The big stuck boat as an analogy for political disagreements in relationships

In reference to whether it's possible to have relationships with people with different politics, someone much smarter than me (and I wish I remembered who so I could give them credit) once said "You can disagree about what the solutions are, but you have to agree about what the problems are."

Sarah Gailey's excellent article "I Like That The Boat Is Stuck" provides a perfect analogy for this.

There's no debate over whether or not the big boat is stuck: it is a big boat, and it is stuck, and we are all aware of those facts, even those of us who are currently located in outer space.

Furthermore, most of us share the opinion that it's disagreeable, logistically, for the boat to be stuck. The boat being stuck is inconvenient. It's a big disruption! Nobody can say it isn't a big disruption. None of my distant relatives will get into arguments on The Face Website about whether or not the stuck boat is making a nuisance for lots of people. I like that.

We all agree that it's stuck, and we all agree that this is a bad thing. We might disagree about how best to get it unstuck. We might disagree about the amount of sacrifice that is reasonable to get it unstuck.  We might disagree about whether the other ships waiting to use the canal should keep waiting patiently or should detour around Africa. We might disagree about how to prevent similar problems in the future.

 

And we can have a civilized disagreement about that. We can, in fact, agree to disagree and go about our lives. If any of us are actually involved in unstuckening the ship, we can use the approach that we think is best, or pitch the approach that we think is best to our bosses. We can use multiple approaches in parallel. Ultimately, we're all on the same side.

 

But imagine that there's someone out there arguing that the ship isn't stuck. Or that the ship should be stuck. Or that more ships should be stuck. Imagine that, instead of discussing whether we should bring more diggers to dig the ship out or more tugboats to tug the ship out, they're bringing in diggers and tugboats working to get the ship even more firmly stuck.

That person is harder to get along with, aren't they?

Now imagine if, instead of a ship on the other side of the world, the problem is something more immediate, something that threatens your survival or safety or bodily integrity, or that of people you care about.

To use the example that's at the forefront of everyone's mind, you're trying to keep people safe from the virus, and but there's someone insisting the virus doesn't exist and advocating for activities that will spread the virus. 

They're just . . . in the way, aren't they?

If they're someone you already care about, you might feel it's worth keeping them in your life despite the fact that they're in the way. Or you might not. But if they're a new person, there's really no point in bringing them into your life if all they're going to do is get your boat more stuck.

What if the difference in first wave and second wave pandemic response is due to racism?

Sitting here watching the second wave of the pandemic spiral with those in power doing little to nothing, I find myself increasingly surprised that the lockdown actually happened back in March. Given the apparent lack of political will to return to the now-familiar lockdown when numbers are skyrocketing and the seriousness of COVID is clear, I'm amazed that they initiated the then-unprecedented lockdown back when it still seemed possible that the threat of COVID might be overblown.

It makes no sense whatsoever!

Which makes me wonder: might racism be at play?

As I've blogged about before, I'm not nearly as good as I should be at spotting racism. I've been trying to learn, but it's slow going (especially since I don't want to, like, actively seek out racists to see what they're saying). However one thing I have learned is that when I feel a specific shade of "This makes no sense whatsoever!", it usually means that what I'm missing is recognizing how racism is at play in the situation. And this is the specific shade of "It makes no sense whatosever!" that I'm feeling here.

So, if it is a question of racism, how might that be playing out?

I see two possibilities, which are not mutually exclusive:

1. As far as we know, the pandemic began in China. Maybe back in March there was a sense that COVID was foreign, and the lockdown was motivated by keeping that Bad Foreign Disease away. Now that community transmission is by far more common, they don't see it as as much of a threat.

2. Here in Toronto/Ontario/Canada, COVID-19 is disproportionately affecting marginalized people, including racialized people. Black and brown people have disproportionately high COVID numbers here in Toronto, and white people have disproportionately low numbers. So maybe those in positions of power and authority are thinking "It won't affect us", or even "The people it will affect don't matter."

As I said, I'm not as good as I should be at spotting racism, so there are almost certainly going to be nuances here that I've missed.

But, conversely, if someone as clueless as me thinks this situation makes so little sense that I'm arriving at the idea of racism, it's probably a sign that those in power should, at a minimum, make the situation make more sense.

Would it help if we had more discrete socio-economic classes?

We tend not to like to talk about class (in the socioeconomic sense) here in Canada. We tend to be more comfortable thinking of ourselves as an egalitarian society that's beyond that sort of thing.

If you ask a typical Canadian to name the classes we have here in Canada, they'll hem and haw and, eventually, if pressed, probably come up with "middle class", "working class/poor", and "rich". We sometimes have sub-classes like "upper middle class" or "lower middle class", but essentially we have just the three basic classes.

I think it would serve us better - and, ultimately, lead to a more egalitarian society - if we had more.


For example, consider someone who makes $100,000 a year.

Are they rich?

Most people would say "yes".  (Some people would quietly think to themselves "Well, not that rich!" but publicly would say "yes" so as not to seem out of touch.)

And someone who makes $100,000 a year is rich. They're close to the top 5% of income in the country. Most of us will never make that much.

But, at the same time, they still have to work. Unless they're very close to retirement age already and have an excellent savings and investment strategy and don't have any strokes of bad luck, a person who makes $100,000 a year could still run out of money if they never earned another dollar.

They also have to get a mortgage. Unless they've been saving very aggressively for many years and are in an area with lower housing prices, a person who makes $100,000 a year still can't afford to buy a house outright.

Despite being rich, they could have some bad luck that would result in them being poor.


Now consider a person with a billion dollars in wealth. That's $1,000,000,000. That's ten thousand (10,000) years' salary for the person who makes $100,000 a year.

The billionaire doesn't have to work. They could easily live on the money they already have. If their remaining life expectancy is 50 years, they would have to spend more than twenty million dollars ($20,000,000) a year before they could run out of money.

They don't need a mortgage. They could easily buy a house outright - they could buy close to a thousand (1,000) detached houses here in Toronto outright. 


But both these people fall into the basic class category of "rich". When someone utters the words "rich people", that encompasses both these examples.


So why is this an issue?

