Sunday, December 30, 2007

Dark vs. Right?

In my post below, I mentioned the Darkness and the Demons. These are my names for complex emotions, not literal things I actually see (and completely different from what Dexter experiences). I find people either immediately identify with this and no further explanation is necessary, or they have no idea what I'm talking about and think perhaps I need some drugs (or have been taking some drugs).

The most right-wing person I know personally cannot identify with the Darkness. When presented with the Darkness depicted visually in the arts (Munch, Burton, Gorey), they say they cannot imagine how anyone could possibly ever think of such things.

This leads me to wonder if there's a correlation between a person's politics and whether they experience the Darkness. I haven't done any investigation into this at all, but it does occur to me that it would be far easier to be right-wing if you knew nothing of the Darkness.

My new year's resolution

When the darkness descends or the demons come out to play, I will not even try to work through it. Instead I will immediately reach for food, wine, music and comedy to get my mood back up, then regroup and try again. Virtuous though it may feel, ploughing through the darkness is never as efficient as preserving my energy until the light comes back, and I'm a better person when I've been laughing than when I've been crying.

Saturday, December 29, 2007

How to get me to use biodegradeable garbage bags

Mr. Hartmann said Toronto should simply require biodegradable bags instead of purchasing more costly hydropulpers to remove plastic. He said Toronto residents would be willing to convert to biodegradable bags if they knew it would help the environment.


Come on, does anyone not already know it helps the environment?

I've been through this before, but I'll say it again: what they really need to do is have all stores bag people's purchases in biodegradeable plastic bags instead of the regular kind. Then we will automatically have biodegradeable bags on hand to put our garbage and organics in.

Why not buy biodegradeable bags? First of all, I currently get bags for free with my purchases - buying them is additional expense and inconvenience. Secondly, they aren't readily available within my normal travels, and like hell I'm going to make a separate trip just for garbage bags.

Why not use reuseable shopping bags? Because then I'd have to plan my grocery shopping (which introduces a completely new chore to my routine) and carry big shopping bags around all day (which doubles the number of things I'm carrying - normally I just have a purse) or go home after work, pick up the bags, and go back to the grocery store (which nearly doubles my commute).

It's a completely different story for car people - they can put the reuseable bags in their trunks, and since they travel so widely normally they tend not to consider an extra stop an inconvenience. But for those of us who choose to incur greater expenses and sacrifice space and privacy for the massive convenience of living without a car and within walking distance of most amenities, having to carry extra things and buy extra things is a significant inconvenience. For a car person, it may only be a 5% inconvenience. For me, it's like a 25% inconvenience.

Having stores bag my purchases in biodegradeable bags will ensure that I never put another plastic bag down the garbage chute and that every garbage bag I use is biodegradeable. Anything else is very unlikely to work on me.

Friday, December 28, 2007

Things They Should Research: Does the morphology of numbers in different languages affect those cultures' perceptions of adolescence?

Q: Which ages are considered "teenagers"?
A: 13-19
Q: Why?
A: Because those are the numbers that have "teen" in them.

This has nothing to do with adolescent development, does it? It's just because that's how the numbers go. But the numbers don't do the same thing in every language. Here are the numbers 10-20 inclusive in a few languages. "Teens" (i.e. morphemes deriving from 10) are bolded.

English: ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty

French: dix, onze, douze, treize, quatorze, quinze, seize, dix-sept, dix-huit, dix-neuf, vingt

German: zehn, elf, zwölf, dreizehn, vierzehn, fünfzehn, sechzehn, siebzehn, achtzehn, neunzehn, zwanzig

Spanish: diez, once, doce, trece, catorce, quince, dieciséis, diecisiete, dieciocho, diecinueve, veinte

Polish: dziesięć, jedenaście, dwanaście, trzynaście, czternaście, piętnaście, szesnaście, siedemnaście, osiemnaście, dziewiętnaście, dwadzieścia (the numbers 11-19 all formulate the same, but it isn't a derivative of 10 as far as I can tell)

Russian: Десять, Одиннадцать, Двенадцать, Тринадцать, Четырнадцать, Пятнадцать, Шестнадцать, Семнадцать, Восемнадцать, Девятнадцать, Двадцать (text copy-pasted from the first appropriate website because I can't convince my keyboard to do cyrillic. Again, 11-19 all formulate the same, but it isn't a derivative of 10)

Portugese: dez, onze, doze, treze, catorze, quinze, dezasseis, dezassete, dezoito, dezanove, vinte (thank you Poodle)

