Additional Advances in Absolutely Essential Cosmetic Surgery

 VAIN BRAIN

   I told you recently about a young man who flew from France to Turkey to get a beard transplant, (see, "Beards Again".) Now you will learn about another one who flew from England to France to get the colour of his eyes changed. Most people simply buy coloured contact lenses if they want their eyes to match their outfit, but this chap wanted a more permanent solution so his eyes would match those of his puppy’s. As the saying goes, “You can’t make this stuff up,” and it is said a lot these days. The story from, perhaps a more trusted source:

"Changing Your Eye Color With Surgery Is Risky: They Did It Anyway, Advances in Cosmetic Surgery Let People Permanently Change Their Eye Color, and They Pay Thousands For a New Hue. Doctors Disagree On Whether It's Safe," Jiselle, Lee, The Washington Post, Dec. 30, 2024.

"Two days before he booked a March trip to Nice, France, to meet with an ophthalmologist, he adopted a puppy, Baby Bear.

The cryptocurrency investor thought matching Baby Bear’s eyes would make them “like father, like son.”

If this appeals to you, here is what is involved:

   "There are three common ways to permanently change eye color: iris implants, keratopigmentation and laser depigmentation. All three surgeries alter the appearance of the colored part of the eye known as the iris. Keratopigmentation uses a laser to create a tunnel in the cornea to fill with colored ink, blocking the iris. Laser depigmentation uses a laser to reveal a lighter pigment that lies naturally under the iris’s darker surface layer. An incision is required to insert an iris implant, a thin silicone sheet, between the sclera and cornea to block the iris."

Apparently the procedure is done elsewhere and is not uncommon, but I did find this demographic nugget surprising since it shows that not only young white guys make bad decisions.

   "At Alexander Movshovich’s Kerato New York eye center, at least 90 percent of clients have naturally dark-brown eyes. Of the more than 900 people he’s operated on, about 60 percent were Hispanic or Black, according to data he shared with The Washington Post in August.

What About A Tattoo? - For The Eye!

   I do confess to not paying too much attention to my appearance since my bad experience with the folks at the "Hair Club For Men", so I am generally unaware of the latest styles and cosmetic options. But, I have learned that if you are not happy with the three procedures above, there is another option that involves getting your eye tattooed. Since I have already covered tattoos in MM I will move on, but you can look at the entry for "Scleral Tattooing" in Wikipedia. 

   I should add that I am not recommending that you get your eye tattooed since you are sure to regret such a decision, even more than you do the one that led you to put that big picture on your calf. It is also the case that the American Academy of Ophthalmology does not approve of eye colour-changing procedures. 

The Bonus:
  You may recall seeing an eyeball earlier on MM and you will find it here: "University of the Unusual (3) - The Guinea Worm..."  If the words "guinea worm" seem familiar, that is because the late President Carter just died and The Carter Center worked to see that such worms were eradicated.

Survival of the Weakest

  It is my impression, which I think is shared by a few others, that more young people seem to be having psychological problems and that there is also a growing cohort of them with food allergies. Some may have both. If one assumes these things are true, the major question is why there are increasing numbers in each category.
  A few minor questions, likely to be raised by a skeptic or contrarian, have to do with the attempt to ascertain which of these psychological issues and dietary ones are more important than others. Psychological disabilities can be more difficult to diagnose and confirm than physical ones and there needs to be a distinction between actual food allergies and dietary preferences, such as, for example, those required for religious reasons. 
  University settings where young people abound, yield data about such things and here are two articles from campuses about, disabilities and dining. Both indicate that there are indeed more students signing up for clinical help and complaining about the dining halls. Whereas administrators used to be employed to mainly support the faculty and those working in the physical plant, now more are needed to attend to the mental problems of students. The increasing demand is affecting universities with decreasing budgets, which would be most of them here in Ontario.
  I am in the contrarian camp when it comes to the psychological issues as you may recall from my recent related post about, "Prevalence Inflation." (See also: "The PTSD Pandemic," and "STRESS - A Contrarian View.") About the increase in allergies, I am curious, but I think that many who complain about food have too much of it and that generally most things one chews on will not result in an anaphylactic shock.
  Here are the views of others. The first article is a Canadian one and it is followed by an American example, indicating the "disability problem" is also occurring there. The dietary issues follow. (The articles are not provided in full and the bolding is mine.)

