Orange Alert

This afternoon I dad an americano at Orange Alert Organic Coffee @ McCaul and Dundas West for the second time in three days. Tasty stuff.

I came home, and after a little Googlin', I discovered a review of the café on a site called Tupalo (tagline: "stuff in your neighborhood"), which is a city-by-city, user-generated map site. It's a solid implementation of an idea I've seen several times elsewhere (e.g. Google Local), but based on individuals adding their favourite places rather than adding a whole phonebook's worth of locations. For example, here's a search for coffee near Dundas that returns just four locations based on reviews by happy-camper customers.

Later that night, Borrelli, Liam, Dave and I made rowdy fools of ourselves over loads of delicions "meat" at Bo De Duyen. Maybe a positive review will go some distance toward making ammends?

Student punished for spaghetti beliefs - "The school, in North Buncombe, North Carolina, remains adamant that their decision to suspend Killian for a day has nothing to do with his religion, and quite a lot to do with his repeated refusal to heed warnings against wearing pirate outfits." [Metro.co.uk via Digg]

York U assaults on YouTube

Retrofit that s***!

Faulty towers - "Typically viewed as "mistakes" from the 1960s and '70s, and largely excluded from urban debates, [high-rise apartments] may in fact represent one of our greatest opportunities for creating a sustainable region... Though efficiencies are gained from reduced land coverage, transit use and so on, exposed floor edges (typically protruding balconies), minimal insulation, single-pane windows, and aging mechanical systems give these buildings an unacceptable environmental impact. A typical 25-storey building contributes 1,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide." [Toronto Star]

Booze, smokes worse than some illegal drugs: study - "Prof. Nutt and his colleagues used three factors to determine the harm associated with any drug: the physical harm to the user, the drug's potential for addiction, and the impact on society of drug use." [Globe and Mail]

Torontoist vs. Torontoist in...Non-Citizen Voting! [Torontoist]

The political revenge fantasies of Shooter - "The movie's... strangely powerful and absolutely nihilistic political message: Everything sucks as much as it possibly can, and even if you're named something as awesome as Bob Lee Swagger, there's not much you can do about it." [Slate]

At-home earning & online booking

If it works as advertised, Skype Prime could enable regular (anglophone) Joes to profitably connect with eager Asians or Eastern Europeans or others as paid 'conversation partners' in their spare time. Apparently it even includes a handy online booking and scheduling function.

Now if only I could book medical, dental, optometric and audiology appointments online... that should be coming in the near future. I know my optometrist already uses and 'end to end' practice management software package for windows - his eye charts are a flat panel LCD reflected in a mirror, and he emailed me a copy of a recent Optomap laser retinal scan. Presumably an online booking module is in the works, or perhaps even already available.

Whenever I finally shift from my old 905 health care providers to new ones in the 416, the ability to book online would be a massive selling point. I suspect, however, that such perks are the preserve of high-end, pay-as-you-go clinics for the rich where your OHIP card is worthless.

English conversation partner

Practice your spoken English skills with a university-educated native speaker in Canada.

Call now

USD $0.50/min

Adequately rewarding selflessness

`It was instinct,' subway hero says - "After risking his life by jumping into the tracks at the Sheppard subway station to save a blind man who had fallen in, friends and neighbours gave Osman Hersi the nickname Hero. It's a moniker that's sure to follow him all the way to Rideau Hall, where he will be given the Medal of Bravery by Governor General Michaëlle Jean in a ceremony later this year." [Toronto Star]

The article also notes that the TTC boosted Hirsi's initial reward -- one free metropass -- to a full year of gratis rides after a torrent of public complaints.

I think it should have been a special lifetime metropass. If 19-year old Hirsi lives to be 100, such a reward might represent a value of around $100,000* in 2007 dollars, but would cost the TTC virtually nothing given the insignificant marginal cost of a single rider. Even administration costs would be miniscule: just add one name to the MDP mailing list in perpetuity.

