Circling Fifty

Gun control in Canada - changes are coming

2011-11-03T06:35:00.001-06:00

I remember when Marc Lepine rounded up a group of women at L'Ecole Polytechnique and killed them with an illegal weapon. I was working at University of Calgary. Everyone, gun owner or not, was stunned and horrified. How could this happen in Canada, we have gun control. Handguns and semi-automatic weapons were prohibited. The crazy guy shouldn't have been able to get a license and shouldn't have been able to legally purchase a weapon that could be converted. Surely our government would address this. Then word came down that, in addition to solidifying laws about acquisition, requiring locked gun storage and generally ensuring that gun owners were aware of hazards, people with rifles (long guns) would required to register each gun. Oh the uproar. Rural gun owners were being penalized for the actions of fearful Urbanites.

Many changes were made to gun ownership. The screening for Firearms Acquisition Certificate (FAC) became more rigorous and the certificate must be renewed every 5 years. Renewal is easy enough, fill in a form, submit a picture and your certificate will be reviewed and renewed. More importantly, you could no longer legally purchase ammunition without producing a certificate. Illicit weapons were expanded and made more specific.

Now the government is making changes again. The Bill in the house will remove the requirement to register each long gun. More uproar, how could this make us safer than what we have? Why is this such a big deal? Why is the current list of owners being deleted?

I don't know if will make us safer but the reason the registry should be destroyed is the same reason it was a failure to start with; voluntary registry of existing firearms. It's no big deal to implement a registry of guns as you purchase them, just another step in the process. But the people who were against the registry were never going to put their guns in the system because they were sure the black helicopters were coming. To get all guns registered you would have had to do house to house, as is done with census, to *reduce* non-compliance. Those long lived, non - registered guns float in the system, not getting registered as they change hands because people get them from friends/neighbours/family members and if they register them the original owner will get charged.

Now you have a very porous gun registry. Would it be better to continue funding at a Federal level or would it be better to use Federal funding to prevent restricted weapons from entering the country? Keep in mind Canada shares the largest non patrolled border in the world that happens to be next to a country with fundamentally different viewpoint to gun ownership. There is not unlimited funding so I pick the latter. Car registration and insurance is dealt with at the provincial level with Federal umbrella legislation. as is labour laws, designating the age of majority, and health care. Why not supplement Federal law with Provincial legislation?

What about transferring vs destroying the existing registry? If it was my responsibility, I would destroy it. It is too full of holes for me confidently transfer that information. It would use just as much resources to verify existing information as would to re-register everyone and verifying the registry would be at the bottom of the "to-do" list because the registry is already populated. Bad information would delay investigations as much as no information.

I know there are guns in our home, they are not mine and I have not fired them. I tried skeet shooting as an Air Cadet and in my 20s when a boyfriend inherited some black power rifles we shot them at a range. It was fun and I think it would be fun to try pistol shooting as long as the targets were just the round ones. Yet, I am for rigorous gun control. Virtually every handgun and automatic weapons crime is Canada is done with an illegal weapon and the public are not allowed to have concealed weapons. Users are investigated and must pass a gun safety test before they can get a gun or ammunition in a store. If there is domestic violence, any FAC is re-examined. No onerous requirements. I would like all guns to be registered but I'm not sure it would be a more effective control than existing peer pressure and better border inspection/control.

First week with the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1

2011-09-17T14:32:00.000-06:00

Why yes that is a Sony UX50 I'm using as an alarm clock

I had been looking around at all the new tablets that have come out this year and comparing them to my Galaxy Tab 7 that I got late last year; I liked the idea of a bigger screen but none of the new tabs really called to me. Not much thinner or lighter and I didn't see what all the fuss was about with Honeycomb. ( I really hate updating my stuff once I have it running the way I want it so an improvement has to be substantial.) Then my Tab got the long awaited Gingerbread update. Wow - fast, smooth ... no blue tooth. Wait, what? My BT speaker and BT keyboard no longer work. Apparently Bell figured only people who want to crack the device and use it as a phone would want blue tooth. Uh no but if you're going to be like that I can cancel my tab plan. So I did.

With no data plan I decided to look for a WiFi tablet. I've been putting away some money from participating in market research so I figured with selling the GTab7 I could afford any of the tablets out on the market. The only ones I hadn't really looked at was the iPad2 and the GTab 10.1 I have no other Apple stuff and that glaring white bezel and almost square form factor on the iPad2 didn't do anything for me. How about the GTab. Light, rectangle, black front with white back. No SD slot. Checked out my use on my GTab 7 and I don't actually use that much memory so that's not an issue. Went to FutureShop, brought it home. I had 7 days to return.

The first thing I did, after getting it out of the box is pair my BT keyboard and little Monster speaker. Yay they work! I downloaded stuff from Market and checked that it worked. The screen is amazing. The device itself is light weight and easy to hold. I like to use devices in portrait mode and the bit narrower form factor of the GTab really works for me; when I use thumb keyboard I don't have to super stretch my thumbs. Books work really well on it, as does Zinio, and I love how web pages load the same way they do on a computer (and work the same way). Streaming is very nice, Google Music works great and if I need to I can just throw a movie and a few albums in the memory.

Down side - none of the Sammy stuff is on there. No AllShare and iMediaShare doesn't work - honeycomb? Most of my stuff is optimized for small screen so I may have to re-rip my movies. My sling player software is also optimized for the smaller screen but I can live with that. An annoyance - what's with the stupid 5 screens? I've spread stuff over 3 but really could have used just one. I'll probably buy AWD launcher if Samsung doesn't send out the update they pushed to the I/O Tab. I find the no bezel button thing disorienting. This tablet really is designed to be used in landscape mode. If you use it in portrait the volume rocker is either backwards or it's too easy to bump the power button and turn off of the screen.

When I first got the device I wasn't sure I was going to keep it but I think that's because I spent the first day trying to make it like my existing Tab. Day 2 I enjoyed it for what it is (stuck with 5 pages) and I bought a cover case in purple from ebay - or at least I hope I did, it may be light blue:P

O_o Google and Motorola

2011-08-19T10:41:00.000-06:00

The big tech news Monday was, of course, the Google offer to purchase Motorola. Instantly, speculation as to the motivation being simply patent acquisition started up. That may be, Leo Laporte et al. were discussing what's included in the purchase during This Week in Tech and it seems Motorola has some key patents for innovation going forward. Hand set manufactures issued statements that were eerily similar fueling speculation that they are not happy. Welcome to the world of business communication.

I work for a publicly held multi-national that regularly takes over other companies. The new units are absorbed into existing units and either bolster existing manufacturing or ease the company costs as it transitions into new areas. Most likely it's similar in the tech industry. Regardless of the "don't be evil" mantra, Google is a publicly traded company and their shareholders are not going be on board with over paying to buy out a less profitable product.

So, if the purchase goes through what happens to our variety of slab faced devices with ever growing screen space?

IMHO as long as the o/s is provided at no charge and updated in a timely manner, I see no reason for Samsung, HTC etc. to bail on Android even if Google retains the Moto hardware division. All hardware manufacturers provide different user experiences. Geeks may prefer the vanilla version of android but it's been missing a lot of pieces. Samsung did the last Nexus iteration and still took a long time to get the GB update to their Galaxy S line. But much of the features integrated in 2.3 (pano photos, front camera support) was already cooked in to the Samsung user experience regardless of whether they used the TouchWiz launcher. 2.3 made my device run smoother but didn't add any overt features.

What would Google do with the hardware division aside from provide competition for the Nexus phone? Drive handset innovation by trying different types of batteries (solar?), memory, rugged configurations for isolated areas replacing the aging Symbian system devices. Research more uses for android (home robotics, more responsive smart home controls?). Licensing those uses to the other manufacturers. That's what the company I work for appears to do. They have a main product but research different uses for that product to expand their sales of core products.

Regardless of what happens, it will be an exciting time for consumers as handsets become our communication connection and personal computer.

Oh the Humanity

2011-08-15T07:54:00.000-06:00

The humanities have always been a tough sell. I grew up in the '70s and even then the idea was that if you got a degree in the arts (English, philosophy, art, music) you were prepared for any job as you were thought how to think and had a record for completing things. I think that last part had something to do with sticking it out through uni. It is no surprise that liberal arts degrees are in less demand than ever. Seems that all education, from trades to graduate degree is directed at mostly getting a job. Interest groups are the ones focusing on humanities; animal rights, anti vaccination and environmental activists are a style of bioethics, sceptics work the critical thinking arena, philosophy is more directed by feminists and atheists. And all of it is put out on blogs.

Why would this be a bad thing? After all, the humanities have been taken out of the Ivory Tower to the People. This can only be a good thing as it encompasses more people. Am I right?

People are very good at being critical but not as good as provide broad range solutions. Interest groups don't have the power to enforce long term change. Case in point - abortion. Vocal anti-abortion groups are not satisfied with being able to choose not to have an abortion so they attempt to bomb clinics, kill doctors. Mandatory reversible birth control of both sexes where one applies for a reproductive license would be an equally extreme solution. A long term solution would be factual sex education (frequently repeated in the hopes it would stick), accessible birth control and fertilized ova transplant services.

We are also very poor at empathy leading to being good at being manipulated. Studies have shown that anecdotes are effective because the larger the group we consider, the less emotional impact they have on us. Like it or not, we are part of a global community. How does what we do in one place impact the lives of others? It would be a good thing if somewhere along the education line people were giving critical thinking tools, and these tools are the humanities.

When I was in school we had language arts. Although I did well in it, I can only appreciate the tools we were being given in retrospect. While parents were bemoaning the loss of grammar from the curriculum, we were learning how to use our imagination through short story and poetry composition; effective communication, critical thinking and philosophy through essay analysis. These tools complement the ones I learned in science labs. After deciding what questions to ask I could actually find some answers through experimentation. Using scientific criteria I could determine how consistently the results answered the questions. Ideally this would lead to new questions based on the answers.

Like the Sciences, the Humanities have been "jobified". English has become Communications. Philosophy has become Human Resources. Both are not valued in general because they are not rote series actions and frequently non-intuitive. They are open to structured criticism by peers and not easy because of specialized language so they are difficult to teach well. Most importantly people don't feel the being imaginative and exploratory is integral to daily living. I can't imagine this is much different than any other time.

Tone trolling or politeness?

2011-08-12T06:34:00.000-06:00

One thing that really struck me reading about Elevator-gate is how people insisted they had the "right" to speak to someone regardless of the circumstance. Points were given for not going to the next level of interaction which would have been physically insisting the person being spoken to went along with the speaker. Questions were asked about rules for initiating conversation. All through it I thought, how hard is it to check the other person's response and grind your desire to interact to a halt rather than inflict yourself on someone?

I may have to re-evaluate. I was reading an article in the National Post (sorry no link) that was headlined something to the effect of work places getting ruder. Being a article, the comments were full of how other people were rude. For some it was the chatterer who kept talking while the other person itched to get on with their day. For some it was the coworker that didn't engage in conversation. Another mention goes to those wearing earphones to isolate themselves from the world. It was also brought up that it's up to the bosses to set the tone.

Part of the problem is what people consider rude. My M-I-L told us the story of a 3 generational family out for supper in a restaurant. Adults were talking, kids were playing on their handheld gaming unit. Her point was that it was rude for the children to be playing rather than interacting with the adults. We felt the parents were really considerate of other diners by ensuring the kids were entertained while confined in a public space. Keep the forced interaction to more private (or lonely) locations, like home. Wil Wheaton related a story of a family in an airport and felt as my M-I-L did. Sad that everyone in a family was doing solo things rather than interacting as a family. I empathize with the the family since when I travel it's long distances with changes. Stress of finding luggage, gates etc makes me relish the down time when I can just sit and do my own thing (this is why I prefer to travel alone).

I interact a lot of places in RL and on the internet. At work, I try to be aware of when I'm babbling and when others are trying to get tasks done. Most co-workers do the same or I excuse myself. It's not that hard. On line, I tend to hang out where people try to be agreeable or at least don't attack others for comments. An easy example was on Eileen Riviera's thread about the HTC Bliss. Another G+ er and I were talking about how products marketed for girls/women are not just pink but have inferior specs to items targeted to men. Some guy had to defend everyone's choice to be spoken down to. On some some boards that would be a signal for the mansplainer epitaph but for this forum, it was just ignored our of politeness. That's situational awareness that some people (not on the autistic spectrum) are struggling with.

Perhaps Stef McGraw was correct. All the preliminary chat about saying Watson saying she didn't want to be approached isn't necessarily a indication of sexism, it could just be rudeness. I did ask my SO though and he felt the guy was being sexist by my SO is quite polite as well. He was in a no loose situation. If she said yes, he'd know he's changed her mind about what she was intending to do; if she said no, he would have invaded her space. Not being self centered is hard I guess.

More about elevatorgate

2011-07-31T18:02:00.085-06:00

It's amazing how long this is going on and how divisive this episode has been for the sceptic community. The way people have been defending their position and demanding apologies made me re-examine my position think about different elements and what it would have taken for me to change my thoughts on McGraw at least. I've not been a fan of Skepchick nor had I visited the CFI site before this outbreak.

Watson - mean for calling out McGraw the way she did? I don't think so. It was an audience of 100 and to draw people in by showing how you can have an unconscious bias can be very effective. Had she spend a substantial amount of time on it I could see it being a problem. From a position of meh, I stayed at a position of meh. She's right, that's not the way to get more women into the sceptical community.

McGraw - victim? Only of sloppy thinking. I was not impressed with how she cherry picked Watson's story to make Watson look like a killjoy. I was even less impressed with her response to being called out. What could she have done that I would have respected? Instead of brushing aside the details of the encounter with EG in the follow up post, she could have pointed out that this is not sexism as much as a side effect of celebrity that all people encounter and built on that. Or discussed expectations of different styles of feminism. I'm sure there was a lot of traffic to the site with all the blogging that's been going on. Discuss the assumption of bias; show some critical thinking skills.

Dawkins with his muslina comment and follow up. That's simple. Compare Watson's experience in an elevator with a "fan" to his own experience in an elevator with a "fan" - surely he's had one. I wouldn't think it unusual to feel intimidated by a stranger in a small space, but that's a female perspective.

I've also thought about rape and dysfunctional relationships. I remember when, in Canada wording was changed to sexual assault. Thinking was that this downgrade the importance of rape by putting it on a spectrum that includes unwanted touching. Now I'm not so sure. Unlike assault, when there is an accusation of rape the accusation is heavily examined before taking any action against the accused. When people are assaulted physical evidence is enough; there is less assumption that the accuser is lying. I'm also unsure that being assaulted is any less traumatic than being sexually assaulted. In both cases a person's trust and integrity has been violated. Depending on the person's personality and the extent of the assault, she may or may not ever overcome the event.

And dysfunctional (heteronormative) relationships - I always wonder what could have been done differently to avoid the situation. In the case of women why is it the victim who has to move, change names and work so hard to get away while the guy goes on his merry way? In the case of men, how do we encourage men to report female bullies and get relief rather than being though of as unmanly?

So many questions. Still so little experience.

Multi-National Companies - a force for ethics?

2011-07-28T06:42:00.000-06:00

This post has been percolating ever since our last round of ethics training started at work. Our training cycles seems to have accelerated and widened in the past few years. It's gone from an annual lecture to mostly management on not to give/take bribed to biannual training that is attended by everyone. While we still get told that bribery isn't acceptable there are more subtle examples of things we can't do. Happily training has gotten much better. In the last round we had to watch well produced videos in the style of "the Office". All employees got to see that there alternatives to cringe worthy management style and recourse.

I first realized the effect of multinationals when we got a share holders vote card in the main about hiring policies. Should hiring be discriminatory, in Ireland, based on religion. Of course not we voted from our secularized home country. We did talk about inflicting our values on a society bogged down in a religious fight but felt discrimination should not be institutionalized. Bad us, interested enough to vote yet not interested enough to follow up.

This becomes more important now because the loud voices out of the US seems to eschew any type of generosity between out groups. While there's a ton of noise about abortion in the US and not funding it, in Canada abortion is just another medical procedure and cannot be de-funded. What if a Canadian, with corporate insurance, suffers a miscarriage while on holidays to the US? While the US struggles with sexual equality, Corporate benefits extend to same sex relationships in Canada, after all everyone has the right to get married here. If you move an employee from the US to Canada, what happens to benefits when they move back home. The Multi I work for puts Canada in the US domestic bucket. Does this mean that USians get the same coverage as Canadians? How does this jive with intolerant State law?

Last year I went to HR with a comment about Christmas boxes. Not because I'm against Christmas or gifting children but because enough people had mentioned to me that they felt there were alternative SECULAR organizations that wouldn't proselytize under the cover of being interfaith. I wasn't happy with local management response (that's not religious) so I sent it up the ladder. Shortly after, acceptable charitable organizations were clarified again to be mostly donation matching to the Red Cross.

Change.

Elevatorgate - why companies have training on harassment.

2011-07-05T18:05:00.000-06:00

Elevatorgate has been sweeping the skeptisphere, it seems like forever. It started with a Rebecca Watson video complete with tip that an unknown guy asking a woman to their room for coffee at 4:30 is creepy.