Disabilities

"As Demand for Disability Accommodations in Universities Grows, Professors Contend With How to Handle Students’ Requests," Joe Friesen, The Globe and Mail, Dec. 27, 2024 (also the source for the graph.)

   "In Thomas Abrams’s second-year sociology course at Queen’s University in Kingston last year, about one-third of students were registered with the school’s disabilities office.
That means they were eligible for academic accommodations, which can apply to classroom delivery as well as assessment, and can range from more time on assignments to a semi-private room for exams and a memory cue sheet to assist them.
One-third of a single class might sound high, but it’s also increasingly the norm. More than 6,000 of the roughly 28,000 students at Queen’s last year (22 per cent) were approved for such accommodations by the disabilities office. Five years ago, it was about 2,250 students (9 per cent).....
“We are faced with a complex pedagogical, human rights, privacy, labour and psychological issue,” he said.
What’s happening at Queen’s is part of a trend that’s apparent across Ontario and the rest of Canada. The number of students registering with disabilities at universities has rapidly increased, causing resources to become strained. The shift has also raised questions about the fairness of accommodations and triggered frustration among professors who are unsure how to handle the volume of requests...."
Often, these students’ conditions aren’t physical or visible. Three-quarters of those registered with Queen’s Student Accessibility Services (QSAS) have a disability that is not physical: 33 per cent have a mental-health disability, 29 per cent have ADHD and 14 per cent have a learning disability. Most of the growth in accommodation requests across the province over the past decade has been in those three categories...."
An independent report commissioned by Queen’s to examine the university’s accommodations policies, prompted by the rapid increase in student needs and a desire to assess the fairness and adequacy of those policies, was released in June...."
   The report’s authors said they couldn’t discern the reason for the recent increase but described a perception across campus that Queen’s has been hit by a “tsunami” of students asking for accommodations."

  This is the article talking about the situation in the United States.

"Are Colleges Getting Disability Accommodations All Wrong?"

Higher ed’s maximally inclusive approach hurts those it attempts to help," Chronicle of Higher Education, By Alan Levinovitz September 25, 2024

"Disability accommodations in American higher education are skyrocketing. In the past decade, the proportion of colleges with more than 10 percent of students registered as disabled has quintupled, and accommodation requests have followed the same pattern. Despite increased staff and resources, disability-service providers are overwhelmed, and it’s common for a single staff member to be tasked with serving 500 students. Faculty are also reporting increased workloads as they find themselves continually adjusting teaching and assessment practices.

Providing an accessible education to everyone is a crucial civil-rights issue, one that went unaddressed in this country for far too long. Discrimination against people with disabilities was standard practice until the introduction of legal protections like Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act in 1973 and the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) in 1990. Without these protections, blind students would have no recourse if their community college failed to provide accessible versions of textbooks and library materials, and deaf students participating in online classes would not be entitled to closed-captioning. Even with robust laws in place, disabilities are frequently missed or dismissed, a problem compounded by racial and socioeconomic disparities.

Concern about the validity of surging accommodation requests may therefore seem misplaced. To a certain extent, the trend is a positive development: the product of increased awareness, better screening practices, and less institutional discrimination. We should worry about students’ rising rates of mental-health disorders, many disability advocates say, not the willingness of colleges to accommodate them.

However, a suite of acute, well-documented problems with disability accommodations demand attention. The data is clear, for instance, that a significant minority of diagnoses are fraudulent or mistaken. In many cases, there is no empirical basis for granting common accommodation requests like extended time or distraction-free testing. And there is further evidence that the current state of disability accommodation compounds inequities in student achievement, rather than alleviating them.

Students and instructors are rightfully concerned about fairness and compromised rigor. Resources are being misallocated to unproven interventions and students who don’t need them. Worst of all, the interventions may be harming some of the students they are intended to help, exacerbating their mental-health problems and setting them up for a lifetime of struggle.

