Things They Should Study: does the societal move away from print newspapers affect how informed kids grow up to be?

I've blogged before about how a lot of my basic understanding of medical and political concepts comes from my lifelong habit of reading newspapers, and how my lifelong habit of reading newspapers comes from having them around the house when I was growing up.

This wasn't a result of parenting, it was a result of incidental proximity. My parents didn't try to get me to read newspapers are part of education or child-raising, they just had them sitting on the kitchen table for their own use.  I just started rummaging through them in search of comics, moved on to adjacent features like advice columns and lighter news, and by middle school I was reading the local daily every day.

I wonder how this will play out for future generations as more people move away from print newspapers?

Even if the kids' parents read newspapers electronically, that doesn't leave as much opportunity for casual discovery. If everyone in the household uses their own devices, there's no opportunity whatsoever.  If they have shared devices the possibility exists, but it's still less likely.  When you finally get a turn with the ipad, you're going to use it for gaming or social media as you planned, not to go look at the boring news sites mom and dad look at.  And with the move away from web towards apps, casual discovery is even less necessary because it's seen as a separate app.

Older kids will have the opportunity for casual discovery through social media, but I feel like that's not the same as the casual discovery you get from a newspaper. As I've blogged about before, I find that I read more articles in print that it would never occur to me to click online.  I also find that my social media serves as more of an echo chamber, reiterating and going into greater depth on my own opinions and interests.  Both of them have their function, but I feel like I'd be far more ignorant without the newspaper habit.

Of course, it's quite possible I feel this way because newspapers are my baseline.  It's very easy for me to see ways that non-newspaper people are poorly informed by their lack of newspapers, but it's possible that I'm poorly informed in ways I can't perceived by not being more app-centric or something.

That's why I think it would be interesting to study how (and if) the absence of print newspapers (but with the presence of informed parents) in the house when kids are growing up affects their informedness as adults.

The first tourist

In the shower this morning, it occurred to me that some one person in human history must have been the very first tourist, by which I mean the first person to travel recreationally.

For all of human history, people have travelled to find food or to flee problems where they were living before or to trade or to warmonger or to find new unused or conquerable land or for a quest or for a religious pilgrimage.

But recreational travel wouldn't have been a thing for much of human history, because travel was difficult and too many people were too preoccupied to survive. Plus, because no one had ever done it before, it probably wouldn't have occurred to many people to do it.

And then, someone, somewhere, came up with the idea of "Hey, let's go over there for no particular purpose, just to look around!  It will be fun!"  No one in the history of the world had ever gone somewhere for no particular purpose before!  But this person did, and somehow the idea caught on.

Things They Should Invent in Fiction: Getting To Know You magic spell

A trope that exists in fiction - especially fantasy genres where magic is present - is the love potion.  You get the object of your affection to ingest the love potion, and they fall madly in love with you!  Of course, the problem is that this will never be true love, because it's just the effects of the potion (e.g. Merope Gaunt in Harry Potter).

It occurred to me that what these makers of magic in fictional universes should invent instead is a "Getting To Know You" spell. You cast the spell on the object of your affection, and they instantly know you - your likes and dislikes, hopes and dream, everything that you need to learn about a person to know if they're a good match and to fall in love with them.

In fiction, the protagonist and the love interest often fall in love after plot points allow them to get past their preconceptions and get to know each other's real selves.  (And, in real life, people suffering from unrequited love often feel like this would happen if the opportunity would only arise.) 

At this point, you're probably thinking "But that would ruin the story! They'd get to know each other and fall in love instantly and then there's be no story to tell!"

But what it actually does it open up whole new story avenues!

What happens if the protagonist casts a Getting To Know You spell on their love interest, and this doesn't cause the love interest to become interested in them?

What if someone casts a Getting To Know You spell on the protagonist, but they aren't interested?  And suddenly they have all this knowledge of some random person they're not interested in?

What if the protagonist casts a Getting To Know You spell on the love interest and the love interest appears by all signs to fall in love with the protagonist, but never casts at Getting To Know You back on the protagonist, so the protagonist doesn't know the love interest as well as the love interest knows the protagonist?  Would this mean the love interest is up to something nefarious?

What if spies started trying to beguile their targets into casting a Getting To Know You spell on them in the hopes of learning their secrets, or at least making them more manipulable?