* ~$100/month * 12 months * 81 years = ~$97,200

As with the cheapo, so too with the custom

Breathing lessons: the peculiar pleasure of earplugs - "I could hear people speaking, I could hear sounds, but it all took place at a remove. And yet I did not feel farther away from everything. I moved through the streets as though in a dream, but, as with a dream, somehow more attentive and aware than usual. Up to that point the purpose of earplugs was to keep things out. Now I perceived a new dimension to earplugs—to keep things in." [Slate]

The effect only gets stronger when you graduate to the custom kind.

No new funds for affordable housing

Thanks for the thoughts, but where's the money? - "Two days ago, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty complained that Monday's federal budget fell short of the dollars that Ontario was seeking. "Justice delayed is justice denied," said the Premier of the Harper budget. The same can be said of Premier McGuinty's own budget, which falls far short of delivering the dollars that would lift Ontario children, and their families, out of poverty." [Wellesley Institute via CNW Telbec]

Tear out the Sheppard subway!

I've been pondering the implications of the so-called Transit City LRT plan for Toronto (which has been discussed in passionate and speculative detail over at Spacing).

An LRT is to run westward along Sheppard to Don Mills station, which is great; however, travelling this direction past Yonge will then mean a transfer from the LRT to the subway at Don Mills, then to a bus at Yonge.

It is well-known that the Sheppard stubway, while convenient for a limited range of commutes, loses a great deal of money every year. If the LRT is added, it may being seem like an inconvenience.

My outlandish proposal: rip out the subway tracks and run the LRT underground from Don Mills to Yonge. Eventually, the LRT could hit the surface around Wellbeck (doesn't the Sheppard tunnel already run a certain distance past Yonge?), and head all the way out to Weston with connects at Bathurst, Downsview station, Keele, and the proposed Jane LRT.

Swapping subway for LRT along Sheppard shold cost considerably less than digging a new LRT tunnel (as is planned on Eglinton), requiring only new tracks and some station modifications to raise low-floor LRT doors up to meet the platform. The subway cars used on the Sheppard line are interchangable with the rest, and so they won't go to waste.

Will it cost less to operate an underground portion of an LRT line than the current Sheppard subway? Have heavy-to-light underground rail retrofits been sucessfully accomplished elsewhere? I have no idea, but a great deal of transfer hassle would be saved at Don Mills, and a single-trip, transfer-free LRT run from the east through to Weston would make a lot of sense.

Smokey Bear Nation - "We now take it for granted that fictional characters like Shrek and Arthur and Smokey Bear help teach our children right from wrong. But how did we come to outsource our kids' educations to creatures with googly eyes?" [Slate]

Now that's a tidy raise

Minimum wage to rise, Liberals to fight child poverty - "Sorbara commissioned University of Toronto professor Morley Gunderson to study the impact of a $2 hike. Gunderson, paid $24,000 for a sobering 50-page report that took him six weeks to complete, found such a dramatic rise in the wage could cost even more jobs than the 66,000 the finance ministry had estimated." [Toronto Star]

Before I go nuts with math here, a disclaimer: none of what I'm about to spew out is is by way of impugning the quality or accuracy of Prof. Gunderson's study, or his deserving to be properly compensated for key economic policy advice.

But $24,000 divided by 6 weeks = $4,000 per week, which begs the question:


In other words:

• 40 hrs @ $100/hr;
  
• 20 hrs @ $200/hr;
  
• 10 hrs @ $400/hr;

I think it's safe to assume that the professor didn't manage to squeeze in an extra full time job moonlighting for Queen's Park. I suppose $200/hr is probably a decent ballpark guess at the effective wage paid for his study.