Because a lot of people, even if they don't make $100,000 a year and don't have a clear line to making $100,000 a year, can identify with it. Maybe if you luck into a better-paying job, or get promoted into management, or get a lot of overtime one year. If you look at the Sunshine List, you can see jobs like police officers and high school principals - regular, everyday jobs that your neighbour might have or your childhood friend's mom might have had when you were growing up.

So when there's talk of taxing the rich, meaning billionaires, people who can identify with maybe possibly one day if they're super lucky making $100,000 think "Oh no, that could be me one day! But I don't actually have that much financial leeway!" and then end up opposing taxing the rich.


It happens on the other end of the economic spectrum too.

Making a below-average income in a stable full-time job is different from being caught in the gig economy is different from being on welfare where your monthly benefits are less than your rent, but they all fall under the label of "poor".


There are all kinds of nuance that make a real difference in socioeconomic quality of life.

Making $X a year and having your mortgage paid off is a very different situation from making $X a year and being fully leveraged, or just barely making rent.

Making a million dollars a year is very different from having a million dollars in total wealth, but we use the word "millionaire" for both.

Having wealth in the market value of your primary residence is very different from having the same amount of wealth liquid, or in a number of different assets that are less important than your primary residence.

Making below the poverty line for a few years when you're starting out is different from being below the poverty line for your entire life, and both of these are different from being below the poverty line after several years of having significantly more money.

Having no money readily on hand is different from having no money unless you tap your retirement fund, both of which are different from having no money and having no available credit.

Being evicted and having to go back to your parents' house and live in your childhood bedroom is different from being evicted and having to crash on someone's couch is different from being evicted and having literally no one who will take you in.


Maybe if we had discrete names for these different situations, discourse would be improved?

The mystery of the disappearing desks

I blogged before about how people keep saying "things you have around the house" for things that I don't have around the house.

One thing I do have around the house is a desk. And, with the pandemic, I was surprised to learn just how many people don't have a desk.


My high-school graduation gift was a computer - a desktop computer, because that's what my father thought was most suitable. Laptop computers did exist in those days, but in the days before wifi you were tethered to a wall if you want to use the internet anyway, so desktops were a lot more common.

I set up my computer on my desk in my childhood bedroom, and subsequently on the desk in my dorm room and, being an internet addict, I spent most of my waking hours there, talking on the internet to other people who were also at their desktop computers tethered to the wall.

When I got my first apartment, I brought in my furniture from my childhood bedroom (my parents had the foresight to furnish our childhood bedrooms with regular grownup furniture rather than small/cutesy child-specific furniture). It was a small apartment, but my computer was still my top priority in my waking hours, so I set up my desk right in the living room, so I could continue my habit of spending time on the internet talking to other people also sitting at their desks.

Around this time I learned about ergonomics at work, so I applied the same principles to my desk at home. My set-up in student housing had been unergonomic and caused me a lot of neck pain, so I wanted something more sustainable for my adult life.

Then, when I got a laptop, I saw no reason not to continue with my comfy, ergonomized desk. I connected the laptop to my ergonomic peripherals, and kept right on spending my days at my desk, talking to people on the internet who, I had every reason to believe, were also at their desks.


Then, when the pandemic came along and everyone who can work from home started doing so, I was shocked to discover that the internet was full of people who . . . don't own a desk!!!  All these people whom I'd always pictured as being at their desks were suddenly setting up makeshift workstations at kitchen tables and on couches and in bed . . .

Where did all the desks go??


I do understand intellectually that you can internet on laptops and mobile devices, but I've always found working at a desk more comfortable and convenient.

I also understand that many people live in small homes - I do myself!  It's just my desk has always been so important to me that it's my second priority, after a bed.

So it's quite astonishing to me that it's such a low priority for so many people that "how to work from home when you don't have a desk" was a major topic of conversation in the early days of the pandemic!


But in addition to the question of "Why don't people have desks?" there's also the question of "What happened to the desks that people used to have?"

A lot of the "no desk, now what?" that's reaching me is coming from people who have been on the internet (in a personal capacity, not just for work or school) for at least as long as I have. Which means that, once upon a time, they almost certainly must have had a desk in their home - even if not a literal desk, then a designated table where a computer could be set up.

And now they don't.  They must have, at some point, gotten rid of the literal desk. Which is so bizarre to me - they looked at what I consider the second most important piece of furniture in a home, and thought "I don't anticipate ever needing to fulfill this function again."

Or what if they never had them in the first place? What if, for all these years, all these people on the internet I thought were sitting at their desks actually weren't?

That would be interesting to study - survey people who were caught out without a desk in the pandemic and ask them if they've ever owned a desk.


If you had asked me, back in the 90s when I was setting up my very own computer at my very own desk, to predict what will happen in the world in the year 2020, I would never have come up with "A lot fewer people own desks"!

Flaws in my Education: "You should speak up and contribute!"

I was identified as gifted when I was in Grade 5, which meant every year I'd get an IPRC, where I'd meet with my parents and the resource teacher and they'd make a plan for how to get the most out of my education.

The one thing the resource teachers always did (every single resource teacher over the years did this - I can think of at least three individual teachers and I'm sure I'm missing some) was put in the plan that I should raise my hand and answer more questions in class.

Even looking back at it as an adult, I don't understand what that was supposed to achieve. (I knew that I knew the answers, I was just staying quiet to avoid bullying.) But there was very strong messaging that I should raise my hand and give the teachers the answers I already knew I already knew, that doing so would be a good thing, and that failing to do so was a bad thing.


Similarly, as a shy person who doesn't always speak in groups, I've gotten a lot of "You should speak up! You should contribute!" as social skills advice.

As though I necessarily have something not just to say, but to contribute? I can't fathom what that might be!


So for the first 30ish years of my life, I was receiving constant messaging that I should say something, anything. That not putting in my two cents is practically not pulling my weight.


And then, when I was well into my 30s, I was exposed for the first time to the concept of staying in one's lane.

This was literally the first time in my life I had heard that perhaps I shouldn't speak up, perhaps I don't have anything to contribute to a given discussion.

(When I was a kid, adults would tell me to be quiet and not to talk back in a given moment, but on a philosophical/theoretical level they definitely would have said I should speak up and contribute.)