Colleges have remained complacent about the status quo for a variety of reasons. Since they want to support students and avoid lawsuits, administrators are incentivized to pursue a maximally inclusive approach to accommodation. Disability advocates fear, understandably, that calling attention to these issues will result in public backlash, creating more stigma around disability and threatening hard-won rights. Outside of academe, alarmism about accommodations has been associated with ableism and culture wars. While researching this piece, multiple people refused to speak with me about their misgivings on the record. There is a chilling effect at work, resulting in a lopsided discussion that leaves educators, students, and the public poorly informed.

However understandable the reluctance to criticize disability accommodations, refusing to do so is antithetical to the mission of higher education. Inaction harms students both with and without disabilities, allows for continued misallocation of limited resources, and calls the integrity of our institutional practices into question. We have a duty to engage in even-handed, critical reflection and pursue necessary reforms — even when it makes us uncomfortable."

Dining

"The New Reality for College Dining Halls: Dozens of Dietary Restrictions:

A surge of students with allergies and special diets is challenging meal services and changing the shape of the campus cafeteria, Priya Krishna NYT - Sept. 5, 2023.

For the staff of the Michigan State University dining halls, serving roughly 27,000 students each semester has never been a picnic. But these days, the job involves an even bigger challenge: One in six of those students has an allergy or other dietary restriction. Just five years ago, it was one in eight.

Once upon a time, running a college meal service was fairly straightforward: Put out one entree, one dessert, maybe a salad bar. Today, dining halls must cater to a student body with increasingly varied and complicated needs and preferences.

Some 6.2 percent of adults in the United States have a food allergy, according to a 2021 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But that number reflects only medically diagnosed allergies, and doesn’t include all the restricted diets that many younger people are adopting.

Robert Landolphi, the assistant director of culinary operations at the University of Connecticut, said that two decades ago, “you had your handful of peanut and tree-nut allergies, and back then we had maybe two people with gluten-free diets.” Today, he said, more than 10 percent of those on meal plans have some sort of dietary restriction.

Several dining hall managers and dietitians said they do their best to meet each student’s needs, but acknowledged that it can be difficult and cost-prohibitive to accommodate all of them — especially the less-common requests....

At the University of Connecticut, Mr. Landolphi recalled a student who told him that for animal protein, he ate only fish heads, organ meats and bone broth — and that the dining hall should serve a similar menu, for the sake of student health."

There were many comments about this article. Here is one that I chose:

COMMENT:

"I am a school nurse and am just APPALLED by all of this.

Toughen up people!

True, there are those with life threatening food allergies  but for the most part whatever 'sensitivities' students may have can be taken care of with avoidance or a little Benadryl.

What it says loud and clear is that the parents, and their parenting, of this college generation were hovering too closely overhead making their kids afraid of everything, keeping everything TOO clean so their immune systems now are so untested and their anxiety levels are so high that they'll breakout in a rash over anything. 

It's just a precursor to how they're going to be handling the outside real world : Badly, quivering at every new experience that may cross their path.  And then, God help us all- and save us from the spoiled generation..in other words

GROW UP."

Walking Around the United Kingdom

   If one of your resolutions for the new year is to walk more, then book a flight to England, head for the closest coast and start walking. All the travel advice you need is found here - England's Coast.   For more background see this:

   "Britain is an island nation. And soon it will be possible to walk all the way round that island, because the King Charles III England Coast Path, as it is formally known, will open. (Wales already has a coastal path, and Scottish rules enshrine the freedom to roam, including along the coast.) The English path has been long awaited: the campaign for it began in 2004. It is also long. Its 2,700 miles will make it the longest continuous coastal path in the world. Neil Constable, national adviser at Natural England, which has created the path, hopes that by the end of 2025 it will be possible to arrive at the coast of England, and “turn right or left and follow the national trail as far as you want to go”...."
   "YOU WILL walk past Pevensey, where William the Conqueror landed, and Margate, where the Spanish Armada did not. You will walk past Plymouth, from where the Mayflower famously set sail, and Southampton, from where the Titanic infamously did. You will walk past places made famous in poetry and song: past Lyme Regis, where Mary Anning sold seashells on the seashore, past Scarborough Fair, and past the blue birds over the white cliffs of Dover. You will walk along a “footpath through British history”, says David Abulafia, a professor of history at Cambridge University, and its “relationship with the sea”.
("You Will Be Able to Walk Around the Coast of England in 2025: You May Want to Bring Your Wellies," Catherine Nixey, The Economist, Nov. 20, 2024.

