Mes excuses publiques

Au cas où il lit mon blog, je voudrais sincèrement, formellement, et publiquement m’excuser auprès du collègue qui j’ai par inadvertance abandonné dans le métro. Lorsque j’ai noté que tu ne pouvais pas entrer, j’aurais dû te laisser entrer avec mon Metropass. C’était absolument inexcusable de ne pas l’avoir fait. Je voudrais t’assurer que ce geste n’était pas fait par mauvaise foi, c’était plutôt une erreur passagère et stupide de jugement. Je suis vraiment désolée, et je te prie d’avoir la gentillesse de m’excuser.

Learn from my fashion disasters

If your eyes are green and you like the fact that your eyes are green, it is not helpful to wear a shirt that is a brighter green than your eyes. It will just wash out your eyes and make them look brown.

Star Wars characterization problems (contains the very most minor of spoilers for RotS)

In Attack of the Clones, it is quite obvious that Anakin loves Padmé. However, it is not so obvious that Padmé loves Anakin. She goes through all the motions of loving him and says she loves him and marries him at the end, but as I'm watching the movie I'm not actually feeling the love from her like I am from Anakin.

I didn't notice this at first because I was kind of experiencing the movie from Anakin's point of view, but it becomes more important in Revenge of the Sith. I'm not going to fully spoil this (although it isn't much of a spoiler), but the fact that Anakin loves Padmé more than anything is important to the plot, and the fact that Padmé loves Anakin more than anything is important to the plot. While I can intellectually accept them as a married couple based on the characterization to date, and while I can see based on the characterization to date that Anakin madly and passionately and eternally loves Padmé beyond anything else, I'm not seeing the same depth of love coming from Padmé. And in RotS, her love needs to be just as intense as Anakin's.

I think when it comes to building the romance, George Lucas is telling, not showing, and I'm afraid the final film may suffer for that.

On the way home from the subway

Seen: a man in an elegant suit and dreads that are longer than my hair inadvertently attempt to put a metropass into an ATM.

Heard: an older lady loudly complaining in Polish about how terribly cold it was. It was close to 20 degrees and gloriously sunny at the time.

Seen: a man who appeared to be in his thirties attempting to chat up a girl who appeared to be about 16, all while standing in the middle of a small sidestreet rather than walking the whole two metres to the nearest sidewalk.

Brilliant Ideas That Will Never Work: Dream Coach

This came to me as I was doing yoga relaxation. If something is bothering you physically, a yoga instructor can probably recommend some stretching and breathing that will make it feel better. Similarly, a dream coach will give you advice on how to have dreams that make whatever is bothering you mentally and emotionally feel better. They'll give you advice about how to tweak your sleeping environment and behaviours and what thoughts to focus on so as to produce dreams that will ease whatever particular thoughts and feelings are troubling you.

Saturday by Ian McEwan

I'm not sure if I like this book. It's almost universally well-reveiewed, but it wasn't entirely a good experience for me. The obsessive minute attention to detail kind of annoyed me, although it is clearly part of the exercise in which the author is engaging. The climax of the story upset me emotionally, although it could easily have been much worse (I'm not describing it here because it would rather spoil the book), and the ending didn't give me satisfactory closure. I literally just finished it and I'm writing this in an attempt to create closure. I'm not in a position to actually assess the literary merits of this book because I'm kind of upset from it. I guess it's good in that it can affect me emotionally like this, but this isn't a good way to be feeling when I have to be at work in 9.5 hours.

How to study for a language exam

My original plan was to do all the previous years' exams, have my grandmother (a native speaker) mark them for me, and use that as a basis for where to focus my studying. However, I ended up not being able to do this because of scheduling conflicts, so I decided to mark the practice exams myself.

That was SUCH a serendipitiously good idea!

I don't have an answer key, so to mark the practice exams I have to look up the answer to every single question that I'm not 100% sure of. Most of the questions are applying my grammatical knowledge rather than spewing back vocabulary, so I have to look up the grammatical rules, understand them fully, and apply them to the example in question. It takes forever (it took me twice as long to mark the first exam as it took me to write it), but it is SO effective!

Sci-fi physics

I've seen several times in science fiction a situation in which a spaceship has a brief hull breach and the people inside survive by holding on REALLY tight until the hull breach seals itself, so they aren't sucked out into space.

