Why are people allowed to write laws when they can't accurately express their intentions?

Reading about the legal challenge to the laws surrounding prostitution, it seems apparent that the intention of the legislation was to prevent people from being forced/coerced/exploited into prostitution, without getting people in trouble for being prostitutes.

We can all wrap our brains around that concept. Even if we don't agree with it, we can easily grok what's being described. Even if you believe that all prostitutes are being forced/coerced/exploited - even if it turns out that in reality every single prostitute in the world is being forced/coerced/exploited - we can still conceptualize the theoretical difference between being forced/coerced/exploited into prostitution and willingly engaging in prostitution. It isn't a particularly difficult concept. (Just like how we can conceptualize the difference between a horse and a unicorn even if we don't believe in unicorns.)

So why can't they write the law to reflect these intentions, rather than making fussy and arbitrary rules about living off the avails and bawdy houses?

This happens quite frequently. They raised the age of consent to 16 in an alleged attempt to stop the sexual exploitation of minors, rather than writing legislation against the sexual exploitation of minors. I recently heard of a school that required students wearing uniform kilts to wear hosiery underneath to stop students from wearing the skirts too short and flashing their thongs - rather than just making a rule against flashing their thongs. They recently made age-specific changes to Ontario driver's licences to stop people from driving around with cars full of drunken screaming idiots, rather than making rules against driving around with cars full of drunken screaming idiots.

We can all conceptualize the nuance of the specific behaviour that these rules are trying to stop, and we can all see how the legislation as written doesn't precisely reflect the intentions, it just sort of generally correlates most of the time.

So why don't we demand competence from our legislators? Why are we, as a society, allowing people to write legislation when they can't clearly articulate their intentions?

Polar bear: "OMG, PUPPIES!"

Clicky

When do unto others doesn't work

I've been struggling for quite a long time to compose this post, because it's very hard to write without sounding whiny or "woe is me". So I'm going to cop out and state outright at the outset that my intention is not to sound whiny or "woe is me". My intention is simply to observe an invisible obstacle that makes it harder for people to understand each other and enjoy pleasant social interactions. I use many personal examples, but that's because those are most accessible to me - I'm not often inside other people's heads.

So this train of thought started with this:

When it comes to not understanding the inner state of minds too different from our own, most people also do a lousy job, Schwarz says. "But the non-autistic majority gets a free pass because, if they assume that the other person's mind works like their own, they have a much better chance of being right."

I've blogged before about how this is a problem for me as an introvert in making conversation with extroverts. It's also been a problem in other areas. For example, when I'm going through an emotionally difficult time, I tend to retreat within myself. Talking about it doesn't help - it actually makes it worse because it keeps me dwelling on it - I just need some time and space alone. However, sometimes my friends feel neglected when I withdraw, and if I tell them I'm withdrawing because I'm going through a difficult time, their feelings are hurt that I'm not confiding in them. So where an extrovert would be able to heal themselves and tend to their friends' feelings with a single action - by talking about their problem with their friends - I can't do both at once and they actually work at cross-purposes. If I heal myself I'm hurting my friends' feelings, and if I tend to my friends' feelings I'm hindering my healing.

Before I had even heard of the difference between introverts and extroverts, someone told me that a friend of his had just had her dog hit by a car, so they were taking her out to a bar to get drunk. I was shocked and appalled. How could you possibly think someone would want to go out when their dog had just died? They'd totally want to sit alone in a room and drink by themselves! How dare they burden a bereaved dog owner that way! So since I was completely unaware at the time that other people's brains and emotional needs worked differently from my own, if the bereaved dog owner had been my friend I totally wouldn't have given her what she needed (and would probably have abandoned her to wallow in her grief on the assumption that that's what she needed); and if the bereaved dog owner had been me, I would have been so pissed off at my friends for trying to take me out to a bar of all things, at a time like this!

This also applies in situations where your innocent individual preferences are different from the norm. For example, suppose someone decides to hold a barbecue in the park, with all kinds of sports activities for everyone to enjoy. Conventional wisdom is that this is good and fun and a win-win-win situation. The barbecue will feed everyone, and it's the kind of food that people actively enjoy eating. Being outdoors is nice, spending time with lots of people is nice, and sports activities are fun. So your typical person gets their hunger sated, the pleasure of yummy food, the enjoyment of being outdoors, the hap hits of social interaction and the fun of playing sports. If they were a Sim, their hunger, social and fun meters would all be going up, and they'd have a few positive moodlets. And on top of this all they get the social capital of having participated in the group activity.