Then the internet thing takes over...A response from a college student McGraw that Watson is just wrong to deny men and woman have sexual feelings. Then Watson uses the response to illustrate the faces of sexism as a prelude to a talk about the Republican war on women. Then McGraw and her supporters complain that Watson was harassing her by naming her because McGraw couldn't respond right away. People started conflating a brief encounter in an elevator that Watson used to illustrate how not to meet women with attempted rape. Men start protesting they can *NEVER* approach any women if they have to consider context. Richard Dawkins chimes just to be a douche. Ongoing posts from Watson sticks to the topic of feminism in the sceptic community. Follow up post from McGraw sticks to talking about how unfair it was to use her as an example of sexism.

Frankly I'm not seeing her point. I went to see if McGraw would actually come up with an reason why she should not be considered to be sexist based on her comment. There was a lame, "transcribing is hard and I didn't think it was important" excuse. Religious people don't think they're cherry picking the bible either. Yes, especially if it takes away from your point that Watson is frigid and ruining it for the girls that go to conferences to get laid. Regardless of what McGraw thinks about a power iniquity, this episode sent many people to *her* website to see *her* response. This was her opportunity to present a good argument about why her comment was not sexist/anti woman and she didn't have one.

I've been slowly transitioning my sceptic/atheist sites from male voices to female voices. I tried Skepchick several years ago and found it too...lite. I'll try it again. I can't give up Pharyngula because PZ is such a good writer-whether you agree with him or not, he has actual points to think about and backs them up (sometimes unsuccessfully). BlagHag for sure. McGraw for sure not.

Phones, phones, phones

2011-06-26T07:48:00.000-06:00

I've been watching as the new phones start coming out for Q3. With the new crop, devices will have more processor speed, a higher performance camera and a new OS version but do I want to upgrade? Luckily I've had some time to think about it while I talk to other people who are thinking of upgrading their phones.

I was golfing with a co-worker and he said that his carrier was trying to get him into a smartphone, what did I think. I asked what he used his phone for and he said calls and texting. I asked if he wanted to do more and he said no. No brainer, resist the smartphone pitches. Maybe look at a feature phone.

My SIL is thinking of upgrading although she's in a tough spot. She has SaskTel as the only available service provider and it, in spite of being a provincial utility, has decided that her ranch isn't really part of Saskatchewan, even though they pay Sask taxes, so they aren't going to have service there. She can use her phone most other places though. Smart phone or feature phone. She would like a large font so she can read texts without having to use her glasses. You can do that with a Blackberry, I can do that using Handcent, couldn't find the option in WP7 although I'm sure the feature is there sometime (or will be). Again, I think a feature phone would be the best for her, just one with adjustable text.

Friends come over with their kids who have iPods, she has Torch and iPad, he has iPhone. Kids start to get bored so, like many instances, we pull out our smart phones. The LG has nice hand feel, slide out keyboard and WP7. Big tiles that are appealing to new users. The Galaxy S has beautiful screen and Android 2.2. but for this I actually pulled out my GTab as personal stuff is not on screen as widgets. Kids like to message and stuff so we played with LiveProfile.

This is where WP7 really falls down. No multi-tasking, not a big deal if the task swapping is well managed but out of the cross platform app loop is a deal breaker. I want more than a feature phone and to me WP7 is currently a feature phone with ties to Xbox and Zune. None of the stuff I do is supported by WP7. I haven't found a cross platform IM app, no reading/store apps - although overdrive (public libraries) has one, no Slingbox. Pretty games and expensive apps is all I see on a system that is no easier than any other if you want to do more than what's on the surface.

I got WP7 as a tester to see if I would want to upgrade to one. While it's great for a new user, it has failed on it's promise to upgrade frequently and OTA and still doesn't have platform support. In the end, even though I am one of the 2 people who liked the features of WM6.5 and was somewhat interested in WP7, it's not for me. Google tools are easy to use once you get over the initial learning bump. tiles are nice enough, widgets are awesome. Most of the stuff out there for Apple has a Android equivalent. From now on, when I'm asked about a smart phone suggestion, one of my questions will be whether anyone else they know has a WP7. It's way too easy to get left out of the loop with one.

Dogs and gods

2011-06-14T19:14:00.000-06:00

Was reading Dispatches from the Culture Wars and he was blogging about a rabbi who things that caring for pets leads people away from the bible. Bahahah how nuts I thought at first, but then I thought further about how could sharing your house with a dog lead you away from needing a god in your life.

Disclaimer - I have 2 dogs. They are super cute even when they need a good brush. They sleep on the bed at night and don't have a job other than to be companions. Milo guards us from the wind while he dreams, under a tree at the far end of the fence, of long walks outside the yard while Duffy can barely stand to be away from his humans, flopping down close by whenever possible. When I talk about a companion animal I can only reference dogs (and fish) because that's mostly what we've had.

One thing having a pet shows you is that we are not the only species that has an emotional life. It may not be *our* kind of emotion but if animals "work" by instinctual response then we do too. Pets are generally responsive to each other and humans. Even if we are anthropomorphizing, that wouldn't be possible if we didn't recognize some basis for that, not many people get as attached to even their cars the same way.

Another is unconditional love. Unlike the unconditional love that God is suppose to have for you if you accept him and his son and the contradictory rules set out in his book, dogs are there to greet you happily no matter when you get home or what you treat them like when you get there. If you are sad they can provide warm body to hug and ears to whisper your loss into. You don't have to do anything special and they won't blab.

All pets teach you about death and how to be humane. Most dogs have a shorter life span than humans so if you have one, you are likely to have to deal with loss. Our first dog died while on a walk; my first brush with sudden death. Carrying him home was indescribably and I don't know that I would have been more affected by the sudden death of an acquaintance. He carried a lot of pain for me in his life and taught me to grieve publicly. Our second dog had a rough go. When he was 2 he developed autoimmune disease and liver failure. We got him back to health but then he got kidney disease. By the time we realized what was going on it was too late. We took him to the vet to be put to sleep because it was more merciful than having him lethargic and vomiting blood for the short time more he was likely to live. I wanted so badly for the vet to provide a miracle cure but it was not to be. He taught me to make hard decisions.

When you live with a house animal companion, you see that personalities aren't restricted to humans which leads away from the idea that we're super special and thus away from a need for a god. So I guess I agree with the rabbi; we just disagree about whether this is a good thing.

Weddings

2011-06-04T12:29:00.000-06:00

A co-worker's daughter is marrying her high school fella and since I was invited, I thought I would attend. They've been together for a long time (around 7 years) so I've heard how first she thought he was ok then they moved together away from town, then moved back, then got engaged and she was so excited.

On Tuesday I will have been married to the same guy for 25 years. I will have spent exactly half my life as a married person with this last name. We met, were friends for a few months then dated, got engaged right away and married a year later. Good things about being married for a so long:

a shared history so you can laugh at and with each other
having another viewpoint at hand
seeing change in yourself and your partner

I think this couple has learned a lot of this already. I hope they continue to have a happy life together.

torn...

2011-06-03T06:04:00.000-06:00

Summer is a tough time to watch your weight and our summer is short enough that I would rather just spend it having fun than fretting about food. I don't really do exercise classes, I just target one activity a day. Most of the time I walk to work or golf or try a class that I enjoy but don't do regularly.

I just looked at the NRG4Life summer schedule and, darn, Thursday night is pretty well perfect for a double class, something I never do in the summer. Dare I hope the double will stick through the next year? I love doing advanced step and to follow it up with Yoga -perfection. Almost as good would be Zumba followed by Yoga.

I guess we'll see. I really struggled with weight maintenance this spring. I was out of town a lot so I ate more and missed a lot of my classes. And the classes at the time I could go were fun but I felt I didn't work as hard as I could have. I did do more Yoga and I'm sticking with that for sure over summer.

Pro Choice - the secular, pro woman stance

2011-05-25T06:39:00.001-06:00

I was reading around the intrawebs. I've started reading more more women skeptics and I'm glad I have or I wouldn't have come on this gem by Skepchick. While men get get behind fighting creationism in the classroom as a sceptical cause, only a woman could identify the root of all the anti abortions/anti choice lawmaking going on in the US as an effect of the religiosity blooming in the Republican Party. Since it's packaged with abstinence style birth control, reducing access to contraception and the desire to return women to a cloistered role in society.

As a non-USian I can roll my eyes and vow never to go to a state that discriminates against women and same sex unions-I don't say gays because that implies to me a men's movement. As such, it will eventually be accepted and respected. Not so much with women's rights in the US. Rebecca Watson identifies 49 states with 916 bills that have restricted reproductive rights in the works and those that have passed are horrifying. It is unlikely to work out ok for women; one just has to look at the ERA failure. In the States that have passed laws, women have to put with defunded Planned Parenthood, vaginal ultrasound (I can't imagine how well that would go over with a casualty of rape) with description (now let's torture women terminating a wanted child with genetic defects) and now no insurance coverage from ANY provider, not just the State.

Pervasive in our society is the idea that women get pregnant, are simply inconvenienced by the getting bigger part then love the outcome in the end. Men taking the pro choice stance usually focus on rape as a reason for needing abortion services. This is a huge lack of imagination. One of the great things about the Jerry Springer effect is that women no longer have to experience pregnancy to enter that the "procreation girls club" that lets you know of all the things that can go wrong. That's important because women lack imagination as well. Women that I've know to have abortions have done so because the fetus has died after 5 or even 8 months, a miscarriage that didn't complete, defective fetal development and ectopic pregnancy. When anti-abortion laws are passed, I wonder about those women, the ones that Tiller and Kvorkian helped. I don't know how many women I know have simply chosen to terminate as a choice because it's none of my business. I do know when I worked in a hospital in the '80s, people were outraged that all procedures were listed as D&Cs rather than identifying those slutty women who used abortion as birth control.

Why do women buy into these laws? The risk of pregnancy is outweighed by the benefit of offspring for most women. I knew a woman who miscarried and at that point became anti-abortion because she was devastated and thought other women should be prevented from that grief. When I pointed out women who chose abortion would not necessarily feel that grief (not a shining hour for tact on my part) she implied that would be inhuman. Many women seem to buy into the idea that they cannot make a decent decision without the help of a man. News flash, many decisions men make are poor as well.

Election 2011 winds down - yay

2011-05-01T09:56:00.000-06:00

Canadians are going to the polls for the 4th time in 5 years. What we gained by not crashing hard during the last economic downturn is being wasted buy power plays. There is only one thing I wish we would adopt from US political structure and that is specific wait times between elections that cannot be overturned unless there is a vote of non-confidence. That would have removed just one of the elections but one is better than none.

I thought I would never understand the knee jerk opposition to Harper. To me he's pretty much like our family of 2 working adults. His Calgary home isn't in a super rich area, his wife ran a successful business. He said he would put the same sex marriage thing up for vote in parliament and he did while phrasing it in way that could not possible overturn the Supreme Court judgement. In spite of personal beliefs he has held the line on abortion being a medical procedure like any other. First time as PM he made 5 election promises and kept them. The social fears of (mainly) Metro-Torontonians seem really out to lunch especially since our civil rights are protected and Canadians rarely go on about "activist judges". I don't want the Conservatives to have a majority because I don't think that best serves a country as diverse as ours but I can accept him representing Canada.

Since I've developed a negative reaction to Ignatieff I'm a little more sympathetic to those anti-Harper folks. I was very surprised that the Liberals brought, what is in essence, an American to be their party leader. Here is someone who as spent most of his adult life in the US as it wandered further and further to the right. Under his leadership there has been no interest in working with the CPC, just creating conflict. He can't even be bothered to do his job by attending Parliament. And there's his amazing statement that even if Harper got the majority minority he'd persuade the Gov Gen.that *Ignatieff* should be the PM forming a minority coalition. Even as a throw away comment that is deeply disrespectful of the Canadian Electorate. A sore loser that appeals to authority to "win".

Which brings us to the NDP. I actually think a coalition of NDP and CPC could bring the balance Canada needs. Do good things for Canadians at a reasonable cost. The CPC initiative of getting physicians to areas in need by forgiving student loans actually mesh well with the idea of the NDP desire to get rid of cell phone contract to make cell phones like any other utility; both widen the availability of services to everyone. Encourage small business, ensure a stable social net, hold big business accountable are all things the CPC and NDP could work on together.

And to my surprise those could be the big 2 after tomorrow. NDP is gaining support in Quebec and running neck-in-neck with the Liberal party. If Layton does become official opposition and does well, the next election - hopefully in 4 to 5 years - could be really interesting.

Art - what is it good for?

2011-04-24T16:05:00.000-06:00

Art, a snapshot of a culture. Not only the art created but the art that survives tells a lot about the impression a culture wishes to leave to history. Art has to be especially scary in authoritarian times, it requires imagination to create and provokes emotion when viewed. Luckily it's very easy to denigrate.

The first art controversy I remember is when the Canadian government purchase a piece of art for the national museum that consisted of 3 stripes. Oh the outrage over the photograph of the painting. What a waste of money. I, jumped on that band wagon as well. Really, even I can create 3 stripes of colour and I'm no expert but I know what I like. Fast forward a couple decades; I went to an exhibition and spent most of my time standing in front of a white canvas. If photographed it would look like a polar bear beside an igloo in a blizzard. In reality there was an amazing display of texture and pattern impressed on that white canvas. I haven't seen the 3 stripes but I can appreciate that if I did, they would speak to me the same way.

The first time an exhibit really made an impact on me was when I went to see The Castration of St. Paul. A friend said we should go see it while it was on campus. I wasn't much interested in going to see photos of 30 male groins but I went anyway. I thought I would walk through unaffected, perhaps a little embarrassed, but the photographic style was very effective and the shear numbers emphasised the tradition of patriarchy entrenched in religious authority. And that any male midriffs could stand in for any saint worth noting, well you know who the important ones are.

Piss Christ, created a few years before the Castration of St. Paul exhibit, was irreparably damaged this month by a religious mob while on display in France. A Christian's ambiguous comment on the cheapening of religious icons has been destroyed at a time when religion is openly being used to get people to toe an authoritarian line of an earlier age. Had the artist not named the piece Piss Christ, one would simply marvel at the lighting that created an unearthly glow that reflects the holiness of Jesus. If only religious adherents had matured enough to see the irony of their protest.

I wish I could have seen this exhibit. A small image on a computer screen is compelling, I can only imagine the effect of the 60x40 inch work.

Holiday eating

2011-04-17T09:50:00.000-06:00

There's nothing like a being out of routine to totally distort your eating habits. This has been a tough winter for me as I've travelled for work during what is usually my fitness focus time. Then we went on a 2 week holiday. It reminded me that weight loss about more than just counting calories and/or going to the gym.

While studies show exercise doesn't make you loose weight by "balancing" calories it does give many important benefits. I admire people who travel intermittently and fit in exercise. I always intend to do it first thing in the morning since I usually have more time but instead I take advantage of being able to sleep in. Rats. I find business trips very sedentary. Not only is there little time during the day for walking around, but frequently the evenings are scheduled with activities that aren't particularly active. I find it easy to just suspend my activities until I get back home. I'm sure if I actually travelled regularly I would find a way to incorporate exercise. Holidays are different of course as you set your own schedules. When we go for our tropical vacation we do stuff we don't do at home because of time or availability. Most days we kayak, snorkel and walk as much as possible since we aren't on a schedule.

Over time I have come to prefer grilled food over fried food, internalized schedule eating so I don't snack when I have nothing to do, and better estimate serving size. I know I have to be careful as, like so many, if I get really hungry feeling I over eat tremendously. I also find that the novelty of free fall gorging gets thin pretty quickly, although dessert never seems to get old :^)

So how did it work out this year? After holidays I noticed my exercise clothes fit differently. I'm in the middle of the BMI range but I have developed a tummy so it feels to me like I'm doing crunches with a firm pillow in the way. Just a reminder that sweets are not a food group.

I've read articles denigrating the attitude that to loose weight effectively one has to consider it a lifestyle change. I think it can't be emphasised enough that without that lifestyle change any weight loss effort is bound to fail over the long term. Weight gain is quite subtle and it's easy to get into a bouncing cycle or just resign yourself to buying larger clothes every year. It would be awesome if everyone learned healthy eating before having a weight problem but our culture seems to be more into being reactive than proactive.

Canada heads into an election

2011-03-27T07:01:00.000-06:00

The charm of Canadian politics is that we can go to a Federal election any time a vote of non-confidence is held and failed. Not so charming is most Canadians confuse Canadian politics with US politics. It happens with laws too. In spite of strict gun control, people wanted even more in the aftermath of the Ecole Polytechnique Massacre in the late 80s.

The main way our system is different than the US system is we vote for a party not the Prime Minister. Yet not all parties field candidates in all Ridings (Bloc anyone?) and it's frequently difficult to find a respected candidate in an area that leans heavily in one direction (Quebec, the prairies). Peeps moving into politics have to very dynamic, have a strong civic record that doesn't just rely on the success of the current government and be very community spirited. And they have to be strong enough to choose a party that isn't necessarily the winning one.

Case in point is Ralph Klein. Here is a politician that had very liberal policies yet chose to join the Conservative Party. Most people were amazed. He did do a lot of Conservative things, that as usual mostly affected women. Things like cutting welfare to the bone, rolling back public employees by 10% - teachers, admin, nurses (effectively by 20% since the union cut 10% through voluntary retirement etc. in an effort to assist) but I think it could have been much worse. As usual he did a lot of things that helped business which ends up not as bad since business hadn't figured out the jobless recovery thing.