Is that at all plausible?

Cono Sur Reserve Chardonnay

This bottle is interesting. It's ever so slightly shorter and stubbier than normal, but still contains the standard 750 mL. The foil is slightly harder to remove than usual, but the cork, though artificial, is easy to remove. The cork is black, which I've never seen before.

As for the wine itself, it's very well-balanced - it's fruity/buttery/oaky in equal measures, and whichever taste you're looking for tends to emphasize itself. It also has a little hint of that "tangy zip" (I don't know what it's really called - is it dryness? acidity?) that you often find in white wines, but you do have to look for it. It keeps you from gulping the wine down, but you don't actually notice that it's doing this.

This is a very archetypal chardonnay - the sort of thing you expect to get when you go to a patio and order a glass of white wine to sip as you watch the world go by.

I have just upgraded my requirements for elected officials

Thomas Walkom mentions in his column that "When bureaucrats went on too long at [Mike Harris's] cabinet meetings, [Harris] would throw things at them."

My requirements for elected officials have now been upgraded to include the provision that any candidate worthy of my vote must have sufficient self-control NOT to throw things in meetings!

VIA Signature Strengths

A while ago I took the VIA Signature Strengths survey (It will ask you to register and log in, but it's free and they don't spam you). Apparently people who use their signature strengths on a regular basis tend to be happier.

My signature strengths are as follows:

1. Modesty and humility: You do not seek the spotlight, preferring to let your accomplishments speak for themselves. You do not regard yourself as special, and others recognize and value your modesty. (100th percentile)
2. Love of learning: You love learning new things, whether in a class or on your own. You have always loved school, reading, and museums-anywhere and everywhere there is an opportunity to learn. (97th percentile)
3. Caution, prudence, and discretion: You are a careful person, and your choices are consistently prudent ones. You do not say or do things that you might later regret. (97th percentile)
4. Judgment, critical thinking, and open-mindedness: Thinking things through and examining them from all sides are important aspects of who you are. You do not jump to conclusions, and you rely only on solid evidence to make your decisions. You are able to change your mind. (87th percentile)
5. Creativity, ingenuity, and originality: Thinking of new ways to do things is a crucial part of who you are. You are never content with doing something the conventional way if a better way is possible. (82nd percentile)

This is a good picture of my inner self, especially if you look at the full results for all 24 strengths (which I stored in my LJ if anyone cares). The problem is that you have to use your signature strengths, and many of mine are things that I cannot deliberately use. I can use my love of learning, and I can sometimes use my creativity, although more often it just jumps out at unexpected moments with random ideas that are of little to no use in real life. However, humility, prudence and critical thinking are all things that are just there. I can no more deliberately use them than I can deliberately choose to inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide. In fact, I wouldn't say I even use them, they're just there, part of my self, just like my arachnophobia and my night-owl tendencies and my introversion and my unconscious devoicing of final consonants. I did read the relevant parts of the book, but they don't say anything about HOW one goes about applying these strengths.

Vermeer In Bosnia by Lawrence Weschler

This is a fascinating book! It's a series of essays by New Yorker writer Lawrence Weschler, on subjects ranging from war crimes to art to Polish history to Judaism. I love the way Weschler shows how everything is connected to everything else; in the title essay, he mentions how a justice at the war crimes tribunal at the Hague would destress by going to a museum to look at Vermeer paintings, then proceeds to draw a connection between the political and historical context in which Vermeer painted and the context in which atrocities were committed in the former Yugoslavia. The vast majority of the topics he discusses in this book are things I know nothing about, but he explains everything so well that I am able to follow along like an expert. It sounds like something that would be dull and pretentious, but it's actually fascinating and easy to read. Read this book if you want to feel smart!

I want to know which Flame Warrior I am!

Someone needs to turn this into a personality quiz!

Schoolgirl

What with Karla Homolka being in the news again, I have occasionally seen media outlets referring to Kristen French and Leslie Mahaffey as "schoolgirls."

I find this strange for a couple of reasons. First of all, the word schoolgirl is long and redundant. Anyone in our culture who is young enough to be referred to as a girl is going to be in school. There are many synonyms that are both shorter and more neutral - student, girl, teen, youth - and I can't imagine any situation in which a person would prefer to be referred to as "schoolgirl" rather than "student".

