrown up on many many occasions when I wasn't wearing them.

But this guy was about to sit next to me for a long bus ride. If it were true that the anti-nausea measures I'm taking are entirely psychosomatic, he would have an immediate personal investment in my believing in them!  Why would you try to convince the person next to you on a long bus ride that their psychosomatic anti-carsickness measures are all in their head?

Thank you Blogger!

I recently blogged about a Blogger error message that prevents you from posting or saving posts unless the post has a title.

It seems this error has gone away.  I can now once again save and post messages without a title!

Given the recent spate of Google decision that hindered my user experience and disregarded my needs, I'm very glad to see Blogger is responsive to this!

Analogy for why social media is not a replacement for RSS

One of the things I found most bizarre in all the discussion surrounding the cancellation of Google Reader is that some people (including, apparently, some who work at Google) seem to think that social media is a suitable replacement for a feed reader.  As though we're perfectly content with reading whatever our internet friends choose to share and have no need whatsoever to curate our own reading list.

Today my shower gave me an analogy:

I've just caught up on the Inspector Gamache series, and am waiting with bated breath for the next book to come out in August.

So suppose, on the release date in August, I walk into a bookstore and ask "Do you have the latest Inspector Gamache book?"

The bookstore worker answers, "Here are some books I read and enjoyed recently!"

That doesn't solve my problem, does it?  I want to know what happened with Inspector Beauvoir.  I want to know how (or whether) Peter and Clara's marriage is holding up. I want to find out who leaked the video.

The books the bookstore worker read and enjoyed recently won't address these needs.  They may well be good books, I may well enjoy them, they may well end up being new favourites that I end up following diligently.  But, even if I read and enjoy them all, I will still want to read the next Inspector Gamache.

New Rules: Natural Consequences Edition V

9. If you tell someone (or say about someone) that they should just get a job, as though it's that simple, you're required to hire them.  You must hire them to do something they're capable of doing (or that you're willing to train them to do) and pay them enough to make it worth their while.

Oh, what's that?  You don't have any work that needs doing?  Or you couldn't afford to pay them reasonable compensation for the work that does need doing?

Exactly.

People who don't have preferences

Quite often, if someone mentions that they don't like a certain food, someone else will reply with something like "Oh, you just haven't tried really good [food].  You have to get it fresh, in season, organic and locally grown, and eat it raw, not cooked.  Or if you have to cook it, just steam it lightly, make sure you don't overcook it."  They give all this advice that is ultimately aimed at getting the most flavourful [food] possible.

But when I don't like a food, it's because of the flavour.  I don't like olives because they taste like olives.  I don't like cantaloupe because it's so cantaloupey. Making it more flavourful would just make things worse. 

Are there really people who want some flavour, any flavour, no matter what it is, and would only dislike a food because it's lower in flavour?

You see something similar in nutrition advice from time to time.  They recommend that you reduce your salt use by shaking spices on your food instead of salt, or you put lemon juice on your salad instead of salad dressing.  As though you're after a flavour, any flavour, rather than a specific flavour.  (But, somehow, the flavour of actual food won't do.)

I also see this sometimes when I'm complaining about my annual apple drought.  I'm all "I can't find Cortland apples!" and people respond with "You should get some blueberries, they're in season now!"  My complaint is about the absence of a  specific variety of a specific fruit.  Why would someone think this need can be addressed with a fruit, any fruit?  And if it could, there are plenty of kinds of fruit commercially available, including other kinds of apples right where my beloved Cortlands should be. Don't you think I'd have already bought some other fruit and stopped complaining if some other fruit would solve the problem?

Actually, this also reminds me of the Google Reader shutdown.  One of the arguments in favour of the shutdown was that people allegedly don't need RSS in this age of social media.  My social media certainly does provide me with things my friends think are worth sharing (and is useful in this respect because it isn't all stuff I would have stumbled upon myself), but I still want to read the things I want to read.  Having a steady stream of things to read is insufficient; I also want to read specific  things.

Are there really people like this, who don't have specific preferences and think anything will do interchangeably? Or do people who like to give others advice on the internet just think there are?

Things They Should Invent: emergency information robocalls for power outages

My power didn't go out in the storm earlier this week, but, being a bit of a Twitter stormwatcher, I did occasionally look at Toronto Hydro's Twitter feed to watch the show.  However, as many people have noted, using the internet for primary method of communication during a power outage is problematic.  People's personal internet access is going to be out, so only those whose cellphones have internet (and haven't run out of battery yet) and those who aren't currently in the power outage area can access the information. This means that the information is going to be less available to more vulnerable people (elderly, poorer, etc.) who are also likely to be less resilient to difficulties of a power outage.

Here's a simple solution: if there's a power outage, Hydro automatically robocalls affected customers telling them the status, the size of the area affected, and the ETA for power restoration.  When the status has changed significantly (ETA has changed, or area affected is significantly smaller), they send out another robocall.

People could opt in or out of emergency robocalls, so those who do have smartphones without landlines wouldn't have to use up valuable battery life fielding phone calls that give them no new information.

Perhaps they could also have mass text messaging (for people who don't have data plans - or if data isn't working due to the outage) since that's less of a drain on the battery than a ringing phone.

In any case, methods of immediate and automatic information distribution that aren't dependent upon electricity do exist.  They should make use of these during power outages.