Tuesday, August 23, 2011

I definitely smell a pork product of some type

I kinda want to go to an Islamic country during Ramadan and eat all sorts of aromatic meats.

D.E.S. - Narcs or Holy Warriors of Might and Justice?


D.E.S. stands for "Drug Enforcement Section" which is part of the O.P.P.'s Organized Crime Enforcement Bureau. It's the lead agency in charge of drug enforcement in Ontario and judging from it's insignia, it thinks pretty highly of itself.

Start with the sword in the middle. Traditionally, swords represent the following: prestige, state power, warfare, righteousness, honour, justice, masculinity, courage, aggression, and virtue. Plus it's a phallus. Back in the Middle Ages, the sword represented the word of God, but I sincerely hope that's not what the O.P.P. is going for here.

Then you have the scales of justice, which are self-explanatory: they mean that the D.E.S. balances both sides fairly. The scales are normally held by Lady Justice (a.k.a.the personification of judicial morality) but even alone we all know they represent fairness and justice. The weird thing is, cops are not judges and so it is not their job to weigh the merits of a case. Even after a cop brings in a case, the Crown Attorney would still have the discretion to decide whether or not to proceed with prosecution even before a judge would have to consider the issue, so there is no need for cops to have a finely-tuned sense of right and wrong (but I suppose it wouldn't hurt if they did). More than anything, I believe the scales are meant to indicate that the D.E.S.operates without bias, corruption, prejudice, or favour

Next, consider the lettering. The D.E.S. uses an intimidating combination of big, black, and bold with gray outlines of each letter for EXTRA EMPHASIS. You can't use that combination then complain that it's hard to reach your female hiring quotas. Why not try some classic Helvetica with a soft cerulean twinge to attract some hipsters? They know where the pot is.

Behind everything is a pair of wings. Generally, wings like these belong to an eagle, which is a sufficiently prestigious symbol by itself; eagle wings portend strength, courage, farsightedness, and immortality and eagles themselves are affiliated with Zeus. Heraldry eagles of the sort used by the D.E.S. symbolize courage, action, and judiciousness, and when they are spread as in the above insignia that signifies the role of protector. I assume that's what the D.E.S. was going for, but even if the wings are just regular-type wings, that still represents mobility, speed, protection, justice, and man's desire to soar unencumbered by earthly limitations.

In conclusion, the D.E.S. portrays itself as transcendent justice protecting us through masculine virtue while never giving in to bias. Keep in mind these are the cool kids who run D.A.R.E. in Ontario.

Monday, August 15, 2011

My Body Is a 1999 Buick Century

There is an interesting* article in the Globe & Mail today about athletes that eat junk food. The article compares your body to a high-performance vehicle that demands care and attention and asks whether you would put low-grade gas in your Mercedes.

It's a good analogy, but I think I would probably sell the Mercedes in that situation then use a fraction of the proceeds to buy a used car as a replacement and spend the rest of the money on beef jerky and video games. Then I would drive by the Mercedes dealership and loathe myself.

*: Actually, the article was not interesting at all -- it was the typical mix of mildly interesting anecdotes about unusual cases with platitudes about the importance of eating right and exercising -- but I felt I needed to say the article was interesting for the set-up to work.

Thursday, August 11, 2011

Zing

What's the difference between contemporary police forces and a Twitter server failure?


Only the latter can stop a riot.

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

I saw the sign/It opened up my eyes/I saw the sign

So Amy K. Nelson from ESPN wrote a piece suggesting that the Toronto Blue Jays have been stealing signs at the Rogers Centre.* Apparently some guy in a white shirt sits in the center field bleachers and raises his arm when he (somehow) knows the pitch is going to be an off-speed pitch and does nothing when it is going to be a fastball.

Rather than actually going back to the tape to see if there was any proof that matched the description given by unnamed players, Nelson makes her argument based on some dubious eyewitness accounts and some statistics that show the Jays hit more homers at home last year than they did on the road. Never mind that that the Blue Jays almost have the exact same winning percentage at home (28-27) as they do on the road (30-30) this year despite the usual advantages associated with home-field,** the best stat to look at is homers.

What bothers me most about Nelson's uses of home run numbers to prove her point is that she could have looked at walks or strikeouts or batting average instead, all of which would have given her a larger sample size to work with than home runs and all of which would be expected to correlate more with knowing what type of pitch was coming than the ability to hit a home run.

