Wherein I accidentally figure out why I'm a pessimist

Reading this unrelated article, the following passage caught my eye.

One reason that paying for experiences gives us longer-lasting happiness is that we can reminisce about them, researchers say. That’s true for even the most middling of experiences. That trip to Rome during which you waited in endless lines, broke your camera and argued with your spouse will typically be airbrushed with “rosy recollection,” says Sonja Lyubomirsky, a psychology professor at the University of California, Riverside.

Lyubomirsky has a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health to conduct research on the possibility of permanently increasing happiness. “Trips aren’t all perfect,” she notes, “but we remember them as perfect.”

My first thought was "Oh, so THAT's why people like travelling." Because my brain works the opposite way. I remember every single annoyance. The largest-looming memories of my childhood summers are fighting off carsickness and my sister, yearning for a moment alone in a quiet air-conditioned room with a book. This is why to this day I hate travelling and there are few things I'd rather do on a summer weekend then have some quality time alone with a book.

Then I realized that's it's more than just memories of travelling. In all my memories, the negative emotions stay on as strong as ever, but the positive emotions fade.

I can best explain this with a recent memory. When we saw Eddie the first time, I came home with three concurrent emotions: giddy endorphin rush, the "OMG, he's real!" feeling I got when he first walked on stage, and wanting to kick myself for making such an ass of myself at stage door.

The endorphin rush faded like endorphins do, and never came back as part of the memories. I remember the fact that it happened, of course. I remember what it felt like. But when I go into the memory, the endorphin rush isn't there. Even the next day telling people about it, I didn't feel even a fraction of the endorphin rush when I summoned up the memory.

The "OMG, he's real" feeling was present in the memories at first. It would totally reach into my belly with it's claws and grab my guts and twist them (in an entirely good way). Now, three months later, it's faded to a quiet little smile. I remember having that feeling, I remember what it felt like, but it's no longer an inherent part of the memory. Three months from now, I probably won't even be able to summon it up. (Which is unfortunate - it was an entirely new feeling and I rather like it).

But the feeling of wanting to kick myself for making an ass of myself hasn't gone away or even weakened. Even now when I think of it, I still wince physically and viscerally, and would slap my own face if I wasn't too chickenshit. I've already convinced myself quite logically that my idiocy was inconsequential (with a tremendous assist from someone on a fan site who proudly described doing something far stupider than I'd ever dream of), but the negative emotion is there just as strong as ever.

And I think all my memories work this way. I remember the fact that I felt gleefully independent when I started living alone, but I feel the constant lurking fear of the things that would crawl out of walls in my crappy student housing. I remember that my sister got married last year, but I feel the anger and frustration and humiliation and helplessness of my uncle (bizarrely) giving me a hard time for not being married myself in the one moment where I couldn't escape because the ceremony was right about to start any minute. I remember that I played that one playground game many many times and enjoyed it, but I feel the helpless terror of the one time I got injured and had to go to the ER and didn't understand what was going on, to the extent that I'm flashing back just typing this non-descriptive sentence. Positive emotions fade until I can just remember the fact that I felt the positive emotions, negative emotions stay on as an inherent part of the memory that comes back every time I remember it.

So if most people's brains are wired the opposite, so bad emotions fade and good emotions stay as described in the quote above, that would explain why so many people are so bizarrely optimistic. And, accordingly, why I am so inherently pessimistic.

The next mystery: why does my brain do this differently?

The other reason why I feel the police are currently the biggest threat to me

I blogged before about how, in the wake of the G20, I feel the police are currently the biggest threat to me. There's one more important factor that I wasn't able to articulate then.

The scariest thing about the police's G20 actions is how they targeted everyone who happened to be in a given area a the time (Queen & Spadina, Queen's Park, Esplanade).

Civilian criminals don't do this. Civilian criminal acts are target-specific or goal-specific. They're going to attack that one guy who dissed them, or they're going to attack the next likely target who walks by. They aren't out to attack absolutely everyone in the general area.

I can best explain this with an example of a real-life bad guy. This past spring, there was a guy on the subway sexually assaulting people who look like me. (They've since arrested someone, but for the purpose of this example, let's go back in time to when he was still at large.)