Afrikaans: tien, elf, twaalf, dertien, veertien, vyftien, sestien, sewentien, agtien, neëntien, twintig(thank you Poodle)

Italian: Dieci, Undici, Dodici, Tredici, Quattordici, Quindici, Sedici, Diciassette, Diciotto, Diciannove, Venti (via Google translate)

Dutch: Tien, Elf, Twaalf, Dertien, Veertien, Vijftien, Zestien, Zeventien, Achttien, Negentien, Twintig (via Google translate)

Greek: δεκα, εντεκα, δωδεκα, δεκατρεις, δεκατεσσερα, δεκαπεντε, δεκαεξι, δεκαεπτα, δεκαοκτω, δεκαεννεα, εικοσι (via Google translate - I can't actually read Greek so I'm just identifying patterns visually)

If you have access to any other languages, please post in the comments! Google Translate also does Arabic, Japanese, Chinese, and Korean, but I can't read those well enough to draw any conclusions - if you can, your contributions would be most welcome. (I know I should be using Google Translate and normally I don't but this is one of the most straightforward translations possible with no negative consequences of getting it wrong.)

Anyway, given that the change in number formulation can occur anywhere from 11 to 17 depending on the language, I'm wondering if this affects how various cultures perceive adolescence. Anyone in the market for a thesis project?

Etiquette puzzle

I'm in a conversation with two other people, A and B. A asks B a question. A and B have every reason to believe that B is the most qualified person to answer the question. However, I know at least as much as B, if not more, and have every reason to believe that I can explain it better than B.* Should I chime in, "Oh, I've translated about that! Here's how it works!"? Should I wait for an opening and then put in my two cents, if I have anything to add on top of what B says? Should I passive-aggressively ask B questions to lead them to providing the information that A needs? Or should I just shut up and let B be the expert?

*Really, this isn't ego. Something about how I learn things when translating about them seems to make me far better able to explain them to outsiders than insiders can. In other cases, I've experienced something firsthand and studied it academically, when B has done only one or the other.

Wednesday, December 26, 2007

Sunday, December 23, 2007

So what does a petition have to do to get into the news?

I've seen several mentions in the news of the fact that a facebook group opposing proposed changes to Canada's copyright law got something like 30,000 members in only a few days.

But the avaaz.org "stop being a dickhead about climate change" (traduction libre) petition got over 100,000 signatures in three or four days, and I haven't seen that in the news anywhere.

Saturday, December 22, 2007

Sesame Street Old School!

Recently I've been watching Sesame Street Old School, old Sesame Street from the early 70s, which apparently "Is intended for grown-ups and may not suit the needs of today's pre-schooler."

So obviously I had to watch it to see what was apparently so wrong with it!

I can see a few things that wouldn't fly today. Gordon (who's a teacher - I'd forgotten that) takes it upon himself to walk a little girl who's new to the neighbourhood home from school and introduce her to everyone. Susan invites this little girl she's just met (and many other children over the course of the show) to come over for milk and cookies. And speaking of milk, they seemed really enthusiastic about milk in the first episode. There was like milk propoganda! (Seriously, five minutes on milk, on Sesame Street?) And at one point Luis decides to go out for a coffee break and leaves a small child at the Fix-It Shop with instructions to answer the phone and tell whoever calls that he'll be back in five minutes. Then he says "And if they don't speak English..." and gives her instructions on what to say in Spanish - and I think she didn't even speak Spanish!

It was fun to see early incarnations of the muppets we all know and love. Oscar the Grouch was ORANGE! Big Bird was kind of dopey and stupid at first, then he grew some more feathers on the top of his head and became more childlike than dopey. In Mr. Snuffleupagus's first appearance, his eyes were green - like even the whites of his eyes were green! Cookie Monster was this big dark hairy lurking beast who snuck up and wordlessly devoured Kermit the Frog's W. Oh, and everyone with whom I've argued about the lyrics of the "One of these things is not like the others" song: they don't sing it the same way every time! So we're all right!

