Les Bonnes Choses

There's  been a fair amount of hulabaloo lately regarding some entitled people and their jet-setting ways. In a nutshell: the Canadian people collectively own some expensive pieces of military flying machinery. They have been used to ferry around Chief of Defense Staff, General Walter Natynczyk and the Minister of Defense, Peter MacKay all over the place, including to and from their vacations.

You know that fantasy you have as you sit in a traffic jam on the 400 series highways on your way to the cottage? The one where your car has some James Bond wings that convert it into a VTOL aircraft, and you take off, leaving the slow procession of cars behind? These guys are living it.

To their credit (I think), these guys are mostly using these aircraft in the course of carrying out their jobs -- or at least, they are when they're en route to a repatriation ceremony for a fallen soldier. Another argument is that the aircraft and pilot are being paid for anyways: pilots need to maintain their skill by flying these aircraft regularly, thus we're paying for them to be in the air one way or another, whether the pilot is bringing Mr. MacKay back to his cottage, or flying loop-the-loops over Saskatoon.

That argument, however, is a red-herring, propped up only by virtue of the fact that nobody has been quite able to articulate what seems to be 'wrong' with the situation. Here's the problem as I see it: It's not that several hundred thousand dollars of taxpayer dollars have been spent flying these airplanes -- the money apparently was going to be spent anyways. I think what's really wrong here is that these dollars have been spent to the exclusive benefit of these two apparently extraordinarily important individuals. Perhaps the families of the fallen soldiers are happy that Mr. MacKay takes time out of his holidays to honour their loved ones, but I don't suppose he offered them a lift? (The answer: no, implied by this government web page, if families of the dead want to be at the repatriation ceremony, they're getting there on their own dime).

So, sure, I'm happy these clowns are doing their bit to make sure to optimize the use of our national resources. But in all fairness, maybe they should give someone else a turn.

Hi, and welcome back to our program. In recent months, some of Canada's public institutions have been under the microscope, facing cuts from the sitting Conservative Harper government.

Someone involved in that episode could probably benefit from a good read through of Sun Tzu, or maybe Machiavelli. I'm pretty sure one of them would have advised making sure your victory was complete. The CBC is staffed by writers. Not all of them are great, mind you, but they aren't all without skill. And some might have an axe to grind:

Feds hire 'cuts' consultant at $90,000 a day

I get the distinct feeling that someone was being mocked.

And in the last few hours of my thirty-mumble-mumble year, I'm going to talk about the economy -- namely, how I stimulated it today. It may have been chance, or it may have been the combination of black tea and Sudafed for my allergies, but I felt quite energized today. Good thing too, as I was working in the basement of a hospital for an 8-hour day that finished with an experimental participant with ADHD. An aside: I used to be an ADHD skeptic. I still think it's overdiagnosed. But by-golly I tell you, the kids that do have it: they're a lot of work.

So my day ended and, finding myself downtown Chicago, I decided to go to the Lego Store in the Watertower Mall. I had never been, though I had often seen tourists and shoppers carrying the tell-tale shopping bags that hinted at its existence, like so many maps to ancient Inca gold.

(I now think perhaps I'm hopped up on Sudafed).

Jude's birthday is coming up, and after sharing with him the disappointment of not having enough red lego bricks to make a Cars 2 Mac truck, I wanted to remedy that. One of the joys, for me, of having boys is that I can look forward to years of fanciful Lego creations. It's likely that, with their pedigree, my boys are going to take it that extra step and motorize their creations in future science fairs or first year engineering, but for now it's all about artistic expression. The thrill of walking into a room of pure creative potential was indescribable. I can say that with confidence because this is the fifth time I've edited this paragraph, and just gave up. Even though Lego products have shifted towards almost exclusively themed boxed sets, with specialized pieces for making specific projects, I still think they foster creativity and imagination. Especially when the project instructions get lost. Then there's one project you can always fall back on: build a fleet of spaceships.

