How ghettoization works

I was chatting with my hairdresser and mentioned in the natural flow of conversation that I'm childfree. She told me that most of her clients are childfree. That's very bizarre. I chose her because she has a somewhat unconventional approach that is compatible with my own somewhat unconventional needs, and I ended up as part of a clientele with generally similar family planning goals.

Then I realized that a lot of things in my life have worked out that way. I chose something based on specific factors, and ended up surrounded by people who are similar to me in completely unrelated areas.

For example, I chose translation because it's the first career path that I've ever been absolutely certain I could do. (All the others I would have had to blindly trust that my education and training would get me there.) I took what opportunities were available to me, and ended up on a team full of children of immigrants, ranging from first-and-a-half to second-and-a-half generation. (This is notable because none of us are translating in our heritage languages.)

I chose my neighbourhood because it's located at a subway stop, it has all the basic amenities (grocery store, drug store, LCBO, banks, library, doctor, dentist) all within walking distance, and it's safe and comfortable. Turns out it also has a good selection of demographically-suitable women's clothing and shoe stores, and a decent range of restaurants and bars that I wouldn't feel out of place patronizing. When I first moved here, my big political issue was working towards the legalization of same-sex marriage (this was April 2003, and I had no idea how close we actually were); turned out my MP supported it wholeheartedly.

I keep making decisions based on the relevant factors, and finding myself surrounded by people who are similar or like-minded in other areas of life as well. I'm not quite sure what to think of this. On one hand, it's convenient. On the other, it might be making me narrow-minded. But then, it's not like I'm going to go out of my way to live somewhere that meets my needs less well or find a less suitable job (or get my hair done by someone I don't trust) just so I can be around people who aren't similar to me.

I'm not quite sure what to make of this, but it's kind of interesting.

Do you actually want me to understand your story, or should I just smile and nod?

A number of times recently I've had people tell me stories involving topics or plot points that I don't understand, and that they know I don't understand. To use fake examples, they might be telling me about their ultrasound when they know I've never been pregnant, or they might be telling me a story about a family thing where I don't know the names of the family members.

So I ask the questions I need to follow the plot of the story. E.g., "So why do you have to drink all this water?" or "Wait, is Bob the ex-husband?" And then my interlocutor seems to get pissed or frustrated at me for not knowing this stuff. In life in general I seem to learn things quickly enough so I don't think I'm just generally stupid. (Of course, if I were generally stupid I wouldn't notice, would I?) This frustration seems to happen only when people are telling me stories where I don't know the subject matter, and it seems only when they know that I'm not familiar with the subject matter. When they don't know about my ignorance going in and then I confess it, I seem to do fine.

So should I be just smiling and nodding in these cases even though I'm not following the story at all?

Interesting study

A study by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives calculating how much taxpayer-funded public services we receive based on income and household configuration.

While it is interesting, it's a dense study (at least to economically semi-literate people like me) so I haven't read it thoroughly yet or analyzed the methodology or looked for other research on the topic (although the study says that there isn't much out there). But in any case, it's worth at least skimming through and seeing where you fall on the various charts.

(Via the always awesome Linda Diebel)

Things They Should Invent: make heel height proportionate to shoe size

I can strap a pair of four-inch heels on my size 11 feet without blinking an eye, but it's probably far more difficult to contort your feet into a four-inch heel if you only wear a size 6. According to the first chart I could google up, a size 6 foot is two whole inches shorter than mine, which is a different of about 20%. This means that a four-inch heel has the same difficutly level for me as a three-inch heel does for a size 6. Conversely, a four-inch heel on a size 6 would feel the same as a five-inch heel does on me, and I can tell you from firsthand experience that a five-inch heel is really pushing the absolute limits of what I can wear.

Why not give the dainty-footed a fighting chance and reduce heel height in proportion to shoe size?

Let's change the meaning of circumnavigate

Circumnavigate means to travel all the way around the planet. But how often do we need to express that concept - especially now that it can be readily achieved and is no longer any particular feat (except of general endurance)?

Circumnavigate should instead have a meaning parallel to that of circumlocute. It should mean to find a route around something so as to avoid that particular something. Example: "The subway is down and the shuttle buses are way overcrowded, so it's best to just circumnavigate Yonge St. entirely."

Normally we'd use "avoid" in that sentence where I used the word circumnavigate; the nuance requiring a different word is that circumnavigate would imply seeking out and finding a way to avoid Yonge St., rather than just not going on Yonge St. There's a slight connotation of initiative and achievement.

