Saturday, December 06, 2008

Dear Margo misfires

This one really surprised me because Margo is usually very good.

Sixteen is a tough age for kids and their parents. It's good that you understand the value of communication, but unfortunately you can't achieve it. There's an old saying that the older you get, the smarter your parents become. I hope this is so in your case. In the meantime, to calm things down, you might try to lose a little weight, clean up your room and bring that D up to a C. As for retreating to your room for hours, granted, that is not screaming, but it is passive aggressive. I am guessing if you make an effort your parents will seem much more reasonable to you.


1. While losing weight is generally a good thing for most people, it is completely inappropriate to advise someone to change their body to smooth over interpersonal relationships with someone else. Do you really want to be setting that precedent and normalizing that concept with a 16 year old girl?

2. Retreating to one's room isn't passive agressive, because passive aggressive implies she's doing it to evoke a certain response from her parents. She isn't. She's doing it for her own benefit, so she doesn't have to deal with them. Think about when you seek privacy in your own life. You aren't seeking privacy as a dis to the other people. You aren't going "I'll show them, I'll deprive them of my company!" It's for your own purposes, because you personally need to either be alone, or be away from certain people, or be alone with a certain someone.

Things They Should Invent: online circadian rhythm tracker

There are a number of websites that you can use to track your menstrual cycle. You put in the dates of your periods and over a number of months it starts predicting your menstruation and ovulation dates. It's useful for people who have irregular cycles or are trying to do fertility awareness.

I want something like that for my circadian rhythms. My energy levels wax and wane throughout the day, and if I could predict when it's going to happen I could leverage this so I don't find myself having to do more draining activities at low-energy times. Mindfully doing hour-by-hour observations over a number of days isn't very practical, because I have to fit in real life too. What I'd like to be able to do is whenever I notice that I'm feeling up or down, I enter the time that this happened, and the computer uses all this information to tell me when I can expect to be up or down in the future. Then I can schedule more draining things for up times and keep down times more low-key

Friday, December 05, 2008

Is it always possible to give exceptional service?

I was reading some people talking about tipping, and as usual there were one or two loudmouths who said they think they should only have to tip if the service is exceptional.

I know why that's a problem under our current wage model, and that's a boring discussion anyway so that isn't what I want to talk about here.

What I'm wondering is whether most transactions even have the opportunity for exceptional service to happen. As I think about the business transactions I go through every day, most of the time the opportunity isn't there. If the transaction is simple and nothing goes wrong, there isn't really room for much more than competent service.

I get in a cab and the driver takes me where I'm going. Done. No room for it to be exceptional. If I'm running late and the 401 is closed and he still gets me to the airport in time to make my flight that's exceptional service, but if I have plenty of time and there's nothing wrong there's no room to make it exceptional.

I order my meal, the waiter brings it, I eat it. No room to be exceptional. If I have a lot of questions about the menu or the order is complex or the kitchen is slow so the waiter brings me a free drink or something then the service can get exceptional, but if everything is smooth or unremarkable the opportunity isn't there.

I've recently been considering tipping my supers because they saved my ass in a couple of minor emergencies. But if the minor emergencies hadn't occurred, the opportunity wouldn't have been there for them to provide me with exceptional service.

Even if you don't agree that you should tip everyone all the time, it seems unfair that workers should get less money just because the world as a whole is running smoothly.

Things They Should Invent: mirrored cameras that force people to pose flatteringly

You know how you can look in a mirror, make eye contact with your reflection,* and quickly and easily arrange your face and body into a flattering pose like Paris Hilton does automatically whenever someone points a camera at her? And you know how you can never do that when being photographed IRL if you're not Paris Hilton?

Solution: a camera with a mirror on it. The person being photographed poses themselves automatically, and the camera lens is somehow arranged so that the picture taken by the camera looks exactly like what the person being photographed sees in the mirror.

Quick and easy real-world alternative: digital camera with an LCD screen that faces out. You'd probably need one that faces the photographer too, and the LCD screen delay might be problematic for the person being photographed.

*Someone once told me that it's humanly impossible NOT to make eye contact with your own reflection. I don't have verification of that, but I think it's a cool factoid if it's true.

"Tout le malheur des hommes vient d'une seule chose, qui est de ne pas savoir demeurer en repos dans une chambre." - Blaise Pascal

All of man's troubles stem from his inability to sit quietly in a room. I've seen it quoted differently and attributed to different people, but I think the one in the title is the original.

I can totally sit quietly in a room. I can sit there and just think, it's intellectually satisfying. Add internet access so I can google and I'm perfectly content for hours and hours and hours. It's a hardcore introvert thing.

The problem is this can easily hinder real life. I have stuff that has to get done. I have to be places by a certain time. But I sit down and start thinking and then google something and the next thing I know two hours have passed. I'm content, I'm satisfied, I'm at peace, I've had all kinds of interesting ideas, but real life isn't getting done. I can convince myself to build up momentum and go out and get a shitload of stuff done and I do feel some satisfaction from checking it all off my list, but it doesn't give me the hap hits (as Marti Olsen Laney writes about) of sitting quietly in my apartment.