Having spent money on Jude (Don't worry. He doesn't read my blog), I decided to treat myself to a new pair of Club Shoes. Club Shoes? Back in 2004, I was in Chicago for a conference with Pat, Ray and Coco -- my lab mates at the time. I did not have anything that resembled a business-casual appropriate shoe. I felt very self-conscious about this because my departmental position as area fashionista was in jeopardy. So the second day of the conference, the group of us did some recon for a store near our hotel that might sell shoes. One blustery walk later, I was the proud owner of a new pair of black shoes -- shoes that looked rather like those worn by the rest of my party. Hence: club shoes. I am happy to say those shoes served me well these last 7 years, but it is time to move on.

Farewell, old club shoes! May my feet be so well shod 7 years hence!

That last bit I should have done in pentambic iambeter.

I am SO taking Sudafed again tomorrow.

My parent's lawyer once told me I'd make a good lawyer. I know a few, and think they're a smart bunch, which I can appreciate. The problem is their work falls within the scope of the legal system, which unfortunately has been largely engineered by people who don't quite think things all the way through.

Here's today's intellectual property law example (in a nutshell, the company owning the copyright to The Hurt Locker are going to strike down upon file sharers with great vengeance and furious anger, just as soon as they find out who they all are).

This might not seem to be a problem until you consider how peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing works. Let's construct a toy example, assuming the copyright holder's accusation at face value: each time a person shares their intellectual property, they are deprived of revenue corresponding to its retail value (this is debatable for a number of reasons). Suppose we have 100 people making available a copy of The Hurt Locker using a P2P client. When I use P2P to download a file, my client finds out who is making the file available, and downloads the file, 1 chunk at a time, from everyone who has chunks to offer. Suppose I am the only person on the internet interested in downloading The Hurt Locker. My computer connects to 100 seeding computers and downloads chunks from each of them until I have the whole movie. There are now 101 copies of The Hurt Locker on the internet. But each of the 100 people from whom I downloaded the movie are assessed damages equal to the retail value of 1 copy of the movie. Net loss for Voltage Pictures, LLC: $27 (today's list price on Amazon.com). Claimed damages: $2700.

Now, I'd wager most people would think twice about going out on a business dinner, paying $27 for a meal, but filing an expense claim for $2700. That would be fraud, right?

I can't say I'm especially surprised about the finding that fast-paced cartoons aren't exactly the best fodder for growing minds. Even if it turns out that this isn't replicable or generalizable, I'm happy to use it for the time being to justify banning the inane tripe they feed kids -- at least in my presence. I know a number of talented people in the animation industry, and I'm sure a little part of them dies when they either see or are forced to contribute towards this stuff. But even if you ban Spongebob and its ilk in your house, there's still one problem: The main issue in the study isn't the asinine plot featured in these programs; it's the low attention-span being bred by all the scene changes. I don't suppose you've noticed, but television programming is peppered with commercial interruptions featuring 30 to 60 second spots. All the more reason to PVR your favourite programs, or hell, cancel your cable and wait for it to show up on DVD or the torrent. While you're waiting, maybe read a book or something.

Speaking of ads and cartoons, you may not have had the pleasure of comics in your childhood. I didn't either, for the most part, but I did see one every now and again. One thing that stood out for me were the ads for Hostess products.



I was simultaneously perplexed and amused when Rebecca came home after an evening of shopping with her sister, equipped with a nearly full sample of Hostess snack products, from Twinkies to Snowballs to fruit pies. It was her sister's idea, I am told (ironic, because she's in a university food and nutrition program). I had never seen these products in 3-dimensions. Because of context, they fell in the same category as Sea Monkeys and Charles Atlas body-building mail-order products.

Now, I'm not going to judge her -- okay, scratch that. I did judge her. But she agreed: it was an idea that need never be revisited. Those things were vile.

Instructions on the bottle of Life-brand nasal spray for "fast acting relief of nasal congestion":
Spray firmly 2 to 3 times into each nostril. Breathe deeply.

Tell me if you see a problem here.

That's all I got today. I'm tired and I don't use Twitter. Sue me.