Now, I can't tell you how much of this "you should speak up and contribute" was because I'm white, and I can't tell you whether my non-white classmates were treated differently. My school was fairly small (if you had shown me a photo of any of my classmates, I could have instantly told you their name and something about them) and there were so few non-white students that I could count them without running out of fingers.

I cannot think of/remember a single instance of any of my classmates, of any race, being urged to systematically speak up more or to systematically be quiet. But also, I wasn't paying attention to such things at the time, so who knows what I might have missed?

If there was any difference in how we were treated, I'm sure the adults would have told you they were treating us as individuals, based on our individual needs. And there simply isn't enough data to suggest otherwise - I had too few non-white classmates to identify any sort of pattern.


But the fact of the matter is there were, in raw numbers, a lot of white people around in that time and place, and other times and places like it. I can't possibly have been the only person who was told to speak up and contribute. (I seriously doubt the adults around me would have come up with an all new unprecedented piece of advice just for me!)

Maybe the world would be a better place if more of us were told there are some times and places where you should sit down, be quiet and listen - and not just when those in power and authority are talking.

The best things in life and the worst things in life

The April 26 Frazz comic:

Caulfield: A few weeks ago, you were all but howling at the full moon.
Frazz: Beautiful! Enormous, razor sharp and bright enough to hold its own against the rising sun across a vast, cloudless sky.
Caulfield: So you remember it.
Frazz: Of course! A moon like that is one of the best things in life.
Caulfield: Do you remember a week ago?
Frazz: I guess I don't.
Caulfield: It was inky and overcast, and there wouldn't have been a visible moon anyway. The complete opposite of the best thing in life, if you catch my drift.
Frazz: You're overthinking this.
Caulfield: Ergo: The worst things in life aren't as bad as the best things are good.
Frazz: I like the way you overthink.

The interesting thing is Caulfield has essentially proven that the worst things in life are way worse than the best things in life are good.

There are people in the world who, like Frazz think the beauty of nature is one of the best things in life.

If you find one of these people, ideally at a moment where they haven't just opined on the best things in life, and ask them about the worst things in life, they will, rightfully, come up with something like war atrocities. (Or, if they don't will likely agree that war atrocities are far worse than whatever they just thought of. Unless, of course, there's something worse than war atrocities that I'm not thinking of.)

War atrocities are, by far, many many many orders of magnitude worse than the beauty of nature is good.

(If anyone disagrees, here's a thought experiment: would you rather never be subjected to war atrocities and never experience the beauty of nature? Or would you rather be subjected to war atrocities for the rest of your natural life as the price of admission for experiencing the beauty of nature?)


In fact, Caulfield has just demonstrated that the bad things in life aren't even on the same scale as the good things in life. The absence of a beautiful moon isn't a war atrocity, it's simply nondescript. The absence of war atrocities isn't beautiful, it's simply nondescript.

There's a saying that the opposite of love isn't hate, it's indifference. Maybe that logic applies to other things in life as well.

The Star Wars sequel trilogy should have started earlier

The problem with the Star Wars sequel trilogy is it starts too late.

The original trilogy ends with a happily ever after. Evil is vanquished! Fireworks! Ewok dance party!

When the sequel trilogy starts, evil has already risen again, complete with armies and spaceships and an established power structure.  Everything earned in the original trilogy was for naught. We didn't even get a moment to savour our happily ever after. This is emotionally unsatisfying and, as I've blogged about before, makes it practically impossible to end the sequel trilogy on an emotionally-satisfying happily every after.

This could have been avoided by starting the sequel trilogy earlier in the arc.

They could have started it the same number of years in the future - years and ages don't matter - but it should have started before evil began rising once again.


Picture this: we start in the happily ever after. The galaxy is a thriving, flourishing society. We see people living happy, prosperous lives, much like the Shire at the beginning of Lord of the Rings.

Our heroes from the original trilogy are living their best lives. Leia is in a position of power and authority. Luke is training young people (who may or may not include Ben Solo, depending on the needs of the plot) in the ways of the Force. Han is doing whatever is most convenient for the plot.

Then Ben Solo finds out something bad. Not "evil empire" bad - no war atrocities or anything - but rather peacetime bad. Corruption, insider trading, tax evasion, something like that. (Maybe Han is the perpetrator if that helps the plot?) This causes him to get disillusioned with the idealism he learned at his mother's knee, and he starts wondering if perhaps there's another way.

He goes looking for another way, gets radicalized, and begins studying the ways of the Sith.

In the process of doing this, he encounters Rey through their Force connection.

Rey is being brought up in the ways of the Sith, and she's beginning to question it.  Through her Force connection with Ben, she gets a glimpse of another life. But everyone around her - and this dude with whom she apparently has a force connection now - are out to destroy it.

Adventures happen! Light sabre battles happen! Special effects make movie audiences gasp in delight! Entertaining subplots involving marketable action figure characters happen! Emotionally satisfying beats involving old favourite characters happen! The couple you're shipping kisses!

And, ultimately, evil doesn't rise. It tries to, but throughout the movies we see how the the foundation built up by the good guys in the original trilogy stops them from getting too far, and provides us with the reassurance that, even if evil tries to rise in the future, things will never again get as bad as they were at the height of the empire.


This would still let us have our Star Wars adventure, but wouldn't render everything the original trilogy earned irrelevant. And, in a universe where the benefits of the original trilogy's happily-ever-after are felt throughout our heroes' attempts to stop evil from rising, we can feel confident that any happily-ever-after that this trilogy delivers will have lasting effects.

Disillusionment (Part 2)

This post contains descriptions of racism and other stereotypes.

"So," you're wondering, "you're a Harry Potter fan. Why is your big "disillusionment at discovering someone is transphobic" post about Heather Mallick rather than J.K. Rowling?"

And the answer to that is I got emotional closure on Harry Potter at the end of Book 7. All was well, I closed the book and walked away. I have no need to revisit Hogwarts - I may well go my entire life without ever looking at another Harry Potter fic, and not even notice its absence.

But there's another problem.

When it J.K. Rowling's transphobia reached my Twitter feed, people also started posting about various stereotypes contained the Harry Potter series. (The linked article is but one example - there were many examples, but I'm struggling to re-find them.)

