Rhyme versus Reason and the Monopoly of Morality

This morning, I found an article in my Yahoo Mail account that dealt with the new trend where parents of college-bound students search Face-book profiles to screen potential new room-mates for their children. I have included the article below. After the article was a comment from someone who was infuriated that people were doing these Face-book searches for the purpose of ensuring that their child would not end up with any gay roommates. This person said that if he or she had any children, he or she would do a similar search on facebook to ensure that his or her child would not end up with a "closed-minded bigot" as a roommate. I decided to post a comment myself to illustrate the irony of that person's comment. It's all below:

Parents Using Facebook To Research Kids' Roomies
Wed Aug 8, 2007 7:47PM EDT

Posted originally on Yahoo!Tech

Friends are not the only ones stopping by your Facebook profile this summer—your future college roommate and their parents are too. The worst part is they're making assumptions based on what they see on your profile to request room changes.

USA Today says more and more colleges around the country are receiving requests for room changes after parents reported not liking what they saw on Facebook. But parents aren't solely judging you on party habits alone. Housing officials say race, religion, and sexual orientation also play a part in their decision. Maureen Wark of Suffolk University in Boston told USA Today, one parent expressed "psychological and sanitary concerns" about her son's new roommates who happened to be gay men.

Unfortunately for them, not all schools are quick to make room changes. Some of them wait at least three to eight weeks, then try to mediate any problems that arise between students who don't get along. To avoid all these types of concerns, schools like the University of Georgia allows students to search their password-protected database for ideal roommates before room assignments go out.

Just one more reason to set your profile to private.

What do you think about all this?

Someone called "m_leinoff" then made this comment:

I don't have kids, but I might someday. And when they go to college, I'll want to search their new roommate's Facebook page too. I need to make sure my kid won't be living with a close-minded bigot.

I think that perhaps, m_leinoff was trying to put a clever spin on why using these kinds of facebook searches is not a good thing. Nevertheless, his or her reliance on little more than rhetoric to get his or her point pissed me off somewhat and so I replied with the following. I laid on a good amount of rhetoric myself though as you will see. It's all tongue-and-cheek:

Leinoff (Post #1):

College is all about the broadening of experience and acquiring new points of view. In line with Post #2, children need to learn to make their own decisions in order to develop into the well-rounded kind of adults that modern societies need. Otherwise, a child is at risk of becoming anchored within the limits of his or her parents' range of experience and opinion. Don’t be so closed-minded about bigotry and have faith that the child is intelligent enough to come to his or her own conclusions about what is right and what is wrong.

While society generally holds that bigotry is bad, it is equally bad for people, especially young ones, to arrive at this conclusion because of a deficiency of experience that is coupled with a life-long exposure to rhetoric that is laden with strong emotional valences. We need more reason based in independent experience and less rhyme. This is true regardless of what political or social opinions one might maintain. If we don't learn to arrive at our own conclusions independently and instead, allow ourselves to rely on the mental short-cuts that are so readily available to us, we give away the keys to our minds. If we allow this, our minds may be wrought into whatever form that is desired by the hammer that beats the drum of public opinion, including the form of a bigot. (OK, so that last sentence was heavily laden with affect but I couldn't help myself for the purpose of illustrating this irony). Perhaps bigotry, on some level, is automatically a product of the process mentioned above. If this is so, then the lines between right and left, conservative and liberal, evil and good, bigots and the enlightened, etc., become less meaningful the more we allow ourselves to live this way.

Innocent until proven guilty

Featured on a major network news broadcast today, was the death of an 11-year-old boy, Ephraim Brown. The boy was killed by a stray bullet fired in an inter-gang show-down in Toronto. Police arrested a man who will be charged with the boy's murder. I do not remember the name of this man, but I recall that the news that was read from the teleprompter contained this remark:

"We must remember that these charges are allegations only and have not yet been proven in a court of law."

I can only speculate as to the motivations of the person who decided that the above bit of "newspeak" was to make it into the broadcast. Was the remark made out of journalistic integrity; a desire to not only keep the tone of the news neutral, but also to not act recklessly against that person who shall remain "innocent until proven guilty"? Or was the motivation less altruistic? Perhaps the statement was made out of a desire to cover the network's ass in the unlikely event that it should be accused of interfering with the course of justice.

If any of these motivations were present, none of them were served by the making of the above-mentioned remark.