  If you are only interested in reading about walking, I will place here, some related posts found in MM. I wrote about this British path back in 2020, The Coastal Path.  If you want to walk across Canada, see: The Great Trail which was orginally called "The Trans Canada Trail" and is about 24,000 kilometres. You can get on it in St. Thomas. For a shorter walk see, Walking Around Prince Edward Island.  It you like to sing while you walk, listen to the songs found in Trail Tunes For Old-Timers. You will hear: Frankie Lane sing, "Along the Navajo Trail", and  "The Happy Wanderer," among others. 
  And if you are really interested in reading about trails and byways, have a look at:
American Trails Book Series, or this which will help with your exploration of England: Highways and Byways of England. 

The Bonus: 
  On Jan. 1, CNN listed some of the best places to visit  in 2025 and this was one of the suggestions:

England’s footpaths
  "All manner of footpaths, bridleways and byways crisscross the English countryside, many of which have been trodden by humans since ancient times. Access to them is enshrined in law passed just over 75 years ago. That means no matter who owns the land, there’s usually a signposted trail, and some of the most idyllic scenery in the world remains open to all.
   England might not have the epic mountain trails found in some parts of the world, but just yards from almost every doorstep in the land, there’s a hedgerow path wending off into a green tunnel of overhanging trees or onto a romantically wuthering moorland.
   Popular long-distance routes such as the Pennine Way (60 years old in 2025), Coast-to-Coast or South Downs Way get attention, but quieter corners of the country have their own waymarked trails. Indeed, anyone armed with an Ordnance Survey map can create their own.
   Only visiting London? Check out the Capital Ring Walk — a sectioned trail that loops around the city’s suburbs and hidden wildernesses. Or head up the London Underground’s Metropolitan Line and sample the Chess Valley Walk from Chesham to Rickmansworth: 10 miles (16 kilometers) of mostly rural bliss with a Tube station at either end." — Barry Neild

LARGE Larcenies

 Not Petty Thefts
  I had hoped to get this information to you before the end of the year so as to call your attention to some big stories you may have missed. Now that we have started a new one, I will suggest these past events may portend some trends to which we should not look forward.
  There are two reasons for this subject, apart from the sheer magnitude of the crimes committed. The first is that I will read stories about anything these days to avoid all the political ones. The second has to do with CHICKENS and I will begin with them because most of the work has already been done. If you don't want to bother reading all of what follows, the points are, I guess, that: 1)Very large quantities of things are being stolen; 2) Probably because prices have risen, while wages have not, and 3) because Organized Crime is involved so you can get rid of very large quantities without much trouble (like all of the fancy automobiles now missing from Toronto and which aren't even included below.) So much stuff is missing, I will just proceed in point form by commodities, most of which are edible. 

                                              Nor Mere Pilfering
The Chickens
   I still don't understand how you can steal 30,000 chicks, come back and steal 15,000 more and get away with them and it. See: "The Great Huron County Chicken Heist(s)".

Books
  Books are not much valued these days, unless they are valuable ones. See: "The Great British Book Burglary". 

Syrup
   This one happened a while back, but it is Canadian and it was such a big story that you may be watching "The Sticky" which just started on Amazon Prime Video.

See: "In $18 Million Theft, Victim Was a Canadian Maple Syrup Cartel," Ian Austen, NYT, Dec. 19, 2012. 

"It was an inside job of sorts. Thieves with access to a warehouse and a careful plan loaded up trucks and, over time, made off with $18 million of a valuable commodity...Over time, the thieves helped themselves to six million pounds of syrup."

Gold
  They cannot find your luggage at Pearson, but thieves were able to locate and make off with over $20 million in gold. There is even a Wiki entry for: "Toronto Pearson International Airport Heist." Perhaps this is where COSTCO is getting its product: See, "Gold At Costco!!"

Cheese
  In Vancouver. "On Thursday, B.C. RCMP revealed they'd recently foiled an attempted cheese heist at a Whole Foods in North Vancouver. They'd been on patrol Sept. 29 when they found a cart full of cheese outside the grocery store. A suspect fled on foot, leaving $12,800 worth of cheese behind."

