Sunday 27 December 2015

Of bread and grandmothers



"What Christmas gift did you always want and never get?" Asked the radio D.J. when I was driving to work one day last week. Alone in my car, I blurted out "Easy Bake Oven". Then I laughed, because the reason why I never got an Easy Bake Oven is the same reason I don't have one now. I was allowed to use the real oven.

Growing up on a rural Nova Scotia farm in the pre-wireless age (it's barely wired now), make your own fun was an essential component of childhood. Having grandparents living 14 feet away was an essential component in that.

My sister Jan and I had a stool when we started baking with Granny; we weren't tall enough to reach the counter without it. We started out with easy gear, like cookies and squares, before migrating to bread. Bread, by comparison, is labour intensive, especially when you have a grandmother intent on teaching it old school and you're four and a half feet tall. Granny was only a few inches taller full grown. Game on!

We started with a cup of very warm water, yeast and sugar in a small bowl, covered with a plate. After that, in a big bowl, really hot water to melt the lard, salt and sugar, with a bit of vinegar thrown in to make the bread keep longer. Once the lard was melted into a shiny slick across the top, we'd add flour until we had an easy to stir slurry. Then it was time to beat in the yeast, which had magically expanded to touch the top of the plate.

Then it was adding flour, flour, and more flour, 'til you couldn't mix it with a spoon any more, at which point, we'd dump it on the counter for kneading. I worked as a baker for a little while. I find kneading bread soothing. This is why.  The rhythmic smooshing of dough, pulling up the side to throw fresh flour underneath to be rolled in. Sprinkling flour into the bowl and rubbing the dough stuck to the sides so you can work in every last bit. Waste not, want not.

On to kneading till the dough squeaked. The dough had to squeak, because that meant that the yeast was working and we were crushing air bubbles. Air bubbles are critical to bread success. At the time, had I known the word "sadist" I would have used it for my grandmother. It takes a lot of kneading to make the bread squeak. I certainly don't work the dough for that long now, but I don't have to. The yeast is is better.

But my grandmother had to. Growing up, if I ruined a batch of bread we had Ben's sliced white waiting in the wings, we just didn't get the treat of homemade bread, served hot, with butter and brown sugar. In my depression-era grandmother's day, no homemade bread meant no bread, so you worked it till it you receive squeaks of confirmation. Perhaps even willed it so.

P.S. I have used quick-rise yeast ever since my stint as a baker in '96. I love it. There's no proofing (the small bowl and plate), with quick rise yeast and as with any restaurant employee, you follow the recipe. I didn't know until I was reading recipes today that folks are skipping their first rise with quick-rise yeast. I swear I felt my grandmother cringe inside me when I read about it. Granny had a standard, and that was to get as close to store bought as possible, from canned peas to white bread.  Unless you let your dough rise at least once (Granny's was twice, but that's too long), before you form loaves, you'll never work out all the big air bubbles and when it's sliced, there's holes in it. The dough needs to be refined with kneading so the bubbles are tiny throughout.  Now grocery stores sell Artisanal bread and a point of authenticity is that it's irregular. Like homemade. How rude.

Sunday 20 December 2015

Tips for political petitioners on Change.org

The following petition appeared in my newsfeed this morning. Well, a copied and pasted version of it, which links to the petition here.


Now calling for politicians to be charged with treason is nothing new. For as long as there have been politicians, and before them, monarchies, there have been people calling their actions treasonous. We just use virtual pitchforks and torches now. Harper had his treason petitioners too (they appear to have a better grasp on grammar and spelling, but some crazy leaks out between the lines), which brings us to the point of this post: 

What you need to know about online petitions


1. Online petitions are meaningless in terms of petitioning the House of Commons


For real. This is how you petition the House of Commons. Pertinent details include a paper application with handwritten, verifiable signatures. Five minutes on Change.org doesn't cut it. You need to knock on doors, plead your case, get the support in writing. Wear comfortable shoes. 

2. Online petitions can serve as a rallying cry for change, which may lead to actual change


Also for real. Online petitions that obtain widespread support can be used to apply pressure on a government or an organization to take an action, like halting the forced relocation of 40,000 people. That petition carries over two million signatures. Cecil the Lion has over a million. Oh sure, the dentist was never charged, but good luck to game hunters who want to fly their trophies home on an U.S. Airline now. 

3. For actual change, support is critical


You don't even need a factual argument. Look at Vani Hari, otherwise known as The Food Babe. Hari is an expert at generating publicity through the use of online petitions: Subway changed their bread. Starbucks changed their lattes. Budweiser changed their beer labels. And all with zero scientific evidence that changes were required. The Food Babe just takes big words, makes them sound scary, and relies on the scientific illiteracy of her followers to take her to the finish line. Any doubts, read this:


Air is 78 per cent nitrogen, 21 per cent oxygen, plus carbon dioxide, argon and other trace gases. Filling an airplane cabin with 100 per cent oxygen takes already a flying bomb and turn it into an even more volatile flying bomb. But prior to Hari deleting this post (no take backs on the internet, Hari), she had lots of supporters agreeing with her in the comments.

4. Support requires a clear, understandable, and actionable message

Hari gets this. Oh sure, while she may possess the scientific intellect of an under-performing third grader, she has mastered the art of provoking an emotional response through skillful writing. 

You? You have not. Grammatically, look at the mess you made. It's like a red tide of proofreaders marks. Did you write this on your phone? Always use a word processing program. It won't catch everything, but it'll do a better job than you did.

