Another reason to stop renaming venues

I've blogged before about how annoying it is that they keep renaming Toronto theatres every time they get a new corporate sponsor. Here's another problem:

Today a very nice family stopped and asked me directions. By my best read on the situation, they're newcomers to Canada who live in 905 and are in the city for a special family outing. They didn't seem to be used to navigating the subway and the busy sidewalks with their gaggle of young children, and seemed rather overwhelmed by the whole situation.

I'm walking by, apparently looking like I know where I'm going, so they stop me and ask me directions. I can tell that the place they're asking for is a recently-renamed venue, but I don't know what it was called before (i.e. what I have it labelled as in my mind), so I don't know where it is. It was a part of town I'm not completely fluent in, so I wasn't even able to give them a "your best bet is in that general direction." So I apologized profusely for not being able to help them, and left them standing on the sidewalk with their gaggle of children, trying to find someone who can give them directions.

I just got home and googled up the place they were looking for. I've been there several times. I could totally have given them good directions complete with landmarks for the kids to keep an eye out for. But because they renamed the place, I was useless. Instead of being helpful and welcoming to these tourists and newcomers, I was useless and gave them a suboptimal Toronto experience.

Today needs some Hip

Grace, Too - The Tragically Hip

What I love about translator brain

I love being able to see nuances that I couldn't see before. The word "proactive" means something to me. I see how the statement "it is what it is" might contribute to discourse. I couldn't see those things in high school. When I was a kid, my father had this book called The Politically Correct Dictionary or something similar. The thesis of this book was "OMG, look, these politically correct people want us to replace all these everyday words with these cumbersome expressions! Let's laugh at them!" Now I can see and articulately explain the precise nuances of connotation that the authors of this book were either blind to or ignoring, and I can productively use both the "politically correct" and the "politically incorrect" words to achieve specific effects.

I love being able to tell what language a person was thinking in when they said or wrote something. I love being able to look at a single innocent error and get useful information on how I should analyze the word choices for the rest of the source text.

I love being able to look at someone else's mistranslation and tell exactly how it happened and sometimes, if the language combination is one of mine or a cognate of one of mine, tell what they really meant without even seeing the source text.

I love being able to tell when an author's word choices are meaningful and when they're mindless. I can't always do this, but when I can it's awesome.

My coffee ideas

1. Chocolate milk in coffee instead of regular milk. Good idea or bad idea?

2. Taking coffee into the shower in the morning, most likely in a travel mug with a fully closeable lid. Good idea or bad idea?

Things Fanfic Archives Should Invent: tell us when the author knows how the story ends

One of the most annoying things in fanfic is when an author starts an interesting and compelling story, then writes themselves into a corner and abandons it.

To avoid this, I'd like stories have tags indicating whether or not the author knows how it ends. No judgement either way, just yes or no. Then people who get annoyed by stories that are abandoned can skip those where the author doesn't know the ending until the author has actually completed them.

I would totally read a story being made up as it goes along by some of the more talented authors - people whose work I've previously read and enjoyed. But I'd like the option of opting out of stories by n00bs who don't know where they're going.

That's me in the corner, that's me in the spotlight

When I was 10 years old, my parents came up with the idea that we should say grace before Sunday dinner, and that we should all take turns - every week a different person says grace.

I was really uncomfortable with this idea. It seemed random and out of the blue. Why start now? Why only Sunday dinner? If they thought saying grace was so important, why didn't they ever do it when they were sitting down to eat themselves?

In retrospect, looking at it from an adult perspective, it seems likely they read one of those parenting articles on the importance of creating family rituals. This also might have been related to a tragedy that occurred in our extended family around that time. But to me that wasn't how religion worked. You did it - or you did your best to do it - because you believe in it, or because it's what you're supposed to do. You didn't just arbitrarily start doing other bits of religion for no particular reason!

I thought long and hard trying to make sense of this, and couldn't get past the feeling that my parents were trying to put on a show to trick God (written this way because that's how I thought of Him at the time), trying to impress Him with what I then didn't have a word for but would now describe as false piety. I was not comfortable with that. No way we could trick God. We were totally going to hell for that.

