How to do a reverse apology

Via Language Log, some guy walks around New York City apologizing to people who bump into him.

That took a minute, didn't it? We all do that automatically, it a basic part of Canadian etiquette.

The problem is, the guy in the article is overdoing it. His reverse apologies are really pointed and come across as passive-aggressive. A proper reverse apology has to come across as perfectly automatic, as automatic as saying thanks when the cashier hands you your change. It needs to be non-specific. "Sorry" or "Oops, sorry" will do just fine. "Sorry you dropped my apple" is petty and passive-aggressive. However, even if you are just saying the word "Sorry" and saying it automatically as soon as the incident occurs, you also need to say it like it's no big deal. Imagine you're walking through a subway station, busy day, a lot on your mind, striding briskly towards the platform (the train isn't there yet so you aren't running) and you bump into someone else. No big deal, no one is hurt, really your bag just hit their bag, no need to break stride, you say "Oops, sorry" and continue on your way, the encounter forgotten two seconds later. That's the kind of tone you need. In my corner of the world, that will elicit a sorry of equal or greater value. Doing anything bigger or more pointed for a minor incident in which you are not at fault will come across as passive-aggressive and put the other person on the defensive.

It would be interesting to repeat this experiment with someone who is fluent in reverse apologies, who does it automatically, and who isn't so actively seeking to change behaviour. Canadians who are currently in New York City (I'm sure there are some Canadians in New York City at any given time): spend a day apologizing like a Canadian and blog your findings!

A hamster eating broccoli

I'm very tired and cranky today, and am going to be doing some cranky blogging as soon as I get less cranky (cranky blogging isn't nearly as effective until I'm post-cranky, but the material still needs to be blogged). But this made me melt, so I'll share it. That way if you're reading my blog from the top down you'll get a smile after all the crankiness. (If you're reading chronologically, you've been warned.)



(via the awesome Malene Arpe)

In re: today's Corner Gas

1. Brent Butt has had his teeth whitened to TV standards. Perfectly normal thing to do if you're going to be on TV (I'd totally get it done if I had to be on TV even once, but I'm insecure that way), but it looks WAY out of character. Brent would never get his teeth whitened.

2. My mother's lasagna recipe totally involves the food processor. I can't figure out how you'd make lasagna without one.

Generosity

I think true generosity isn't giving people things or money or time. I think true generosity is giving people the benefit of the doubt, and not begrudging them whatever good fortune they might have.

It's hella hard and not nearly as personally rewarding. Dropping a quarter in the tip jar at Tim Horton's is way easier than thinking "Poor girl, she must be having a rough day" when they mess up your order after you've already waited in a line that goes out the door. Spending an afternoon sorting cans a the food bank is way easier than thinking "Good for them, that's a much-needed increase" when you hear about social assistance rates going up while you sort through paying the bills after a long day at the office. Picking something pricey off the wedding registry is exponentially easier than convincing yourself to be genuinely happy for them even though you were supposed to get married first. Generosity of time and money get noticed, get thanks, get people thinking of you as generous. Generosity of attitude goes unnoticed.

But I really think if everyone could just somehow figure out how to muster up benefit of the doubt and non-begrudgeal of good fortune, the world would be a far better place.

For the person googling for the definition of "stanaist"

"Stanaist" is a typo of Satanist. :)

Dear Google: You might want to add this to your autocorrect thingy.

From PostSecret

An email commenter said that they did this too, and several other people in the community agreed. And, it feels bizarrely personal to admit, my first thought after he was elected was to wish that I was able to pray so I could pray for his safety. Later on I did try to pray, but I'm still incapable of it. I'm still just empitly going through motions, even though I actually wanted to be able to do it.

But it occurred to me, this might be the one thing in the history of the world that has inspired the most atheists to attempt to pray. That would be...kinda weird, kinda cool, kinda sad, kinda scary.

Things They Should Invent: garbage bins that are too small to be too heavy

I've recently heard of people whose green bins or blue bins weren't picked up by the garbage collectors because they were too heavy (the bins, not the people).

Simple solution: make the bins small enough that they won't be too heavy even if they're full, and give each household two or more bins. It seems to me that the weight of organics and recyclables should be relatively predictable. Assume each bin is completely full of the heaviest possible materials that might go in that size of bin, adjust bin size accordingly, issue each household a sufficient number of bins.

Outside my window, October 27, about 4:30 p.m.

I know the buildings look overexposed, but the colours actually are just about accurate. A massive rainstorm was heading out to the east (i.e. the direction the camera is facing) and bright sun was shining in from the west, lighting up the buildings.