What if the spells aren't reversible, and casting them is a Big Life Step?

What if the spells are reversible, but you have to go on a quest to acquire a MacGuffin in order to reverse them?

And the person you thought was your love interest but who is in fact nefarious and now knows everything about you is trying to use this knowledge to hinder your quest?

In a universe where magic exists and the pitfalls of love potions have been proven, the next logical step would be for someone to come up with a Getting To Know You spell.  I think this would open up new and interesting story avenues.

There is no incentive to falsely take a citizenship oath

Recently in the news is the story that the government intends to appeal the Federal Court ruling that it is unlawful to require people to remove their clothing (in this case, a niqab) before taking a citizenship oath.

Sitting here steeped in white girl cultural hegemony, I tacitly assumed that they wanted people to uncover their faces during the oath for identification or fraud prevention purposes.  But it occurred to me in the shower this morning that no one would cover their face during a citizenship ceremony for nefarious purposes, because there's no incentive to do so - nothing would be gained or achieved by doing so, and it wouldn't change anything.

Let's unpack this.

Scenario: Cindy the New Citizen has gone through the entire immigration process and permanent resident process and citizenship exam and all the hoops and paperwork and everything, and has just received an invitation to attend a citizenship ceremony and take the citizenship oath.  Congratulations, Cindy! But Cindy doesn't attend the ceremony and take the oath.  Instead, Irene the Imposter attends the ceremony, pretending to be Cindy, and takes the oath in her place.

So what would the outcome of this scenario be?

Would Irene become a citizen by taking the oath?  Of course not - it's not a binding magical contract like in Harry Potter!  The record would show that Cindy, who is fully qualified to be a citizen, is now a citizen.  So Cindy would be a citizen and Irene's status would not change. 

This means that Irene has no incentive to impersonate Cindy, because it would have no impact on Irene's status.

But what if it's not Irene whose intentions are nefarious, but rather Cindy?  What if Cindy is trying to get citizenship without being beholden to the oath?  Let's think about this.

Suppose, Cindy breaks her oath and is caught.  When called out on it, she says "Nope, you can't hold me to that!  I didn't take the oath - I sent an imposter on my behalf!"  She's still in trouble, since the content of the oath is, essentially, promising to fulfill your duties as a citizen and obey the law, so she'd be in trouble for being derelict in her duties and/or breaking the law.  And, on top of everything else, she'd also be guilty of fraud! 

This means that Cindy has no incentive to send an imposter on her behalf, because that would only make things worse.

But what if Irene isn't there on Cindy's behalf?  What if she's there without Cindy's knowledge?

I can think of two possible motives for that: either Irene is trying to steal Cindy's identity, or she's trying to inflict citizenship upon Cindy without her knowledge.

If Irene is trying to steal Cindy's identity, she would have had to start long before the citizenship ceremony.  She could only find out about Cindy's citizenship ceremony if she has access to Cindy's mail, in which case she's either successfully stolen her identity, or has access to far more useful things like credit card statements and tax documents.  Going to the ceremony and taking the oath as Cindy will have no impact on the extent of her identity theft.

If Cindy doesn't actually want citizenship and Irene is trying to inflict it upon her without her knowledge, Cindy wouldn't even be having a citizenship ceremony.  There's quite a lot of work to do and steps to take to become a citizen, and if Cindy didn't want it, she could just do nothing. 

There is simply no reason why anyone would falsely take the oath with nefarious intentions, because it would do nothing to help them achieve their nefarious intentions and basically wouldn't be worth their time.  Therefore, there's no reason to fret about being able to see everyone's faces at all times.

New Rules: Natural Consequences Edition VI

10. If you don't understand the difference between "required to" and "permitted to", and therefore advocate for policies requiring people to do things when policies permitting people to do those things would be sufficient to achieve your goals, you are henceforth required to do everything that you were previously simply permitted to do.

The penalty for failing to meet these new requirements is commensurate with whatever the penalty for failing to meet the requirements would have been in the policy you were advocating for.

Would it really be a bad thing if income tax disincentivized people from working more?

A piece of conventional wisdom I've been hearing ever since I was a child that higher marginal income tax rates for higher tax brackets are a problem because people would be disincentivized to work more and earn more money.

