All posts by stephanie

Lately, I have been noticing a lot of new student housing going up in Waterloo, which I think is great. I love living in a city with a vibrant education scene, and having 2 major universities within a few blocks of each other is great. The student housing is all apartment blocks. At the same time, certain parts of town are either already filled with – or expanding to add more single family dwellings. Many of them look huge from the outside. Based on occasionally looking some places up on the realtor website – my totally unscientific survey – it appears that they are frequently over 2,500 square feet of living space (including the basement) and many are probably well over  3,000 sq. feet.
Based on a very rough guess from my student days, I’m guessing that the student apartments are pretty tight (apartments under 1,000 square feet, shared by several people). So, students are perhaps getting 350 square feet per person, probably often less. Then, somehow, to fill these new places, people are supposed to “graduate” out of student housing to single family dwelling with well over 500 square feet per person, and still be able to afford the mortgage etc.  Also, what does it say about our priorities if so much of our collectives resources are going towards our own, large dwellings instead of donating the money or using it to build community? Why aren’t more apartment buildings sized for and aimed at families with children?
According to this article https://www.point2homes.com/news/canada-real-estate/how-large-are-canadian-homes.html, this isn’t all in my imagination. They are suggesting that the size of new homes has doubled since the 1970’s, and homes in Canada are the US are larger, on average, than other parts of the world, including Europe. So, what can we as Canadians do to live more simply and match our international neighours in our housing choices? 🙂
Extra Info:
This UN report http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/charting/14.pdf ranks countries, in one chart based on whether people have more or less than 20 sq metres/215 sq. feet/person, which equals around 1,000 sq ft for a family of 4.

“How to be more confident Some people exude self-assurance, while others dread putting themselves forward. But is lack of confidence societal or genetic, and what tricks can we use to overcome it?”
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/oct/26/too-scared-to-speak-up-how-to-be-more-confident?CMP=share_windows_mail
Almost wasn’t going to read this article, based on the heading. However, I started reading, and found it more interesting than I was expecting.
Here’s a quote from a BBC journalist, Katty Kay, speaking about women and work, highlighting one of the perhaps more subtle impacts of a male-dominated society:

“Evidence of women underestimating their abilities is comprehensive and across the board,” she says. “It exists in sports, it exists in politics, it exists in business, it exists in the military.” It is quite the reverse for men. “One of the most reliable social studies you can do is to give men and women a scientific reasoning quiz,” she says. “Men tend to overestimate their abilities by more than 30%. Women routinely underestimate their abilities.” In reality, the quiz results reveal men and women tend to do about the same.
This, of course, has implications for both an individual’s career and the workplace in general. “Hewlett Packard has done work on promotions,” Kay continues. “Women will apply for promotions when they have 100% of the skill set, men will go for those same promotions with 60% of the skill set, because they figure they’re going to learn the rest when they get there – and they’re right, they will, and so could we…”

Found a movie recently on Netflix (https://www.menemshafilms.com/dough and https://www.netflix.com/title/80065909) and thought I would pass it on. It’s based on the intersecting lives of a nearly retired Jewish baker in London, and the young adult Muslim newcomer he hires to help out when facing a staffing shortage.   The owner is shocked to see business booming, only to later discover that his staff person (first by accident, then intentionally), has been adding small amounts of marajuana to every batch of dough, resulting in very happy customers, who have no idea what they are actually consuming.
Fairly predictable in many ways, leading clearly to a happy ending, with a bit of a low budget feel, it will not win awards for the best movie ever made. However, I still think that the world needs more happy endings to counter the negativity that is so dominant in some politics and other sectors lately.  This is a nice way to spend a couple of hours, on a day when you are looking for something positive with a few laughs. 🙂

http://oxfamblogs.org/fp2p/links-i-liked-147/
Today’s geography lesson… apparently, in Trump’s world,  a map of Africa may include Nambia approx in the centre, with Narnia right next door. 🙂

http://oxfamblogs.org/fp2p/are-grassroots-faith-organizations-better-at-advocacymaking-change-happen/
Interesting summary of some of the faith-based vs secular questions in the NGO world. One piece that is missing, in my opinion, is the role of inter-religious peacebuilding. It is alluded to towards the end (that things are not as clear in a more diverse community), but, to me, that is the more critical question. It seems fairly straightforward that many people would do things at the request of their own faith-group more than they would for a secular request. However, for example, what about if the mosque asks the church for help or the reverse? What if multiple faith groups join together to ask their people to work together on an issue? It certainly happens (I have been involved in these kinds of projects, and would like to see it happen more), but I haven’t seen much research on inter-religious cooperation as opposed to single-faith vs secular. (Admittedly, I haven’t dug very hard).  How do success rates or implementation change in secular vs single faith vs multi-faith projects?

Shouldn’t the Canadian government be leading the way on climate change – demonstrating what a forward thinking and progressive country can do? Seems to me that there is no excuse for falling behind like this.  Working together for position change is the only option here. 🙂
………
Ottawa ‘needs to start doing the hard work’ to adapt to climate change, says watchdog
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/environment-commissioner-report-climate-change-1.4317074
Shared via the CBC News Android App

Saw this in the decorations section at a bookstore recently and it caught my eye. 🙂

Many female doctors in Pakistan drop out of the profession when they start a family. Now there’s a new scheme to help them to continue in practice from home using online video clinics – and it’s helping poor, remote, communities too.

http://www.bbc.com/news/av/magazine-41003627/how-to-stop-female-doctors-from-dropping-out-in-pakistan
Looks like a great  project – I particularly like the way that it is giving greater control and agency to women on both ends of the project. Women providing care are able to continue in the career they are trained for, while women receiving care get support that they might otherwise not get at all. I would love to see this expanded into other regions, and into other sectors – this could work great for education, small business development and all kinds of other areas. It’s probably already being done somewhere else, but I can’t think of any specific examples right now. 🙂

Came across this video today and thought that I would pass it on – little humour because it’s almost the weekend! 🙂 Of course, we are all looking for systemic change, and that is what we are all working for all the time. However, it’s true that, in the meantime, while the system is still imperfect, this can seem like a tempting option. Well done as a way to shed light on an important topic. 🙂

https://amp-theguardian-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/02/bus-seats-mistaken-burqas-anti-immigrant-group-norwegian
While, naturally, I would rather not have any of these kinds of hate groups around, in this particular case, someone appears to have used it for a rather interesting little experiment. The picture of an empty bus was posted, and members of the group saw it as something completely different – responding with almost comical (if it weren’t so disturbing) – hatred for the empty bus.

The photographer said he was “interested to see how people’s perceptions of an image are influenced by how others around them react. I ended up having a good laugh.”

“I’m shocked at how much hate and fake news is spread [on the Fedrelandet viktigst page]. So much hatred against empty bus seats certainly shows that prejudice wins out over wisdom.”  Comment from Sindre Beyer, a former Labour party MP who said he has been following Fatherland first for some time, and published 23 pages of screenshots of the group’s outraged comments.