To say that the allegations "have not yet been proven" does not merely imply, but states outright, that the allegations will be proved. Quite the remark to be made by an even-handed news medium. The fact that the passive voice is used, does not negate the inevitability that is the message, intended or not.

So much for "innocent until proven guilty."

Any given day, I can tune into a news broadcast and listen to some talking head read scores of grammatically incorrect utterances such as "our poll reveals that most Torontonians think that there's too many guns on our city streets" or "We got the Mayor on the phone right now. Let's get his opinion." Apparently, the news-media have hit a new low. They now make illiterate statements.

At least they "got" the grammar right this time.

putting the green in greenbacks

We learn the term "global warming".

We learn the term "carbon footprint".

We halt annual consumption of 45,000,000,000 units of product "A".

We begin annual consumption of 45,000,000,000 units of product "Green".

Problem solved.

It's the end of the world as we know it...

From a recent thread on sci.math

a = b
a^2 = ab
a^2-b^2 = ab-b^2
(a+b)(a-b) = b(a-b)
a+b = b
2b = b
2 = 1

Orwell came close, but it seems that 2+2= 3, not 5.

My Top Ten Favourite Pseudo-Scientific Terms:

10. Microbeads/Microbubbles

9. Reebok's ERS (Energy Return System)

8. Any new "micronized" formula

7. Thermogenic 6-pack-targeting technology

6. Any hair product that is "volumizing"

5. Halitosis - A term invented to help sell Listerine

4. Power-Stripe

3. Flavour Crystals - chewing gum used to have these to create "taste explosions"

2. Moisture Beads

1. Evolution


This list is non-exhaustive. Please feel free to contribute to it.

Dirty Dictionary or Prude Processor?

First things first: Some people have told me that comments weren't enabled properly on this blog. I think I have fixed this.

Now...Today's Post:

While frustrated with studying, I decided to vent by typing a string of curse words into a document that I was working on in MS Word. Of particular note were the words "fuck" and "shit".

What was noteworthy about these words was that they failed to trigger the squiggly red underline feature that the MS Word spell checker employs to inform the user that he or she has mispelled a word.

So "fuck" and "shit" pass the spell check feature?

Not quite, depending on how you look at it.

At that point, I decided to try mis-spelling the same words to see if I could (after the red squigglies appeared) right-click on those words and be given a drop-down list from which to chose suggestions of proper spelling.

Well, I got the drop-down list of suggestions, but neither "fuck" nor "shit" appeared in any of these respective lists.

So it seems that while the editors of the Microsoft English Dictionary acknowledge that fuck and shit are indeed words, they apparently are not yet ready to encourage people to use these words. It probably would have been a more effective form of censorship to have simply kept the red squigglies.

Cool Runnings

Well, the temperature in London is finally making its upward march into April and with this change in the weather, comes the welcome skin-parade that is spring at U.W.O. and London in general. Patios bloom with girls wearing nothing but their finest napkins. Out of the winter woodwork crawl scantily clad hordes of what Sarah aptly calls “hot and dumb undergrads to ogle.”

However welcome this change in the weather may be, it is not all that set to endure yet. Nights here are still freezing cold. And so it really cooks my noodle to see how many people go out to the bars at night without any jacket to keep warm.

Typically, I see people like this shivering in the lineups for bars, but last week at Barney’s I saw some half-naked people actually sitting outside on the patio having cold drinks.

I realize that as winter wanes (it’s actually been officially spring for 2 weeks now), people are eager to show off their wares by wearing much less clothing than is healthy or comfortable for them. Undoubtedly, this is all part of the evening’s pick-up-plan for these people. I wonder, however, if hanging-out half-naked in the cold might actually be counter-productive to such an objective.

First of all, I’d like to say that this question applies only to the guys. Without a doubt, girls who do this* will have no problem finding someone to keep them warm for the night. I’m not so sure about the guys though.

It’s often argued that when a man who is attempting to pick up a woman appears too eager in his efforts, he will usually crash and burn. Simply said: Eagerness is the anti-aphrodisiac. Similarly, it is said that if a man appears to lack self-confidence, his efforts will also be in vain. If this is true, then perhaps wearing less will not bode well at the bars for men if it is cold.

