It's not always about You

I make a point of not doing that thing when you talk in the second person when you're actually talking about yourself.

See what I did there?

If you didn't, be careful reading on because you might start seeing it a lot. Many people don't notice it when they hear it, much less out of their own mouths.


I remember when I first encountered this. It was in French class in about grade two, and the teacher was telling us about the different pronouns: je, tu, il/elle/on... "on". He had to explain to us the meaning of "on", the third person singular, which is common in French but obscure in English.

In English, the equivalent would be "one"; specifically, the third definition under the heading "pronoun" on Oxford's online definition of "one" (as in "one does not simply walk into Mordor"). Our French teacher tried describing this to us, but many of us seven year olds hadn't yet encountered it in English (or at least not that we'd recognized).

So he tried again, describing the generic "you". "you know how some people will say 'you always have to look both ways before crossing the street'" and I thought (particularly after having just been told that "tu" is for the second person) that that was such a peculiar way of saying things. Also, no, I hadn't encountered that either.

Clearly, I eventually caught on to the meaning of "one" and its distinctness from "you", as one does (or as you do), and I never let go of that feeling that said that this was a strange and unnecessary way of using "you" when there's a perfectly unambiguous alternative.


I don't remember when I started noticing people using the generic "you"; likely after I was exposed to Orwell's wonderfully succinct treatise Politics and the English Language in high school. And it was probably not so much when it was used as a replacement for "one"—which makes sense in context—as when the speaker bastardizes even the generic "you" in order to refer to their own behaviour.

I had a colleague who did it all the time. In a one-on-one conversation, she would be telling an anecdote and she'd say "So I do that thing where you always check your phone when getting on the bus..." instead of simply saying "I always check my phone when getting on the bus...". This would derail my train of thought, even though it was often an aside to her main point (e.g. "...and I realized this morning when I got on the bus that I forgot my phone at home"). Not only does she change from first person to second person in the middle of the sentence, but she's also describing—to me, in the point of view that refers to me—something that I don't do myself.

I'm sure there's something psychological about it, and I have a few theories:
- because you're describing something you do regularly you fall back on phrasing used for generic activities
- you'd feel awkward saying "I eat breakfast every morning" when the listener might get the impression you think you're the only one who does this common activity
- you don't want to say "I put milk on my oatmeal" in case the other person doesn't do it too, so you describe it as a general behaviour to normalize it, hopefully averting a conversation about whether or not it's normal to put milk on porridge.

Of course, the first two are situations where you could use "one", the pronoun specifically designed for this situation, and you were just too lazy to do so. The third situation reflects a lack of confidence—and it could even be aggressive!

Imagine you're in an office setting and a colleague is telling you an anecdote about chewing gum. In introducing the topic they describe "that thing where you chew gum really loudly in public..." You realize that you chew gum in the office, and maybe it's actually annoying your colleagues and this is their way of pointing it out to you. Forget the rest of their anecdote, you're not listening any more. Instead you're getting self-conscious. Is your loud gum-chewing so notorious around the office that your colleague can mention it so offhandedly? You didn't think you chewed your gum loudly... sorry, what was that last bit?

"... and then spit it out onto the sidewalk?" Oh, it wasn't about me. What a relief!

It can also be deliberately passive-aggressive by normalizing something that the listener should do, thus putting them down if they happen not to: "you know how you're not supposed to put two spaces after a period anymore because we no longer type in fixed-width fonts? Well anyway, I got a resume today where he put three!" (Some people still do put two spaces after a period, and yes, I'm calling it out!)

Orally, one's intonation can usually distinguish between the general "you know how you have two ears" and the specific "you know how you always leave the toilet seat up," but telling these apart can be harder in print. This has only gotten worse as people tend to write more the way they speak, but without the added contextual cues that come with spoken language.


There are other situations where the pronoun is dropped altogether. Sue Sherring did it a lot when she wrote for the Ottawa Sun, before it merged with the Citizen and she subsequently left. I didn't have to go far to find an example on her blog, in the most recent post. This is the full paragraph:

"Simply can’t think of a more appropriate name for a park honouring Rabbi Bulka."

Clearly in from the context, including that it's her personal blog, the pronoun would be "I". Regardless of that, both "you" or "one" would also fit in here and mean the same thing. But you can imagine situations where it's really not clear whether she's talking about herself or the article's subject (and you'll have to imagine them because I can't find any at the moment, even though I thought I had collected or emailed myself some samples that I can't find).

While this is sloppy style for a print newspaper, I've found myself having dropped the subject in jotted notes, which are by their nature somewhat sloppy. Later, I'd have difficulty figuring out whether, when I wrote "sent email", I meant that I sent an email to the person or they sent one to me. Sometimes during the slow parts of a meeting I'll reread the notes I've taken so far and I'll catch these while the context is still fresh in my mind, and squeeze in some clarifying additions.