Pas de deux à six membres

(Shamelessly yoinked from James Bow)

Refining the Dream Drugs

I previously came up with the idea of Dream Drugs, which make your dreams more interesting.

I have an idea of how to achieve that: reverse the sleep cycle.

If I remember my science properly, at the beginning of the night you fall into a deep sleep, then you get more REM cycles (and therefore more dreams) as the night wears on.

This is inconvenient. If you aren't going to be able to get a full night's sleep, you aren't going to have as many dreams. If you happen to wake up an hour or two before you've completed your sleep cycle, it's extra tempting to go back to bed because that's when all the good dreams are going to happen.

So what the Dream Drugs should do is reverse the sleep cycle so that the dreams come first and the deep sleep comes second. Then every night you can enjoy dreams, even if you don't get a full night's sleep. And if you happen to wake up an hour or two before your alarm, you may as well get out of bed and get a head start on your day since you aren't going to get any more dreams to play with.

I wonder how bad writing works

Sometimes in fanfic I see people who just can't write dialogue. They have the characters talking in giant run-on sentences without commas.

"Good morning ma'am sorry to bother you but we're with the police and we need to ask you a few questions."

"Oh well come in then pardon the mess but I have three kids and just got them off to school and haven't had time to clean up."

It's like that for the whole fic, which is unfortunate because usually the premise of the story is interesting, but I just can't hear the characters in these run-on sentences.

This has me wondering how exactly the author ends up in that place. They are exposed to proper dialogue construction in their recreational reading (and I know they read recreationally because these are book fandoms, plus the majority of fic in the fandoms uses properly-constructed dialogue), and yet in their own writing they land on these unpunctuated run-on streams of sentences.

When translators misfire on tone, they tend to err on the side of sounding like themselves instead of sounding like the source text. I'm not enough into fiction writing to know for certain, but it would stand to reason that in fiction people would make the similar error of sounding like themselves instead of sounding like the character. I know that in my own many epicly failed attempts at fiction, the problem was that all the characters sound like me.

But, I don't know about anyone else, but I think in sentences, with clauses and punctuation and everything. They aren't always impeccably structured - this post is a representative braindump - but they are sentences. That's just the way my thoughts arrive once they have manifested themselves into words.

So does this mean there are people walking around out there who don't think in sentences? Do their brains give them an epic spew of words to which they must consciously and manually add punctuation?

Things They Should Study: bullies who tell their victims they should kill themselves

Today's Annie's Mailbox has a girl whose bully is leaving her MySpace messages saying "Why don't you just go and kill yourself already?"

I've heard of this bullying method before, although it was never done to me, and I really think someone should research it. We could use more information about the perps motives and what they're thinking, because this makes even less sense than most other bullying techniques.

My bullies bullied me when we were unwillingly all in the same place - at school or on the bus mostly. But in this technique, the bullies go out of their way contact the victim at home outside of school hours. If they really think the victim is so worthless they should commit suicide, why would they go out of their way to contact her during free time that isn't being marred by her presence?

Also, I don't know if this is broadly applicable, but within my own circle the victims who were being told to suicide were far cooler than me. (To me they looked like they were on par with their bullies in terms of coolness, but they were all several levels above me so it's possible I couldn't see the distinction.) In callously cold and objective terms, I was a far better candidate for suicide than these victims, but no one ever suggested that I should commit suicide. And now that I think about it, those particular bullies were never cruel to me. We certainly weren't friends and some of us didn't quite get along in a sort of cold and distant and avoiding each other way, but they never actually bullied me. Why would they do something so much more drastic to the cooler victim while leaving the uncool victim alone?

I'd love for someone to seek out adults who used to bully this way and find out about their motivations and how they chose their victims. Even moreso than regular bullying, it's a giant mystery to me.

Jackson 5 vs. Kid Rock

I want You Back All Summer Long - Calmucho Presents Jackson 5 & Kid Rock

Psychoanalyze this

Last night I dreamed I had to go camping with a bunch of fat people. I didn't want to go because I hate camping (I prefer activities involving more indoor plumbing and internet access and fewer bugs, thank you very much), but everyone kept saying that I was discriminating against fat people. It had nothing to do with the fat people, it was just that I didn't want to go camping, but no one believed me and I quickly gained a reputation as being biased against fat people.