How does one go about becoming a wealthy, eccentric, reclusive genius with a discreet but loyal butler to take care of all their petty day-to-day needs?

Acapellas

Move Along:



Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles:



I'm Too Sexy:



Bohemian Rhapsody:



Fat-Bottomed Girls:

Thursday, December 04, 2008

Separatist vs. souverainiste: an analysis

I've been trying to wrap my brain around the meaningfulness of separatist vs. souverainiste. My problem is that I was trying to think this through from a position of hegemony. I was assuming that my English was standard, and I was thinking in terms of "What was their reasoning in referring to the separatists as sovereigntists?"

I've been thinking and doing some research, and I've discovered the problem is that the meaning of "separatist" and "sovereigntist" in my English is skewed, and the real question to be asking is "What was their reasoning in referring to the people in question as separatists?"

Forget everything you know about Quebec for a second. In the world at large and in the English language in general, "separatist" is negative and "sovereigntist" is positive.

Separatists want to break away from something to which they belong, to destroy an existing union, The connotations are usually a bit extremist and a bit irrational (think Basque separatists, white separatists, black separatists, Tamil separatists, etc. etc.)

"Sovereignty," on the other hand, is a good thing. One's sovereignty over one's own body. Canada's sovereignty over its northern waters. Sovereigntists want to preserve their existing rights and freedoms.

They are two separate concepts. They are separate concepts in most parts of the English-speaking world, and they are separate concepts in cognate languages, including French.

(Now you can remember everything you know about Quebec again.)

However, we Anglo-Canadians are so used to hearing the word sovereignty used to describe Quebec separation (which, rightfully or wrongfully, we do perceive as a threat) that we tend to forget its positive connotations and immediately equate it with this perceived threat. It's like the words "life" and "choice" when discussing abortion. If abortion is the topic of discussion and one of those words comes up, it is not going to be taken neutrally.

So because we equate this positive word "sovereignty" with Quebec separation, we don't always distinguish between "separatist" and "sovereigntist". Certainly both words can be used very deliberately and advisedly in our English, but they can also be used mindlessly and interchangeably. Again, think about about the terms "pro-life" and "anti-abortion". Sometimes (depending on speaker, audience, situation, context) the choice of one or the other is meaningful and politicized. But sometimes it's just the word the speaker happens to land on.

Analogy: "sovereigntist" is like "potato chips". "Separatist" is like "junk food." They can be used to describe the same concept and they can both be used positively, negatively or neutrally depending on speaker/audience/situation/context, but the second one is generally more negative.

So what does this mean for Stephen Harper's speeches? I can't tell you. Why? Because I don't know how mindfully he chose the word "separatists" instead of "sovereigntists" in English. He (or his speechwriters) might have just grabbed the first word that came to mind. They might have chosen it to demonize the Bloc as much as possible. They might have chosen it because the people in question tend to refer to themselves as souverainistes and they don't want their base to view them as sympathetic. I have no way of knowing.

So how did the French end up being souverainistes? At some point someone changed it. Was this cunning and manipulative? There is, of course, room for it to have been, but it was not necessarily. It is a perfectly normal part of the French translator's job to make minor stylistic tweaks, and to be the one to realize "That line may play in Canmore, but not in Baie-Comeau" and edit it to something that will get the desired reaction from the Francophone audience. That's why you want mother-tongue translators. From a translational perspective, changing separatists to souverainistes is morally equivalent to altering a line that is a political catchphrase in the target language but politically neutral in the source language, or changing an abbreviation so it isn't a dirty word in the target language. Whenever it's in question, you always err on the side of not making people look like dickheads.

Was the PM aware of the different connotations? I have no way of knowing. I know that any sensible person does review their translated speeches before delivering them. I know that souverainiste is harder for an Anglophone to pronounce than séparatiste (sometimes this is a factor in word choices for speeches, sometimes not - I have no idea if it is for Mr. Harper). I know that Mr. Harper is coming from the same English as I am, so he may well not immediately recognize that separatist and souverainiste are in fact different concepts (I never thought about it before this speech happened).

So the take-away:

sovereigntist = potato chips
separatist = junk food

There is room for the difference in word choices to be calculating and manipulative, and there is room for it to be perfectly innocent. It all depends not on why they decided to refer to the junk food as potato chips, but on how mindful they were in choosing to call it junk food in the first place.

And regardless of any motives or lack thereof in word choice, the impact of the use of separatist and souverainiste is negligible when compared with the impact of all Mr. Harper's other comments on the Bloc's alignment with the coalition.

Wednesday, December 03, 2008

Hilarity!

Make sure you watch the second half

Things They Should Invent: alternate closed captions of the original material, not the interpretation

Right now Gilles Duceppe is speaking on TV in French and being simultaneously interpreted into English (because I'm on the English CBC and I don't know offhand where this is on TV in French).