But what was even more fun is noticing as an adult things that I took as given as a child. The blue man throws a hissy fit because his alphabet soup doesn't contain all the letters of the alphabet! The grown-ups all drop everything for a game of Follow The Leader. (Oh, and speaking of the grown-ups, they're all wearing or not wearing their own wedding rings - the rings aren't part of the costume! So Bob has a wedding ring, but Gordon and Susan (who are married to each other) don't.) Gordon (who had a fro and sideburns!) and some kids are shooting hoops, and Gordon says "Let's get a game together, but first we need to count how many people we have." So he stops and they all count everyone, then they go back to just shooting hoops. In a scene about how everyone makes mistakes, Big Bird accidentally steps on his J, and Gordon says "Oh, that's okay, don't worry about it, I accidentally step on my J all the time." When I was little, I took this as absolutely normal, and thought it was very strange that I never saw a random W just sitting there on a little brick wall IRL. When I was just starting to learn to read, my parents either made or bought some little letters made of wood so then I had letters like on Sesame Street. I don't know if this is because at some point I expressed a wish for Sesame Street letters, or if they thought of it separately.

Actually, now that I think about it, one of the educational benefits of Sesame Street is that it normalized reading and counting and talking about letters and shapes and colours. Everyone on Sesame Street from children to muppets to grown-ups sometimes just stops everything and counts to 20, or thinks of things that start with B. This would actually be very useful for children because it models these skills on a level they can understand! Because I don't think small children would associate skimming the newspaper or paying for groceries with knowing your letters and numbers. When I was little, I used to think that boys couldn't do math, because I could clearly do math (and was better at it than most of the boys - and the girls - in my class) and my mother was a math teacher so she did math, but I never actually saw my father doing math. But of course he did - my father was a programmer and had investments and did home improvement projects that involved rulers and protractors and calculators and generally functioned in adult life, but I didn't think of any of this as math. Math was textbooks and worksheets and memorizing your times tables, and I just couldn't yet associate it with balancing your chequebook or calculating how much drywall you needed for the basement. So if other children's minds work similarly, Sesame Street could be really helpful just by normalizing the idea of reciting the alphabet or counting by twos.

Solstice

Good morning! I hope everyone did their part for world peace.

Just a little something for the slow waning of the darkness:




Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Calling all triple threats

If you can sing, tap-dance, and play the trumpet, here's your audition piece:

Monday, December 17, 2007

Language commercial idea, free for the taking

There are commercials trying to convince people to learn another language. I'm not entirely sure why, but there are. (Examples: 1, 2, 3 (contains dirty language - don't play at work or within earshot of your parents or children).

I have an idea for another one.

Two people are in a cafe having what sounds like an intriguing personal conversation, except they're code-switching. The first language is the first language of the viewership, the second language is a language that the viewership is highly unlikely to understand. The conversation goes something like this:

A: So then he [other language]
B: With just his tongue????
A: Yes! And on top of that, he has the biggest [other language]!
B: Wow, so how did you deal with that? I mean your [other language] is kind of, you know...
A: Yeah, I know, [other language]. But it turns out he had been through this before, so he told me to just [other language].
B: You know, I never thought of that position before, but now that I picture it, it just might work!

So that's what the viewer hears. Now what they could do is if buzz picks up about this commercial but a translation doesn't become readily googleable, they could start running it with subtitles. Then the viewers will learn that the conversation is really something like this:

A: So then he kept accidentally pushing the instruments right out of my hand!
B: With just his tongue????
A: Yes! And on top of that, he has the biggest gag reflex I've seen in my 20 years as a dental hygiensit!
B: Wow, so how did you deal with that? I mean your hands are kind of, you know...
A: Yeah, I know, big, mannish, indelicate. But it turns out he had been through this before, so he told me to just recline the chair all the way back and stand right behind his head instead of to the side.
B: You know, I never thought of that position before, but now that I picture it, it just might work!

The overall effect should be funnier though, and the code-switching should be natural. But I'm too lazy to do this, so I'm giving the idea away.

The saddest thing I've ever seen

From this week's PostSecret.

My first thought is that I want to find whoever wrote that secret and give them a big messy snog - the kind where things get a bit more heated than you originally intended and you start veering towards the horizontal and your hands end up in unexpected places and the devil on your shoulder starts trying to convince you that under the circumstances it isn't really strictly necessary to slow down and have that conversation before you go further. (And all this despite the fact that even the slightest non-platonic kiss would violate two of the key principles of my personal ethics.)

My second thought is that I hope whoever wrote that secret gets just that kind of snog real soon, but from someone who doesn't know they wrote that secret, who never even read that secret, and maybe who doesn't even know they were in Iraq.

Sunday, December 16, 2007

Do you want someone to rip your mask off?

This train of thought started with this Spacing post but wandered a bit and is now only tangental.

People in those comments talked about shaking people out of their routine and snapping them out of their zombie state. You hear about this a lot when people are talking about public space issues. It's also generally seen as something that's wrong with urban societies - for example, when I was taking courses at Mac, one classmate said she hated taking to GO to Toronto because everyone was wearing their masks.