Think about it: if you knew whether a fastball or a breaking ball was coming, wouldn't it be easier to lay off the junk? If you could then you would get more walks. Well, Nelson reports that the Blue Jays actually had an "abysmal team on-base percentage" in 2010, suggesting Jays batters didn't register many walks.

I also question why the split between home and away is proof of anything. If you are willing to cheat at home, why not cheat on the road, too? I concede that it is likely easier to set something up in your home ballpark but since the allegations are just that a guy sits in center field and throws his arm in the air, there does not seem to be a lot stopping the Jays from doing something similar at other ball parks that also have seats in center field.


Besides Nelson's approach to statistical arguments, the other part of the piece that bothered me was a stylistic nit-pick. Here's my quote of her quote (that she was not present for) of an unnamed but very angry pitcher:

"It's not too [f------] easy to hit home runs when you don't know what's coming!"
Why replace the last six letters in the word "fucking" with hyphens and then also put square brackets around the word? It's not like we wouldn't have known f------ was a paraphrase if it weren't for the square brackets. Was the copy editor worried that if the square brackets weren't there people would think that the angry pitcher was stuttering or something? What would six hyphens in a row sound like?

Nelson does the same thing later in the piece when the same angry pitcher yells at Blue Jays slugger Jose Bautista:
"We know what you're doing," he said, ... according to the player and two witnesses. "If you do it again, I'm going to hit you in the [f------] head."
Annoying. And I'd just like to note that uttering a threat to cause bodily harm to a person is an offence under s. 264.1 of the Canadian Criminal Code. That is a crime a bit more worthy of investigation than dubitable claims about baseball pitches.

*: Actual blue jays -- i.e. the actual birds -- have a reputation for stealing from other birds' nests, but this was not mentioned in the article which was disappointing to me. I suffer the same disappointment when writers fail to mention how white socks have a reputation for stinking when someone writes an article accusing the White Sox of stinking.

**: Of the 14 teams in the American League, 12 of them have a better record at home right now than they do on the road.

Saturday, August 6, 2011

He chose ... poorly

Jon Stewart asked Johnny Knoxville who would be the first Jackass member to die (and what will his scrotum be stapled to) back in 2006. But the real ironic part is that Knoxville was asked the question while he was on "The Seat of Heat".

Friday, August 5, 2011

C.A.S. Surrey v. Dursley

ONTARIO COURT OF JUSTICE
BETWEEN

CHILDREN'S AID SOCIETY OF SURREY,
     Applicant,

- AND - 
VERNON DURSLEY and PETUNIA DURSLEY,
     Respondents.

Before Justice John Kirkin
Heard on August 5, 1992
Reasons for judgment released on September 10, 1992


STATUTES AND REGULATIONS CITED

Child and Family Services Act, R.S.O. 1990, c. C-11 [as amended], paragraph 37(2)(b), paragraph 37(2)(g), subsection 53(1)


CASES CITED

Children’s Aid Society of Halton Region v. R.(C.J.), 2005 ONCJ 514

Patricia J. Smith ....................................................... counsel for the applicant society
Florence X. McIlfly ........................................................... counsel for the respondents


Thursday, August 4, 2011

Here's the problem ...

Being self-employed is great and all (much better than being other-employed), but it means I can't engineer my own dismissal from work and go on the pogey, and that sucks.

Maybe it's the epigenetic result of having a father from Atlantic Canada, but I would really enjoy being paid (not very much at all) to be unemployed, even if only on a seasonal basis.* I would say I fantasize about being on OW, ODSP, or CPP, at least once a day, and that's despite encountering people in those situations on a regular basis and therefore being fully aware of how shitty their situations are. I used to fantasize about retirement but then I finished school and started working and realized how far away 60-65 is.

I think I would be good at getting myself fired, too. I'd probably feign incompetence -- is feign the right word when it comes so naturally? -- by "accidentally" breaking things, e.g. knocking things over with my forklift or stocking the shelves at an angle so entire rows come down at once when a little extra pressure is applied. If anything, that sounds like fun. The trick would be hitting that sweet spot where I am incompetent enough that my employer could easily find someone better but not be so bad that I get fired for cause and lose the pay in lieu of notice windfall that you get as severance.

Oh well, I guess I'm stuck here getting paid to be marginally useful to society while I spend the majority of my time on non-work related tasks, which will have to do.

*: This may also be the reason I dislike seals and vote Liberal, but I'm saving those topics for future posts.