However, I, personally, don't get pleasure from most of these things. I'm vegetarian, so a barbecue is always a struggle to find something I can eat (and what's usually available will do the job, but isn't the kind of thing I'd go out of my way to eat.) Spending a day outdoors in the park would get me bitten to death by mosquitoes - even if the typical person isn't being bothered at all - and if bugs get near the food I'm going to have a panic attack. Sports simply aren't fun for me, and as an introvert I am drained rather than energized by the large group. So, if I were a Sim, my hunger, social and fun meters would all be going down, and I'd have a few negative moodlets. (And, as we all know from playing the Sims, if your mood rating is too low, you can't doing activities you don't enjoy - the option simply isn't available in the menu until your mood rating goes up.) But if you tell people this, you're no fun, a stick in the mud, a spoilsport. So if I want to gain the social capital of having participated in the group activity, I need to convince people that my needs meters are going up and I'm full of positive moodlets when they're actually going down and full of negative moodlets. Then, once the activity is done and I'm back home, I have to treat all my mosquito bites and eat something that makes me happy and get my mood back up so I can function at work the next day, whereas the people who actually enjoy this activity are sated in every way and already have their mood back up. So it isn't just the fact that you don't have access to do unto others and it isn't just the fact that you have to perform to gain social capital rather than just being yourself, it's also way more time consuming to have needs and preferences that are different from others'. Not only can you not multi-task the barbecue into meeting multiple needs, but others assume your multiple needs have been met. "What do you mean you need to go home and relax and have something to eat? You've been at a barbecue all day!"

And another part of the problem is that even if you know other people's needs or preferences are different from your own, you don't necessarily know what they are. For example, now that I know something of introversion and extroversion, I know that an extrovert who has just lost her dog probably doesn't want to be left all alone. However, I would never ever in a million years come up with the idea of taking her to a bar. That is simply so far removed from anything that feels remotely helpful to me.

So what do we do with this? I'm not quite sure. But a good start would be to stop putting value judgments on individual preferences, and to be open to the fact that not everyone's mind works the same as our own. Something I've been experimenting with recently (not sure if it's a good idea or not, but I'm in a place where I have a bit of leeway) is being completely out about the fact that I'm not sure what to do and asking other people for advice. "Is it appropriate to ask the mother of the hospitalized preemie baby how her baby is doing?" "Is this the kind of event where it's better to arrive early or to arrive late?" "This is the first time I've trained anyone, at all ever, so if I'm ever being less helpful than I should don't hesitate to let me know, because I'll never figure it out otherwise." If it doesn't result in everyone thinking I'm a total idiot, maybe it will at least give people an idea of the range of things I do and don't know.

Le contexte est plus fort que le concept

A piece of evidence from a relatively high-profile local crime was found very close to my home. (No worries, I have no reason to believe my neighbourhood is any less safe than I thought it was.) It isn't too hard to figure out which recent news story I'm talking about, but I'm not naming names or identifying features for googleability reasons.

I've been following the media coverage closely and have been reading the associated comments threads, and one thing I discovered to my surprise was how much of the general public's speculation is just wrong because they lack what I will term hyper-local knowledge. By hyper-local knowledge, I mean familiarity with the usual behavioural patterns and motivations of people in this neighbourhood. Not in terms of normal human motivation, but rather smaller and fussier things, like where people would take a shortcut or a smoke break or walk a dog, which entrance people would use if approaching a certain building from a certain direction on foot, stuff like that.

It sounds so inconsequential, but I'm reading through the comments threads dismissing theories left and right with near-certainty. "No, a visitor to the neighbourhood would never use this street to get to that destination." "Actually, people leave their personal effects there all the time and it hardly warrants a second glance." "Yes, it isn't far, but they simply wouldn't come here unless they had a very specific reason. People just don't do that." "The only way a person with a car would end up there is if they were very familiar with the area and had been in that exact location for a specific reason previously."

I never would have thought this if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, but there are so many little nuances that you just don't perceive until you've spent a lot of time in a particular context. Half the time I can't even articulate why, but I'm absolutely certain that no one would ever to that thing one of the commentators is proposing. It's not like these commentators are stupid or ignorant or anything, they just don't know that people tend to run their dogs in this bit here, and sometimes they block off that sidewalk for construction, and the subsequent ripple effect in overall neighbourhood behaviour until you get to "Well, of COURSE he moved it! I would have moved it too! It's the obvious reaction!"

This makes me wonder how many thoughts and ideas I have that are just completely wrong because of some tiny little nuance that I can't even see.