This is always talked about as a problem to be solved in the third person. We have to snap them out of their zombie state, we have to get them to take their masks off. But you never hear it talked about in the first person. You never hear anyone saying "Oh, I just want someone to just pull me out of my daily routine and rip my mask right off!"

Is it really a problem for the people wearing the masks? When you, personally, have your mask on, are you wishing that someone would walk up and forceably rip it off?

This may just be me because I have a far higher tolerance for social disengagement than most people, but really, I'm fine. Sometimes I need my mask to protect myself (empirical evidence has demonstrated that my smiles are both beautiful enough to be remarked upon and easily misconstrued by the people I least want to misconstrue my intentions), but even when I'm perfectly safe, really I'm fine. I usually have my ipod, full of music and comedy, I usually have a good book with me, I'm mentally de-stressing and intellectually engaged. It is, quite simply, not a problem that needs solving. Are there people out there for whom it is?

Saturday, December 15, 2007

Strange word choice

Toronto Hydro has also put staff on alert, to ensure they can work extra time to restore power if necessary. “It’s good that our customers get ready as well,” Thelma Hatzis of Toronto Hydro said. She said families should have flashlights with fresh batteries on hand and know that cordless phones won’t work if the electricity is down. They should also check in with elderly family members.


So singles and groups of roommates don't need flashlights?

(I know, I know, it's so not the point. It just really jumped out at me that someone landed on a word that doesn't encompass "everyone" and no one has edited it.)

Voice casting

In the song A Heart Full Of Love from Les Miz, Marius and Cosette fall in love and sing at each other, then Eponine turns up and laments that Marius never loved her.

The first thought that popped into my head when this came up on my ipod was "Of course, he didn't, you're the alto."

This made me decide that when I write my musical, the alto and the tenor will end up together. (The soprano will end up with the comic relief.) And when the big final love ballad is sung, I'll build the harmonies in contrary motion, so sometimes the alto ends up on top. Which just goes to show that disregarding traditional gender roles can spice up romance.

Thursday, December 13, 2007

More information please

Apparently sharing crack pipes can spread Hepatitis C.

So for those of us who aren't wise in the ways of crack pipes, does that mean sharing drinking glasses or cigarettes or kissing can also spread Hep C? Or is there some special characteristic of crack pipes? (I know that Hep C rates may be higher among drug users, but it's still quite possible that someone who doesn't know about crack pipes may find themselves sharing a drink or a kiss with a drug user.)

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Let's watch where we're pointing

Like many people, I've been thinking a lot about poor Aqsa Parvez.

A lot of commentators have been framing this as an immigration issue or a Muslim issue, but I don't think it is.

Aqsa Parvez, 16, who died Monday night after being attacked in her Mississauga home, wanted to hang out with friends instead of obeying her 5 p.m. curfew. She wanted to listen to rap, hip hop and R & B, which her parents didn't permit.

Vivacious and outgoing, Parvez wanted to dress like a Western woman in tight-fitting clothes and show off her long, dark hair by removing her hijab.

She wanted to be "free" and independent of her family's devout Muslim beliefs.


Think about your own adolescence. Did you ever want to hang out with friends instead of being home when your parents wanted you to? Did you ever want to listen to music they didn't want you to? Did you ever want to dress in a way they didn't want you to? Did you ever want to throw off the trappings of their values and be your own person?

This same drama is playing out in millions of households all around the world. There are, of course, variations. Perhaps instead of a hijab, the clothing in contention is hemlines or cleavage or heels. Perhaps instead of Muslim beliefs, it's Catholicism or Mormonism or Orthodox Judaism. But it is happening. And in some of these families, they do beat up their kids for not conforming. Hopefully in most they don't, but in some they do. I don't have statistics on hand to back this up, but I'd bet real money that within the next year, some other kid somewhere in the world will be killed by their parents in a similar dispute, and they won't be Muslim or a new immigrant.

So let's think carefully before labelling as an immigration issue or a Muslim issue. The real problem (if all the allegations are true - insert the word allegedly wherever legally necessary) is that the father thought threats and violence and controlfreakism were appropriate responses to a disagreement over fashion and pop culture.

A petition

Canadians: Please read this and sign if you're interested.

(Aside: Have you ever felt tempted to email a politician saying nothing but "Dude, WTF?")

Sunday, December 09, 2007

Ping Python people

PythOnline seems to be undergoing another resurrection! (Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing remains to be seen)