I question that notion because of the way tax brackets work (the higher tax rate is applied to the next dollar earned, not to the income as a whole, so your net salary never decreases when your gross salary increases) but today in the shower it occurred to me: if it was in fact a disincentive to working more, would that actually be a problem?

Suppose you're working a 40-hour workweek, but you feel like you'd earn enough working 30 hours and the extra 10 just aren't worth your while.  So you scale back to 30.

You know what that's called? Work-life balance!  Good for you!

But what if everyone did it?

If everyone scaled back their 40-hour work week to 30 hours because it just wasn't worth it to them to work any longer, then only 75% as much work would get done.  If there was demand for more work to be done, employers would have to hire more people.

Know what that's called? Job creation! Good for you!

I strongly doubt that higher income tax rates in higher tax brackets would have this kind of impact to any significant extent, because most people live a lifestyle that is commensurate with their income and aren't in a position to just go "Meh, I have enough, there's no point in earning any more."

But if they did, I don't think it would be a bad thing.

Analogy for assuming I'm going to get sick

I operate under the assumption that I'm going to have every medical problem - everything my ancestors have died of or even been diagnosed with, everything my genetics or behaviour makes it more likely for me to develop, basically everything I have an even slightly greater than average likelihood of contracting.  I assume I'm going to get Alzheimer's, I assume I'm going to get cancer, I assume I'm going to get Barrett's esophagus, I assume I'm going to break a hip and become helpless.

There are people who think this approach is needlessly pessimistic, and who say things like "Why don't you just adopt a healthier lifestyle so you don't end up with these health problems?"

Today my shower gave me an analogy to explain why:

Suppose you want to enter a university program, but you don't have enough money to pay the tuition.

The university offers a scholarship to the very top student in the whole university every year, and this scholarship offers enough money to pay for the whole program.  But only one such scholarship is offered, and it's only available to the one student with the very top marks in the whole university.

So is it a good strategy to decide "Okay, problem solved.  I'll just get the best marks in the whole university and pay my tuition with that scholarship"?  Or would it perhaps be a better idea to assume you won't win the big scholarship, and instead work out a way to assemble the funding from other, smaller, more winnable scholarships with multiple recipients, combined with perhaps a part-time job and some student loans?

To win the one single big scholarship, you have to address and overcome a wide variety of ever-changing factors.  You not only have to be at the top of all your classes, you also have to be aware of what kind of marks other students are getting in other classes and figure out ways to top them.  You  need to keep in mind how various courses are graded, and choose courses (and maybe even a major) that make it more possible to get higher marks. (For example, it's easier to get extremely high marks in a math class than in a literature class, because answers to math problems can be unquestionably and objectively correct, whereas a literary analysis essay is more subjective and far less likely to be interpreted as perfect and therefore worth of a 100%.) You also have to be able to read your profs to determine how to extract the highest marks from them, (for example, I've had profs who give higher marks to essays that prove conventional theses, and I've had profs who give higher marks to essays that take a risk and prove an unconventional thesis, or have a good go at disproving a conventional thesis), and you have to do this early enough in the course so as not to have a sacrificial first assignment.  To say nothing of the stress you'd have to put yourself under and the pleasures of life you'd have to give up to study enough to earn top marks in all things at all times!

This is rather difficult, isn't it?  In addition to doing your absolute best in everything at all times, you have to be constantly and at every moment on top of an ever-changing lineup of factors, many of which are completely beyond your control.  And if you drop the ball even for a second, there goes the scholarship you were depending on for funding.  It's a lot easier, less stressful and more feasible to operate under the assumption that you're not going to get the big scholarship and instead work out a way to get more predictable funding.  If you get the scholarship, bonus!  All your problems are solved!  But if you don't get it, you're prepared for the eventuality.

Similarly, I find the list of things you're supposed to do to prevent Alzheimer's, cancer etc. is large, complex, overwhelming, and ever-evolving.  There is contradictory information out there, some of which is actively trying to discredit each other.  It encompasses every facet of life, some of it involves factors that are beyond our control, and much more of it involves factors that it is possible to control but very difficult to do. There are aspects of it that we don't know yet, and there are aspects of it that may be thought to be helpful but later be discovered to be harmful.

So instead of making myself a slave to all that, I just assume I'm going to get all these diseases and plan accordingly.  If I don't get them and end up dying peacefully in my sleep, bonus!  But if I do get them, then I'm prepared for the eventuality.

