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OPINION
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EDITORIAL
We all have won
The city recently wrapped up another successful
Tamarack Ottawa Race Weekend,
an event that attracts more than 40,000
participants, not to mention the hordes of
onlookers who filled the streets of downtown on May
24 and 25.
The statistics alone are staggering.
Ottawa Race Weekend is the biggest multidistance
race event in Canada and is one of only two
International Association of Athletics Federations
sanctioned events in the country.
Over the course of a weekend, approximately
$28.7 million is pumped into the Ottawa-Gatineau
economy -- not exactly chump change. Hotels book
around 9,000 homes in the capital region.
Race organizers are responsible for collecting
427,000 discarded drinking cups and handing out
roughly 25,000 sponges to sweaty participants.
It takes a volunteer work force of 2,000 people to
help organize and run the races, including those who
distribute water, run the information booth, and provide
emergency services. Doctors, nurses, paramedics
and other medical professionals volunteer their
time, bringing enough equipment to set up a small
hospital to service the event.
When you think about it, over the course of the
weekend Ottawa absorbs the population of several
small cities -- and those people require additional city
services, such as police, fire services and doctors.
Ottawa Race Weekend is a hallmark event that all the
citizens can take pride in, a series of races with international
repute, drawing some of the best athletes
across the world.
How fitting that the event was kicked off with a
marathon torch relay run from the village of Marathon
in West Carleton to city hall - a 42-kilometre
trek that matches the length of a marathon run.
The torch run was suggested by Greeceʼs ambassador
to Canada, and the mayor of Marathon, Greece,
travelled to Ottawa with two ceremonial torches
for the relay run, giving the race weekend a little
international polish. We can also take pride in the
tremendous volunteer effort generated by the event.
Every year, runners participating in race weekend
have raised more than $1 million, money that
supports 25 charities affiliated with Ottawa Race
Weekend. Ottawa Race Weekend celebrates what is
best in our city and its citizens. Pheidippides, a Greek
soldier who inspired the concept of a marathon after
he ran 40 kilometres in 490 BC to report the victory
of Athens over Persia before falling over dead, said it
best: “We have won.”
COLUMN
Experts all thumbs when it comes to the keyboard
Someone is always trying to invent a
better mousetrap, they used to say.
They donʼt say it so much any more,
now that I think of it. This could
mean that the better mousetrap has already
been invented, although I doubt it, to judge by
the mice.
The better mousetrap, if it is to be invented
in this day and age, will probably involve
lasers and the use of social media, because
every new invention does. Perhaps a mouse
could be lured to his doom by invitations on
MouseBook, there to be confronted by a laser
launched by a drone triggered by someoneʼs
cellphone.
Something you probably hadnʼt thought
about: the invitation on MouseBook would be
sent by someone typing on his or her thumbs.
Which brings us, not very neatly, to todayʼs
topic. Every few years someone tries to
reinvent the typewriter keyboard, which is
what computer keyboards still have. The time
has come again. This time itʼs researchers at a
university in Scotland who say, according to
news article, that the traditional keyboard has
a “suboptimal text entry interface.”
This is mad scientist-speak for “you canʼt
type very well on it.” Except, of course, that
you can. Millions, maybe billions, of people
CHARLES
GORDON
Funny Town
over the years have used the traditional keyboard
and found it quite optimal enough, once
they figured it out.
They way they figured it out was by
practicing it, after learning which fingers go
on which keys. There were typing classes in
school. The keyboard we all use is known as
the QWERTY system, after the arrangement
of the top six letter keys for the left hand.
QWERTY developed after it was discovered
that the seemingly logical system of placing
the keys in alphabetical order did not work
well. If people typed too quickly the keys
jammed up. Placing the most-used letters
apart worked better.
For years, mad scientists have been trying
to improve on it, arguing, not without logic,
that QWERTY is inefficient. But, of course,
QWERTY is more efficient than other systems
because people have learned how to use it.
Watch a fast QWERTY typist work and try to
imagine anything going faster.
Some systems are inefficient but impossible
to replace. How inefficient is, say, the
French language, with all those genders? How
inefficient is the English language, with all
of those words that sound the same and are
spelled differently? And how likely are we,
the English- and French-speakers, to sacrifice
our languages to efficiency?
Mad scientists who study baseball say that
the way baseball players throw in an overhand
motion is unnatural. The natural way is to
throw a kind of combination of underhand
and sidearm. You can see how much effect
this has had on baseball players. Sometimes
we do things just because thatʼs the way we
do things. And it works for us. As it turns
out, this latest attempt to eradicate QWERTY
coincides roughly with the 20th anniversary
of text messaging. The latest knock against
QWERTY is that it doesnʼt work well for
people who type with their thumbs. The latest
solution is to put the vowels on one side of the
keyboard and the consonants on the other.
Now, since there are 21 consonants and
only five vowels, that would make it necessary
to change some consonants into vowels for
balanceʼs sake. In effect, the inventors of the
new system, called KALQ, have done that,
moving some consonants over to where the
vowels are (and leaving the Y with the consonants,
for some reason). The over-all effect,
seen in views of the new keyboard, seems just
as random as QWERTY but we are assured it
is more efficient.
The philosophical question so far remains
unasked: Is it in the best interests of humanity
to make it easier for people to type with their
thumbs? Next thing you know, everyone will
be throwing sidearm.
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