Short shameful confession

I confess: when I go to buy milk, I look in the back of the milk section to find the container with the newest expiry date.

Sudden uncharitable thought

A thought just occurred to me: I suspect that many of the people who downplay the importance of fighting climate change are not impacted by hot weather.

If someone lives in a luxury condo and works in an office tower with underground parking, he or she can avoid the weather entirely, going from an air-conditioned home to an air-conditioned parking garage to an air-conditioned car to another air-conditioned garage to an air-conditioned workplace.

This reminds me of a way to divide the world into three groups, which I may already have mentioned in this space:

• Those who can hire people to clean up their messes for them
• Those who have to clean up their own messes (I’m in this group)
• Those who have to clean up other people’s messes for a living

Lottery tickets, the pennant race, and the need for hope

(Note: this also appears on the Batter’s Box Interactive Magazine web site. Which explains the “bear with me – this is about baseball” comments.)

Recently, I figured out why people buy lottery tickets.

I once believed people played the lottery because they weren’t smart enough to calculate the odds. Since the chances of winning are so poor, the rational choice is always to keep your money in your pocket. For this reason, I thought of the lottery as a tax on stupid people.

(What does this have to do with baseball, you ask? Bear with me two more paragraphs, please.)

It occurred to me the other day that most lottery purchasers are fully aware that the odds are stacked against them. But lottery tickets offer hope: after all, somebody has to win the big prize. And many people have no rational source of hope in life, so they go to their local lottery retailer to buy some irrational hope. A few dollars a week for a little bit of hope is a tradeoff many people are willing to make.

(There’s baseball in the next paragraph. I promise.)

Baseball fans, being human, need hope too. As I write this, virtually every team in the majors has at least a slim chance of making it to the post-season. And almost all of those who are out of contention have some talented young players who offer hope for next season. (There are exceptions. If you’re reading this, and you’re an Orioles fan, all I can say is: I’m so sorry.) This hope – that something wonderful is going to happen some day, and we’re going to get to be a part of it – keeps us watching the games, writing to web sites like this one, and generally caring about baseball and the Blue Jays. And caring and hope are Good Things.

And this is why I don’t like the output of certain Toronto baseball columnists. It’s not because they’re cranky and sarcastic – many of the best people are cranky, sarcastic, or both. And it’s certainly not because they write negative things about my beloved Blue Jays: diehard fans often bash the Jays harder than even the meanest-spirited writer does. No, the reason I don’t like what certain writers write is because they seem to see their job as Myth Debunker, or Reality Therapy Specialist.

These writers believe that it is their duty to explain, clearly and rationally, why the local team hasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of succeeding. (You’ve seen those dreary calculations: “The Jays have to play 46-5 ball between now and the end of September, while everybody else plays .500 or worse, to have even a slim chance of making it to the postseason. Where they’re likely to be stomped by the Yankees anyway. Have a nice day.”) When they do this, they are trying to take away my hope. That is why I don’t like them.

And there is hope, by God. Sure, the odds are against the Jays. The Jays need to have several bats wake up all at the same time. There are a lot of teams ahead of them. And George Steinbrenner needs to keep his wallet tightly chained. But these things could happen. The Jays could win, and so could your lottery ticket. Hang in there; don’t give up.

Notes from suburbia

Today, I went for a job interview that took me north of the city, and I wound up having lunch at the Steeles and 404 mall (known, grandly, as The Shops) and then walking south. I noticed three things:

1. The men’s washroom at The Shops featured a sign that warned me that this facility was monitored 24 hours a day. This leads me to wonder: who on earth would want a job staring at a men’s washroom all day long? Do they put out “help wanted” ads for that? And who would be given the thankless task of monitoring the washroom in the middle of the night?

   There’s something kind of weird about having someone electronically watch you while you, erm, do your business. (I suppose they probably don’t actually have a human being staring at a screen – it’s probably a computer that has been programmed to detect unusual behaviour. Still… whoa.) Is the women’s washroom monitored as well? If so, do they have one monitor of each sex to prevent cross-gender monitoring and all that that entails?

2. It will be very difficult to transform some of the newer suburbs into denser, more greenhouse gas-friendly urban environments. For one thing, most arterial roads in new suburbs are designed exclusively for the efficient movement of cars: there are no houses, apartments, condos, small stores, parks or anything connecting to them other than feeder streets. There’s literally nothing there.
3. Buses belonging to suburban transit systems are inevitably larger, newer and nicer than the equivalent TTC buses. This isn’t knocking the TTC: the suburban systems can afford better buses because they receive greater per-user subsidies than the downtown system.

