Things They Should Invent: a blank on ballots for the reason for your vote

Some people vote for the Yellow Party because they like their Widget Policy. Other people vote for the Yellow Party because they don't want the Purple Party to come into power and raise import tariffs on three-handled family gredunzas.

But sometimes I find myself voting for a party for reasons that aren't as common or aren't something listed in campaign literature. For example, suppose the Yellow Party is really focusing its campaign on the widgets and the gredunzas, but I don't actually care about that. I'm more interested in the fact that they want to require all shoes to be available in sizes up to 12. But us large-footed girls are considered a fringe special interest group so the big shoes issue isn't getting a lot of media play. My Yellow vote will be interpreted - by the politicos and the media - as pro-widget and pro-gredunza.

I normally email any newly elected representative with a friendly congratulations and touch on a couple of the issues that are most important to me (credit to one of my early clients for giving me that idea), but a) I doubt that has any significant effect, b) I doubt most people take the time to do that, and c) that has no effect on media interpretation of the election results.

I want a blank on the ballot where voters can (optionally) write their reason for voting the way they're voting. Then, after the votes are counted (so as not to delay election results) they can tabulate who's voting how and why, and this information could be made available to the media.

It would also be interesting to what proportion of the population is voting misinformedly. We all know that some people are, but it would be interesting to see how many.

I just need to gloat for a minute

An astronaut tweeted at me!

Translation In Death

Eve Dallas wouldn't be entirely comfortable with the fact that she's inspired me in a number of ways, but I'm sure she'd be completely baffled to learn that she helped me with a translation.

To protect my client I'm going to change the words involved, but my example is pragmatically analogous to the actual problem. The subject of the text was something that the organization was committed to providing to various people in various quantities, and the text was trying to figure out how they were going to afford this. Unfortunately, the author referred to the items being given away as trucs. Trucs is a very casual, very indefinite word, the sort of word that people use every day but might not actually be approved by the Académie française. Its most accurate translation given the context is "thingies", which is ultimately meaningless. And, to make matters worse, the word truc didn't appear anywhere on the client's website, reference texts, or texts we'd previously translated for the client.

The author knew what precisely these trucs were, the audience knew what precisely these trucs were, but I had no clue. It was an overnight turnaround, so the author of the text was unavailable - they sent us the translation and went home for the day, expecting it in their inbox when they arrived at the office the next day. While "thingies" was a perfectly valid translation of trucs and would probably stand up in court, it sounds funny, especially when used repeatedly like in this text. There was sentence after sentence of "We need 700 trucs in January and 300 trucs in June. Past presidents of the organization get 2 trucs each as a courtesy, and we need an extra supply of trucs should the media express interest." You can't say "thingies" there every time. There's also the problem that we don't know if the Anglophones involved in the organization call the trucs "thingies". They might call them "things" or "thingamabobs" or "whatchamacalits" or "snapping turtles". I don't know because I don't know what they actually are. If I use the wrong word, my text will be completely and hilarious meaningless to its audience, even if the word I choose is a valid translation of trucs. I really needed to know what, precisely and tangibly, they were talking about so I could make a meaningful translation.

Eve Dallas often solves her cases by following the money. More than once, the key to cracking the case has been that the timing and quantity of deposits to the victim's account corresponds with the timing and quantity of withdrawals from a person of interest's account (or vice versa). So, inspired by this, I decided to follow the numbers. So I started searching for 700, January, 300, and June all appearing in the same document, and turned up something about event tickets. I then went to the part of my text that talked about the total cost of giving away all these trucs, and extrapolated the cost per truc. I then looked up the cost of a ticket to the event in question, and lo and behold it was an exact match. So the trucs were tickets to this event, of which the client was a major sponsor, but the number of free tickets being given away was cutting into the event's revenues. Suddenly the whole text made sense and I was able to clarify a couple of other points that were questionable.

Translation by financial extrapolation. I think Roarke would approve.

I'm probably the last person in the world to realize this

But I just realized that this song would totally work as a round, and very flexibly (2, 3, 4, or 6 parts if I'm working it out right).

