Third time's a charm?

For the third time Jeannette is giving her Chinafax blog a go.

It seems that with each iteration there is an intended theme.  So far my sense of things is that if there is a theme to describe this attempt at blogging it would be 'projects,' though a very loose sense of the word.  Projects, in this case, might be taken to mean something like a crafting project or a diet-based project.

Anyway, if you are interested please check it out (my felting gets a shout out so it will definitely be worth your while).

Getting my felt on - 3

It turns out I couldn't stay away from felting (or time-lapse) for very long.


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This afternoon I made a small felted bowl-type thing.  I am not yet sure which purpose it will serve, but I am generally pleased with the outcome, particularly for a second solo felting attempt.

The only aspect of the project that I am not quite satisfied with is the fact that some of the coloured wool seems to have bleed through to the other side of wherever it was placed.

Maybe at some point I will even give Jeannette a chance to give her felting stuff a test run.

A Few Quick Notes 555

-After a remarkably warm and rainy day yesterday that wiped out our White Christmas snow we are back to wintery sub-zero temperatures.  Overnight we also managed to replace some of the snow that we lost due to yesterday's rain.  Given the current forecast it looks as though we may be able to ride this wintery mix into the new year.  Hurrah.

-Because of some recent holiday baking miscalculations I  recently found myself with an extra litre of buttermilk in my fridge.  Jeannette, as one who seems to have been completely unaware of the existence of buttermilk until a few days ago, has been less than helpful when it comes to suggestions for how to use this stuff before it spoils.

Fortunately I am on the case and actively trying to come up with reasonable uses for this specialty dairy product.

This morning I threw some into some pumpkin bran muffins with positive results.  Actually, I think I am now going to be disappointed with buttermilk-less pumpkin bran muffins.

When I next have to make bread, probably in a few days, I will try to toss some in.

Even with this two projects (one completed and one still in the conceptual stages) I will still probably have between one to two cups of buttermilk left.  Hopefully I can come up with something reasonable in the next few days.

-I am hoping that later today I can finish off the rest of the turkey by preparing a turkey pot-pie.  Once this is taken care of I think I will be through with Christmas leftovers.

Getting my felt on - 2

So the whole felting project moved along rather quickly.

Soon after starting with my basic and equipment and some unspun wool...

...I ended up with a mushroom shaped something or other, though it is currently functioning as a top-heavy pin cushion.

My only problem now is that I have an urge to do more felting and I can't think of anything useful to make.

Getting my felt on - 1

After a two-year hiatus I plan on getting back into needle felting tonight. My plan is to start small. I am going to try to start with some kind of needle cushion type thing. This will then be used by Jeannette when she uses her new sewing machine to make me socks and other sewing machine-made clothes. (No more clothes shopping for me.) The great thing about such a project is that just about any outcome will be at least somewhat functional as a pin cushion. That said, I really do hope to end up with somemthing functional and nice. Here we go.

As the year comes to an end

At the beginning of the year I was really cranking out blog posts at an unsustainable and unhealthy rate.  By the end of February we already had more than 140 posts.

Not surprisingly, it didn't take Neil long to comment on this prodigious rate of production.  Neil suspected that I might overwhelm readers before long.

And Neil being Neil he was also interested in turning the whole situation into something of a game.  Neil, Rebecca, Jeannette, Peter, and I all supplied guesses as to how many posts I would have by year's end.

My recollection is that a few people, maybe Rebecca and Jeannette, guessed close to 500 while I thought my own production would be closer to 400.

Amazingly, with little conscious effort to make it so, I suspect that my number will the the number that is closest to the actual number of posts.  And while some of you might point out that this isn't surprising as I was the only one in the position to control the output of blog posts I don't recall ever trying to manipulate the number so that it would be closer to my guess, though I did know that I would be embarrassed if I had close to 600 posts and had allowed other commitments to fall by the wayside.

Anyway, maybe this is all just a way of drawing attention to the fact that we are now approaching the end of the fifth full calendar year of Montifax's existence.  I guess I am not only surprised that it still is an active entity, but that five years in it was looking as though we would have more posts than ever.

To our loyal (and presumably masochistic) readers, thanks for sticking with us.  Our readers more than anyone else know that even after five years of blogging we really aren't that good at it yet and that even a few more years probably won't help that much.

