In one month Federation of Students, University of Waterloo will be forty years old. On 29 April 1967 Federation of Students incorporated.

In the beginning was the Engineering Society and a few other student societies. After three years those societies got together and formed Students’ Council. Over the years they worked on a constitution, which passed around 1966. The following year they decided to incorporate.

Stephen Ireland was acclaimed as the federations’ first president. In his speech he said

“The present set-up on this campus gives the students very little say in the university. . . . The individual student does not count in the university — his opinion is not heard seriously. But worst of all, he believes he cannot effectively alter the situation.”

Now that the federation has existed for so long, it becomes ever more important that the organization focuses on its purpose as much as it might work for self-perpetuation. Students must have knowledge and efficacy in their organization let alone whole university.

Old BS or new ideas — Anticipating another election uwryan.com 7 January 2003

I know two Sarahs who are on different continents.

Sarah is in Ghana and other Sarah is in Japan. So read them.

Connecting Ghana and Canada — Arriving in Ghana after a long plane ride and a rainy stop over in amsterdam was exciting - to say the least! We had a few notes of Twi greetings jotted down in a notebook and forced relaxaed responses to get us through customs. I was very happy to see my backpack pop out with everyone elses’s luggage. (Losing my bag on the way to Cameroon was a stressful experience and left quite an impression on me! )

the hollywood north report — I’m happy to report I survived my first day on the job as a junior high school English teacher. Fortunately, there weren’t any classes so I didn’t have to teach. Unfortunately, I did have to give a three-minute speech in Japanese in front of the entire school at the opening ceremony. Have I mentioned that I don’t speak Japanese? Right. You can probably guess how this is going to go.

Imack says some stuff about the UPass debate at UW. He says he only cares about closure, but talks of the threat to Feds services of a refundable pass.

there is no refundable plan coming. If you vote ‘no’, that’s fine, all I really care about is closure on the issue. . . . nobody will talk about it again at UW, . . . GRT wanted FEDS to be liable for finance shortfalls, which is a monumentally bad idea

As long as there is no bus pass GRT will want to get revenue from students and it will keep coming up. This issue has come up several times since 1996, before GRT even existed. The way to kill the issue is to give away bargaining power by establishing the fee.

Check this out. A Cornell hospitality study found increases in tips with various candy giving. The sample was 92 dining parties.

In Experiment 1, two waiters randomly assigned 92 dining parties to receive candy or not. In Experiment 2, a waitress randomly assigned 80 dining parties to receive either no candy, one candy, two candies, or one plus another candy. All servers then recorded the tip and bill sizes of those parties.

I think the best part, the strategy of giving an extra candy after. It’s like making someone feel that they are getting even better treatment.

However, the largest tips were given when the server offered guests one piece of candy and then “spontaneously” suggested that they take a second piece of candy (23%).

The conclusion:

These findings indicate that servers can get larger tips by giving their customers’ candy. They also suggest that this effect is attributable to the customers’ need to reciprocate for the gifts of candy.

I just wonder how candy can be used in other situations or how something other than candy can be used.

Last night at soccer this guy was standing at the sidelines. He said, “Hey are you Ryan?”

It was Ian who was in my yellow group when I was a “huge” (group leader) years ago. It was interesting to hear what he remembered about me. I told him the times I remember.

What was he doing there at the fieldturf fieldhouse in Waterloo? It turns out that his sister is my teammate’s girlfriend.

He is working for a local company, but in Ottawa.

So, that was interesting.

The Name Inspector is a dude in Seattle who writes a blog about brand names and company names. He says these names are “literary miniatures: nanopoems,” among other things:

The Name Inspector takes a close look at names and tells you what makes them click (or clunk) from a linguistic point of view.[...] He is concerned with the linguistic essence of names: how they feel and sound when spoken, what they look like when written, and the meanings and moods they evoke in their contexts. [...] The Name Inspector has a finely tuned ear for names. A sharp eye. A delicate palate. He has a PhD in Linguistics and years of experience as a professional namer and name analyst. Let him show you the inner workings of names.