  In the UK. "This most recent attempted heist comes as the cheese world is still reeling after a U.K. cheese heist that saw con artists make off with more than £300,000 (or more than $540,000 Cdn) in clothbound, award-winning cheddar. A 63-year-old man was recently arrested and released on bail. 

The cheese — 950 wheels of cheddar weighing 22 tonnes, stolen from Neal's Yard Dairy in London — has not been recovered."
 In the Netherlands. In 2022, thieves stole 161 wheels of cheese worth about $32,000 Cdn from a Dutch cheese farmer, according to the New York Times. Dairy farms in the Netherlands are frequently targeted, with the website Dutch News reporting in 2016 that 8,500 kilograms of Dutch cheese was stolen in the previous year, worth about $135,000.
 In Italy. "Italy is also often a target for Parmigiano Reggiano thieves. In 2016, CBS reported that about $9.7 million worth of the hard Italian cheese had been stolen in the past two years."
 In the U.S. "The U.S. isn't immune, with 20,000 pounds of fresh Wisconsin cheese worth about $64,000 nabbed by "cheese bandits" in 2016."
 In Canada. "...thieves made off with $187,000 worth of cheese from Saputo Dairy Products in Tavistock, Ont., in 2019."

Butter
  In Canada. "Scott Tracey, a spokesman with Guelph Police Service, said there have been eight or nine butter thefts over the last year, including one theft last December worth $1,000. In October, two men walked into a local grocer and filled their carts with cases of butter valued at $936, and four days later a Guelph grocer lost four cases valued at $958."

"Police in Brantford, Ont., are also investigating the theft of about $1,200 worth of butter from a store on Nov. 4."

In Russia: "Butter prices soar in Russia amid surging inflation in war economy

'The Armageddon with butter is escalating,' Russian economists claim on Telegram

Thomson Reuters. "The steep price rise has prompted a spate of butter thefts at some supermarkets, according to Russian media, and some retailers have started putting individual blocks of butter inside plastic containers to deter shoplifting."
  Perhaps this is where they are getting all the butter for the "Butter Sculptures."

Pies - They Are Even Stealing Dessert
  "Michelin Chef Appeals to Christmas Spirit of Thieves Who Stole 2,500 Pies:

“I know you’re a criminal, but maybe just do something nice because it’s Christmas,” said British chef Tommy Banks, after thieves stole a van full of pies," The Washington Post, Dec. 3, 2024.

Buckets - Big Time Bucket Theft
  "A Bucket Mystery: Compost Container Thefts Baffle D.C. Residents: The number of buckets stolen since the District program began last year has startled administrators," The Washington Post, Dec. 4, 2024.

 "Each of the 9,000 households participating in the Department of Public Works’ curbside composting collection program is issued a five-gallon bucket with a screw-top lid in which to place household compost for weekly pickup. A large orange sticker wrapped around the bucket identifies it as containing food waste and as “Property of District of Columbia Government.”

  But soon after the program launched in September 2023, the heists began. From sidewalks and alleys, front steps and backyards, the plastic carriers went missing. Slowly at first. Then much faster.

  By the end of the year-long pilot program, approximately 4,000 buckets had been  stolen, according to DPW.

   Widespread compost container theft was not something the agency anticipated when it launched the project, DPW Director Timothy Spriggs said in an interview. “And definitely not to the degree of the actual number of buckets that have been stolen,” Spriggs said. “So that has taken me by somewhat of a surprise.”

The motive for stealing such an ordinary, relatively inexpensive item remains a mystery."

BONUS - Bourbon. Over the Christmas holidays a neighbour involved (legitimately) in the booze business told us about a big theft of the stuff. She wasn't lying and you can easily learn about "Pappy Gate" which resulted in a lot of "Pappy Van Winkle" being stolen from the Buffalo Trace distillery. Like the missing cars in Toronto, it won't even be mentioned here.

Post Script: About The Illustration At The Top
  I came up with the title "Large Larcenies" and thought I would check and see if it was frequently used and that you might accuse me of title plagiarism. It is not much used and one of the few references is to the source of the illustration above.

The New Yorker, Nov.16, 1935.

  I suppose the good conclusion one can reach is that there have always been thieves ready to steal and that large larcenies are not a startling new form of criminality. 