Moving to the Federal stage, we have Harper (Conservative) and Ignatieff (Liberal) squaring off with Layton (NDP) able to influence policy as the strongest 3rd party. I would love to meet my Liberal candidate but I probably won't since this is a very strong Conservative riding. Same with the NDP rep. It would make a difference to me. Although right now, the only PM candidate I would vote for now is Harper or Layton I am voting for a Member.

And why wouldn't I vote for Ignatieff even though the Liberals have done great things for Canada? He's spent way too much time in the US (over half his life) Even though it was at a liberal private Uni, the US version of liberalism is way right of Canadian Conservatism. I grew up in NDP BC yet, because I moved to a Conservative province I find myself influenced by conservative truisms unless I am careful. Am I going to support someone who had been embedded in an affluent US lifestyle? At least Harper lives in a normal home in a reasonably affordable neighbourhood.

I want the minority government to function in way that promotes the best of all the party ideals not stupid posturing and wasteful spending on voting. By all means promote open government and bring forward things that could change our culture (like more prisons when we have less crime) but you can do that best during sessions.

Samsung wants my $$

2011-03-23T17:01:00.000-06:00

This is the first year I paid attention to all the new tech coming out and I must have been talking it up because my SO picked up my Galaxy S the other day and started playing with it. When I asked him what he was doing he said he was getting ready to take possession of his new phone since I'd be itching to buy soon. Surprisingly this isn't so.

Not that long ago I was very enthused about my Omnia II right up until MS decided to completely disconnect WP7 from WM 6.5. Huh? Get rid of all those applications and user base. Well if I have to purchase everything over again I may as well look around. I stuck with Samsung and ended up with my Galaxy S. I knew I'd made the right choice when I read teach writers going on about android fragmentation LOL. I've been really happy with it. It's been upgraded to Froyo and by the time there's a totally new iteration of android OS I'll be comfortable with the idea of doing the custom ROM. Sammy has said the SGS will be upgraded to 2.3 but I'm happy with what I have now. It's a solid device that does everything I want it to. So no phone unless android update and totally doesn't support existing apps.

What about the new tablets that have been announced or an iPad. I looked hard at getting an iPad and decided on the Galaxy Tab, smaller, lighter, front/back cameras, SD slot, flash - what's not to choose. The new Tabs look great but I won't be trading up for one of those either since I like what I have. It's super comfortable for reading books. All the apps I bought for my SGS download onto my tab at no extra cost and I like the hubs.The only disappoint I've had is Zinio.

I did get a new computer though. Samsung (again) had a very attractive looking laptop but I have a laptop. It's broken but I'm getting it fixed - or so I hope. I ended up with an HP all-in-one and the only thing I don't like is the keyboard but it's wireless and I can get a new one for $100 if I can't adjust to this one. I love having the large screen and since I did early migration to Win7 at work, this wasn't a big stretch. Everything I wanted, slingbox, kies, installed and worked right away. Huh.

So no new fun tech for me. I think I'm at the age where I want stuff to just work and once it does for me, I'm happy for now but if anyone wants to send me a new device I will do an unbox and nice review like I did for the Momax 2700mAh battery I got.

Long marriage - how does that work?

2011-03-20T11:39:00.002-06:00

Every year as we get ready to go away we think about our anniversary because we decided on our 20th anniversary to start going to the Cook Islands for a winter holiday. This year I've been especially aware because I will have had my married persona for as long as I had my non-married persona on our anniversary.
This year there have been some other things prompting the evaluation. A couple of wedding invitations, a post by PZ Myer's marriage being worth less than Newt Gingrich's in the eyes of US right wing mouth pieces, (Mr. G has a poor track record of sticking around-his previous wives should probably be happy euthanasia is illegal in the US) and comments on an review of Spousonomics by Canada AM.
I really liked the idea of running your marriage like a small business because in the end, that's what a modern marriage is - a partnership that takes an effort to be successful. One of the key concepts identified is recognizing that there is a finite amount of time and everything takes time to do, too many tasks and something has to give. If that something is always the same person's personal time the partnership is unlikely to be as successful as it could be.
A long time ago I read an article about how to negotiate and I used it to redistribute household chores. Like most people I regard housekeeping as a necessary evil and, like most people find it profoundly unrewarding. Getting stuck with most of it wasn't working out. Because I'm a geek, I listed all the chores and assigned time and frequency to each task with the view of equalizing the time. Then, and this is the important part, we sat down and listed which was most important to us and which we really disliked doing. Then chores were distributed evenly with no one doing the stuff they really either dislike or don't care about. And I made a chart:) By doing a lot of background, we got past the accusations of who does all the work (me).
Another mention from Spousenomics that resonated was the don't go to sleep angry idea. Keeping someone up to argue is about winning. Who doesn't benefit from leaving a situation while conflicted. Think things over, identify the root point and talk when things have cooled down a bit.
So how do you have long, content marriage? Treat the other member as a partner an recognize they have their own interests that may not be yours.

Tackling childhood obesity in Canada

2011-03-09T08:21:00.001-07:00

Earlier this week Canada started an initiative to reduce childhood obesity and apparently there are a bunch of comments on news stories about how easy it is to lose weight and who's fault it is there are so many obese people around. I have to wonder how many of these commenters have maintained even a 5 kilo weight loss. It seems many people think they are exempt from BMI due to big bones, never step on a scale etc.

First the advantages of being non obese in case you think it's all about looks and meaness. Less pills as you age to prevent high blood pressure, control blood sugar levels, mitigate gout and control cholesterol levels. Decrease bone and soft tissue injury from extra weight bearing and body size (public structures constructed for smaller body sizes).

Research has confirmed that it is mostly about controlling calorie intake and getting sufficient exercise but this is not as simple as chucking kids outside and starving them at meal times. It does start with parental habits, then teachers and youth leaders and finally all adults. If you get used to the idea that everyone is large, being a little larger is also easy.

The first idea that has to be changed is the idea of going on a diet. Yes diet is what we eat everyday but for many the word diet is linked with deprivation. When we decided to lose weight we were changing our eating habits, finding foods we enjoyed that were more nutritious than our other choices and bringing those foods home from the grocery store. We don't eat a structured evening meal so we get quick to prepare foods that we like-not cans of stuff but fixings for quesedillias-and getting the smaller portion size. We plan our eating out because meals are guaranteed to have double the calories of what we would eat at home unless we choose a kids meal or seniors portion.

People need to build activity into the day whether it is walking to work or school or making teachers and students move around between classes. After schools is where the activity games are helpful. Kinecs, Move and Wii do not burn a pile of calories but it does decrease sedentary behaviour. Make sure family homes have stairs and encourage their use (this one is easy) with room placement-pass on basement wet bars or only stock for special occasions.

These kind of actions help change habits.

http://ourhealthourfuture.gc.ca/home/

Borrowing library e-books

2011-02-26T16:28:00.000-07:00

You would think that book publishers would have the library thing figured out by now, after all, I've belonged to a library since I was 5 or 6. You get a card, borrow books, return them on time or pay a fine. Libraries purchase books (through special licence I assume) and lend them out until they are tattered then sell them to raise funds to buy more books. Online, I've used the Baen Free Library for years now, sometimes buying and sometimes just borrowing. Now, through chatting with a member of the cairn list I am on, I've found out about borrowing e-books through the library. This is fantastic and is done through Library2go. I used my library card to register then installed the Overdrive media app on my Galaxy Tab. Software is available for PCs, Android devices and, of course, the iPad. The person I got the info from has it direct to her Nook e-reader and Kobo e- reader is supported as well.

How slick is it? Well pretty slick. I can look at the catalogue on my computer or my GTab then select books for check out. I can get up to 5 at a time for either 7 or 14 days. There is a range of stuff available. Check out, down load and poof - new books to read. The reader software is good; has night and day settings, font size adjustments, automatic bookmarking and smooth, responsive page turning. On the splash page,there is a list of books you have out and the amount of time left to read. At the end of the borrowing time, the permission to read is removed from your device - I'm not sure how that works since I haven't gotten there yet. Really the best part is no more late fees - I had to pay $8 in overdue fees to get my library card updated (and I hadn't been to the library for a couple years!). If you're not going to pursue people minimize late fees.

The catalogue is pretty good. I read mainly SciFi and YA. As I get older I find I enjoy stuff I've read in the past (I think people call them classics) so recent publication isn't that essential. I've never read an entire library although I have gotten to the point where I'm waiting for new books a lot. I love the idea of reading different authors through the library. That's how I found Sharon Lee and Steve Miller One library read and I've bought e versions and paper versions of many of their books.

So why do I question if the publishers are "getting it"? Random House is apparently having a problem coming to an agreement with Overdrive. They want e-copies to expire after 26 lends. Why? It's not as if the download files degrade. You are getting libraries to purchase several licenses so they can lend the same book several people at a time when everyone could download from the same file almost at the same time. I get the part about editing etc but people do still buy books that they've borrowed from the library, just like they did with the hard copies.

I hope e-borrowing through your local library really takes off. It may help preserve library access for communities with reduced funding and brings relevance to those of us who don't *need* the library to access the internet or have a quite place to study. It's part of my muni-taxes but I could see this being a value added fee service if it would provide more in house services.

Now I must continue to read The City The City.

On life and death

2011-02-24T07:01:00.001-07:00

Today in the news there were two stories about how people treat their loves ones at the end of their lives. What ties them together is that the ones dying were unable to give consent. One because of due to advanced cancer and one because of extreme youth.

The first was a man who administered a lethal injection to his wife who was in extreme pain and suffering from terminal cancer. She was not going to recover so he administered a lethal injection and later gave himself up to police. He is wracked with guilt because, even though he acted out of empathy, they hadn't talk about end of life scenarios. It would be hard to know if you did an action like this for the sufferer or yourself. I've taken a sick dog in for euthanasia. I had to know he wasn't going to get better and his quality of life would rapidly deteriorate - my job to ensure he has a good life, including a reasonable end of life. I couldn't ask his opinion. I can only imagine how his man feels.

If euthanasia was legal the couple could have gotten some end of life options as part of the treatment discussion. Now he will never know, for certain, whether she would rather have died in peace or struggled painfully to the end.

The other story is also sad. A dying infant, in a near persistant vegetative state. Except there is no doubt at all about selflessness. The parents want to give the infant a tracheotomy so the he can die at home. After the procedure the he would in pain unless medicated and the procedure would do nothing to extend life. Courts have said no (legitimate since this would be on the universal healthcare dime). The lawyer of the parents hasn't read the court decision but can't understand why anyone would prevent a this since the infant is near vegetative. Perhaps because it would cause unnecessary pain and suffering to a life?

Another case FOR euthanasia law. By treating euthanasia as simply a medical treatment; human dignity is retained, lines are drawn. As people who love, we have a hard time seeking past our wants to the needs of others. Sometimes an input from someone not emotionally involved adds clarity.

Links
Adult - http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/story/2011/02/24/ns-liverpool-euthanasia-claim.html
Infant - http://www.vancouversun.com/news/canada/Father+dying+Windsor+baby+says+hospital+treating+like+criminal/4328772/story.html

Galaxy Tab = laptop replacement?

2011-02-11T16:47:00.002-07:00

The thing about buying new tech for fun is that you never know when you will break your old tech and really finding out whether you need to replace said old tech. Yesterday I decided to clean between the keys on my laptop and snapped one of the clips for the space key. I can use the space key but what better time to see how functional my Tab is. There are all sorts of new android tablets coming on the market and of course the next generation of iPad. Can tablets replace the net book? Right off the bat I can say this is faster and more responsive than the netbook I tried. Also its easier to tap the screen for the cursor than it is on my Galaxy S.
I posted before about the on-screen keyboard. Since then I've changed from the Samsung keyboard to Better Keyboard. I seem to hit the keys better. I also ordered a case with built in Bluetooth keypad from Brando since I do miss the keyboard. I'm not a big fan of how smudgy the screen gets after some data entry and I have a protector and dry hands. Editing is actually easier in the Tab than on my laptop. Perhaps because it's more like natural reading for me.
I'm using Dolphin HD so I have the option of surfing in mobile or desktop mode. Since I have apps like Tapatalk and Plume I am using the web version. I purchased my keyboard from my tab using PayPal and had the same experience I would have had on my laptop with some pinching to zoom. Not bad at all.
The thing about the Tab is the portability. I'm no long tied to my desk so...no longer tied to my balance ball. I can use my tab while lounging but that's not doing much for fitness and I think doing crunches would be out of the question, maybe some stretches though. The dogs are really liking it because we can all pile on the same chair.
We shall see how this goes. I can still use my laptop and probably will but I can also check stuff at work so I may not miss it such.

Eek I have a neck like a turtle!

6 words to yourself at 14

2011-02-05T09:11:00.001-07:00

If you could go back in time to talk to your 14 year old self, what would you say? What could you say that you would have listened to? Would you be you or an interested stranger? Would you try to change things?

A lot of this depends, of course, on what your childhood was like and how things have panned out. Looking back from the age I am now, I think I had a great childhood. We were never well off and my parents didn't always get along but I had a lot of freedom. I grew up in a tolerant time of increasing civil rights in a peaceful country. Same evil people in the world-there was a rapist free in our area so girls were told not to go to the bathrooms alone even at school-and one of the teachers at my Jr. High was later found to be a pedophile. When you're a kid you are blind to that stuff if its not happening to you.

And now things are good as well. I appreciate having a good life. I've ridden out bad financial times and emotional losses. I may not be as generous as I'd like to be but its somehimg to aspire to.

So in the end I have nothing to say to my 14 year old self. She made pretty good decisions.

Really, rich just wanna stay rich?

2011-01-30T12:07:00.000-07:00

I was just starting out in the work world when the Reaganomics economic theory was embraced in the US. What an attractive idea for the wealthy to push - make us RICHER and we'll take care of you. How had that worked out before? Well there was the French revolution but those were aristocrats not the USians who had pulled themselves up by the bootstraps. I didn't think the rich in the US are more generous about sharing their wealth; traditionally rich have built their fortunes on the backs of people less well-off whether they were slaves or minimally paid workers but …

I thought it was a poor idea just based on human nature and that it was a pity it would take a generation to see the effect of that economic policy. Then I went merrily on my way working through the ups and downs of the Canadian/Alberta economy. I bought a car when interest rates were over 20% because I needed one. We bought our first house when interest rates were over 12%. We both came from frugal families and while we were not as frugal, our financial plan has always been to be net positive if something catastrophic happened to us. Calgary was a strange place of wealth and layoffs so we've always been aware of our debt load which stood us in good stead in the early 90s. We didn't upgrade our lifestyles (much) as money became more available - we hoarded (aka saved).

How has Reaganomics worked out? This article at the Atlantic seems to indicate - not that well for the US middle class. And that would be okay - for the most part USians have brought this on themselves through prosperity churches, sub-prime loans and rampant consumerism - except that these are actually people not just number that are going up and down. Not only do USians not have much of a social net but they seem convinced, individually, that they aren't going to need it so they give tax breaks to the rich and protest about any kind of financial help for the poorer among them that doesn't include a way for the rich to profit. Universal health care? Only if we can make sure private insurance continues to reap profits. Financial regulation? No way. In spite of bank bust cycles (I can remember 3) people insist the rich have to remain on the leading edge of profit just in case they get rich. The economy has bounced back but employment hasn't. Now more than ever, the mid-income earners are going to have to be innovative in order to even stay in place and the poor will become more vilified and touted as a drain on the economy.

Money has a strange effect on people. The more you have the more you want and the easier it is to justify keeping it to yourself. After all, it allows you to do everything you want without worrying about cost. What if you need that money for something else and you’ve given it away? What if you give that money to – let say health care – and it’s used to give a smoker a lung transplant or an alcoholic a liver transplant or a marginally viable infant a life? What if you disagree with those decisions and you don’t get to be the judge? Better to just keep it. And it doesn't matter if someone else would judge *you* as unworthy of having that money, you think you’re worthy and that’s all that matters.

This is not a call to massively redistribute wealth but I am glad that Canada does have regulations that protect the people just trying to live their lives the best they can while rewarding the innovative.

Bathing Suits and body image

2011-01-23T14:58:00.000-07:00

This is the 5th year we're going to the South Pacific at the end of winter. It's fun because plan past the horrid cold winters we have in Canada. It also provides us with an excuse to get new summer clothes that aren't for golfing. The big thing is bathing suit shopping. This year I am getting and existing suit altered rather than buying a new one because I wear one type of suit at home and one when on holidays and I don't spend much time in a swim suit at home anyway.

Guess which is the holiday suit

I'm kind of curious as to how I even got used to wearing a bikini.

Like most women, I stand in front of a mirror with a critical eye. Even with extra good posture my tummy isn't flat, I don't have 6 pack abs and most likely have cellulite. If you want to go in the water, your bathing suit bottom makes panty lines or the suit will ride up. In stores you stand very close to a non-flattering mirror (and they could be hung at a flattering angle) and who wants to go into the more open part of the change room. It's not even the "no one will know me" effect because we go back to the same place every year and the islands are small enough that we run into the same people all over the place.

It's all part of a mental trick of ignoring parts of your body that create a unproductive critical internal talk. First I got used to exercising in front of mirrors. Sure I had to start by focusing on my shoes but now I prefer access to a mirror while exercising. I can see my posture and make sure I'm working the right muscle groups. Then I started wearing matching underwear so I got used to seeing me in a mirror. It helps that I only wear my suit for water activities. For other activities I may have a bikini under a dress or board shorts.