Anyhow, putting it a (few) other way(s):



To earn $24,000 today, you'd have to clock:

• 3,504 hours (88 weeks full-time) @ 2003's $6.85 pre-Liberal minimum wage;
  
• 3,000 hours (75 weeks full-time) @ today's $8;
  
• 2,341 hours (59 weeks) at 2010's proposed $10.25;
  

Finally, Prof. Gunderson's 2005 U of T salary (excluding benefits): $140,970.32, for an effective wage of $67.77/hr assuming 52 weeks at 40 hrs/wk.

Surprise of the decade

A Conservative (for the umpteenth time, not Tory!) budget that panders to middle-class suburbanites? You don't say... [Globe and Mail, CBC, National Post, etc.]

My vote for word of the century:

"Presenteeism"

WordSpy: "The feeling that one must show up for work even if one is too sick, stressed, or distracted to be productive; the feeling that one needs to work extra hours even if one has no extra work to do."

Random Googled glossary: "Describes an employee who is at work but not fully functioning while there."

Urban Dictionary: "[The phenomenon] of showing to work when you are sick. Opposite of absenteeism."

Dictionary.com/Webster's: "[T]he practice of always being present at the workplace, often working longer hours even when there is nothing to do."

WebMD: "[W]hen sick employees show up for work."

MedicineNet.com: "The problem of workers being on the job but, because of medical conditions, not fully functioning. The health problems that result in presenteeism include such chronic or episodic ailments as seasonal include: depression, back pain, arthritis, heart disease, high blood pressure, and gastrointestinal disorders. An example of presenteeism might ibe an employee who suffers from depression and so is less able to work effectively. And another example might be the employee with a migraine headache who may have difficulty looking at a computer screen."

Now for a not-SideJob to track...

SideJobTrack calls itself a "web-based job tracking, invoicing, reporting & project management software for the part-time independent contractor." [via WebWorkerDaily]

Ms Sorbara's in a groove - OK, so Greg Sorbara's daughter Martina moved to England, became a pop musician, and is now mostly naked in The Star? Oh, right, it's *Sunday*. Thanks, Torstar!

Far too big, too high, too close - "It's a cat-and-mouse game between the [billboard] advertising companies and overworked city inspectors trying to enforce an inadequate bylaw that is convoluted and confusing, even to them. Among other things, it mandates the kind of billboard that is permissible and the minimum distance between signs." [Toronto Star via Spacing]

This article profiles Rami Tabello of IllegalSigns.ca and its map of allegedly offending billboards.

Click2Map is a fancy-pants Google Maps tool that's verily oozing with AJAXy goodness.

Stay in school, kids

It's hard to remain optimistic about one's own job prospects when Softchoice wants Facilities Assistants (whose duties include: "restock toilet paper, hand towels and soap", "Clean fridges every two weeks", "Wipe glass surfaces with Windex") to have a "College or University Degree", the "ability to multi-task", and "Working knowledge of MS Word, Excel, Outlook".

Perhaps at Canada's 8th best workplace (2006), BA-wielding janitors are expected to simultaneously email revised spreadsheets tracking office-wide TP use statistics to their supervisors while re-filling the liquid soap dispensers.

"A University of Iowa study may provide an explanation for why some people get migraine headaches while others do not. The researchers found that too much of a small protein called RAMP1 appears to 'turn up the volume' of a nerve cell receptor's response to a neuropeptide thought to cause migraines." [University of Iowa]

Meat-loving calf eats chickens - "Instead of the dogs, we watched in horror as the calf, whom we had fondly named Lal, sneak to the coop and grab the little ones with the precision of a jungle cat..." [Reuters]

Crisis Looms in Market for Mortgages - "Hanging in the balance is the nation’s housing market, which has been a big driver of the economy. Fewer lenders means many potential homebuyers will find it more difficult to get credit, while hundreds of thousands of homes will go up for sale as borrowers default, further swamping a stalled market." [New York Times]

Status report Delta

So, my hearing aids work. Well. Fear of distortion, feedback, whistling from the wind, and physical discomfort have proven unfounded.

Hussah?