A Little Levity From Dave Barry

 We Need Some
   So far, things are not going well this year and that is unfortunate since most things did not go well for all of last year. It is the case, however, that Dave Barry was able to find some humour in 2024, as he has done for many of the years that came before that awful one. 
  In 2022 his annual year-end review even included some CANCON and for that reason ended up in MM (see, "Year-End CanCon Continued".) He also merited attention in MM for his coverage of the "Great Canadian Worm Wars" of 1993 (see, "On Worms.") That alone should convince you to read on, but, if not, I will also throw in the fact that he has won a Pulitzer Prize and the Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism. 
  He has been a columnist since the 1980s and his year-end one is widely syndicated. It is as lengthy as a very long novel and I will offer a bit of it since I don't think Mr. Barry would mind, or need more money. He begins with a preamble, which is novella-length and then writes almost a chapter for each month. Here is a portion from the introduction and a few samples from just a few of the months. Funny stuff is even found in the title. If this year also turns out to not be funny, at least we can look forward to Mr. Barry's review of it. 

"Dave Barry's 2024 Year in Review: How Many Goofs Can One Nation Endure? The Answer is Boeing in the Wind." (from The Washington Post and found in other newspapers. It is worth looking for the entire column.)

How Stupid Was 2024?

  "Let’s start with the art world, which over the centuries has given humanity so many beautiful, timeless masterpieces. This year, the biggest story involving art, by far, was that a cryptocurrency businessman paid $6.2 million at a Sotheby’s auction for ...
A banana.
Which he ate.
“It’s much better than other bananas,” he told the media.
And that was not the stupidest thing that happened in 2024. It might not even crack the top 10. Because this was also a year when:

*The Olympics awarded medals for breakdancing.

*Fully grown adults got into fights in Target stores over Stanley brand drinking cups, which are part of the national obsession with hydration that causes many Americans to carry large-capacity beverage containers at all times, as if they’re setting off on a trek across the Sahara instead of going to Trader Joe’s.

*Despite multiple instances of property damage, injury and even death, expectant couples continued to insist on revealing the genders of their unborn children by blowing things up instead of simply telling people.

*The number of people who identify as “influencers” continued to grow exponentially, which means that, unless we find a cure, within 10 years everybody on the planet will be trying to make a living by influencing everybody else.

*Hundreds of millions of Americans set all their clocks ahead in March, then set them all back in November, without having the faintest idea why. (Granted, Americans do this every year; we’re just pointing out that it’s stupid.)

* But what made 2024 truly special, in terms of sustained idiocy, was that it was an election year. This meant that day after day, month after month, the average American voter was subjected to a relentless gushing spew of campaign messaging created by political professionals who — no matter what side they’re on — all share one unshakable core belief: that the average American voter has the intellectual capacity of a potted fern. It was a brutal, depressing slog, and it felt as though it would never end. In fact, it may still be going on in California: a state that apparently tabulates its ballots on a defective Etch a Sketch.

  A few monthly samples:
February:
*In a highly controversial decision, the Alabama Supreme Court rules that frozen embryos are, for legal purposes, children, and therefore must immediately be thawed out and provided with iPhones.
*Tucker Carlson conducts a two-hour interview with Vladimir Putin, offering Westerners a rare opportunity to find out what the Russian leader really thinks. It turns out he thinks Carlson is a useful idiot.
*In a Super Bowl for the ages, two teams compete against each other under the watchful gaze of Taylor Swift.

April:
*As the tragic situation in Gaza worsens, American college students on a growing number of campuses engage in protests and other dramatic actions intended to draw attention to the single most important issue facing the world: the feelings of American college students.

November: (with a bit of CANCON)

*On election night, the TV networks are teeming with political commentators prepared to analyze and dissect and crunch the numbers far into the night as the nation settles in for the long, grueling process of determining the winner — a process that everyone agrees could go on for days, possibly even weeks, because of the extreme razor-thin closeness of the ...

Never mind. In roughly the same amount of time it takes to air a Geico commercial, the networks determine that Trump has decisively won the election, including all of the so-called battleground states and four Canadian provinces. It’s a stunning result and a massive failure by the expert political analysts, who humbly admit that they had no idea what was happening, and promise that from now on they will be more aware of their limitations.