(Fortunately, based on what I've seen in media coverage, the police do seem to have this hyper-local knowledge.)

Are we not holding the United States of America to high enough standards?

Barack Obama strikes me as a decent enough fellow. He seems capable of a certain amount of critical and nuanced thinking, and looks like he's generally trying to make good things happen and make bad things stop happening. He seems to have a reasonable quantity of perspective, wit and charm, and strikes me as the kind of person who would like to make the world a better place. And he also happens to be President of the United States of America.

This should all be unremarkable. Most people reading this have most of these characteristics. They should be a minimum starting point - an assumption until informed otherwise (apart from the President of the United States of America part, of course).

But I think today they were the rationale for awarding the Nobel Peace Prize.

Understand, I have nothing against Barack Obama. I find him a likable individual and very rarely end up shout at the TV when he's talking. It wouldn't surprise me if one day he did do something worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize.

But he hasn't done it yet. Basically all he's done is be President of the United States without being an idiot. And while that's a refreshing change, it isn't grounds for a Nobel Prize. It shouldn't even be noteworthy.

We, the international community, would never deem one of our own leaders Nobel-worthy just on the grounds of not being an idiot. We should hold the US to the same standard.

Teach me ebay etiquette

As an experiment, I bought a gizmo on ebay from china for 50 cents (it would normally retail for about $20 here). I received it, and it turns out it has a flaw that probably renders either useless or unsafe to use. (It's electric, and one of the plug prongs is loose.) No big deal, you get what you pay for, life goes on. I really just wanted to see what would happen. I don't feel in any way put out and, from a "time is money" perspective, this isn't worth any more of my attention.

My question: what do I do about feedback? I don't want to give positive feedback because the gizmo is flawed. However, it doesn't seem fair to give non-positive feedback when I'm not giving the seller an opportunity to resolve the problem. I don't know what happens if you give no feedback whatsoever.

Any thoughts on what I should do? What would you want me to do if you were the seller?

Blah

I have like three long posts festering in my head, but they're the kind of things that require organization instead of braindumping and I can't seem to convince myself to buckle down and put together cohesive prose like a grownup.

Why doesn't baby brain make people smarter?

I've heard a lot of anecdotal evidence that when you're pregnant you get tired and sometimes forgetful. And it's a fact of life that new babies wake up at night a lot, waking up their parents and leaving them sleep-deprived, and everyone knows from firsthand experience that you don't think quite so clearly when sleep-deprived.

In my own observations of people dealing with pregnancy and new babies, the result seems to be that they lose a level of critical thinking. Where before they would go "Interesting article. I wonder if the assumptions are valid and broadly applicable? I wonder how this premise is affected by the economic stimulus? What are the environmental implications? Would this hold if the stock market crashes and interest rates skyrocket?" they now go "OMG, you GUYS! Check out this article, it is SO TRUE!"

Doesn't this strike you as poor design? Why make the people responsible for the most helpless of our young temporarily dumber? How is that good for the perpetuation of the species? Wouldn't it be far more sensible for pregnancy hormones to give your cognitive powers a boost?

I love Improv Everywhere

Invisible dogs!

This would actually be interesting as an acting/improv training exercise, because you have to get in character as the dog. You see a pigeon or some garbage or another dog, what would your dog do? I think it would be a good way to practise committing to a character without the complexity of a human character that you don't know everything about.

Things They Should Invent: clear communication meter

Sometimes I think I'm communicating perfectly clearly with no room for ambiguity, and my interlocutor doesn't understand what I'm getting at at all. And sometimes someone is telling me something that makes no logical sense whatsoever, but they're acting like what they're saying is perfectly obvious. And sometimes the miscommunication in these cases is so great that the speaker can't even tell what aspect of it is not obvious to the listener. (This isn't a question of misunderstanding the language being spoken, it's a question of the clarity/logic of the message being communicated.)

As a translator and as a human being living in the world, I know intellectually that both parties are responsible for ensuring that communication is clear (assuming both parties are more or less equals - when an adult is talking to a three-year-old, it's obviously the adult's responsibility to understand and make themselves understood). But it's still frustrated, and there's often a part of me mentally screaming at my interlocutor "STOP BEING STUPID!" And if this happens often, it's very easy to feel like I'm the only sensible person in a world full of idiots, when in fact it's quite possible that I'm the idiot.

I wish there was some way to objectively measure who is making more sense and who is at greater fault for the miscommunication. That might make it easier to clear up any miscommunication, and people could get a sense of how often they're the idiot in the conversation. Maybe they could make an iphone app to do this.

