Thanks from Amnesty International
Posted: January 26, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: AOSA, work Leave a comment »I received this lovely note from Amnesty International, thanking us (which means anyone who bought The Architecture of Open Source Applications) for our donations.
(I send them cheques for the royalties from the Kindle book, because the process to get them sent directly from Amazon is too byzantine to bother with.)
“Green”: You’re Missing the Point
Posted: January 8, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: environment, politics, society Leave a comment »I stumbled across this post today, asking about whether one of those coffee makers that consumes a new disposable pod for every cup (pot?) of coffee is “green”.
Ooh, miss! Miss! I know, miss! I know! Pick me!
No. No, a device which consumes a non-recyclable plastic cup in a process which normally only consumes a piece of paper (or even nothing disposable at all) is not green. It’s just not. REDUCE is the first R. Did you know they’re in order? Of course you did: reduce > reuse > recycle. There is nothing green (environmentally-conscious, sustainable) about this kind of coffee maker. There is no way to make it sustainable apart from buying their reusable filter and using regular coffee, which is exactly what they don’t want you to do because they mark up the price on their little pods like crazy, just like every other processed food is marked up like crazy.
I read on:
Specifically, how do they shoot hot water through a plastic cup with no harmful leaching from the plastic, including BPA?
See, now you’re somehow (I blame the hippies) getting greenness (environmental-consciousness, sustainability) mixed up with chemophobia (irrational fear of things you don’t understand). There is still some question of whether BPA is the boogeyman we’ve been led to believe it is, and further even if it is, we’re still not sure if it’s getting into our bodies through oral exposure or some other avenue. That may or may not make you feel better, but either way, that has no bearing on the environment.
My point is, don’t say “green” when you mean “contains no oogedy-boogedy scary chemicals”.
Early Childhood Education
Posted: November 22, 2011 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: kids, parenting, politics, school Leave a comment »Delphine was the first baby I ever knew. I was the baby of my family – I had no younger siblings or cousins, so I didn’t have any exposure to babies when I was a child. In adulthood, I was only the second of my social circle to have a baby. All I knew about babies was that I wanted one.
Fortunately, for me and for Delphine, I had amazing role models: my in-laws. They showed me, by example, how to hold her, how to carry her, talk to her, read to her, and play with her. They showed me how to make every object in the house an interesting artifact to be shown to and discussed with the baby; every object including the ones with text on them. Through my in-laws I learned to show Delphine letters and words, to sound them out, to talk about the shapes of letters and the sounds they represent. She and Cordelia and their baby cousin Charlie were saturated in text ever since they could focus on it.
So I was surprised when I asked a four-year-old of my acquaintance whether her name started with A or H (Anna or Hannah) and she couldn’t tell me. I was more surprised when a friend reported with pride that her son had come home from kindergarten and spelled his name for the first time. How, I thought, do you send a kid off to kindergarten without being able to spell his own name?
It turns out most people don’t have in-laws like mine, or any other role models to teach them how to introduce their children to the world of reading. That’s why I couldn’t agree more with this call to extend schooling to younger children. I don’t mean sitting-in-desks, worksheets-and-homework school, I mean the kind of excellent research-based, play-centred early childhood education that is offered in Ontario’s registered daycares. (At least all the daycares my kids were in.) And I’m not suggesting that kids be taken away from their parents for hours every day; I like the idea of a combined drop-in centre/childcare/kindergarten which is available at low or no cost to whoever chooses to use it, and allows children to participate at the pace that works for them and their family. And I really like the idea of putting such centres into Toronto’s underused schools, instead of closing schools and forcing kids to bus or travel further.
Letter of the Month: President’s Choice Cocoa
Posted: October 20, 2011 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: letter, politics Leave a comment »President’s Choice Customer Relations
1 President’s Choice Circle
Brampton ON L6Y 5S5
To Whom It May Concern:
I have recently been alarmed to learn of the use of child labour and even slavery in the processing of cocoa, especially in Ivory Coast. I understand that major chocolate producers purchase cocoa at commodity exchanges where Ivory Coast cocoa is mixed with cocoa from other sources.
I would like your assurance that President’s Choice doesn’t distribute chocolate made from cocoa produced by child slaves. I understand that it is difficult to be sure of the provenance of a commodity like cocoa. However, I will no longer purchase chocolate from companies who do not take responsibility for the production of the cocoa they use, and who cannot assure me that their chocolate was not made by child slaves.
Two hundred years ago my ancestors in England gave up sugar to protest the slave trade – I can surely do the same with chocolate now.
I look forward to hearing from you on this important matter.
Sincerely,
Amy Brown
The Tangled Web
Posted: September 26, 2011 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: fluff, society Leave a comment »The big news for today is that Sean Maher, who played Simon Tam on Firefly, just came out of the closet.
