I should clarify. Sam is actually gung-ho to move to a very specific sub-set of Toronto:

Actually, I’m being unfair on Sam, as I wouldn’t live in suburban Toronto either. The traffic alone would kill me. And the map is actually a very narrow interpretation of the GTA, since I didn’t include Oshawa or Burlington in my GTA graphic, but apparently both are considered as such.

So, to conclude: Toronto = sprawling, traffic-ridden suburbia, but really very nice for about 7 square kilometres in the downtown.

…George Clooney is entirely responsible for the existence of this product:

Gorgeous George in a Bottle

So, this isn’t my preferred method of funding higher education. It’s very clear that you only benefit from this if you (1) can afford to save significant amounts per child, and (2) are in a high enough tax bracket for the tax break to matter. I’d rather see $1-billion subsidize low-income families (say by increasing the matching grant subject to a means test), or go to current students as grants or scholarships or shiny new campus infrastructure.

This is also not my preferred method of cutting taxes. It’s deeply regressive — If you make under $35k a year, your tax break will be indistinguishable from zero. It’s not even my preferred method of cutting taxes for the wealthy. I mean, as long as we’re doling out a billion in tax cuts (annually!) to high earners, I want to get mine, and not be held back because I’m sprogless.

But, this is what you get with a Conservative government, right? No! This is a private member’s bill from a Liberal MP, and is fervently supported by the alleged heroes-of-the-working-class, the NDP and Bloc Quebecois. The Conservatives, and the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, and the right-wing think tanks are up in arms. They’re arguing that it’s a subsidy to the wealthy, which is completely true. But they’re the Tories. They’re supposed to be *in favour* of subsidies to the wealthy. Meanwhile, the NDs and Bloc and supposed to rail against the Tories for putting the interests of their wealthy donors ahead of the interests of the working man/little sovereigntists from Shawinigan. I swear, the whole of the House of Commons has fallen through the looking glass.

I find the whole conversation rather bizarre. Daughter is young, but is in her second year of university, so must be at least 18, and more likely 19. Yet one of the reasons that spending the night is “inappropriate” is that boyfriend is 21. This seems like a silly age difference to make a fuss over. I also wonder how mother is planning to enforce her desired sleeping arrangements. Surely, once daughter and boyfriend are on the trip, she has no control whatsoever. Further, I have learnt through the course of my shameless eavesdropping that daughter is going to Germany this summer, sans parents (she is taking German to prepare, see). How is mother going to enforce preferred sleeping arrangements on that trip? Indeed, If daughter takes it into her head to have casual sex with every man in Germany, how is mother going to prevent it?

I gather mother has some sort of moral objection to pre-marital sex, and she also believes that spending the night together will lead to an unhealthy relationship with boyfriend. I think she’s nuts to believe these things, but I think she’s even nutsier to think she can somehow prevent her adult daughter from having unhealthy relationships and/or moral failings. At some point, daughter has to either succeed or fail on her own decisions, and if that point hasn’t come by age 18, when does it come? Under mother’s mental model, at what age does she no longer get a deciding say in her children’s personal lives? And what does she think she’s accomplishing by bringing pressure to bear on this subject? It seems obvious to me that the most likely outcome is deceit and a more distant relationship with daughter, plus a daughter who doesn’t own her decisions, and expects her parents to be at least somewhat accountable for her choices. How are the sleeping arrangements on any road trip worth that kind of fall out?

When the IAAF’s decision came down, I disagreed with it, but I couldn’t really fault their argument. I believe that the prosthetics impart a mechanical advantage. Look at them.. They’ve been engineered to be as efficient as possible, so they’re clearly going to outpace anything evolution has been able to accomplish with the human foot. Agreeing with the IAAF’s reasoning, I couldn’t quite articulate why I disagreed with their conclusion.