Things They Should Study: ROI of socio-economic security

The older I get, the more of life I experience, the more I come to recognize the vast and disproportionate value of security, in the socio-economic sense of the word. Having a Good Job. Having safe housing. Having dental insurance. Having a bit of money put aside that you can throw at any moderate unexpected problem that might arise. Having a role in society that is generally considered respectable. Having the majority of people you encounter every day not look down on you. Simply being able to do, without drama or a second thought, whatever small and harmless thing you want to do, whether it's having a long hot shower, or making love to the consenting adult of your choice, or dyeing your hair red, or enjoying a glass of wine before bed.

The older I get, the more of life I experience, the more I enjoy doing what socio-economic security I do have and enjoy being empowered to do these kinds of small and harmless things that you can't always do (or at least not without drama) when you don't have socio-economic security, the more I become convinced that the benefits of socio-economic security are exponentially greater than any investment required to achieve it. I've already blogged about how I think the best way to help consumer confidence (and therefore economic recovery) is the perception among the general population that their jobs are safe. I've also found that the more social acceptance and less social censure I receive, the less defensive and more socially pleasant I become (which snowballs into even more social acceptance and less social censure), and I'm also in a better position to truly see and respect other people's points of view when I don't feel defensive about my own. I also find that in general, having a sense of my place in the world makes me a more productive citizen of the world. For most of my life, the world was a blur of confusion, swirling around me in an impenetrable mass of unwritten rules and unspoken expectations and uncertain futures. But the more socio-economic security I achieved, the more this blur came into focus. Instead of stumbling through a fog, it's more like walking down a busy street. Still lots going on, still lots of unknowns, but I have a better sense of what they are. Instead of using all my energy on not falling into unseen traps, I can spend some of it on inventing stuff and learning things and thinking about the societal implications of my choices. It's all very Maslowian.

So, thinking about all this, I think it would be fascinating if someone could quantify the ROI of providing people with socio-economic security. What would we have to invest to give everyone safety, a respectable place in society, and the leeway they need so that an innocent mistake or stroke of bad luck won't ruin them and so that they can enjoy harmless indulgences often enough to keep morale up? And what kinds of benefits would we gain from it?

Currently pondering

Suppose OHIP started covering 100% of the cost of glasses, including frames - whichever frames the client ends up choosing.

How would that affect the fashion aspect of the eyewear market?

Because fashion is a factor. You wear your glasses on your face, and often all the time. I'm sure the primary argument against OHIP covering 100% of the cost of frames is "But then people would get posh expensive designer frames for free!"

But would designer frames still be expensive if the status symbol factor wasn't there? Would more people buy designer frames, or would fewer people buy them since they're no longer a symbol of wealth? Given the (in my view tacky) habit of certain designers (**cough cough dolce&gabbana cough**) of putting their brand in giant letters on the arms of the frames, it seems some people value the designer name. Unless they merely tolerate the designer name to get the frames that they like best. (Personally, the big designer logo is a dealbreaker. It strikes me as hella non-U, not that I can claim to be U.) Are designer frames objectively better? (I don't know if they are, I can't afford them.) How would this affect the fashion choices of the general public? What if OHIP didn't put a limit on the number of pairs of glasses you bought?

State of everything

Craig Ferguson thinks everything sucks:



Louis CK thinks everything's amazing:

"Everything is amazing and nobody is happy"
Uploaded by Meowbay. - See more comedy videos.

I agree with them both.

"Microblogging site Twitter"

Sometimes when news articles refer to Twitter, the first mention describes it as "microblogging site Twitter".

Is there anyone - even one single person in the world - who knows what microblogging is but doesn't know what Twitter is?

I did hear of microblogging in passing before I became familiar with Twitter, but the concept didn't make sense to me. Then, later on, when I found out that various famous people I want to stalk like and admire were tweeting, I went and checked out their Twitter feeds and from that got a sense of what Twitter is. And from this, I groked the concept of microblogging.

But there has been no point in my internet experience where my concept of what Twitter is could ever have been clarified by describing it as a "microblogging site."

Things Sleeptracker Should Invent: "I'm going to bed now" button

I've been playing with a Sleeptracker recently. I might post a more comprehensive review later, but my preliminary assessment based on the first couple of tries is that it does what it says it does.

