How are you supposed to know what is and is not obvious to people who are smarter than you?

While googling for phraseology, I landed on an article about the issues doctors have with treating teenage patients.

Then comes recognizing that the early teen years are when kids move from concrete thinking to more abstract thought – they begin to connect the dots, Biro explains. They may assume the doctor connected the dots the same way, meaning a girl who complains of stomach pain may not volunteer that she fears pregnancy.

"It's not that they're withholding information. They figure they've just told you everything you need to know because the rest of it you should be able to figure out," Biro says. "I prove to them I am indeed about as smart as mud and I have to ask them more probing questions."

They make this sound like a flaw in people skills that is the result of adolescent immaturity. The thing is, I've always had this problem my whole life, and still do. When something is completely obvious to me, it doesn't occur to me that it might not be completely obvious to someone who's supposed to be smarter than me. The patient with the stomach pain doesn't mention that she fears pregnancy because it's completely obvious to her that that's what she's worried about - just like if I had missed a period and was experiencing nausea, I might not think to explicitly mention to the doctor that I'm worried about pregnancy because it's completely obvious to me that that's where the symptoms are pointing.

If I know more about the issue at hand than my interlocutor, I can manage the interaction just fine. For example, as a result of years of working to make documents that were originally written in French sound like they were written in English, I can tell if a person speaking is thinking in French or English, regardless of which of those languages they're speaking. If my interlocutor is another translator, I won't even point this out because it's so obvious. If my interlocutor is unilingual, I'll tell them outright from my position as the authority on the subject, maybe pointing out the specific word choices that give it away. If my interlocutor is a non-translator langling, I'll probe a bit to see what is and isn't obvious to them and adapt accordingly.

However, when I know less than my interlocutor, I'm unable to assess and adapt to their knowledge. For example, my gaydar doesn't ping nearly as often as it should. It pinged for Scott Thompson and Stephen Fry, but not Graham Chapman or Rick Mercer. So if it's obvious to me that someone is gay, it would never occur to me to tell my interlocutor that that person is gay any more than it would occur to me to mention that they have brown hair, because when it's obvious to me it's usually obvious to everyone else. If it isn't obvious to my interlocutor, I have no way of knowing that because empirical evidence suggests that when it's obvious to me it's obvious to anyone with better people-reading skills than me (which is like 90% of the population).

So how am I, from my position as the more ignorant person in the conversation, supposed to know that what I think are obvious pregnancy symptoms don't look that way to a doctor? How am I supposed to know that the most obvious of gayness isn't evident to someone who is much better at reading people than I am? When it's glaringly obvious to me that the property tax model is injust or it's morally wrong to buy pets from pet stores when there are pets in shelters or eliminating plastic shopping bags is not going to affect the number of plastic bags that we throw in the landfill, how am I supposed to know that it isn't glaringly obvious to my much-smarter interlocutor? How do you develop this skill?

Dana Fuchs has miracle hair

Check this out:



She has long wild sexy awesome hair, probably three times as much as I do, with no clips or anything in it. She's on stage, under lights, singing, tossing her head around, arguing with her boyfriend, and only ONCE does a piece of hair fall in front of her eyes. I look down at my keyboard and a piece of hair falls in front of my eyes.

How to create a Canadian political legacy in a single session of Parliament

Today I discovered that there is an Amnesty International report on Canada. That surprised me, I wasn't expecting it.

However, upon reading it, I noticed that it would be relatively simple to address these issues. Most of them could be legislated away. The Aboriginal issues are more complex and would require some serious work, but the rest could be addressed by passing suitable legislation, signing onto UN conventions, and making the policy changes Amnesty International was kind enough to outline right in their report.

A savvy prime minister could do all this in a single session of Parliament. If they're getting resistance to the necessary legislation, all they'd have to do is publicly announce that their goal is clear our Amnesty International rap sheet and make us the world leader in human rights. That will get enough popular support to pass anything and guarantee a legacy that will go down in the history books for centuries.

There are people/media who like to gloat because Canada is the only G7 country that hasn't had any bank failures. Imagine the bragging rights if we were also the only G7 country with a clean Amnesty International report!

Things I Don't Understand

1. People who automatically assume other people's motives are different from what their own would be in the same situation. Fake but representative example:

"OMG, that bitch has her office door closed! She's totally snubbing me!"
"Does this mean you're snubbing us when you close your door?"
"No, of course not, I just close my door when I need to make private phone calls. But she's totally snubbing me!"

I don't understand how people can do that. And I'm not saying this in a lamenting-humanity's-lack-of-empathy way, I'm saying that my brain simply does not do that and I totally don't grok how people can. My brain always defaults to assuming others' motives are the same as my own, and it's actual work to move away from that and land on something else. But some people seem to do that rather often. I'd love to dissect their brains.