Simultaneous interpretation is necessarily awkward, and I don't blame the interpreter for this. I'm certainly not good enough to do it. However, it would be easier for me to follow along in French.

My TV has the options for two sets of closed captions: C1 and C2. C1 is regular subtitles, C2 doesn't do anything.

I want C2 to give me the French in cases like this.

To watch for in media spin

I hope media coverage of these speeches points out that Mr. Dion's comments were prepared and pre-recorded without his having heard Mr. Harper's speech, presumably due to television network constraints.

Neither of these gentlemen is especially good at talking to a camera. They're better when talking to actual people.

On terminology

Because I know some people are going to ask me...

According to Termium (the official Government of Canada terminology database, created by professional terminologists), separatist and sovereigntist have separate and non-overlapping. This means the English separatist and the French souverainiste are, strictly speaking, different concepts. However, there is some room for stylistics in translation, so I'm not saying it's inappopriate or incorrect to translate separatist as souverainiste.

I'm only commenting on this because the people on TV seem to think it's meaningful. I have no idea whether or not it's meaningful or, if it is, what it might mean. The Francophone media will most likely be able to comment on this.

Edit: For the googlers, more here.

For reference

The economic statement is here.

Drinking game for the PM's speech tonight

Sip for the following words and any derivatives thereof: separatism, socialism, sponsorship, democracy, Canada

Take two standard drinks if he gets through the whole speech without talking up or improving upon or retracting the economic statement.

Finish the bottle if he resigns.

Even if there's no coalition, you still need the confidence of the House

The more I think about it, the stranger it is that the government is spending so much energy on dissing the idea of an Opposition coalition. Even if for some reason the coalition doesn't happen, it still remains that the economic statement, which is a confidence issue, doesn't have the confidence of the House.

Why aren't they working on selling the economic statement to us, trying to convince us to tell our MPs to let it pass? Or why aren't they working on a new economic statement that is more to everyone's liking? Even if they do convince everyone that the coalition is bad, Parliament isn't going anywhere until this thing or its replacement passes.

Tuesday, December 02, 2008

Things They Should Invent: smartest person in the room detector

Wouldn't it be awesome if somehow everyone always knew which person in the conversation is most knowledgeable about the topic of conversation?

(Inspired by an earlier attempt at a conversation with someone who's supposed to be smarter than me but in fact wasn't even aware that there WAS an economic statement.)

I feel sorry for Michaëlle Jean

Poor Michaëlle Jean. She's in a no-win situation. There are so few existing precedents they are pratically one-offs if they apply at all to this situation, and no matter what she does some very loud people will view it as partisan and complain that it's inappropriate for an appointee (and a representative of the monarch yet!) to have that kind of power. But she's duty-bound, she has no choice.

Because there's no one clear answer and so little precedent, you'd really have to be the universally-acknowledged single greatest constitutional expert in Canada to have wide credibility here, and Madam Jean is not. Nothing against her, she's an excellent figurehead and knows more about the constitution than I do (and probably does have the very best constitutional experts as her advisors) but the optics are never going to work with someone who isn't an acknowledged expert.

I wonder if Madam Jean has had a chance to talk to the Queen lately? Do Governors General get to talk to the Queen? Her Majesty might have some insight into this situation. I don't know if the UK has ever been in a situation where the Crown has had to decide whether to prorogue Parliament or call an election or let a minority coalition govern, but since the Queen has been head of state since before Madam Jean was even born, she might have given this a bit of thought.

Monday, December 01, 2008

Because every historic political event needs a drinking game

In ascending order of buzz:

1. Drink every time you hear the words King, Byng, Meighan, Miller, Peterson, Rae
2. Add the words: Harper, Dion, Layton, Duceppe
3. Add the words: Chrétien, Broadbent, Ignatieff, Leblanc, Jean
4. Add the words: socialist, democratic, undemocratic, separatist, constitutional crisis, prorogue, economy, stimulus
5. Drink every time you hear the word coalition

Pour celles et ceux de parmi vous qui peuvent lire le français

Chantal Hébert is blogging at L'actualité. She's totally on top of things and very much worth adding to your feed reader for the duration.

Open Letter to the Coalition

Dear Coalition:

You know that history-making resurgence of idealism and hope our neighbours got going on? You can make something similar happen up here. You're already talking a good game, all you gotta do now is walk the talk for a little while. You don't have to walk the talk forever, you might not even have to walk the talk for the timelines you set out today (although it would help if you did.) All you have to do is walk the talk for two consecutive quarters of economic growth. De-recessionize us, play at being grownups for a while, give everyone a chance to look good. Then, if you still miss the old ways, once everyone has had a chance to make any leadership changes they need to, you can allow an election to be triggered. I don't think we'll mind so much.

That's all you have to create hope and make history. It's really not that hard. You can do it!