Eternal Ephemeron

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.

Fedora 12 ongoing saga

2010-03-08T09:00:00.001-05:00

My HTPC was recently "upgraded" to Fedora 12. The Fedora 10 and 11 installs on that box were almost completely broken and so I opted for a clean install. What I forgot was that Fedora's text mode install leaves you with a system that has

No network connection
No Wi-Fi
In fact, NetworkManager is not installed or is not working
No GUI
No easy way to install software from the CD-ROM media

Sigh.

I wanted to be able to connect this system to my network so that I could install the missing software, but this meant moving the computer to the other room, where the hub is. This meant that I can't see what I'm typing, because this computer's monitor is my TV, which is a CRT weighing a million trillion pounds*. So I plug the computer into the hub and turn it on. But the network isn't starting, for some reason, or it's not connecting properly. This means I have to log into the computer and try to type random commands blindly until the network card finally connects.

Once the computer is on the network I have to try to figure out WHERE on the network it is so that I can log into it from my notebook. I wrote a little script to ping various addresses until I found it. Once I had it I was able to log into the computer using SSH and then (gasp!) actually see what I was typing. From that point on it was relatively easy to use yum to install whatever software I need, and the copious updates that Fedora had waiting for me.

Once the software was installed it was easy to get livna hooked up and the binary nVidia driver installed, which lets me use the TV as a monitor. Now if only I could remember the incantation which tells it that my TV is not HD..... stay tuned.

--
*I'd secretly hoped that something bad would have "accidentally" happened to the TV when we moved, thus giving me an excuse to get a modern TV, but sadly, it arrived without incident.

Fedora 12

2010-02-06T21:00:00.001-05:00

I am a glutton for punishment. This is the only conclusion I can come to because I keep trying to install newer versions of Fedora on my various computers. Recently I tried Fedora 12 on my LG R500, which was relatively happily running Fedora 10.

I ran into a problem right off the bat: the installer wouldn't boot. The kernel just got stuck partway along and froze. It turns out there is a bug with the TPM driver on certain hardware, which causes a timeout error:

tpm_tis 00:0a: tpm_transmit: tpm_send: error -62
tpm_tis 00:0a: tpm_transmit: tpm_send: error -62
tpm_tis 00:0a: tpm_transmit: tpm_send: error -62

This error can be worked around by disabling timeouts in the tpm module. Unfortunately, even though this issue was known before Fedora 12 was released, it wasn't fixed, nor was it even mentioned in the release notes. Sigh.

The touchpad also wasn't working properly. After install, you can't tap it to click on things. The simulated 3rd button when you click in the top right corner is broken. I googled and found that the touchpad needs to be configured in the Gnome control panel, however I'm running KDE and it didn't seem to have a touchpad applet. Turns out it wasn't installed; yum install kcm_synaptics fixed that and I was able to enable the functionality that should be on by default.

Fedora 10 introduced a new graphical boot for systems which have appropriate video drivers; in Fedora 12 nVidia hardware is included using the nouveau driver. The nouveau driver, however, is unfinished and it corrupts the display often (but the graphical boot is nice). In the end I had to install the binary nvidia driver because flash video was freezing the machine.

Speaking of boot, on boot Fedora starts the GDM Gnome login manager. Annoyingly, KDE's switch user feature is still broken unless started from KDM; you try to switch users and instead the screen locks and that's all that happens. No error, no warning, just a broken feature. Switching to KDM requires editing a config file.

Installing software through kpackagekit is needlessly difficult. Finding the right package to enable mp3 playback in amarok is an exercise in futility. Amarok itself provides no indication of what is wrong; it just tries to play a song and fails, skipping the song and going to the next, with no error message or anything. If all your music is mp3s amarok will just keep chewing through the playlist, happily not playing anything.

Also, for the first time in about 4 years, my printer doesn't work out of the box. Drivers for every possible bizarre input type or video card or sound card or network card or HPC IO controller or satellite launcher are installed, but my printer's drivers were not.

Finally, because I wasn't feeling punished enough, I also tried upgrading my HTPC to Fedora 12 from Fedora 11. I have no idea how badly things are broken because, to be honest, the Fedora 11 installation was pretty fuzzed to begin with. But at least the upgrade installed and nothing seriously broke.