2. People who are surprised that Kids Today are familiar with music that isn't from their era. Nearly all the music we consume is recorded! Of course people are familiar with things that aren't of this very moment. I am certain that you personally, anyone at all who is reading this, have at least passing familiarity with some music by Beethoven, Louis Armstrong, The Rolling Stones, and Beyonce, even though most of those are probably not of your era. And I'm sure you don't think it's any big deal at all. It's just walking around and living in the world. But a surprising number of times I've encountered adults who are surprised and impressed when a teenager has a passing familiarith with The Beatles.

Why every organization should hire language geeks

Someone like me could have saved the Irish police a lot of trouble.

Dear CBC, you're embarassing us

Dear CBC:

Yes, it is news that Barack Obama is visiting Ottawa. However, devoting literally 50% of your top-of-the-hour world news spot to that fact is kind of excessively fangirl. Be cool and do your job instead of going all asquee.

Sincerely,

Someone who learned that lesson in high school

Why are there railings in elevators?

An elevator I was in made a weird jolt, so I grabbed the railing. Then I laughed at myself because holding the railing is not going to help at all if the elevator goes plummeting.

So what are the railings there for anyway?

Blast from the past

Things They Should Invent: relative karmameter

I recently came up with the idea of a karmameter that tallies up all your virtues and vices and tells you how well you're doing in general. The idea behind this is that constantly trying to improve in every aspect of life is untenable, so I want to know when I'm doing okay in order to concentrate my stress and worrying in the areas where it is needed most.

There was an article in the Star last week about how they can get people to improve their environmental behaviour by telling them how they're doing in comparison to others.

This would totally work for the karmameter, and it would be way easier to make than an absolute karmameter. It would totally achieve the intended results too. For example, I know from statistics that my environmental footprint is significantly lower than the average person's, so I don't stress too much about environmental stuff. If we karmametered every aspect of life, I could then find areas where I'm not doing nearly as well as the average person and work on those areas without stressing about things that I don't need to stress about.

Open Letter to all journalists writing about pay equity

Apparently there are parts of the recent federal budget that would be detrimental to pay equity for federal employees.

Problem: we don't know how pay equity for federal employees currently works.

I know one thing that a lot of commenters don't seem to know: it isn't individual, it's by profession. So it isn't that Jane catches a glimpse of John's paystub and sees that he's earning more than her even though they both went through the same university program and graduated at the same time and were hired at the same time. It's that female-dominated professions are not being paid the same as male-dominated professions who do work of equal value and difficulty that requires equal expertise. Apparently (this was told to me several years ago by someone who is in a position to know, so any inaccuracies are the fault of my misremembering or misunderstanding) what they do is they reduce the difficulty and skill and education and stress required to do every job in the federal public service down to a mathematical formula to quantify the value of the work, and then compare the female-dominated jobs with male-dominated jobs of equal value. If the female-dominated profession isn't being paid the same as the male-dominated profession, they increase the pay for everyone in the public service (male and female) that's doing that profession.

However, I don't understand what the current changes would do, because I don't know what's going on currently. I see media saying that the proposed changes would be detrimental, but I don't know why they're detrimental because I don't know what the current system is.

I don't like to just blindly take people's word for things, I want to understand them properly. If you give me all the information I'll probably be on your side, but if you don't give me all the information I can't form a proper opinion, and therefore am going to take no action and express no opinion because I'm insufficiently informed. Help me out here, okay?

Sometimes I hate my inner child

When I got to the elevators, there was a gaggle of teenage girls waiting. They were quite obviously The Cool Girls in the hierarchy of their little adolescent world.

I'm twice their age. I was on my way home to my very own apartment in a very nice building in a very nice neighbourhood. I had just spent my day doing difficult and fascinating work that would make you go "OMG that is SO COOL!" if I told you what it was. I am by objective standards hotter and better dressed than they are. The staff at that mall store that they're complaining watches them like they're going to steal something are actively polite to me, helping me find sizes and figure out which necklace works best, but also happily leaving me alone if I'm just browsing. And I could go into Holt Renfrew or a real estate agent or a car dealership and get treated with equal consideration, at least to my face.

But, because they're The Cool Girls and I've never been, some instinct from half a lifetime ago kicked in, and I lowered my eyes and tried to become invisible.

I hate it when that happens.

Things They Should Invent: redistributive cosmetics

I use powder to make my forehead less shiny and gloss to make my lips more shiny. I use concealer to make the skin under my eyes lighter and shadow to make the skin over my eyes darker. I spend a lot of money and effort on growing more hair on my head and less hair elsewhere on my body.

There must be a better way! Can't they invent something to just relocate stuff from one area to another?