Once at a summer camp, we had oatmeal for breakfast, and the toppings were making their rounds on the table. Brown sugar, for sure. The kid next to me put milk over his oatmeal (as I was accustomed to doing myself) and passed the milk jug to me. As I started to tilt the jug over my bowl, one of the other children called him out: "you put milk on your oatmeal?!?" and before a drop fell out I deftly moved the milk jug over to my empty glass, lest I repeat the apparent faux pas.

In retrospect, I could have defended him, but peer pressure is such a powerful thing when one is a child at a summer camp.

I suppose I could have replied, "yeah. You know how you put milk on oatmeal?"

- RG>

The Cursive Conspiracy

There was a small media blip about cursive writing recently. Namely, that cursive writing might go the way of the Canadian penny, in that schoolteachers won't be required to teach it in Ontario. And like the penny, good riddance. Even better, educators are finding that proper typing is a more useful skill, and I wholeheartedly agree.

When I went through school, we were told a number of things about handwriting. We were not told that it was important because it was part of the curriculum (the word 'curriculum' had likely not entered my vocabulary yet, not to mention the bureaucratic environment from which it originates) but because it was a skill we children would need later in life. We were told the same thing a few years further in about the importance of writing in pen instead of pencil.

For example, I distinctly remember being told in elementary school that we'd have to get used to writing in pen, in cursive, because we'd be required to use it in middle school. Which was true enough--it was--except that middle school required us to follow the same convention only insofar as the same warning applied, this time one tier up looking on to high school.

Then the cracks started to show in the plan. Here's a sample of my notes from a high school English class:

This one was in pen, but it sure isn't cursive. In fact, it doesn't look much like print, either. The illegibility suggests that our high school teachers didn't really give a fuck how we wrote (which, sadly, seems to still be the case). None of my other surviving papers from high school were in cursive, either (though admittedly, most of the samples were from math and science classes, where print--and pencil--prevailed). Nevertheless, I seem to recall (and this might be apocryphal) a teacher telling us that we could print if we wanted to, but warned us that we'd be required in university/college/life to write in cursive.

In university, they really didn't give a fuck (the feeling was mutual). In fact, they distinctly discouraged us from writing in cursive on our written exams because it was so difficult for them to read the writing of these young adults who had been habituated into writing in cursive for school assignments but never properly disciplined in its use. (As for spelling and grammar, I agonized through the mandatory courses therein at university because they were teaching what was obvious to me. These basic lessons had long been ingrained in those of us who had endured the classes of our high school's old-school crone, who--bless her heart--would berate the hell out of you if you didn't heed her lessons on the nuances of English grammar.)


I recently discovered some old notebooks from early elementary school. My second grade teacher required us to write a diary and hand it in. She would then write some comment in it. And, as my friend observed reading through them, I wrote responses to her comments, often rather deadpan.

It's actually quite neat to find this, because it's a record with specific dates of where I've been. When going through the cache of school notebooks that contained this Grade 2 diary, I discarded a few which had no dates. I suppose it doesn't really matter what the date was in this case, but now in the information age we like our precision, which is included tacitly with each electronic snippet we produce. With e-mails and electronic agendas and date-stamped photos, etc., if for some odd reason I wanted to know what I was doing on a specific day in the last handful of years, I have ways of finding out. On handwritten notes, I now write the date obsessively, even writing the date of an annotation of an earlier, dated, note (sometimes I'll even write on an undated note a date wherein I speculate the date of the original note). I refer to older documents often enough that it annoys the hell out of me when I find something undated, because usually when I'm doing so it's to establish a chronology. The dates in this old diary were likely a teacher requirement rather than a habit of my own, but it is nice to have them nevertheless.

One particular entry, dated February 24 (no relation), ninteen-mumble-mumble, is illustrative of both. I had written it in cursive, which I suspect was at the encouragement of the teacher. It was in pencil, not pen, but we did a lot of erasing and correcting in those early days. It tells the story of a grand fort my friend and I had built at his place.

To this day, I remember quite a few details about this event: one of my parents drove me over to his house, which was in the Glebe (the significance of which was unapparent to me at the time). I went up to the door, and his mother answered. My friend wasn't in yet, she said, but I could wait for him. In fact, I think he was building a fort and I was to wait for him inside while he finished up. Perhaps we did work on the fort, since I don't remember much of what happened between arriving, looking at some toys and discussing them but not playing with them, and being picked up to leave. Okay, so maybe I don't remember so much, but the event as a whole I certainly remember, and it is nice to have this contemporary documentation of it.

Discovering the journal entry, decades later, it reads out succinctly as "On such-and-such date, I went to so-and-so's house and we dug out a fort [stet]." The teacher commented on how it was a good idea to visit a friend, and I replied coldly beneath her comment, "it was his [idea]." That's at least consistent with my recollection that he had started the fort long before I arrived. Perhaps I should have elaborated further, but it's too late now.