On the HTPC the KDE installation is missing some pieces because I can't log in using KDE as my desktop; instead I get no error message but am booted back to the login screen. Some KDE apps don't work properly. Also annoying is the fact that I can adjust my fonts to make things readable on the TV but only one of GNOME or KDE sees those settings, the other doesn't, but my menu contains either KDE apps or GNOME apps but not both. An average user would be pretty annoyed that they want large fonts, and 90% of their desktop uses the right fonts, but there is a hidden, mysterious control panel that asks you the same exact questions you already answered in some other program, but you have to answer again or else 10% of your apps will look wrong. Now, this is a Gnome vs KDE issue, but the fact remains that Fedora 11, installed fresh, and then 12 installed as an upgrade overtop, left me with a hybrid Gnome/KDE system, where the only graphical software installer uses tiny fonts because it's a KDE app and I'm stuck in Gnome.

If I get the HTPC working properly again using MythTV I am going to never upgrade it again.

LEGO Creator 4998 Stegosaurus

2010-01-16T09:00:00.001-05:00

For Christmas I received the Lego Stegosaurus. I had been wanting this set for a while and was eagerly anticipating it. Of course, with a toddler running around the house it was several days before I had time to build it, but it was well worth the wait.

This set is one of the best Lego kits I have seen in a while. It has 731 pieces and comes with instructions for three different models (as many Creator kits now do). The main model, the Stegosaurus, is easily the best of the three, but the Tyranosaur and flying dinosaur (I'm not sure it's anatomically correct for any flying dino) are still decent builds.

The instructions are easy to follow; any child should have no difficulty at all even though the building techniques are somewhat advanced. In fact I found the instructions a little too simplistic and found that I had to flip a lot of pages to get only a few pieces put on. But I have become adept at noticing when there is going to be a lot of repetition for building a symmetrical model (such as the legs: they are mirror images of each other) so I can save time by building both hind legs at the same time, etc (That saves a TON of time when building the AT-AT).

One thing I noticed about this set was that the piece selection is truly stellar. Many Lego kits come with part selections that are not what you'd expect to see in a given model. For example, the AT-AT is a big grey walking machine, but it is actually full of bright blue and red bricks for the internal structure. When building the main model that is not a big deal because those pieces are hidden, but if you want to take it apart and build something else those pieces lose a lot of their value. The reason Lego puts these primary-coloured pieces in is to make it easier for children to build the set because the pieces are easier to find, harder to mistake one for another, and easier to follow in the instructions.

Thankfully, the Stegosaurus model has almost no unnecessary colours in it. It features a fairly wide palette of colours, mainly green, dark green, dark grey, brown, and yellow, but between the greys and greens and the odd black or brown piece here and there the instructions get buy without any bright blue or turquoise ruining the part selection. The importance of this can't be overstated. It means that every single piece is useful for further construction of dinosaurs. And these earth-tone colours are also extremely useful for landscaping. And the dark green would look really good on a car or space ship. The greys, of course, are super versatile. Suffice to say that you don't regret any of the pieces in this kit. The resulting dinosaurs are not a single uniform colour, but they still look good.

The construction of the models is also quite well done. The stegosaurus is most impressive; it has a good feel, decent posability, and an imposing appearance. My only complaint is that I find the mouth too fragile; if I open the lower jaw it often comes right off. The tyrannosaur is quite good and doesn't seem to suffer for being the secondary model. You don't get a feeling that they compromised the design to make it fit the parts selection of the Stegosaurus. My main complaints about this model are that I don't like how the hands look and how the head is attached to the body. The head joint is the worst part: the head only turns left or right which severely limits how the dinosaur can be posed.

I was pleased to see a few surprising uses of pieces, such as using wing pieces instead of plates for the tyrannosaur. The yellow line along its back is actually the yellow wing pieces from the stegosaurus's plates; they are merely turned inwards so that the wing portion is hidden. This leaves gaps where the wing piece doesn't fully cover the studs it is placed on, but as this is inside the body of the T-rex it is invisible and it doesn't hurt the model in any way. This use of these pieces in this way is what Lego is all about: building stuff with the pieces you have.