Gorgeous sled dogs!

Clicky! (No, I don't know why the Toronto Star randomly has pictures of sled dogs.)

We need to refine our use of the word "rights"

You do not have the right to have a cup of coffee in the morning.

"WTF?" you're thinking, "I totally do."

No, you don't.

You're totally allowed. It's perfectly legal. It's your own coffee purchased with your own hard-earned money. No one is going to stop you. Most people will even offer you coffee if you haven't had any yet.

But it isn't a right. It isn't codified in the Charter or anywhere else.

This is a problem with our current usage. We tend to use the word "rights" to refer to stuff that you're allowed to do, not your actual codified legal rights. Even though we understand intellectually the meaning of capital R Rights, if someone tells us we don't have the right to something, we hear that we aren't allowed to do it.

I don't know if it's because of this or just related, but there's a lot of other sloppy usage. I've heard people say "Voting is a privilege, not a right!" Except it's totally a right. You sometimes hear people complain that people are so worried about their rights but not thinking about their responsibilities, as though they're opposites or prerequisites or something.

Let's watch our usage. It's an important word for an important concept. It won't help to weaken it.

This made my day

Via Spacing

25 random facts about me

1. On my right hand, my ring finger is longer than my index finger. On my left hand, my index finger is longer than my ring finger.

2. For the vast majority of my life, I've felt like everyone except me knows the rules of how the world works.

3. Both my parents are afraid of bugs like I am (although they have a remarkable ability to charge to the rescue when their child is having a panic attack). However, they decided, as many parents do, to make a specific effort to prevent me from developing the same fear by hiding their fear and teaching me to respect and appreciate creepy crawlies. So one day when I was a toddler, a rather large spider started making a home outside the sliding glass doors that led to our back deck. Rather than getting rid of it, they had me look at it from the other side of the glass and talked to me about how interesting it was and how it's good and helpful because it will catch and eat bad bugs. I watched it with some interest over what seemed like a rather long period of time (although it might have been just a couple of days). Then one day, I don't remember if it was my idea or my father's, we decided to go out on the back deck to see its web from the other side. The web was taller than me. And three dimensional. I ran away screaming and my phobias started that day.

4. When I was a small child, the dresser in my bedroom turned into a monster at night. Oh sure, it just sat there very very still, but I KNEW it was going to get me. So I got the biggest and strongest of my toy smurfs - named Hefty after the strongman smurf in the cartoon - and put him on my head. With Hefty on my head, the monster would think I'm a moose and then it wouldn't get me. (Everyone knows monsters only eat little girls, not meese.) It worked! The monster didn't get me! So I did the same thing again the next night. And the next night. And basically every night of my life when I was alone in bed. I still have Hefty and, even though none of my furniture turns into monsters any more, to this day I sleep better with him on my head.

5. If the first time I try a new food it doesn't taste like what it looks like it should taste like, I dislike the food. I can't even evaluate it objectively - I'm immediately put off because it wasn't what I was expecting. I have no idea what potato salad even tastes like, but it tasted nothing like what I was expecting the first time I tried it so now I can't even bring myself to eat it.

6. I can't stand fresh in-season organic tomatoes. They have way too much flavour. My stomach turns at the idea of a bright red tomato fresh from the garden, but I don't mind the slightly orangish kind that have come up on a truck from California.

7. I've been vegetarian since the age of 13. The only thing I miss is chicken noodle soup. Imagine Organics used to make something called No-Chicken Broth that closely duplicated the flavour, but I can't find that any more so once again I'm in the market for a yummy vegetarian chicken soup.

8. I find randomness satisfying. I listen to my ipod on shuffle while I'm working, and make rules for myself that I'm allowed to take certain kinds of breaks when songs meeting certain criteria come up. I put a bunch of books in my library holds list and read them in the order they come in, never knowing what's going to come in next. When I was a kid I'd dress my barbies by closing my eyes and reaching in to the big box of clothes and pulling out a handful of stuff and then trying to make an outfit from it. I make life decisions for my Sims by rolling dice (or, rather, by using a dice server.)

9. I got my first zit at the age of 9 and found my first grey hair at the age of 19. If genetics are any indication, I'm going to have both zits and grey hair at the same time for the rest of my life.

10. I'm the shortest one in my extended family of my generation. I felt emasculated the first time one of my younger cousins surpassed my height.

11. I have never in my life successfully initiated or escalated a relationship, whether romantic or platonic. From saying "Let's be friends!" on the kindergarten playground to rounding the sexual bases to setting the precedent of sharing funny news articles with the guy in the next cube, every successful relationship upgrade has been the other person's doing. Every time I've tried, I've failed.

12. All my friends are by every objective measure completely out of my league. I am constantly astounded that they deign to associate with me.