Maher [...] recalls that when he began his career [...] he was advised by his publicists, who were unaware he’s gay, to keep his girlfriend out of the spotlight to not compromise his appeal to a female demographic. Maher says he decided against being honest to his publicist because earlier his manager, who also didn’t know of Maher’s sexual orientation, had told him to get a girlfriend so people wouldn’t presume he’s gay.
*headdesk*
On Children and Commitment
Posted: September 12, 2011 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: kids, parenting Leave a comment »A couple of years ago I took Delphine to audition for the Toronto Children’s Chorus. It’s an excellent choir – or rather, family of choirs, because there are various choirs for different ages and skill levels. They do multiple concerts a year, make recordings, and the more senior choirs even go on international tours. They demand a high level of discipline on the part of the children and commitment on the part of the parents: they are expected to be at every performance and almost every rehearsal. In return they get to sing some amazing, challenging repertoire in a very accomplished choir.
The audition was successful, and Delphine was invited to join the TCC, but when I asked her whether she was interested she said she wasn’t. I was, honestly, a little relieved; I was conflicted as to whether the TCC was a good choice for us, and it was nice to have the decision taken out of my hands. Tonight I talked to someone who had been in the TCC from ages 11 to 16, and what she said confirmed our decision.
I asked her whether she had enjoyed being in the TCC, and she said, “Yeeeess…” while her body language said kinda. “…at the time.”
“So you enjoyed it when you were a kid but in retrospect it kind of sucked?” I asked, half-joking.
“Well, now I know what other activities were available.”
She wished she had done more different activities, rather than focusing all her time on choir. And indeed, if Delphine had joined the TCC I we wouldn’t have had the time or money to put her in any activities other than piano. And I’m just not ready to commit her to one interest at this stage in her life.
(Okay, let’s be honest, I’m not ready to commit me to one interest at this stage in my life, which is why I’m medium-good at a lot of things but expert at none. I’ve yet to decide if this is useful or not, but it’s certainly more fun. But the point is, if I can’t commit myself there’s no way I’m going to have whatever it takes to commit my kid.)
A while ago I read “The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother”, by Amy Chua. There was a lot of food for thought in that book, but one thing that struck me was that she took two perfectly ordinary kids with no particular talent or affinity for music and made them both into prodigies – one on piano, one on violin – by sheer determination and hard work. That means that pretty much every kid out there could be brilliant at something – music, hockey, math, golf, ballet, … – if their parents decided to sink sufficient time and money into making them so. (Or, and this does happen occasionally, if the kid decided to commit to something and the parents supported them.)
But I just can’t do it. Obviously my laissez-faire parenting style will not accommodate 15-hour-a week Tiger Mom practice sessions, but even a commitment like the TCC, one that will crowd out art lessons and ballet and cooking class and hours of unstructured lying-around-with-a-book time, is too much for my kids. Looks like they’ll have to either pursue their own passion (and sell me on supporting it), or be pretty good at lots of things but not expert at anything. Either way, I’m sure they’ll find a way to make it work.
Things That Make You Go “Hmm…” (Some software architecture questions)
Posted: August 10, 2011 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: AOSA, work Leave a comment »The attendees at the Software Architecture webinar had lots of interesting questions, but unfortunately we ran out of time before we could address all of them. Here are some of the questions we didn’t get to, or which bear revisiting; feel free to discuss them in the comments, or on your blog. If you write about them let me know and I’ll include a link to your post here. Read the rest of this entry »
Talking About Architecture
Posted: July 23, 2011 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: AOSA, work Leave a comment »
If talking about music is like dancing about architecture, I’m not sure what that makes talking about architecture, but talk we did, about software architecture rather than the bricks and mortar kind. Last Wednesday I participated in Part 2 of the Architecture of Open Source Applications webinar run by Smartbear Software and the Software Quality Connection. The other participants were Greg Wilson, my co-editor; Margo Seltzer, who co-wrote the chapter on BDB, Simon Stewart, who wrote the chapter on Selenium; and Emil Ivov, who wrote the chapter on Jitsi.
Read on for some of their insights. Read the rest of this entry »
The Nutrition Police Are Coming to Your Bake Sale
Posted: June 12, 2011 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: kids, politics, school 2 Comments »It has come to my attention that the Ontario government has been so kind as to provide us with a cookbook with “healthy” recipes for baked goods, so our children don’t have to suffer the ignominy of purchasing delicious, decadent treats at school bake sales.
The cookbook features such Seinfeldian delights as brownies made with mashed black beans, and “vanilla squares”: Rice Krispie squares, minus the Rice Krispies, plus All-Bran. Because what kid doesn’t enjoy a delicious square of Super Colon Blow ‘n Marshmallows?