Things LJ Should Invent: have locked posts show up in feeds

I don't actually check my LJ friends page that often because it's such a very small part of my overall internet rounds. I've added some people's feeds to my Google Reader, but that doesn't show friends-locked posts so I miss stuff.

To solve this, LJ feeds should show the presence of friends-locked posts. Not the contents, of course. Just show that there is a post there. Then people could click through, log in, and read the post. That would accomodate both the internet's general shift to feed readers and LJ users' need to maintain some privacy.

Things They Should Invent: limited number of "offensive" votes per user per day

I've noticed that people in newspaper comment threads (yeah, I know) are way overusing the mark as offensive option. In some threads, nearly every post has been marked offensive.

Each user should only be allowed to mark one or two things offensive per day. Things that actually are offensive would still get marked, but it would stop people from marking everything willy-nilly.

Open Letter to Rogers

Dear Rogers:

If you're experiencing higher than usual volumes that mean it will take nine days for you to respond to my email, you might want to change your autoreply so it no longer promises me a response within 24 hours. A realistic timeframe would be nice, or just have the autoreply tell me you've received my email and it will be handled in the order received. I wouldn't be disgruntled at your response time if you hadn't promised me 24 hours.

That said, a reply saying nothing more than that my issue needs to be handled by phone is unacceptable. I sent email in the first place because I don't like the phone, so you need to give me a good reason why this has to be done by phone. It only takes like 30 seconds to do this. If that channel actually isn't part of my package, as my readers have worked out faster than you could, you can tell me that in an email. If it is part of my package but for whatever reason you can only activate it by phone, you need to tell me that in the email. Ideally you should put some note on my file so when (if) I call, the phone person will know right away why I'm calling and I don't have to go through the whole story again. (If you want to be really awesome, set up something so that people who have contacted you already by email only to find that they need to call get bumped to the front of the queue.)

In any case, waiting nine times the promised wait time only to be told I need to call is unacceptable. You could very easily do better.

Best fanfic rant ever

Read this now. Seriously. Even if you aren't into fanfic. Really.

Famous people twittering

It seems John Cleese and Stephen Fry are both actually and legitimately on Twitter. (This is confirmed on their official websites.) What surprises me is that other users, who seem by all appearances to be just regular ordinary people, are sometimes replying to them, and sometimes they reply back! I envy that confidence, to think that of course you're allowed to reply to a famous person just because they're on Twitter!

Of course, if I had the confidence to think I'm allowed to talk to famous people, I'd probably end up like Mel on Flight of the Conchords.

Ratings and censorship

Lately I've been noticing how much things like movie ratings and censorship are focused on protecting children from adult concepts. This is odd, because that's such a small portion of your life! Before the age of, say, 8 you're more into child-focused media, and by the age of about 16 you can handle adult concepts well enough that you don't need to be protected. It's also starting to annoy me a bit, because I keep coming across things that censor things that are so massively unlike anything from which I need to be protected, and the censorship is way more obvious than the offending concept would be if left alone. For example, I saw a youtube of Christina Aguilera performing Candyman on TV, and they censored the word panties. (The line, as part of a descriptoin of a charming and seductive man: "He's a one stop shop, makes my panties drop, he's a sweet talking sugar-coated candyman".) I saw a video of Nickelback's Rockstar where they censored the word pills (The line, as part of a laundry list of sterotypical rockstar behaviour: "I'm gonna pop my pills from a pez dispenser"). Actually, they also censored the word drug in "Everybody's got a drug dealer on speed-dial," which is ridiculous because "Everybody's got a * dealer on speed-dial" means exactly the same thing! I also somehow ended up with a censored version of Hate Me by Blue October (I think I got it from a Big Shiny Tunes album), where they censor the word fucking (line: "I'll drive so fucking far away that I'll never cross your mind"), but they kept the line about cockroaches leaving babies in your bed. I don't need to be protected from the word fucking, but I certainly wouldn't mind being protected from the image of cockroaches leaving eggs in my bed, thank you very much!

I wish it was possible for us to choose more specifically what does and doesn't get censored in the media we consume. For example, I don't want to watch rape scenes, but I don't need happy sex scenes to be censored. (I don't mind if they tone them down to protect the actors' modesty, but I don't need them toned down to protect my delicate sensibilities.) I don't mind blood, but I'm completely squicked out by broken bones or eyeballs. I don't mind snakes or monsters, but bugs will give me nightmares. Profanity I don't give a fuck about, but I don't want hate speech unless it really is absolutely necessary in the broader context. Remember that V-chip thing they were talking about in the 90s? Wouldn't it be awesome if you could fine-tune it to censor only the precise things you don't want to see?