Analogy for why you won't regret not doing things you don't enjoy

Between my introversion and the fact that I've been extremely fortunate to land exactly where I want to in life, I'm content.  My life is very simple, contains exactly what I want, and makes me perfectly happy.  Because of this, I don't feel the need to seek ambition or adventure.

 Sometimes I encounter people who think I should be seeking ambition or adventure anyway (especially in regards to travelling), because they think I'll later regret not doing it.  Even though I know full well that it would make me unhappy to do so, they seem to think I will look back and regret not doing the thing that will make me unhappy. Which I find absolutely bizarre!

Today my shower gave me an analogy:

Suppose, at some point in your adult life, you find that you're not able to get as much sex as you'd like.

That doesn't mean that you should have gotten in the car with the strange men who were driving by shouting obscene suggestions at you when you were 12 years old.

Even if some of those obscene suggestions ended up being activities you grew into with future partners - and even if, as an adult, you grow to miss them when circumstances aren't aligning to allow you to indulge in them - they weren't right for you back then.  Not at that age, not with those strange men.

And, looking back at it as an adult - even as an undersexed adult - you don't look back and regret not getting in that car with those strange men.  You recognize that it would have made you unhappy at the time, and that the unhappiness would stick with you as a bad memory, not as something your adult self will end up being glad you did.

Typos and word counts

Sometimes I'm proofreading a translation or looking back at an old blog post, and I'm  shocked to discover that I typed "their" when I was supposed to use "there".  WTF?  I know the difference full well!  Why did the wrong one come out of my fingers?

Of course, my thoughts then turned to dementia.  I never made these mistakes when I was a kid in school!  Am I losing my mind??

But in the shower this morning, I realized there's a major difference between what I'm doing now and what I was doing in school: in my adult life, between translating and writing and blogging and emailing and chatting and assorted casual internet use, I invariably write thousands and thousands of words every day.  I probably write more words in a day in my adult life than I'd write in a semester of any given class when I was in school.

I guess they had us write so little in school because the teachers had to mark all of it. If each teacher taught 100 students in any given semester (because it's plausible and makes the math easy) and they had the students write even 1,000 words a day, they'd have to read and mark 100,000 words a day, which would be rather a lot to do every single day.

But this means that, in adult life, I can make as many stupid brainfarts in a day as I did in a semester in school before I have to start worrying about losing my faculties.

itunes lyrics efficiency

As I've mentioned before, I'm lyric-deaf, meaning I can't always clearly hear all the words of a song I'm listening to.  As a result, often when I'm going about my everyday life, I feel the need to stop and google up the lyrics to the song I'm listening to.

But this morning my shower gave me an idea:

Every time I find myself googling up lyrics, I'll paste them into the "Lyrics" tab for that song. (Right-click the song, click on Get Info, choose the Lyrics tab.)  Then they'll be available for me on my ipod, and apparently you can also download plug-ins that will show the contents of the Lyrics tab in itunes as the song plays.  So if I keep doing this, every song with incomprehensible lyrics will eventually display its lyrics automatically when it plays.

Things They Should Invent: public birthday parties

Sometimes people can't celebrate their birthday on their actual birthday, because the people they most want to celebrate with aren't available on that day.

Solution: public, meet-up style birthday parties for anyone who has a birthday that day.  I'm picturing the parties being held by a group of bars or pubs - the kind of place where any random person can walk in and have a good time - that would rotate among themselves so each one has to throw a birthday party only every couple of weeks or so.

You go in, show ID showing that it's your birthday, and you're entitled to one free drink and a piece of cake and maybe all the nachos you can eat over the course of the evening (or whatever else they can give away without wrecking their margins).  The employees (and, hopefully, other customers and birthday people) congratulate you and wish you happy birthday and generally make a fuss over you.  Maybe there could also be bonus freebies for people celebrating a milestone birthday. There would also be a general discount for people whose birthday it isn't on birthday party days, so there will be other people around to wish happy birthday to the birthday people.

The bars get attention, publicity, drink sales (because few people are going to limit themselves to the one free drink on their birthday), and maybe some new regulars who remember how this bar made them feel happy and welcome and celebrated on that birthday when they were all alone.

