Eternal Ephemeron

Why I cannot support the Conservative Party

2013-03-22T10:31:00.003-04:00

I don't like keeping one political party in power for too long. The incumbents can become lazy or corrupt and it's good to replace them every so often. Keeps them honest. But the problem is when there are not many choices, and one of those choices is the Conservative Party of Canada. A party who has so many wrong ideas.In 2005 virtually all sitting Conservative MPs voted against gay marriage. Now, they are at it again. A recent private-member's bill was drafted which sought to explicitly protect transgender rights. Arguably these rights should already exist under the Human Rights Acts protecting discrimination against sexuality or disability. However, new legislation was deemed necessary to clear up confusion on this issue because, let's face it, it can be a confusing issue.

The bill passed, which is surprising because it was an NDP bill in a Conservative parliament. But look at that vote breakdown:

I think that graphic speaks for itself.

(Image source: CBC)

Traditional Chinese "Medicine"

2013-03-14T16:41:00.001-04:00

So it seems that Ontario is going to start regulating practitioners of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). Starting April 1st it will be illegal to practice TCM without being a member of the College.

The college will establish the scope of practice and professional registration, and handle complaints brought by the public. The profession is currently unregulated, but the province in 2006 passed legislation to create a regulatory body to ensure public safety.

Naturally, practitioners of this trade are up in arms:

Peter Lam, a spokesperson for the ad hoc Committee to Support Traditional Chinese Medicine Practitioners and Acupuncturists of Ontario, said “We have consulted with two lawyers. This is against the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It is illegal.” In addition to a lack of English proficiency, many current practitioners inherited the knowledge from their ancestors and do not have the formal academic credentials to qualify for the registration requirements, Lam said.

I'm not particularly upset that the province is ruling out "my dad taught me" as a proper method of teaching medicine. We don't allow that for many professions, so why would this one be special? Anyway the legislation was passed in 2006. Seems like plenty of time to get your paperwork in order, no?

On one hand, regulating this field is better than the status quo, where anyone with a box of needles can call themselves an acupuncturist, and anyone with a box of powder can practice TCM. Now, you'll at least have to demonstrate that you understand certain basic safety instructions. Like sterilizing the needles first:

3/15/2004: The Quebec government is asking 1,200 people to undergo a blood test for HIV and hepatitis after needles were used more than once at a Montreal acupuncture clinic

Or making sure that peddlers of powders and herbs actually know what they are selling you, and what they're made of, so that they don't accidentally give you cancer:

Ying "Susan" Wu, 48, of Holland-on-Sea in Essex, has been on trial at the Old Bailey for selling pills containing aristolochic acid to a civil servant. Patricia Booth, 58, took the pills, bought at Chelmsford's Chinese Herbal Medical Centre, for over five years. She was in her mid-40s when she first sought help from the centre in 1997 for stubborn patches of spots on her face. The products had been advertised as "safe and natural".
But they contained a substance - aristolochic acid - which when she was first sold them, should only have been given under prescription, and which was later banned.

So hopefully the college can impart a basic degree of safety which is apparently currently lacking in this industry.

On the other hand, we won't see any degree of accountability for improving patient outcomes. The thing is that acupuncture and TCM do not work effectively to treat illnesses. Acupuncture is a waste of time with the potential for physical harm, and TCM is taking random, untested ingredients and hoping for some kind of drug effect. Both are based on a mystical notion of Qi, a life energy which flows through your body. Simply put: this notion is nonsense. Any non-placebo effect that TCM has is due to actual chemicals doing things in your body. And as Ms Wu found out in the UK, some of those chemicals are pretty dangerous. Some of them do nothing at all. Who can tell what effect a particular medicine will have? Not even its practitioners.

Elevating acupuncture and TCM from unregulated nonsense to a regulated profession will add credibility to this quackery. Instead of simply regulating them for safety, they should also be forced to prove their claims using the scientific method. Heck, even explaining their supposed method of action using real concepts instead of magic would be a start.

But at least fewer people should be poisoned, or exposed to pathogens now that it's being regulated, right?

First day

2012-09-04T13:13:00.000-04:00

This blog post is a writing exercise from writers.stackexchange.com. Visit the Writers chat room every Tuesday for new writing exercises. This week's exercise: A microfiction (no more than 600 words) story with a first-line prompt of "She did her best, but she was young."

She did her best, but she was young. She sat in her chair, her legs wrapped around its, hunched over the paper. Her fingers gripped the pencil tightly as she concentrated on her work. Meticulous stroke after meticulous stroke.

At one point someone with a ball crashed into her, prompting her to put down her pencil and exclaim “Be careful! I’m writing here!” before turning back to her work. She gave an exasperated sigh as she erased the errant stroke caused by the juxtaposition of her elbow and a kindergartener.

Unmindful of the clock on the wall, she toiled away until her paper was filled to her satisfaction. Smiling, she put it aside, only to see that it was time to leave. She jumped up to go change her shoes and grab her coat, snagging her paper almost as an afterthought as she ran towards the door.

“Daddy, Daddy, look what I wrote!” she beamed as only a four-year-old can.

“Let’s see, honey!” he said, as he picked up the paper and examined the huge letters scrawled across the page

DEARDADDY I
MISS MOMmy
wHen CAN WE
GO SEE HER

“Did I write it good?” she asked, hopping from one foot to another.

“You did, honey,” he said, a tear forming in his eye.

“Did I make any mistakes?” she asked excitedly.

“You spelled every word right, but some of your letters need practice,” he said gently. “Mommy would have been proud of you,” he added.

She took his hand, and they left the classroom to go home.

Jannik and the statue

2012-08-29T00:31:00.000-04:00

This blog post is a writing exercise from writers.stackexchange.com. Visit the Writers chat room every Tuesday for new writing exercises. This week's exercise: A 10-300 word story involving walking to, and perhaps riding, a subway train.

The crew cursed and yelled as they lowered the statue off the ship. It was surprisingly heavy despite being only life-sized. Jannik gasped as a rope snapped and it tumbled out of its rigging and onto the dock. The statue was only wrapped in thin cloth, yet Jannik was shocked to find that it was unharmed. They quickly loaded it onto a cart and left for the Academy.

“It’s clearly Infused,” said the Senior Initiate of Artifact Research.

“Yes, definitely solar powered,” said the Senior Initiate of Energy. “Good thing you kept it covered,” he said to Jannik.

“It may be an explosive,” said the Senior Initiate of Offensive Weaponry. “It needs further study, by a Senior Initiate,” he added. The implication was clear. Jannik was a mere Initiate. The fact that he had brought the statue all the way from the forbidden continent of Northam meant nothing.

Jannik fastened his cloak went down to wait for the subterranean train. His anger was overcoming him so he forced himself to do a Computation Mantra, using the echos he heard to Compute a model of the train tunnels. When the train came through the echoes expanded his visualization and he realized how close he sat to the Vault itself.

It was an act of vandalism that could get him imprisoned, or worse, expelled, but he was too angry to care. He picked some items out of his pack and put them into his mouth, Infusing them with stored Essences. His teeth and tongue assembled it, and when it was ready he gently spat it into his hands. “Go on, little mole,” he said, as he set it on its way.

The Vault keepers were surprised to hear a voice from inside the Vault. When they entered they saw a thin shaft of sunlight streaming from a silvery hole, shining on an empty pedestal. Lying on the floor was a man. “Help me...” he said, then collapsed.

Mexican Food Stand-off

2012-07-30T22:21:00.000-04:00

This blog post is a writing exercise from writers.stackexchange.com. Visit the Writers chat room every Tuesday for new writing exercises. This week's exercise: to write a dialog (only dialog!) between two people that includes within it pants and tacos.

"Damn it, why isn't this thing working?"

"Did you try speaking more slowly?"

"Yes, and I even tried retraining it. It just doesn't understand me."

"Here, let me try. 'I WOULD LIKE A TACO.'"

"See? Nothing. The damn thing is busted."

"Je veux un taco. Wo yao yige taco."

"I'm telling you, it's broken."

"Just give it a good whack."

"How many times do I have to remind you that a replicator is not something you whack? Forget it. I'm going to go out to eat."

"Wait! You're not wearing any pants."

"Damn it! I de-materialized them because they were dirty and I wanted to make a clean pair... only now the replicator is busted ... crap, what will I wear?"

"I have a spare pair on, you can have them."

"You're wearing two pairs of pants?"

"Yeah. For emergencies."

"You wouldn't happen to have a spare taco, would you?"

"Sorry, no."

The Garden

2012-07-24T07:00:00.000-04:00

This blog post is a writing exercise from writers.stackexchange.com. Visit the Writers chat room every Tuesday for new writing exercises. This week's exercise: A short story with 2 paragraphs, no dialogue, containing a rusty nail, a tulip, and the word "spangled".