Secondly, the semantic value of the word "schoolgirl" above and beyond "girl who is in school" (which could be just as easily communicated by student, teen, youth, girl) is limited to two negative connotations: trivializing (giggling like a schoolgirl), and objectifying (like one might find in a description of pornography). Both these connotations are clearly inappropriate in this context. There is no good reason to trivialize the victims of brutal torture and murder, and that very sense of objectification is what led to Bernardo and Holmolka choosing to abduct, torture and murder them in the first place.

I realize that not everyone in the world gives as much thought to the implications of word choices as I do (that's why they pay me the big money), but I would think that journalists would be one group of people for whom word choice is an important everyday issue. So what on earth are they hoping to achieve by using the word schoolgirl?

No TTC strike tomorrow!

Pass it on!

Stupidest Dear Abby problem ever

Am I the only one who thinks there's no problem here?

The parents give their daughter a car, then complain that she's doing all the driving when her boyfriend doesn't drive. What did they expect to happen when they gave her a car? Does the daughter even mind? I can't think of any 16-year-olds who would rather have their date's parents drive than drive themselves. And if the daughter does mind, why isn't she writing to Dear Abby herself?

And what is Dear Abby hoping to achieve by suggesting that the girl's parents tell the boy's parents not to leave the kids unsupervised? If they didn't trust their daughter to be unsupervised, why would they have given her a car in the first place?Telling boyfriend's parents to supervise at all times is just making their daughter's life more annoying by denying the kids privacy for no good reason. And I'm not even talking about privacy to do whatever things their parents think they shouldn't be doing (which they already have every opportunity to do, because she has a car!) I'm talking privacy to gossip about friends or bitch about how much they hate their English teacher or discuss how tempting it is to skip the assembly they're having at school tomorrow or complain about their parents - you know, all the things you want to talk about when you're 16 but you don't want your parents to overhear because they'll stick their nose in.

Moral of the story:

1. If you give your kid a car, don't be surprised when they start driving more.
2. If you don't want your kid driving or being unsupervised, don't give them a car.
3. If your kid isn't complaining about how much they're driving, it's none of your damn business.
4. If your kid is complaining about how much they're driving, it's really their job to resolve the problem, not yours.

A logistical question

How are TTC workers who don't own cars going to get to their pickets?

Prince Charles and Robert Mugabe

Some media outlets are jumping down Prince Charles throat for shaking hands with Robert Mugabe. I think they're jumping down his throat for the wrong reason.

First, a bit of context. This was at the pope's funeral. They were, of course, conducting a full catholic mass. At one point in a catholic mass, the priest says "Let us share with each other the sign of peace." The everyone shakes hands with their neighbours and says "Peace be with you."

I don't think a funeral mass is an appropriate place to make a political statement, so on that level Charles should have refused to shake hands with Mugabe. However, perhaps he should have not shaken hands with anyone, because that might count as participating in a religious service for a religion he doesn't subscribe to.

Because I sometimes find myself in this position, I have read up on the etiquette for attending the services of a religion you don't subscribe to. The goal is to show appropriate respect without actually participating. In catholicism, this means that you stand when they say to stand, sit when they say to sit, and remain sitting when they say to kneel. You do not say any refrains or sing any of the songs, or go up to receive communion. However, I have not been able to find a directive on what to do with the "Peace be with you" part of the mass. As an atheist, I can honestly and sincerely wish someone else peace, but I cannot do it with whatever religious intent is inherent in catholicism.

If anyone has any insight on the etiquette for non-catholics regarding the sign of peace, I would greatly appreciate if you could share it. And if it is not appropriate to share the sign of peace if you are not catholic, how do you politely refuse?

But at any rate, the most appropriate options for Charles would have been to shake hands with everyone if that was apporpriate in catholicism, or to shake hands with no one.

A long-shot attempt to find a carpool

For the people whom I know personally, either IRL or online:

Do you know anyone who has access to a car and whose commute involves driving north on Yonge in the morning and south on Yonge at night? If you do, and would be willing to facilitate an introduction, please contact me privately. My general deal is that I'm willing to pay for parking in exchange for a ride.

This offer is not intended for strangers, even if they are regular readers. My intention here is to find a carpool whose character can be vouched for, not to find any carpool at any cost.