I’m on Mastodon now

Given Twitter’s continuing slide into the cesspool of fradulent, fake, flimflamery, I’ve created an account on Mastodon.

A quick review of Tories’ new Tool(e)

Hi,, I’m Erin O’Toole. I’m smiling and I don’t know why.

Erin O’Toole is the new leader of the Conservative Party of Canada. Global News recently posted a brief introduction to O’Toole. I’d like to quickly review some highlights, as presented by Global. Quotes below are taken from the Global article.

O’Toole won on the 3rd ballot against perennial schmuck Peter MacKay and two other generic candidates. Not exactly a landslide victory. Still somehow he equates this to being given a “clear mission” by the Party. Clear as mud, I’d say.

This mission, according to O’Toole, includes “champion[ing] our conservative principles”. I’m really sure what those are. I mean, going by recent Tory leaders (the flaccid pastyman Andrew Scheer and the malignant fascist Stephen Harper), conservative principles include selling out to Big Business, re-instituting obsolete and regressive social norms, propagandizing everything, silencing scientists, dissolving the separation of Church and State, and generally fucking everything up. Not sure that how I’d go if I was in his shoes.

O’Toole started in politics in 2012. So he’s now running a federal political party with only 8 years experience. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, considering how messed up so many politicians with longer careers are, but he likely lacks the personal network and front-line experience to make his own decisions. I expect his many back room advisors will end up having much more power than they used to have. Note that these advisors are not really accountable to anyone….

He has a military background, having joined the RCAF when he was 18. The military – even the Canadian military – is by design a system to indoctrinate soldiers to a worldview where might ultimately makes right. The human brain’s higher functions – including abstract and ethical reasoning – matures around the age of 20. Assuming O’Toole’s cognitive development proceeded in an average way, the military had 2 years to literally shape his mind to their liking. That is not a good thing.

After the military, he became a lawyer. A lawyer, FFS! Lawyers are basically trained liars who advocate for their clients regardless of the ethics of that advocacy. According to Global News, he specialized “in areas like corporate law and energy regulation”. I’m not sure what “in areas like” means in this case. It could mean he specialized in corporate law, energy regulation, and related areas; or it could mean he specialized in areas that are similar to, but different from, corporate law and energy regulation. The only inference I can draw from this imprecise prose by Global News is that he likely worked for Big Business. This inference is supported by the claim that he “provide[d] counsel to companies like Procter & Gamble and Gillette”.

O’Toole is therefore probably not very aware of the plight and needs of the average worker, but extremely knowledgeable about “increasing shareholder value” (i.e., making the 1% even richer).

O’Toole was der Führer Harper’s Minister for Veterans’ Affairs – which makes sense given his military background. He “was able place a class action lawsuit on hold in order to start settlement negotiations with a group of Afghanistan veterans.” Settlement negotiations are confidential; class action lawsuits… less so. If the Harper regime had been truly interested in openness and transparency, it would have welcomed the class action suit. I think of all such cases that are resolved with “negotiated settlements” as just ways to preserve government secrecy without oversight.

He tried to become Tory leader back in 2017, and was defeated by the flaccid pastyman himself. Make of that what you will.

O’Toole’s platform, as reported by Global News, is virtually content-free. And where specifics are given, they’re not good: “reverse the Liberal government’s small business tax hike”, “taking a hardline approach on foreign relations”, ending Bill C-69, and “criminaliz[ing] the blockading of railways or ports.”

So it seems that, overall, the Canadian Conservatives will now be led by just another white, middle-aged, Euro-cis-male who was a jarhead, a corporate lawyer, and an employee of a regressive megalomaniac. In other words, just another Tory Tool.

My Dream for Star Trek: Picard

This post includes spoilers for the premiere episode of Star Trek: Picard. You have been warned.

Although I hold that the only bad Trek is no Trek, I must say I’ve been deeply disappointed by the “Jar Jar Abrams” timeline. So it is with only desperate hope that I pitch my crazy theory about the latest show in the Star Trek Universe: Picard will erase the Kelvin timeline and return things to the way they should be.

The thermodynamics of teaching and power imbalances in the classroom

Heat one end of a rod, and eventually the whole rod will reach an even and elevated temperature. That’s thermodynamics.

Drip a drop of dye into a cup of water and eventually the dye will diffuse evenly everywhere in the water. That’s thermodynamics too.

When heat moves from here to there, it’s because of an energy gradient. When dye moves from here to there in a cup of water, it’s because of a chemical gradient.

Gradients represent sources of power. Water falls over a cliff because of a gravitational gradient; and we can tap that gradient to generate electricity; we convert gravitational power into electric power. The taller the cliff, the greater the gradient, the more power is available, and the more electricity can be generated.

Put another way, gradients and power go hand in hand; you can’t have one without the other.

Classroom dynamics are like that too.

Text Expander for Chrome

Text Blaze is a free Chrome extension of the “text expander” type. It allows you to create abbreviations that will automatically expand to other user-definable text. There are lots of these text expanders out there; I’ve tried a few, but none have provided the functionality and usability of Text Blaze for free.

For instance, I’ve set up a snippet that turns “/today” into [17.03.19].

There’s a bit of a programming interface so you can create quite complex substitutions, even in Google Docs too. And it connects to your Google Account, so install it once and it will “spread” to all your devices that support Chrome extensions automatically

If you’re looking for an easy way to make your Chrome browser work better for you, I suggest you look into this extension.

Making exams easier on my knees

If you’re an engineering student, you’ll probably have to write more more than a few exams at the Mattamy Centre, and you’ll know what it’s like having to find your seat in the long rows of tables and chairs set up for exams down there.

Colourless peripheral vision? Yup.

Did you know you have no peripheral colour vision?

Look straight ahead. Without moving your eyes, take note of objects in your peripheral vision. You will see them in colour, right? But that’s an illusion.

You’re thinking: WTF?

Reflection makes experience meaningful

I wrote a post on my other blog about the importance of reflecting on your life as a feature of learning. If you care about your education, you need to reflect on what you’re learning.

You should watch this movie

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” — George Santayana

You may think things are pretty messed up these days, but in many ways they’re actually better. We have gotten kinder and less violent, for instance. There have also been tremendous strides forward for equality, all prefaced on the very simple realization that there is no necessary connection between skin colour, sex, (dis)ability, or culture and the quality of one’s character.

The art of taking notes

To my students:

Taking notes by hand (i.e., with pen & paper) has been shown to correlate strongly with better learning.