I reached for my glass of iced tea, but it was empty, and even the ice-cubes had disappeared. I thought about going inside to get more but I couldn’t move. It was just too damn hot. I played with my empty glass while contemplating my garden. To be honest, “garden” was a strong word for it. I never weeded it or planted things. Stuff simply grew there; that stuff wasn’t grass, thus it was a garden. I knew I should really do something about the ivy, because it was encroaching on, well, everything: the patio stones, the fence, the tree, even the house. But it was just so hot that I sat there contemplating doing something rather than doing it.

I was out of iced tea and it was getting hotter. I thought about the front lawn, or “lawn”, now that the grass was all dead from the drought. There had been tulips growing in the middle of the lawn in the Spring, but they were long gone and so were all signs of life from that part of the yard. Only the back yard, with its modicum of shade, withstood this infernal heat. Only the ivy thrived, encroaching on everything: the gate, the hedge, heck, one tendril even climbed all the way up the wall and wrapped around a rusty nail that used to hold up a downspout. I have no idea how it found that nail. The dog lay complacently on the ivy-covered stones, and again I looked at my empty glass of iced tea, and contemplated the lure of the air conditioning on the other side of the patio door. But it was too hot to move.

The sun’s heat was reflecting off the patio stones and surely baking me even though I was sitting in the shade. I gazed at my empty glass and my garden with its lush ivy. The ivy was a rich green colour and its broad leaves hinted at the coolness of their shadows. I was sitting in the shade of an ivy-encrusted tree but it was still so hot and my glass of iced tea was bone dry. The tree was not unique in being covered in the ubiquitous ivy; it encroached on everything: the patio table, the barbecue, the eavestroughs, even the dog. I wondered if the dog was cool under there. I was hot so I took off my hat and placed it on the table, and I hummed the Star-Spangled Banner while contemplating the ivy and my pruning shears, which were in the garage, but anyway it was too hot to prune today.

I picked up my glass of iced tea but it was full of ivy and I didn’t think those leaves would make good tea and besides I had no water. I couldn’t see the dog and the ivy was now encroaching on my legs. The heat was dizzying but my feet felt so cool and I wondered why I’d ever wanted to trim this ivy, which was encroaching on my belt. I couldn’t see the dog or the patio table or any patio stones, only the ivy, which was encroaching on my head. At last I felt cool as the ivy closed over me.

I reached for my glass of ivy but the glass was gone and so was the table and to be honest I wasn’t sure where I was anymore. But it was blessedly cool and I contemplated my garden. Next summer, I thought, I’m hiring a landscaper.

Atheism is not a religion - Response to Rabbi Marmur in the Toronto Star

2012-06-06T13:56:00.000-04:00

Rabbi Dow Marmur writes in the Toronto Star that Atheism resembles religious fanaticism and that atheism is a religion:

Atheism nowadays does indeed require a lot of devotion as it’s on the way to becoming a religion.

This is not a good start to his essay and it gets worse from there. There is so much wrongness in his essay that I barely know how to respond, except by doing a point-by-point tear-down. All of the following quotes (with a blue background) are from Marmur's article, which has so many wrong things that I've reproduced almost the whole thing here:

Atheism nowadays does indeed require a lot of devotion as it’s on the way to becoming a religion. The title of Alain de Botton’s new book heralds it: Religion for Atheists: A Non-Believer’s Guide to the Uses of Religion. He even wants to build temples because “it’s time atheists had their own versions of the great churches and cathedrals.”

First of all, atheism does not require any devotion. This is the fallacy commonly made by believers: that atheists have to work hard to not believe in a god. In fact it's quite easy to not believe in a god. Most Christians do not believe in Thor, or Odin, or Loki, or Zeus, or Mithra, or Vishnu, or the Force. It does not require any faith or effort or devotion on their part to maintain this disbelief. Atheists simply add "Yahweh" and "Jesus" to that list.

Secondly, Alain de Botton does not speak for all atheists. He is not a leader of some "atheist church". Atheists do not elect or appoint leaders and follow the leaders' directions. Some atheists are famous for speaking out about atheism, such as Richard Dawkins or P. Z. Myers. However they hold no authority over other atheists and they only have "followers" inasmuch as people usually agree with them.

In fact, Richard Dawkins recently lost quite a bit of credibility among atheists when he essentially told a female skeptic to shut up about her experience being sexually harassed at a skepticism conference. Professor Dawkins is respected only as far as his actions take him; if he offends people then others will stop listening to him.

[de Botton's] book may be an improvement on the many rabidly anti-religious tracts that have become bestsellers in recent years. Whereas they seem to tell readers what they’re against in religion, de Botton’s is potentially a more positive, albeit eccentric, message.

"Eccentric" doesn't even begin to describe de Botton's message. P. Z. Myers said it better than I can: de Botton wants to take all the creepy parts of religion, such as indoctrination and centralized control, and copy those in secular society. He feels that this is somehow an improvement. But most people who are atheists don't really want to be indoctrinated or controlled. That's often one of the catalysts for their de-conversion: repulsion from the way religious organizations operate.

Frank Furedi is a sociology professor and, by his own admission, a supporter of the British Humanist Association. He writes: “Where atheism was once depicted as a dangerous and subversive creed, today it is often portrayed as an enlightened outlook that perches on the moral high ground.”

Atheism is STILL depicted as dangerous and subversive, usually by religious people. And it IS dangerous and subversive to religion and religious organizations, who cannot maintain their riches and power when they have no followers. But if you tell me that religious people don't also portray themselves as having "an enlightened outlook that perches on the moral high ground" then I'll call you a liar.

There was a time when exponents of conventional religion were criticized for being overzealous and dogmatic. Today, in the religious circles in which I mix, openness and tolerance are the order of the day. It’s the New Atheism that, according to Furedi, “expresses itself through a doctrinaire language of its own.”

I’ve, therefore, consistently refused to engage in debates with atheists. They may consider me a cowardly man of little faith who’s afraid of exposing himself to the truth, but impartial observers will know that contemporary atheists are often even more fanatical than religious fundamentalists. Their zeal seems to know no bounds.

Anyone can be overzealous and dogmatic. And again: there are lots of religious people for whom "overzealous" and "dogmatic" are polite understatements. The Westboro Baptist Church comes to mind. New Atheism is simply made up of atheists standing up and proclaiming their atheism, so that they are no longer an invisible and silent minority. New Atheism doesn't like religion because there is so much to dislike about it.

This may be due to their realization that conventional religion is here to stay, not as “the opiate of the people” in Karl Marx’s oft-cited description, but as “an ethical and cohesive force,” as New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof has called it. Conventional religion bestows purpose and meaning on life; atheists may be envious of it.

Wow! What a leap of logic in this paragraph. Conventional religion is actually declining in most developed nations. Atheists do have meaning and purpose in their lives, if they choose: they work to make this life better for themselves and their fellow humans, because it's the only life they have.

Because religion is articulated and administered by human beings, it often falls short of its stated ideals — just like atheism. Though atheists are keen to parade the abuses committed by some religious leaders and attack distortions attributed to others, they don’t seem to apply the same criticism to themselves but tend to hide behind what they call reason and science.

Atheism doesn't have "ideals" - it is simply the lack of belief in gods - though there are some groups who are organized around the ideals of humanism or of combating religion. But typically if any members of those groups "fall short of their ideals" then they are dealt with accordingly. People who fail to perform in their roles are fired. People who commit crimes are turned over to the police. I know of no atheist or humanist or other organization based explicitly on atheist or skeptic or scientific goals that has had a world-wide sex-abuse scandal, or that was stealing babies from politically-disadvantaged women and selling them to the rich, or that advocates for putting all gays behind electrified fences until they die. Religious groups and public figures have many flaws and have been guilty of many crimes that went unpunished; where are the corresponding scandals in the Atheist community? When has the Atheist community protected its own members no matter what monstrous crimes they committed?

And science is not something that one "hides behind". To make that claim is to fundamentally misunderstand what science is, how it works, and what its goals are. Science is a process of thought and discovery and invention. The methods and data and experiments and processes used are documented and open. There are no hidden rituals or secret cabals. Anyone can take part in it and take it apart. Science adjusts its views when it is shown to be mistaken. (This process can take time - scientists are human and have egos, like anyone else- but it is guaranteed to occur). Science is about transparency. You can't hide behind a transparent window. Nor do you hide behind science. Science stands on its own merits and falls by its own method, only to stand again stronger than before.

Religion, because it’s attuned to and aware of human inadequacies we know as sin, seems to be much more conducive to self-examination and a determination to do better next time.
Joseph Harker, writing last December in the British daily the Guardian, made a strong case for belief in God when he stated that “it offers clarity and opportunity for regular self-assessment, in an atmosphere of genuine humility.” In religion, he wrote, “the world doesn’t evolve around ‘me’; I have to contribute to the world.”