The bar's regulars get a discount and a bit of a party atmosphere on that particular day, and the possibility of attracting new and interesting regulars to the bar (if the birthday people are made to feel happy and welcome and celebrated.)

The birthday people get something fun to do on their birthday that makes them feel happy and welcome and celebrated, plus they get to meet other people who have the same birthday and thereby make friends who will totally be into celebrating their birthday on their birthday next year!

And, because the birthday people will meet birthday buddies, they might be able to make it just a one-year project. This would eliminate any "Meh, I'll go next year" sentiment among the birthday people, and thereby increase attendance and popularity.

Secularism: ur doin it wrong

At first I wasn't going to blog about Quebec's Charte des valeurs. I've already written many times about how assholic it is to force people to expose more of their bodies than they're comfortable with and was weary of having to cover the same ground again, and most of the media coverage of this story has already taken that approach so I was weary of having to repeat myself and didn't think I had anything to add.

But in the shower, it occurred to me that it's interesting to look at it from from the other side: instead of looking at what's banned, let's look at what's allowed.

Here's an English-language version of the visual aid that's been circulating.

Look at the "banned" items in the bottom row.  Apart from the giant cross in the left-most picture, all these items have a practical and/or theological function.  They all have the practical function of covering a part of the body that the wearer wants to be covered (with the possible exception of the yarmulke - I'm not clear on whether covering that part of the head is necessary, or whether it's the yarmulke itself that's necessary.) They all also have the theological function of being something the wearer needs to do to avoid going to hell, or whatever the equivalent in their religion is.  (I have heard that the hijab per se is not necessary, just that covering the head is necessary.  And I have heard that the hijab per se is necessary.  So let's split the difference and say that some people believe it is theologically necessary.)

Now look at the "allowed" items.  They're all small pieces of jewellery that display the wearer's religious affiliation.  They have no theological function, and they have no practical function other than displaying the wearer's religious affiliation.  They aren't a part of the actual practise of the wearer's religion, they aren't going to help send the wearer to heaven or prevent them from going to hell (or whatever the equivalent in their religion is).  They are simply a gratuitous display.

If Quebec wants to create an image of secularism, the place to start is by eliminating gratuitous displays of religion that serve no purpose.  Banning the functional while permitting the gratuitous eliminates all credibility.

Analogy: Suppose I have a car, and suppose you have a baby. We have an awesome, supportive friendship full of mutual assistance, which includes me lending you my car on those occasions when you need a car.  But then one day I tell you "You aren't allowed to put your baby's carseat in my car.  As you know, I am a Voluntary Human Extinctionist, and displaying the carseat would come across as promoting breeding."  But, before you can even open your mouth to protest, I add, "But it's okay if you want to put your Baby On Board sticker on the car, because that's just small."


Update: I was so caught up in imagining how awful it would be to be forced to expose more of my body than I'm comfortable with in order to keep my job that I failed to notice two very important things pointed out in this article:

The Charte wouldn't (my emphasis):

1. Remove religious symbols and elements considered "emblematic of Quebec's cultural heritage." That includes: the crucifixes in the Quebec legislature and atop Mount Royal in Montreal, the thousands of religiously based geographic names (e.g. Saint-Louis-du-Ha! Ha!) and the names of schools and hospitals.

[...]

4. Ban opening prayers at municipal council meetings, which was recommended by the 2008 Bouchard-Taylor Commission report into cultural accommodation. The Quebec Court of Appeal ruled in May that such prayers do not necessarily violate Quebec's current human rights legislation.

Yeah. So they're forbidding people to wear as much clothing as they'd like to in government buildings because it might be interpreted as a religious symbol, but they're allowing actual religious symbols actually on display in government buildings.  They're forbidding individuals who happen to work for the government in one capacity to practise their own religion with their own body, but still permitting situations in which individuals who work for the government in another capacity are forced or coerced or pressured to participate in the collective practise of a religion to which they may or may not subscribe in order to do their jobs.


So let's revisit the analogy.  I own a car that I lend out to my friends in a spirit of mutual assistance, but I forbid people to put their children's carseats in my car because "displaying" the carseats would counter my stated Voluntary Human Extinctionist principles.  However, I permit the "Baby On Board" sticker on the basis that it's small.

But now, with this new information, it comes to light that I have a gaudy, brightly-coloured children's playground in my front yard.  Because, like, it's always been there.