Now when suit hunting I can focus on whether the colours look good and everything I want covered is covered when I move around and feels comfortable. I've gotten comfortable enough that one year our Xmas card had a picture of me in a bikini ... with the Merry Christmas sign startegically placed of course:)

Testing - blogging from Galaxy Tab

2011-01-16T13:55:00.001-07:00

Over time I'd like to use my new tab for more and more stuff so I'm trying some the Blogger-droid app and seeing how comfortable it would be to hold and type over a period of time. I could get a Bluetooth keyboard that will work with my Tab and Galaxy S Vibrant.

I'm amazed at the strangers who took the time to respond to my tweet by telling me how awful Samsung is for updates. Thank you for the warning but I may have been buying tech since before you were alive. I say that because anyone who's been around for a couple of decades remembers slow, expensive upgrade cycles. The joke around here is the $1200 alarm clock my Sony UX 50 has become because you can't rip tunes in that poor quality and it needs a new battery although everything else works fine. I like shiny things so I thought hard about what I would use a tablet for, what size I would like and even if I wanted it to have 3G. I did a lot of ooing and ahhing over CES announcements and will be watching the Barcelona reports with interest. I'm not interested in updating. I'll just purchase a new device if it comes to that-which I doubt it will.

What could make me regret what I have? A device at the 1/2 weight of this one with twice the battery life available within 3 months totally unlocked for the same price I paid. I didn't see anything like that at CES and devices from the Barcelona won't be in Canada that quickly.

I'm pleased with how the Tab is working out so far. It will easily replace taking my laptop places, is very comfortable as an e-reader, love the Readerhub, and the GPS is great. There are apps for reading feeds and tapatalk for responding on boards. It's not super heavy or large. My only desire is for Bell Mobility to come up with a data share plane between my phone and tab.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.5

Lifestyle assessment - post Xmas edition

2011-01-15T12:11:00.000-07:00

Studies have shown that , while you don't really gain 10 lbs over Xmas, the weigh gained tends to hang around. Combine that with New Year resolutions and it's often a recipe for failure as you cast around for activities - any activities - to help loose weight. I like the straight shot from Jan 1st to Easter break because I'm usually home which means I can control my eating with minimal will power and get to all the exercise classes I want to.

As our (mine and spouse) parents get older we can really focus on what our goals are. We watch as they become less mobile and needing more pills to normalize their metabolism. High blood pressure, cholesterol, blood thinners, gout - it's a lot of pills to manage. Our target is to reduce the time we have to take those pills by managing our lifestyle now. The hardest thing for me to wrap my head around is not trying to use exercise to compensate for poor eating habits. So why am I exercising again?

I'm working out to maintain bone density and flexibility. I also want to reduce the chance of back injury by ensuring I have abdominal strength. And I want to have fun - never forget that! So I've drastically cut back. Last year I was going 7 times a week and the majority of that was step aerobics. This year is a big change. I asked the main instructor at NRG4Life what she would do if she could only do one activity. She said yoga as the type we do incorporates strength and aerobic elements. So now the only full aerobic class I'm taking is Zumba - because it's fun. All my step classes incorporate weights and abs and twice a week I head out to do 60 minute yoga session. To reduce sedentary behaviour at work, I'm making more of an effort to walk around a little each hour. Not that hard since we stand and walk a lot as part of the job.

Our eating habits are good but we were slowly sliding into skipping our home made lunches for eating out. So getting more variety at lunch is essential as it will help us eat less.

It will be interesting to see how this affects us.

The Bell Mobility/Samsung Vibrant debacle

2011-01-02T12:50:00.019-07:00

It's been very interesting watching the Bell/Samsung debacle unfold thru the members at XDA and it's hard to escape the conclusion that there are a lot of young entitled males using the i9000m Vibrant. No doubt about it, Samsung made a HUGE mis-step with it's release of UGJK4 and Bell Mobility, with it's varying customer service isn't blameless either. But when one takes a cutting edge device, twists it until it breaks then goes looking for blood it's hard to have sympathy. As always, the innocent user with the spontaneous failure gets stuck in the pool with the tweakers.

Parts/devices seemed to be in short supply in September/October. Some users root, lagfix and install different ROM on their devices, always with the caveat by the chefs that they are not responsible for bricks. So when they brick they send it back to Bell with a "one day I woke up and this stopped working" story and Bell seems in no rush to fix them. It IS outrageous that Bell would hold devices for over a month without any suspension of service rebate, replacement item or even an explanation. Users seemed sure that the i9000m had special problems that caused it to break down more often.

Then came the update. OUCH. I understand that they probably wanted to meet the 2010 update deadline but the timing was truly horrible. The UGJK4 update changed something in the phone and, any time from immediately to never, the phone crashed needing repair. Bad Samsung/Bell. The only reason I can think that a company would release such a flawed update was that there was no other way to find the flaw. OK the other reason is short term memory - after all, most people have forgotten just how bad the XBox was when it came out.

Hand off to Bell and I have to say - really? What's the deal with your customer service. Some people are charged to send the phone in. Some people are charged for a loaner. Some people's phones apparently sit in a back room for a long time as a penalty for being a Bell customer. Get information to your Bell stores, be clear about what you are charging for and tell your customers the options. Have you taken NO MANAGEMENT COURSES? Happily the location I deal with DOES have good training. They fiddled with the phone then said to see if I could connect to my computer and if not then call call tech service. Great, maybe it doesn't have to go away. Oh yes it does. The one repairs clerk (yes ensure there is a clear chain of custody) said it could be 6 weeks but Samsung had been good so it would probably be more like 2 weeks. 2 days to get there, 2 days repair, 2 days back. Add a couple of days on each end for store stuff and that's about 2 weeks.

While my device was away users on XDA started a complaint or something. What was the complaint exactly? The phone was being repaired or replaced and the companies involved would always say it was as timely as possible. In the same time frame Bell and Samsung figured out their strategy - pull the update, exchange devices for a new one and get a $100 credit, release another update UGJL2 that is very solid. This doesn't do anything for the people in the system but with the end of the Christmas break, the trickle was about to turn into a flood. This gets rid of many who would sign the petition. Not to mention this is what big business does best, stifle complaint by throwing money at the end user.

I don't comment there much because I'm tempted to throw up my hands too often. Sometimes I think their phone is a slim black box - make that sometimes they make it very apparent that the phone is a slim black box to them. We have thin light micro-electrical components in a plastic case. Metal would not make it better. Not only do all the connections have to be precise but all components have to have programming to talk to each other then there is the ROM that coordinates it all to add functionality. One slip up in programming, one poor solder, any little glitch anywhere can have dire consequences for the device. Of course users are mad because the system's been closed a little with the new update even though it makes the i9000m very difficult to brick. Sigh - I can see why MS and Apple have been so closed with their hardware.

Is weight loss in your new year's resolution?

2010-12-31T08:20:00.000-07:00

We're coming to the end of the eating extravaganza that is December. In our household we have 2 birthdays as well as Christmas and New Years as excuses to over-indulge. This year we had a landmark birthday, 2 xmas suppers and we have plans for both Dec 31 and Jan 1. We should be making resolutions to lose weight in starting in January, especially as we look forward to our late winter holiday, but we aren't.

I'm going to be rifting off several posts by Yoni Freedhoff the first being the fallacy that one gains 3 to 5 kgs over Christmas. Most people only gain 1kg but that's a hard 1kg to lose again. It adds up so if it's not the New Years resolution, what to do? Lifestyle change is always the answer!

My SO and I have always approached weight maintenance differently. Him by decreasing calories from fat and me by exercising. He does a lot of lip service to aerobic exercise and I do the same for food choices. I do exercise because I really enjoy it and I can eat what I want. We both lost around 7 kg between 1998 and 1999 and have kept it off. Reading the most up-to-date research, it seems that his is the more effective method. Not gaining weight is much easier than having to take it off. For us this means label reading and portion measurement until we get the idea of what a serving size is...and it's always much smaller than anticipated. We also always drink diet pop - carbonated chemical soup may as well be calorie-free since it's already nutrition free.

For me, it all goes sideways when I fall into the magical idea of weight set-points. That's the idea that it doesn't matter what I eat, I won't gain weight. Uh huh. Last time I tried that I gained 3 kilos from eating pub food after golf. Apparently some people use the idea of a societal weight set point as an excuse for their weight. Actually the idea of a lifestyle set point which makes a lot more sense. It's why we quickly loose some weight after holidays as we return to our normal eating habits.

So what about those resolutions? Mine is to continue to educate myself about nutrition and health and choose my food wisely. Happily after all this time, my tastes have changed and I can eat half a mini blizzard without the other half calling me from the freezer. I'm hoping to get SO to get the idea of hard aerobics out of his exercise routine and do the same - no more bootcamp for us but more ab exercises all around! We're getting more subject to injuries that take a long time to heal.

Have a great 2011 because, you know, the world ends in 2012. Kind of like Y2K only Y2K12. No pressure.

The unawesomeness of all in one devices

2010-12-19T18:23:00.000-07:00

I used to have a PDA and no cell phone, I just don't phone a lot. My Sony Clie UX50 was a whopping $1200 and did everything but made phone calls. I was pretty happy with it - it's still my alarm clock.

Tech doesn't stand still though and slowly I couldn't rip MP3s into small enough files and Palm all but disappeared. Eventually I upgraded to a windows mobile phone then another. Along the way I found I really like swype but not a physical keyboard. I don't like a screen full of icons, even if I have no intentions of leaving the sandbox, I usually do. I like having a removable battery and an external SD card is a quick way to transfer media from one device to another.

I have a Samsung GT i9000M thru Bell Mobility. Better known as the Galaxy Vibrant. I updated to Froyo, my device crashed and burned and is now at the repair shop. This is not a rant about Bell or Samsung. Enough devices failed that the update was pulled, repairs are being made and, hopefully, the problem is being resolved.

Nope this is about how much I plain rely on my device and I have to say I'm surprised. My SO was out of town last week. We usually text. Not this time, we had to - gasp - phone! Not that easy to catch someone when they are going out with a dog every 30 minutes. I twitter (much better than I blog). Sometimes I see stuff that I take a picture of and post. Or even take a picture to show SO later. No camera with me. I like to listen to tunes at work. No new tunes. My grocery list is on my device. Now it's back to pen and paper and it's hard to keep a pen. I pay for groceries with a credit card (for points) then pay back the card as soon as I leave the store because I loose those bills right away. Using debit card instead. Standing in line or waiting somewhere so I could play a game...if I had my Vibrant. I even saw a book that would be perfect for reading in snippets What the Dog Saw . Happily not yet available in Canada on Kindle. But I'm in the middle of a couple of books on my device - sigh.

Should I consider changing devices when mine comes back fixed? It was good until the update so I think it will be good again when repaired. And there's just nothing else out there right now that's better. Even the Nexus S doesn't meet up with my Vibrant.

How a WP7 device came to our house

2010-12-05T20:59:00.000-07:00

I am the primary geek at our house. I had an Omnia 2 that I really liked. I fiddled and modified until it was just the way I wanted but it didn't have the direct access programs like android does so after I saw my S-I-L's device, and checking that there were Android apps for the stuff I like to do, I decided to upgrade to the Galaxy S, reset the Omnia 2 and give it to my SO. He's not a geek but I'm around so I thought it would work out well.

Not so much. The screen was not sensitive enough except when he didn't want it to work at all. This meant tapping H-A-R-D on the screen for texting yet doing butt calls even though the screen was supposed to be locked. Frustrating. He wasn't interested in having several screens with themes for applications and really didn't like the on-screen keyboard. I had a credit so I asked him if he wanted to go shopping for a phone. He said he would trust me to get him something.

First it would have to have a roomy keyboard. I looked at a Torch, and LG Optimus Quantum. The torch keyboard has very small keys with ridges around them to center the thumb on the key. The LG just has larger keys and just felt like it would be better for someone with bigger fingertips. The Torch had a series of small icon to touch and the LG had big squares. So I brought home the LG. With an upgrade credit and by trading in the O2. I ended up paying $6 and have 14 days to exchange it at any Futureshop.

It was a hit. In 2 seconds he had sent a couple of texts and was on line at his favorite website. Setting up email was a snap. We sat around and took pictures of each other with the LG, SGS and iPhone4 in the room (mine were the best because I was using retrocamera but his flash was a nice feature)

This would not be the phone for me. I fiddled with it for a couple of minutes and put it down. But for people new to the smart phones I think it could be a good choice. It has solid construction. WP7 Marketplace has a reasonable range of apps for those doing social media or playing games and the Internet Explorer is responsive. Like the old Palm PDAs, there is no multi-tasking but you can use it as a DAP while using programs and when you return to an app, it's where you left off unless you close it. Most importantly, it's easy to use.

Missing the point of the pro choice position

2010-11-21T11:41:00.000-07:00

Going around the part of the internet I peruse is the truly ridiculous internet poll about the "pregnancy of Pete and Alisha Arnold". The feeling in my part of the blogsphere is that it's a scam designed to promote the anti-abortion position since no real people would get pregnant in order to have strangers decide on their personal life. That seems very probably, PZ's post may not be the best (no person *yet*? There will never be a person in her belly) but as always there are some awesome comments and those are what I'll be rifting off.

MY pro-choice position. I have no right to input into any pregnancy but my own. If I were to be asked what I would do in their position I would try to help them clarify what medical terms meant for end result of the pregnancy. Then it's their decision. Government has no right to input into pregnancies either. Whether it's US states denying abortions to women or the Chinese government dictating the one child/mandatory abortion policy. I agree with the motivation for the China policy much more than the US position (population explosion vs. women are stupid) but in the end, I feel both are wrong and would be better served with a education and medical intervention to prevent pregnancies in the first place. Pregnancy is a health condition that starts changing women's bodies soon after conception; it should be avoided if a child is not desired. If it helps, think of it as workplace safety.

People seem to be confused about the terminating the pregnancy part. All too often you get someone saying that there must be restrictions against late term abortions. Why? First, if a woman did decide on a late term termination is legality really going to be an issue? Do some major damage to yourself and the pregnancy is likely to be terminated. Second, late term terminations are done all the time. C-sections - late term termination. Any labour inducing actions are, in effect, late term terminations. The pregnancy is terminated not the product.

An expression of the lagging of science is often stated as where's my flying car. I would ask, where is my artificial womb. If it was truly accepted that life began at conception and human life is sacred there would be a concerted effort to ensure that any embryos removed from women would have an opportunity to develop as far as possible. This would be a boon to infertile couples and overly fertile women alike. The embryo/fetus only dies because of the inability to survive the new environment - see all those terminated pregnancies walking around?

It's very important to me that abortion is legal. Pregnancies can and do go wrong and doctors must be able to communicate options that will be in the best health interests of the woman and/or help prepare the parent(s) for birth. Just like any life changing event, the patient may need counselling. I am very glad that Canada doesn't have an abortion law. Pregnancy is treated as any other medical condition. I don't get to vote whether a smoker gets a lung transplant so why should I get to vote if other women keep a pregnancy. What is the difference between women miscarrying and needing a D&C and women choosing early in a pregnancy to get a D&C? Why do anti-abortionists assume the doctors that are there to help women hate humanity?

When you really think about it, it seems that the anti abortion lobby can only be primarily a pro-"punish/control women for being able to grow cells that can become life" group. That's a topic for another post though.

Trip down memory lane - our wedding

2010-11-06T16:58:00.000-06:00

We were visiting with friends and they were playing their wedding music for us. It was interesting because their wedding was South African and very dance-able. This lead to our wedding music, clearly more important to me than him because he couldn't remember it. He gave a stab at our first song (he chose "Time in a Bottle" by Jim Croce at the time but not during our visit) then, I think, just gave up and said something by Roberta Flack for the second song. Really, Roberta, Killing me Softly, Flack? I knew I had wanted "In My life" by the Beatles for the first song so thought we had it for the second song. Quick - get the wedding memories book.

We were all pretty happy about following local traditions.

I'm amazed that I found the book in 3 seconds. We've moved several times and rarely look at photos anymore. I was very detailed in filling in blanks even though we were at school. Some of the comments are classic. Under traditions we like I have - arch at end, vetoed by SO; Under Engagement Mementos there are a couple of pictures and the comments 2 roses for Valentines and over 3.5/4 for grades - at least I didn't totally go soppy. And, btw, all wedding dress styles have sleeves that's how long ago it was.

My dream wedding was to get married in a hot air balloon at dawn. Very symbolic and unrealistic considering I get motion sick at the drop of a hat. That would have had to a very large balloon. Anyway my dad mentioned that ma cousine had gotten married by a JP; I wasn't going to do that was I. Uh, I guess not. Off to a church we went. Luckily in the '80 the RCC was much more relaxed about weddings - busy shuffling those priests I guess. Our priest was a very nice guy who got the call while taking Chemical Engineering. We spent a lot of time talking Chemistry rather than religion. He made suggestions for secularizing our ceremony (least repulsive OT verses, no mass etc) and off we went. Church, hotel reception and dance (calypso, rock, no polkas or Beach Boys until requested by guests!). We took off at midnight because we were heading to Hawaii in the morning.

I compare to the last wedding I was in 5 years ago. Very nice ceremony in the bride's parent's back yard. Nice supper at a hall, lots of country music. Bridal party last out the door because we had to clean up garbage, remove decorations, pack up booze, take gifts home etc. And that seems to be the trend around here. One of the lab techs has 2 weddings next summer, one in her back yard and the other not. In both cases there will be cleaning up that involves more than removing the gifts. I guess it prepares you for the rest of your life together.