If you are willing to stand outside in the cold (either in-line or on the patio) without a jacket to keep you warm because you think that is what it will take for you to get some action, then you will probably appear very eager to please to the average female bar-goer. Just think how “cool” you’ll look when a pretty woman walks past, and your attempt to crack a coy smile results in a grinning mouthful of chattering teeth. People rarely end up outside without a jacket on a cold night by accident. Not only will you probably look like an overly-eager idiot for your efforts, but your willingness to subject yourself to such torture will speak the following about your self-confidence: If you thought that you had what it takes to pick-up without freezing your ass off, then you’d be wearing a jacket or a sweater right now!

Hot? I think not.

If this is you, then when you meet the object of your affections for that evening, you won’t need her to put you on ice because you’ll already be there.



*(while looking good)

Take with Ritalin as part of a balanced diet

This public service announcement comes from the November 1972 edition of National Geographic. Click on the image to enlarge. (You'll have to enlarge it again by clicking the bottom right corner to read the text) The ad speaks for itself. The part at the bottom left is particularly funny though.



I thought that I'd pull this one out of the "memory-hole" just to show how quickly our perceptions of something can change and how truth is found in glossy ads and pseudo-scientific talk. Anyone remember how before the whole Atkin's fad became stamped in our brains, word was that staying away from meats and eating pasta was the way to slim-down? If you are one of the many converts who think that carbs are the new public enemy #1, then the Registered Dietitians at Kellogg Canada have this message for you.

Maybe if I look through my National Geographics from the 1980's, I'll find an ad telling me how good aspartame is for brain function.

BL baffles brains

Danone is running a TV ad for its new yogurt called Activia.

The commercial features a husband and wife (both about 40 years of age) doing what appears to be some type of mating dance in their kitchen while eating yogurt lustfully. The announcer tells me that this yogurt is the only one on the market to contain the probiotic culture BL™ and like the dancing old-people, I should “take the Activia 14-day challenge and feel the difference”.

…end of sales pitch.

Then what?

If I eat this yogurt for 14 days, what sort of difference am I supposed to feel? Danone doesn’t say. Is the probiotic culture BL™ anything more than BS, or will it confer some real positive benefit on me… like the stamina needed to dance with 40-year-old women? I checked out the Activia website to find out.

Generally, I don’t give in to such baiting tactics used by marketers to get me interested in a product. I have never asked my doctor about Celebrex. I have never typed “www.yaris.ca” into my web browser to find out what Uncle Yaris was all about (although he did appear to have some sweet dance moves). In this case however, I made an exception.

According to Danone, BL™ is its own brand of bifidobacterium lactis, which is a class of naturally-occuring bacteria thought to “contribute to protein and vitamin metabolism, exert anti-microbial activity and possibly act on intestinal transit”. Now the other kinds of natural bacteria that you normally find in yogurt apparently also do the same things, except that bifidobacteria lactae supposedly survive longer in the intestinal tract, and therefore amplify the benefits that run-of-the-mill yogurt bacteria would confer only in limited fashion.

Fair enough. So Activia yogurt might be good for your poop-chute.

At least this gives me some idea as to why the TV add was so hush-hush about the “difference” that I would feel if I ate this yogurt for 2 weeks. Yogurt and poo probably don’t mix well in the mind of the average consumer.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go eat some chocolate pudding and dance around my kitchen.

Will someone please help me sue the law school?

Go to any library on the UWO campus save the law school's, and near closing, you will hear a shrill tone followed by a public address indicating that the library will soon be closing for the night. Go to the law library at about the same time, and something completely different will happen.

You'd figure that being a library filled with books on what does and does not constitute irresponsible and tortious behaviour, the law library would get the closing ritual right (like all the other libraries) and not do anything that would create a potential liability in tort. Instead, the law library not only does something that carries the potential for an action in tort...it does something that begs for someone to sue them and here's what it is: Without any warning whatsoever, all the lights in the library go out at once and they stay off for about 10 seconds.

Hopefully, I'm not the only one who sees the risk here. Imagine someone who is walking in the stack stairwells (no windows in there) or even down the main lower-level stairs at night. Now picture them falling to their severe injury and/or death in darkness. No real stretch of the imagination there.

