The Citizen, 2004-11-11, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 2004. PAGE 5.
Other Views
There were a couple of stories in the
news last week that I'm still trying to
wrap my head around. It's tough,
because the stories pull my brain in opposite
directions.
The first item concerns the latest telephone
innovation from our own beloved Bell Canada.
While leading-edge communications giants
like Nokia, Sony Ericsson and Toshiba
continue to pump out tinier and tinier
cellphones with more and more wireless
features, Ma Bell is introducing...the rotary
telephone.
Yup, the big old clunky chunk of bakelite
with the dial on the front and the curly chord
that leads to a handset big enough to knock
down a burglar. Rotary telephones were
big back in the Leave It To Beaver era, and
then started to disappear in the '70s,
replaced by touch tone phones. Now they're
making a comeback and it's hard to figure
why.
Rotary phones don't offer call-waiting, call-
display, speaker phone or automatic redial but
customers are clamouring for them anyway.
"Some people have been asking for them
and looking for them," says Bell Canada
spokeswoman Gina Gottenburg, "so we
thought we'd give our customers a choice of
old or new".
What's the attraction? Nostalgia, I reckon.
In a world where everything seems to change
at warp speed, it might be comforting to have
a substantial nugget of retro-tech you can
actually hold in your hand. Lord knows not
much else is safe from the cosmic stable
broom of change — not even the Swiss Army
Knife.
You know the Swiss Army Knife? The
Rolls-Royce of pocket knives. Most portable
shivs feature one or two blades at most. The
Swiss Army Knife may have dozens,
About the worst offence politicians can
commit is offending women. So why
do they keep doing it?
Shafiq Qaadri, a Liberal MPP and family
physician, shouted across the legislature that a
New Democrat, Marilyn Churley, who was
heckling, was suffering a menopausal hot
flash.
Liberal ministers, genuinely affronted and
. aware this would create headlines that their
party insults women, quickly forced him to
apologize and Liberal aides then marched
him outside to repeat his regrets through the
media. .
Contrast this swift crackdown to Mike
Harris, whom as Progressive Conservative
premier, called a male opponent an "asshole"
and took days before grudgingly coughing up
a half-hearted semi-apology.
MPPs place a high priority in leaping on
their counterparts who offend women
members, one reason it happens rarely.
The last time also involved Churley, an
energetic MPP who pulls no punches and said
Harris's government should be ashamed
for not doing enough for children. Joe
Spina, a Tory backbencher, came up
with the riot-so-clever retort, "Why don't
' you go home and take care of your own
kids'?" •
He also demanded a New Democrat stop
speaking French and such insensitivities cost
him his seat.
The best-remembered harassment of a
woman MPP was back in the 1980s. The
victim was Liberal Sheila Copps, who was in
her 20s as a newly-arrived member and-later to
do some harassing of her own.
depending on the model.
Not that they're all 'blades'. My SAK has
tweezers, two screwdrivers, a pair of mini-
scissors and several appendages I haven't
figured out.
For my money, the Swiss Army Knife is the
perfect prpto-gadget — an entire tool box that
you can hold in your hand and wear on your
hip. It's a perfectly sound piece of
technological ingenuity that's been around for
more tharta century.
And now they've gone and computerized it.
I'm serious. Victoritiox, which is the parent
company, is now marketing a model they call
the SwissMemory Army Knife. It -looks like
the old familiar red-shanked toad sticker
except you can plug this one right into your
computer.
All you have to do is sidle up to a desktop or
a laptop, slot your SwissMemory 'knife' into a
USB port and you're set to download
documents, photos, MP3 audio files, video
files — whatever you need. Your handy-dandy
SwissMemory has 128 megabytes of space to
play with.
The deluxe SwissMemory also boasts
scissors, a nail file, a screwdriver, a ballpoint
pen, a flashlight — and a knife blade.
And good luck trying to jockey " that baby
past airport security.
I fear, the SwissMemory knife might
be but the thin edge of the technological
wedge.
A long-time Tory minister, Claude Bennett,
told Copps the-only thing he had to say to her
was she was better looking than a'69-year-
old Liberal who had retired, Margaret
Campbell.
A New Democrat protested this was sexist,
but Bennett huffed he was entitled as a male to
make an observation on the other sex and
another Tory, Mickey Hennessy, made matters
worse by yelling Copps should "go back to the
kitchen."
A Tory backbencher, Copps said, once
handed her a note with a newspaper
photograph of beauty contestants in bikinis on
which he had written her name with an arrow
pointing to the breasts of the most voluptuous.
She received another note signed "the boys
in the back row," whom she knew were a group
of lively Tories, who explained they were
placing bets on how much she weighed,
offered three different estimates and asked her
to circle the correct one.
Copps said she was surprised and
embarrassed because all their estimates were
much higher than her real weight, but not
wanting to make a mountain out of a molehill,
wrote back saying none was correct and her
weight was only one-third of their highest
Some sadist somewhere has apparently
decided that our machines need to be more
`interactive'. Thus, we have airport vending
machines that try to seduce us into buying a
Coke or a chocolate bar using a sexy, recorded
robot voice.