Suppose I'm on the same subway car as this guy. What might happen? Maybe he'll attack no one, maybe he'll attack another long-haired brunette, or maybe he'll attack me. If he attacks no one, we're all fine. If he attacks another long-haired brunette, I can, if I choose, take that opportunity to escape. (It's dishonourable and chickenshit, yes, and I'd like to think I wouldn't take that option, but my point is the option is there.) If he attacks me I can fight back, and other people might also intervene, which would make them heroes. The perp cannot stop me from escaping when I get an opportunity, and he cannot attack everyone on the subway car at once. A maximum of one person is at risk.

Now suppose the police decide there's a stealth black bloc person on the same subway car as me. Either they'll act or they won't. If they don't act, we're all fine. If they act, they're going to detain all of us. The fact that I'm not the person they're looking for won't protect me. The fact that there are other, more likely suspects won't protect me. If I attempt to escape, they have grounds to detain me legitimately (evading police). If I attempt to fight back, they have grounds to detain me legitimately (assaulting an officer). If someone else attempts to intervene, they have grounds to detain them legitimately (obstruction of justice). Everyone on that subway car is at risk.

In summary, here are the facts I have. Civilians sometimes do bad things. Police sometimes do bad things. (The value of "sometimes" cannot be quantified in either case.) When civilians do bad things, they are targeting less than 100% of the people in the area, and generally can't get everyone at once. When police do bad things, they're targeting 100% of the people in the area, and can get everyone at once. If you attempt to escape from the area while the police are doing bad things, you are breaking the law and they have legal cause to arrest you. If you attempt to escape from the area while civilians are doing bad things, your actions are perfectly lawful.

This is why my shields now go up when I find myself in the same general area as police officers.

How to fake plain language in French to English translations

1. Every time you see the word "of", try to rephrase the sentence to eliminate it.
2. Every time you see a word ending in "-ion", try changing the ending to "-ing" and rephrasing the sentence accordingly.
3. Every time you see "regarding" or some synonym thereof (concerning, in regard to, in terms of, etc.), try to replace it with a more specific preposition (about, on, in, for, with, to, etc. Whatever describes the actual real-life relationship between the elements.) Helpful hint: if the first word in any sentence is "regarding" or one of its synonyms, this is a sign that the sentence is not phrased as clearly as it could be.
4. After you've done these first three steps, do a word count. If your English word count is over 80% of your French word count, go through again and look for places where you can reduce your word count.

What is the political motivation behind putting more people in jail?

First, there was the Miami Model at the G20.

Then there's Stockwell Day wanting to build more prisons even though crime is going down.

Both of these seem politically motivated. But what's the motivation?

Arresting/imprisoning more people systematically increases the chances of arresting/imprisoning more innocent people, which is detrimental to the establishment's credibility. It also damages the general public's trust in authority figures, which doesn't seem like something governments would want to do. (Since the G20, if I see a cop car while innocently walking down my own street on the way to my good sensible job, my shields go up and I'm automatically looking for escape routes. How is this more beneficial than my previous reaction of not caring one way or the other?) I'd also imagine that governments and authority figures would want people to report any crimes they might encounter (it certainly seems Stockwell Day does), but not being able to trust the police makes this less likely. (In the aftermath of the G20, there were people who kept saying that if you don't like the police, you shouldn't go calling them next time you have an emergency. The truth of the matter is now I wouldn't even consider calling them unless the threat I faced was worse than being detained for 36 hours with insufficient water, no toilet paper, and people trying to stick their fingers into you.)

They must think they're achieving something by arresting/imprisoning more people. What do they think they're achieving?

This also got me thinking about the impact on workers and the economy. More prisons probably means more jobs as prison guards, which sounds good at first glance but seems like the sort of thing that would be rather soul-destroying as a job. But then I got to thinking that the very thing that makes it soul-destroying might make it not as good for the economy as other types of jobs. I don't know enough economics to say this for certain, but here's my thinking:

Most jobs create something and/or facilitate the movement of money (which, as I understand it, is what constitutes economic activity). In my job, I create English documents. When I'm done my work, there are English documents where there were no English documents before. The salespeople at the store don't create much, but they do get money from my wallet into the store's coffers, to then be used to pay suppliers and employees and ultimately make the economy flow.

But a prison guard doesn't create anything and doesn't help money move. They just guard the prisoners. So suppose they repurposed a bunch of laid-off auto workers as prison guards. Now, instead of creating something (making cars where there were no cars before) that will become a part of the economy (being sold, requiring gas and insurance and parking, etc.), they're doing something economically dead-end.) Would that be detrimental to the economy as a whole?