We are, of course, joking. In a matter of seconds these experts pivot from being spectacularly clueless about what was going to happen in the election to confidently explaining what happened in the election."

December:

*Clearly, this year needs to end. Which is why we’re looking forward to New Year’s Eve — when, in a beloved tradition, thousands of revelers will gather in Times Square to say goodbye to 2024 and welcome 2025. We like to think that on that night, as the seconds tick down to zero and that giant ball starts to descend, the people gazing up at it will all be united, if only for a moment, by a common hope — a hope shared by the millions of us watching on television — specifically, that the giant ball was not manufactured by Boeing.

Also, while we’re hoping, let’s hope that 2025 will be a better year. How could it be worse?

Try not to think about it."

AGEISM

Banning Those in Gen Z and a Few Millennials
   Most arguments about ageism involve attitudes toward the elderly and old age. I noticed recently an example of discrimination involving young people. I will leave it to you to debate the legal and ethical implications of not allowing those under the age of 30 to enter a restaurant. Here are some examples:

"A D.C. Cafe is Banning Patrons Under 30. Is It Legal?", Emily Heil, The Washington Post, Dec. 17, 2024.
"For years, the owners of Café 8, a Mediterranean restaurant and hookah bar in Washington’s Capitol Hill neighborhood, have wondered how they could keep their patrons’ noise down around their establishment, which backs up to a residential neighborhood.
“They park on the front, they blast music, they party in their cars and all those things,” says Elif Sam, who manages the restaurant for her family. Finally, last month, they decided to take a step to attract an older clientele, rather than the younger, rowdier crowds. So they adopted a policy banning patrons under 30 after 8:30 p.m."
As for the legal part, it's complicated as most legal things are and the arguments around age discrimination are numerous.

"Still, while the family introduced the policy to help keep the peace, it might run afoul of D.C. law.
Under federal law, age is not a protected class in service settings the way it is when it comes to employment. And laws that do apply to public accommodations, such as eateries, ban discrimination when it comes to race, religion, national origin or disability status — but not age.
In D.C., though, the Human Rights Act expands the kinds of traits that businesses can’t discriminate against, including age over 18, personal appearance and political affiliation.
“It’s pretty straightforward,” said Andrew Kline, principal of the Veritas Law Firm, who frequently works on cases involving D.C. restaurants. He noted that the D.C. law includes a clause granting exceptions for “business necessity,” such as allowing establishments to ban patrons under 21 to prevent underage drinking. But he questioned whether Café 8’s new rule would meet that standard. “I think making the case that there’s a business necessity for keeping [out people over 21] would be troublesome,” he said."

There are other cases of exclusion elsewhere in the country. For example in St. Louis:

"A Restaurant Wanting a ‘Grown and Sexy’ Vibe Bans Diners Under 30:

At Caribbean restaurant Bliss outside St. Louis, age limits draw support and condemnation," The Washington Post, June 10, 2024.

"When Marvin Pate and his wife opened Bliss, their Caribbean restaurant outside St. Louis, they were aiming for an upscale, luxe vibe. They put jollof rice and tropical cocktails on the menu, offered hookahs for patrons to enjoy — and banned diners under the age of 30.

Since opening its doors in May, the restaurant has operated with an unusual age restriction, allowing in only women at least 30 and men at least 35, rules that the owners have been defending as necessary to maintain the kind of “grown and sexy” atmosphere they’re aiming for. “This policy is in place to ensure a mature, sophisticated, and safe dining environment for everyone,” the restaurant said in a Facebook post."

Some additional examples are offered in the article, but I have not found any Canadian ones, although child-free condos and adult-only developments exist here. 

"Legally, restaurants have the right to impose age limits, because age is not a protected class in that context. Controversies around age restrictions usually have cropped up when restaurants have banned children. Last year, Nettie’s House of Spaghetti in New Jersey was both rebuked and praised when it banned kids under 10, citing the noise and “crazy messes” they brought.

It’s far less common for such rules to target adults. But there are exceptions: In San Antonio, Horizons & More bills itself as a 30-and-up destination “for the grown & mature.” And in New York, the Auction House cocktail bar imposes a 25-and-up policy on Fridays and Saturdays.