Also, since I lend out my car to my friends so often, I'm gathering together a circle of friends to give me their input on the next car I purchase.  However, if you want to be part of this circle, you have to donate gametes to help me in my attempt to conceive a child of my own.

But you still aren't allowed to put your baby's carseat in the car.  Because that would promote breeding.


Not so very good for the credibility, is it?

Mme. Marois suggests that the Charte will unite Quebecers.  I believe it will, against her.  You don't win over the secularists by allowing gratuitous displays of religion in the name of secularism.

Is there a name for the opposite of the Dunning-Kruger effect?

In one of my very first translation classes, the prof asked us to think about how we'd translate a short English sentence into French.  The sentence was grammatically simple and contained three words that rhymed. (I'm not posting it here because it will become googleable and ruin my prof's whole lesson plan.)  The point of this lesson was to discuss the various factors that many need to be translated.  Are we after the meaning of the sentence?  Are we after a rhyme?  Do we need to convey its brevity and simplicity?

My classmates seemed to find this a reasonably easy request and immediately began discussing it.  But I was panicking, because I didn't even know how to say one of the three key words in French!  I felt in over my head and desperately out of my league!  It was only the first or second classes ever, and already I couldn't handle it even though every else could!

So I frantically and stealthily looked up the word I didn't know in the dictionary, and discovered that if I used the first word in the dictionary entry and the most straightforward translation of the two other key words, I could have two out of the three key words rhyme.  And if I replaced the third word with another word that would fit nicely into the sentence and create a similar image, I could have all three rhyme.

(As an analagous example, suppose looking in the dictionary led me to "Bite the red kite."  If the rhyme scheme was more important than the meaning of the actual words, I could use "Bite the white kite.")

It seemed so glaringly obvious!  This was quite clearly the correct answer!

But why weren't any of my classmates coming up with the same thing?  They were coming up with all these things that were way different and no one had even touched on the words I had in mind...this must mean there's something wrong with my idea!  So I said nothing the whole class and felt in way over my  head.

This memory came to mind in the shower the other day, 13 years after the fact, with 10 years' professional experience under my belt.  And I realized: my idea was perfectly good!  It may well even be the optimal translation! It was more effective at rendering both the meaning of the original and the rhyme scheme than what my classmates were suggesting, even after 10 years' experience I can't think of anything better, and, even if something better exists, any competent translator would agree that my idea was a perfectly valid attempt.  And I was still a teenager at the time!

I was so afraid at that time.  I was surrounded by people who had been to immersion and on exchanges and could use slang and real-life accents, and I felt so hideously incompetent in comparison.  But I knew my shit, way better than I could even have imagined.

(Which makes the conventional wisdom that teenagers and young adults think they know everything all the more frustrating.)

Analogy for why social media is not a replacement for RSS

One of the things I found most bizarre in all the discussion surrounding the cancellation of Google Reader is that some people (including, apparently, some who work at Google) seem to think that social media is a suitable replacement for a feed reader.  As though we're perfectly content with reading whatever our internet friends choose to share and have no need whatsoever to curate our own reading list.

Today my shower gave me an analogy:

I've just caught up on the Inspector Gamache series, and am waiting with bated breath for the next book to come out in August.

So suppose, on the release date in August, I walk into a bookstore and ask "Do you have the latest Inspector Gamache book?"

The bookstore worker answers, "Here are some books I read and enjoyed recently!"

That doesn't solve my problem, does it?  I want to know what happened with Inspector Beauvoir.  I want to know how (or whether) Peter and Clara's marriage is holding up. I want to find out who leaked the video.

The books the bookstore worker read and enjoyed recently won't address these needs.  They may well be good books, I may well enjoy them, they may well end up being new favourites that I end up following diligently.  But, even if I read and enjoy them all, I will still want to read the next Inspector Gamache.

Analogy for why you don't need to give up your stuffed animals

I previously blogged about how when I was a kid I thought I'd need to give up my very favourite stuffed toy just because none of the adults around me used stuffed toys, but once I grew up I realized that you don't ever need to give them up, even if you don't need to use them any more.

Today my shower gave me an analogy:

As we grow up and grow older, we need our parents'  help less and less.  When we're well into adult life, sometimes months or even years go by when we don't need their help at all.