And our second song *was* In My Life. For all that it's remembered I should have push for it to be first:)

Faith-based organizations =/= religious org ; semantics at it's best

2010-11-03T06:44:00.000-06:00

Every year the multi-national I work for puts employees through the Corporate Ethics. It used to be everyone but they've stopped wasting the time of people who have no purchasing power; unfortunately that's not me. In it people like me find out things like

if someone has a frowny face they are unlikely to take your teasing about age well.
avoid the appearance conflict of interest
don't give/take bribes which includes most gifts

I also thought it said something about not promoting religion, as did some other people, but apparently we miss understood. It's okay to systematically use corporate resources to advance an evangelical personal life as long as you use support faith-based (aka non-denominational Christian evangelical) organizations NOT religious ones. Company sponsored table at a prayer breakfast - no problem, any person of faith will appreciate that this is a super way to be involved in the community. Support an evangelical children's charity - who could deny children at Christmas? The OCE is ready for questions and have their supporting statements ready. Pursue that line of inquiry and the manager knows you're not one of his type; it's the appearance that matters.

And so American manager has brought his religion into the workplace. Even if I choose not to participate in a charitable activity, I can rest assured that he will contribute on my behalf. That would be my behalf as both and employee and stock holder. Thank you for relieving me of that burden. Now I have to make doubly sure to up my contributions to secular charities.

Obesity acceptance

2010-10-31T12:17:00.000-06:00

I was reading Dr. Sharma's weekly links. One interesting discussion is obesity is like alcoholism. Commenters rightly noted that obesity doesn't at all lead to the types of behaviour alcoholism does with the effects on others. But if obesity was treated as an addition like alcoholism perhaps more people would seek treatment.

I'm not sure we're seeking a solution that doesn't exist. A long time ago, a friend (who was taking a psych course at the time) told me that all people have addictive personalities as part of their pleasure/reward system. Research has not contradicted that pleasure is a powerful motivator and reward and we see it in all aspect of life. It's just as some are more socially acceptable than others. Most people admire successful/rich people. In the past, a well fed body was an indication of wealth. Now that there is an overwhelming availability of cheap palatable food everyone can have this wealth indicator.

I admit, I find it difficult to empathize with obese people. I don't really understand why, once you have to increase your clothes size a couple of times that you don't take steps to stop the increase by checking your portion size and making yourself eat different foods. Replace food as a reward with an activity you would do more of if you had more time/money. Take time to build new habits and don't multi-task while eating.

And then I remember dog training. My first dog never went on furniture - a firm rule but he also had to be on a leash because he was intermittent on coming when called. We're now on dog number 4. None of them have had really solid recalls though all of them come when I call them to watch tv or go in their space because I'm going out. I can make all the excuses in the world about time and other commitments but, in the end, as much as I would like (really like) my guys to come when I call them ALL THE TIME, it's not that important to me because I haven't made time to effectively work on it to make sure that they do.

Why does obesity matter to you? If you're activity level is slow walking, sitting, driving and you can do that, what is your motivation for change? If you don't mind taking pills to compensate for metabolic shortcomings why lose weight? If you are willing to take the increased risk of surgical risk, poor medication dosage then being larger isn't going to be a motivator. If you don't care how long you live because you'll be seeing everyone who matters in heaven, why would you be concerned about your length and quality of life?

Why does your obesity matter to me? Well, in a universal health care system there is a finite amount of money. I am currently healthy. A little physio and an annual checkup is about the extent of my use. But every dollar that goes towards a intervention of a manageable health problem is unavailable for other use. That means poorer assessment and treatment of cancer and other diseases. Longer surgical wait times because of the increased surgical complexities with increased likelihood of poor outcomes. Less research and/or health education funds.

Research shows that it's really is the calorie intake that matters; we over eat way more than we can compensate for with exercise. If the reward not being obese is not self evident, perhaps it means MORE food processing to take out calories while maintaining nutritional needs and inducing a sense of satiety. I'm not talking about deceitful marketing or emphasizing of one nutritional aspect in the face of overwhelming lack of value for calories (like chocolate milk and twizzlers). I'm talking about more intrinsic single serving packaging like precut pizza made with low fat cheese and salt substitutes with flash freezing for optimal palatability. Prefer pop/soda? Make it with stevia (natural has a better image!) and load it with nutrients. Many people denigrate food research because it is done by multi-national, profit based food companies. This is like denying the good that has come out of medications because they are developed by multi-national, profit based pharmaceutical companies. Use food processing to help those people who are not going to take the effort to garden, prepare raw food, measure serving sizes and all those other things that go into healthy eating habits.

I would like everyone to be more like me. Making the choice to eat healthier foods in moderate quantities. Exercising for fun and all that. But that's not realistic. Instead of using an authoritative control for a widespread problem, play into the behavioral aspect. Making the low calorie choice convenient, attractive and tasty may seem like giving up or giving in but what am I losing? The ability to be judgmental about people who make different lifestyle choices? Sure but I'm also hoping to lose the strain on the health care system and see people live with less medical intervention.

Gender roles hurt men too.

2010-10-30T12:36:00.000-06:00

I was wandering the interwebz before my exercise class this morning and ran across a discussion about this comic on Pharyngula. I have to admit that I naively thought that women would have more respect and status by now given that we are at least half the population but between the rise of uber-conservatism and the denial of existence of experts it's no surprise that women as still treated like second class citizens. Mostly it boils down to men being unable imagine that women could have an area of expertise other than one related to sex - and really the only thing that matters to women is their sexual attractiveness. Oh and thinking they have the right to lack self control but anyway...

Eventually someone brings up the "men have it hard too" argument. Oh and gender roles hurt men.

Which brings me to the reason I'm blogging today. The instructors at NRG4Life are all certified and very well versed in musculature and how to exercise without injury. Kind of like EXPERTS! Today was Halloween fun so a woman brought her husband along to the class. Now you know that classes are through to be lame because - well they are female activity involving rhythm and music. For the class today there was some aerobics then some free weights. The deal with free weight is you do specific movements in a controlled manner to work specific muscle groups. You can challenge yourself by either upping the reps or the weight. Well the guy at the back of the class was using 3 pound weights (I could tell because they were lime green) when we were told to only grab heavy weights; then when we were doing shoulders he was swinging his arms around like he was scything hay. Let me tell you it's very distracting to have someone doing something so *utterly* useless in your field of view. He continued this trend through the entire upper body workout. The instructor didn't challenge him even though he was inviting self injury and I don't blame her.

That man was unable to comprehend that a woman could know something he didn't so he didn't follow the routine. I wouldn't be surprised if he told his wife that it was such an easy work out that other men couldn't be getting much out of it. This guy flirted with an injury because of his inability to follow directions from a woman. You can bet he would have blamed the instructor if he pulled something even though he wasn't doing what she said. Also he's old (like me only a little older I think) so it's going to take a long time to heal a soft tissue injury. There are a few men who come to the various classes. They use heavier weights to exhaust their muscles and they follow the routine so they the benefits of a guided workout. Kudos for being willing to show exhaustion when working out with the opposite gender.

WM 7 is out - competition is good

2010-10-12T17:07:00.000-06:00

WM7 had the big launch yesterday and there are tons of handsets out there. wmpoweruser.com has a very nice overview of the handsets available with their specs. I've enjoying having a couple of WM handsets over the past few years. I don't even think their new catchphrase "always delightful, and wonderfully mine" is that creepy or any dumber than any other large corporate phrase generator :)

I do think MS has successfully edged between the iCrowd and the fandroids. The multitude of form factors will ensure there's something for everyone. The HTC Surround looks really cool with the pop up speaker and built in stand - hopefully you would have an office and not just a cube. You can get a vertical or horizontal keyboard which is nice for those who like physical keyboards. I'm always tempted by the HTC Pro until I actually pick it up - it's pretty heavy. Then there are, of course, the slabs from Samsung, HTC and LG. The sparse interface and closed app store will make it easier to control. A couple of new-ish players are being given a shot - I'm referring to Dell and LG - but it's no surprise to hear that HTC was working with MS from the start; they don't have a proprietary O/S.

Over the past couple of years, as I've been looking for the smart phone for me I've come to realize that tech sites really *fear* customization which is why they've liked the iPhone so much and cheered the new direction for MS. They want something good enough right out of the box that the reporters don't feel the desire to go below the surface. And they're sure if consumers dip below the surface they will be scared and/or disgusted by tiny print and a learning curve seen in WM 6.5 and even in Android (yes I have seen the little print - it lets you do the cool stuff). What they like to over look (or dismiss as fragmentation) is how consumers pick a phone.

My SIL is a general consumer and I am a gadget geek yet we ended up with the same phone. She wanted something with SIM. She texts, takes pictures, uses SoundHound, lets her boys play games, goes on line and makes the odd phone call. I wanted something with a SIM card that I could watch TV, read books, text, surf, bank, and make the odd phone call. It looked great, the on board interface was attractive to both of us and we're both really happy.

Against my better judgement, I made the jump to Android earlier this year; I had wanted to wait until after the launch but even after the launch I have no regrets. I played with an iPhone 4 for awhile the other day. It's small, heavy and has that screen of icons that I find unappealing. WM7 has those big the tiles and the closed App shop, I don't have a Zune or Xbox and I don't need Exchange compatibility. Even though I start out liking things out of the box, over time, I always customize. When I handed off Luigi (Omnia i8000) I reset to factory and was amazed at how different it looked. I had even changed the start up graphics! I know I'll need to learn a new OS so I'll go to something I can personalize.

And yes I do stare at my phone but not because I'm looking for something, I looking AT something I find interesting. It's a cute idea but glance and go isn't going to appeal to me or any of the people in the commercial.

Sunday Sermon - another ist

2010-10-03T11:56:00.000-06:00

Last summer I participated in a survey of atheists, agnostics, humanists, freethinkers, and sceptics titled administered by researchers at U of Waterloo (my alma mater btw). It was bound to have a bias as the survey was linked from many atheist web sites. I got an email from the researchers that gave a link to their preliminary results. As I read through the descriptions of respondents I realized that I hoped I didn't fall in the "new" atheist group. But I am. I'm in the group because I strongly agree with the idea that religion should be practiced privately and not inform public policy and I'm in total agreement with individuating morality rather than binding/purity morality. I've held my religious (or lack thereof) beliefs for decades so why would it bother me to be put in the "new" atheist bucket?

Well for one thing gnu atheists *are* passionate about excluding religion for public policy. That means butting heads with pretty well all cultures as people seem to think you can't have culture without some kind of belief in a "higher something" authoritarian or not. This is not a fight I want to have. I just want to live my life according to my beliefs as I stay within secular law (hard sometime when it comes to speeding). My beliefs inform my actions and I expect your beliefs to form your actions.

For another - atheist are the last group public figures can malign and no one speaks up (except the Universal Society of Hinduism). Who wants to "own" that label? First the Pope now the Dalai Lama lay a lot of ills of modern society on criticism of religion as if the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, the Irish civil war, Yugoslavia and Bosnia atrocities and the ongoing deal between Israel and the rest of the Middle East are equal to words that simply saying that being religious doesn't make you more moral or ethical and religious documents do not correlate with known events.

And finally - whenever you read anything about how science and religion could get along if only those "new atheists" didn't rock the boat both belief, as it is commonly practiced, and atheism are distorted beyond recognition.

But after participating in and reading preliminary results from the Beyond Belief survey I'm happy to be identified with "New" Atheists who I would prefer were called informed atheists but I don't make up new terms just to make me comfortable. I am agnostic in that there could be an omniscient, omnipotent being pulling our marionette strings but how can we comprehend anything about such an entity much less how to make it happy? I am atheist about the existence of a God who listens to your prayers and decides what is best for you. I am "scientistic" about a shared reality that can be explored to give consistent measurable results that apply to everyone whether they believe or not.

When I was a teen, I thought religion was an effect way to control a diffuse population. Religious leaders were in it for the power. Everyone else was in it because it was the culture (and fear of punishment from the leaders). I couldn't imagine that there are people who are comforted by an authoritarian figurehead and unchanging world. Now that I've suffered some personal losses and empathized with friends who've had losses I can understand the appeal of a world view where you are promised that if you follow all these rules then you will get to see all those people/friends you've lost again. Your human suffering has a point other than mere existence and as a bonus you can feel superior to those who don't follow the rules as they've been handed to you (if that's the way you roll). Face it, premature losses haunt you as you wonder if there is anything that could have done. Change and uncertainty is frequently uncomfortable.

At this point in time it would take some extraordinary public event to make me accept the reality of God - that's the "scientistic" part of me. I'm sure I would resist the evidence but in the end, all the answers would lead to that reality regardless of whether I believed it or not.

Lifestyle change update

2010-09-29T21:38:00.000-06:00

Well it's been a couple weeks since I started back into the exercise routine along with the eating better (although I did have 2 cupcakes for supper). If I was doing this to lose weight it's be pretty disappointing. I haven't really lost any weight but I'm happy with how things are going.

I'm doing a great range of activities. Yoga is helping me improve my flexibility and balance twice a week. Bootcamp is killing me once a week - there is just no way to not go hard so I'm glad it's only managed to be 45 minutes each week, it must be building endurance. I'm still doing Zumba twice a week because it's so much fun. Once a week Zumba's right after bootcamp so it's not as energetic as it could be. For more cardiac activity I'm doing an advanced step and a pump class. I just wish there was one more yoga class.

And what about the eating part. I wanted to focus on not eating as much junk food. It's not that I was eating poorly, I was just eating extra stuff late in the evening and I wanted to cut that as much as possible. That part is going well. It's always good to check on your serving size. With my app, I'm finding that I eat not that much but what I eat is kind of fatty and definitely high in sodium. Good thing my blood pressure is on the low side. And there's no scientific studies showing that cutting sodium decreases chances of heart attack - yay.

First week back at exercise...

2010-09-16T17:06:00.000-06:00

and I was away too long. I could see I was starting to lose tone and my serving sizes were creeping up as were the number of "treats". Even though I've missed seeing people and am glad to be back, I did get some new stuff because everything even more fun with new stuff!

I got some new clothes at a new store in town called One Tooth. Very nice quality yoga clothes/active wear for far less than Lululemon. Even though I workout nearly daily, I have problems buying pants for nearly $100 (that includes jeans). So One Tooth is working for me. I also got some new shoes - it was time.

The purchase I'm most excited about, though, is some software for my Galaxy S. It's called Absolute Fitness and I downloaded it from the market. I am a food logger from way back. It forces me to focus on serving size and I'm lazy (yet honest) enough that I eat less because I don't like seeing all those items in a day:) I was looking for something that tracked both calories and exercise. This is a really neat app. You can add foods if you don't find what you eat, it includes all sorts of exercises (for calories burned) and gives a very nice graphic of how you are doing for the day. The daily calorie intake for me is 1850 which seems high but reasonable. It's easy to add your food as you eat it and will show me when I tend to eat - mostly before evening since I exercise in the evening.

I've bumped up the classes I'm doing as well. Over summer I did Zumba for fun. Now I've added Bootcamp before Zumba (are my quads killing me), a flow yoga class on Tuesday, Zumba again on Wednesday, Adv. Step and Flow Yoga on Thursdays, a PUMP class on Saturday morning and intermittent stuff on Sunday. I'm not sure how Thursday is going to work because I have an hour between classes. While it's not to cold, I'll probably come home and shower but as winter sinks in I may shower at the gym and read for awhile before yoga. Or I may do the class right before yoga instead.

I don't do this to lose weight. I tend to eat when I'm not doing anything else so it helps get me off that kick to track my intake. I love exercise classes - I've made lots of friends and it's my opportunity to move to music as my partner is not a dancer. Scalzi has a rant about finding time to write and says just make time. I feel the same way about fitness. Everyone has the same 24 hours, it's how you use it.

Paid Labour - a failing social construct?

2010-09-12T12:45:00.000-06:00

I was reading the news the other day - much like the Beatles - and decided to read about how Canada's unemployment rate went above 8% to 8.1% in the month of August. Since I live in a very hot job market I'm really an on-looker but I still wonder what the real percentage of people are actually looking for work when these numbers are published. Then I wandering into the comments. The first two comments were anti-Harper comments along the line of - Go Harper raise that unemployment rate. Since we have a capitalist (with safety net) society, I wonder what on earth that means? Is the government supposed to force employers to increase employees? Are our tax dollars supposed to go to an inflated public service so more people can be employed? How much more welcoming can our government be towards business and would it make a difference?

The Industrial Revolution didn't bring about a huge change in labour for most people. Instead of majority of people being peasants they moved to the big city and became labourers. Sure labourer had more autonomy than peasants and seemingly more ability to move up the ladder but most were content to stay where they were. Most people could still identify the fruits of their labour. Good companies fostered paternalism that replaced the serf/lord relationship. You can see it in pictures from the early 1900s. Work for a company and they had housing for you at a reduced rate and did family type stuff like picnics. And so it went through 2 world wars and for as long as lots of people were needed to make stuff. Things were by no means perfect but basically you worked and got paid. If you did a good job, you stayed employed and even got raises - that was the social contract.