This would ultimately be the catalyst of my loss of faith.

I'd never really thought about whether my prayers and other religious acts were sincere. It was just how life worked, it was just what you did to be good. Say please and thank you, 7x9=63, I believe in one God the Father Almighty, don't pick your nose. But because I was uncomfortable with my parents' attempts to apparently trick God, I started thinking critically about this whole saying grace thing, and I arrived at the conclusion that I wasn't thankful for my food. I know, I know, you're supposed to be even outside Catholicism in life in general, but the fact is I wasn't thankful for it. I just took it for granted. (Still do, actually.) So now I'm not only trying to trick God, but I'm trying to trick God by specifically lying to him. Our family never really did every single piece of Catholicism, but generally my failures were benign neglect, and any religious acts were sincere. They were often automatic and had not been thought about critically, but, apart from my first confession (I made up plausible stuff because I couldn't think of anything to say - I've since learned that tons of people did that) I was never lying or outright faking it.

So I decided I didn't want to lie to and trick God, and told my parents I didn't want to say grace when it was my turn. I couldn't articulate my reasons very clearly, so I told them it's because I wasn't thankful for the food. They told me I had to anyway. We were all sitting at the table, with food on the table, and no one was allowed to eat until I said grace. So I said grace and felt dirty doing so.

For the next 10 years, there would be a monthly battle for me to get out of saying grace and my parents to try to get me to say grace. This cause me to be constantly questioning and thinking critically about my religion, and to ultimately conclude that I cannot be Catholic. (It wasn't until well into adulthood that I realized I'm congenitally incapable of religious faith - my brain just doesn't bend that way.) I could have either accepted it unquestioningly or as not-particularly-meaningful ritual, but putting on an intentional show false piety was a dealbreaker and drove me to a life of sincere sacrilege.

Today needs Craig Ferguson and Eddie Izzard being silly

(Non-overlap of second clip starts at 0:53)



If you know how to get these clips to stop pretending they're widescreen and fucking up the aesthetics of my template, let me know.

BURMA!

In honour of World Penguin Day:

Things They Should Study: next-of-kin overruling organ donor wishes

I blogged previously that they should change the rules of organ donation so they don't require next-of-kin consent when they already have clear consent from the prospective donor.

I think this would be interesting to study. In what percentage of cases does the next-of-kin not go along with the prospective donor's clearly-expressed wishes? In what percentage of cases does the next-of-kin block donation, and in what percentage do they consent to donation even though the prospective donor doesn't?

(I also wonder, purely as a matter of theoretical ethics, whether there's an ethical difference between consenting to donation against the donor's will (and thereby helping other people) and blocking donation (thereby preventing the donor from helping others). I can make arguments both ways.)

Snapshot

Right now I am playing Insaniquarium and listening to Mahler while blue gunk soaks into my face.

Toronto moment

I love when you honestly can't tell if the call centre you're talking it is in Bangalore or Brampton.

The only problem is I'm not sure if I'm being insulting or helpful when carefully spelling my street name etc. If they're in India, maybe I have to say "M as in Michael" when giving my postal code. If they're in 905, they probably know that 416=M.

Friday schadenfreude

I hate the existence of hair extensions. They're worse than breast implants, because the untrained eye can't tell if hair is real or extensions. I'm doin' it for real, yo, with all the imperfections that that entails, and it's irritating that people can just buy the length that I'm working to achieve, theirs looks better, and no one can tell.

So I hope you'll excuse me if I'm petty and small enough to enjoy this:



I'm also petty and small enough to enjoy the fact that a millionaire whose job description is to look good on stage (and therefore can reasonably spend most of her time working on that) still needs extensions to reach shoulder-length.

Things They Should Invent: universal size chart wiki

One website - only one single, universal website - where everyone lists all the clothes that fit them and which size fits them. Then you can see what fits other people who are the same size and shape as you.