The Onion has hit on it. No one is going to cut off their legs to reap this advantage. Yes, steroids and HGH and whatever else wreak horrible damage on the body, but the effects are ambiguous and in the future, and it’s easy for athletes to discount them. Amputation is instant and acute and obviously horribly painful, and no one is going to discount the ’side effect’ of no longer having legs. Even if some athlete were sufficiently mentally ill as to *want* to trade off their lower limbs for a hoped-for athletic advantage, no surgeon would do it. If it makes them feel better, the IAAF could ban voluntary amputation of limbs. It’s a hell of a lot easier than policing testosterone use — it’s not something that happens behind closed doors with no definitive physical indicators. One day you have legs, one day you don’t, people are going to notice. Therefore, the only people gaining from prosthetic limbs will be people born without legs, or people who have had limbs amputations due to some horrific accident or illness.

In other words, amputees get an athletic advantage due to some factor outside of their control. Much the same way as being naturally athletically gifted gives you an advantage outside of your control. Further, it’s not as if getting yourself a set of Cheetah prosthetics automatically makes you a world-class track star. You still need to train incredibly hard, be intensely dedicated to your sport, etc., etc. I’m pretty confident that Paula Radcliffe’s lungs are freakishly efficient and confer a huge advantage over my asthmatic ones, but she shouldn’t be banned from using them. Moreover, no matter how good her lungs are, Radcliffe wouldn’t be a world class marathoner if she didn’t train like a crazy woman. Amputees’ prosthetics shouldn’t be viewed as bionic technical aids; they’re legs. Any Olympic athlete (curlers excepted) is going to have at least one physical attribute that is better or more efficient than you would find in the general population. I would argue that prosthetic limbs fall into the same category, and should not be viewed as a technical aid.

SAN JOSE — [Toronto Maple Leaf’s embattled head coach] Paul Maurice’s voice cracked and quivered with emotion as he considered the question about whether his players had quit on him.

Personally, I think Maurice’s sobbing histrionics are clearly a calculated, manufactured tactic to win sympathy in advance of voting (by the MLSE board). He must be getting bad advice from Mark Penn.

Susan to Sam: You’ve got keys?

Sam to Susan: You’ve got a wallet?

It is only as we’re walking back from the post office that we realize: Sam keeps his prox card in his wallet, and Susan keeps her prox card on her key chain. Therefore, if we’ve got Sam’s key chain and Susan’s wallet, we don’t have a prox card, and we cannot get back in the apartment building.

It is, of course, monumentally stupid to lock yourself out of your apartment. But it is monumentally stupider to lock yourself out of your apartment when the temperature is -20ºC, and falling. It was a long cold wait for someone to let us in the building.

I’m shopping for Christmas presents on your fine website, and lucky me, the order comes to $39.34, so my shipping is free. But as I’m paying for the purchase, I realize I’m being billed $50. Why? Well, I have an iRewards card, which gives me an automatic discount, bringing the total price below the $39 free-shipping threshold, to $38.08. I’m paying over $9.50 in shipping costs to save myself $1.26 on the books. Silly.

But I’m nonplussed. I think to myself that it shouldn’t be a problem. Surely there’s just some box I can tick, to decline the iRewards “discount”. No? Well, surely I can go edit my account profile and remove the iRewards membership number. No again? Well, shit.

You know what the only way is to decline the iRewards discount? Sign up for a whole other account, attached to a different email address, and not enter the rewards membership. Or, alternatively, I could buy the same order on amazon, and save myself the aggravation. Guess which option I chose?

Ordinarily I’d charge top dollar for advice like this, but here’s a freebie: add a line of code so that the iRewards discount isn’t applied when it causes an order to fall below $39. Otherwise, anyone with an iRewards card (ostensibly your most valued customer) is going to make all his $39-$40 purchases at the competition. Go figure.

Yours,

S.

p.s. Uh, Sam? You might be getting books for Christmas. They cost a shade over $39. Sorry to spoil the surprise.