I am bridezilla...

hear me roar.

Bad ideas involving a futon

(Click to embiggen.)

It's my pug in a box

Someone is a bit concerned that he ends up in the "to-go" pile... (click to embiggen)...

Sparkle's Birthday Weekend in Ottawa

Juice Tiger

What do you do when you're fast approaching a MAJOR fruit crisis because you have an excess of oranges from your organic delivery service?

You buy a juice tiger, that's what.

My Major Paper as a Word Cloud

I found "Wordle" on my interweb machine. Worlde "is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text."

I pasted in my entire major paper, excitingly titled "Xenotransplantation: Weighing the Benefits and the Harm", and this came out (click to embiggen):

It's nice to see that hundreds of hours of work can be reduced to a cloud of 100 words.

I don't think I will ever type the word "xenotransplanatation" that many times in one document again.

Phone Messages I Put Up With

And yet again on the day of the solicitor's exam...

I wish I were here: (click to embiggen)

Exploding dog is spying on me

Again, explodingdog was very apropos (and rhyme-y) on the day I wrote the barrister's exam.

I give you: I can do anything if I try,


and, I hope I can finish this before I die.


A true reflection of the dichotomous magic that is writing a 7 hour multiple choice exam.

Delinquent Blogging

So, I had a bloggable event (Emma's visit) then I got sick, then the bar materials tried to kill me and eat my brain and as a result blogging kind of got away from me.

Emma and I had a lot of fun. This visit was particularly notable because we finally made it to the War Museum. We tried to get to this attraction before but were unsuccessful. Our lack of visitation may have had something to do with one of us leading the other to the location of the old war museum (where nary a war museum was) . As a result, the previous time we toured the Canadian Mint instead. Free advice: don't tour the mint on a Saturday when it's just a big empty factory with nothing happening.

Not surprisingly, the War Museum does not really lend itself to jaunty pictures given the subject matter...but we got a few.

Unlike the teacup ride debacle of the late 1980s, Emma is tall enough to defend Canada.

I was all saucy-like avec tank.

We filled our brains with historical learning. We found out that this desk can protect you from nuclear attack:


We also discovered that the only thing one needs to do to join a tank crew is to obtain a metal chapeau. (Would you like to join a tank crew? Try on this helmet and become a Canadian tanker.) Seems like a rather low standard to join the military.

Then, a very, very bad game was played involving Adie's wedding garter and the dog...


It was no Canadian Mint, but a good time was had by all.

I'll miss the typing...

Exploding dog was very apropos today.

I give you "I did it!"


I did!

Thanks, that really cleared things up...

Adjusted cost base: the adjusted cost base ("ACB") of depreciable property at any given time is its "capital cost" to the taxpayer as of that time (section 54, "adjusted cost base," paragraph (a)), whereas the ACB of capital property other than depreciable property is its "cost," adjusted as of the relevant time in accordance with section 53 (section 54, "adjusted cost base," paragraph (b)).

The truth comes out...

I knew they wanted that dress for a reason!

A guest comic from Sparkle (click to enlarge):

No. Really.

Art Imitating Stress

Welcome to my new comic series: "Because I'm the Bride, That's Why!"

Springtime in the Capital

This morning it was snowing. Then it was snraining. Now it's just raining.

And apparently, we're being attacked by giant spiders.

Dudes. We need some sun... and some good weather, ASAP.

I remember now why I hated philosophy...

I had to blog for school. The topic assigned was: can animals and robots be persons? Sadly, my first thought to this stimulating academic challenge was "why do I care?" My motivation was not improved by the fact that little gem isn't going to be graded... it simply needs to be submitted.

I am so ready to be out of school.

Anyway, after telling people about this assignment, and after they stopped laughing (at me), they requested to read it. Enjoy the Deep Thoughts. If nothing else, I think you'll enjoy seeing Mr. Rogers pretend to be unafraid by a giant gorilla.


Can animals and robots be persons?

Before we can answer the question of whether an animal or a robot can be a person, we have to ask, “what is a person?”

The question is not easily answerable. Although this subject has been endlessly debated, at least since the time of Aristotle, we don’t seem any closer to coming to a definitive answer.

What is it that makes human beings “special” or “different” from either animals or machines? What is it about us that is distinct, unique to human beings alone, that qualifies us as “persons”?

In trying to answer this question, we’ve discovered only that we are less special than we originally thought.

We are not unique because of our biology or DNA. As science progresses, we have learned that, if anything, we are even more similar to animals than we believed. For instance, at the biochemical level, we share approximately 98% of our DNA with chimpanzees.