Big week for the federation

Earlier this week news came out that Ottawa was, at least to some extent, relinquishing its use of the spending power to shape national health policy.  The likely eventual consequence of such a decision is that provinces will have more flexibility in terms of the structure their public healthcare systems.  Of course whether such changes in the way provincial programs are funded actually will lead to many changes (or more divergence than we already see) is not yet known.

And now today one of the federal government's big centralizing moves, the creation of a national securities regulator, seems to have been quashed by the Supreme Court of Canada.  Or as they put it:

The  Securities Act as presently drafted  is not valid under the general branch of the federal power to regulate trade and commerce under s. 91(2) of the Constitution Act, 1867. 

 Or if you want a slightly more detail rich version of their position:

In sum, the proposed Act overreaches genuine national concerns.  While the economic importance and pervasive character of the securities market may, in principle, support federal intervention that is qualitatively different from what the provinces can do, they do not justify a wholesale takeover  of the regulation of the securities industry which is the ultimate consequence of the proposed federal legislation.  A cooperative approach that permits a scheme recognizing the essentially provincial nature of securities regulation  while allowing Parliament to deal with genuinely national concerns remains available and is supported by Canadian constitutional principles and by the practice adopted by the federal and provincial  governments in other fields of activities.

Anyway, though it may be too early to tell how the healthcare funding changes play out, it looks as though this has been a pretty good week for a decentralized federation.  Of course, if you aren't a particularly big fan of Canada being a decentralized federation and are all about national standards this may have been one of the worst weeks for you in many years.

No matter where you stand on the centralization/decentralization debate, at least you will all now have good grist for the conversation mill this holiday season.

Holiday animation fun

A few days or weeks ago Jeannette suggested that we try to meld her love of making small clay figures with my love of horrible homemade stop-motion animation in holiday-y clip.

After weeks of procrastination (or in this case actually do more important things) we finally got around to it last night.  After about an hour of production time (including the creation of the figures and set, script conception and writing, principal photography, and editing) we were able to crank out the following 1:05 second clip.

 

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Hope it was worth the minute.

And then there were three

As I mentioned yesterday, for the past few months we have been receiving calls from collection agencies for two individuals.  Given the consistency of these calls I just kind of assumed that these were the only two individuals for whom we would receive calls.

It seems I was wrong.

Just moments ago I received a call for a third individual, though in this case I don't think that it was a creditor calling.

I can't help but think that we managed to get a a particularly active recycled phone number.  Two to four calls a day is starting to get a little annoying.

Doesn't ring true

Grocery stores are some of my favourite stores.  Not only are they great places to visit in your hometown, but they are really wonderful entry points to local culture while travelling.  Grocery stores provide a pretty unvarnished glimpse into what people are consuming and how much they are paying for it.

Given my appreciation of these stores it may not come as a surprise that while visiting such establishments I frequently try to get a sense of some of the prices.  I am particularly interested common foods, like flour and bread, that one can find in a pretty wide range of locales.

Anyway, the reason for this discussion of my love of grocery stores and grocery pricing is because I just read a Globe and Mail article about higher food prices that really didn't ring true to me.

To be a little more precise, aspects of the article didn't ring true to me.  It wasn't really the general thrust of the article with which I had a problem (I agree that food prices do seem to be heading up), but it was a particular sentence that bothered me.

Canadians have had years of access to cheaper food, and on average devoted far less of their household budgets to groceries than people in other countries.

While it may be true that food costs in Canada are lower than in some other countries, they aren't countries I have visited.  When in the two non-Canadian countries with which I am most familiar, the US and the UK, I am always struck by the lower food prices.  More expensive wheat, particularly given Canada's prominence as a wheat producer, always strikes me as a particularly noticeable trend here.

Furthermore, though I didn't follow all imported food prices closely at the time, I don't recall ever seeing a dramatic price drop in Canadian grocery prices when the dollar surged in value a few years ago (a trend which seems to parallel the continuing discrepancy in US/Canada book prices).  For instance, shouldn't oranges, a entirely imported product, have taken something like a 30% price dip to reflect our increasing purchasing power?

For some reason I keep get the sense that in Canada the consumer is frequently not reaping the benefits of changes in global market places (though had the Globe and Mail cited their source it is possible I could follow up and learn that my sense of things is off).

A Few Quick Notes 554

-Though we have finally dropped down to sub-zero temperatures in Wolfville, things are still looking quite nice today.  A few recent dustings of snow are making things look particularly festive.  I am even hopeful that we may manage to squeeze out a nice sunset this afternoon evening.