Sterilization technology update

I just found out today that there's another sterilization procedure that's like Essure, except the fallopian tube inserts are silicone rather than metal. It's called Adiana. It seems it hasn't been approved in Canada yet, but is going through the process.

I am not a medical professional and I am not in a position to vouch for or endorse this or any other medical procedure. I (unfortunately) have no firsthand experience with any sterilization procedures. I'm just posting this because it seems like it might be promising for people who are in the market for Essure but can't tolerate the metal inserts.

What I learned from the Industry Committee's census hearings

Last week's Industry Committee meeting on the census was incredibly interesting, and I'm trying very hard to be patient with the fact that the transcript isn't up yet. (Because yes, I know that on top of everything else, every single word uttered needs to be translated and I know it really really really needs to be done right because a) it's Parliament and b) this issue gets media attention. But I want to blog about it, dammit!)

The transcript will be up here when it's ready. The CBC's liveblog is also useful.

Here are the key things I learned from the evidence given at this committee:

1. The government, being the government, can change the legal penalties for failing to fill out the census form. If they believe the penalties are too harsh, they can go right ahead and legislate milder penalties, or no penalties. Because that's what the government does - makes and modifies laws.

2. The government gets to approve the census questions. If they find any questions too intrusive, they can just...not approve those questions, and they won't go in the census.

3. The Privacy Commissioner has gotten 50 complaints over the census in 20 years.

4. No one has ever gone to jail for failing to fill out the census.

5. The question about the number of rooms is used to, among other things, identify what is called "hidden homelessness". In some remote Arctic communities, the ratio of rooms to people reveals that there isn't enough housing, even though no one is sleeping on the street or anything.

This is way more interesting than I thought it would be, and very informative. I look forward to them posting the transcript soon so I can make a proper post.

Why does property tax exist?

The municipal tax base is based on property taxes rather than income taxes or sales taxes. They assess the market value of your property and charge you a percentage of that assessed value in tax.

Why does this exist? How is it fair? How is it superior to income tax?

The amount of property tax we pay may be fair at the time we buy our homes, although that assumes that we're leveraging more or less fully. For example, suppose you buy a home for the largest value they'll give you a mortgage for with the minimum down payment they'll accept. Not the most optimal way to do it, but houses are expensive, you know, sometimes we don't have a choice. At the same time, some billionaire buys the house next door, which is assessed at exactly the same value. This billionaire is so rich they can buy the house outright, in cash. They could afford way more house, but they simply don't need it - it's a perfectly decent house, after all. So you're mortgaged to the hilt, but they've paid out pocket change and own it outright. They make as much in a day as you do in a year. But you both pay exactly the same number of dollars in property tax. Is that fair? Is that optimal?

Now suppose a couple of years pass. Due to some external influence, the assessed value of your home (and your neighbour's home) has skyrocketed, and your property taxes have therefore skyrocketed as well. But you've lost your job and run out your EI benefits, so you have literally no income (and not a whole lot of savings, because two years ago you were fully leveraged.) Meanwhile, your neighbour's stock options have also skyrocketed, so they're now earning even more money. You don't earn enough in a year to pay your property taxes, but they earn enough to pay their property taxes in 30 seconds. And yet you still owe the same number of dollars. How is that helpful?

Think of the elders in your life. Think of someone who is retired and has been living in the same home for decades, perhaps the home where they raised their children. Now run their income through a mortgage calculator. Do they make enough money to buy their house at its current assessed value? Probably not. House values tend to rise over time, which can really add up over decades. How is it useful to make them pay the same number of dollars in tax as someone who just moved in and does have an income proportionate to the assessed value of the house?

At this point, people usually say that you can borrow against the value of your home. But that's unsustainable. If I don't have $5,000 to pay my property taxes this year and I borrow it out of my mortgage, then I owe an extra $5,000 into my mortgage (which is accruing interest and increasing my required mortgage payments), plus I'll have to come up with another $5,000 (or probably more) next year. Unless my income is increasing significantly, I'll never catch up and eventually lose my home.

So who decided this is a good idea? Why does it exist? What benefits does it have over an income tax? Wouldn't it be better to just have a municipal income tax to make sure taxes owed doesn't exceed your income or threaten your housing security?

Where have all the poor people gone?