Overall I strongly recommend this kit. Great part selection and good models. Easy and fun to build. What's not to like?

Bill 179

2009-11-30T22:58:00.002-05:00

Ontario is on the verge of passing a health care bill which will grant drug prescribing power to Naturopathic Doctors. The name "Naturopathic Doctors" is misleading because they are not doctors in the sense of a medical doctor; they are merely approved by the self-regulated College of Naturopathy. Skeptic North explains this issue far better than I can so I urge you to read their posts on the subject.

Magical Prescriptions
Why Bill 179 Matters and is a threat to Medical Standards
A Skeptic North Response to the Naturopaths' Rebuttal

I sent the following email to my MPP to explain my views on the subject. I urge everyone to call or write their MPPs before it is too late and any nutjob in a white lab coat can write prescriptions.

We recently read about Bill 179 on the CBC website and were shocked to discover that Ontario is planning to allow naturopaths to prescribe medication. We feel this is a grave mistake.

Naturopathic practitioners are simply not qualified to assess patients and determine which chemicals they should be ingesting. Naturopathy is based on pseudo-scientific philosophy and is not grounded in chemistry or science. It is based on unproven beliefs and untested hypotheses, or worse, disproven theories. Naturopaths are opposed to conventional, evidence-based medicine. They oppose vaccines. They promote homeopathy, which has been proven again and again to be a placebo. In short, naturopathy is not medicine and naturopaths are not proper health-care providers. Someone who is not trained in chemistry and biology should not be able to prescribe a drug.

There is real risk of harm to patients.

Recently a baby girl died because her eczema was treated with homeopathic remedies instead of real medical care. In Ontario a baby died in 1987 due to malnutrition because a naturopathic "doctor" was advising the parents about the proper feeding and care for the baby. In Quebec last year a court ruled that a mother was negligent in withholding her daughter's medication in favour of naturopathic treatments. The website whatistheharm.net documents these and many other cases worldwide where improper treatment and non-medical treatments result in injury or death to patients.

Most people are not qualified to judge their own healthcare. They have little or no understanding of biology or even nutrition. These people are easy prey for people who sell questionable cures. Consider vitamins: there are two kinds of vitamins. One is water-soluble, which means that if you have too much in your body it just dissolves in your urine and you flush it away. Taking these vitamins can cause kidney stones but is usually not harmful (merely wasteful of your money). The other kind of vitamin is fat soluble, which means it builds up in your body. Vitamin D is one of the fat-soluble vitamins. This means it is actually dangerous for people to take vitamin D supplements because it is very easy to overdose. But the general public is unaware of the danger and they feel that because it's available without a prescription it must be safe and effective. This simply isn't true and the science backs it up. However under Bill 179 naturopaths are going to regain the ability to prescribe high doses of Vitamin D. Most people don't have a vitamin deficiency, but for those with low Vitamin D the standard dose, 1000 IU, can already be prescribed by naturopaths. What basis do naturopaths have for prescribing higher doses?

Finally, another troubling aspect of this bill is that it legitimizes naturopathy. Naturopathy does not work. Homeopathy does not work. This is a simple fact. Some people try to paint a picture of "science" vs "nature" but this is a false dichotomy. Science is about facts. When science proves something, it is a fact. If science proves the opposite, then it is not a fact. Science has proven that homeopathy is no better than placebo, and that naturopathic treatments do not work. If they did work, they would be scientific treatments. After all, what do you call alternative medicine once it's been proven to work? Conventional medicine. Science isn't about taking sides or being political. It is impartial.

Bill 179 expands the scope of practice for many non-physicians. This is not necessarily bad. There is logic to allowing optometrists and pharmacists and other medical professionals the right to prescribe. Presumable an optometrist knows how to prescribe eye-related medications because she has studied the biology, chemistry and physics of the eye. Similarly, a nurse has also studied biology and medicine. Pharmacists too spend a good portion of their school years studying chemistry and biology so that they can understand and evaluate prescriptions. All of these people are trained medical professionals. Naturopaths are by definition not medical. They should not be allowed to prescribe medicine.

