Chandra Clarke

Award-winning entrepreneur. Author. Professional Optimist.

If the shoe fits

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Image Credit: Pixabay

Pardon me for saying so, but your shoes are stupid.

I don’t mean to say that your shoes look stupid, although what you were thinking when you wore that blue and pink pair out last week, I do not know. What I mean is that your shoes aren’t very intelligent.

Adidas announced some time ago that it had developed a “smart shoe.” This shoe contains a microprocessor and a tiny screw and cable system, which adjusts the cushioning provided by the shoe — based on measurements of your size and stride. Three years of top secret research went into the making of the shoe, which company officials say “senses, understands and adapts.”

Now, this is very clever technology, and I can see where long distance runners, hikers, or even wait staff would have a need for a shoe that provides the ultimate in comfort in every step. However, I can’t help thinking that there are better places for this sort of application.

For example, I would love for my coffee pot to sense, understand and adapt first thing in the morning, because goodness knows I can’t. A truly intelligent pot would not only brew a fresh cup for me, but add the sugar and milk and bring it to me while I’m still struggling to figure out what day it is.

Our car could be a lot smarter than it is. I wouldn’t mind if it could sense when some idiot is about to cut in front of me; it could do some pre-emptive honking and rude gesturing to prevent the cut off from happening altogether. Better yet, given gas prices lately, an intelligent car should be able to figure out how to convert itself to a hydrogen powered vehicle. It could make rude gestures at the gas station as we drove by too.

My computer could be a heck of a lot brighter. I would love it if it would sense that the operating system was about to crash and well, not crash. It should be able to know that I am not interested in emails about cheap or forbidden software, hot stock tips, or discounted drugs. And the CD ROM tray really would be a cup holder — one that dispensed either hot tea or strong scotch, depending on the type of day you were having at the office.

While we’re at it, why hasn’t someone invested three years of top secret research into making smarter politicians? Just think of the benefits to society in a world where there was no such thing as a Sarah Palin. Or a Boris Johnson. Or Vic Toews. Or…

Finally, when it comes to things that sense, understand and adapt, I think I want something like that for my laundry system. A clever washing machine would sense that the hamper is overflowing, understand that I am no more interested in it today than I was yesterday, and adapt by coming upstairs to fetch the clothes. Furthermore, it would toss the washed clothes into the dryer and take them out and fold them at the right moment so that no ironing would ever be required.

I’d even let it wash my stupid shoes.

Pas de Pudginess

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If there’s any book that went flying off the shelves faster than “The Da Vinci Code” it was “French Women Don’t Get Fat.” The book explains the so-called “French paradox” — the ability of the French to eat seemingly rich food without getting a case of les grands buttocks.

I could summarize the book by renaming it “101 Ways to Lose Weight Painlessly.” I could, except that it would remind me that was going to be the name of the book *I* had planned to write along the same lines, if Mme Guiliano hadn’t beaten me to it. Oh, but for a little more writing time first thing in the morning…

The book could also be summarized with titles like “Non, Je Ne Veux Pas Fries With That” or “Everything Avec Le Moderation.” However, there are two reasons why it shouldn’t be: 1) To condense the book into a short phrase defeats the purpose, which is to get you to take a more holistic approach to life and eating and 2) The French grammar police would have to arrest me for language abuse.

Personally I always thought that the answer to the French paradox — and indeed other supposedly inexplicable phenomenon like the Mediterranean diet — was fairly obvious. There’s a reason why the French celebrate “joie de vivre” and not “joie de Super Big Gulp.” They, and a lot of other Europeans, try go to for quality over quantity. There’s no French translation for “supersize me,” and if there were, it would probably be fairly literal — and quite telling — like “donne moi les twenty extra pounds sur ma patoot.”

However, given the, er, increasing rates of obesity in North America, the answer apparently wasn’t so obvious. The book has arrived just in time to address that issue, and to provide hope for the no/low carb dieters who are about to fall off the wagon.

Yes, I am predicting that fad is about to end. This is because 1) There’s only so long a rational, right-thinking human being can hold out against the temptation of good garlic bread and 2) Bakers across the land are joining forces to launch a particularly underhanded advertising campaign that will include muffin-scented inserts in popular magazines.

