I Like BOB-TV

But more importantly, Alex likes Bob-TV.

Reasons why Bob-TV is better than The Wiggles:

• Although they are both music shows, the Bob-TV is better music.
• Having Bob-TV on in the background is like having the radio on from when I was going to school.
• Most importantly it takes Alex three hours to watch all three Bob-TV episodes in the PVR rather than only the one hour required to exhaust the Wiggles episodes in the PVR.

One of the current crop of Bob-TV episodes in our PVR includes Rush's Tom Sawyer in them.

We're number 7!

Idiot journalist:

But the good news for Canadians is that we are no far behind on the ranking — 7th out of 100 countries.

No, wrong, thanks for playing.

In lists like this your position doesn't matter so much as your distance from whatever you think your achievable score is.

Look, if these countries were in a line up and the first ten countries got something like I dunno a sane politician, then yes being 7th is pretty good. But being 11th is just as bad as being 100th -- all you get for turning up is wasted time.

But since this list we are talking about involves some kind of scoring, what's important is both the total score and the scores of those ahead (and, if you care, behind) of us. Otherwise your "position on the list" is completely meaningless.

Let's consider a hypothetical list of 100 countries where we come last. But the countries are scored on a scale of 1 to 100, and the first 99 countries get 100, and we get 99. So just looking at the list we'd say "we are the last one! boo hoo!" and "we are the only country to score below average! Boo hoo!" But the fact that we are only 1% out of the logjam for #1 means we really did pretty well.

But what do you expect -- the IS the media we are talking about.

(Posted here because the Citizen's signup thing hates me.)

6K on ServerFault

Been a while, but broke 6K on Server Fault yesterday.

Seems to me like the number of questions I can answer is steadily dropping, as so much of the low-hanging-fruit turns out to be duplicates of previous answers. The questions that remain are very incident-specific, and most of then deal with details I don't know about.

But still, 6K is still nothing to sneer at. As of today, I'm ranked #42 on the site.

(Previously.)

Context Fail: Flipped

As in:

A tractor-trailer has flipped on its side forcing police to close the two south bound lanes of Maitland Ave.

To me, a "flip" describes a end-over-end motion which sweeps at minimum 180 degrees. 270 degrees is more like it.

Compare: if I flip onto my back, it implies I went face-first, my feet go over my head, and I end up on my back. If I go over backwards and end up on my back, to me it just implies a 90 degree change in orientation -- in other words, I just fell over backwards.

While I'm sure that someone, somewhere has "flipped" a tractor trailer onto its side, using the terms "flopped" or "fell over" is probably far more descriptive.

Balloons In Spaaaace

Problem: thousands of objects, one square centimetre or larger, in orbit around the earth.

Solution: tie big balloons to dead satellites and let them increase the orbital drag, which should eventually drag them into the atmosphere where they'll burn up.

Problem: how do you tie big balloons to dead satellites?

Solution: An orbital robot, the design and implementation of which is left as an exercise for the reader.

Don't you love science!

Context Fail: Numerous.

Like this: A 50-year-old man faces numerous charges for firearms and public mischief after an armed standoff with police at a Swiss Chalet in Toronto's west end on Friday afternoon.

The word Numerous is being used here as short form for "a really large amount", when it really means "beyond number".

The legal system is a precise world. There is an actual number of charges that this man is facing, but the journalists in question realize that the reading public really don't care what this number is. And because writing something like A 50-year-old faces a really large number of charges [...] sounds like you are in grade school, the word "numerous" has been inserted instead.

It is lazy, imprecise use of language.

I Like This Idea

This is going to sound a little strange when compared with past opinions, but...

This idea of extending LRT to Landsdown is an idea I like.

It seems to me that thinking about things this was is exactly what you want to do in order to promote "smart" growth. If we are going to do LRT, and if we are going to do Landsdown, then gluing the two together is to me a no-brainer.

It occurs to me that any LRT which improves the lives of those of us who live out in the suburbs is only going to encourage the growth in those suburbs. If you are serious about densification, then you have to do two things:

• make the core of the city an inviting place to live through public works improvements like this, and
• stop making the places you want to discourage people living in more inviting.

I mean really, why are people going to choose to live in the city over living in the suburbs? Because it is a nicer place to live.

You still have to deal with the problem that the same money in the city buys a fraction of the living space that it does in the city. There is probably no real solution to that problem. But by making the surrounding city more inviting goes a long way towards correcting the perceived imbalance, especially since you are not actively trying to make life in the suburbs more convenient.

(Timely: the Bulldog on roadworks projects.)