This is hogwash. First, the fact that a ritualized belief system has, as one of its components, an exhortation to perform self-reflection, has nothing to do with whether or not the god presupposed by this religion actually exists. Joseph Harker's article doesn't even make the claim that god exists, only that religious rituals can help people better themselves. But this is also a non-sequiter: people who want to do self-assessment will do it whether or not they believe in a god, and people who don't want to self-assess won't. Religion doesn't have a monopoly on telling people that they're doing something wrong.

Meanwhile, what most religions call "sins" or "human inadequacies" are merely arbitrary. It is a "sin" for Jews or Muslims to eat pork, or for Hindus to eat beef. Christians can eat anything... as long as it's not meat on Good Friday. Who's right? Why do these rules even exist or matter? Jews are prohibited from working on the Sabbath; a prohibition that extends so far that even carrying a cane for walking is considered forbidden. But it's okay, because they build holy fences around entire cities in order to squeak in under the law. Masturbation is considered a grave sin in the Catholic Church. Yet pretty much everyone does it at least occasionally and it causes no harm. So why is it a sin? The Church demands "self-reflection" and tries to shame you into feeling guilt if you don't follow every little rule, no matter what the actual harm is or how petty or random the rule is.

Psychology professor Jonathan Haidt, writes that religious ritual practices point to a solution “to one of the hardest problems humans face: cooperation without kinship.” A religious community gives adherents a home and something of a family. Community members often testify to it and, therefore, remain unmoved by atheist onslaughts. Perhaps that’s why de Botton now wants to imitate religious congregations.

Finally! Finally something that makes sense in this whole ridiculous essay. Yes, it is a well-known fact that people cooperate better when they have a commonality to link them. So essentially: religious people are like Toronto Maple Leafs fans, who keep paying exorbitant prices to watch their team lose again and again, yet stick together because they are sticking together. Go Team!

In fact, the most common cause of religious conversion is the security of rituals and the comfort of community. Both help people to experience the caring God who loves them. Atheists, however devout, aren’t ever likely to know it.

Atheists often come from those very communities. And often they don't tell tales of security and comfort. They tell different tales: Tales of being made to feel fear and shame for no good reason. Tales of abuse in the name of God. Tales of institutionalized sexism or homophobia. Tales of brainwashing. Community is important. But religion is not the only source of community. And where is the caring and loving God who let Catholic bullies torment Jamie Hubley to death?

Religion may have helped people cooperate in the past. But now religion often stands in the way of progress. The Bible was used as a defence of slavery and racism. It is used to oppress women. It is still being used to oppress gays. Rabbi Marmur says that religion is about tolerance, yet the Catholic Bishops are still trying to suppress equality for gays. Why is it that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and not the Bible, is the tool that makes life better for women, and minorities, and gays, and other disadvantaged people? Why are the Catholic Bishops trying to suppress anti-bullying campaigns in Ontario schools?

Atheism, at its core, is simply about rejecting religion because it makes no sense. But once that step is taken, once the supernatural is removed, all that's left is this world, just this one world we live in. There is no reward or punishment in your next life. There are no second chances. There is only here, and now, and us, and we have to work together to make things better for all of us. But I guess that's a sentiment that devout religious people will never understand.

Takei-Straight Alliances in Ontario Schools

2012-06-02T02:09:00.002-04:00

The Catholic bishops of Ontario are all upset these days because the provincial government is passing a law that forces Catholic schools to allow students to form gay-straight alliances: anti-bullying clubs intended to protect LGBT students. The schools currently may or may not reluctantly allow these clubs (some do, some don't), but they are not allowed to be named Gay-Straight Alliances, or any other name that suggests homosexuality. Even names like "The Rainbow Alliance" and the like have been vetoed by the schools.

I guess George Takei's solution is needed.

But the bishops are all upset because they feel that the government is encroaching on their religious freedoms. Guess what? "Religious Freedom" is not a blank cheque for discriminating against the population. And these schools are funded by taxpayers. That makes the schools part of the government, and the government is prohibited from this kind of discrimination. The taxpayers largely agree: they voted to keep the current Liberal government in power, in part because of the homophobic nutcases running under the Conservative banner.

The views of the Catholic Church regarding homosexuality are wrong. They are wrong and they are hateful and they are evil. Hopefully, the momentum has shifted in these schools, and the future Catholic leaders will make changes. If they don't, they risk alienating their members, who will leave the church for less hateful pastures, and they risk alienating the taxpayers, who will demand the privatization of the Catholic Schools if they don't get in line with modern values.

Lego Star Wars 7965 Millennium Falcon

2012-04-30T07:00:00.000-04:00

Christmas 2001: my wife and I were Christmas shopping. We went to a Toys R Us and I admired the Lego Millennium Falcon (7190). My wife told me to leave the store and she later came out with a flat box in a bag, a box which made a rattling sound. On Christmas morning, as I unwrapped a rattling box, I was surprised to find... a Scrabble game! Which was also a great gift but wasn't what I had expected. Anyway, we decided to go Boxing Day shopping, and I tried to find the Millennium Falcon, but it was sold out everywhere.
That summer, my wife surprised me again: on my birthday I received another box, which didn't rattle, but which contained a tightly-packed Lego Millennium Falcon that she had bought on eBay. Did I mention that she's awesome? She is.

My birthday present

Well, that was 2002, and in 2004 Lego released a new version of the Millennium Falcon (4504). It improved on the old design a lot. I wanted to buy it but I was told that I couldn't, on account of "You already have one, and I paid way too much money for you to buy another one." And that was that, for years. I watched a few Millennium Falcon models go by, including the oh-so-tempting full-minifig-scale Ultimate Collector Series version. But I didn't buy any of them.

So imagine my surprise last Saturday, when I went downstairs for breakfast, and found a new Millennium Falcon (7965) on the table! With the help of my daughter I put it together. Let me get right to the point: this is one of Lego's best kits ever. It is a very good rendition of the Falcon. The shape is quite accurate; it has several important details such as landing gear, entrance ramp, smuggling compartments, Dejarik table, guns on the top and bottom of the ship (including a place where Han and Luke can sit back-to-back, to recreate the scene in Episode IV when they are escaping the Death Star), and even a little flying orb and welding helmet for Luke to practice his lightsaber. It comes with 6 minifigs (Han Solo, Chewbacca, Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, Obi-wan Kenobi, and Darth Vader). There are 1254 pieces, but the assembly is in six stages, with the parts separated in numbered bags to make it easier. The resulting model has no useless features or oddly-coloured parts. In fact, I have only two complaints:

There are no droids. Why include Darth Vader, when he was never on the ship, but leave out the droids? Not that I need more droids, but for the price of this kit I think they could toss in a couple.
Stickers. Round stickers that are hard to apply and that don't stay stuck. Again, considering how much this kit costs, a handful of printed pieces shouldn't be a luxury.

Old MF

New MF

I thought it would be fun to compare this model with the one from 2000, so I dug it out and put it together. The first thing that struck me was how the new kit really uses appropriate colours in a way that the old kit did not. The old kit used a simpler arrangement: every piece of a certain kind was the same colour. Every 1x8 brick is blue. Every 2x6 plate is dark grey. Every 2x10 plate is light grey. Every 2x4 brick is red. Etc. This makes building the model easier, because it's easier to find the piece you want and easier to see where it goes on the model. However, it makes the resulting model look like a box of Crayola crayons sneezed all over it.

The second thing I noticed, and it's the main problem with the old model, is that the designers didn't try very hard to use advanced techniques to achieve the Falcon's shape. The cockpit hangs off the side but doesn't look like it's connected by a walkway. The cockpit is the wrong shape (despite using a custom canopy piece). The Falcon's hull is made of four huge quarter-circle dome plates, which aren't that accurate to the movies and which make the ship look like a hamburger.

Old MF, lid off

New MF, peeled open

The new ship goes way beyond standard building techniques to achieve its shape. Its perimeter is made of hinged sections to simulate roundness. The roof is made of hinged plate sections that peel open to access the interior. The detailing is better. Even something like the gun turret: both models have it; both models use a similar approach, but the new one uses more pieces and better colours to make the whole thing look nicer. (Not to mention that the old model only had a top gun, no bottom gun).

I loved the Millennium Falcon model when I got it in 2002. But the new one is so superior that it almost makes you want to pretend that Lego never made the old one.

Old Crew

New Crew

Lego Atlantis 7985 City of Atlantis

2012-01-25T22:26:00.000-05:00

The Christmas season brought several new Lego kits into my home, one of which was the City of Atlantis. This is a fairly large set, with 686 pieces, and it mainly consists of a sunken Greek-inspired temple, along with a small submarine and a brick-built giant crab.