However, there is one thing that annoys me. If you want it to track the quality of your sleep during the night (rather than just waking you up at an optimal time), you have to set a "to bed" time, i.e. tell it in advance what time you're going to bed. Setting the "to bed" time involves as much fussy button-pressing as setting an alarm time on a regular digital watch, which is annoying because I don't go to bed at the same time every night and despite my best efforts never end up in bed at the time I planned to - which is why I need a Sleeptracker to wake me up in the first place. So this means that if I want to track my sleep quality, I have to fuss with buttons and set the time just before I go to bed every single night. Not especially user-friendly, and probably won't be something I can keep up in the long term.

What I'd like to be able to do is press one button (or one button sequence) to tell the tracker "I'm going to bed right now." Then it automatically sets the "to bed" time as whatever the current time is. Surely we have the technology to do that?

Happy International Translation Day!

As ever, using Fête St-Jerôme as an excuse to post an Eddie Izzard bootleg*




*(Dear Eddie: Massive, massive respect for your ever-increasing awesomeness and I'mma let you finish, but if you'd bring your tour to Canada we wouldn't need all these bootlegs.)

Teach me eBay etiquette

I emailed an ebay seller asking how much shipping to Canada would cost. Seller quotes an amount, I bid accordingly and win. Then I get a standard "YAY, you won!" email from the seller quoting a shipping price that's 20% higher.

The item ended up selling for close to my upper bid, so this 20% higher shipping price is enough to tip it from "cheaper than retail" to "more expensive than retail."

I already sent the seller a polite email asking WTF, but if they won't lower the shipping price back to their originally quoted amount, is there any way I can cancel the transaction without incurring any sort of penalty? I don't even particularly want the seller to get any penalty, I just don't want to buy the thing if shipping is 20% higher.

Update: Seller corrected it with no drama, all is good.

How to teach financial literacy in high school without changing the curriculum

A recurring theme during this recession is that they should teach financial literacy in high school. Of course, adding mandatory courses isn't that simple. There's only room for so many courses over the four years, there are all kinds of other courses that people want to be made mandatory, and there still has to be room for people to take electives like French and Physics and History all the way through to Grade 12.

So here's what we do: make every single word problem in the textbooks about a financial literacy concept, whenever mathematically possible.

For example, one thing I learned in one of my high school math classes was the formula for compound interest. M = P(1 + i)^n. I still use it to this day when trying to plan my personal finances. However, every word problem we had on this concept was about earning interest on investments. They could quite easily have made some of the word problems about credit card interest. Same mathematical concept, same word problem, but now you've taught how credit card interest works, which is one of the concepts people are complaining that they don't teach in high school.

Apparently calculus is used in economics similarly to how it's used in physics. I don't know enough about economics to know how this works. (And I find it SO WEIRD that so artificial a concept as economics would follow the mathematical laws of the physical universe.) But they could have taught this quite easily with a sentence or two about how calculus is used in economics, followed by some economics-based word problems. Then everyone who takes calculus will know a bit about economics. They did that with physics - I learned about derivatives and velocity and acceleration in Calculus class before I even took the relevant Physics class - so it shouldn't be any harder to do it with economics.

As an added bonus, it will make mathematics seem more relevant to students, because everyone knows you have to do money stuff when you're a grownup.

It will take some rewriting of textbooks, but that's more painless and possibly faster than rewriting the curriculum.

Real-life Things They Should Invent

Voting for Project 10 to the 100 is finally open! You can vote here!

I'm trying to decide which one to vote for. Obviously my first thought is either the one that will give the most help to the most people, or the one that would be most beneficial to me personally. But then I started wondering whether I should also be thinking about feasibility? Which of these projects can actually be achieved (or have significant progress be made) with $2 million? Which of these projects could Google actually make happen (as opposed to being dependent on external factors)? So I'm going to have to give it more thought before I vote.

You should go check out the finalists and vote too!

I had a long, difficult day of translation today

But not nearly as difficult as this guy.

This is why I hope to be able to stick to written translation for my entire career.

Only one person stopped to help

Sometimes in the Star's Acts of Kindness and other good deed stories, you there are stories where someone's in trouble and only one person stopped to help, everyone else just walked by, pretending they didn't see it.

Today I saw a lady fall down, and another lady immediately stopped to help. I didn't see any further need for help (fallen-down lady was getting up, no apparent injuries, they didn't need more people to pick up her personal effects) so I didn't linger and, to protect fallen-down lady's dignity and privacy, did my very best not to stare.

What would they have me do instead? I certainly wouldn't want a whole crowd gathering if I were the one who fell down.

The choreography of spare change

I was walking down the street, wearing a skirt and blouse (no jacket) and carrying a large purse with my raincoat draped over it. Some guy stops me (yes, actually stops me, as though he was going to ask for directions) and asks for spare change.