-My Christmas preparations, aside from some gift shopping and thinking about all of the cleaning I will likely need to do, started in earnest today when I made some bread that I eventually intend to use for the turkey stuffing.  As much as I am willing to admit that it does seem a bit weird to intention bake bread to allow it to go stale, it seems even weirder to me to buy bread with the intention of letting it go stale.  Anyway, the deed has been done and the bread is now working its way towards staleness.

-The individuals previously associated with our phone number are still receiving daily calls from creditors.  While I seem to have talked a collection agency into not calling, we are still receiving regular calls for another individual from a major financial institution.  As I have already spoken to the company once I don't really know what my next step is (the calls are automated, making one-on-one interactions with the staff difficult).

(While writing this I had to deal with another such call, though this time from a person.  I suspect I was talking to a collection agency, but as there number was blocked I can't confirm this hunch.)

-I probably listen to too many podcasts.  I consume them while cooking, cleaning, walking, procrastinating, and riding the bus.  They're the best.  And there's little I like more than discovering a great new podcast with an archive I can compulsively listen to over the course of a few days.

Anyway, this is a long way of saying that I have recently found two podcasts that I am in the midst of acquainting myself with.  The first one, HOW TO DO EVERYTHING, which seems to be NPR/WBEZ associated, is pretty light and concerns itself with a Richardson's Rounduppesque assortment of topics.  The second one, 99% Invisible (which I discovered thanks to a recent Radiolab episode), is a little more serious and generally deals with topics relating to architecture and design.

How to construct an argument

I think I have been able to distill the fundamental approach to argument making used by many current undergraduate students.

The whole things boils down to a simple two step process.

Step 1: Define a term

Start by defining a term very poorly. To make this most of it you probably want to omit a few key components of the definition.

Example: A lady is something that has hair, legs, breasts, and a circulatory system.

Step 2: Identify an object

You then want to identify something that has these characteristics. Whether or not the entity should be labelled in this way is besides the point. Of course, once the faulty association between the term and the object has been made no effort should be made to confirm whether or not this position conflicts with the common understanding of either the terms or the objects in question.

Example: Gandhi had hair, legs, breasts, and a circulatory system. It has been conclusively proven that Gandhi is a lady.

Voila, you're done. You now have yourself the basis of your term paper. Add a little repetition and a snappy conclusion and you have your final product. That didn't take very long did it?

Not one, but two

So it seems that we our phone number was likely associated with not one, but two individuals being hounded by collection agencies. While it seems that I was able to shake one of the companies, and hopefully everything for the first guy, companies are still calling about the second guy.

Fun.

Do you think they will give us a Christmas morning call?

10 tips for a more successful essay

I am currently in the midst of grading a batch of first year social science essays. What always impresses me about the essay grading process is that so many of the same mistakes and missteps are made by relatively large proportions of each class.

Not that I expect people to necessarily find or read this, but I thought that I should maybe try to compile a few tips based on some of the most common problems I have encountered while grading essays.

Anyway, here goes.

1 – Though it seems that most of the essays I grade do it, starting one’s essay with a broad, but unsupportable, claim is not a particularly good idea. The person grading your essays know that you don’t really know that ‘Everyone loves X.’ Don’t start your essay by giving the grader a reason to think that you don’t know what you’re doing.

2 – Proof read your essay before submitting it. Make sure that what you are saying is what you actually want to be saying. Nothing gives away a rush job like an incoherent essay.

3 – Make sure that you use the right word. There are all kinds of homophones out there waiting to be misused. Don’t fall for them. ‘Poll’ is not the same as ‘pole’ which is not the same as ‘Pole.’ Not only are such mistakes embarrassing in hindsight, but they also display a lack of attention to detail and are frequently a good sign that the writer doesn’t really know much about what they are writing about.

4 – You aren’t Dickens - so don’t write like him. Though they may be tempting, avoid artificially long and complex sentences. While these guys may juice your word count they also make the essay harder to read (and many times there are also issues on the execution front). Clarity is essential. If the grader can’t read the essay it doesn’t matter that you managed to squeeze in a few extra words.

5 – Make sure that your essay is the required length. If the assigned essay is to be five pages long then it should be five pages long. Though reasonable graders will usually accept some flexibility around the edges, being 20% or 30% over or under is asking for trouble. The worst part about mistakes of this nature is that they are pretty easy to avoid. Before you even submit your essay you know how long your essay is and how long it should be. Make sure that these two things match.