I'm not worldly enough to have spotted these stereotypes.  I'm not worldly enough to extrapolate from the examples given in these articles to spot other stereotypes.

All of which is a problem because last year, completely ignorant of all these issues, I gave Fairy Goddaughter Harry Potter for her seventh birthday.


Harry Potter is one of the fandoms I share with Fairy Goddaughter's mother (who really needs a blog nickname!). We read the books together. We were high school classmates when it began, Fairy Goddaughter's Mother was a newlywed when it ended.

In the months leading up to her seventh birthday, Fairy Goddaughter was expressing interest in the character of Hermione Granger. Who is she? Is she smart? Is she powerful? So her mother decided Fairy Goddaughter was ready, and allowed me the honour of giving Fairy Goddaughter her metaphorical Hogwarts letter.

Then I had a creative idea - literally my first creative idea since my head injury! Fairy Goddaughter should be invited to Hogwarts with an actual Hogwarts letter!

Inspired - and rejoicing in the sensation of inspiration, which I never thought I'd feel again! - I ran around the neighbourhood looking for everything I needed.  Hogwarts letters are written on parchment! But it turns out real parchment doesn't look like I'd imagined. Luckily, Deserres had stationery that looked more like a Hogwarts letter than actual parchment does. Hogwarts letters are written in green calligraphy! I've tried calligraphy pens before, they just make a mess. Luckily, Deserres had these markers with slanted tips that produce writing that looks more like calligraphy than I can produce with a calligraphy pen. Hogwarts letters are delivered by owl! They don't yet have a service where you can get an actual owl to deliver a letter to a given address, so instead I ran around to every store that sells toys, looking for the closest approximation of a Hogwarts owl.

Using my green calligraphyesque marker and my parchment-emulating stationery, I wrote Fairy Goddaughter a letter about how these books have meant so much to her mother and to me, and I hope she has an equally magical time at Hogwarts.

I packed up the beautiful Harry Potter box set in a shipping box, rolled up the letter like a scroll, tucked it under the owl so it would look like the owl was holding it, and sent it off to Fairy Goddaughter, full of pride and anticipation that she gets to set off on her magical journey, and full of glee and delight that my post-head-injury brain actually thought of and implemented a creative idea.


And, completely unbeknownst to me, I was handing her a book full of harmful stereotypes that I'm not worldly enough to detect. And I have every reason to believe Fairy Goddaughter's parents aren't either. (Fairy Goddaughter's Mother and I have talked at length over the years about how our sheltered upbringing in a small town with very little diversity didn't equip us to detect things like stereotypes and racism.) And we all enthusiastically presented it as a magical happy place.


What do you do about this?? How do adults who are too sheltered to notice stereotypes learn about stereotypes in order to guide children appropriately?


In life in general, people likely become aware of stereotypes because people around them use stereotypes with a critical mass of frequency. The lack of diversity where I grew up meant I didn't have this exposure. I can't say with confidence that no one was racist (and, as I learn more about the world, I'm coming to realize that fallacies like white saviour syndrome and othering were rampant), but rather that there was no one for the racist people to be racist towards, at least not with enough frequency for us to notice patterns and develop awareness of stereotypes. 


Most, if not all, of the stereotypes I've become aware of in my life have been from people pointing out examples of racism. They provide a screenshot or a link: "See, this is racist!"

And I wouldn't have been able to determine that independently, by which I mean that the racist words or images read as a sequence of nonsense to me.

For example, some 20 years after I started watching Monty Python, I learned that the embassy scene in Monty Python's Cycling Tour episode involves what I learned is called "yellowface" - racist, stereotypical depictions of Chinese people. Watching it the first time as a teenager, I didn't even realize that they were trying to depict Chinese people. I thought it was just a bunch of people in strange costumes and silly voices behaving erratically (to be expected from the comedy troupe that brought us Gumbies).

But I can't extrapolate from this to see what else might be racist. I can't even tell you with certainty that Gumbies aren't racist. (What I've read about their origin suggests that there's no racial or ethnic or stereotyping component, but I can't rule out the possibility that I'm just not seeing it.)

So how do I learn this? Do I have to go around listening to racist people, or is there another way? I do try to read books by people of a variety of races (and am always open to new recommendations), I try to pay attention and believe people when they say something is racist, but that's insufficient for me to learn what I need to know. Even though I'm reading, paying attention, listening, and believing people, the next example of racism that's pointed out to me always ends up being a completely different thing that also read to me as meaningless nonsense, that I  couldn't extrapolate from previous things. I fully recognize that I need to educate myself and not put the burden on racialized people to teach me, but . . . so far it isn't working, and I don't know what else to do.


My parents would have told you that it's a good thing that I don't know anything about racism or stereotypes. And, if that were true of every single child, they would be right. If no one knew any stereotypes, there would be no such thing as stereotypes.

But the problem is that some people are targeted by stereotypes. Stereotypes are used to hurt them. So they have the burden of being hurt and of people like me not being able to see it.  If no one knew any stereotypes there wouldn't be any stereotypes, but if enough people know them that they can be used to harm, then other people's ignorance exacerbates the situation.

What do we do about this?


***

As with the previous post, it's not really about me and my feelings, it's about how this fits into the system.

When I learned about the stereotypes present in Harry Potter, I found myself wondering why the editor didn't remove them. J.K. Rowling wasn't famous when she wrote the first book, I doubt she would have had the clout to reject a "Dude, this looks really racist!" edit.

But . . . what if the editor was in the same position as me? In my own job I'm sometimes called upon to edit, and I don't know many stereotypes. Have I inadvertently let some through???

My own anti-racism education was, as you can see, insufficient. It was a topic in school around Grade 9 I think, and it didn't do anything. There was some "stereotypes are bad", and we sat there and agreed "Yes, stereotypes are bad!" but never gained the ability to recognize stereotypes when being used by other people.

One of the examples of stereotypes used was the notion that Polish people are stupid.  My own mother was born in Poland . . . and I had never heard of this stereotype! My Polish relatives are intelligent, classy people, my non-Polish relatives are less so, and I'd never heard another human being express an opinion on Polishness. I managed to grow up without even being exposed to stereotypes about my own ethnicity!