I'm reading an article on how census data is used for marketing, and it includes examples of the different demographic categories (PDF) marketers organize us into by neighbourhood.

I don't know if it's just me, but I find the average incomes of those demographic groups really high, especially given the qualitative descriptions assigned to them.

The lowest income group averages $40,000, but there are all kinds of people in the real life who earn way less than that, and incomes in the $50,000 range are described as "downscale" and "low income".

You can look up your own postal code by going here and clicking on "Lifestyle Lookup". When I looked up my postal code, I saw an average income higher than I will ever earn (in constant dollars) described as "middle" income. But I'm living quite comfortably here on noticeably less than that amount - I painlessly did my year of Shut Up and Buy It with a salary of twenty grand less than that amount. I ran the numbers for several other postal codes of people whose incomes I know, and there's a constant pattern of living comfortably on $20,000 less than the average for working people or half of the average for retired people, and everyone is far more comfortable than the qualitative label associated with their actual income bracket suggests. (i.e. based on how it feels in my bank account, $50,000 is more of a middle class lifestyle than low income.)

Are these categories off, or is my sense of how comfortable a given income level is off? How do people in these categories feel IRL? How do people in these categories perceive other categories?

And what of poor people, who make significantly less than the $40,052 average given for the lowest income category?

Currently wondering: does uterine birth control affect HIV transmission?

I vaguely remember reading, either in a text I was translating several years ago or in my research for this text, that part of the reason why there's a high risk of HIV transmission in unprotected vaginal intercourse is that the purpose of the uterus is to be a hospitable environment for any cells that enter it to hang out for a while and grow and multiply.

I can't find this text since it's several years old and I've forgotten who the client was, but, assuming my understanding is correct, I wonder if certain forms of birth control would reduce the risk of HIV transmission.

The IUD and certain types of oral contraceptives work by making the uterus less hospitable. It's more difficult for sperm and egg to meet and mate and develop and embryo and implant and start cellular division. I wonder if this also makes it less hospitable to HIV cells. Even a diaphragm would at least keep the HIV cells from making it into the uterus, which obviously isn't sufficient protection but might make the risk lower.

A quick google shows that birth control does not increase one's risk of HIV transmission (either male to female or female to male - no mention of female to female) and that it is safe for people with HIV to use birth control, but there's no mention of whether birth control reduces the risk. Does this mean it doesn't, or does this mean they haven't done the research?

Writing to my 13-year-old self

There's a "write a letter to your 13-year-old self" trend going around the blogosphere. I recently wrote a letter to my 18-year-old self. One of the things I said was:

Read Harry Potter. Read the complete works of Miss Manners. Read the In Death series. Read Introvert Advantage. Read Malcolm Gladwell. Watch Eddie Izzard's comedy and every interview he's ever done. These will all not only entertain you, but help you navigate the world better.

But almost none of these things existed when I was 13! Harry Potter was still five years away. Miss Manners existed. In Death was two years away. The neuroscience underlying Introvert Advantage hadn't even been discovered yet. Malcolm Gladwell wasn't writing his Malcolm Gladwellish stuff yet. Eddie had only just done Live at the Ambassadors, and on top of all that the Web was only just in its infancy. The things my 13-year-old self needed to self-actualize had not yet been created!

Even if they had existed, I wouldn't necessarily have been able to access them. Not just because of the logistical difficulties of accessing information in 1993, but because of the logistical difficulties of being 13! Miss Manners, Introvert Advantage, and Malcolm Gladwell I could easily check out of the library (although Miss Manners would have gotten comments from any family members and bullying from any peers who saw me reading it.) In Death I might not have been allowed because of the sex, and Harry Potter I might not have been allowed because it's too easy (my parents never censored my reading for mature content, although my 13-year-old self never tried to read anything as hot as In Death, but I'd at the very least get a talking-to if I was reading anything my father considered too easy). But Eddie? Transvestite comedian who says fuck a lot? Could never have gotten away with it. Eddie inspires me, makes me brave (insofar as I am brave), and is single-handedly responsible for at least 50% of the people skills I've developed since I first encountered his work, but my parents would have taken the video away and tried to have A Talk with me and supervised me annoyingly closely if I had ever brought that home to watch.

No wonder I can't think of anything useful to tell my 13-year-old self!

So...