We don’t seem to possess any “uniquely human” capacities. Traits we thought were exclusive to us, such as tool-making, culture and logic have, over time, been identified in non-human animals: chimpanzees create spears for hunting, whales have a unique culture, and "Rio" the sea lion understands the principles of symmetry and transitivity. Like us, it even seems possible for animals to learn language and then communicate with their favourite television personalities.

Compared to robots, the simple fact of our being “alive” may not be enough to distinguish human beings from advanced machines. If a computer can trick us into believing it is a person, or has a processor that functions in an identical way to the human brain, how is it different from us? One might say the difference lies in its programming but is programming so unlike from the socialization and learning processes that shape our own brains as we age? How is the learning and adaptation of a computer so different from the processes of education and discovery that we all undergo?

In the end, it seems we are left without a single distinctive feature that human beings can call their own.

This may be for the best. Defining who is and who is not a person can lead to logical consequences that many of us may find objectionable. By using any restrictive definition of personhood it is inevitable that some human beings will be left out while some animals and machines will be included. For example, depending on the criteria used to define “persons”, individuals in persistent vegetative states, or people who rely on technology to keep their bodies alive may cease to be “people”.

Given the seeming impossibility of explaining what makes a “person” and the possible negative effects of any exclusive definition, why not classify an animal or a robot as a person? What is stopping us from extending personhood to non-human entities?

And here we come to perhaps the most interesting question: why do we persist in trying to distinguish ourselves from the entities around us? Is it species arrogance? Is it something deep within our “human-ness” that intuitively knows we are especially unique on this planet?

Perhaps it is something a bit baser: I believe we try to maintain these un-maintainable separations between human beings and animals and human beings and machines because we are afraid of the implications of recognizing non-human life forms as persons. If we are forced to recognize some robots and animals as persons, upon what basis can we then deny them rights? Recognizing non-human beings as “persons” will change our relationship with these entities and will mean, in many cases, we can no longer justify our exploitation of them for our own benefit.

Scientific Snow Piles

Apparently, this is the second most snowy Ottawa winter on record.

To give you an idea, this is Marco and Joey standing in front of a snowbank in 2006:

This is a picture of the same location that we took yesterday:

Clearly, these pictures provide indisputable, scientific evidence that there is WAY more snow this year.

Happily, we're getting a break from the snow... with 15 mm of freezing rain later today.

Horrifying

Poor travel decisions

Today in Ottawa, it is "only" -18. Don't worry, though. That puffy coat won't go to waste since it still feels like -29.

Now, admittedly, the worlds seems a bit different when you're riding around in the back of a 1953 Chevy convertible,


but I have to ask: why did I come back from Cuba, again?

The bar exam ate my soul (and other whining)

Got my grad photos done:

OMG! I'm, like, so totally legal! (Insert hair toss here).

Sadly though, it seems we're not all pleased as punch to be finishing law school. Saw this on post secret:


Over the summer there was a flurry of articles all basically saying the legal profession is soul-crushing, Bay Street is a gulag, and all lawyers are rats.

You know what I think? If you hate practicing law, but just do it to impress people, or to make a lot of money, or because your dad was a lawyer, or some other similarly silly reason: is it really such a huge surprise that you dislike your job?

I'm just sayin'.

The Swift

Life has been hectic:

• exams
• complete computer meltdown on the eve of exams (seriously... every law student's WORST nightmare came true)
• a call to India to fix meltdown
• failure to fix said meltdown
• exam deferral
• $55 parking ticket
• Christmas (and its regular stresses) combined with the albatross of Trusts around my neck for the duration of the festive season
• A Christmas cold (mine)
• 1 broken hip (not mine)
• 1 broken hand (again, not mine)
• AND a Christmas tree that fell over and in a mess of water, pine needles, and shattered decorative bulbs... could not get up.

But as of today:

• Computer is fixed.
• It is Joey's 7th birthday.
• Everyone is relatively healthy/on the mend.
• Trusts exam written.

All I can say is: eat my trust.

Boo-yah!

It is in the rosy glow of (possibly misplaced) optimism that I bring you Marco's Christmas present to me: The Swift.

Actually, what you have seen (besides the cause of some frustration with an eeeeveel mpeg editor program) is a swift and ball winder. Those of you in-the-knitting-know know that this little device avoids your friends and loved ones from having to sit with their hands outstretched while you wind hanks into balls so that you can knit socks. Get yours at Woolhouse Tools!

Here endeth the knitting Dark Ages.