And because I'd never been exposed to this stereotype (or any of the others used as examples), it sort of reinforced in myself (and, likely, my classmates) the idea that stereotypes are Other - not something that happens in real life, not something that we'll ever encounter.


So the problem reinforces and feeds on itself. People like me who grow up sheltered aren't exposed to stereotypes, which gets in the way of teaching us about stereotypes, which leaves us oblivious and useless to people who are harmed by stereotypes.

What do we even do about this?


And then there's the fact that I love buying books for children. Even though I don't celebrate xmas myself, it's the occasion when I most often get to see my baby cousins, so I delight in going to Mabel's Fables, picking out books for each child, wrapping them paper shiny enough to make a child believe the package must contain magic . . . and, all this time, how many stereotypes have I unknowingly placed in their innocent hands? Thereby normalizing the stereotypes without any of us even realizing it, and perpetuating the cycle for another generation?

[X] or [X+1] [noun]s

A turn of phrase I've noticed recently, although it seems old-fashioned (or possibly British) is "[X] or [X+1] [noun]s".

Examples:
- "An army of 300 or 400 soldiers."
- "I drove there with 2 or 3 friends."
- "The house had 13 or 14 windows."

This turn of phrase is interesting to me, because I think it has connotations and I can't tell what they are.  I suspect it's not (or perhaps not always) literal - like how "a dozen eggs" means literally 12 eggs, but "a dozen people in line" can mean 10 or 14.

Does "300 or 400 soldiers" mean between 300 and 400?  Or might it be 298 or 407?  Or might it be between 300 and 500? (i.e. "three hundred and something or four hundred and something")?  The speaker knows, I can't tell.

The "2 or 3 friends" phase is a real-life example, i.e. someone actually said that. (Unfortunately, I didn't save the source.)  That's a situation where they'd actually know the real number - surely when it's only 2 or 3 people, you can remember who exactly was there.  So why did they phrase it that way?

This sounds like a strange thing to worry about - even if I don't know what the speaker's thinking, it's clear enough for our purposes - but this kind of thing is sometimes relevant in translation, when the target language doesn't do the same thing with numbers or doesn't have the same connotations.

For example, in French they have the word dizaine, deriving from dix, meaning 10. As I mentioned above, in English we have "dozen", which means either "12" or "approximately 12" depending on the context. (French also has douzaine, meaning "dozen".) Dizaine does the same thing with 10 as "dozen" does with 12 - it either means "10" or "approximately 10", depending on context.

But because English doesn't have a word for dizaine, the French to English translator needs to figure out from context where this particular instance of dizaine means "10" or "approximately 10", and whether the approximateness needs to be explicitly stated in the translation. (For example, if I say "Cassandra can cook Thanksgiving dinner for 10 all by herself!" and there were really 11 people at dinner, no harm is done by my saying 10. If I say "Cassandra invited her 10 nieces and nephews to Thanksgiving dinner" and Cassandra actually has 11 nieces and nephews, someone might read that and wonder whom Cassandra has disowned.)

This doesn't seem like it would be relevant to translating "[x] or [x+1]" - all languages have words for numbers and for the concept of "or". (And if there are any that don't, please let me know in the comments!) You can just plug the words for the numbers and for "or" into the sentence, and the translation is complete, right?

Not necessarily.

It's possible that a number phrase that's perfectly cromulent in one language might sound unduly weird in another, and the translator might have to adjust.

An example I routinely encounter in technical and administrative documents written in French is an approximating adjective followed by a non-round number, for example environ 473 voitures ("around 473 cars").

It is a simple matter to translate the words, but it sounds conspicuously weird to the English reader in a way that it doesn't to the French reader, so the English translator has to figure out the connotations (do they mean literally 473 or approximately? If they mean approximately, how did they land on that number rather than 470 or 475?) and the implications (what would be the consequences if you said "473" without any modifier and it turned out to be approximate? Or vice versa?) and adjust their translation accordingly, or find a workaround. (I like "some" as a workaround here - "some 473 cars". It conveys the notion of approximateness, but is also more easily overlooked by the English reader).

There might be some languages where "300 or 400 soldiers" also sounds conspicuously weird in a way it doesn't to the English reader, so a translator working away from English might need to understand the connotations so they can eliminate the conspicuous weirdness without eliminating accuracy.

And that translator may well ask me, in my capacity as a native-speaker Anglophone, exactly what the connotations are.

And I haven't a clue! Isn't that weird?

A Grade 3 moment

My fairy goddaughter just started Grade 3!  So here's the story of a seminal moment from when I was in Grade 3:

Mornings in our Grade 3 classroom followed a routine: spelling, then math, then journal, then silent reading. The teacher started each morning by writing the day's spelling exercises, math questions and journal topic on the board, so we could see as soon as we walked in what the morning would bring.

I was one of the better students in the class, so I was always among the first to finish my spelling exercises. Then, one day, I had an idea: I'm done my spelling, so rather than sitting around waiting bored, I'll do my math next!

So I took out my math book, worked through the questions written on the board, and finished them all while the class was still working on spelling.

So then I took out my journal, and wrote a journal entry on the topic written on the board.  The class was still working on spelling.

So I took out my silent reading book - it was a good book and I was looking forward to it! - and settled in to spend the rest of my morning reading.

My teacher noticed I was reading instead of working, so he came over to see what's up.  I showed him I'd already finished the morning's work and was now diligently doing my silent reading.  He praised me to the class for my initiative (which was awkward) and then let me read.

***

What's interesting about this moment is how representative it is of my strengths and temperament.

I find task-oriented work far more satisfying than project-oriented work.

I find it disproportionately satisfying to work through a list and check everything off and then have free time afterwards (and, in fact, that's what my system that I'm currently trying to redesign is intended to do).

When I worked in fast food, I loved working closing shift because it basically consisted of going through a checklist. (I would have felt the same about opening shift, except it took place at an obscenely early hour.)

When I worked in tech support, much of my job was going through a queue of requests and responding to or escalating them. And, since part of the job was simply staffing the helpdesk, once all the requests were complete I was at liberty to do homework or internet once I finished everything on my list.