When I ranted about this to Blake his first response was, “at least it’s not mandatory.” Actually, the cookbook goes hand in hand with Ontario’s new School Food and Beverage Policy, which specifies that 80% or greater of food sold at any given school event should meet certain criteria: no more than 5 grams of fat per serving, no more than 2 grams of saturated fat per serving, and at least 2 grams of fibre per serving.
Now, I have nothing against healthy eating, but this is ridiculous.
First of all, we’re talking about bake sales here. Bake sales. Bake sales are special occasions, a time for indulgence. Bake sale food does not make up a significant proportion of anyone’s diet. No kid ever got fat eating food from bake sales.
Second, this cookbook, this whole policy, is insulting and patronising. I’m no liberatarian, but this is literally a nanny state at work. The government is telling us, in very specific and precise terms, what we should feed our children. Not suggesting, not educating, but decreeing.
Who provides the food for bake sales? Parents. Not corporations or school boards, who might for reasons of profit or expedience not take all childrens’ needs into account, but the parents of the very same children who are buying and eating the food. If we, the parents, thought bake sale food was damaging our childrens health, we would have very straightforward recourse: we would provide different food. No-one sends steak tartar or fugu to bake sales because that would be dangerous. Cupcakes and brownies are not dangerous. They do not need to be regulated.
The final irony is that “the standards do not apply to food and beverages that are offered in schools to students at no cost”. So school meal programs for children who come to school hungry, the programs which are quite likely to furnish a significant proportion of those children’s daily nutrition, are, unfathomably, not governed by these regulations. Good grief.
Redistribution of Wealth
Posted: June 7, 2011 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: politics, school, society Leave a comment »On May 31, Emma Waverman tweeted this:
My friend is a Principal in a underserviced Toronto jr school. She needs $2000 to FEED her students for the rest of the year. Anyone?
Emma Waverman
emmawaverman
And I thought something like, “Holy shit, @2000?” I thought, “Holy shit, $2000?” because at our school summer fair we raised $1300. At the bake sale table. Never mind the barbeque and the silent auction and the bouncy castle and the games, we raised 65% of the money Emma’s friend needs to feed her school’s kids for a month, selling brownies and cupcakes for three hours.
It seemed a little ridiculous not to try to help. So I sent email to our School Council president and treasurer, and to the principal, asking if we could help. The response was overwhelmingly positive: the treasurer said we could give some money and also ask the other schools in our area to donate; the principal suggested setting up a donating jar at the Freezie Friday table; and in her typical no-bullshit style, the president of the school council dropped $500 of her own money on the table. Emails flew back and forth, working out the logistics, and this rainy morning I woke up to this tweet:
Thanks to @amyrhoda and her school’s parent council. The kids at my friend’s school have enough to eat for the rest of the school year. #wowEmma Waverman
emmawaverman
I’m not sure exactly what amount of money came from which source, but we did it.
But there’s a catch. Our next School Council meeting is on June 14, which means we did this without consulting the council. Now, our contribution was (as far as I know) only $500, and we came up with a plan to cover it if the council retroactively refuses to donate this money, so technically it’s fine. But I’m pretty sad that we have to even make a contingency plan. “In case of ungenerousness, break glass.”
The Ontario school funding formula is broken (thanks to Mike Harris); schools just don’t get the money they need. To make up the difference, families in some schools have stepped in with fundraising efforts. But a lot of schools don’t have access to the kind of fundraising expertise, connections, or cash that others do, creating a two-tier public education system where the rich get richer and the poor stay hungry. Some “have” school councils quietly contribute to “have not” schools, but despite repeated efforts on my part and the part of other parents, we have been unable to convince our school council to do the same.
I don’t think it’s because we’re fundamentally ungenerous. The fact is, we’re not a rich neighbourhood in the sense that Forest Hill and Rosedale are rich. Yes, we have a lot of money, but we work damn hard for it–we’re bankers and lawyers (and software developers), not idle heirs and socialites. So we do tend to hold on to our money. But I believe if we (the school council) only managed to frame the idea of giving properly, we could get the rest to agree to it.
I think funding something specific and finite, like a breakfast program for a particular school, would be simple and appealing enough to convince parents to part with a little bit of our money. It’s much more satisfying to contribute to something you can picture than something nebulous; that’s why the charity appeals on TV always feature one specific kid (or dog).
So I don’t honestly expect that we’ll be retroactively refused that meal program money, although we might (fairly enough) be questioned as to whether we intend to quietly and without consultation give away any more of our money. That will be a good time to say, “No, but let’s plan to give a specific amount to a particular need, so we can share the wealth in a structured manner.” Maybe this time they’ll go for it.