For example, my black flats are a size 11, and they're a generous fit. My awesome red shoes are a size 10.5, and they're a bit of a tight fit. The other awesome red shoes I tried on are an 11 and I couldn't even get my foot all the way in. So someone else somewhere in the world who has the same black flats and is considering buying awesome red shoes can look them up and determine what size they'd be.

I'm a large size 13 at Smart Set and a small size 13 at Reitman's. So someone who's a large size 13 at Reitman's can look that up and see that they're probably sized out of Smart Set.

Gap jeans gap in the back for me. Lee One True Fit gap in the back for me. Point Zero don't gap in the back for me. Maybe there's someone else who has tried these brands and has the same fit issues, but maybe they've also found another brand that doesn't gap in the back.

Once this thing reaches critical mass, it will save us all a bunch of annoying fruitless shopping, and maybe people could even make some friends they can trade clothing with.

Why is this Canadian citizen not entitled to a health card?

Kim Suk Yeung arrived nine years ago with a male friend on visitor's visas. Eugene was born in April 2001. The girl's father returned to Korea and has married. Kim held various jobs, most recently behind the counter at a drycleaner's on Davenport Rd., where the neighbours met mother and daughter.

She applied for refugee status in 2004, knowing South Koreans are rarely granted it, so Eugene could have a health card.

The mother (Kim Suk Yeung) arrived nine years ago. The child (Eugene) was born eight years ago. Therefore the child was born in Canada, and it does say elsewhere in the article that she is in fact a citizen. There is no indication in the article that they have lived anywhere other than Toronto, so surely the child fulfills the Ontario residency requirement.

So why isn't she automatically entitled to a health card? Why did her mother have to apply for refugee status to get her a health card? If the mother isn't entitled to a health card because of her own immigration status, that's one thing. But the daughter is a Canadian citizen and an Ontario resident. She should be entitled to a health card on the same basis that I'm entitled to a health card - because I was born in Canada and in Ontario and have lived in Ontario my whole life. She shouldn't be denied a health card on the basis of her mother's personal decisions. Have your parents ever made ill-advised personal decisions? Did you deserve to be denied health insurance on that basis?

The child is eight years old. She was three years old at the time when her mother applied for refugee status to get her a health card. The child has no ability to influence her mother's immigration decisions, and she does not yet have the ability to go apply for a health card on her own. She has no ability to pay for her own health care or seek out her own health insurance. Therefore, it is especially important that the government automatically provide her with all the benefits to which she is entitled as a citizen and a resident rather than punishing her for her mother's decisions.

Idiomatic Translation For Dummies

Via the awesome Malene Arpe, this is the trailer for the film Coco Avant Chanel, subtitled by a student with one and half semesters of introductory French.



With the exception of a few conjugations and a few misheard homophones, the translation is accurate. Painstakingly so. I'm actually impressed that someone with 1.5 sememsters of high school French could do that.

But that's just the problem. It's painstakingly accurate, so painstakingly accurate that the translator hasn't given a moment's thought to whether it sounds idomatic in English. This very dramatically shows why literal or close translation won't do, and we need idiomatic translation. The translator needs to think about whether things sound normal in English, because something that doesn't sound normal in English (no matter how close it is to the source language) is practically useless to the Anglophone reader, as these subtitles so dramatically show.

I'm not going to tear the whole thing apart because you can do that yourself. I'll just do the first line as an example.

French: "Comment vous vous appelez?"
Subtitle: "How do you call yourself?"

That is a perfect literal translation. Every single word in that sentence is translated into the single English word that most closely expresses its meaning.

The only problem is that in English we would never say "How do you call yourself?" In that place, to communicate that concept, to obtain that answer from our interlocutor, we very nearly always say "What's your name?"

Lather, rinse, repeat for every single line.

What is the environmental impact of gardening soil?

Today for Earth Day people kept trying to give me seeds and plants. I refused them because I have nowhere to plant them. I live in a highrise and don't have rights to any ground whatsoever. So someone told me that I could plant them in pots on my balcony, but I don't own pots or soil and I'm sure as hell not buying dirt!

Then I got thinking. You can buy dirt. Which means they removed the dirt from the ground somewhere (I don't think you can manufacture soil? So what is the environmental impact of removing that healthy soil from wherever it originally lived?