Even now as a translator, my work is task-oriented and I have a list of texts and deadlines to work my way through. And, because I work from home, I have some flexibility once I finish the day's deadlines and word count, as long as I stay within earshot of my phone and email during office hours so I can respond to anything new that comes in.

I never knew that that moment in Grade 3 was so important. None of my parents or teachers or guidance counsellors identified this as an area of strength that could be used to point me towards jobs that I would find satisfying. I don't think anyone even knew where to look.

Simply based on the number of people who respond to the fact that I work from home with "But how does your boss know you're working???" I suspect a lot of white-collar work isn't like this. I think much of it is more project-oriented, working towards broader goals, without a checklist to follow and without a clear endpoint.

So I'm very lucky I did stumble into jobs that scratch this itch!

Age of majority

In the English-speaking world at least, ages of majority are weird.  It tends to be 18, 19 or 21.  But never 20.  Why are they avoiding the only round number in the general range?

I know the age of majority of 21 originally comes from England centuries ago - it was the age of majority for the purposes of marriage without a parent's consent in Jane Austen - but it's not easy (and certainly not readily googleable) to find how they landed on that particular age.

People's instinctive answer is going to be "because that's when you stop being teenage-like and start being adult-like," but I wonder about the actual cause and effect there. It's a lot easier to actually be adult-like when you are legally and socially permitted to! Fifteen-year-olds may well be sufficiently adult-like within a social structure that allows them adult roles, and doesn't require them to be in child roles (e.g. in school) by default and/or to achieve long-term success.

The other interesting thing about 21 as an age of majority (at least in historical England) is people under the age of 21 could easily fulfill adult roles in a society where formal education was far from the norm and there were no other obligations specific to teenagers. A 20-year-old, or a 17-year-old, or probably even a 13-year-old, would have been doing work that is comparable to their parents' work. I wonder why societal structures kept them legally dependent for what seems like an awfully long time?

As someone who was a legal adult for years before I was an adult economic actor (I was a full-time student until the age of 22, but a legal adult at 18) I wonder what it would have been like to be an adult economic actor but not a legal adult?

I'm going to have to find a book on this or something - there's a lot of interesting stuff in here, and I'm sure some of it has been documented as history and/or sociology.

And I still wonder why the age of majority is so rarely the nice round number of 20?

Brown corduroy pants

The very first piece of clothing I ever owned that made me feel good in my post-puberty body was, weirdly enough, a pair of brown corduroy pants.

It was the mid-90s and I was in my mid-teens. I didn't feel good about corduroy on principle (it's what the frumpiest adults of my acquaintance wore, and in Grade 1 my elementary school classmates had laughed at the noise my knock-kneed legs made in my red corduroy pants), but these were different.  They were what I now know to be called a finer wale, almost like velvet. They were on-trend for that time and place - either boot-cut or flared (my teenage self didn't know the different), low slung and a bit baggy.

This shape was both flattering to my curves and comfortable to sit in. (The first time I had experienced both since Mother Nature had seen fit to give me adult curves as a preteen!). With sandals and a tank top, it evoked a sort of hippy look (something I admired and aspired to, although I've never been cool enough). With boots and my new awesome peacoat, it evoked a sort of retro 70s look (which was what the kids who were cooler than I could have ever imagined were going for).  Both these looks worked well with my long straight hair - the first time in my life my natural hair has actually helped an aesthetic, given that my life thus far had taken place in the era of big 80s hair!

In short, this was the first time either "flattering", "comfortable" and "fashionable" were ever within reach for me - and I got all three for one!

I wore them so much they eventually got holes in undignified places and I couldn't wear them any more. But those pants opened the door: I could feel good about myself in clothes! I could achieve looks that I aspired to!  I learned more about what shapes and colours are flattering to the particularities of my body, I bought more clothes that make me feel good about myself, and I grew up to be a well-dressed grownup lady - something my preteen self never dared dream of!

The other day, I saw a poster outside a mall store where the model's outfit included brown corduroy pants that appeared to be boot cut.  They didn't have them in store, but I hope they come in as part of the fall collection and they fit me.  I still think brown and corduroy are both objectively frumpy, but I would love to have something in my closet that reminds me of feeling good about myself for the very first time.

Brandingthink

On the front page of today's Globe and Mail, I noticed a small blurb about their logo:

On Monday The Globe and Mail is introducing the next evolution of our print nameplate.

The refreshed red logo is the same typeface and styling that appears online at the top of our homepage. By consolidating our print and digital designs, we are restating our dedication to groundbreaking journalism, no matter the platform.

This is interesting to me, and, in my capacity as a non-design person, I find myself pondering the thinking and process behind it - not the change in the logo, but the explanation and its wording.

Do they actually think that consolidating the design "restat[es their] dedication to groundbreaking journalism, no matter the platform"?  Or was there a committee sitting around the table trying to come up with something?

Or was this the wording of the design brief, and the designer produced the logo and asserted that it achieves these things?

It's also interesting to me that they felt it was necessary to print a statement of intent behind their logo change, rather than just printing the new logo. I don't know that I would have noticed. Or, if I did notice, I would have just though "Meh, newspapers change their design from time to time."

The fact that they printed a statement of intent leans towards the idea of someone actually thinking that changing the logo "restat[es their] dedication to groundbreaking journalism", because if they didn't think that, they could have just not printed an explanation rather than thinking up an explanation.  But, to my non-design brain, these things seem completely unrelated (like how my choice of font is completely unrelated to my commitment to a vegetarian lifestyle), so I'm intrigued that other people's brains can do this.

Adventures in persistent spoonerisms

Chipo[l/t]e 

The first time I ever saw the word chipotle, my mind inverted the T and the L and read it as "chipolte".  Then, after some time, I realized I had it backwards.  So I set a sort of mental flag. Whenever the word came up, I'd tell myself "Wait, you have it backwards, remember to invert those two letters." Then I'd successfully say "chipotle".

However, I didn't realize that I'd cured my spoonerism.  The mental flag persisted.  Whenever I went to say "chipotle" I'd stop and tell myself "Wait, you have it backwards, remember to invert those two letters."  Then I'd say "chipolte".