He analyzes names of companies in the same sector as well as individual names. In his analysis of groups of names, he divides them into these categories:

1. Real Words - (del.icio.us, )
2. Compounds - (AnswerBus, )
3. Phrases - (Windows Live Mobile, )
4. Blends - (, )
5. Made up or obscure origin - (yubnub (Ewok “hooray�; no, this does not belong in Real Words; )
6. Tweaked words - (WIKIO (wiki),
7. Affixed words - (GIGABLAST )
8. Made up or obscure origin -
9. Puns - (scirus (cirrus, ci –> science) )
10. People’s names (real or fictitious) - (mrquery)
11. Initials and Acronyms - (TWERQ (The Web’s Effective Result Query; also from QWERTY))

He also has the eclectic “Mixing the name types in mashonyms” category.

I find this stuff super-interesting. I think I’ll do some name analysis on my list of companies. I haven’t read all the posts, but I haven’t read his description of naming his own site.

I was reading this story on racing that talked about banking.

[...]the track that was under intense scrutiny all weekend because of changes owner Bruton Smith made to the 1.5-mile speedway. It included an increase in the banking from 12 degrees Fahrenheit to 20 (-11 degrees C to -6), and a curved pit lane unlike anything the drivers had seen before.

The bank is the slant of a turn. So, obviously, it should not be quoted in degrees Centigrade, I’m not sure about Fahrenheit, I am less familiar with imperial.

The two reasons I would go to a talk are to learn something new or innovative or to hear something presented in a new way. Justin Trudeau didn’t tell me anything new and neither did he speak with much innovation. What he did provide was himself, someone to whom this group of mostly university students would listen.

Even if he doesn’t have much more than a famous father, the name of a prime minister, and a wealth of experiences around the world, if people will listen, it behooves him to speak and do what he can to make a difference.

He opened by saying that since he was a teacher he knows what it is like to be talked at and that he wanted to hear what we, the audience, thought and had to say. He said he would speak for only about 15-20 minutes; fifty minutes later he finished and asked for questions. The question period lasted less than 40 minutes.

(more…)

It seems as though David Johnston likes to take quotations from the Kennedys. Last night when he introduced Justin Trudeau at a talk in Hagey Hall he spoke of a “torch being passed to a new generation of Canadians.”

That, of course, is from JFK’s inaugural address in 1961.

Back in january at the launch of Waterloo’s (the university’s) 50th anniversary celebrations he talked about a line from a play by George Bernard Shaw. In his play Back to Methuselah the serpent says to Eve:

You see things; and you say ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were; and I say ‘Why not?’

At the celebration Dave said that since he was Irish he likes to change it around and say “Some see the world as it is and ask why; I dream things that never were and say Why not.”

This modified line is most famously attributed to RFK. At RFK’s funeral, Edward Kennedy, Roberts’ younger sibling, closed the eulogy by quoting his brother (who, it seems, was modi-quoting Shaw):

As he said many times, in many parts of this nation, to those he touched and who sought to touch him:

“Some men see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not.”

The Kennedys are of Irish descent as well and Johnston (Shaw was Irish too) who went to university in Boston. How about that?

It may be interesting too that after Ted Kennedy’s eulogy for his brother he was encouraged, by some, to run for president just as after Justin eulogized his father, many saw a future in politics for the eldest Trudeau son. That future in politics has arrived.

Heavy snow started falling yesterday around noon. It piled up quickly. School closed in the afternoon. Stores and the library closed early too. Valumart at WTS closed at 5pm and the library WPL  closed at 6pm.

In the evening the snow turned to freezing rain. Wind blew and ice bits pattered on the windows.

This morning there was an icy crust on top of the snow and in our neighbourhood you could see twig, branches and and debris that had blown down over night. Around the corner a large branch fell over and blocked the sidewalk.

School is closed again today, but I am off to get some work done.