When Bill 179 comes up for a third reading we urge you to vote against it unless the expanded scope of practice excludes non-medical practitioners. Don't put the lives of Ontarians at risk.

Harry Potter's world

2009-10-30T08:00:00.002-04:00

The Harry Potter books suffer from a "big picture" problem. There seems to be a large population of wizards, some who live in their own town (Hogsmeade), though most live in mixed-Muggle/Wizard places. How do these wizards earn a living? They can't create food from nothing (a rule arbitrarily introduced in the last book), and there is such a thing as wizard poverty, so there must be wizard farmers and labourers somewhere. But what do all the other wizards do? Most of the wizards whose occupations are known are working in service industries:

Bill Weasley works at the bank.
Percy and Arthur (and many other characters) work for the government.
Many wizards work in education.
Some wizards work in stores, but it seems that those that do also manufacture their own goods; Ollivander makes his own wands; Fred and George make their own Wheezes, etc.
Harry and Ron want to be Aurors, i.e. police. Do wizards pay taxes to support the police?

Also it seems that even as the young wizards approach their final years of school they have nowhere near the skills of the teachers in the school. Even Harry never wins through magical skill; in fact his talents seem negligible compared to Dumbledore, who can walk into a cave and determine what spells were performed there years ago. This suggests that there must be a higher education institute somewhere where they can learn more applied magic, but it is never mentioned, and in fact quitting school to strike out on your own is perfectly acceptable.

Finally the wizard community is remarkably aloof and isolationist when it comes to the Muggles. They can never understand anything non-magical, not even the money, though basic math should fix that... oh wait, they don't study math at Hogwarts. In fact they don't study anything mundane. But surely someone who can understand how to run a household or investigate a crime or make change in Galleons and Sickles should be able to understand how to use a telephone after a try or two. But there seems to be some kind of mental block that applies to all the characters not raised by Muggles. This suggests that muggledom is akin to a language, in that you can learn the muggle way as a child but not easily as an adult.

It's possible that by raising these objections I'm missing the point, which is that these are kids books about a group of friends growing up in a tough world. But I feel that a more thorough approach to this issue would have made these books remarkable. Instead they have an inconsistent world where many of the characters show signs of insanity or incompetence and the world's limitations are numerous and arbitrary.

Misleading headlines

2009-08-16T13:28:00.002-04:00

Newspapers are always full of headlines that are misleading, or ambiguous, or have multiple readings which are contradictory or confusing.

Consider this one:

Tenants must consent to smart meters under new rules

Did you read that as "Tenants are forced to give their consent when the landlord installs smart meters"? That's how I read it. Nope, turns out "Tenants consent must be obtained by the landlord before smart meters can be installed".

I hate notebooks

2009-07-25T21:00:00.001-04:00

The LG R500 notebook I bought last year started crashing recently. It seems that it's overheating. It happened more while playing a game or watching a video. I blame the video card.

My usual approach with a PC would be to take the video card out and replace it with another one, but with a notebook that's out of warranty your options are severely limited. So I decided to go another route and try to fix the cooling.

The first thing I did was take out every external screw so that I could get the notebook apart. Then I had to pry the outer shell open. Turns out I didn't need to do all that; the video card is directly under the keyboard and could be accessed by removing 3 screws. Sigh.

In any case, after taking the video card off I cleaned off the thermal paste and put the video card back. It doesn't have a fan; instead the video card and CPU are both attached to a huge heatsink that is cooled by a fan in the corner. I cleaned the fan too but it wasn't very dirty.

After replacing the thermal paste I found that the notebook was more reliable, though not fully perfect. But this emboldened me to buy a notebook cooler. For those of you who don't know, a notebook cooler is a ridiculous device that you put under the notebook, which provides additional cooling by blowing air onto the underside of the notebook. Think of the sidewalk grate blowing up Marylin Monroe's skirt, only instead of a skirt it's a notebook computer that's overheated.