If I were to give him spare change, I would have to take my raincoat off my purse and shift it to the other arm, open my purse, dig out my wallet, open the change section of my wallet, and decide which change to give him.

I wonder if he seriously thought I was going to do all that?

I wonder if panhandlers ever get money - like at all ever - from people who don't have pockets with change in them?

Things They Should Invent: medical symptom word bank (for patients)

When trying to explain the value of using target language native speaker translators, or of having translation services available even to people who can function on an everyday basis in the target language, I often ask people to think of the last time they experienced medical symptoms that confused or frightened them - didn't know WTF was going on, couldn't google up a cause - and then describe these symptoms in a language other than their mother tongue. Try it, I'll wait. See? You lose nuance and feel less in control of what you're saying, and this is exacerbated when you're confused or frightened or in pain.

One of my favourite reference tools from back in the days when I did more medical translation is this sort of a cheat sheet for student clinicians in psychology. It's like a massive multiple choice test of all the things they need to be diagnosing, listing each factor/indicator, and then the adjectives that can be used to describe that factor/indicator. So mood can be euthymic, affect can be labile, etc. I did rather extensive research when I first started doing this so I am familiar with the concepts, but the vocabulary isn't always right on the tip of my tongue. I read the source text, I grok exactly what they're saying, I know there's a nice psychy word for it, but it isn't coming to me. I do have the tools and skills to look up each term individually, but it's much faster and easier to just scan my cheat sheet and suddenly "Echolalia! That's it!"

I'm thinking a similar tool could be very useful to patients whose first language isn't English (or even to children who don't know what kind of answers the doctor wants). Just a list of words that might be useful, grouped by category. Pain can be: dull, throbbing, burning, excruciating. A wound can be: open, scabbed, weeping, festering, bleeding. The vocabulary would have to be more everyday than my cheat sheet ("How are you today?" "Euthymic, yourself?"), but it would still be a huge help.

You know how it's easy to read in other languages, but really hard to talk at the level you can read at? Like (assuming you're an Anglophone) even if you don't think you speak French, you could totally figure out how to, say, buy tickets on the Juste pour rire website. But even if you do think you speak French, you couldn't get up on the stage and actually perform stand-up in French (unless you're Eddie Izzard, but we already know he's a looney.)

With this word bank tool, coming up with le mot juste to describe pain or symptoms or bodily fluids would be as easy as reading. It would be like skimming the Juste pour rire website, looking for tickets, and thinking "Hmmm, the word for "ticket" is billet so Billetterie looks like a promising link" rather than having to come up with the word billetterie all on your own. Patients could describe their symptoms in a more precise and nuanced fashion plus have a better idea of what sorts of things the doctors want them to tell them about, doctors could give them better care, and all it would take is an hour of brainstorming and a few photocopies.

Things They Should Invent: optional accent sensitivity in search engines

Some of my tools are accent-blind (i.e. they read ou and où the same) and others are accent-sensitive (i.e. they read ou and où as two different words). As a lazy Anglophone, I prefer accent blindness, but sometimes accent-sensitivity would be convenient to filter out interference.

I'd love it if we could have a checkbox to turn accent-sensitivity on or off depending on our needs.

Letter to my 18-year-old self

I just realized that it was 10 years ago that I started university. Here's some things I wish I'd known then:

- Do half an hour of homework or studying per course every day. That's all it takes. You'll be on top of everything.
- Move out of your parents' house. You'll be fine, really. And you'll prove your parents wrong about all kinds of things that they're annoying about.
- Your boss shouldn't be playing mind games with you. Your boss should be protecting you when the customers sexually harass you. Your boss shouldn't be requiring you to cash in and cash out and take out the garbage and clean the bathrooms before and after your paid shift. There are jobs available where they don't do this. You don't have to keep your job just because you have a job.
- Apply for every single on-campus job you think you might possibly be able to do. Apply for every single work placement or translation practicum you can find.
- Apartments don't have to suck. If the apartment you're looking at sucks, say no thank you and look at a different apartment.
- Prioritize living within easy walking distance of a grocery store. You don't need parks, you don't need landscaping or scenery, you don't need in-building amenities other than laundry. You do need to be able to run out and buy milk in the middle of the night if necessary.
- Don't stop reading recreationally just because you're in university. Keep your library card active and add anything that piques your interest to your holds list.
- 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.
- Contact the second-year-entry program you're after and ask them if they have any suggestions on what you should take first year. They will actually answer your questions, and you'll be better prepared and have met some program requirements ahead of time.
- Be out about your phobias. People will help you. Get insecticide with a paper label, and have someone remove the label for you. That solves the disgusting picture problem and gives you evil death powers over the yucky things.
- Be out about your insecurities in general. Your interlocutors will compensate. In the real world, people want you to feel like you belong.
- Don't try to save money by scrimping on internet service. It will only depress you.
- Make a point of consuming more information about Canadian politics than about US politics.
- People aren't going to think you're weird if you bing off a quick email thanking them for whatever. Seriously.
- Wear skirts. Wear dresses. Wear v-neck shirts. Wear t-shirt bras. Wear teacup eyeglass frames, and buy the best lenses available. Wear necklaces. Worry about heel width, not heel height. Buy every well-fitting pair of black pants you meet. Buy two of every shirt you fall in love with. Buy black cotton knee socks. If a pair of pants fits perfectly except for gapping in the back, any competent alterationist (and often your own mother) can put darts in the back to fix that. If your feet can go all the way into the shoes but they're a bit tight around the toes, any competent shoemaker can stretch them at a very reasonable price.
- When buying a new computer, get more RAM and more disk space than you expect you would ever need.
- You can trust your money instincts. You can trust your writing voice. You can trust your research skills even if you do end up sucking at documentation class.
- If something makes you cry, stop doing/thinking about the thing that makes you cry. Distract yourself. Run up the stairwell until your thighs fill with lactic acid. Sing nasty songs at the top of your lungs. Have a drink. Eat chocolate. Go to sleep. Then revisit the crying trigger later once you've regrouped. You'll save yourself a lot of time that way.

How do minor set-backs affect self-reported happiness?

This post was triggered by, but is completely unrelated to, this Language Log post about self-reported happiness studies.

Last night my glasses broke (yes, again) in what is hopefully a minor and fixable way, yet one that requires immediate attention. So now my plans for things I have to get done this weekend all have to be shuffled around. I'm annoyed and inconvenienced and have looming over me the possibility that they might not be fixable and I might have to replace them immediately and then when I go to a wedding next weekend I'll look like an idiot with suboptimal glasses.

So if you had me do a self-reported happiness study right this minute, my happiness would come out lower than if my glasses hadn't broke. Yes, I know intellectually that they mean a broader, more long-term definition of happiness, but right at this moment the feeling of contentment seems like only a distant memory.

It would be interesting to study if things like this have an affect on happiness studies.

Pure cute

(H/T Poodle)

Currently wondering

The cool kids in high school.

You only ever heard them spoken of as Other (at least in my corner of the world and of the internet). Is there anyone in the world who feels like they actually were one of the cool kids in high school?

So sweet and so cold

I noticed recently that whenever I bite into a peach (even one that has been sitting on the counter at room temperature for several days), the inside is cold. So I tried washing a peach in warm water, but the inside was still cold when I bit into it. It has never been in a fridge, unless the farmer at the market had it in a fridge, but I bought it three days ago and it's been at room temperature ever since.

I wonder why it's cold?

Re: Caster Semenya

Just think about this, quietly and to yourself, for as long as you need to:

Are you, personally, certain that you have all the sexual organs associated with your gender and none of the sexual organs associated with the other gender? Both internally and externally? Are you sure?

Some people are sure, I know. If you've had a tubal or a c-section or exploratory surgery to diagnose the cause of your infertility, you probably know for certain. But not everyone knows for certain. I don't know for certain. I know I have breasts and a vulva, both of which appear within the range of normal to medical and intimate examination. I know I have a vagina and a cervix, or something that resembles a cervix closely enough that no doctor has ever commented upon giving me a pap smear. I know I have something the behaves enough like a uterus that it produces menstruation that is regulated with birth control pills, and stands up to the palpation part of a standard pelvic examination. I can't tell you for certain that I don't have secret internal testes. I can't tell you for certain that my uterus is fully operational (I've never been pregnant). But I'm a woman, there's no question of that. I just...am. Even if I found out I had internal testes, I'd still want to put on lipstick before leaving the house.

Can you say with absolute certainty that you have lady parts, all your lady parts, and nothing but lady parts? (Unless, of course, you have gentleman parts). If so, could you say so with equal certainty at the age of 18? If you found out tomorrow that you have some bits that aren't consistent with your gender, or are missing some bits that are usually found in your gender, would that change you? Would your sexual preferences change? Would your personal behaviour change?

Teach me about the used car market

Apparently the quality of used vehicles is improving.