But we don't respond to this development by murdering them, or by casting them off on an ice floe to die.  We respond by leaving them mostly to their own devices while we handle our own problems without interrupting their well-deserved retirement. But (as long as they're still alive) we still retain the option of going to them if we need their help.

Things They Should Invent: dictionary of connotations

I recently had a disagreement over a word.  I thought that it was neutral, linguistically unmarked, and derived directly from the verb in question (analogous to how a cook is a person who cooks, or a grave-digger is a person who digs graves).  But my interlocutor  thought it was negative, and wanted us to use a less negative word, but couldn't actually suggest one.  I wasn't able to suggest one either, because I didn't feel that the original word was negative (or positive), and it's very difficult to come up with a synonym that has a different degree of a characteristic that's absent in the original word.  It would be like if someone asked you to provide them with a cake recipe that's less extroverted, or a career path that's not quite as purple.

In any case, the problem was that we were at an impasse over whether this word had this connotation, and there was nothing either of us could to to prove our position to the other.

Proposed solution: a dictionary of connotations.  You look up a word, it tells you all the positive and negative connotations.  In this situation, we could have looked up the word to see definitively if it has the connotations in question, much like how you'd look up a word in the OED or the Petit Robert if you're disagreeing on the meaning.

It would also be useful in preventing inadvertent racism.  Most of the racist things I've uttered in my life have been because I didn't know they were racist, because I don't spend much time around people who are being racist so I don't know all the slurs and stereotypes.  (The remaining times I've been racist have been when I learned some non-neutral words for concepts without having learned the neutral words, so I didn't have the vocabulary to express what I wanted to neutrally.)  It would be enormously helpful to have a reference where we can check these things without having to google for racism.

How to organize hair accessories

I was sorting through a drawer, and I noticed it contained a lot of loose hair clips, and a lot of loose hair elastics.  I was considering getting some kind of container or organizing device, and then I had a brainstorm:

I grouped all the like clips together, then I wrapped all the like hair elastics around each bundle of clips. The elastics keep the clips together in bundles, and the clips provide something to wrap the elastics around without stretching them out, so they won't rattle around loose and sink to the bottom of the drawer.

This takes up less space than any organizing device, the hair accessories are far more readily visible in the drawer than when they're loose, and I can tell what I own at a glance. 

Flawed analogies for street harassment

There are some people in the world who think catcalling and street harassment aren't actual problems.  For the purpose of brevity, I'll call them harassment minimizers (HMs).

Sometimes, when the HMs are male and straight, they'll make some comment like "I don't know what you're complaining about, I'd be thrilled if whenever I walked down the street, groups of women would shout how hot I am and how much they want to have sex with me."

However, this is a flawed analogy.

What do we know about the harassers?  We know two things:

1.  They're harassing people.
2.   They're male (because they've only ever been male in my experience, and this conversation only ever happens with male HMs talking about male harassers).

We know nothing else about them because all the harassment is in the way of us knowing about their hopes and dreams and aspirations and deepest innermost souls.

If I were to evaluate the harassers as viable sexual candidates, I'd see one benign factor and one dealbreaker.  The fact that they're male is benign; the fact that they're harassers is a dealbreaker.

If a straight male HM were to evaluate the harassers as viable sexual candidates, he'd see one benign factor and one dealbreaker.  The fact that they're harassers is benign (since, being a harassment minimizer, he doesn't see harassment as a problem); the fact that they're male is a dealbreaker (since the HM is a straight male).

So the HM's analogy where he'd be happy to have women shouting at him in the street is flawed, because he's taking the one factor that's a dealbreaker for him and changing it to something that isn't a dealbreaker for him.

For the analogy to be sound, he needs to retain one dealbreaker factor and one benign factor.  Therefore, the more apt analogy would be to keep the characters and behaviours the same.  So a straight male HM trying to analogize himself into the shoes of someone being harassed by male harassers should also envision himself being harassed by male harassers.

To change the gender to female would be like if I said "I don't know why it bothers you to have strange men on the street loudly speculating on your sexual proclivities and rudely propositioning you, I'd be thrilled to have kind, gentle, charming, gallant men expressing their esteem for me in ways that I feel are wholly appropriate and not at all uncomfortable."