There are 5 minifigs which come with the set: two human divers, two aquatic monsters, and one human statue. The monsters are not bad; they both consist of a printed torso and a rubbery "head" which covers the torso to some degree. The red monster has lobster claws, which are basically lobster-claw-shaped accessories that a standard minifig hand holds onto.

The submarine is a small sub with room for a single minifg inside. It features a green tome, a large propeller, two flick-fire missiles, and two arms with claws suitable for picking up sea treasure or recalcitrant monsters. The sub is well-built, using fairly generic parts to good effect, and doesn't have any glaring flaws such as huge gaps in the cockpit. It isn't very detailed but it also isn't the main focus of this kit.

The crab is a brick-built monster that defends the temple. Again, the construction is simple and elegant, not over-doing it but providing a nice little "bad-guy" counterpoint to the submarine. The pieces used are fairly generic and useful and it looks good and is somewhat poseable. I guess in the Lego Atlantis storyline, the monster sea creatures like this crab are actually machines, or so the stickers would suggest. I don't really like stickers on Lego, so I left several of them off where I felt they weren't essential.

The city itself, or rather, temple, is a pretty good representation of the facade of a Greek temple, if that temple had been submerged underwater for some time and partially ruined. There is a broken column, some seaweed, a locked gate, a treasure chest, and an arch. The temple's roof is just two narrow plates, but from the front it looks good. It's fairly obvious that a Lego kit such as this would never include proper walls or an enclosing roof, but given the constraints the overall look is quite good.

There are several booby-traps in the temple; the archway leading to the steps has an axe that can swing down; there is a trap-door, and the column that isn't ruined is hinged so that it can fall over (I suppose that might not be a proper trap, per se). There are also two flick-fire missiles in the roof of the temple but I'd rather pretend those aren't there.

One thing that strikes me as odd about these traps is that given the underwater setting, traps which rely on gravity (falling axe, trap door, falling column) seem pretty out of place. Couldn't an invader just swim down from above? In fact, that's the most likely angle of attack anyway, given that the good guys have a submarine. Maybe those traps are left over from when Atlantis wasn't submerged? One can only guess.

I've left the most interesting detail of this kit until last. This kit, like several other Atlantis sets, features a "key" which can be used to unlock a secret. At the base of the temple steps there is a round pedestal which turns freely, until the key is in place; when the key is in place turning the key causes the statue minifig to pop up from under a trap door. This little mechanism is quite nice and very fun to play with (statue goes up, statue goes down, statue goes up...). I think many fantasy creations besides "Atlantis" could use a mechanism like this and can foresee this sort of feature becoming an element in one of my future creations. It's all connected underneath with Technic parts, so it should be easy enough to extend into any kind of complicated machinery.

Overall, I find that this is a very well-designed kit. Many of the Atlantis kits didn't interest me and I avoided the theme until now. This set, however, is quite nice. The pieces are almost all universally useful. It is a good source of white parts, especially the grooved round bricks that make up the columns. The minifigs are good. The kit is well-designed with lots of interesting play features. My only complaint is the stickers. I still find it annoying when parts require stickers. I understand that this keeps the price down, but to me putting a sticker on a piece is almost as bad as painting a piece or cutting one. Don't ask me to explain that, I know it's irrational.

An Open Letter to Vince Agovino

2011-10-21T20:00:00.000-04:00

Dear Mr. Agovino,
Recently, in your campaign for the position of Member of Provincial Parliament in Willowdale, you sent out a letter (p1, p2, p3, ad) to all constituents. In this letter, you included an advertisement for a petition regarding the sex ed program in Ontario schools, and a long explanation about the problems you see regarding Ontario schools (Catholic schools, specifically) and the "Gay Agenda".

I have to start by saying that your letter lost some of its impact by arriving at my house on October 12th, a little too late for the October 6th election (besides, I voted in the advance polls). However, I did find it quite insulting that Canada Post seems to think that one cent of postage was not sufficent for this letter, and that I am now personally responsible for $1.81 in outstanding postage.

The mode of delivery of this particular letter, however, is not what offends me the most. What offends me are the views expressed in this letter. But first, a little about myself. I was born in Ontario and was a student in Ontario's Catholic school system from Grade 1 onwards. As a child, I didn't know lots of things, including much about homosexuality (or, let's face it, about sexuality at all). But I did know that someone you didn't like in the schoolyard was called a "fag", though I didn't use that word very often.

Now, I am living in Willowdale and am raising a family of my own. In a way, my situation is a bit like yours. However, our choice of city (and provincial riding) appear to be the only similarities we share. Because frankly, I found it incredibly offensive that your letter establishes your campaign platform along the following two ideas:

Sexual education for children is bad.
Gays are bad, or at least, should be ignored, and certainly not supported in schools.

The first point is one that I've already rebutted on my blog. In a nutshell, the sex ed curriculum changes that the Liberal government had proposed was almost completely unremarkable, and it should have simply been implemented as-is. It is total misinformation and fear-mongering to suggest that children will be learning about "sex" when they should be learning to tie their shoes. That argument doesn't even make sense. Children can learn more than one thing at a time and the sex-ed curriculum doesn't bump out any other useful knowledge. And also, learning about anatomy is not the same thing as learning about sexual intercourse. Attempting to equate those two things is, basically, lying. Learning about anatomy, and privacy, are important things to teach small children who otherwise can't articulate themselves when an adult abuses them, and this is what the early sex-ed curriculum addresses. Suffice to say, the government was making a positive change with that curriculum and my disappointment lies in the fact that they backed down because of a rabid, uninformed, fear-mongering outcry.

Your second platform point is actually far worse than your first. Your letter reads as a thinly veiled warning that if we don't elect you, the gays are going to have their way with our children. You must really not like gays. Because if you cared about them at all, you'd be appalled that a gay student killed himself in Ottawa recently, and that he did so because he was bullied by homophobic teenagers in his school. And Gay-Straight Alliances, which the Catholic school boards are resisting tooth-and-nail, are an important tool to help deal with that kind of bullying. But your campaign letter says that you will fight tirelessly to ensure that Catholic schools are free to allow students to bully gays.

How does an educated person in 2011 get to be so wrong about such an issue? Let's pretend that instead of gay students we are talking about black students, or Chinese students. If schools were full of systematic bullying and intolerance for black or Chinese students, wouldn't you want the schools to set up programs to help alleviate this? Wouldn't you support the government's attempts to solve this problem? I'll be honest and say that I don't know how effective a solution a GSA is. Maybe it helps, maybe it doesn't. But you aren't criticizing the solution. You are instead criticizing the problem. Because these students were born gay, they are now fair game for bullying, and any attempts they make to improve their lives must be evidence of an evil conspiracy.

Now, you might raise a bunch of arguments here, such as claiming that being gay is a choice, or that being gay is a sin. First, most scientists do not believe that being gay is a choice. The evidence is pretty clear about it. Besides, what possible advantages does it bring? "Gee, I'd like to be attracted to the same gender as me, so that I can have the same amount of sexual satisfaction as a straight person, but oodles more scorn and derision and bullying from people who see me as a freak! Sounds like a good idea!"

As for it being a sin, please note that the Old Testament explicitly condemns homosexuality only in Leviticus, and the Gospels say nothing about homosexuality. Leviticus is a surprising book to read. It starts out with a detailed description of how to sacrifice animals. Then it talks about which things are unclean and how you are a guilty sinner if you touched an unclean thing, even if you didn't know you had. Also it prohibits the eating of lobster, clams, and other sea creatures that don't have scales, because those are abominations. There are whole lists of creatures that you can and can't eat. Leviticus also prescribes that all men must be circumcised. It goes on and on. My point is that almost all the rules of Leviticus are ignored in modern Christianity. Why does the ban against homosexuality get special treatment? Jesus never said anything about homosexuality. But he did command his followers to love their neighbours.

That boy that committed suicide recently, because homophobic teenagers bullied him? His name was Jamie Hubley. He was a boy, learning about the world and growing up to be a man. And he's dead now, because homophobes made his life unbearable. How can we let something like this happen? How can we pretend that this boy "chose" to be tormented to death? He was a boy, and a human being, and he deserved better from the world and from his school. And your campaign strove to undo any advances this child needed.

That attitude sickens me to no end. Maybe I shouldn't be surprised, since you've aligned yourself with the same party whose Federal brothers and sisters unanimously voted against officially legalizing gay marriage, despite it being clearly required by the Charter of rights and freedoms. It was a mere technicality, yet the entire cohort of elected Conservatives stood up to declare themselves homophobic. It should come as no surprise that you too have the same views as they. But your letter, your anti-gay beliefs are why you, and your party, lost the provincial election: the people of Toronto stood up and denounced this bigotry.