13. When I was a teenager, I would sometimes learn about things that boys I had crushes on were into. This never once helped me make any progress with any of these boys. However, I have since had a number of good friendships develop on the foundation of interests I nurtured in adolescent attempts to impress boys.

14. I have never been to a sporting event, apart from the occasional high school basketball game that I'd go to to get out of class and then sneak out of and go home at the first available opportunity.

15. Based on my genetics, I'm going to live past 100. I'm not thrilled with this. It's a huge financial planning problem.

16. I hate travelling. In theory I want to be open to new cultures and new experiences and practice my languages, but I just hate being beholden to itineraries and check-out times. It's work to me, not relaxation. In my apartment and in my neighbourhood, I have all the comforts and pleasures I need - a computer set up just the way I like it, a bathroom stocked with every little thing I might need and an essentially unlimited supply of well-pressured hot water, any food I might want readily available - and I hate the idea of spending my valuable savings and vacation time in an environment that meets my needs less perfectly. If you told me I was never going to leave Toronto again in my life, it wouldn't bother me one bit.

17. I can wrap the fingers of one hand completely around the widest part of the other hand. In other words, I can make a circle around my right wrist with the thumb and middle finger of my left hand (and vice versa) and pull my right hand completely through the circle without the thumb and middle finger losing contact with each other. I've never met anyone else who can do this.

18. I find asking myself "What would Eddie Izzard do?" far more helpful than it rightfully should be.

19. When I first entered translation school, I was a literalist prescriptivist. However, doing my first assignment, I found I just couldn't make a workable translation following the literalist prescriptivist philosophy that I thought was necessary. Frustrated and with deadline looming, I threw my hands in the air, saying "This is hopeless! I'll never be a translator! This thing is due and I don't know what to do, so I'll just write in English what the author of the source text really means!" I got an A+ on the assignment. I looked at the prof and thought "Ha! Tricked him!" It took probably half a dozen more instances of thusly tricking profs into giving me A's before I realized that idiomatic translation was the way to go.

20. When I was 10 or 11, shortly after menarche, I had a strong biological yearning to have a baby. However, I was not yet emotionally or hormonally capable of sexual attraction. The idea of even kissing anyone repulsed me. I was about 15 by the time sex seemed theoretically appealing, and by then I was childfree.

21. I lost my last baby tooth in Grade 9 music class.

22. Even though I know fully well how linguistic innovation works, whenever I hear someone else adopt a word or phrase that they got from me, I can't quite shake the feeling that maybe they're making fun of me.

23. I once underwent a psychiatric assessment during which the doctor asked me if I have the need to keep checking if the door was locked. I had never in my life felt the need to keep checking if the door is locked. However, when I went home that night and every night since then, I've had the need to check multiple times that the door is locked. I had to develop the habit of locking it and saying out loud to myself "Door is locked" so that I'd retain the fact that it's locked and not have to keep checking it.

24. I have never had a hangover.

25. This post has been sitting in my drafts for several days and I still can't think of a 25th thing to say.

Parental forgetfulness

I've blogged before about how odd it is that parents seem to lose the ability to identify with the child half of a parent-child relationship, but this one blew me away.

I overheard part of a conversation where a mother of teens was talking to the mother of a baby. The baby's mother was talking about how much angst they were going through with teething, and the teens' mother said "Just wait until I tell you what happens when she gets her period!" The baby's mother replied "Don't even tell me!"

It's like they have no firsthand memory of what it's like to get your first period! The baby's mother is my age so there's no reason why she shouldn't remember her early teens, and it is her biological child that she gestated herself so I know she menstruates. But they're talking about this as though it's something completely Other that happens to your kids rather than something that we've all been through!

Things I Don't Understand

1. Why on earth would anyone want two bathrooms in a one bedroom condo?

2. Why is there such thing as a combination curling and straightening iron (who's the target market for this?) but there's no such thing as a curling iron with interchangeable barrel sizes?

I wish I could be into Twitter

I like the idea of Twitter. Often when I'm nowhere near a computer I think of brief ideas that I'd like to post. I'd love to follow Levar Burton's attempt to quit smoking or tweet at the TTC's director of communications when there's a subway delay. And I'd totally want to be twittering early reports next time I'm in the presence of breaking news.

But there are just too many tweets. I could never keep up with all the incoming. I come home to nearly 100 new posts a day in my Google Reader alone - I just can't add another thing.

If I didn't have to have a full-time job, I'd be a kick-ass twitterer. I'd have a fun and witty feed and follow everyone I've ever heard of and come up with clever things that would make John Cleese reply to me. But unfortunately I don't have room for that much more internet commitment on top of a full-time job, and even the best twitter feed in the world won't pay the rent.