Dear 13-year-old self:

One day, you will get on a subway in Toronto (I know, it sounds big and scary, but you're just like those grownup women you envied on the Tube in London!) and see Big Bully sitting in the train. Fortunately, you'll look fantastic! Your hair isn't oily (Google up hairdressers specializing in long hair once you move to Toronto. Don't worry, the verb "google" will be meaningful by then.), your skin looks smooth (They're soon going to invent something called Touche Eclat. Get some as soon as you can afford it.), your outfit is flattering and grown up, you're wearing funky shoes by your favourite designer (You have a favourite shoe designer, by the way, which you chose entirely out of personal taste and completely without the influence of fashion magazines.) and just wait until I tell you what your bra size is! You also happen to be engaged in witty conversation with a very attractive man. In French. (French will give you your career. Learn your prepositions even when they're stupid!) Sure, he's gay (which isn't a problem, BTW. You'd do best to just not express any opinion on sexual orientation before the 21st century.) and you're talking about work, but Big Bully doesn't know that! It's not like she speaks French! You won't even cast a casual glance in Big Bully's direction, instead staying engrossed in your conversation with the attractive man. Then you'll get off at your stop (one of the better neighbourhoods in Toronto - BTW, you earn more dollars than you thought you ever would, although inflation makes that less impressive than it sounds) and go home to your beautiful apartment, never to see Big Bully again.

Don't worry, you'll be in love for real to. You'll be kissed and, crazy as it sounds, even have sex in ways that are far better than you've imagined yet. (Look up the word "cunnilingus" in the glossary of that book Mom gave you about your changing body.) You'll have friends too, real friends to whom you can admit you like Star Trek! But that one moment on the subway will be the only time you ever see any of your bullies. They are irrelevant to your life now. And all they know about you is that one glimpse Big Bully got of you on the train - a witty conversation in French with an attractive man, while looking fantastic.

I can't tell you anything to make it better right now, but I can tell you it will get better. The adult world isn't like what you're going through at all, and you can navigate it just fine without being able to navigate the 13-year-old world. Never mind what any of the grownups around you say: the adult world is WAY easier.

Kids Today and their baggy pants

Train of thought arose from this story, where a judge threw out a summons that a police officer issued to a guy wearing saggy pants.

I first encountered that look in some of my classmates when I was in grade 7, which would have been 1992. My middle school wasn't exactly on the cutting edge of fashion, so I'd assume the style originated at least in 1990, if not earlier. That's 20 years ago! If, as is the case with most trends, some of the early adopter were in their early 20s, then there would now be early adopters of this trend who are now in their 40s, and quite likely still wearing their pants low because it never entirely went out of style.

The style is 20 years old and the early adopters are in their 40s. So why are people still clutching their pearls about it?

Why should I be allowed to drive with alcohol in my blood?

They're about to introduce new drinking and driving restrictions for people aged 21 and under, where they must have a blood alcohol level of zero regardless of their licence category or driving experience.

I blogged before about how it's inappropriate to have these restrictions be age-based instead of experience-based, especially since the people in question are legally adults.

But today it just occurred to me to think about it from the opposite perspective:

If I, being 29 years old with no 21st-century driving experience, quickly cram in a few driving lessons with one of those driving schools that takes you up to a tiny rural town to do the G2 and manage to pass that test since there's no traffic around to freak me out, I can drive with a small amount of alcohol in my blood. (I think it's 0.05, but I'm not certain because I'm not in the market for any drinking and driving.)

But why should I be allowed to do that? What purpose does it serve? Why, when they were updating the legislation, didn't they make it illegal for me to drive with alcohol in my blood too? How is society better off if I'm allowed to drive with a small amount of alcohol in my blood than if I'm allowed to drive with no alcohol in my blood?

The ostensible reason for this age restriction:

Statistics show people aged 19 to 21 are nearly 1.5 times more likely than older drivers to be involved in fatal crashes and injuries as a result of drinking and driving.

So because I'm statistically less likely to be harmed as a result of the undesirable behaviour, I'm allowed to engage in the undesirable behaviour? Based on that logic, I should be allowed to have guns and drugs.

(Also, people aged 19 to 21 are more likely than older drivers to be involved? So they're counting drivers and passengers aged 19 to 21, but only drivers who are older than that? Really? I wouldn't be surprised to learn that statistically the set of drivers and passengers overall is 1.5 times as large as the set of drivers only.)