So then I had to tell myself "Okay, you got this, no need to invert the letters any more."  But it was too late.  I'd gone charging right past "chipotle" back to "chipolte".  So I had to tell myself to invert it again.

This pendulum has swung back and forth over the years, and somehow I've never arrived at the ability to permanently and consistently pronounce or spell "chipotle" correctly. No matter where I am in the cycle, I seem to get it right less than 50% of the time.

I looked it up multiple times while writing this post, and I'm sure I got it wrong at least once.  (Weirdly, spellcheck isn't consistent about when it gives either spelling squiggles.)

Jolelujah 

The internet told me that Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah (link is to the k.d. lang version because that's the one that speaks to me) and Dolly Parton's Jolene can be sung to each other's tunes.

I tried it out, and it turns out they can! The choruses you have to fudge a bit, but the verses work perfectly - and Leonard Cohen's melody really adds a delicious anguish to Dolly Parton's lyrics.

Then I had the idea of a comedic arrangement - the singer starts singing one song and somehow gets lost and ends up in the other, or, perhaps there are two singers trying to upstage each other and getting stuck in each other's songs.

So I was workshopping this in the shower, trying to figure out how the comedic timing worked, and I suddenly lost the ability to sing the verse melody of Jolene.  I tried, but it kept coming out as Hallelujah!

So when I got out of the shower I listened to a recording of Jolene and got that melody back, but then I lost Hallelujah - it kept coming out as Jolene!

Now I can't hold the melody of either song, even when I'm trying to do just one song without any mashups whatsoever.  It keeps changing, it's completely beyond my control, and it never comes out the same way twice!

And, to add insult to injury, it never once comes out with effective comedic timing either!

Sentences

The following is a quote from Hyper Focus: How to be More Productive in a World of Distraction by Chris Bailey. As usual, any typos are my own.

As you read, your brain is hard at work converting the raw bits of perceptual information into facts, stories and lessons that you remember and internalize. After your eyes register the waves of light emanating from the page, your mind generates words from them. These words temporarily fill your attentional space. You then begin connecting the words to form syntactic units and clauses - the fundamental building blocks of sentences. Finally, using your attentional space as a scratch pad, your brain groups those combinations of words together into complete idea so you can extract their higher-level meaning.

Sentence structure can influence this process and slow down or speed up how quickly you read. Much as the world doesn't combine many groups of data in to sets greater than seven, every book is structured to accommodate a reader's restricted attentional space. Sentences have a limited length and are punctuated by commas, semicolons, and dashes. According ton one study, the period at the end of a sentence is the point when our attentional space "stops being loaded, and what has been present in it up to that moment, must be in some way stored in a summarized form in a short-term memory."

This is super interesting to me, because reading isn't natural! It's an entirely artificial construct that, for the vast majority of people who are literate today, has only been available to our ancestors for a few generations - not nearly long enough for our brains to evolve to accommodate it. (For example, compulsory public education was introduced recently enough in the various places where my ancestors lived that I have personally met the first people in each branch of the family to have access to it. Some were my great-grandparents and some were my grandparents. One of them is still living.)

I always thought of learning to read as simply sounding out words until you can do it automatically, but upon reading this I realize it involves so many more mental processes than I originally thought, not all of which are natural, but all of which the majority of the population can learn to do automatically with just a few years of instruction and practice!

And this also extrapolates to spoken language (although spoken language isn't nearly as recent and our brains have had more time to evolve accordingly). Our brains learn to pick up not just the meaning of words and how syntax works, but the very concept of a sentence - picking up cues that mean "This thought is done, save to memory", and, conversely, conveying those cues.

Language surely did not emerge with a fully-formed grammar, so human brains had to figure out both how to indicate "This thought is done, save to memory" and to process that concept.

I wonder if, in the very early days of human language, processing these concepts was difficult, like how reading is hard work when you're a little kid? I wonder if elders were thinking "Kids Today! Why can't they just point and grunt?"

I wonder if there are, or ever have been, any languages that don't have the concept of a sentence?

What if they didn't tell the heir about the entail?

The estate is entailed upon the male line! But the current master of the estate only has daughters! When he dies, the estate will be inherited by some distant cousin nobody has ever met! And the heir would be perfectly entitled to throw the widow and daughters out of their home! What do???

This is a common trope in fiction - well-known examples include Pride and Prejudice and Downton Abbey - as well as, I'm sure, being something that happened from time to time in real life.

But I wonder, what would happen if they just...didn't tell the heir that he's the heir?

It seems like it would be reasonably easy to conceal that information in an era before computerization and mass communication - it's just sitting in a file in some office somewhere, no one can look it up on a database or anything. It probably wouldn't even be too difficult to destroy the records if needed. (Maybe the lawyer whose office they're in is bribable?)

In Downton they have the additional complication that Lord Grantham is an earl with a seat in the House of Lords so his empty seat would be conspicuous, but Mr. Collins in Pride and Prejudice has no such distinction (and doesn't even share the Bennet surname!)  If they just didn't tell people the estate was entailed, people probably wouldn't even notice if they just kept living there after Mr. Bennet died.

Even if people did know the estate was entailed, what if they just told the neighbours that the heir was kind enough to let them continue living there?  Matthew Crawley legit would have let the Crawleys continue living at Downton, and it's perfectly plausible to stranger that Mr. Collins, being a man of the cloth, would have done the same. Or they could tell their neighbours that their lawyer discovered that the heir had died, thereby breaking the entail.

Or, if the heir did know he was the heir, what if they just didn't tell him when the master of the estate died? Under normal circumstances (in the absence of the Darcy-de Bourgh connection), Mr. Collins would have no way of knowing anything that happened at Longbourn. 
It also occurs to me that an imposter absentee heir could be brought in.  Get some guy that one of the daughters is enthusiastic about marrying, tell everyone that he's the heir, and ultimately the children of the daughter who marries him will inherit the estate.  If the actual heir turns up and the imposter heir has already done the work of ingratiating himself to the neighbours, it should be fairly straightforward to accuse the actual heir of being the imposter - it's not like they have photo ID!

Was there some kind of central authority enforcing these entails and communicating to these distant heirs the fact that they were the heir?  Because if there wasn't, it seems like they would be one lawyer bribe away from it not being a problem.

