I was randomly surfing the internet when I happened across this little gem ¹. I read it and immediately thought of something that Mankiw² has been espousing for quite a few years, pigovian taxes ³.

From the arm of my chair I commented on the article:

“One of the first, and definitely not the last example of a pigovian tax. Essentially, an attempt to offset the cost of goods that have negative externalities – with taxes. Unfortunately, this one was poorly marketed but that doesn’t mean it’s any less necessary.”

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When I woke up this morning, the only thing I could think about was having a coffee. You know, one of those zombie like walks you make to the kitchen with your eyes only 1/8th open? Yes, that was me.

So, I went into the kitchen and I started to boil water. I went back into the bedroom to check my mail and about 5 minutes later I smelled something pungent, strong and smokey. Yes, you guessed it – the kitchen was on fire!

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In the middle of 2008, I decided it was time to give Wordpress a try and I’ve found a lot of things that I really do not appreciate.

There really is a big difference between Wordpress and Textpattern. Textpattern, does only what you tell it to do, and is incredibly simple to customize. Wordpress does everything you need it to, even when you don’t want it to, and is considerably more difficult to customize. For example, the PHP in Wordpress is far more difficult to read than are simple pneumonic tags in Textpattern that do the exact same thing.

But let’s talk a little about economies of scale here. Wordpress has a significantly larger user base, therefore it has many more themes, plugin’s and potential developers. Textpattern, has a smaller userbase and hence less themes, less plugin’s and less potential developers.

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Because I want a government:

• That cuts income taxes rather than corporate taxes
• That believes in and has the balls to tax environmental externalities (the fancy way of saying “the green shift” aka – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigovian_tax ) such that the true costs of goods and services are pushed not only on the manufacturer but also on the consumer
• That has a proven track record dealing with times of significant economic uncertainty
• That supports the arts; and
• That supports childcare – not just a measly $2000 tax credit (people are paying that in a month to have their children cared for).

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I have a rule – perhaps it’s better described as an axiom – that I use as a guiding principle for life. “Everything has a way of working out – even when you don’t expect it to”. Either I’m a hopeless optimist or it is just a good way to describe my own laissez-faire approach to life problems. Regardless, it proved to be wrong for at least a portion of Sharon’s Birthday.

How many things can go wrong in one day? Here’s an overview of Sharon’s day:

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So recently someone passed me one of these videos where the lyrics were directly translated into English and I almost died laughing. You have to check it out.

We showed this to Sharon’s dad and told him to pay attention to the subtitles. He replied “What do I need the subtitles for, I understand what they are saying already?”

Humour really is lost in translation sometimes. Or in this case, perhaps it’s gained.

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It is almost too easy to remember situations in which communication goes awry. One great example comes from something that I feel is common, especially in Canada, where the nuance of language is “lost in translation”.

For a while, I was dating a Croatian girl whose parents spoke little to no English; so I started studying the language intensely. I had reached a point where I felt comfortable with the language. You know, that point where knowing a little can be exponentially more dangerous than knowing nothing at all.

I used what little knowledge of the language I had to the best of my ability one night before dinner. In an attempt to tell her mother that what she was cooking smelled fantastic, I expounded, in broken Croatian: “Ovo je smrdi vrlo dobro!”. Her mother looked at me like a deer looking into headlights, long enough for me to think that I had made some horrible pronunciation error that translated into some expletive. After a few moments of the “deer looking into headlights” gaze she and my former girlfriend started laughing profusely. Apparently, the direct translation of what I had said was “This STINKS really good”.

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Unilever
2421 Bristol Circle
Oakville, Ontario
L6H 5S9

Brandon Erik Bertelsen
[Address Held Private]

Dear Unilever,

I recently purchased a carton of your ice cream, and I felt disappointed and misled by the advertising on the packaging; it claimed to be “Loaded with Stuff”. However, I found it lacking in the “stuff” department. Especially in comparison to other ice cream brands like the Oreo branded ice cream or the entire range of Haagendaz ice creams that contain, well, stuff.

As a connoisseur of ice cream, I would recommend that you cease to use the word “loaded” when it obviously lacks what any reasonable ice cream connoisseur would expect to receive in a “loaded” carton of milky, gooey goodness.

I would clarify my point by saying that I still enjoyed the carton and easily devoured it within a matter of hours. In fact it was absolutely delish! Regardless, it left me feeling cantankerous and somewhat ornery as the advertisement cheated my expectations. For that reason I am taking advantage of the formal process of writing you a letter and enclosing the UPC.

Sincerely,

A concerned ice cream connoisseur

I’m excited for this years round of hot docs. If you don’t know what hot docs is:

Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival is North America’s largest documentary festival. Each year, the festival presents a selection of more than 100 cutting-edge documentaries from Canada and around the globe. Through its industry programmes, the Festival also provides a full range of professional development, market and networking opportunities for documentary professionals. ~ courtesy of hot docs

Here are my pics for this year:

• Beyond Our Ken
• At the Death House Door
• Forgotten Woman
• Killer Poet
• Planet B-Boy
• Short and Male

I also really want to see this film but I’m not sure if there’s enough time!

• Be Like Others

Dear Ryerson University,

Last year, I took a distance education course through Ryerson University and I’d like to share some elements of the course structure and organization that I found extremely difficult to deal with. I do not intend for this to come across as a rant but in some situations it may seem so.

Organization of information in an online course, to me, is crucial. All of one’s questions should be answered from one specific online location that is not only indexed but also searchable. The course material was held in three different locations. The course outline was in a web format but task-based course information was released on a weekly basis in the format of a letter that you had to go in and physically download; also, the letter held superfluous information about the course and was not formatted appropriately for giving people directions as to “what’s next”. This led to me clicking around for about 20 minutes and reading for another 20 minutes before I could find what I was supposed to do that week.

In addition, online courses lose out on the ability of instantaneous question responses from professors so there needs to be some method of providing feedback; this is where the forums come in. The complaint here is that there was a load of unnecessary information within the forums and questions that should have been answered in a more public manner were buried in the thread. In addition, students would reply to other student’s questions and while their intention is to help, as a student asking a question, I want it answered by my professor – not my peers.

Here is what I would recommend to Ryerson:

1. Ditch blackboard, or at least upgrade the version – it’s horribly outdated in comparison to some of the super fast and not to mention FREE applications available out there on the internet with the same capabilities.
2. Or at least ditch the threaded forums; they are painstaking to follow and require entirely to much action on my part to be involved in (usability)
3. Use a forum like punBB it’s open source, easy to implement and perfect for distributing information in ONE location
4. Setup email or RSS notifications for the release of information. Do you know how easy it would be to make a simple facebook application that notifies your students that there’s work to be done?!
5. Create FAQ’s for those who do not like to waste time wading through the forum but do not want to waste the professor’s time either.

Thanks,

BEB

Student, Ryerson University