Now the notebook works much better when playing games, but I'm annoyed that the notebook didn't work properly without these workarounds. Taking apart a notebook is not easy; even in this case where there was an easy way to get to the video card, it still cost me to learn this: One of the screws holding the two halves of the case together broke, and I stripped a screwdriver taking out all those screws. At least I basically know what I'm doing here. Someone who doesn't know what they're doing could find that they took it apart, put it back together, and it doesn't work at all anymore. The reason: thermal paste has to be re-applied when you take the heatsink off the chip. Raise your hand if you have thermal paste at home. I thought so.

Then to top things off, I had to buy a frickin' external cooling system for this. When was the last time you bought something and found that it didn't work at all without an external device to compensate for its shortcomings? It's like buying a phone, only finding out that you can't hear the person on the other end without an amplifier that you strap onto the handset. Or buying pants but finding out that you can't do up the zipper without a $100 velcro kit sold separately by a third party.

I should have had to buy a cooling system for this computer. It should cool itself.

Well, anyway, it works mow. I'm a little behind the leading edge of gameplay these days, but I've just discovered that the cake is a lie.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

2009-07-19T11:29:00.002-04:00

I just saw Harry Potter 6 yesterday. I must admit that I was pleasantly surprised by the movie. 4 and 5 were not great movies; the pacing was too fast and too much dialogue had been cut to make the movie fit the 2.5 hour format. With Harry Potter 6 they managed to redeem themselves and make the movie work.

There are a few notable plot changes in the movie; most crucially there was a battle inserted in the middle and one removed from somewhere else. Some minor details here and there were changed, sometimes in ways that seemed odd, and sometimes in ways that violate the canon of the story, but nothing truly important was tampered with. Most characters appear without introduction and if you didn't recognize them from the books or previous movies you won't be able to recognize them now either. But aside from that the movie progressed fairly well and in accordance with the original story.

This is perhaps the best instalment so far since the first movie, which was the most true to the book.

One thing that bothers me is that the Death Eaters seem to have the ability to fly. In the 7th book they point out that Voldemort can fly and everyone is surprised by that. Oh well, it's not an important detail.

One thing I found funny is that certain actors have aged A LOT since the first movie and others don't appear to. This makes Rupert Grint, who's 21, look really out of place in Hogwarts, where the incoming students are 11. And some of the teachers in the school have aged a lot and I worry that they won't be around to play their roles in book 7. Maybe the director will film the end of that book sooner, since the teachers play a bigger role at the end than at the beginning.

Anyway, overall I recommend this movie to all fans of the books or the movies. It won't really disappoint; as far as movie adaptations go it's one of the better ones.

Lego Indiana Jones and the Lost Tomb

2009-06-22T22:30:00.001-04:00

I recently picked up the Indiana Jones Lego set where Indy and Marion are in the Well of Souls (From Raiders of the Lost Ark).

It's a pretty decent little set, with a low price point. As usual, Lego's Candian pricing is crazy, but it was on sale so I got it at a fair price.

This small set basically represents the Well of Souls, including a bunch of snakes, and the Ark of the Covanent. In a stunning departure from the movie cannon, the Ark is still present while Marion and Indy try to free themselves.

As far as playability goes, the set offers a few tricks; the Marion minifig has two faces, one happy and one sad; the back wall of the tomb has a snake-dispensing trap, and the Egyptian statues can be toppled over, breaking through the back wall of the tomb (which are held in place with only a single stud for easy destruction).

Overall the quality of the set is good, though I would have liked a couple more minifigs (where's Sallah?). My only complaint is the use of stickers for the Egyptian art motifs. One of the stickers offensively covers two separate pieces, which means it will tear in half or get pulled off at some point in the future. I didn't apply that sticker. Also, some of the stickers (especially the eyes on the statues) aren't really necessary to get the full enjoyment from the set.

Piece-wise these are useful parts, in tan and that new brown colour that's the colour of chocolate milk. I really like the colour and this set has two baseplates that use it, as well as a few tiles. The normal tan pieces are also very useful and I was pleased to see that the pillar was made up of lots of individual round bricks instead of the less-useful one-piece pillar. I also noticed that the wall pieces are now hollow in the back, instead of solid like regular bricks. That's fine for most building but it's annoying in general that the pieces are getting a bit cheaper.

Overall I rate this set highly. It's a cute little set and you can't beat the Indiana Jones minifig.