(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.)

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”.

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.

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

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*

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.

• Are there fundamental differences between front-end and back-end architecture concepts? What about graphics, connections and other aspects of many finished projects? —Alexander Ostrow

• Has there been any study of how much open source software has influenced closed source software?  Not in the sense of “closed source product A embeds open source project B in their code”, but more in terms of imitating [and] knowledge sharing (i.e., Twitter discussions between competing open source projects)?  That is, is there any way to know if or how much architecture of closed source applications has been influenced by open source software? —Jeff Squyres

• How do each of the open source projects achieve consensus on their architecture? Open source is sometimes known as quite contentious / flame war-intensive. How does distributed consensus between the human participants — particularly those in different organizations — factor into good and bad decisions in software architecture? —Jeff Squyres

• [In open source] How do you deal with people who won’t let go of a bad idea (or an idea that they just can’t get other people on board with)? —Fahd Khan

• Is good architecture key for any project to be successful? Can a project be successful without good architecture? Do all size projects need architecture to succeed? —Lokesh SP

• The subtitle of the book mentions “A Few Fearless Hacks”.  Could you guys talk about some of the more interesting hacks, specifically how those became an appropriate direction of development for the project and how those hacks lasted over time? —Rocco Pigneri [AB: Honestly, we mainly put that in the subtitle because it sounds cool, but I'm posting this question to see if we get any good stories.]

• What tools (if any) do you use to track a project’s history?  How do you remember why a feature was added, or not added? —John Jensen

• You have referred to the importance of learning from previous experiences, and I liked the term “Architecture Archaeology”, but how far are we from formalizing the essential software architectural principles and standards? Are open source projects helping in merging ideas together towards this essential set of principles and standards? —Zaid Basha

Read on for some of their insights.

You need that visceral sense of failure. – Simon Stewart

Each panelist talked about what surprised them, or what they learned, in the process of writing their chapter. Emil talked about not “expecting the unexpected”; he learned that you should just go with what needs to be done at the time and be ready to change it later, rather than trying to plan for every contingency up front. Margo talked about teaching students how to read source code, and about reading the Lions’ commentary on Unix as a student herself. Simon was surprised that he’d never sat down and written out his application’s design choices before. Greg discussed being pleasantly surprised that self-publishing was easier and quicker than legacy publishing, and I talked a little on that subject too.

Q&A

Questions from the audience elicited interesting comments.

How can you distinguish good architecture from bad architecture? Simon suggested that the more you need to know about a system to make change to it, the worse the architecture is. Margo said that well-written software is easy to read; if reading it makes you angry and frustrated then the architecture is bad. She also said that good architecture disappears into the code (kind of like how good novel structure disappears into the story — my analogy, not Margo’s). Greg observed that open source code can be like a third world city, with slums abutting nicely manicured neighbourhoods. The result is that most developers stay in the tidy parts of the code and the messy areas are neglected. According to Simon, it takes a strong leader with plenty of nerve to clean up those messy spots.

Sometimes problems are solved by people who don’t properly understand the problem. – Margo Seltzer

Does good architecture always go hand-in-hand with good code? Can you have good architecture which is badly implemented, or bad architecture implemented with good code? Margo proposed that you can have good architecture implemented badly, but that it’s easier to replace bad code if the architecture is good.

The full webinar is available on-demand, with tons more interesting discussion of software architecture, computer science education, and the best pub in London.

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.

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:

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.