I am sending this letter to you directly from my personal email, and also cross-posting it to my blog. If you reply, I will post your reply as well, so that you can get your word in.

LEGO Kingdoms 7189 Mill Village Raid

2011-10-02T23:00:00.002-04:00

I recently found the Lego Kingdoms set 7189 on sale at Toys R Us and decided that I had to have it.

There are lots of things I like about the latest Kingdoms line. First, I am crazy about the evil faction, the dragon knights. They have great minifigs and colours. So a set that features these minifigs is always nice to see. Of course, the main highlight of this relatively large set is not the knights, but rather the peasants.

This set represents the continuation of the recent years' foray into medieval scenes featuring civilians. In the past, virtually all Castle sets featured only combatants, except the odd wagon now and then that might have a lonely farmer. Lately, LEGO has added more "daily life" sets to the mix. One signature set in that series was the Medieval Market, which featured medieval city buildings, farmers, cattle, food, and other day-to-day things you might find in a medieval city. Now with 7189 they are bringing out a rather large farm set that really shines.

This set is divided up into four stages. Each stage has numbered polybags of parts, so that it's easy to assemble the first time. The first bag has the minifigs and the wagon. The wagon is nothing great but frankly, who cares. Lego has almost never put out a good wagon and that never bothered me. It serves the purpose of having something to hitch to the horse. The horse, by the way, is really nicely done, with shaggy hooves and blinders. Not a warhorse at all. Aside from the horse, you also get three chickens, two goats, and a pig. I've never seen Lego farm animals before and I have to say that these are really, really, really cute. They look good next to the farmer, his wife, and their son (who needs a haircut, in my opinion :) )

The second stage is the windmill. This is a nice little building, on a rotating base, with a sloped roof. The windmill actually rotates a central shaft that has a grindstone on it. You can turn a crank or turn the blades themselves and the stone grinds. It's really well done. The only thing I didn't like about this windmill is that it's very fragile, for a building. I can never recall when I've ever accidentally crushed a model I was building while trying to attach a piece, but this happened a couple of times while I was putting this together.

The third stage is one half of the barn, and the fourth stage is the other half. The barn is well made; it swings apart so that you can reach inside, and it features a winch, a trap door, and two stalls for the animals. The construction is fairly sturdy and it looks nice when it's completed. There is not too much to remark on, construction-wise.

One thing I did notice is that this model shows how some of the parts in the Lego repertoire have evolved over time. Consider the door that is used on the mill. On an older kit, this door would be used. It attaches using a special brick that has little tabs hanging off. This mechanism is very old; I have lego from the early 1980s that uses this for shutters. It's also fairly fragile; the tabs on the brick could break off, and the doors fall off during play. In 7189 the door looks like this, and the clips that hold it in place are standard vertical claws. In this particular model, the claws are part of a giant, 3-tall brick with the claws permanently molded in. But there is nothing special about these claws and any standard claw can be used. The same is true of almost every other hinge in this set. The older hinges have all been replaced with standard claws. This is an amazing improvement, because it means that you can now be far more versatile in how you connect these pieces. I'm a bit disappointed that all my old doors are obsolete but I'm glad to see real progress.

The other thing I was glad to see in this model is that there are virtually no off-colour parts that are included for bizarre reasons. LEGO often puts a single bright-blue brick in the middle of a model for some reason. In this set, that was kept to a minimum and most of the colour variation is on-palette, that is, it's different shades of brown and grey. And I love the new super-dark brown, and the dark-tan, both of which are used a lot in this set.

Overall, aside from the fragility of the windmill, I find that this set is extremely well constructed. The part selection is really good. The minifigs and animals are excellent. Overall a very good set and worth owning.

When to admit you're mistaken

2011-09-14T12:06:00.001-04:00

Cameron Johnston, a York University prof, is in hot water for uttering the words

"All Jews should be sterilized"

in his lecture. Naturally, this upset one of his students, Sarah Grunfeld, who says "that’s pretty serious," and so she emailed Oriyah Barzilay, the president of an Israel advocacy group on campus who then sent a press release to media and other Jewish community groups calling for Johnston to be fired.

If this were all the story, I might sympathize with the outrage and the demands for Mr. Johnston's resignation. But, you see, that isn't what he said at all.

What he did say was

Everyone is not entitled to their opinion. “All Jews should be sterilized” would be an example of an unacceptable and dangerous opinion.

See what happens when you add the context? It's quite significant. But not to Ms. Grunfeld, who states

“The words, ‘Jews should be sterilized’ still came out of his mouth, so regardless of the context I still think that’s pretty serious.”

No, Ms. Grunfeld, you are wrong. It is not serious that he mentioned those words. Just like if I write the word "nigger" on this page, that does not mean that I am calling anyone a nigger or exhibiting racism. If you remove the context of the words you change the meaning of the words. And there is a major difference between using a word and mentioning it.

Ms. Grunfeld is adamant, however, that she is correct and doubts that Mr. Johnston is, in fact, Jewish, as he claims he is, and says that maybe if he IS, he just thought that he could talk "smack" about Jews. That statement made so little sense that I thought my head would explode.

Ms. Grunfeld: You owe Mr. Johnston an apology. You were wrong when you misunderstood a perfectly reasonable statement and so caused trouble for him, and now you are wrong when accuse him of lying about his background and questioning his motives. It's time to back down and admit that you were wrong. Please do it now before you become even wronger.

More non-English phobias

2011-07-29T09:00:00.004-04:00

The Telegraph (in the UK) published a piece about how immigrants should be required to learn English before they settle in England.

I love the ironic ignorance of history, linguistics, and anthropology that leads to articles like this. And I love the totally ironic error in the sub-headline:

The inability to speak a host country’s language ... is a very reasonable requirement of any immigrant.

I guess the Normans don't belong in England. The Saxons came after the Angles, and THEY replaced the Celts, who were themselves cultural and linguistic invaders. None of them spoke the "native" languages.

But what is more ironic is that the author claims that we need to all speak one language so that we don't have "dangerous divisions". This is a totally unsubstantiated claim; lots of countries do just fine with minority populations that speak different languages; but then the author goes and cites CANADA as an example of a country that requires a language test to get in. Um... maybe someone should tell him that we don't all speak the same language in Canada? Yeesh. I guess we're dangerously unstable? Oh wait... nope, it's just a few crackpots that occasionally cause the odd ruckus about Quebec, while meanwhile separatist sentiment waxes and wanes. Oh wait, didn't England have a problem of this sort? Like, hm, Ireland? I'm pretty sure they speak English there.

I addressed some of the points about immigrants learning new languages in my previous post on this topic. To sum it up, I don't think it makes sense to force immigrants to learn the language when we don't force natives to learn the language. Research has shown (and your own intuition should also show this) that the children of immigrants assimilate quite quickly and within a couple generations they are indistinguishable from the natives. This is most true when it comes to language, as children learn languages really really easily.

What this all amounts to is that language is used as a proxy for racism and xenophobia. You can't shut the door on immigrants, you can't single out all the Muslims or Indians who want to move to England, but maybe you can raise the bar high enough that it's impractical for those people to move there.

As an aside, Joshua Gans wrote about his taking of the English test for moving to Canada. Frankly it's quite absurd that an economics professor from Australia, who has published books in English, is made to take a test to prove that he speaks the language. Surely this is something that would be immediately apparent from a simple 15-minute interview? Testing native speakers is a waste of time and money, and testing other immigrants is xenophobia and racism.

Virginity tests

2011-06-01T11:16:00.000-04:00

In Egypt, the military administered virginity tests on female prisoners.

W. T. F.

The general who admitted to this crime rationalizes his behaviour:

"The girls who were detained were not like your daughter or mine," the general said. "These were girls who had camped out in tents with male protesters in Tahrir Square, and we found in the tents Molotov cocktails and (drugs). ... We didn't want them to say we had sexually assaulted or raped them, so we wanted to prove that they weren't virgins in the first place," the general said. "None of them were (virgins)."

My irony meter exploded when I read that last part. So, to prevent them claiming that they had been sexually assaulted, you ... sexually assaulted them? And since they supposedly weren't virgins at the time of their capture, that means you have no way to prove that they haven't been raped in your captivity. Boy, you must be disappointed that you went to all that trouble for nothing!

Sadly, this sort of behaviour is too commonplace in other parts of the world. Here in Canada, we generally don't tolerate sexual abuse or rape. It must suck to be female and to live elsewhere. Dear women of Egypt, and other places where the men can't be trusted: you are welcome to come to Canada. Leave the jerks behind though.