Things Google Should Invent: gcourriel (or would that be courrig?)

I was verbally giving someone my email address in French, and without thinking I simply uttered "gmail" exactly like I pronounce it in English, without bothering to spell it out.

Not a huge problem since most people are aware of gmail. However, as we all learned in Grade 4 French, the way we pronounce the English letter G sounds closest to the French pronunciation of the letter J, so it could have been misinterpreted as "jmail."

The inherently English name of gmail is a problem for non-English speakers who nevertheless wish to use this very convenient email system. In English, we just say "gmail" and it's obvious how to spell it, but in other languages it might be less instinctive.

So what Google should do buy a bunch of domains that serve as translations of the word "gmail." For example, the French would be either gcourriel.com or courrig.com, whichever sounds better to the Francophone ear. This would increase the number of gmail addresses available and give people the option of having multiple addresses to accommodate multiple languages. The ideal implementation would be to give the owner of each gmail.com address right of first refusal for the equivalent gcourriel.com address (et cetera for each language), but most likely having multiple parallel email addresses in different languages would only be of interest to a very small proportion of users.

Y.E.T.A.N.O.T.H.E.R. reason to sponsor Eddie Izzard

To recap: Eddie Izzard (who is hilarious and generally above and beyond) is engaged in a ridiculously epic feat of human endurance to raise money for charity. And rescuing lost kittens along the way.

In case you needed just one more reason to donate, there's now an anonymous donor matching the next £43,000 of donations. If you've been putting it off, now's the time.

You can donate here and follow Eddie's adventure here and here.

Update: Plus, Eddie now has a rather serious-sounding ligament injury.

Are ballet dancers richer than I think, or is housing in New York more reasonable than I think?

Or has Brooke McEldowney not fully considered the economics of his universe?

Seth and Edda have a spare room. That means they have a three-bedroom apartment. They're both ballet dancers.

Not only that, but the apartment was originally just Seth's. He was already living there, and Edda moved in when she first joined the ballet. This means that Seth was managing a three-bedroom apartment on a dancer's salary singlehandedly.

I don't actually know anything about ballet dancers' paycheques or New York City rents. But conventional wisdom is that the arts don't pay particularly well, and conventional wisdom is that housing in NY is exceptionally expensive. So something is missing somewhere.

New words: anglotypical and francotypical

In English, if you search for something using the search engine Google, you say "I googled it." This construction is anglotypical.

In French, you'd say "J'ai effectué une recherche Google." This construction is francotypical.

These words aren't completely unknown (a few dozen google results each - "dozen" being an anglotypical word choice, with the francotypical counterpart being "quelques dizaines") but they're useful and ought to be more widely used. I went through translation school and half a dozen years as a professional translator, and have never heard them used.

They, of course, can be modified as appropriate for other languages.

New Rule: announce yourself as you knock on the door

In my old building, when the supers knocked on the door, they'd announce "Super!" Then I'd know who it is and open the door for them. I've had some delivery people do this, but not all. I think everyone should do it. Yes, I have a peephole, but peephole gets darker as you look through it so the person at the door can tell if you look and then choose not to answer the door. Also, you can't always tell by looking who it is. I once had enumerators come to my door, and they just looked like regular people (as opposed to UPS, who's in uniform). As a rule I don't open my door unless I'm expecting someone and I had no way of knowing they were enumerators, so I didn't get enumerated.

If everyone announces themselves as they knock at the door, then you'll get better results from your knocking on doors. And if announcing yourself will make people not answer the door, then you shouldn't be knocking on doors.

I can't stop listening to this

Into The Mystic - VAN MORRISON

I went down to the Chelsea drugstore to get your prescription filled

As anyone who cares already knows, this is a line from the Rolling Stones.

But why do they call it a drugstore? Wouldn't "chemist" be more idiomatic in their dialect?

Perhaps my job is safe after all

Translation Party translates any English phrase you give it to Japanese and back until it reaches equilibrium.

Like this.

Still trying to find out: why is it using a mixture of two Japanese alphabets?

Why can't I find Campbell's Hearty Noodles in Thai flavour?