Burghers in Berlin can look forward to
talking trash cans next spring. The city fathers
have OK'd a plan to wire some of the city's
20,000 public litter bins for sound. Users will
hear a voice say `Danko' when they toss their
garbage in the bin.
Some cans will also be programmed to say
`Thank you' and `Merci' when their lids are
popped — just to inject that soupcon of
cosmopolitan flavour so lacking in
conventional garbage collection...
It gets worse. In Amsterdam the toilets talk
back to you. The owner of a popular café in
central Amsterdam has installed motion
sensors in his biffys that respond with a
recorded message to the behaviour of folks
using the facilities.
Sometimes the toilet will chide you for not
washing your hands. One visitor was told "You
might consider sitting down next time," in a
sarcastic voice. Still another was warned that
"the last visitor did not take heed of basic rules
of hygiene."
The toilets are also programmed to cough
violently if somebody lights a cigarette and to
expound on the futility of war and other
weighty matters.
Who needs a lippy lavatory in their life?
Well, the creator, one Leonard van Munster,
claims his talking toilets are "an artistic
statement". He even threatens to build more "if
the demand arises".
I wouldn't hold my breath on that one
Leonard. And if I ever catch you installing
sensors on my throne I'll clock you upside the
head. With my rotary phone.
guess.
The latest offender, Qaadri, was a't fault
because he implied a woman politician
speaking with passion must have a medical
problem — she could not be doing it because
she had a genuine case or was enthusiastic.
He also referred to a physical condition
women do not discuss much publicly. Men
would not like it if a woman joked they were
speaking abnormally because of erectile
disfunction.
Telling a woman politician she should go
home and look after her kids suggests she has
no place in politics or even neglects her
children.
Saying Copps was better looking than her
elderly predecessor was judging women first
on appearance, although men normally are not
rated on looks.
It also was a colossal misjudgment to
denigrate 69-year-old Campbell because she
was an effective MPP to the end who beat Tory
Roy McMurtry in an historic by-election, kept
him temporarily out of the legislature and
forced him into another riding before he got in
and became a heavyweight attorney-general
and chief justice.
Sending notes to a politician discussing her
weight and the size of her breasts is distasteful.
Most. such abuses reported in the past were by
Tories and other parties charged they included
a fringe with antiquated ideas aboutiwomen
and minorities.
But the latest offender, Qaadri, is a 41-year-
old Liberal, highly educated, who has had
works published on male menopause and
comi4Vrticating health information. The
biggest problem is politicians not thinking.
If I could do it otter
f I just had it to do over again. How many /
times through life have we uttered those
words?
Often in retrospect I've thought that some of
the choices and decisions I've made,
particularly in my teens, might have been
better not made. And yet, every step and
misstep taken has brought me to where I am
today. Which is I must say, not a bad place to
be at all, so I probably wouldn't alter that path
I've taken in any way. A good thing I guess,
because, as we've all learned at one point or
another, we can maybe straighten the path
ahead of us, but twists and turns behind us
can't change.
There are opportunities, however, when we
can try again. I was thinking of this recently
when we visited with family members who
have just built their dream home. Having
constructed and lived in other houses, they had
a clear vision of what was valuable to them
and what was obsolete. With thorough
attention to the little things, and careful
planning of the bigger ones, they found and
improved upon the right design for
themselves.
Once upon a time, I heard someone say that
you have to live in 10 homes before you can
build one perfect to your lifestyle and your
needs. While it didn't take quite that for this
family, it was evident that they did pick up
some hints from previous habitats.
I've never had the chance. Early on my
husband and I planned on building a new
house. However, we made the choice instead
for the money pit. Fraught with the structural
aches and pains of age, the drafty brick
building was aesthetically homely inside. Its
plumbing and heating were outdated, its
kitchen a gross insult to culinary achievement.
And we loved it on sigl,t. We didn't see the
purple walls, the rolling linoleum or metal
cabinets. We saw instead the rich wood trim
and a banister just begging for little ones'
bottoms. We ignored the cold dampness that
permeated through the double brick walls,
passing the . heat enroute to the outdoors
through the many cracks and openings. What
we did see was that this was a house for
family, ours and many that went before.
Getting it up to snuff was a project my
husband attacked with a vengeance. Nights
and weekends were dedicated to turning our
family home into, well, a place where our
family could actually function with a level of
comfort. It was the beginning of a love/hate
relationship.
That was 25 years ago. Much energy and
money has been, and still is being; consumed.
And while I harbour a deep affection for our
humble. abode, while it has become an ode to
the cliché - my comfort zone, my retreat, my
safe haven - it is far from perfect. There are
few corners or rooms to which I cannot look
and see improvements that could be made.
Having lived in it for so long, I have noticed
the aspects that, if I was to start from scratch,
I would do differently.
Thus, while I have a romantic inclination
towards older homes, while I have become
rather attached to mine, sitting in that new
house recently, I was struck by its youth, its
fresh, but practical function. For a moment I
thought how nice it might be to start with a
clean slate, if I had it to do over again.
Though somewhat envious of that notion. I
began to feel a little disloyal to my stalwart
residence, however. Granted it's old and
flawed, but that just gives it character. And at
my age, that's worth noting. _.......___
You talking to me, toilet?
The worst offence for politicians