We had to euthanize betafish today. He was all floaty and his swim bladder wasn't working properly. Poor little dude. I got him in September and he was all banged up and had scales scraped off (pet stores do not treat fishes well, particularly the betas in the little tiny cups). He had recovered his scales, and was looking healthy and lively, but alas. I've never had a beta before, and they're quite charming.

In other more serious news, Canada should ban tasers. It is becoming increasingly clear that, if given tasers, people will use them. And when they use them, they will use them incorrectly - multiple tases in under a minute, for example, or using them on people who are on the ground, or simply tasing for compliance. Transit authorities in BC have been tasing people for not paying transit fare. To this I say: what the hell?? Why are they even allowed to carry tasers?

I'm frankly uncomfortable with even police having them, what with the multiple tens of cases of them being misused by law enforcement - there is this perception that since they're not lethal (well... usually) that it's OK to use them any old time. At least lethal force is recognized as something that is very serious and with very serious consequences. Tasers, on the other hand, are like little plastic toys that you can point at people to make them shut up! They're maaaagic! Enlarging the taser-having population seems a recipe for disaster.

Er, anyway, back to the epiphenomenology for me!

• I promise to never complain about the price of milk or bread again. Ever.
• What do you do with a neighbour who won't make eye contact? When we moved in, we tried to be friendly by saying 'hello,' but we never got the chance. Whenever we were outside shovelling the walk or dumping the compost or whatever, we would look in their direction to say "Hi, we're your new neighbours," but. They refused to look at us. So we never actually got the chance. It's very puzzling. (Our other neighbours are really nice folks.)

  I thought maybe they just were nearsighted or busy or distracted or something, until this morning. They have a doggie who, whenever we're in the back yard, runs over and begs us to play with him. So, finally, Damian couldn't stand the poor sad doggie, and he put his hand over the (small) fence, retrieved the doggie toy the puppy had brought over, and threw it for him a few times. Now, whenever the doggie sees Damian, he runs over. Play! Play with me! Yeah! Yeah yeah yeah! You know how dogs are. (Neighbours never play with him). So Damian was out there this morning throwing the filthy dog-rag a few times, and neighbour lady opened the door, yelled at the dog to come in, and did not even look at Damian once. It was weird. I don't think I like our neighbours. I should challenge them to a stare-off.*

• I paid all this money for a cell phone and a plan, and there isn't even going to be an election until the Fall. I demand a refund. In the meantime, of course, I'm going to campaign my ass off. (As soon as I get back from Taiwan.)
• This guy is awesome. Gilbert and Sullivan would be proud. I particularly like this one, about Thomas Beattie.
• More finch eggs. It's like they're trying to repopulate the continent.
• Did you know that it costs $450 to get vaccinated against Japanese Encephalitis? Yeah. And $90 for cholera. And $160 for each Hep B shot. Oh! But mumps, measles and rubella is free. Isn't that nice?

  UPDATE: The reason that it's $450 for the Encephalitis vaccine is because it's made in live mouse brains. Yep, that's right. Mouse brains! I wonder, though, the mice at the pet store are $5 for 3. Where's the other $445? I'll just buy a mouse, expose it to some mosquitos, and, well, I'll have saved a lot of money.

• My cold is gone. Yay!

* Nah, I'll just ignore 'em. But still, wtf?

It never rains, but it pours. Like, outside, right now? It's pouring. Also, speaking of buckets of unexpected things, I have had five (5) offers of work in the past week. And two of them are huge projects. Like, massive. I have much glee and consternation. Because I have a problem: I love doing this stuff. And I love the extra cash. But here's the thing: I DON'T HAVE TIME!!! Augh! I have exams! And campaigning! And... augh!

Sigh. I love this stuff, and somehow I know I'll try to find a way to do it all, and you will find me sitting in a corner at 3:00am mumbling PHP to myself and rocking back and forth clutching my laptop... Count on it.

In other news, I KNEW IT. There is a Homosexual Agenda. (yeah, yeah, it's actually been posted on Pam's site for ages, which must have been how Sally Kern learned about it, because, you know, it was really kind of a secret for a long while). Also, speaking of the Homosexual Agenda, Dan Savage was wearing a Queen's Engineering GPA (golden party armor) on national television. Go Queen's! Although Dan himself didn't go to Queen's, he says that a friend gave it to him because, well, you know why.

In other news, things are Changing in my department, and I have trepidation. The general direction is that we are being required to make Business Cases for everything that we do. Which is great, to a point. Basic services like selling textbooks or getting through the registration lineup. But at that point and beyond - into the classroom and into teaching - we have to put up our dukes and insist to the government and to society that we're fundamentally not a business, and we are not like a business except in very superficial ways. What are we? We're a university.

And what, really, is the business case for higher education? How much the initials are worth we can measure, sort of. But what we can't measure is how much the knowledge and experiences are worth.

I don't know, I'm just a simple code monkey... But my humble socialist opinion is that education is an investment in people, in a profound and, frankly, unquantifiable way. We get people together in an environment that is full of stuff, and it's that environment which is special. Education is a long-term investment that doesn't -- and can never -- pay universities back in any direct way; it pays us back via the increased productivity of our graduates and society in general, but not via ledger balances. I look at education in the US - Stanford moving to a tuition-free model. And in Britain? Oxford was free for several hundred years yet managed to provide a world-class education (and so were all the other schools*). So what gives?

My discontent springs, I think, from the general - and relatively recent - idea of citizen-as-taxpayer; now we get student-as-customer, and it's pushing my buttons. Both of these models tends to miss the intangible psychological benefits of collective actions, things like learning or voting or participating in local government or yelling at the gas company.

That I disagree with the premises this model rests upon is part of a larger criticism, or course. Universities aren't getting the funding that they need to provide quality education, and the government isn't interested in providing it, because they don't believe in these intangibles either. "Intangibles" is just another way of saying "hippy feel-good mumbo-jumbo" because scientific management has infected the fabric of society.

Well. Now. There. I feel lots better.

* However "Public schools" run on a tuition model in England provide excellent secondary education, as opposed to state-run schools that don't. This is the privatize-health-care paradigm, where the good schools suck up the good students (via grants, subsidized by rich kids) and the good teachers (via higher pay) and leave the public system in the lurch.