Yes, they're full of sodium and preservatives. No, they aren't particularly hearty. Yes, they're a rather pathetic excuse for noodles. Yes, I can get better Thai food in half a dozen places between my office an my home.

But they're a comfort food for me. In university they were my favourite no-dishes, just-add-water noodle soup, and they were always there for me, hot and filling, when everything in the caf sucked or I was just too tired for anything that would require washing dishes.

These past couple of days I've been wanting to revisit that flavour, but I can't find them anywhere! Every store I visit has all the other flavours, but not Thai. They're still on the website, but I'm not finding them IRL.

"The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing." - Socrates

It is possible to not be aware of the extent of your knowledge/ignorance. It is also possible to be fully aware of the extent of your knowledge/ignorance. So you can know very little and not be aware that you know so little, or you can know very little and be aware that you know so little, or you can know a lot and be aware that you know a lot.

But is it possible to know a lot and not be aware that you know so much? Is it possible to know literally everything about a given topic and not be aware that you've got everything?

What to do if your TTC Metropass doesn't arrive in the mail

If you don't get your Metropass, go to the Metropass office at Davisville station (during business hours, 8:30-5 weekdays I think), show them ID, and they'll issue a replacement. They ask you to return the original if it subsequently arrives in the mail.

Blogging this because I couldn't google up the information.

How to decommercialize christmas without sacrificing anything

But after a disastrous Christmas last year and lacklustre sales most of this year, many retailers are desperate to make up the shortfall in the final four months.

Holiday sales can account for as much as 40 per cent of annual sales, more for those who specialize in giftware.

So that's the problem. That's why retailers are so aggressive with the music and the decorations. They've associated huge sales with this season.

So what we as consumers have to do as consumers is make xmas sales unremarkable, and this without fucking up the economy.

Here's how:

In 2010, don't give your xmas presents on xmas. Instead, give your xmas presents (to your family and friends, as well as any employees and service providers to whom you give a xmas tip) on your own birthday. To dissuade retailers from responding by instituting year-round xmas decorations, do not purchase any xmas presents from retailers who have decorations up before November 28, 2010, which is the first day of Advent 2010. Because people tend to give you presents on your birthday, the result will be multiple opportunities to exchange gifts and good wishes throughout the year.

Santa will bring kids their presents on their half-birthday. Q: Why not their birthday? A: As people born in December and early January can attest, when your birthday coincides with xmas you tend to get less than your rightful share of presents (rightful share being determined by observing siblings and peers). This will maintain the common standard of two annual gift-receiving occasions, which is particularly important when you're a kid and can't just buy stuff for yourself. This will also enable Santa to have more consistent workflow management, with elves specializing in different parts of the production process being more steadily employed year-round, and to save in overtime costs. Mrs. Claus also looks forward to spending a quiet Christmas at home, drinking eggnog in front of the fire and reflecting on the true meaning of the season, for the first time in over two millenia.

Santa assures all good little boys and girls that they will receive their presents on their half-birthday regardless of whether a tree and/or stockings and/or milk and cookies are present in the home.

December 25 (or 24 or January 6 or whichever day you use in your particular culture) can, of course, still be used as a religious feast day, a family gathering, and/or a statutory holiday. But the only socially mandated gift-giving that will occur on or marking that day is xmas gifts from and birthday gifts to individuals whose birthday is December 25, and xmas gifts from Santa to children whose birthday is June 25.

In summary, in 2010:

- Give your xmas gifts on your own birthday
- Santa brings kids their xmas gifts on their half-birthday
- Don't buy xmas gifts from retailers who have decorations up before November 28
- Your religion's, culture's, and/or family's customary celebrations can continue to be held on the customary date, but without the exchange of gifts.

Let's all work together to decentralize xmas 2010 and bring some sanity back to what should be a happy occasion.

Do more people want to keep what they have, or do more people want more?

Disregarding the altruistic and social justice aspects, the purely selfish aspect of my politics can be reduced to "I have some good things. I don't want to lose them." I don't particularly care whether or not I gain more good things. The selfish part of me doesn't particularly care whether or not other people gain more good things (the altruistic part thinks everyone should have access to the good things I have if they're interested). The primary focus is just not losing what I have.