"Claim your climate action incentive!"

Shortly after I did my taxes this year, I got a flyer in the mail saying "Claim your climate action incentive!"

"Aw, crap!" I thought, "I forgot to do that!"

So I went back and pulled up my tax files in anticipation of having to figure out how to get a do-over . . . and I discovered that the tax software had already claimed it for me and the extra money was already included in my refund!

This makes me think the marketing encouraging you to claim your incentive, as though some action is required on your part, is perhaps not the best marketing strategy. 

Maybe they should say "Look for your climate action incentive rebate on line 449!"  If all you have to do is nothing, that's a good marketing point, and making it sound like some action is required when no action is in fact required makes the whole thing sound less beneficial than it actually is.

If it turns out you actually have do something if you're filling out your taxes by hand on paper, they should enclose a thing with your T1 form (or whatever it's called nowadays - I haven't done my taxes on paper since the 90s) that says "Make sure to fill out Schedule 14 to get your climate action incentive!"  Or just put it on the T1 form where you fill in your name and address and everything.

If I were a government person in charge of promoting this, I'd also instruct CRA to verify every return to make sure everyone has claimed their climate action incentive. (Q: When would they fit this in? A: In the course of whatever magic they do between receiving your return and sending out your Notice of Assessment. A computer algorithm could surely do it.)

That way, anyone who does end up somehow filing their return without claiming their climate action incentive would get some surprise bonus extra money. And that would be way better marketing than instructing people to carry out a task that's difficult to find because it doesn't actually need to be carried out.

Working 9 to 5

It surprises me how often businesses and services that serve the public directly choose to have their operating hours Monday to Friday, 9 to 5.

This makes it far more difficult for customers who work regular business hours to use these businesses.

It's particularly surprising when I see these hours on, like, hair salons and small clothing boutiques in Yonge St. storefronts. While it's possible that customers could get time off work to go to the doctor, it's less likely that they could get time off work to get their hair done, and may well choose instead one of the many comparable businesses in the same neighbourhood with more convenient business hours.  Especially with storefront space on Yonge St. being so expensive, I'm surprised they can afford to make themselves less convenient to their customer.

Also, if I think about it in the first person as a small business owner, why wake up early to open at 9 if you could instead sleep in, open later, and be available to the after-work crowd?  If you're, like, a doctor, why not sleep in at least a couple of days a week so you have office hours where your patients wouldn't have to miss work?  Why not work four 10-hour days and get three days off every week?

Even if you need to be available for deliveries etc., a very small business probably doesn't get deliveries every day. Be on site when you're expecting something, sleep in the other days.

If I had completely control over my schedule, I sure as hell wouldn't be waking up to an alarm!  And if your clients are the people whose workday causes rush hour to happen, you'd also be doing them the kindness of being available at more convenient hours.

"Kids Today think they invented sex!"

Sometimes people who are old enough to perceive young adults as "kids" complain that "Kids Today think they invented sex!"  Which is a really bizarre thing to say!

First of all, think back to when sex first became part of your life.  You didn't think you invented it (literally or metaphorically).  The history of sex was irrelevant to what you were thinking and feeling. You were simply revelling in a new and thrilling life experience (quite possibly the most thrilling life experience you'd had in your entire life so far.)

But on top of that, at least within the cultures with which I'm familiar, young people grow up in an environment where adults (or, at least, non-abusive adults) are trying to keep sex secret from them.

For the first several years of your life, if all goes well you don't know that sex at all.  Then, when you're old enough to wonder how babies get in a lady's tummy, your parents might tell you about procreative sex.

Around middle school and into high school, you start getting sex ed, with a generally vanilla focus and an underlying message that you're not supposed to be doing this yet.  But also around this age, you're starting to become aware of adult popular culture, which frames sex as the ultimate human experience. It's Unimaginable Pleasure, and it's Not For You.

At the same time, you are most likely supervised by parents, school, etc. in a way that's intended to prevent you from having sex, or even from finding out about the details of sex that aren't taught in sex ed. Your adults make rules like you can't bring a person they think you might have sex with into your bedroom, and they try to prevent you from accessing porn, or whatever else Kids Today are using to learn about Weird Sex Stuff.  If they find out you know even about Weird Sex Stuff, you can get in trouble.

And, at the same time, the adults around you are hiding any sex that they might be having. They lock the door, they don't leave their sexual accoutrements out in the open, etc.   Even if they don't object on a theoretical level to you knowing that they have sex, they take measures to prevent you from knowing when and how.  If they are using porn or engaging in Weird Sex Stuff, they actively try to keep this secret from you - even beyond the point where they're not keeping the fact that they have sex secret.

(All of which is the right thing to do, of course.  In our culture, it would be considered abuse for such specifics of their parents' sexuality to be inflicted upon kids.  If your kids don't know about your Weird Sex Stuff, you're doing your job right.)

So basically, the people who say "Kids Today think they invented sex!" are contemptuous of their kids for enjoying the novelty of a new experience that, for as long as they have been aware of it, has been hyped as the ultimate human experience, while also dissing their kids for not assuming they have been doing the very thing that, to do their job as a parent in our culture, they've been trying to conceal from their kids their whole lives.

How self-absorbed is that!

Metropasses

May 2002 Metropass (source: Colnect)

I got my first Metropass in May 2002, when I was doing my internship.  I felt so glamorously adult, going into an office each morning and swiping my pass like a proper grownup who does this all the time!

I went back to tokens when I was back in school, but once again turned to Metropasses once I graduated and started working full-time. I'm not sure if they ended up being cheaper than tokens every single month, but I loved the convenience - hopping on and off the TTC whenever I wanted, swiping my way into turnstiles.  It made me feel like a real urbanite, a true part of my city.

March 2013 Metropass (source: Woodsworth College Students Association)

I stopped using Metropasses when I started working from home in 2013.  But even though I haven't needed them in over five years, I'm still sad that they're being discontinued in favour of the Presto card. My Metropasses have been symbols of and tools of adulthood, independence, urbanity...all the things I never dreamed I was even allowed to aspire to. And so I mourn their loss.  My Presto card, while it has the same functions, doesn't have the same emotional weight.