6 – If the assignment requires that you use a certain number of scholarly sources then use at least that number of scholarly sources. Failure to meet the basic requirements as outlined in the assignment is a great way to lose points. Oh, and while you’re at it, why not trying using a standard citation format?

7 – An unsubstantiated fact or direct quote without a source isn’t worth very much these days. It is essential that you cite the sources of your information. Not only will this help you avoid charges of plagiarism, but it will also help you strengthen your position. And if you have done the work why not demonstrate that this is the case?

8 – Avoid repetition. Graders know if you are just saying the same thing again and again. And it gets old fast.

9 – Don’t write with your thesaurus. In my experience overuse of one word is almost always better than the misuse of several words. If you would like a larger vocabulary, always a laudable goal, try hitting your dictionary in the off-season so you are ready to go come essay writing season.

10 – Don’t underestimate the intelligence of the person grading your essay. If it is a rush job they will know. If you don’t know what you are talking about they will know. And there’s a good chance they will be able to tell if you have claimed a professional’s writing as your own.

Bonus Tip – And maybe this is the most important one, start early and do the work. It will show.

So it's going to be nice tomorrow?

Over the past few days I have heard reports about a 'weather bomb' that may be approaching the region. Apparently much of the province is for some heavy rain and wind.

When I went to the Environment Canada site to find the local forecast and warnings I was surprised to see that they didn't appear to have any for the region.

I then decided to check the general warnings page to see if they might have been listed there but not cross-posted to the local page. While there I saw that there are, in fact, warnings for much of the province, but we seem to live in one of the three counties without a weather warning.

I presume this means tomorrow won't be anything special?

And now it's the basis of a lawsuit

You may recall that a few months ago I brought up the issue that in Newfoundland and Labrador voters were able to cast special ballots before an election had been called.

Though I didn't hear anything about this issue from any of the parties during the election, it seems that a close election result in Burin-Placentia West has lead to a lawsuit being filed on this very issue. The NDP candidate is claiming that these provisions violated the Charter.

While I have no idea how this lawsuit will play out, I am certain that this is an important issue.

Hopefully a better process will be in place before the next provincial election.

No, not all skiers

So the bill about requiring ski helmets in Nova Scotia that I mentioned yesterday has now been posted online. As you may recall, I was interested in whether or not the requirement would actually apply to all skiers, as was reported in the CBC article, or if it would specifically apply to downhill skiers.

It turns out that this very issue is dealt with in s. 2 of the bill.

The purpose of this Act is to protect the health of Nova Scotians by requiring people to wear protective helmets while downhill skiing or snowboarding at ski hills where people pay to ski or snowboard.

Of course, I guess this means that if you are just out in the woods or at an abandoned ski hill there would be no requirement to wear a helmet.

There are also sections of the act that seem to provide the potential for abuse.

7 (1) For the purpose of enforcing this Act and the regulations, an enforcement officer may, without a warrant,
(a)investigate any complaint of a contravention of this Act or the regulations and examine any person to determine if a contravention has occurred;
(b) from time to time and at all reasonable times, enter the property or premises of an owner or any other person if it is reasonably necessary to do so in order to determine whether or not this Act and the regulations are being complied with;
(c) request that a person remove the person's helmet and provide it for inspection;
(d) require a person to provide the person's name and address or proof of identity; and
(e) do any other thing necessary for the purpose of enforcing this Act and the regulations.

Is it really necessary to allow enforcement officers to be able to request ID and proof of address if there is no suspicion of wrong-doing? Or that people must submit to helmet inspections? What about s. 8 of the Charter?

8. Everyone has the right to be secure against unreasonable search or seizure.

Can this invasion really be "demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society"?

Yesterday, while looking for a copy of the bill, I happened to come across the press release issued to announce the impending introduction of this bill. Something that caught my eye in the press release was the claim that "The Snowsport Helmet Act will be the first legislation of its kind in the world." Could this really be true? Had no other jurisdiction tried to implement a mandatory helmet law?

Well, after a few minutes of searching I came to the conclusion that the claim may not be entirely accurate (it likely depends on your definition of 'first of its kind'). It seems that in California legislation was introduced, and passed by both houses of the legislature, that would have required those under sixteen to wear helmets while downhill skiing. Though the bill had legislative support it was eventually vetoed by California first post-Schwarzenegger governor.