To me that contract seems to be failing and I can pinpoint when it happened in Alberta. The economic downturn in the early '90s. Employees were laid off because companies would go under if they didn't. Employees went along on the unspoken understanding that when times got better, jobs would return. Then the government wanted to reduce costs by 5% so the nurses trimmed and retired enough to offer that 5%. In return the provincial government said - thanks, now *we'll * implement the 5% reduction. The thing I noticed the most about that 5% cut was that it affected jobs performed mostly by women; teachers, administrators and nurses - and male feminists rarely speak out in those situations - they need their jobs too. In Alberta, the public sector lead the way in fracturing the work contract. Businesses started to lay off if they weren't going to make their profits for the year as it was an easy way to cut costs. Lose some people, save their wages and redistribute work. Jobs have returned but the stability of knowing that if you do a *good job* your job will be there never has. Sure you can't get fired but make up some reason to slow down and get rid of a position....

Fast forward to the present. People making the most money don't seem to contribute to the actual manufacture of a product. The economy has recovered to a great extent yet there is still high unemployment rates; at this point jobs aren't coming back so new ones have to be created but by who? Everyone seems to be buying into the idea that company profitability is THE reason for ... everything! Why would new jobs be created when they can squeeze the people they have. Management disrespects people's skills and knowledge then complains that the quality of employee isn't the same as it used to be AND they are rewarded in the form of tax cuts from the government.

Yet I still hear about an upcoming labour shortage as baby boomers retire. How is this possible? When I was growing up it was a given that the work day would shorten and we would have lots of time to do fun stuff. It seems like all the "leisure time" has been concentrated to create a higher unemployment rate. There is less jobs to be had and more automation. Minimum wage here seems reasonable but how many part time jobs do you need to cover expenses? Questions, questions. Our economy seems to be based on infinite growth - or at least infinite for now.

Autumn is time to diet and exercise reset

2010-09-05T07:19:00.000-06:00

We tend to be on a scholastic year even though neither of us have been in school for decades. The back to school specials combined with the impending end of warm weather activities makes it a good time to think about our winter schedule.

I started thinking about my activity schedule last month and have been eagerly waiting for the fall/winter schedule at nrg4life. I found I was injury/ache prone last year so I asked Grace how she stays so fit and defined. Grace exercises hours a day because she really enjoys it and her favorite activity is power yoga. The hours have changed this year so I can take both evening yoga classes. Fred wants to do some intense kayaking in the Cooks next year so I'll be doing bootcamp to improve my upper body strength. Still enjoying Zumba so that's twice a week and I want to do an advanced step because Grace may add some dimensional routines which are a blast. I also want to do a core routine everyday. My Yoga Online has some very good short core focused routines that I'll be using.

Well that takes me away from the kitchen but what about stocking the kitchen for when I'm home? Fall is horrible for snacking, somewhere inside me is a bear that wants to bulk up for hibernation:) It's really important to have healthy snacks and some kind of meal plan since I exercise during supper hour. This year it looks like there will be lots of stir-fries and we'll probably end up with quesidillas again. I would like to use our slow cooker more but it makes a lot of food and the more food available the more likely we are to take excessive serving sizes.

Exercise is an important part of my winter activity and not just for calories burned. Think about it, a chocolate bar takes almost an hour of hard activity to balance. No the benefits are getting out to see people, relieving stress through activities and keeping busy to prevent boredome eating.

What are you doing to get ready for winter?

Breaking a personal rule

2010-09-04T06:42:00.000-06:00

Hopefully this isn't the slippery slope into ethics failure but I feel compelled to blog about work. While work doesn't define who or what I am, it is somewhere I spend a lot of time and have a lot of emotional investment in. News that catches my eye is elevator deaths and food safety violations. I am always disappointed but not surprised when news headlines are followed by reports from employees that they tried to communicate with management about near misses but were ignored. I see this all the time.

Working for a large company I can really see the disconnect between the "slow down for safety" coming from the top down, the desire for manpower at the worker and line supervisor to work safely and the continuing drive to optimize production at all levels in between; the classic organizational culture vs. climate problem. After 10 years of trying to create a safety climate with specific training to most management, there is still a struggle to create a safety culture at the operations management level. There are metrics for shipping, receiving and incidents but without a buy in from that OpMan there is incomplete metrics on near misses for both safety and food safety.

My, should have seen this coming, moment was with regard to product quality. Operating parameters verifications were routinely off spec but operations management believed it was just due to operational changes so disregarded the specs creating all sorts of problems. After years of working with a proactive management I couldn't truly believe that I was now working with a reactive management team. Even now that operations are back near the conditions they had been, operations management seems to believe that what happened was inevitable.

Is a safety incident also inevitable? Our operations manager is minimally involved with safety. He hasn't attended safety training since coming to our location. He skips safety events for employees in favour of production related tasks setting an example that encourages short cuts; kiboshes local safety initiatives that haven't been top down mandated; nods in tacit agreement with a safety violation and has a colleague doing damage control (oh he doesn't phrase things right) after he displays a stunningly negative safety attitude. Will he still be here when the fruits of his labours mature?

In a company with multiple locations, the only true way to measure the of each location is incidents. Upper management wants to believe that all is well; location management is ethical (or at least following the company ethics guideline) and that the workers are just jamming for more money or expensive upgrades that have no payback for the stock holder. Line supervisors are stuck in the middle, on the hook for incidents while being bypassed by management when determining operations.

Atheist, Accomodationist, more ists for the mill

2010-08-24T16:24:00.000-06:00

One of the interesting things about living in Canada is that we are a secular state in spite of having God in our constitution. There are a lot of churches and apparently our Prime Minister is a church goer. I say apparently because he doesn't talk a lot about his private life. In any case, we really we have more of a Christian culture than burgeoning Christ based theocracy. Sometimes reading about religion in the US is like reading about a different world and because they are such a h-u-g-e influence on Canadian culture I fear religion in Canada becoming radicalized.

I think about this because of a few themes in the blogosphere that I follow; accomodation vs atheism, Phil Plait's don't be a dick talk at TAM8 and Park 51 There is so much disingenuity when discussing these topics that are really linked by religious in grouping.

First a little about atheism. It means one doesn't believe god(s) exist. Any of them. Ever. Most atheists are honest enough to admit that if a god actually showed up they would have to renounce atheism. That doesn't mean they would have to worship that god, just accede that it is one. Atheist probably don't have any more in common than any group that is defined by one characteristic. One hopes that atheism is a decision based on examining facts but it could just be the way you were brought up. Many atheists are secular humanist and passionate about human rights and justice. Some aren't. Some are outspoken, some soft spoken and some non-spoken.

So first the Accomodation vs Atheism thing. Why do accomodationists (and my main exposure is Chris Mooney) like to demonize passionate atheists writers and bloggers? Why frequently joining with the religious in totally missing the point of a gnu atheist demonstration then expect respect from them? PZ Myers/Crackergate is a really good example. Accomodationist and religious alike focus on the stake through the host while ignoring the back story. PZ stepped up when a student was assaulted in a church for handling a host that a friend brought back to show, then expelled. Assault and expel a student for looking at a host - pick on an adult staking a host. Immature is marauding into a church service; victim-less crime is a picture of a host, page from a Qua'an and the God Delusion with a spike through them. And I have to say, I have gone to RCC church many times and NEVER seen bizarre behaviour of people watching to see if the host is eaten or prevented someone from showing it to another - things must be very different in Florida.

Then there's the don't be a dick thing. I can't see how people say they don't get it. Again PZ is a good example. Pharyngula is a great unmoderated blog; there is a lot of swearing, aggression and dismissal of religion there. If someone tries to evangelize there, that person must be able to logically argue with new points to be respected. Critics like to point at PZ as an angry "dick" atheist. I suppose he is if you are insulted by the idea that people don't believe gods exist. On the other hand, I can recognize dick commenters on his site. If you are an isolate atheist, you may think you have to be this outspoken to be included in the gnu atheist "club" and *talk* to people like this. The internet confers anonymity and it's pretty easy to be much more abrasive on line than you are in real life. Be aware, not everyone reads the same sites as you.

And Park 51. I'm not Muslim but I am horrified by the moronic things the protesters are saying so I can well believe that radical Muslim groups are happy to have recruiting help courtesy of the Teabaggers. And this idiot rhertoric has leaked into Canada. When I mentioned the center and said what about the Muslims that died by 9/11 my Dad actually asked if I meant the hijackers. Really!?!?! I didn't know Muslims were prevented from having jobs in the WTC or being emergency responders.

Sometimes I have to step back from the internet.

The first sign of getting old is using the phrase when I was young

2010-08-22T09:58:00.000-06:00

I've always smiled at the emails that go around asking what you remember even though I'm having more in common with my Dad than I used to. I'm also having a heck of a time looking at people and guessing their age. When I got IDed at 29 I thought it was nuts but I now understand now hard it is to visually tell ages. I generally divide into kids, young adults, "my age" which seems to span a 30 year range, parent's age and wow you've lived a long time old. I don't think about it a lot because I consider stage of life to be more important than age.

So I did found discussion in Slate about Twentysomethings to be fun to read. This is at least the third time (each separated by a decade or so) I've read about how twentysomethings are kind of lame for being different than the people now in their 30s like being 30 is magically gives you something other than the bragging rights of getting there. I read these discussions to learn if anything new and came upon a couple of interesting ideas (mostly from comments).

One is the introduction of a developmental stage between adolescence and adulthood. I suppose that would be a good thing. As our society has more time to age it makes sense to recognize stages of growth but consider this. Many people have problems understanding how juvenile crime works - limiting terms and sealing records due to the youth being unable to fully understand the consequences of their actions (IANAL). I'm not sure creating another "division" serves any value. The other is a comment about kids these days have too many choices and no clear path to adulthood. I'm not sure how you can have too many choices unless one isn't given the tools to properly make decisions and isn't that what parenting is about? Waa - society isn't as authoritarian as you want.

I get the part about wanting to both criticize and be part of the current twentysomething cohort. Who wants to grow old - especially in our current society. Not only are we judged by how old we look but it's easier to escape youthful mistakes than in the "olden days". Mobility and secular society have made shunning a less effective social tool. Work seems easier. At tech school, I learned how to make an analytical GC column and computer courses revolved around learning to program. Now it's more computer courses focusing on learning how to use specific programs - easier maybe? Younger folks have more time to get finances somewhere decent - let's ignore the huge burden of student loans and how profitability is worshiped over job creation even in the public sector.

Supported squat, a sign of aging.

I'm not seeing the difference between kids now days and when I was a YA. We are lucky enough to live when being 20 something is the time to try jobs, maybe get ahead, try relationships and hopefully find yourself in terms of ethics and self actualization. I admire that the people I know take their time more, both at work and in their personal lives, not rushing into tasks or relationships (personal or work). I have lived long enough now to know that people can change and learn from mistakes and it's only by luck that we avoid serious consequences of the thoughtless stuff we all do.

And defining adulthood? Maybe it should just be when a person figures out they are not the center of everyone else's life and takes the consequence for their actions. No blaming things on someone/thing or expecting a supernatural being to make thing better.

I have the exercise habits...now about balanced eating

2010-08-19T08:56:00.003-06:00

I'm lucky to have really good exercise mentors. While my parents didn't particularly encourage me in team sports, one of my youngest memories is my mom working out with Ed Allen with I was a pre-schooler. Her example of making time to exercise is one of the things I really admire. Through my YA years I remember her skipping (on a cement floor - yuck) for 10 minutes most evenings to get her exercise in. My M-I-L could not be more totally different physically than my mom was yet she too has a strong exercise history. My partner's family did a lot of outdoor activity while he was growing up including fishing and hiking. Unfortunately going to the gym was pretty intimidating for women in the '70s and '80 so activity fell off in the winter. Her group activity used to be bridge but is now water aerobics sometimes yoga. How great is that when she's in her '70s?

Of course physical activity is only part of the health story. I am a proponent of the calories out must be same or more than calories in or one will gain weight and all calories are the same (in terms of energy). Yes you may have a faster or slower metabolism, have food sensitivities that physically affect you but in the end, if you eat more calories than your body uses then expect to end up putting extra physical demands on your body through weight gain.

Even though I know this, I eat a lot of nutritionally empty calories. In spite of all the scare chain emails, I do use sweetener because I really like sweets. Like everyone (I hope) the more I think about a specific food the more I crave it and feel hard done by if I can't eat it. The effect of the piling on calories from pop, cake and candy is much more immediate and difficult to counter act than the use of sweeteners (I may change my ind after reading this article from the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition). I prefer Splenda because I can bake with it. Each packet is 12 mg and as long as I don't consume the equivalent of 65 packets a day, I'm inside the FDA guidelines for exposure. Since I do not have phenylketonuria I don't have to be overly concerned about the effects of aspartame either. For me, drinking nutritionally valuable liquids is difficult if not impossible. I would rather eat fruit than drink fruit juice although I enjoyed the eggnog-esque smoothie by Booster Juice last winter.

I've never really followed the Canada Food Guide but I have followed research about values of different types of food. I think because of school and our climate, I think of fall as the time to change things up and create new habits. I will be evaluating my exercise regime due to some chronic injury and I also to tune up my eating habits to decrease risk of chronic disease. I enjoy cooking and now that summer grilling season will be over soon, I need to get some good recipes in hand for comfort eating.

Stop looking for the magic diet bullet!

2010-08-07T10:13:00.000-06:00

Feministe has some guest bloggers right now and one blogged about advances in obesity research and how it could be used to castigate pregnant women. Cue the anti science comments.

There are a few problems with talking about obesity research. One is that most are discussing reports (news clips or PR releases) of the research the other is that obesity is a hot-button topic. Women have been rated on looks for so long - and it's rebounded with a vengeance currently due to hypersexuality. Most people have a bias if they are interested enough to read a science paper; I know I do. I follow many obesity research blogs because I want to know what my risks are and what effects of those risks are as I get older. I want to start taking the pill cocktail with each meal as late as possible so I try to keep up with research.

What are the risks of being obese? Weight and health are related. More weight makes your muscles and joint work harder. But fat isn't just like carrying around a bag of rice. My interest in fat cells developed when I noticed, during peri-menopause, that my weight affected whether I menstruated. Then when my SO had elevated cholesterol levels the doctor suggested trying weight loss to see if he could avoid starting on Lipitor for awhile. 10 kgs lighter and no meds. Sure enough fat cells have a metabolic effect. Recent research shows that obesity related diabetes is can be related to metabolites from fat cells causing the liver to become insulin resistant. It's long been known that dietary fat can increase cholesterol levels and increase risk for heart disease. Combine the increase in cholesterol levels with the increased difficulty in being active when obese and the risk can skyrocket. Turns out that fat cells become a big problem when they are overloaded and having more fat cells can help with that storage. All of these things are counter-intuitive.

We're entering a very important time in obesity research and weight management. Food companies are becoming much better at marketing poor quality food as healthy.Spokes persons to tout the "no bad food" mantra (who doesn't want to believe that) while emphasizing the possibility of risk in quality foods. There is bad food : it's when the health risks intrinsic to the food outweigh the calories consumed. Yes an Aero bar IS a source of calcium but is it the best source? Red Licorice has no fat but it isn't calorie free so what are those calories from? Exercise is not medicine. BMI is taking a hit since most people outside the BMI limits insist they are muscled way more than the population BMI is based on.

Isn't is less expensive to try and eat well than to take a bunch of medication later?

My SO and I have each lost 7- 10 kg and maintained it for the past 9 years. We did it different ways (low fat vs. food/calorie logging) because we have different belief systems about what works. The reality is that reducing excessive eating lowered weight. The thing we had in common was an increased awareness of what and how much we put in our mouths. I struggle with this much more since I cannot casually skip meals. This has become a lifestyle change reflected in our grocery lists and restaurant choices.

Back to the research finding from the Feministe post - pregnancy is a very difficult time, not just the physical changes (and possibly permanent changes in family life) but the bizarre loss of privacy. It seems that since women no longer hide away they are fair game for everyone with an opinion. (and strangers touching bellies - just yuck). As research continues about how fat tissue physically affects health it is important to monitor how fat affects fetus development. Research provides better perinatal care as well as (in an ideal world) shifting health resources for an aging population. This study isn't saying anything new, it's giving more reasons for encourage pregnant women to be aware of what they are eating.

all kinds of -ists

2010-08-01T09:48:00.000-06:00

I've always thought of myself as a secular humanist. I'm not sure if that's what exactly I am but it's how I identify. I don't care if you get inspiration for ethical behaviour from Grimm's Fairy Tales as long as you don't expect me to worship your source or expect your source to top laws that apply to everyone. Part of being a humanist to me is to try to support groups that make the world a better place.

That desire also leads me to identify as a feminist. One of the ongoing random arguments in my home space is when SO makes a comment that implies that papa x can't come out and play after working so hard all day because mama x demands papa x be ...OMG ...a parent. Our domestic unit now uses terms like flight attendant, letter/mail carrier, fisher, spouse that, at least mentally, takes the gender role out of the job. Guys who use the 10 weeks of paternal leave available gets my support because they are embracing their family role. If woman will trust me with her kids, I will look after/monitor them when she needs a break. To me feminism is about fighting patriarchal privilege by, at minimum, recognizing it and working to overcome that privilege.

As is frequently the case, this post at Feministe about embracing the label of mama'i rather than feminist was made more thought provoking by the comments. I am not black nor USian so much of the anger does not resonate with my experience, I can only empathize. I can understand the need to redefine feminism because is it so white and US-centric and has become a strawman to burn in the media. Much like art, music, socialism and most cultural changes, a formal feminist movement requires a group of comparatively affluent people wanting to initiate change. Most of society are busy just living their lives; affluent people have the time and resources to advocate for change. The unfortunate thing is they also end up defining the movement initially and frequently the movement fizzles out as the next generation thinks the battle has been won. It seems to me that the biggest difference between the black civil rights and feminist movement in the US is the recognition by the majority of blacks that the fight is on-going regardless of what mainstream media tries to say. Too many women are ready to narrowly define the feminist movement and call it done. Men are more than happy to go along with that because they don't have to try and change their thinking.