Take heart though: Guiliano offered plenty of practical, easy-to-follow advice, some of which you’ll have heard elsewhere, such as: drink more water, and walk more often. What you haven’t heard is: don’t avoid chocolate altogether, just the cheap, low-quality stuff. Or how about: gyms are more like punishment, disdain them in favour of more physical activity in your life, like sex. You can see why this book has been popular, can’t you?

Some of her advice isn’t practical here in North America — not yet, anyway. For example, she suggests going to the market on a daily basis, and only eating produce that’s in season. I don’t know about you, but with a family to raise and a full-time job, I don’t think I could fit in daily trips to the market. And I live in Canada, where the growing season is approximately 15 minutes long. I couldn’t face a whole winter without at least one green veggie.

But just imagine the profound changes in the economy if the advice in this book was adopted! The market for those made-by-the-millions plasticky cupcakes would dry up, and darnit, wouldn’t freshly made pastries like Napoleon squares and eclairs have to take their place? Gone would be the drinks made with “2% real juice!” and something, a decent chardonnay perhaps, would be required to take up the shelf space. The spice section of your grocery store might finally offer something other than the standard salt, pepper, oregano, and mustard powder.

Women’s magazines would find that they’d actually have to produce editorial copy about important issues, instead of breathless coverage of the latest diet trend. Streets would no longer be littered with extra large coffee and soda cups.

Life would be good. Life would be “A Year in Provence,” well, all year round.

Now if only we could get Mme. Guiliano to write a book called “French Women Don’t Watch TV” in time to prevent a horrible new reality show.

It Could Have Been a Contenda

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It’s hard to believe around fifty years ago people were once *excited* by an invention called television.

It must have seemed so promising. You could watch an escapist glamorous Hollywood musical. You could travel back in time to the wild west. Variety shows introduced you to exotic music (the Beatles!) from far away places (England!). Hey, at the time it was pretty cool. Sorry, groovy. Whatever.

There were ground breaking shows that dealt with major issues like racial discrimination (All in the Family), global unity (Star Trek), or being stranded on a desert island with dumb sailors (Gilligan’s Island.) There were broadcasts of important historical events, like the moon landing. Indeed, there was so much interesting stuff being shown that you could almost forgive shows like “Mr. Ed.” (Wait! Let me clean out my inbox before you send in your complaints!)

Then something happened to television. I haven’t decided whether: (a) Aliens from the planet Neefnoof began tampering with the broadcasts; (b) Multi-national mega corporations started mass producing muck; or (c) Writing school graduates joined the TV industry en masse.

Whatever it was, we’re now getting shows like … “Cosmetic Surgery Live.” I don’t know about you, but I want to watch this show about as much as I want to know more about a procedure I saw advertised yesterday called “lipodissolve.”

Or what if I told you about an event where lots of people gathered around to see individuals being attacked by dogs? You’d think aha! That must be an intellectually stimulating history special on PBS, re-enacting a scene from Roman coliseum. Nope, just reality TV — “Fear Factor.”

This is why, as a parent, I am profoundly grateful for two things: my computer, and my Internet connection. Okay, I’m also grateful for baby gates, apple juice, and night lights, but that’s another story.

The Internet is showing hints that it’s going to become what TV could have been: a fantastic educator. I can go to a site called Research Channel and watch lectures from universities across the US. For example, I can download a piece from the University of Washington called: Cosmetic Surgery: New Advances.

Whoops! Bad example. But from that same site there are things like “Archaeology and Wine Production” or “Learning from Sea Creatures,” and even “Language, Mind, and Brain: How Infants Crack the Speech Code.” I think I’ll watch that last one to figure out how long I have before I have to start spelling things like “t-o-y s-t-o-r-e?” to my husband.

Or I can go to another site and get nearly the entire MIT curriculum without ever having to set foot on campus. Just think of the home schooling I can do with that! Er, once we’ve covered the bit about numbers and the alphabet of course.

I can access satellite shots of my neighbourhood, which means I’m part of the first generation of mums with eyes in the back of their heads AND in the sky. (“Son, I said stay *out* of the garage! Never mind how I knew!”) My children can to play checkers with Australians, watch whales off the coast of British Columbia, and download pictures from Mars, all in a single afternoon. And yes, at some point, they will still come to me and say, “Mum, I’m bored!”