I’m a quality resource!

Today, one of my online job search agents sent me a notification about an opening for a “Quality Technical Writer”. Ordinary technical writers need not apply: they demand Quality! I could nitpick here and point out that one way to define “quality” is as a synonym for “trait” or “attribute”: laziness and inefficiency are qualities. But there’s no point in that.

And, a while back, I saw an ad that stated that it was looking for a “resource”. Perhaps I’m feeling cranky this morning, but I hate being thought of as a resource (or an “asset”). It makes me feel like I’m an expendable commodity to be used and then discarded when no longer needed.

No free market without government

I’m currently reading Air America: The Playbook. One of the articles in this book, titled “Attack of the Killer Corporations” and written by Thom Hartmann, makes a point that seems obvious once you think of it: you can’t have a free market without a government to back it up.

Here’s Hartmann on the subject:

For a market to exist, there must first be a legal concept of private property and private property ownership. This requires laws that define what ownership means [...]

This requires laws defining property, ownership, and terms of exchange. It requires legislatures to enact and fine-tune these laws as times and circumstances change. It requires courts to interpret the laws and adjudicate them. It requires police to enforce them and prisons to hold those who defy them.

Hartmann goes on to say that there are two schools of thought about how governments should create and mediate marketplaces: unrestrained free-market capitalism and compassionate capitalism. Unrestrained capitalism, according to Hartmann, leads to a feudal society in which people and governments are controlled by a few wealthy, powerful men. And this is happening now:

We are quickly shifting toward a corporate-run state in countries all over the world. It appears “free” and even allows elections, albeit only among candidates funded and approved by corporate powers, held on voting machines owned by those corporate powers, and marketed in media owned by those corporate powers.

Which reminds me: I am grateful that, in Canada, election ballots are counted by hand. Did you know that the chief executive of Diebold, a company that manufactures voting machines, is a committed Republican?

Busted!

I was looking at Warren Kinsella’s blog this evening, and found this, which was originally written by Christine McMillan:

John Tory and Mike Harris together again… but shhhh, don’t tell!

North Bay – - Tonight John Tory and Mike Harris are sharing a stage and a toast to their plan to take Ontario backwards to the days of deficits, division and cuts. But shhhh. Don’t tell.

Current Conservative leader John Tory is in North Bay for a fundraiser with former Conservative leader Mike Harris.

But the Conservatives have gone out of their way to avoid any media noticing or being allowed to take any pictures.

The Conservatives are so desperate to keep the ghost of Mike Harris in the closet that they even barred a Liberal from purchasing a ticket.

Tonight Tory and Harris will raise a glass to their attempts to divide Ontario with private schools and private health care. Shhhh…

Even after all this time, the very idea of Mike Harris causes my blood pressure to rise. He seemed to take politics so personally: he gave the impression that he actually hated welfare recipients, teachers, Liberals, Torontonians, the arts, anyone who opposed him…

Why do conservatives of all stripes tend to fight dirty?

Elvis lives!

Tonight, I’m listening to 3WK, an Internet radio station, while I vaguely geek about on my computer. While I’ve been here, they’ve played two covers of old-school Elvis Costello songs. matt pond PA covered “Green Shirt”, and Crosstide covered “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding?” They’re both great versions of great songs.

Rock.

This caught my attention

Something just caught my attention: according to the Globe, a survey of 10 major urban centres indicated that the average homeowner spent more than $11,000 on renovations in 2006. The total was over $17.3 billion in renovations spending.

Most people who renovated apparently did so because they wanted to “add value or to prepare to sell the residence.”

Preapproved to receive 58302

The spam just keeps on coming. Here’s one I got this morning:

As a business you have been preapproved to receive 58302 USD TODAY!

No hassle at all, completely unsecured.
There are no hidden costs or fees.
Worried that your credit is less than perfect? Not an issue.

Give us a ring, now..

[number deleted]

Turn your dream, into a reality, is that not worth two minutes of your time?

[number deleted]

For a moment Geoffrey Alliburton was not sure who the old man at the door was, and this was not entirely because the bell had awakened him from a deepening doze. If the police come, it may raise suspicion, but Id rather have them suspicious than have them drive up to the house and hear you making a big cockadoodie fuss.

Rats. Making a big cockadoodie fuss is pretty much what I do best.

And how did they decide on exactly $58,302?