When all this started, Dalton McGuinty said:

"Perhaps the most precious thing we have in society is our children, and that includes our older children,"

"We owe it to our kids to take the kinds of measures that ensure that they will grow up safe and sound and secure, and if that means a modest restriction on their freedoms until they reach the age of 22, then as a dad, I'm more than prepared to do that."

Oh, I see. You're "more than prepared" to place "a modest restriction on their freedom", but don't even consider in passing extending this to a modest restriction on your own freedom, not even to add credibility to and eliminate the greatest flaws in your legislation.

I said it two years ago and I'll say it again: I'm glad he's not my father.

Things amazon.ca Should Invent: tell us the shipping method when we pay for our cart

I blogged before about how amazon.ca is now using UPS for its shipping, apparently in addition to Canada Post. I find this horrendously inconvenient, but when I emailed them to complain they told me that there's no way for me to set personal shipping method preferences.

If they can't do that (or, you know, just ship by Canada Post like normal people), they should allow us to see who the shipper will be when we make our cart. You can already tweak your cart to try to leverage discounts, see how different shipping options will affect the ETA, see how shipping items separately or changing shipping speed will affect the price, etc. Why not add an option to tell you which shipper will be used if you order now?

Surely the computer system knows this. (If it were down to human intervention, then we could obviously set a single shipper preference.) If they tell us when we're making our carts, then we can make informed decisions, and maybe they'll get more people paying to upgrade their shipping so they can get the kind of shipping they want.

Politicolinguistics

1. Why are people saying "affirmative action" all the sudden?

The phrase "affirmative action" has been in headlines recently with reference to a federal government program. I find this completely bizarre, because federal doesn't call it affirmative action. Federal calls it Employment Equity. My understanding is that the term "affirmative action" is USian.

There are 11,600 google hits for the phrase "affirmative action" on federal government websites. The first of these is about the Employment Equity program, and nearly all of the rest of the first page refer to programs from other jurisdictions.

Meanwhile, there are nearly ten times as many google hits for "employment equity" on federal government sites.

However, as of this posting, there are 88 Canadian news articles for "affirmative action" and only 37 for "employment equity".

How on earth did that happen?

2. What's up with spinny legislation names?

The names of a couple of new pieces of legislation have caught my attention recently. These pieces of legislation are called the Truth in Sentencing Act and the Strengthening the Value of Canadian Citizenship Act. The reason they caught my attention is because the names are so spinny, in that they sound like they've been named by the PR department.

I don't think federal legislation names are usually that spinny. Skimming the alphabetical list of all the federal laws, it doesn't look like most of them are. The vast majority of the names seem completely neutral to me, and even those that aren't 100% neutral aren't nearly as spinny as these two new pieces of legislation.

Is this new, or have I just not noticed it before? Am I missing equally spinny legislation names? (If so, post them in the comments!) The Clarity Act and the Accountability Act come to mind, but that depends on the exact content (I'm not particularly fluent in any legislation.)

If it is new, do they not think it's detrimental to the credibility of the legislation and the government? Because I don't know about you, but it immediately puts my antennae up.

How oppressors work

Some people want to ban burqas/niqabs because they think the wearers are being oppressed into wearing them, and they think banning the garments will put an end to this oppression.

What I'm wondering: if you're enough of an oppressor to bring your family to a new country but then forbid them from wearing that country's conventional standard of dress if they choose to do so, why would a ban make you shrug your shoulders and say "Oh, okay, they can expose their faces in public then" rather than just forbidding your family members from leaving the house?

It would be interesting to take a poll of parents, and ask them "If an activity your child was involved in changed its uniform to something that you consider to be far too revealing for your child to wear in public, would you allow your child to continue the activity?"

Help me not be one of those assholes

One of my biggest pet peeves is people who cannot see the point of view of a mindset that they themselves have had. For example, parents who can't look at a situation from a kid's point of view, married people who can't put themselves in the shoes of someone who lives alone, professionals who have forgotten what it's like to be in university, etc.

Now I'm afraid I've become one of those assholes. Please rescue me!

First, some background: My first language is English. We spoke English in the home growing up and I went to school in English. The first language I learned in school was French. I got rather good at it and took more and more French classes, then went to university to study translation, started working at bilingual jobs, and eventually graduated and became a translator.

Here's how my job works: I receive texts in one language, translate them, and deliver them to the client in the other language.