France's anti-veil law

2011-04-11T17:10:00.000-04:00

Recently two women were arrested in France for wearing a veil in public. The article in The Star says that one of the women was arrested because she was part of an illegal protest, and because she "refused to disperse" when asked to. (The French law tries to be very PC and avoids mentioning Islam, women, or veils, but let's not be naive. This is clearly about Muslim women wearing veils.)

In the middle ages it was fashionable to hate the Jews, because they had the temerity to keep to themselves and refuse to integrate into Christendom. Now that we're more enlightened, it's fashionable to hate the Muslims, because they dress differently and refuse to integrate into Christendom.

Wait, how exactly can one woman "disperse"? Was she supposed to de-materialize?

Personally, I don't like the Muslim veils. I see it primarily as a tool for male oppression of females. But you know what? If a woman wants to wear a veil in public, she should be allowed to. What's next? Laws banning mini-skirts? Laws banning socks with sandals?

In Canada, we believe in Freedom. Personal liberty is an extremely important concept. Privacy is as well. So why should we tell someone that their dress code is wrong? If they choose to wear it, that's their choice.

Some women don't have a choice. Their husbands or fathers or other relatives will force them, one way or another, to comply with their medieval religious ideals. But guess what? We already have laws against this behaviour. Why would we need another law specifically singling out one kind of abuse? Honour Killings are against the law no matter whether the reason was because she had sex out of wedlock or because she didn't want to wear a frickin' scarf. If some jerk tries to force her to wear the scarf, HE should be punished. If SHE chooses to wear the scarf, by all means, let her.

Inevitably someone will mention some ridiculous edge case that supposedly makes my argument moot. Such as the commentor on the Star who says "I saw a woman driving while wearing a niqab." But we already have laws that stipulate what constitutes safe driving. You could be charged for dangerous driving if you were, say, driving while blind, or driving while wearing contact lenses that block your vision. Even if everyone can see your face.

I can hear the other whiners now. "But what if I'm working at a bank, and this person comes in and says she's my customer, but I can't recognize her? What if we need her driver's license photo? What if, what if?!" Clearly, if a person must be identified, then they must be identified. But how often do YOU need to be identified on a daily basis? I certainly almost never need to be. I can pay for things with a credit-card and enter my PIN and nobody needs to know who I am. I can walk around the city and it doesn't matter who I am. I can get on the TTC with my Metropass and it makes no difference if the driver can see my face or not. So why should it be against the law for me to cover my face? Or for a Muslim woman to do so?

The comments posted on the Star's article are FULL of racism and xenophobia and Islamophobia. Canadians (at least, the ones who posted on that article) seem to be very insecure about their country and the demands that Multiculturalism (tm) places on it. You know what? Canada has ALWAYS been multicultural. From the very first colonists who landed here and started integrating with the existing population... oh wait, that's not how it happened. Two dominant European cultures came here and fought everyone else into submission for centuries, until they reached an uneasy peace. Then we opened our doors to other cultures... as long as they weren't too shocking. No Asians or Africans or other "visible minorities" please. It wasn't until the late 20th century that we finally reached something like true Freedom and openness. I mean, until Trudeau, we were a model of tolerance and freedom. Forget about the Japanese internment camps. Or the Residential schools for the natives. Or better yet, DON'T FORGET about those things. Canada's history (and the world's history) is full of misdeeds and shameful things we'd sooner forget, but we must always remember our mistakes. Let's not add systemic, legalized Islamophobia to that list.

Canada has some important values. Freedom and equality are the most important. Our women must be free from the religious tyranny commonly associated with Islam. But not all Muslim women are oppressed. And not all oppressed women are Muslim. Don't be afraid of the veil. Be afraid of tyranny, and stand up against it. Let ALL our women be free, including being free to choose the veil. France's law, and its oppression of its own citizens, should be condemned.

No, it was the first thing that was disgusting

2011-04-01T21:53:00.001-04:00

The following story is true.

I was sitting on a crowded subway when I noticed that a couple doors away there was a stroller parked, essentially blocking the door. It didn't much matter that the door was blocked because the stroller was moved in as far as it could be and the train was full. The father was all the way in the train and the mother was at the outside edge by the door, having barely squeezed in. So far, nothing amiss.

Then, at the next stop, I overheard the father telling the mother not to let someone on the train. She was telling the person on the platform not to push her because there was no room for them to get on. The father started shouting at someone on the platform, and then he said "Come on! I'll kick your ass!"

By now, everyone nearby was watching the spectacle, because the potential for violence on a train always merits vigilance. But I don't think anyone expected the father to do what he did.

As the doors were closing, he spit this huge spray of spit, right out the door. Right over his kid's stroller, right past his wife, and (because it was a pretty wide spray) he probably got everyone else who was crammed into that doorway.

Someone standing nearby said "That's disgusting!"

His reply? "No. You know what's disgusting? That guy was calling me on, right in front of my kid!"

I nearly burst into flames from the irony.

Build-a-Bear part 3

2010-12-09T00:41:00.000-05:00

I've posted before about my build-a-bear cake pan. I've used it a couple of times now and I think I can finally claim to have the hang of it. I've made the bear cake maybe half-a-dozen times and each time it has turned out more or less ok. However, the last two times I upped the ante a bit by using fondant for decorating it. This gives the bear "clothes" and is a really good finishing touch to make the bear look special.

I googled around for other people's advice on using this cake pan and I was surprised at how many people couldn't get the bear to assemble properly. People claimed there wasn't enough batter in the recipe, or the cake fell apart, or other problems. I have to say that not once has the back-of-the-box recipe failed me in any way. It makes a cake that is strong enough to stand up, good-tasting, and the proper quantity for the bear pan.

That being said, I have a new challenge when making this cake. My son is allergic to milk and eggs, and thus we've had to vegan-ize some of our recipes. In some cases that's easy to do but in this recipe we have to replace 4 eggs. However with a bit of experimentation I came upon a winning formula. I replaced the milk with soy milk (plain, sweetened, unflavoured). I replaced the butter with half shortening, half margarine (this mixture worked well for me when making cookies). For the eggs, I replaced the eggs with 1/4 cup per egg of pureed pumpkin, and I tripled the baking powder. Since I was making a pumpkin cake I also added some spices: cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice.

The resulting cake was better than any of the previous bear cakes I've ever made, and if I do say so myself, was better than almost any cake I've ever made. It was moist and rich, yet strong enough to stand in bear-shape. I had a bit of minor tearing when the cake came out of the pan, but the head didn't fall off and I was able to fix up any glitches with a patch of icing. Once iced there was no way to tell that it wasn't the same old dry cake underneath.

Since I also couldn't make buttercream icing I used my half shortening, half margarine substitution for the butter and added a touch of pumpkin and some spices. Then I iced the entire cake, even the parts which would end up covered in fondant. Finally, I rolled, cut and trimmed the fondant and dressed the bear up in its outfit. Since I was making a white dress I used white fondant and didn't bother with any dyes (I did dye the buttercream icing brown). Dyeing fondant is a major hassle (I spent more time dyeing the fondant when I made a Santa bear last Christmas than I did doing any other part of the decoration). I used white icing to trim the edges of the dress.

The last touches of decor on the bear are the eyes, nose, and feet-pads. For these I simply melted some chocolate chips in margarine, stirred, put it into a plastic sandwich bag, cut the corner, and squeezed it out. This makeshift cake-decorating bag was enough to make these flat-ish elements. The resulting bear was cute enough that when I brought it to my friend's baby shower, people on the subway and street stopped to talk to me about it, and nobody at the shower wanted to actually cut the cake. So I call this one a success.

They don't build them like they used to

2010-09-23T01:15:00.002-04:00

So my notebook computer died. It was only 2.5 years old and it had almost never been used as a portable computer; it spent most of its time tethered to the A/C adapter and the mouse.

It was a not bad computer, feature-wise, but I did have to buy a notebook cooler because it would overheat when I played games. The battery stopped working one day, but that wasn't a big deal because I never moved the notebook. I only bought a notebook because I needed to be able to put it away back when I lived in a condo.

Anyway, when your computer dies it's hard to write infrequent blog posts and do all those other important things I like to do with my computer. So I had to buy a new one. Problem was, I didn't know what to buy since I normally research my computer purchases on my computer before I buy them. I was in a situation I've never been in before: needing to buy a new computer and being without a current one. Ever since my parents first bought the XT back in '87 there's been a PC in the house. I started feeling twitchy after about 6 hours. I had to do something, and fast.

The problem with replacing a notebook is that your choices are A) another notebook (yech) or B) a whole new PC. I opted for a desktop PC because I like desktops better. But that meant I had to buy EVERYTHING, since I didn't have an old Desktop that would contribute a few parts here and there. Actually I had to make a second trip to the store, because I planned to re-use my old DVD burner from my barely-working HTPC, but it turns out that burner is IDE and "modern" motherboards don't have IDE anymore, not even one port. I don't really miss it but it is annoying.