Two years ago, two TikTokers shared a tale of being turned away from Melody Bar & Grill in Los Angeles because they weren’t old enough for the establishment’s 30-plus night. One response to the video seemed to come from someone who appreciated the idea of a 20-something-free zone: “I know it hurts right now, but when you are 30 you’ll understand.”

  Lately we have noticed, when dining out, that restaurants are far too noisy, but generally that is not because of the age of the customers. Still, I am in favour of keeping out noisy people, even those over 30, especially if they carry phones. It also would be great to be able to keep out obnoxious people. I am not sure how one does that, but I am certain that in Canada denying some the right to dine would be problematic, although years ago women were denied entry into many bars. Where I grew up, people of a certain colour could not eat in most restaurants in our small town. I suppose it is best to simply succumb to the self selection process and assume and hope that people of all ages will segregate in a restaurant they choose to be in and that the others won't want to join them. 

Y2K Reminder

   

   At the start of a new year, I was reminded of how we all feared the start of the one at the beginning of this century. We were very uncertain as to whether moving from 19... to 20... might bring down everything. The reminder came in the form of this headline: "More Frequent -- And Disruptive --Tech Outages Are On the Way". It was in an article that recalled the big crash many of us experienced in July when a "routine software update containing a bug that crashed 8.5 computers. It was the largest IT outage in history, grounding 17,000 flights, preventing doctors from accessing medical records, interrupting 911 services and plunging broadcasters into blackouts. Such massive outages are rare, but here's why smaller outages and data breaches will happen more often in 2025."
   Some crashes will happen because of accidents or mistakes. The author points out that:
   "The logic is simple: more complex systems contain more vulnerabilities. For example, software engineers today often rely on open-source code, which performs simple tasks like calculating time zone differences. The code is free and saves time. But it can also be buggy and plagued with compatibility problems, leading to accidental disruptions. This past March, a misconfiguration in OpenSSL—an open-source software library that encrypts a large volume of internet traffic—triggered crashes in web services and databases. It took days to patch the issue."
  Another author, just yesterday, wrote about giving out "Good Tech Awards", 
  "To Andres Freund, and every open-source software maintainer saving us from doom. The most fun column I wrote this year was about a Microsoft database engineer, Andres Freund, who got some odd errors while doing routine maintenance on an obscure open-source software package called xz Utils. While investigating, Mr. Freund inadvertently discovered a huge security vulnerability in the Linux operating system, which could have allowed a hacker to take control of hundreds of millions of computers and bring the world to its knees.It turns out that much of our digital infrastructure rests on similar acts of nerdy heroism."
   That sentence indicates that some crashes will be intentional or deliberate. The day after reading the first article, I was having breakfast with friends, and one of them asked another why he had not been responding to his emails and the answer turned out to be that they had been sent to the company for which he worked and that company had been the victim of a cybercrime. The company has since paid the criminals.
  There have been many articles about such attacks, which bring down systems if a ransom is not paid. Even systems in hospitals, or libraries like those in Calgary, Toronto and the British Library. 
  If you search for examples involving cybercrime or ransomware they are easy to find and attacks are found daily in many different publications that focus on these subjects. The illustration above, came from one, Cybercrime Magazine. In it, under "Latest Security and Privacy News", one finds many and here are just a few recent, Canadian cases:
Auto parts giant LKQ says cyberattack disrupted Canadian business unit.
Cyberattack hits third-party service provider that collects Manitoba court fines.
Outage at Winnipeg schools confirmed as cyberattack.
 LifeLabs data breach report released after firm loses four-year bid to keep it quiet.
Canada Arrests Man Suspected of Hacks of Snowflake Customers.
Chinese state-backed hackers breached 20 Canadian government networks over four years, agency warns.

   Even if you are someone who doesn't rely on computers and the Internet, you are reading this. Even a pure Luddite these days would be surprised by how much could not be done if systems go down. A major internet crash could be worse than a stock market meltdown. We are lucky every day when the power comes on, water pours from the faucet and the computer and TV work.
Sources: 
"More Frequent—and Disruptive—Tech Outages Are on the Way: As companies offload tech systems to third-party suppliers, their supply chains will become vulnerable," Kami Vaniea, Maclean's, Dec. 17, 2024.
"The 2024 Good Tech Awards," Kevin Roose, NYT, Dec. 30, 2024.