When you were reading that sentence, which language were you picturing me receiving the texts in, and which language were you picturing me delivering to the client in? Please mentally answer this question before you read on.

Okay?

The fact of the matter is that I receive texts in French and translate them into English. (Some of you already knew that, I know.) This is standard operating procedure - the optimal situation is for translators to translate into their mother tongue.

But most non-translators, when they find out I'm a translator, think I translate from English to French.

Why do they think that? Did you think that when I asked you above? If so, why?

Here's where the assholery comes in: I used to think that myself. When I was aspiring to study translation but hadn't been accepted into the program yet, I thought I would be translating English to French. That's just how I assumed it would work. And I remember feeling vaguely disappointed when I found out it's French to English, as though that's something of an insult to my intelligence. But now I can't for the life of me remember why I thought that, which makes me one of those assholes.

Please, save me from my own assholery! Why did I think I'd be translating English to French?

The question no one has asked yet about the language test for new immigrants

I'm not in a position to evaluate the test itself. It pings my bad idea radar, but I can't make any definitive statements without more sample questions. And, of course, the idea of not having an exemption for people whose first (and perhaps only) language is already English or French is just as silly as it sounds. But after looking at the one sample question provided by the Toronto Star, the first question that comes to mind is:

Who stands to profit from this test?

The question provided shows a pie chart of Tomoko's expenses, broken down as follows:

Rent and food = 45%
Study materials = 25%
Clothes = 15%
Entertainment = 15%

Then some sentences about the pie chart are provided, and the candidate is instructed to correct the sentences. The first sentence given is:

Tomoko spends an equal amount of money on rent, food, study materials and entertainment.

The correct answer is to change "equal" to "unequal". But I didn't get that right away, and I don't know if it ever would have occurred to me to answer that way. I was reading the sentence wondering "Is this sentence trying to say rent=food=study materials=entertainment? Because rent and food aren't broken down separately. In any case, study materials is more than entertainment. So what are they asking me?" I probably would have ended up writing something true but far more complicated, like "Tomoko spends more on rent and food combined than on study materials, and more on study materials than on entertainment."

Part of the reason I didn't see the desired answer is because food and rent are a single item on the pie chart but listed as two separate, comma-delineated items in the question, which made me think the question is asking me for something more complicated than it is, on the assumption that this change is meaningful. In most language tests I've taken, when something is different in two different places on the same page, that's meaningful. (And I'd love to know the story of how that happened! If I or anyone on my team had been translating it, we would never have let that through and would have pointed it out to the client as something that might prevent candidates from being evaluated perfectly fairly.)

Another part of the reason is that in the many language tests and other tests I've taken and real-life situations I've been in, equal vs. unequal is never really a factor. More vs. less is a factor and specific numbers are a factor, but I have never in my life needed to think about equal vs. unequal in this sort of way. It's just never been the sort of thing that is meaningful enough to be on a test because it's so excessively obvious.

I understand the words perfectly, of course. It's just not within the scope of my experience with Things That A Test Might Be Asking Me. Understand, this sample was the very first time I've ever seen the IELTS, and this equal vs. unequal question was the very first IELTS question I ever saw. I didn't know what to expect, I didn't know if it would be insultingly easily or humblingly difficult, I didn't know what kinds of things they were looking for or what kinds of skills they were looking to test. All I had going in was a lifetime as a native speaker of English and decades of experience as a student of languages and as a student in general. It was not a failure of my English skills, it was a result of my lack of familiarity with this particular test.

"But you're just a mildly interested passer-by clicking on an internet link," you might be thinking, "In real life people prepare for tests!"

Yeah, that's why I'm wondering who profits.

In googling about this test, I found a lot of things for sale. Sample tests, exercise booklets, preparation kits, tutoring services - often at prices that would put a significant dent in a newcomer's budget. Free sample tests (some of dubious quality) certainly do exist, but for-pay materials fall into one's lap far more readily.

People do tend to get significantly lower marks when taking a test sight unseen than when they know what to expect from the test. For example, the result of my first professionally-administered IQ test was 135. Subsequent tests (both professionally-administered and not) clocked in at 150. During the first test, I just stared at the memory test pictures for the designated amount of time and struggled through the questions. In subsequent tests I knew they'd be asking things like "How many bluebirds are there?" or "What time does the store open?", so I was able to focus on those things and make good use of my memorizing time. The first time around, I guessed on every single memory question. Now, I systematically memorize the exact things they're looking for and get every question right with certainty. Familiarity with the test itself makes a massive difference, even if the candidate's skills level is the same.