I ended up getting

Asus P6X58D-E motherboard
Intel i7 950
6GB DDR3 RAM
1TB SATA3 HDD
ATI Radeon HD 5850
CoolerMaster case
Samsung BX2335 23" HD LED display
Windows 7 64-bit

The display is nice and the increased speed of this PC is nice too. Widows 7 is an improvement over Vista and XP. So overall I'm pleased. One thing that struck me is how long it took to put all this together. Some things have not changed since 1995 when I used to assemble PCs for a living, but one notable change is that almost everything is integrated on the motherboard now. That saves some time. Installing CPUs (the first time, anyway) is as easy as it's ever been; put it in the socket, close the lever, snap the fan down, done. The video cards are huge these days, and there's lots of power connectors everywhere, but what seemed to take the longest for me was getting all the extra crap plugged into the motherboard. Every fan, button, external SATA connecter, etc, needs to be plugged into the right spot. My case has a bunch of external features on it (hard drive dock, USB, eSATA, audio, etc) and those all need to be hooked up. Once it's done, though, it's a nice case with easy-to-access features. If only the SATA dock was hot-pluggable (maybe it can be, but it didn't work for me).

The annoying thing is that I didn't want to buy a computer right now, I was hoping to keep the notebook a bit longer. Maybe I erred when I named it "Ephemeron". I won't repeat that mistake again. The new PC's name is "Eternia".

Mandatory Language Tests for Immigrants

2010-07-28T23:45:00.001-04:00

It seems that all skilled immigrants to Canada will need to pass a language proficiency test. Even those whose native language is English and whose careers are based on daily use of the English language.

At first glance this seems like a reasonable idea. The truth is it is a dangerous tool which can be used to enforce racist and xenophobic policies under the guise of "integration". However, it seems like enough of the commentors on the Star's website disagree with me. When I read the comments I was disappointed to find that most of those writing were supportive of the new policy and hostile to foreigners. My own comment achieved a stunning 16 "disagrees", a new record for me.

The article talks about a woman who was born in New York, graduated from Harvard and has been practising law for 13 years. Clearly there is no need to test this person on her language ability. To suggest that anyone in the government Canada is even qualified to pass judgment on her language skills is ridiculous. Yet she must prepare for the language test while simultaneously managing her home life and career.

Wait, what?

She has to prepare? Many of the comments on the Star were questioning this. Why should she need to prepare if she is so confident of her language skills?

Well, the sad truth is that language tests are notorious for being debatable about their content. Thankfully, the test in question doesn't have any grammar questions (despite newspaper reports to the contrary), and seems to be completely about reading and writing comprehension. But the truth is that any test which measures "language" is going to be strongly influenced by how well the test-taker understands the desired answer to a question. A person's grasp of language is not necessarily related to their grasp of test-taking. And since she must pay to take the test, it behoves her to prepare, so that her money isn't wasted by an over-zealous and pedantic test-grader.

Besides the dubious nature of testing a native English speaker's grasp of English, and the obvious waste of resources this entails, is the question of whether or not this exercise has any merit whatsoever.

The comments on the Star were full of sad, sad stories about going into a shop and not being able to find an employee who spoke English. My heart nearly broke into a million pieces as these poor, poor people recounted their tales. The ordeals of a lady who couldn't find an English speaker in a shop in Chinatown. The escapades of a gentleman who was unable to locate the kolbasa in the grocery store and couldn't find an employee who understood his question.

All of these stories have something in common. The speaker suffers from an absurdly inflated sense of entitlement. They act as if they are being personally injured or insulted when they go somewhere and someone doesn't speak their language. It never occurs to them that THEY are somehow flawed for not knowing more than one language. They just bitch and whine that multiculturalism is a failure. They ignore the fact that all of them are descended from people who didn't speak the local language when they arrived: none of their ancestors spoke the languages of the Natives. The hypocrisy goes further, however, because these same people are the type that go into Quebec and complain that the people don't speak English.

Ignoring the petty 'foreign employee in a shop' syndrome, the bigger question is whether or not non-local-speakers are even useful to the society at large. It should be pretty clear that they are. There is no reason that a doctor can't practice medicine in Chinese or in Italian if they have Chinese or Italian patients. This doctor may have difficulty reading the laws on what drugs are legal, or other various tasks, but isn't it the job of the medical college to regulate such things? If the college decided to offer its services in Chinese (because the Chinese population will soon be the biggest minority group in Canada) would that somehow harm the English-speaking doctors and patients? For regulated professions we have licensing and examination boards to keep out people who can't function in those roles. For any other task, why does it matter if the person is illiterate in English? The electrician who comes to your house to install a new light fixture doesn't need to speak English. He needs to know how to install wiring, and he needs to know how to communicate with YOU. If you (hypothetically) only speak German, then that's what he needs to speak.

Furthermore, it's also pretty obvious that monolingualism is an artifact of (some) adult immigrants only. Their children will always (always!) learn the local language. They will be bilingual, speaking their home language at home and their local language at school and work. And their children are (sadly) almost always monolingual in the local language. This always happens, as long as the family stays in the country. So any worries about Canada turning into some country where nobody can speak to anybody are just ridiculous.

Finally, Canada is supposed to be a free country. If I decide that I want to speak nothing but Esperanto, and I teach my children only this language, and I home-school them, and throw away my TV, is this not my choice? Sure, nobody will be able to communicate with me. But don't I have the right? Don't I have the right to try to find work at an Esperanto-friendly business, dealing with Esperanto-speaking customers? Don't I have the right to fail at that task? Of course I do. But I was BORN in Canada. Newcomers aren't allowed to fail and aren't allowed to even try.

Uncricital reporting

2010-06-22T12:47:00.000-04:00

There's something very annoying in newspapers these days. This isn't that new but you'd think we'd have made some progress by now. I am talking about uncritical reporting.

Consider this article: thestar.com blathers on in an interview with Sylvia Browne. The article is completely sympathetic to Browne. It just assumes that she is not a fraud. Not a single critical question is asked of her and her claim that psychics can't see into their own future is just accepted on face value, despite that being the most useless cop-out in psychic history. (though it does explain all her mistakes). Heck, the dumb interviewer even asks "Aren't some psychics bogus?" The true answer is, yes, they are all bogus. But Sylvia is somehow exempt from bogosity because she successfully ripped off enough people that she has money, and thus is somehow better than the so-called "someone with a cardboard table with cards".

I don't need to go into detail about her many errors. Wikipedia's article about her lists several examples and includes a link to a study that shows how her success rate at solving crimes is pretty much zero. She's been wrong very many times:

She claimed this couple's son was dead, when he wasn't. Then she asked them for money for additional help ($700/hour)
She claimed a woman's husband drowned, that his spirit says he couldn't breathe, he was in water, when in fact he was a fireman who died in the 9/11 attacks
She claimed a young man died in a "shaft", across a state line, when in fact he drowned.

When I read an article like the one in the Star I am embarrassed for them. It's time for the media to reject psychics and ostracize them as the con-men they are.

Sex Ed

2010-04-28T22:58:00.000-04:00

The Ontario government recently announced, then withdrew, a new Health and Physical Education curriculum. They withdrew it because of an outcry claiming that this new curriculum was bad. Some rabid protesters even said it was "bordering on criminal".

Seriously?

I read the new curriculum to be sure. Guess what? Nothing in it is remarkable. Rosie DiManno disagrees, and says the new curriculum is a sermon in disguise. But Rosie DiManno seems more opposed to the curriculum's content on "Healthy Relationships" rather than its discusson of anatomy.

Ironically almost nothing in this curriculum is new and almost nothing in it is being taught earlier than it was. I went to a Catholic school and we learned all about the reproductive system and the names of the body parts. We learned about relationships. We learned about puberty. A couple of these topics are being taught a year or two earlier but that is not really a big deal. And the "Healthy Relationships" material is geared towards identifying harm, such as abuse and neglect. It is not about trying to enumerate all the possible healthy relationships that might exist. If you think it's a bad thing for a 6-year-old to be able to tell an adult that someone inappropriately touched him on the penis, maybe you should get a job working for the Pope's child-abuse squad.

This whole thing should be a tempest in a teapot, but sadly there are too many people who are afraid that they won't be able to tell their kids that being gay is wrong, or that God will punish them if they use a condom. Rosie DiManno says that, especially in Toronto,

such a richly multicultural city, where so many families are immigrants and first-generation Canadians of diverse, often conservative faiths and cultures, it was demanding a great deal for parents to accept invasive sex instruction in the schools at complete variance with ethics taught at home. While many of us may disagree with some of those moral paradigms, we can’t compel others to change their personal views, or meekly hand us their very young children so that we can shape theirs.