Analogy for why I didn't convert to another xian denomination

In the past, people have suggested that my leaving catholicism for atheism was rash and closed-minded, and that I should have tried other denominations of xianity first.

As I've blogged about before, I view catholicism as an abusive ex. I view the other denominations of xianity as his brothers. Now we all know that siblings don't always have a lot in common. We all know that's it's very possible for one sibling to be a complete asshole while all the others are perfectly nice guys. And there is room for the possibility that your abusive ex's brother might be a perfect match for you. However, that doesn't mean that your first step should by default be to date your ex's brother. Most people would agree that the reasonable step at this point would be to spend some time being single, or to date someone who is completely unlike your ex. Even in a Jane Austen matchmaking-über-alles world, it is by no means closed-minded or judgemental or indiligent to move on to someone completely else rather than systematically trying out every brother.

If you don't see the fallacy of this xiancentric approach, look at it from the other perspective. Suppose you have a real asshole of a brother who is abusive to his spouse. His spouse finally leaves him. Do you expect the spouse to start dating you? Do you feel personally dissed if they don't automatically start dating you to see if you're a better match than your brother?

I wonder if dogs are good investments for homeless people

I'm inclined to give more generously to homeless people who have dogs, just to make sure the doggie doesn't starve. It occurs to me that I'm probably not the only person who does this. So I wonder if, from a cold economic perspective, owning a dog has a good ROI for homeless people?

Things They Should Invent: slipcovers for bra straps

Sometimes your bra straps are going to show. Even if it isn't on purpose, even in a sleeveless but modest outfit, sometimes they wander out. This means that you have to worry about what your bra straps look like, and take this into consideration when choosing a bra.

The problem is there are also other factors when choosing a bra - structural engineering issues, how well the material and texture of the cups works under your clothes, how well the bra achieves the intended effect once your clothes have come off. So sometimes you find yourself in a situation where you have a bra that works perfectly under your fierce little black dress, but the straps are fugly and beige. Having a black strap wander out from under a little black dress is within the range of acceptable human error, but a beige strap just completely ruins the effect.

What we need is something to cover the bra straps in a different colour of fabric, so your straps will match your outfit even if your bra doesn't.

Childfree for Dummies: Part III

Think about porcupines. They're cool and interesting and can be cute, especially when they're little. If you're walking down the street and you see one, you totally give it a second look and maybe even stop to interact, and as long as nothing goes egregiously wrong it's a pleasant experience that makes a good story to tell when asked how your day was.

However, you don't particularly want one of your own. If you found one, it would never occur to you to keep it. If one popped up in your house one day, you'd probably get rid of it. And you certainly don't feel at all deprived for not owning a porcupine.

How you feel about porcupines here is the same as how I feel about children.

Acquaintances

From the Toronto Police Sex Crimes Unit (PDF)

According to Statistics Canada, 2003, in cases reported to police, 80% of sexual assault survivors knew their abusers. About 10% were assaulted by a friend and 41% were assaulted by an acquaintance, 28% were assaulted by a family member, while the remaining 20% were assaulted by a stranger.

The Canadian Panel on Violence Against Women found that 38% of sexually assaulted women were assaulted by their husbands, common-law partners or boyfriends.

I'm not sure how the 38% corresponds with all the previous numbers. Maybe because it's a different survey? Maybe husband/partner counts as family member and boyfriend counts as friend? But that's not my point here.

My point is the large percentage for acquaintance, because personally I find the acquaintance dynamic the most difficult to manage in terms of saying no. Friends/lovers/partners/family members you know well enough to have assessed for yourself, and you trust them or not on their own merits. Strangers are strangers and you owe them nothing socially. But acquaintances you generally know through someone who knows them better. So it's not just the not-terribly-relevant-to-you acquaintance you might be dissing, but also the judgement of someone who's closer to you.

Imagine you're out somewhere and you need a ride home. You didn't arrange a specific ride because there are dozens of people there that you're close enough to that they'd be happy to give you a ride. Your brother is there, your best friend is there, your boyfriend is there, you've done this without a specific ride dozens of times before, you're certain you're not going to be abandoned. But life and logistics are complicated. So when it comes time to go home, your brother says "I can't give you a ride, but my former roommate is going your way." Or your best friend says "I can't give you a ride, but my neighbour here has room." Or your boyfiend says "I can't give you a ride, but my co-worker totally can." So now you're getting a ride from a strange man. Your brother/best friend/boyfriend totally trusts this dude and if you were to protest "WTF I'm not taking a ride with a strange man!" they'd be all "That's not a strange man, that's Steve!" and might even be insulted.