Your "reason for the treason" is not treason. Not that you tried in any way to explain how stating that terrorists should get to keep their citizenship is treason, but your dots do not connect. Public criticism of a law is not treason. It is freedom of expression. It is a Charter right. 

Your call to action is also incorrectly addressed, in terms of being actionable. The Supreme Court of Canada is the highest appellate court in Canada. They here appeals. They do not lay charges. The RCMP do lay charges, but the guy whose attention you really want to get is David Johnston, the Governor General of Canada. As the queen's representative, he, constitutionally, stands the best chance of deposing a prime minister.

5. Unless you want to be ridiculed, which Hari routinely is, spend a few minutes playing devil's advocate to your argument

For example, what could possibly go wrong with renouncing the citizenship of a terrorist? (As opposed to locking them for life as the Liberals said they would do in the same leaked recording.) To save you time, here's a recent historical example. In 1992, rather than incarceration, the Saudi government renounced Osama Bin Laden's citizenship and banished him from the country. This did not end well for anyone. It is reasonable to say something similar could happen as a result of Bill C-24. It is also reasonable, not treasonous, to say so.

Tuesday 15 December 2015

Grammar is really important

 



Nerd confession: I enjoy reading court decisions. I really like how judges write and the stories are interesting.

On the weekend I read the decision that struck down the Cyber-safety Act. It came with a cautionary tale about the importance of choosing your words carefully when writing rules. Especially rules, but it's good practice to do it all the time. In the decision, the lawmakers’ use of the word “may” in one clause resulted in the Act being deemed procedurally unfair. The clause was also a Charter violation, but that involved significantly more elements than grammar. This blog post is about grammar.*

The clause said:

5 (1) An application for a protection order may be made to a justice, without notice to the respondent, in the form and manner prescribed by the regulations, by

(a)    the subject… (the subject's parents, police, etc.)

The judge took issue with the no-notice part, because it violated the right of the accused to be heard—the Charter violation. The attorney general argued that the clause was written that way for situations where the accused was unknown and immediate action was required. In situations where the accused was known, the Act presented only it as a possibility, not as a procedure that had to be followed.

The lawyer for the defense argued that the clause had to be read as though the application must be made without notice to the respondent. If the “may be made” portion of the clause gave applicants discretion to choose whether to notify the applicant, it followed that it also gave the applicant discretion to choose whether to make the application to a Justice of the Peace and whether to follow the application process set out in the regulations. I.e. apply however you see fit. In terms of procedural rules, this is anarchy. The judge agreed with the defense.

Grammar is really important.

*Except for this part. Laws are really important. The Cyber-safety Act didn't get scrapped because it was was ill conceived. It got scrapped because it was badly executed. So write it again. Do a better job. The hard work is already done. There's the existing Act. There's Justice McDougall's 62-page decision, which is essentially an explanation everything wrong with the Act and why, and there's two years of operational data from the CyberSCAN investigative unit. 

Compared to the nothing the lawmakers of 2013 had to work with, today's lawmakers have a road map, rich in analyses and data, already laid out for them. They just have to follow it.

Friday 11 December 2015

Of internet quotes and a bad driver

https://unitedcats.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/car-crushed.jpg

On my way back to the office today, I was stopped at a light behind a older, customized VW hatchback. There was a decal in the rear window that read:
 
"If one day the speed kills me, do not cry because I was smiling."
Paul Walker 1973 - 2013
 
I would have forgotten about it, but for the light changing and the driver treating the descent from Victoria Road to Windmill like a closed course, which is to say a lane-changing tailgating menace on a half kilometre of city street.
 
The driver made me mad. The Paul Walker quote made me mad, because obviously the driver thought enough of it to glue it to his window. So I looked up the quote. It made me madder.
 
The quote is unattributed and appears only after Walker's death. There is no evidence he ever said it. Whether to make themselves feel better about his passing or to sell bumper stickers and window decals, someone made it up and it was accepted as fact (and we all know that never happens on the internet).
 
It's also not true. The disturbingly easy to locate online coroner's report states that Walker was in a defensive position immediately before impact. He was trying to protect himself. I have a hunch if you asked Walker if he wanted his actions to end his and his friend's life that day, he would have said no.
 
To the author of this quote, you put false words in the mouth of a dead man. That's beyond low. There's no takebacks on the internet, so don't do that again. Ever. You should already feel like tapeworm inside a tapeworm for falsifying the quote in the first place.
 
To the driver, using a fake quote to glorify a preventable accident does not make you a badass nor does it mean you're living the dream. It means you need to broaden your  horizons and try new non-car things. You may live longer. Better still, so may others.

Thursday 3 December 2015

A no gun-control proposal to curb gun violence

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Photo: Carlo Hermann/AFP/Getty Images
 
Starting tomorrow, cast a plaster mould of every person who dies in a mass shooting where they fall. Fill the mould with concrete, let it harden and leave it there.

If victims died on a roadway or on a sidewalk, build a bridge over them. If it's at a desk, move the desk so they're not in the way. If it's at a theater, shop or restaurant, put lights around the bodies so people don't trip, and if it's in a school, paint the bodies cheery colours. 

Let the bodies pile up. Let them pile in such abundance that they interfere and disrupt every aspect of life. 

Do that and then maybe, just maybe, the people who die in future mass shootings will have not, like their predecessors, died in vain. 

Yesterday, San Bernadino was the site of the 355th mass shooting this year. Fourteen more dead. It wasn't even the only mass shooting of the day. Today, nothing has changed.

Nothing will change, not until the cost is too great for everything to remain the same.