Actually, we should demand that they hand us their children so we can fix their broken brainwashing at home. The schools already do this to a great extent. Schools teach that racism is wrong. They teach that humans evolved from some other primate. They teach that the world is round. These are simple facts about the world, and it is the school's job to teach these facts, even if the parents want to stick their heads in the sand. And for those sexually-conservative parents who want to pretend that homosexuality is a choice, or that God hates fags, or some other brain-dead concept, well, the schools should be teaching their kids too. Everyone is entitled to an opinion but you are not entitled to your own facts.

Finally, it has come out that the Catholic school board had been negotiating permission to teach a different curriculum. I went through the Catholic school system and it was not too bad, but there were definitely some missing parts (we did not really learn about contraception). Coincidentally, the Catholic high school in my city had an unusually high number of girls drop out because they were pregnant. Our school didn't have any facility to help such girls and so they typically went (out of sight, out of mind) to a different school that had daycare facilities. These girls might have been in a different position if the principal (a nun) hadn't thrown away boxes of free condoms given to the school to supplement the health program. It is time for the Catholic School Board to teach proper sex-ed. We don't live in the 1950s anymore and the fact is that teenagers have sex and STIs are on the rise. Abstinence-only education has been proven to not reduce pregnancies nor STIs. And a good portion of the Catholic laity is not opposed to STIs (witness the demonstrations when the Pope came to Downsview).

The premier has said that the curriculum will be re-opened for discussions and may be revised. If people actually READ the new curriculum maybe those discussions will be useful. But probably the homophobes and condom-phobes will ruin things for everyone.

Latest Upgrade News

2010-04-03T12:44:00.000-04:00

I've been upgrading my PCs a lot lately and it doesn't always go so well. Usually I end up wasting a lot of time just trying to restore whatever I had working before. Well, my wife and I decided to throw caution to the wind and upgrade something else. It's a project that's been underway for some months now and the result is here!

A couple years ago we upgraded our family to the "One daughter" model. To this day I still marvel that there is a third person living in our house, rooting through the cupboards and greeting me at the door when I arrive home. It's been a wonderful adventure and now we are beginning it again. We have now moved up to the "One daughter, One son" model. The birth of my son is not the turning point that his sister's birth was, but nonetheless his arrival is still just as thrilling. I don't want to continually compare him to his sister because such comparisons are somewhat unfair. When I first held her my heart was so filled with joy I thought it might burst. It turns out there is room for yet more joy.

Once again I was on hand to "assist" in delivering the baby. My role was to provide moral support as my wife did all the real work and I mainly took photos and made the requisite phone calls afterwards. But being there when he was born was an incredible experience. His mother pushed him out, despite his being over 8 lbs, as if she'd been birthing babies for decades. I felt truly surplus while this was going on but I nonetheless turned down the ritual cutting of the cord because it still makes me a bit squeamish. Once everything was done and I got to hold my son the real magic began. He was tiny and squirmy and the look on his face said "What is going on here?" but at the same time he seemed to be taking it all in and evaluating it.

After his mother recovered and the doctors decided everyone was healthy we were discharged and allowed to return home, where there is a bed to "sleep" in.
My daughter is on vacation with her grandparents so we have a few days to adjust to the new addition, but she will return soon enough and we have to return somewhat to business-as-usual. As if that is possible now. But I have to assume that we'll muddle through somehow.

Now that we are home, trying to re-establish our routines I find myself thinking about the future. Until the baby sleeps through the night I imagine our family life will be a tad hectic and frazzled, but hopefully he'll sleep well like his sister did (there goes another comparison) and we'll be "normal" again in a few months. Then the real fun will begin as he grows into a person. I can't wait to get to know him. Will he be creative? Maybe. Argumentative? Almost certainly. But most importantly, he will be someone new. When I look into his tiny eyes I see nothing but potential and adventure.

I'd like to once again thank the staff at North York General Hospital. Not everything that happens in that hospital is perfect, but the delivery and mother/baby units are pretty awesome. The staff was very pleasant and professional and the Tim Hortons there sold me three coffees that were Roll-up-the-Rim winners. Frankly the only thing that could have made the hospital better is if there were more private rooms, so that the dads can spend the night in relative comfort instead of sleeping in a wooden chair (or, in my case, two wooden chairs, pushed together. It was less comfortable than it sounds).

More new music

2010-03-28T15:25:00.000-04:00

So I had a conversation with my friend about his music. I started out by asking for help in understanding what was going on and mentioned something about music being accessible. He replied that one of the pieces in his recent symphony was one of his most accesssible, and I wondered why they weren't ALL accessible, since, isn't that the point of the music?

We then discussed art in general and how the audience shapes and influences the art. Throughout history professional artists have struggled with the balancing act of making art for themselves, which expresses exactly what they want to express, and making art for their fans/consumers/patrons. Making a work of art which communicates to different people is challenging. It's like writing about theoretical physics: you can write a paper which communicates an advanced concept so that an expert can understand it, or so that a layman can understand it, but usually those two modes of writing have little overlap. Sometimes, when writing for a layperson, you even have to simplify to the point of being technically wrong in order to get the point across. The similarity with artists is that they too are making a work that will either be consumed by the masses or by experts and often those groups do not intersect.

My problem with this line of reasoning is that I feel that an artist, like a technical writer, should strive to make the work as accessible as possible despite the limitations. A physicist who writes something that only the top 10 people in his field can understand is not communicating properly. His paper can not be peer-reviewed properly if he has no peers. Part of his duty in writing his findings is to communicate them effectively. Artists, however, are not constrained by duty in the same way scientists are, but the same underlying principle is true: if an artist makes a work of art that nobody understands then its value is purely in its aesthetics (until someone figures it out, I suppose). The communication part of the artwork has failed.

My friend's position is that some things simply require more experience and knowledge before they can be appreciated. This is true. I am learning Chinese, but I cannot criticize Chinese literature until I have achieve a certain level of fluency in Chinese and a certain understanding of the history and culture underlying the literature. The thing is that with music, perhaps alone among all the arts, there has been a long tradition of art that has layers of accessibility; that is, there is something there for everyone. A baby, with no experience or language or knowledge of history can hear music and feel its emotion and energy. An untrained person can admire a beautiful painting for the scene it shows even if they don't understand the subtext or subtleties. But this new form of music my friend is making is so different than the traditional forms I know that it seems to have abandoned the "easy" parts altogether. As my friend wrote, at this point I can either become a trained musical expert (i.e. learn the language), wait a while to see if insight comes to me on its own, or give up and conclude that I don't understand. With traditional works I have a fourth option: look at the scenery, or listen to the melody and hum along with the part I do understand.

New Music

2010-03-09T12:30:00.000-05:00

A friend of mine is a composer. He writes modern "classical" music, that is, music played by orchestras. He is quite talented. The problem is I don't really understand the music he is writing. His music is broadly similar to other modern classical pieces I've heard, which seems to do away with many of the long-standing traditions of music, such as a melody.

When I listen to his music, some of which is very odd-sounding (to me) but much of which is very beautiful, I get a feeling of missing something. The music sounds like the soundtrack to a movie or ballet, only I can't see the film or the dancers. While listening to the music I feel like it's meant to accompany something, but I can't see what that something is.

It's hard to describe but here is a concrete example of the difference between his music and pieces that are (I feel) more stand-alone. Consider the opening theme to Star Wars. It starts loud, has a rolling sound, and carries you along with its melody. You can hum it. I don't think it's particularly nuanced or sophisticated but it conveys drama and excitement, and then the movie starts, which you are eager to see because the music has built up your anticipation. Later on you will hear a sad song about life on Tatooine, and Luke's family's death, and it is sad. But you won't remember it afterwards because it is meant to underscore the feelings that the story tells. My friend's music has a similar feel to me. I feel emotion, I feel that there is a story unfolding, but I can't tell what it is and afterwards I can't recall the music.

I was thinking of how this relates to paintings. A painting is meant to convey a message, or multiple messages, but the message is not explicit; the viewer must find the message for himself. But the most famous paintings are usually also not abstract; they graphically depict a scene, or a person, or something identifiable. In the last few decades abstract art has become more popular, but many people don't "get" it. Is my friend composing the musical equivalent to abstract painting? Perhaps.

When I went to a concert where his music was played along with some other composers' pieces, I remember feeling that I just didn't understand what I had heard, and I wondered if maybe the emperor wasn't wearing any clothes. Having heard my friend's most recent piece I can say that he IS wearing clothes, but I'm not sure what kind they are.

For a limited time, you can hear my friend's arctic symphony on CBC Radio 2. Listen to the Arctic Symphony for yourself and see.