Which leads me to another type of -ist; the "New Atheist". The NA is an expected extension of the Enlightenment movement which discovered less and less need for a god to explain the world or for a brutal justice system based on otherness...and a topic for different post.

Narrowly averted BIG DEBT

2010-07-27T19:28:00.001-06:00

I have some nice stuff - especially since I like to see big numbers in my bank account and not on my credit card bill but lately, I had a bug about buying stuff. Maybe I felt the need to reward myself for something so far undiscovered or I was just bored. Two things came up for consideration and the weirdest thing is that I like what I have even though I was on the front edge when I purchased (sort of like picking Beta instead of a VHS player)

The first up on the block for upgrading was Luigi (my Omnia 2). When I last upgraded, there were apps for Audible, ereader, Slingbox, etc that were only available for WM so it made sense to get a WM phone. And I really like Luigi. Huge screen, fast, lots of memory, camera flash; what could happen to change my mind? Well MS announced that nothing on WM7 would work on WM 6.5 and below.

Luigi's new clothes - much cheaper than new phone

Most developers instantly stopped producing updated software. Yes old apps still work for WM and I can use web pages but stand alone apps are popular for a reason. I really noticed when I started using Google Reader. I never got into RSS feeds but I really like how Google Reader lets me flip through blogs of interest. Using the webpage really sucks on Luigi. I thought maybe I should get a new Samsung Galaxy S. Hmmm. Crisis averted! I was looking through OpenMarket and found speeed reader Now I have an icon on my main page for both Twitter (MoTweets) and Google Reader. Combined with my other stuff I can't even start to need a new smart phone.

That was the cheap crisis.

Passat is more practical than our other drive

I thought I might like a different car. I have a '06 Passat with 4motion. It's pretty awesome. When I first saw the VW Passat on the street, I loved it. When I decided to trade in my GTI I took the opportunity to check out a mildly used one. It's green with beige leather. It has lights that turn when you go round corners; a lane change mode on the turn signal (1 touch, 3 flashes), sat nav and those 30 cool things they added to the Passat. I checked the specs and yesss they upgraded the engine to actually have performance. I drove into the city with one car and came home with another.

But I had seen the BMW Gran Turismo in New Scientist and really liked the styling (other than the pedestrian friendly front end). I've seen another sweet BMW, the X6. Then Honda came out with the Crosstour. Not really hot on the front end but we have a dealership in town advertising 0.9% financing and I'm liking Norden a lot less than I did when I had my GTI. So I test drove the Honda. Nice drive but not nicer than my car. I feel like I'm giving up a lot of luxe features for a newer vehicle. Then I checked the balance of my car loan. Another crisis averted! I washed and cleaned my Passat and it's like new. In a couple years I may trade it for an Acura ZDX if I could ever get used to *that* front end. If VW has something similar I could also head look at it too at a different dealership.

I'm glad my cheap side came through again. Truly none of the cars I could afford evoke as much emotion as my Passat did. While I would like the X6, I had to get my Passat flat-bedded to the city because of a steering column lock failure (yay warranty; yay failing in the garage). The truck driver said he hauls lots of BMWs in. Beemers - still finicky after all these years.

I loved this season of Dr. Who

2010-07-25T11:16:00.000-06:00

I haven't really settled down with a theme for the blog other than I'm getting old:) so I thought I would lighten up with some TV chatter. Dr. Who used to be shown late on Saturday night on PBS; we watched it to relax while at tech school. Until recently, the new series was shown on CBC and pretty well pre-empted at the drop of a hat. Still I managed to see a most of the shows with Rose as the companion and the last couple of season with David Tennant on BBC Canada. Now it's being shown on Space where it's always belonged - yay.

I've been watching the current season on Saturday and the previous seasons on weeknights. It's really interesting to see how different the doctors are. The 9th Doctor didn't actually seem to like humans - more like he was watching a train wreck. The 10th Doctor was coloured by his love of Rose. I read somewhere that Tennant was the emo Doctor and I have to agree. When he wasn't being crazy he was sad. He did seem to get over it when Donna was his companion but I found the 10th doctor to be bitter and unlikeable in his last season (4 specials) so was more than ready for #11.

For a lot of viewers (certainly the ones commenting on io9) this was the first Doctor that was younger than them and they wondered how it would be pulled off. Well the Doctors are generally good actors so that should be the first hint. I was waiting eagerly for the season to begin and have to say this was a very good season and here's why.

Solid writing and acting - Matt Smith quickly created a character that was similar enough for continuity yet different enough. The episodes had enough mix of stand alone adventure and arc stories. Amy and Rory are a great companion team and much more equal in importance that past teams because Amy does love Rory not the Doctor. Perhaps some viewers couldn't relate to Amy and Rory because of gender role reversal - usually it the man who seems nonchalant towards their partner and goes adventuring while the woman that is along because of the emotional connection.

The season finale was great the way that shows for the US/Canada should emulate. If anything happened (ie. entire crew killed by an asteroid) the season could stand on it's own. Had this been a US production the penultimate episode would have been the season ender and the season finale would have been the first show of the 2nd season. This is much better. I mention io9 earlier and their article on the season finale prompted this post. To wrap up I just wanted to reply to some of the question points in the article and comments and how they were resolved to me.

*Doctor saves the world with a time paradox - to me he was using a tool that let him move in the confined space of the diminishing universe. Had he taken the TARDIS that would have created a big paradox because it was exploding.
*Importance of Amy's wedding day - she had to remember the Doctor. That was also where she was supposed to be. The whole thing with Rory was she had to focus on that relationship because it was the jump off for remembering the rest of the universe.
*This doctor still seems to be settling into himself. Instead of just going on adventures with a companion, almost right away he has to deal with something totally unknown, a crack in the universe. Now that I'm watching the previous seasons I can see what a departure this is.
* The deal with the stars is they were the first things to go from the perspective of earth. Most people don't look at them anyway so it does point out how special Amy is.

The Doctor took a big risk to get the universe rebooted. While he did everything he could to get Amy to remember him there was always a possibility that she wouldn't. And what a great way to touch on previous episodes without doing the "letters home" thing that Stargate does. I really looking forward to the next season.

Lastly thanks Charlie Anders. I've enjoyed reading your recaps and even with the spoilers it really whetted my desire to watch the show rather than thinking I knew all I needed to.

Smell, scent or stink

2010-07-18T16:56:00.000-06:00

I get inspired by the strangest things. On an open thread kicked off by the Old Spice commercial people started talking about how far away you should be able to smell perfume then it roamed onto the smell of cigarette smoke.

I am very sensitive to perfumes but I really like them so I explore different ways of wearing them. One time I tried a perfumed hair mousse. Tip - if you are sensitive to scents, don't put a bunch in your hair. It made me nauseous and took me quite awhile to figure out the source of my illness. Luckily a quick shower fixed me right up. I have tried and chucked several products and have settled on a compromise. All my cosmetics and hair products are unscented or low scented. I use shower soaps are by Philosophy because they have lots of variety but the perfume doesn't stick to my skin or hair.Scented body lotions are okay as long as I wash my hands after putting them on. I have found a couple of perfumes that work with my body chemistry so if I'm using a spray I don't use it on my wrists or head area. I also really like rollerballs for control.

I'm a big fan of small scent foot print. I like to smell my perfume occasionally but don't think anyone else should be able to unless they are standing very close to me. I'm okay with larger foot prints in large spaces with reasonable ventilation (locker rooms, labs etc). I'm not okay at all with them in workout situations and end up moving away from that person.

And what about cigarette smoke, it may seem different but it isn't to me. I used to smoke and I realize that it's a legal activity, yada yada. Where I live there is no smoking in enclosed public places, including bars, restaurants and casinos and I work in a non smoking facility. I don't care if other people choose to smoke as long as I don't have to breathe their second hand smoke much but I am surprised at how far the smell can carry and linger. I won't buy a house that was owed by a smoker and scrutinized my current vehicle (a used Passat) carefully. I love that car but had it been owed by a smoker I would have passed.

How noticeable is smoke to me? Someone smoked in their vehicle with their window down and and I could smell it in my car. I can smell smoke when there is a smoker in a vehicle in front of me. I can definitely smell when someone has just had a smoke and when a smoker has been in a room (not smoking in it, being in it) I am appalled that I thought my parents didn't smell smoke on me when I was illicitly smoking. I guess they were picking their battles.

And what about the Old Spice guy? What a voice and those videos looked like they would be fun to shoot. Old Spice itself? Sorry, too smelly. highly scented body wash and deodorant is just as icky on guys as gals to me.

The lazy days of summer

2010-07-15T19:58:00.002-06:00

Summer is a difficult time for me. In the winter I do a variety of exercise classes ranging from step aerobics to pilates to yoga. This builds cardiac health, muscle tone and flexibility and, most importantly, I have a lot of friends that work out so it's a great way to socialize. In summer I walk to work if it's not raining, golf and take only a couple of classes for fun. In the past it's been yoga but for now it's Zumba which is way more fun than I thought it would be. Since I totally change my activities I lose some muscle tone and, dare I say it, gain some weight.

This summer has been hard as there's been quite a bit of stress at work (not sure why exactly) and has marked the return of stress eating. For the first time in ages I had an whole small DQ Blizzard in one sitting and a regular onion rings on a different occasion. The horror! The weirdest part is the effect on my self image. Naturally the first place to loose tone is my tummy so I have this irrational image of me as a much bigger person even though my regular clothes still fit albeit a little differently than in the winter. Note to self - pretty well everyone looks large if they stand less than a foot away from a mirror. Get over it.

I give myself a pass in the summer because I know I'll be active again in the fall. This fall could be different though because I seem to have a chronic i-band injury that's made it difficult to keep up my exercise routine. Work out too hard and it creeps into lower back pain. The main thing for me to remember is that it's not my weight by my metabolic and cardiac fitness that matters.

I mentioned before that I read the Obesity Panacea blog. I would rather be effective than indulge in wishful thinking and these guys report on the latest research.

If I'm going to exercise for cardiac health, go hard. I've never understood that fat burning zone thing because if I stay if it I feel like I'm just coasting. The group leader where I exercise moved away from the heart rate charts to "how hard to feel that you've worked" way of assessing effort. Aim for a 7 or 8 (10 being near death). This year I'm planning on doing Bootcamp and Zumba (haven't you danced hard for an hour? It's work!) for most of my cardiac work outs. I'm also going back to yoga for flexibility.

New research has shown that how full your fat cells are determines your metabolic fitness. As long as they are not bursting you're ok. So you can be metabolically healthy without a low weight. That's good to know. Still, I want to eat "right". A higher fiber breakfast should last longer and could help burn calories more efficiently. I weigh myself every morning and if I drift up a kilo in a couple of weeks I scrutinize my eating to see where the junk food has crept in. Personal finding - those 100 calorie snacks are killers. I suppose they are better than eating a bag of chips but I can eat a much wider variety of snack items (a few pretzels, sliced strawberries and a caramel for instance) and stay under that 100 cal.

This winter will be interesting as I try to maintain fitness levels while making some changes to exercise styles to accommodate the payback for an active youth.

oooo- implosion at The Intersection too

2010-07-10T12:58:00.002-06:00

After Pepsigate at Scienceblogs, I decided to get science news/opinion more from the Discover blogs network. Now that I am I remember why I didn't make this a primary source before. I love reading Bad Astronomy and most of the other blogs but The Intersection just seemed to get weirder and weirder as Chris Mooney got off the topic of science reporting and into the badness of "New Atheists"

I admit that when I first heard of the New Atheist (NA) movement I thought it was kind of dumb - why does one have to declare that s/he doesn't believe in a specific version of god, religion is a private thing? Well in the US it's not a private thing. Evangelicals continuously try to insert God into everything regardless of relevance and insist that it trumps reality. Why can't New Atheists be nicer? I'm not a tactful person but since I'm Canadian I'm automatically nice (ha, ha). After going to a few sites like Pharyngula I could easily see why the bloggers come across as abrasive. They are outspoken, the commentators are even more outspoken and there is always someone dragging tired religious tropes into conversations about science, ethics or both. After repeating yourself a few billion times, you get abrupt - with the anonymity of being on line you can get really obnoxious in your abruptness. People are really eager to interpret actions negatively because for many, not believing in their God is threatening in itself. But I've not seen video from talks by Dawkins, Myers or any of the other high profile NAs that show them being disrespectful, or even impatient, of questioners. Actually I have been encouraged to examine my belief system and get up-to-date with several science areas.

How is this relevant? I stopped reading The Intersection after this post and scrolling through comments. Let me get this right, some guy (I'll call him LIAR) claims to have seem some scientists being insulting to religious folks and this comment gets elevated to the subject of a blog post? Really? LIAR is make further claims about systematic rudeness of non-believing scientists toward the non-scientists they are supposed to be educating/working with. Surely there would be some surreptitious video of a conversation - after all this is the Youtube generation - but nope. Nothing. Now it turns out that not only was the story made up(!?!) but many of the comments following the post were by LIAR using different names! And a website connected to LIAR was also blogged by one person using several names.

Mooney has gone public with this which is good but his focus is on whether the person exists and protecting that person's RL reputation from what was done on the Internet. Nowhere does Mooney recognize that his really big problem is that he didn't actually check on the reality of the claim the LIAR made. Not saying people aren't people (and thus sometimes obnoxious) but that when people are doing work related things they tend to have a work related face on so the whole story never rang true for me.

So what now. Disco blog networks isn't perfect and some of my favorite bloggers are on the scienceblogs network. So back I go.

My internet has changed!

2010-07-09T20:31:00.000-06:00

There was a big implosion at Scienceblogs about the inclusion of a blog by Pepsico about called "Food Frontiers". Pepsico was going to pay for the privilege of hosting its blog on the site. It wasn't introduced to the existing bloggers well and bystanders got to see, and chime in on, the messy admin stuff usually kept behind the scenes. No surprise that a science librarian would have a thoughtful viewpoint with great overview of the kerfuffle.

Zuska looked at an equivalent media decision made by Ms.Magazine when they accepted advertising. Apparently Scienceblogs didn't make the same kind of thoughtful assessment of the effect of this particular advertising stream then bowed to the pressure from bloggers and readers. To an outsider, skepticism appears to be reserved for religion, corporations and conservatives. Pepsico is corporate therefore bad and should be summarily expelled before posting anything of substance.

The person writing an opinion piece in the Guardian explained why she threw this out to the wider world. Seed has shown a pattern of lack of integrity in terms of editorial content for both Seed and the Scienceblogs network. This explains rapid exodus of bloggers, who seemed on the edge of leaving in any case, as well as the lack of following any kind of pre-existing media rules about how to integrate paid with free blogs with full disclosure.

I thought the blog sounded interesting. Ideally the researchers would have time during work to blog about anything that was not confidential research, PR people could ensure that researchers read/answer more specific comments and we could all learn how food research is done. Pepsico brand includes fruit drinks and Quaker Oats. Like it or not food for the masses is big industry* now. The food industry does a lot of research into preservation, added nutrient value and should fund more basic research. With the right people this could have been window into a world we don't usually see.

As for science news. Scienceblogs was starting to be kind of American echo chamber for me. It seems like several bloggers would comment in the same way on the same topic. Lots of the writers moved on to Discovery Magazine's blog network so I have too. And I listened to my first Dr Kiki Science Hour and loved it. Sometimes you have to be shoved out of your comfort zone.

*disclosure, I work for a multi-national agri-business.

Smartphones again

2010-07-06T17:17:00.000-06:00

I read on my twitter feed that WM7 may roll out sooner than later. The way MS is loosing mobile base they really should be out in time for the new school year – late August to early September if they want to recoup any market share. But what do I know, I'm just a user that is happy with the versatility of WM 6.5 and the variety of places to get apps.

But this is not the “Why MS Why are you abandoning geeks for WM7” rant. I know why, the masses are geeks.

This is the - is it ethical to let people have sorta smart phones like iPhones without including a fairly extensive chat about costs and features – rant prompted by this article .

I don't have a lot of sympathy for this guy with his $8K cell phone bill. How can you take your phone out of country without checking out how much it will cost? Marketplace (CBC) aired a show, in December of 2009, called Canada's Worse Cellphone Bill where they polled a bunch of people who racked up huge charges and how they have little recourse. And it's not as if Virgin Mobile is hiding information. Look it's part of the main header when you check out plans.

and they did him the favour of cutting him off when they noticed so he only incurred 3 days of charges instead of 7 he wanted to.

Do I think this is a hard lesson, absolutely I think the consequences are out of line with the actions and yet ... I cannot believe I am defending a corporation. If cell phone providers are expected to excuse all these overages by people who can't read contracts and stay within their plan, how can costs drop for the rest of us? One occurance I can see negotiating but people aren't going to complain about a single accidental overage.

So what can you do? I got Luigi because I wanted to take him places. So far he's been to the South Pacific and the US.

When I went to the South Pacific I got a local SIM card so I could make calls and text. I could also use the GPS, connect up to WiFi networks for internet use and use my regular e-book and audible software. Did I mention I'm running WM 6.5 and can do all this?