Most of the times I've been alone with a strange man have been because there's some presumption of acquaintanceship, i.e. we have been Properly Introduced. When I was a kid sometimes I might end up getting a ride home from a friend's father. When I worked on campus doing tech support I'd often go alone to profs' offices and students' res rooms. Sometimes in my apartment-dwelling life my super or a contractor might come into my apartment to do work while I was in there. Nothing ever did go wrong, but I had no way of knowing that going in. If I had refused any of these things - if I had insisted on getting a ride from a female adult or my own parents, if I had refused to go alone into male profs' offices and male students' rooms*, if I had insisted on the presence of the female super when there was one or that the work wait until I could have someone else in my apartment with me, it would have been a Big Hairy Deal and I'd be inconveniencing everything and perhaps insulting some people.

With strangers you're under no obligation, and we all learn from an early age not to talk to strangers so you're perfectly justified in snubbing them. With friends and family you know them well enough to use your own judgement unapologetically. But with acquaintances, especially acquaintances to whom you've been Properly Introduced, you have to thin-slice and then do a whole etiquette dance with the person who introduced you if you don't trust the new acquaintance.

We need a workaround.

*I did once refuse to go to a male student's room because I wasn't comfortable with him as an individual. He had invaded my personal space on the pretense of casual chitchat, and had repeatedly dissed my boyfriend. It was no big deal - I just said I wasn't comfortable going into this individual's room so another (male) tech went instead - but it would have been very high-maintenance and inconvenient if I had issued a blanket refusal to go into strange men's spaces.

School makes teenagers annoying

Walking past the local high school on the way to the subway, I was getting rather frustrated at the clumps of kids who would block the whole entire sidewalk, as though it never occurred to them that other people might be in a hurry and trying to get by.

Then I realized, it's quite possible it's never occurred to them that other people are in a hurry and trying to get by. I'm not saying that they're too stupid to understand this or anything, but when I think about it from the point of view of a high school student, it's quite possible they've never in their lives walked past the school. They walk to the school. You only walk past the school if you're going from one of maybe a dozen buildings straight to Yonge. If they don't live in these dozen buildings (most of which tend towards one-bedroom apartments), this sidewalk has been a thoroughfare for them. To them it's just the area in front of their school.

And it may have never occurred to them that other people are in a hurry because they aren't in a hurry themselves. In a school, classes always start at the same time and everyone is in a hurry at the same time. You don't have some people starting at 8:30 and some people starting at 9. So they may well have never been in an environment where they're in a hurry but other people aren't.

So I'm thinking maybe a lot of the seemingly inconsiderate behaviour of large groups of teenagers is really the result of the fact that they've spent the vast majority of their lives in the institutional environment of school. In school, you're never alone trying to do something different from the people around you. You're always in groups, you're always doing the same thing as the other people around you, you're always on the same schedule as the people around you. So it doesn't occur to the clumps of kids blocking the sidewalk that I might be in a hurry to get past because they've never been in a hurry to get passed. It doesn't occur to the throngs in the foodcourt that I might have to grab my lunch in a hurry and get back to the office because they've never had to finish their lunch and get back before the rest of the throng. It doesn't occur to the cluster blocking the entire grocery store aisle deciding what kind of pop to get that I might want to get past and grab something real quick because they've never done a quick grocery run knowing precisely what they need.

Unfortunately I don't have any solutions, other than saying "Excuse me please." (And they do always apologize and move.)

Things They Should Invent: if a store doesn't accept returns, leave the merchandise with them anyway

I'm in the midst of an ongoing battle with my hair, trying to convince it to hold a curl. I've already bought quite a few pieces of equipment that are supposed to curl my hair, only to find that they just don't. So not only have I spent all this money on stuff that doesn't work, but I have it all cluttering up my apartment. And you can't return hair equipment because it's a personal care item and it's been in my hair.

So I think what I'm going to do next time I buy something that doesn't work is go into the store with my stick-straight hair and try to return it. Then when they say no, I'm going to leave it with them so they have the burden of disposing of it.

If everyone does this with everything that doesn't do its job and is unreturnable, maybe they'll start selling us stuff that actually works.

I hope they don't do Corner Gas in other languages

Today's Corner Gas is untranslatable.