Analogy for gun people

I recently tweeted: "The weird thing about gun people is they seem to assume that the bad guys are less competent and more chicken than the good guys."

Much pro-gun sentiment seems to be based on the idea that if you have a gun and some bad guy starts doing something bad near you, you can threaten him with your gun and he'll run away, or you can shoot him to stop him from shooting people.

That line of thinking seems to be based on the assumption that the bad guy is likely to drop his gun if you point your gun at him, and/or that you're a better shot than the bad guy. Why would you assume that? His drawing his gun caused you to draw your gun. Why would you expect the opposite reaction from him? The argument for the good guy being a good shot is generally that people apparently practise shooting. So why would you assume the bad guy doesn't? He probably has more time to do so, since guns most likely are a bigger part of his life, whereas the rest of us have to spend time on all the business of being upstanding citizens.

This morning, my shower gave me an analogy for this concept:

I am smart. Therefore, if a bad guy ever does anything bad in my general vicinity, I'll just outsmart him.

Not that simple, is it?

What if they deliberately inflated grades in gym class?

Every once in a while, people talk about making gym class mandatory throughout high school to improve the population's fitness. As I've blogged about previously, before we even get into the instrinic humiliation gym class, making it mandatory every year would be rather harmful academically.

First of all, having another required course to take every year eliminates the option of taking some other course that might be academically useful. Imagine if you're trying to get into some demanding university program, and you don't have room for Biology AND Chemistry AND Physics AND Calculus AND Computer Science because you have to take gym.

Secondly, making the class mandatory brings down the average of students who aren't particularly good at athletics (who should be the target audience of any such initiative, as those who are good at athletics are much more likely to already be involved in athletics). This would be harmful to non-athletic students' university and scholarship applications. For example, I did my very best in gym class every day, and all I got to show for it was a begrudging C. (And I suspect the teacher was only passing me at all because I was doing my best). In comparison, simply showing up in calculus or physics class and not putting in any effort would earn me a B, and simply showing up in French or German class and not putting in any effort would earn me a low A (and doing my best would get me a high A in all these classes). So, if the class were mandatory, it would lower my average, make me less attractive to universities and reduce my scholarships, all in service of a subject that's not only irrelevant to my future academic and professional career, but actually prevents me from taking another course that is relevant to my future academic and professional career. That's downright punitive!

But what if, instead of making gym class mandatory, they made it an easy A? Suppose showing up and doing the sport of the day was enough to earn you a low A-. Students are graded on a curve relative to each other within the A range of percentages, but the lowest mark you can possibly get for showing up and participating is a low A-.

This would give all students who can't normally earn an A effortlessly incentive to take gym every single year, to bring their average up for university. Students would still retain their positions relative to each other because the better performers would get high As and the worse performers would get low As, but gym class would have a positive effect on many people's averages, and no particular detrimental effect on anyone's average.

Inflating the grades may also be useful from a public health perspective (which is relevant since the whole idea of making gym class mandatory comes from a public health perspective). Because my very best efforts got me only a begrudging C, I reasonably conclude that my objective skill in sports is mediocre. If someone asked me to be part of their sports team, I'd be reluctant to do so (again, putting aside personal inclination) because I'd assume I'd be a liability for the team. However, if my best efforts had gotten a respectable B, I'd assume I'm more or less average and therefore no more of a liability than anyone else. You can see how this might affect a person's inclination to play sports later in life.

In all of this, there's still the question of Kinesiology class. I don't know how it works now, but when I was in high school, the OAC (Grade 13) gym class was called Kinesiology, had a stronger classroom component than the gym classes in the lower grades, and was preparation if not prerequisite for studying Kinesiology in university. I googled a few university Kinesiology programs, and they had multiple academic prerequisites (none of which were a high school gym or Kinesiology course), which suggests that, if high school Kinesiology still exists, the classroom component is academically relevant and would suffer from being inflated. Therefore, I propose that, if there is academically relevant material, only the in-gym component should be subject to grade inflation. That way, the students' relative marks will reflect their grasp on the academic material.

Understand, I'm not actually objectively advocating for inflating people's grades in gym class. However, from time to time, people advocate for using gym class as a public health tool, most often by suggesting that it should be made mandatory every year throughout high school. If they're going to insist upon manipulating the curriculum to achieve public health goals, I think grade inflation would be more effective and more just.