When I went to the US I did the simple thing, I just turned off the phone element and used it as a PDA. Had I been somewhere with free WiFi I would have connected up but I was busy so I was happy to just take a few notes, add stuff to my calendar and start some rough spreadsheets and outlines for docs when I got home.

Should providers tell you about roaming charges, long distance and the penalties of going over your plan? Yes they should and I think they do a reasonably good job. I've gotten the talk every time I've changed plans, what's included, what's not, don't tether as it's very expensive. It's just that people aren't listening. They're all excited about their new toy and all the stuff it can do. Perhaps they should re-iterate the information on each bill or include cost saving tips or something. Or just not sell someone a phone without give a course and quiz first :)

Why I like working in science

2010-06-30T20:52:00.010-06:00

I've always wanted to be a scientist - well since grade 4 when I wanted to be an astronaut. Then I wanted to be a marine biologist. Then I lost momentum. My dad wanted me to be a doctor so I went into medical imaging. After sometime out of school I went back, did chemical technology then did my undergrad degree by correspondence thru U Waterloo. Zuska had a post on women choosing science as a career path. What is so great about working in science and would I do it again?

I have to say absolutely I would do it again and if anything I would have switched to chemistry after one year of medical imaging so I could get into a field I enjoy faster. Would I encourage others to choose the same path? Not if they are looking for fame and/or fortune.

I've found working in a lab to be a good mix of working with people and working alone. I've met some really great coworkers and mentors while having the usual mix of bosses. I've had opportunities to take leadership roles myself. I like learning new stuff and continue to do so after all this time but there's routine as well. While I'm disappointed (yet lucky since I get motion sick at the drop of a hat) at not going into space, I did get to analyse data for the Canadian Space Agency. And now I'm in the corporate world, the money is pretty good especially compared to traditional fields.

There has been concern about tempting women into science and engineering as well as much (legitimate) handwringing over the loss of women at the graduate level. Certainly when I was at the Uni stage we had Women in Science and Engineering groups that focused on mentoring undergraduates to at least stay in science/eng and perhaps consider grad school. Twenty years on, I think things have gotten more difficult for young women thinking of the sciences. Society is on an anti-intellectual, conservative swing where fitting in by being womanly is more valued than anything else one could contribute. Some women seem to think we're in a post-feminist age where women have gained equality so it's time to choose to focus on family and creating the perfect home complete with scrapbooking. Other successful women seem to think of themselves like Queen Victoria - she could be queen but mere women had to be protected from themselves.

In some ways we are lucky. With more learning options you can indulge your interest in science without becoming a scientist - just use google scholar instead of google.com in your quest for science knowledge.

Love, marriage and relationships

2010-06-26T06:32:00.000-06:00

I was in the US this week for work and got to speak with many different people than I usually do while travelling: a Canadian sales rep (Sean who looked at my Cook Islands holiday snaps), an American sales rep (Dave) and a female high school student. Relationships came up in all conversations and really stuck in my head - probably because we just celebrated our 24 wedding anniversary and it was mentioned that same sex marriage is 5 years old in Canada.

I've never understood why people are against same sex marriage and got an opportunity to talk briefly about it with a conservative colleague for CA and in turn think about it some more. He took the stand that same sex marriage opens the door to so much other behaviour and asked if I had thought about the implications of my stand ... duh duh duhnnn. I asked if he meant cross species since that seems to be a talking point and I said our human rights legislation applies to just humans not animals. He came out with the statement that there should be marriage and civil unions and I agree - just not the way he's thinking.

I think traditional description of marriage is the perfect term currently in use in Canada. It's the blending of kin and assets into a discrete recognizable social and legal unit. Since it is an open ended contract, I agree there should be some age limits to make sure partners are aware of the responsibilities. Great step forward is that the partners are the people in the marriage instead of a patriarch/matriarch and an outsider. Since it's a legal entity, there should be a specified manner to recognize the partnership and there is, a marriage certificate has to be filed.

For the folk who are religious you can have the use of holy matrimony. You can use that term to exclude whoever you want because it's applicable to only your religious silo (yes that is a new business term coming into common use). Most people who have been exposed to religious institutions will know what you mean. Still you have to file a marriage certificate for the union to be legally recognized.

But what about civil unions? Every once in awhile the idea of a "term marriage" comes up and I think this is a good use for civil unions. I don't think it would be used for romantic relationships because everyone likes to think their love will last forever. It could help people form non-sexual kin groups for social support and extension of benefits such as insurance and financial considerations (loans, mortgages). It would benefit people, including siblings, who find themselves in crisis at the same time whether due to finances, sudden relationship changes or immigration.

I really like this idea of civil unions because it helps people form a social unit. I know it would be hard/impossible to monitor without a lot of intrusion into peoples personal lives. It would never fly in a country that has strong individualist tendencies but in a kinder gentler society perhaps it would.

Where I disagree with ... Neil deGrasse Tyson

2010-06-13T22:31:00.000-06:00

Neil deGrasse Tyson is an USian astrophysicist and well knows as a popularizer of science. I get to disagree with him because it's about the "two cultures" idea that was popularized by C.P. Snow (not astrophysics) and for this I am as qualified as he is to comment. A recent post at Uncertain Principles reminded me how much I disagree that with his statement "...that the scientists, by and large, know more liberal arts than the science that is known by liberal artists..". That is a pretty divisive statement designed to make science students feel exceptional.

It's easy to denigrate liberal arts and non-physical sciences. Most people can read/write a sentence and did at least finger painting in primary school. And it's easy to expect more from people in terms of science knowledge since, at least in a G8 country, we live in a technical world using computers, using science based medicine and ... well electricity. But how much does a science major really know about arts? Can they discuss artistic styles or do they just know what they like? Is baroque music the same as medieval music? What about stages of childhood development? Here's an easy one, what are the visual cues for a successful font - after all we all use computers.

There is a possibility that most US university students would be able to answer of these questions but I doubt it is true in Canada. Not because Canadian students are lacking but because universities have become more concerned with ensuring graduates are "job ready". Most undergraduates with a major in science, minor in science or math because they already know the language - like the difference between theory and Theory.

Science and art have more commonalities than differences. Exceptional art and innovative science rely on people making a creative jump to the next idea. Both use the past practices to build new concepts. As our society becomes more technical, knowledge of each will become more important. We will need to visit the sociological effect of changes, the ethics of innovation and how to communicate to laypeople. Different does not need to create a dicotomy. I worry more about the loss of legacy skills than the two cultures idea.

Radio in the background

2010-06-11T14:47:00.001-06:00

I grew up listening to AM radio, specifically CKLG in Vancouver, BC. It was the time of innovative morning shows – how else could you describe the fish heads ditty – and if you didn’t get happy soon after the clock radio went off you were clearly on the wrong station.

Radio has expanded to internet and satellite but I’m still listening to traditional radio except now it’s FM. We have a few choices around here; 2 stations with some guy’s name (in this case Wayne and Lloyd) and station named after an animal (The Goat – which came first the lack of animal choice or the GTO?). I listen to The Goat because the Wayne doesn’t come in at work and the DJs are better on The Goat anyway. Lloyd plays country.

The Goat’s Morning Breath is a guy/gal team of Chad and Erin. They chit chat, do intros and highlight weird news and it’s the way weird news it discussed that catches my attention because it may reflect how people think around here – although I’m not sure Chad is representative because he doesn’t seem conservative enough.

Two news stories pop to mind.

One is the story about a person infecting himself with a computer virus. Erin was incredulous saying she didn’t think a person could get a computer virus and I hadn’t read the story because the headline put me off since I know a person can’t get a computer virus. Chad *had* read the story and it turned out to be interesting enough that I waiting in the car to listen to the conversation. In case you didn’t read the research, someone injected a chip with a transmitter and a virus into his body then walked by wireless machines. He found he could spread the computer virus from his chip to another device; an interesting and scary result. I wouldn’t have known if I hadn’t heard it on the radio.

The other was the woman in New York who was suing an employer. She felt she was fired for refusing to wear different clothing at work that minimized her figure. Erin’s first comment was about the size of the woman’s ego and dismissed the possibility of there being a legitimate complaint. Chad looked at her picture, said she did have a good body and could see how she would be distracting. I thought she most likely has a case if a dress code specific to her is being implemented. Erin’s response put me off to the point that I didn’t bother to listen to the rest of the segment so I’ll never know.

I like the Morning Breath because I get a different spin on interesting articles I’ve frequently already read. I find it depressing that Erin’s role seems to be “Really? Wow!” since she is the only female DJ at the station.

Out of Office – Jealous I have a life?

2010-06-07T19:04:00.000-06:00

I read about an article in the Financial Times via Mike the Mad Biologist. These articles are written from two totally different viewpoints – the financial industry and academia. I seem to be lower management and I wanted to read the article in FT because I use OOORs whenever I am unlikely to answer email whether it’s because I’m out of office or just busy away from a computer. Oh my dog I even set messages in MS/Communicator to let people know that I’m not around and I use vm if I don't feel like being interrupted at a task. According to the FT I'm not focused - I'm a slacker!

I suppose if you need to be available so people know how much they need to have you around you could feel compelled to connected at all time – like being the only doctor in an isolated community. I don’t have that kind of role so I take the attitude that at any moment something could happen and I just would not be available – perhaps not ever again. As such, shouldn't I try to make sure that people can pick up my strings with minimal effort? I consider what I do at work to be necessary – although I could be mistaken – so why waste someone else’s time by having him/her re-invent the job instead of building and improving on what’s there?

As a matter of fact wouldn’t training the people I supervise make them feel more valued and more likely to be do their work ethically while building their self-esteem and making them more likely to take leadership roles if I’m not available. Wouldn’t this cut down on the pile of work waiting for me when I get back from holidays or conferences? Wouldn’t this be a win all around?

Gosh I almost decided to work part time!

I admit that most of the time I’ve just gone to another building and want to concentrate of one task. To me it’s a courtesy to let others know it may be more helpful for them to phone and in a way inform them that when I do talk with them they will have my full attention.

Any day I expect Lancet or some peer reviewed journal to publish a study showing that people who can’t set limits on their work life suffer from increased stress, poor self-esteem and unsatisfying relationships. Meanwhile I have a life away from work to enjoy.

When did vaccination become such a big deal?

2010-05-30T18:34:00.000-06:00

The news has been full of Andrew Wakefield, the man who launched the “MMR causes autism” debacle, and how he performed unethical research and has now been struck off the rolls in Britain. According to one TV report, his research had been debunked. Reading about his research it seemed like too small a sample size to really make draw any conclusions about. When it came out that he was creating an alternate vaccination for a competitor of the MMR shot, I thought he was too biased for his research to be accepted without many other studies confirming his results. When it came out that the medical results had been re-interpreted to back up his theory...this is one time the establishment actually worked to protect the public. None of that is the same as debunked but media creates sound bites.

I did read some comments and was amazed to find that there are people who think that those of us agreeing with vaccination don’t actually get them and even think they can tell people who have been vaccinated because they look dreary and weighed down by all the toxins in their bodies (maybe this is at the bottom of the increase in BMI too!) And I have to say – really?

My anecdata.

First vaccination (and most traumatic) memory was smallpox. Our nice Greek paediatrician thought he would administer this in the waiting room and came out with a H-U-G-E needle that I was convince was going through my arm (at least). He insisted he was just going to scratch me with it and proceeded to do so. Worst side effect: extreme embarrassment about making such a fuss over nothing. BTW I know this was a nice doctor because he told our mom that we didn't have to eat anything we didn't want to. How great was that fo a kid growing up in the 60s!

Most recent vaccination memory: H1N1 flu shot. This finally prompted me to get the seasonal flu shot as well since I had been free-riding on my acquaintances and co-worker’s flu shots. Side effect – arm hurt for couple of days. Complained about it at my exercise class that night and others who had been vaccinated within the past couple of days said it would be that way for a day. None of us seemed weighed down by toxins.

It’s pretty easy to get caught up in a too much too soon mind set. I have dogs that required annual vaccination because they stay in kennels. I worried that they were being exposed to vectors that they normally wouldn’t be (which is kind of the point of vaccinations – pre-emptive exposure for the immune system). Then I realized that they are dogs and eat dead rotting things and immune systems are made to work with that. Dogs are not children but at the least they are entities under my care and I am responsible for ensuring they are not exposed needlessly to harm.

Age Appropriate Dressing

2010-05-26T21:15:00.006-06:00

OOO summer is coming and so is the impulse to dress like a teen, especially since I'm smaller now than I did when I was a teen. Not a good style when you are nearing 50 unless you look like you are in your 20s and really, who looks like that.

So what is age appropriate anyway? I read somewhere that you should dress shape appropriate more than age appropriate. Great now I have to figure out the difference between a rectangle and the two triangle deal. Is my waist really a waist? What if my waist isn't in the middle? Reading around on the web I should make a list of my good points and dress for them but not in primary colours (darn I just bought an awesome short red trench coat in a petite size yet) Supposedly I know my style and what I like.

I have to admit in the winter I know what to wear. Jeans and a sweater or top with jacket type top is easy. I go on a winter holiday where no one knows me so I do wear short shorts, bikinis and pareaus. It's only that thing about pants and tops. How to buy the right pants when they stretch a size after they are worn for 5 minutes. How come tops come in snug or baggy and not body skimming?

The best things about being close to 50 is that I did get the opportunity to make the same fashion mistakes 20 years ago so at least I'm not tempted by rompers, jump suits and transparent blouses.

Smart phones

2010-05-16T18:09:00.000-06:00

I was wandering the web and came across an article at wired gadget lab about the up and coming cell phone shapes . A comment in the article was that social networking phones were looking for a new shape because the tablet was so strongly associated with the iPhone. At last I know why people ask me if “that’s an iPhone” whenever they see my Omnia 2. Does this look like an iPhone to you?

We are built to make quick association and compare new to existing. If you think of a tablet phone, chances are most people will think of an iPhone. Smallish screen with hard keyboard conjures up a Blackberry and, now, slide out landscape keyboards have really caught on with Android devices (think ‘Droid, Milestone) and of course there’s the portrait slide out form factor of the Palm Pre. Windows Mobile lost out partly because it’s so flexible that it didn’t have a firm brand image. I’m not sure what it left for Windows Phone 7 other than Zune and Xbox integration but tech sites like Engadget seem to be on board with the new OS.

And how did I end up with a smart phone anyway? I can’t just remember to be places any more. I don’t pay much attention to the day of the week unless I’m working and dates – well that’s what hovering over the time displayed in the task tray is for isn’t it? I got used to using Outlook at work so decided to use the calendar on the cell phone I had. Have you tried to use the calendar on a Razr – no really. I had a Sony Clie UX50 back in the day. I could watch and take movies and pictures, read e-books, listen to music AND track appointments. Now I also wanted to listen to audible books and watch TV from at home over the internet in addition to all that other stuff I used to do. I thought I wanted a keyboard so I tried an HTC Touch Dual. Did everything I wanted but not really happy with the form factor. My carrier upgraded to HSPA+ and I upgraded to a phone with a SIM card.

When you find the right phone for you, you’ll find it hard to leave it behind (a plus as I get older and forget more stuff) It fits well in hand. Manufacturers don’t have to get rid of buttons so they aren’t pressed by mistake. It does everything you want in the time you expect it to happen. And you'll be heartbroken when you drop it....

So how's that last project going?

2010-05-13T20:26:00.000-06:00

One of my favorite blogs right now is Obesity Panacea by a graduate student and a newly minted PhD. This post about a recently attended conference prompted yet another reassessment of my "approaching 40" project which was to either loose some weight or learn to be happy with my weight. I targeted loosing 10 pounds over winter by adjusting what I ate and exercising harder. I wasn't sure it would work because I was already exercising regularly but it seems so easy - eat less calories than you burn.

It's a popular idea, you look around on the web there are many supplements to help suppress appetites, programs to help one eat differently, exercise more and harder. Since I like to write stuff down I got a program for my PDA that would help me track my food intake and exercise and I got a kitchen balance so I would know pretty well how much I was eating. While I weighed myself every day, I did the overall less calories on a weekly basis. This means I didn't eat much during the week when I was very structured due to work but on the weekends I could go wild. Gradually I got used to smaller serving sizes and healthier food choices - although I still love deserts.

I'm lucky to live when I have access to an excellent range of fitness classes with an experienced, motivating lead instructor. If here was a t-shirt with "body by Grace" I would have one because I wouldn't be where I am without her. If I'm not looking forward to a class then it's time to change things up. I mix up my activities according to seasons, switching to walking and golfing in the summer, but look forward to seeing the gang again in the fall.

In a way I'm glad I didn't know about all the research giving mixed results on diet and exercise - this is counter intuitive to me. My plan worked for me because I made my diet changes a habit. I'm used to choosing lower fat higher fibre foods now and making active choices. Now I am more concerned about my metabolic health than just weight which is a good thing I think.

Oh and I met my goal 10 years ago, now average 2 kg less than my goal and achieved "6 pack abs" for a couple of weeks when I was 46. Not bad.

Hello World

2010-05-13T16:42:00.000-06:00

I've been on Twitter for awhile and sometimes felt that 140 characters just wasn't enough. Then I started reading The Secret Life of a Grown-Up Brain and I was inspired to blurt out opinions on a blog. I hope to add something weekly for the 6 months before and after my 50th birthday then we'll see what happens. I'd like my posts to be a little longer than this one but this is enough for now.