And there seems to be a huge for-profit industry out there charging money to make people familiar with the IELTS test. If I were an investigative reporter looking for a juicy story, or a political partisan intent on bringing the current government down, I'd be digging into seeing exactly who stands to pocket these profits. If I were a member of the current government trying to make this policy look credible, I'd be working on making test preparation materials readily available at no cost, and/or work on making sure every single question in the version of the test administered to our immigrants is so clear and unambiguous in its expectations that there's no penalty for never having seen the test before.

Update: This is an interesting development. Language Log has determined that the sample test provided by the Star is not, in fact, a typical IELTS question. It seems it's an excerpt from unofficial training materials.

Several questions remain: So what does an actual IELTS question look like? Given that native speakers and second-language speakers make different kinds of mistakes, can the IELTS fairly and usefully assess native speakers? And what is the motivation behind suddenly testing native speakers? Is there a particular existing problem that this is meant to address? What is gained?

Things They Should Invent: penance for cheaters

This post was inspired by this David Eddie column, where a woman who has been in a committed relationship for years finds herself thinking that perhaps she might like to try being with a man.

David Eddie says:

In other words, if you plan on having an affair with someone, you should first break things off with the person with whom you are in love, and have, by your testimonial, a committed relationship.

You could do it nicely, of course. Tell her (a compassionate version of) the truth. Something like: “Listen, I have a little matter I need to get out of my system, this kooky kink called heterosexuality, and unless I do it I’m afraid I’ll always be curious and could not in good faith go through with marrying you. Of course, I understand if you say no. But do you think you could see your way clear to waiting for me while I work this out?”

It occurred to me while reading this that one of the many possible outcomes is that, while Girlfriend doesn't specifically offer to wait, maybe Ms. Bicurious discovers rather quickly that having a male partner doesn't live up to her fantasy and goes crawling back to Girlfriend while Girlfriend still loves her (because you don't just stop loving someone like flicking a switch).

And it occurred to me that if it played out this way, Girlfriend should get some kind of credit or compensation or something. After all, she was a good girl, devoted to her partner, secure in her sexuality. Shouldn't that count for something?

So what they should do is when a couple is trying to save their relationship after an affair, the marriage counsellor should impose a penance on the cheater. It could be something intended to put the wronged party's mind at ease (e.g. they're allowed to snoop in the cheater's email for six months), or it could be punitive (e.g. the cheater has to do the dishes for a year). Both parties agree on what seems reasonable, sign a contract, and when the penance is completed the cheater is deemed to have paid their debt.

This way, the wronged party gets a sense of vindication, but the debt is also considered paid off once the penance is done, so the affair isn't looming over their head to be dredged up in arguments for the rest of their lives.

How to put eyedrops in if you're squeamish

This is not a proper medically approved method. This is a method that works for me. I'm inclined to freak out at the prospect of anything getting near my eyes, but I can do this calmly and comfortably.

1. Stand with your right shoulder facing the mirror.
2. Lean in close to the mirror and look at yourself in the mirror out of the corners of your eyes, turning your head only the absolute minimum necessary. For the rest of this process you will look ONLY at the reflection in the mirror. You will not look at your own hands or body or the eyedropper; look at these things in the mirror if you need to look at them. Maintain eye contact with your reflection as much as humanly possible.
3. Hold onto the bottom outside eyelashes of your left eye, and gently pull your bottom eyelid away from your eye as far as you comfortably can.
4. Drop the eyedrops into the little pocket created by your bottom left eyelid.
5. As soon as the drops go in, let go of your eyelid, shut your eyes, and tilt your head back. (This will keep you from blinking the drops out). Return your head to the normal position and do whatever you need to do to be comfortable without blinking furiously.
6. Once you're comfortable and the drops are settled in your left eye, do the other side.

This method is useful because you can't see the eyedropper or the drops coming at your eyes, you can only see the reflection in the mirror. Using the mirror and making eye contact with your reflection makes sure your eyes stay away from the dropper, so you can go through the process almost in the third person. But using the mirror instead of going by feel makes sure you aren't surprised when the drop hits your eye, which keeps you from fighting it off.