Blast from the past

Once upon a time this was the coolest thing ever:

Are people with white earbuds really more likely to be mugged?

A piece of information that is often repeated in the media is that you should get headphones other than the distinctive white ipod earbuds, because people like to steal ipods and the headphones are a big flashing sign showing that you have an ipod.

I find myself doubting whether this is actually true.

I see a lot of headphones walking around in my daily life, so one day I decided to count the number of ipods. On my walk from the subway to my apartment, I saw 30 confirmed ipods (either I saw the ipod itself, or I saw the ipod earbuds). I'd previously counted that I cross paths with 100 people on the same walk. (I haven't counted how many of those 100 people were wearing some kind of headphones that couldn't be confirmed as an ipod, because it's diffcult to keep multiple running tallies at once.)

So given that level of market penetration, wouldn't it behoove the thieves to assume that any headphones they see are attached to an ipod? And why would they only want ipods anyway? I haven't done extensive research (at the time when I bought my ipod the ipod was the best device for my own personal needs, but I haven't researched since), but the ipod has been on the market for seven years, surely other brands are generally competitive by now?

Things They Should Invent: an economy that doesn't need to constantly grow

The economy needs to grow. If it doesn't grow, bad things happen.

This doesn't seem sustainable. We need a new system where life can continue to be good for everyone even if there's no economic growth.

No, I don't have any specific ideas.

Maybe this is why older people frustrate me

It's not that all older people frustrate me, of course. The vast majority of my interactions with older people are perfectly unremarkable. But when they do frustrate me, it's always because they aren't smarter enough than me. It's an annoyance because it's very difficult to keep up the appropriate level of respect (yes, believe it or not I don't always want to be a disrespectful little shit) when telling someone decades my elder that they're completely wrong, and it's also scary because it makes me wonder if I'm going to stop learning at some point - there's no way half the older people I deal with have spent a lifetime learning at the same rate I am.

But this might explain why:



My entire adulthood has taken place in the 21st century. The vast majority of my adolescence happened on the internet. I've been constantly intaking these huge quantities of information for nearly half my life without even noticing. I feel egregiously underinformed about buying real estate, but I have more information than my parents did when they bought their first house. I mention that the problem with translation is it isn't very organized as an industry, so I don't really know how exactly I'd go about finding a translation job next time I need a job. My older interlocutor says, "Look in the classified ads in the newspaper" as though that's the solution to all life's problems, as though translation jobs have ever been advertised in the classified ads in the newspaper, as though jobs were just advertised instead of us having to access a hidden job market and incorporate ourselves so we can bid on government contracts and educate prospective employers who want bidirectional translation AND conference interpretation AND by the way you're also responsible for organizing the whole conference all for $28,000 a year. But maybe that really was what the world was like last time my interlocutor looked for a job, and they haven't had to look for a job since so they aren't aware that his is unapplicable. Maybe they really think they have all the information because that was the quantity of information they needed last time around.

It's still very frustrating though, because I find myself unable to evaluate whether I'm exponentially more informed or egregiously ignorant. For example, suppose I read in my morning paper "The Prime Minister's economic plan will protect us from this financial turmoil." So I go and google up what exactly the economic plan is, I find commentary supporting and opposing, I do some quick research on the trickier concepts, I post my remaining questions here and maybe some of you nice people answer them. Then I finish my coffee, put on some pants, and go off to work. I don't quite feel well-informed, but I feel like I have a decent overview. Later on I find myself talking about this to an older interlocutor who has been thinking about economics since before I was born. I mention that the information I could find on the economic plan seems to be rather lacking in specifics, and one or two commenters have pointed out ways in which the lessons of the past are not applicable here, and there are some pieces of ideology they have expressed in the past that could be disastrous if implemented here. "Don't worry," my interlocutor tells me, "the Prime Minister's economic plan will protect us from this financial turmoil."

So are they saying this based on their decades of financial experience, of having watched the rise and fall of several economic cycles? Or are they saying this because they read it in the newspaper this morning and are now accepting it as fact?

Question for GTAers who have Rogers Cable

Do you get channel 163?

I have Extended Basic and Timeshifting and I don't get it, which is strange because it looks like it's another PBS station, so I should be getting it with all my other US timeshifting channels.