Interesting! Useful, if you're in the market for a used car!

But why does the used car market exist?

I totally get why someone would buy a used car, but why do so many people want to sell their now apparently perfectly good cars? I can see how some people might want to upgrade and have the very latest thing, but I can't imagine why so many people would do it that a whole used car market would exist, and buying a used car would be commonplace rather than exceptional.

I have no frame of reference here. I've never bought or shopped for a car, my parents have always bought their cars new and used them until they died (the cars, not the parents) and no one I know has ever sold their car. So help me out. What am I missing?

How does the United States of America continue to function with insurance premiums like these?

Via David Olive, a chart of US health insurance premium projections.

The general thesis is "OMG, they're going to get so high!" But my first thought was "OMG, they ARE so high!" $13,000 a year. Thirteen thousand!

Imagine having an extra $13,000 in necessary expenses, on top of your existing necessary expenses. To put that in perspective, that's more than I paid in taxes last year. Could you fit that into your budget? Because I certainly couldn't!

When I run the numbers on finding another $13,000, I've got a two-hour commute and bugs crawling out of the walls, and even then it's hella tight. I've got no savings, I'm wearing cheap men's runners for everyday and improperly-fitting bras, rationing cheese and internet access, hairdressing is not an option, and even then it might not work out. And that's without children, without a car, without travel.

But when you go to the states, you see people with children and cars and vacations. You see people wearing clothes that look like they were purchased new. People have had their hair done. It's normal to have wedding rings made of gold and diamonds. They have tivos and people buy books and DVDs and go to movies and out to dinner...how on earth do they make it work? Seriously. I cannot grok at all how their society as a whole can function with insurance premiums like that.

St. Paul's by-election roundup

1. I don't appreciate this by-election being made into a referendum on the HST. The HST simply isn't important enough to me to make or break my vote. Yes, I very much want them to correct the oversight in the transition benefit, but as for the tax itself? Meh. Any protest vote against the Liberals that I might choose to make would be about their habit of introducing poorly-thought-out legislation (banning plastic bags at the LCBO, restrictions for new drivers that are based on age rather than driving experience, breed-specific legislation against pitbulls when they can't even define the breed well enough). Any vote for the Liberals I might choose to make would be a combination of because they haven't fucked things up, because their candidate is admirable, and because I don't want my riding to turn blue. The HST doesn't come into it, and I don't appreciate my vote be interpreted solely as commentary on this issue that I don't care about.

Normally, elections are my favourite sport. This is the first time that voting felt like a duty rather than a privilege.

2. If this were a "Who has the best advertising?" contest, Eric Hoskins would totally win in my corner of the world. I got multiple flyers from him, all well-targeted to renters' issues. (A couple did dig at the other parties, which I don't much enjoy, but overall they were positive.) From Sue-Ann Levy, I got one flyer with the general thesis of "OMG, the HST is going to raise the prices of [insert list of things I don't even buy ever]." From Julian Heller, I got one flyer with the general thesis of "Hi, I'm not a Liberal and I'm opposed to the HST!" From the other candidates, nothing.

3. Weirdly, I wasn't on the electors' list. I lived at this address the last provincial election (the one with the MMP referendum) and voted then, but this time I didn't get a voter's card. Still voted without a hitch (luckily they accepted my G1 - my new health card (the one with two pictures) doesn't have my address on it!). AND I saw the awesome greyhound that I saw last election was there again! I still didn't pet him, but maybe I should have. We could be election buddies!

Wherein I nag you for the last time to sponsor Eddie Izzard

September 15 (which is just starting right about now in the UK) is the last day of Eddie's run. He's going to end up in Trafalgar Square, where he left way back on July 27.

Donations are still being matched, Eddie's still injured, Eddie's still going for a personal best tomorrow, the kitten still has a home. In just a few hours this complete act of lunacy will be a fait accompli.

Eddie has over a million Twitter followers. If he doesn't manage to raise 100,000 pounds with this incredibly excessive act of human endurance, that will be a blemish on the honour of humanity. Now is the time to stop procrastinating and donate.

You can follow the adventure on Twitter, the blog, the Eddie Izzard forum, and this running forum.

Godspeed Eddie!

Donate here.

Update: HE DID IT! 43 marathons in 51 days, personal best on the last one, and totally upstaged the plinth lady on the way in (here at 31:15). Congrats Eddie!!! Hope you can sleep well soon.

In case you're thinking "Crap, I meant to donate but I missed it!", as of right this minute they still seem to be accepting and matching donations here.

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.