So if you take 'first of its kind' to mean 'bill requiring some segment of the population to wear helmets while skiing' it is clear that this bill is not the first of its kind. On the other hand, if you take 'first of its kind' to mean 'bill requiring all downhill skiers to wear helmets while skiing' then the claim may hold water, though I can't claim to have done a particularly extensive search.

All skiers? Really?

CBC Nova Scotia has just reported that "The Nova Scotia government plans to pass a law requiring all skiers to wear helmets." Not surprisingly, the story doesn't have too many details on the proposed legislation.

I can't help but wonder if it is really necessary to require cross country skiers to wear helmets as they majestically make their way through the countryside at sub-10 KPH speeds. Requiring cross-country skiers to wear helmets is practically like requiring a walking/running helmet. Until I get to see the text of the bill I won't know if this really is the intent of the legislation, or if this is just another instance of sloppiness in the original media report.

My favourite kind of email...

...is the kind in which the message starts with something like "As you are aware" and then the writer conveys bad news that you didn't already know. A few years ago I learned about not getting a SSHRC fellowship this way, and today I learned about someone leaving a job.

I think the special force of this email structure comes not only from getting the bad news, but also from the fact that it indicated that you are really out of the loop or not with it. And that's exactly how you want to feel when you get bad news.

It's gone on long enough

For some reason when one moves up from fast food coffee chains to more expensive coffee houses certain differences are immediately apparent. At least as far as the coffee is concerned I see most of these changes as positive. For instance, I do like having some choice when it comes to roast or whether I would like an espresso-based beverage (not that this is a choice I often make). But, unfortunately, there is one coffee-based difference that seems common to many of these operations that I really dislike. For some reason, these places do not add milk or cream to the coffee before it is handed to the patron.

Maybe the most obvious reason for my dislike of this practice is that the pourers routinely leave room in the cup for milk or cream. As someone who takes my coffee black this means that I am being shorted coffee and not making up for it by taking advantage of the available (relatively more expensive) condiments. This is all the more galling as I’m paying more for the pleasure of being shorted coffee than I would pay for coffee at the cheaper fast food coffee places where I’ve never been shorted on coffee just because I like it black.

My second problem with this practice is more of a safety/spillage concern. So instead of handing me a to-go cup of coffee that is ready to consume, this places will hand me unlidded cups of hot coffee. I know that I am unlikely to spill this coffee on myself, but when I am handling multiple flimsy paper cups at the same time I do enjoy the comfort of a lid.

Of course getting a lid for the coffee is usually another issue. Instead of having the lids near the cash register they are usually near the milk, so that those adding milk can grab them when they have done. Of course, if you won’t want milk this means a trek to the milk stand. If a group ahead of you is at the milk stand you may have to wait or contend with other customers ineptly milking and lidding their coffee. Oh, and this area is usually a mess as people have been spilling milk and sugar since opening time. And as a black coffee drinker spilled milk and sugar are exactly what I want to deal with after I have just ordered a beverage without those ingredients.

And if I have ordered a beverage with those ingredients, which only happens when I am ordering for others, I don’t want to have to figure out how much milk or sugar are typically served with coffee. And even if I knew how much were desired, that I have to add the ingredients myself makes life more difficult when placing an order for a group, a process which is relatively straightforward at most fast food coffee shops. And if nothing else, isn’t service what we’re paying for at a place like this?

A final consideration, and though it doesn’t really impact me directly would seem to be of some significance to the milk in coffee segment of the population, is that when cold milk is added to hot coffee (rather than the other way around) more damage is done to the protein in the milk. Put another way, adding coffee to milk means that more of the nutritional benefits of the milk are be passed along to the consumer than if milk is added to coffee. Ironically, the fast food coffee chains typically do it the healthy way.

So given these concerns, and more that I haven’t dealt with, I don’t understand why this trend seems to be spreading. How has there not been a major outcry from the coffee consuming public to end these unsafe and unhealthy practices? This inferior service model must be stopped.

That explains the daily phone calls

Since we have had the phone number we have now we have been getting all kinds of calls for someone named Johnson. These calls started within hours of the phone line's activation.

My guess would be that we are currently getting about a phone call a day for this Johnson, presumably the previous occupier of this number.

After a while Jeannette guessed that the frequency of the calls suggested that this Johnson likely owed somebody money. Well, after just having receiving an automated call from a collection agency I feel that I am in a position to confirm this hunch.

The upside is that we now know why we are getting so many calls. The downside is that we now also know that until we convince them that we are not who they are looking for we will continue to receive daily calls.