But my point is that the Internet is a grand resource. So it really frosts me to hear about the “Turn off the PC Week” movement. The group behind this warns about the “dangers of excessive computer time” with vague references to “social, physical, and psychological problems.”

Yes, there are a lot of YouTube channels that seem to have taken their cue from Fear Factor. Yes, there is fake news. But as far as I’m concerned, the only real dangers associated with time on the PC are contracting printer rage and computer butt. There’s no known cure for printer rage, but a good balance of outdoor play time and good old-fashioned house chores will cure the other. It goes without saying that the kids should be taken out for real-world trips to zoos, museums, and sports fields whenever parents can afford it.

But *don’t* turn off that PC. Or mobile device. Just show them how to use it properly.

Who knows? Maybe your child will be the one to cure cancer, land on Mars, or invent a printer that never accordion-folds paper that wasn’t supposed to be accordion-folded.

Kids and dogs like me

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A cute sleeping dog
You know what they say about this kind.

Every once and a while, researchers will announce a discovery that so dumbfounds you, you just want to smack your forehead and say: “Why didn’t I think to get a job that pays me big bucks to announce things that everyone already knew?”

For example, one of the most recent dispatches from “The Department of Blindingly Obvious Scientific Results” is the discovery that teenagers sleep in on weekends because… they don’t get enough sleep during the week.

The study, conducted in Denver, Colorado, also proved one very important theory: that researchers don’t actually have teenagers of their own at home. Otherwise, they could easily provide answers to what I know will be the questions in their next study: that is, WHY don’t teenagers get enough sleep during the week. I will bet money that they’ll discover that:

1. Teenagers stay up too late talking to friends on the phone.
2. Teenagers stay up too late talking to friends on the Internet.
3. Teenagers stay up too late talking to friends at the mall.
4. Their teachers are really rude and keep waking them up in class.

Okay, you laugh, but in doing so you miss the really, really important discovery of this study: in order to get these results, a group of adults somehow managed to get more than 700 teenagers to say something other than “mmph.” If we could duplicate their technique, it would change family dynamics around the world.

Meanwhile, scientists based in New Hampshire and Montreal have learned that when babies babble, they are actually trying to learn how to talk. Apparently, before now, researchers believed that baby babbling was just mouth exercise. (Known in scientific circles by the technical term, “flapping your gums.”)

The study authors came to their conclusion by observing that babbling babies opened the right side of their mouth more than their left. Your right side is controlled by your left brain hemisphere, which is in charge of speech, ergo, their conclusion. My question is, how do you open the right side of your mouth more than the left? Also: Just what the heck does ergo mean, anyway?

What this new theory proves is that researchers don’t actually have any babies at home either. Now I think it’s highly significant that scientists don’t seem to have either babies or teenagers. This means we have no hard data on whether there’s a connection between having babies and having teenagers and so we can’t prevent another outbreak.

Possibly the best study of all though, was the one released from the University of California, that said that dogs are actually smarter than we thought.

First, there is the shocking news that dogs can probably count. Having been owned by two Brittany Spaniels at one time, I can verify these results. Early in their puppyhood, Rusty and Taffy established a mid-morning snack that involved not one, but two biscuits. Each. If I gave out only one apiece, they would look at me adoringly with their big brown eyes before dragging me off to the kitchen by the ankles for a refill.

The other finding was that dogs may actually be trying to convey different emotions when they bark. Imagine! As luck would have it, the Japanese toy maker Takara has just unveiled a gadget that translates dog barks into one of six human emotions. I obtained one of these gadgets and went out to interview the neighbourhood dogs. The translations:

Bow wow? – (Confused) Hey, where’s my biscuit?

BARKSNARLSNAP!! – (Angry) Who said you could walk on the grass?!!

Zzzzzzzzzzz – (Sleepy) [I didn’t ask this dog any more questions. You know what they say about letting sleeping dogs lie.]

WOOFWOOFWOOF! – (Happy) Let’s-play-fetch-let’s-play-fetch-let’s-play-fetch

Ruff. Sniffle. Ruff. – (Sad) Bummer. I just had a bath.

Bwahahahahahaha! – (Laughter) Didn’t all those humans reading that column look funny trying to open just the left side of their mouth?