Dell comes through again

My first computer, bought in 1999, was a Dell. Just months before its warranty expired, my power supply died. Dell sent a technician to fix it at no cost and at my convenience, and it was as stress-free as could reasonably be expected considering it's a difficult-to-diagnose-by-phone problem.

My second computer, bought in 2004, is a Dell. Today, just months before its warranty expires, the monitor stopped working. I called tech support, no waiting on hold, they accepted my troubleshooting that correctly diagnosed it as a hardware problem. Procedure said they had to flash the BIOS and see if the problem came back, so they did so and then arranged to have someone call me back tomorrow and check if the problem came back. Total time on phone 30 minutes, total angst zero.

Unfortunately, it came back an hour later. So I called them back (had to wait on hold 15 minutes), they accepted my diagnosis again, and they arranged to ship me a new monitor. Total time on phone like 10 minutes, total angst zero.

While it takes a few business days to ship so it would have been a noticeable inconvenience but for Poodle's awesomeness (see below), that's the reality of logistics and the laws of physics so I find it perfectly acceptable. (Which, I realize, is very easy to say when I'm still sitting here using my computer thanks to Poodle's awesomeness.)

So that's two Dell computers, both of which kindly had their major problems before the warranty expired, both of which got fixed under warranty at no cost to me and no more inconvenience than strictly necessary. I think my third computer will be a Dell.

Also!

Mega-bonus thanks to Poodle who eliminated literally all the stress surrounding this situation!
Me: "My monitor stopped working and I might not be able to use my computer for a few days! My life is ruined!"
Poodle: "Here's a spare, I'll go out of my way to bring it to you as though it's no trouble whatsoever."

Shipping update: My conversation with the call centre that resulted in them shipping out the new monitor occurred on Wednesday, after 8 pm. My monitor arrived by Purolator on Friday.

Rachmaninoff!

Moderato - Sergei Rachmaninoff

Where does the idea that babies don't feel pain come from?

There is an idea out there that infants don't feel pain or don't feel it as strongly as adults do. I know not everyone believes this and maybe even most people don't believe it, but I have seen it used to justify everything from neonatal circumcision to piercing little babies' ears.

Now I'm not an expert on pain or infants and I don't remember being an infant, but I do remember most of my life and I know that pain was worse for me when I was younger.

When I was 11, menstrual cramps had me doubled over on the floor weeping. Now, worst case, they have me sitting with a heating pad while I translate normally and a maybe tiny bit cranky. Around the same age, the band of a bra felt hideously constricting and uncomfortable. I noticed it all day, every day. Now I wear underwires all day without noticing, and can even fall asleep in them.

When I was a child, standing or walking for long periods of time (in retrospect, probably an hour or two) was exhausting. My feet hurt (in running shoes) and I was tired and desperately wanted to sit down. Now I can do that in heels effortlessly, and any discomfort is not even worth mentioning.

When I was a pre-schooler, I couldn't stand it when the seams in my socks were crooked or rough or in any way less than perfectly comfortable. It seriously bothered me - I could feel the seams! Now I don't give a second thought to how my socks fit, and sometimes I walk around in shoes that cause blisters (Q: why? A: normal breaking-in process) and consider the discomfort acceptable collatoral damage.

So if the younger you go the more sensitive to pain you are, why would the sensitivity just drop at infancy?

Even if you don't remember the details of how you experienced pain in childhood, just think about infants. Have you ever seen a new baby in the doctor's office who has just gotten a needle? They're bright red and screaming their poor little heads off! How did it feel when you last got a needle? Maybe "Oh, look, a needle." Maybe a quick sharp pain. Maybe you felt a bit oogie if you're sensitive about needles. But you probably didn't feel the need to scream until you turned red, even if you did allow your Id to take over. Think about a baby who needs to be burped. What do they do? They cry. Think about the last time you had a burp that hadn't come out yet. Can you even remember? It's completely negligible.

So how on earth did some people somewhere at some point once arrive at the conclusion that babies are less sensitive to pain.