I think there are some people whose primary goal is not to keep what they have, but rather to gain more. There also seem to be people who are focused on what other people have, and seem not to want other people to have more than them, or to gain new things at a greater rate than they themselves are.

It would be interesting to study what percentage of society falls into which categories.

I don't intend this judgmentally - I realize it's very easy to say you don't need more once you have enough - I just think it would be interesting to take the pulse of society from this perspective.

What are you supposed to do when you hear someone scream outside?

I'm sitting hear in my apartment with the windows open and I hear someone scream, maybe two or three times. It could be a woman or a child. It doesn't sound specifically like distress, although it doesn't sound specifically playful either. I scream in more distress when I encounter an ordinary household pest. I can't see anything really, but it's dark out. The scream could be coming from the street, or the balconies of any of the neighbouring apartment buildings, or inside any of the neighbouring apartments if someone has a window open. The source of the scream could be anywhere within a three-block radius containing well over a thousand households. That's if I'm estimating correctly how far sound can carry.

Now I'm hearing other screams that sound playful from the same general direction. They are a mix of different voices, some male, some female, some children.

Now, if someone is in fact being attacked, it will be all over the newspaper tomorrow that no one called for help. But I'm sitting here 12 storeys above the ground, unable to see anything. Am I supposed to call the police saying it's possible someone in my general vicinity in this high-density neighbourhood might possibly be in distress, although it's possible they might be having fun, or might be a child being tormented by their sibling, or might be having an overzealous game of hungry hungry hippos?

Now I heard two more, more like the original voice, that sound more towards the distress side of the scale (but not objectively distressful).

It's 11:00 on a Friday night in a neighbourhood with a young adult demographic, so it would be very odd indeed if there was no one having fun under the influence of anything within this radius. And people having fun under the influence do often scream while walking down the street, although they tend to sound more obviously playful.

Two more: one not-really-playful, one more playful, followed by a loud collection of various voices talking loudly. Whatever's going on, there's an assortment of people of various ages and genders there, assuming I'm hearing who's all in the same place properly.

If I had a bug, I would scream in distress several times. Then I would deal with it, drink or med myself down, and go to sleep. If someone who isn't on my floor tried to come to my rescue, they'd never find the source of the screams.

One more, again didn't seem distressed or non-distressed, but the number and variety seem odd. Then two more that sounded like a child being tormented by a sibling, and a short one that sounded playful. A dog barks, a child shouts, a man calls out in response.

I don't want to live in a neighbourhood where you scream for help and no one helps, but I don't know where this person is or if they are screaming for help. Either they aren't or I have convinced myself they aren't. What are you actually supposed to do in this situation? What can I do if I'm ever on the street screaming for help to maximize the chance someone will help me? (One idea I once came up with is, if at all possible, to run out into traffic. Then I'm suddenly all the cars' problem too.)

And now it has started raining, and all I can hear is the rain beating down on my metal balcony railings.

Why does it bother you that I'm quiet?

Question for extroverts:

I've blogged before about how when I was a kid people would say to me "You're so quiet, you never talk."

Question: suppose we're in a randomly-assembled group (classmates working on a project, co-workers on the same shift, people who happen to live in the same neighbourhood waiting for a bus). Sufficient conversation is flowing among the group, but I personally am being quiet.

Why does it bother you that I'm being quiet?

This always happened in randomly-assembled groups with sufficient flow of conversation. Among friends, I'm better able to think of stuff to say (or babble mindlessly and boringly). When there is insufficient flow of conversation, people never seemed to tell me that I'm quiet. The vibe I got is that my quietness bothered them (rather than being a poorly-conceived attempt to draw me out), and googling around this idea I've found that extros are bothered/weirded out by quiet people.

So why, precisely, does it bother you? (Not that I can really do anything about it - I don't have a secret stash of witty conversation that I'm stingily withholding - but I cannot even begin to imagine why this would bother someone.)