Perhaps the risk wouldn't be so bad if the library staff were to only flick the lights off briefly and turn them back on right away. That would be a slightly safer way to get across the message that the library is about to close. The full 10 second outage however, is just asking for trouble. Look at it this way: If someone is thick enough to need a full 10 seconds of darkness to figure out what is going on, then they would probably also be a likely candidate for continuing on their merry way without sight until they go bouncing down the stairs not so merrily. (Such a person would also be a likely candidate for having to wear a helmet everywhere, but since the law library apparently thinks that this means everyone who steps into its domain, I find such a suggestion highly distasteful.)

Since the law library is just begging for this to happen (and since I want to feel smarter than someone who should have to wear a helmet 24-7,) I am looking for volunteers to help me sue the law school in tort.* The plan is simple: I will need someone to wait at the bottom of the stairs just as the lights are about to go out. I will also need someone waiting with a chair-in-hand at the top of the stairs at the same time. I will wait at the bottom of the stairs with the aforementioned person. When the lights go out, the person at the top will hurl the chair down the stairs and the ensuing racket will hopefully sound good enough to pass for the sound of someone falling down the stairs. To complement this sound, I will shriek and scream and then proceed to lay myself out on the floor at the bottom of the stairs in mangled fashion and feign agony while the other person at the bottom makes sure that all the broken pieces of chair are removed from view. The person at the top of the stairs can also help with clean up by running down the stairs (carefully, I hope) to make sure that there isn't any debris left on any of the stairs.

I will sue the law school for one meelion dollars.

*If you have not yet concluded that this post is merely a joke and think that I actually mean to do this, then you need to put a helmet on...NOW!

Braille signs will lead the way (if you can find them)!

Every once in a while, I see a sign written in braille. Most of the time, such signs make me shake my head in disbelief.

For instance, at the corner of University and Bloor in Toronto, there is a braille sign attached to the wall outside the Ombudsperson's building which indicates (as far as I know from the normal lettering above it) that the building is in fact, the Ombudsperson's building. None of the other buildings around the Ombudsperson's building, however, have such signs. I really wonder how useful the sign is. Do blind people who seek the Ombudsperson's building acutally walk along University Avenue dragging their fingers across the facades of the buildings until finally, they find the set of raised dots that they were looking for? Can blind people really count on finding such signs? What happens if someone skims their fingers at the wrong height, missing the sign completely? Would that qualify as height discrimination against the blind?

Another strange place in which I found a braille sign was a washroom at a restaurant. The sign was located on the wall just above the toilet and it bore an instruction not to flush paper towels. Now, I understand that blind people need to rely on their sense of touch more than sighted-people in order to get information but if I were visually impaired person in a public washroom, I wouldn't want to go touching everthing around me. Hell, I wouldn't want to do that regardless of my ability to see. Are blind people expected to grope around the dirty toilet so that someone doesn't have to go in there with a mop every once in a while because someone plugged the toilet with paper towel and caused it to overflow? I say that any blind person who can nail a paper-towel-3-pointer in the bowl from the sink deserves the right to do so!

Then there are the braille no-smoking signs in public areas. Such signs are pure genius. What are the chances that a blind person who needs to light up is going to take the time to scan the walls with their fingers? People in need of a drag are not the most patient sort. Blind people in this category are no exception. I'm sure that conventional no-smoking signs alone cause enough trouble for the visually impaired. Picture a blind person who is having a smoke in front of a conventional no-smoking sign. Think of how many times they might be angrily asked if they are blind and cannot see the sign? If that weren't bad enough, what if the sign WERE in braille and the person were accused of being illiterate and or stupid (after having already been asked angrily if they were blind) simply because they didn't scan every inch of the wall with their fingers?

Who knows? Maybe there is some real utility in these signs. I however, fail to see any.

Hello. I am a HAL-9000 computer

This blog was activated today. Who knows what things I will put in here? I'd like to think that some of the things that I will post here could get me in trouble. MMMM fancy...pure fancy.

Maybe the following SPAMkus (Haikus about SPAM) will get me in trouble with the Hornel company. Hornel makes the pseudo-food called SPAM.

Food for the Masses
SPAM bridges all the Classes
Save Those who make it

While in the Army
You will eat SPAM for Dinner
Outlook not so good

I've never actually eaten any SPAM. I seem to resent it a whole lot though. (Can you tell?)

My pseudo-food of choice is McDonald's, though I hate to admit it. I'm very particular about my pseudo-food. There is a Wendy's one block from where I live. I've only ever eaten there on three occasions, and that was only because I was in a pinch. Thank God it's not a McDonald's.