I also illustrated the diary entry with diagrams of the fort, once in plan view from above, and again in close up (I made a lot of blank pages which I called "drawings" of snow in elementary school).

But aside from the precise date and the minimalist banter, the big surprise was one that had eluded me for years. It was a clue staring me, staring all of my young colleagues, in the face: the cursive thing was a sham. For all the propaganda telling us we needed to write in cursive, my teacher's notes to me were in print!
If only I had looked between the lines to see my teacher's misstep, paid attention not to what she said but what she did. All of that stress, all of that browbeating, all of those threats that we'd never make it in the real world if we didn't write in cursive. It was all a lie. The writing on the cake was in cursive but the invoice for it was in print!

Sigh.

My handwriting still resembles the spaghetti in the high school example. I guess by high school I had determined the precise balance of just how messily I could write and still make out what it said. That way I can get down as much of a thought as possible before the rest escapes my mind. I can write clearly when I need to, by the way, although straight lines of text still elude me.

Rather, I can print clearly, when I need to.Which isn't often. Cursive--I literally can't think of when I last used it, but probably not since before high school.

So kids, if you're reading this at home, and teachers tell you you'll need to learn cursive, don't listen. Learn to print legibly and learn to type. And for god's sake, learn to spell: all the good jobs these days require good communication skills and no one like to hire people who can't spell.

- RG>

In defence of Larry O'Brien

Here I thought I'd retired the O'Brien tag on this blog, but of course this can't be.

When it was first confirmed that it was the real Larry O'Brien who had used a racial slur in a tweet about the U.S. primaries, my reaction was more fascination than upset.

Back when people paid attention to him, he was known for saying really stupid things, and it was always fun to watch him fumble his way out of it. Fun, that's all there is. To suggest he is racist because he used one racial slur is like accusing someone of infanticide for making a dead baby joke.

As hilarious as it is to watch him weasel out of it ("I already talked to my Hispanic friends and apologized to them"). I can easily give him the benefit of the doubt. I was at a talk on a matter of fiscal policy and a twenty-something used the phrase "final solution" to describe the goal of addressing the issue. After the meeting, someone sent an e-mail around expressing concern that this person used this term without realizing that it was Hitler's name for the Holocaust.

Racial slurs are a bit different than a phrase like "Final Solution" which has a benign denotation, but the comparators are stronger in this analogy than the differences. In order to reasonably jump from "O'Brien is a misguided twit who doesn't pick his words well" to "O'Brien is a racist" one would have to conclude that what he said was racist, not necessarily how he said it. Don't get me wrong, "spic" is a racist term, but if using the term makes you racist in any context, then I'm a racist for telling you that Larry used it. So context does matter, but many of the people criticizing him know little more of the situation than the fact that it included a nasty word. [Edit: to eat my own words, I wasn't aware of his comment about muslims until after writing up this blog post, which certainly puts more weight to epithets referencing O'Brien] If you take that out of the equation, we already know he's a misguided twit who doesn't pick his words well, so what's the harm of another turd in his outhouse?


And that's why my take on this whole situation is somewhat blasé. He's not the Mayor anymore, and people only pay attention to him when he does something stupid, so really he's pretty harmless. And as I wrote about after his acquittal on charges of electoral shenanigans, I'd far prefer him to be remembered for having been horribly incompetent as mayor of the capital of Canada than for some stupid thing he said after the world stopped caring about him.

He even reinforced this (albeit inadvertently) in his video confession to the Ottawa Sun when he remarked at how smoothly City Hall was running now. Remember that he had never sat through a City Council meeting before running for Mayor—a key plank in his platform, not just an embarrassing truth—so he never learned that things were running alright before him also.


As I tweeted the other day, the real surprise to me is not that some people now think less of Larry O'Brien for using a racial slur, but that some people's opinion of him still had room to go down.

- RG>

Grammar Nazi's Triumph

Kettleman's Bagels has had a couple of unfortunate connections to stories in the media. There was the time that I caught them with taxi hands, and more recently, some of their product was recalled due to insufficient labeling. Of course, I still go there, because the bagels taste good.

But the thing that gets me most about Kettleman's is the motley signage. Lots of notes are scribbled in permanent marker on white paper, taped to various surfaces. And they all have apostrophes galore where they don't belong.

They renovated their store this past fall, and redesigned their garbage bin to have a hole for recycling. A nice new container, with modern stylings.

Then they slapped this onto it:

"Recycle only / glass + can's please."

Now, I'm easily perturbed by such miscarriages of punctuation as this. I also like a good challenge. The easy thing to do (aside from ignoring it) would be to scratch out the apostrophe, but that would just draw more attention to it and make it look uglier. It'd be sufficiently passive-aggresive, but clumsy. Also, not much of a challenge.

I could also point out the typo to a staffperson, but nobody likes to feel patronized by being called out that way. (The store has a few signs where apostrophes were clearly added after the fact, so getting them to make a new handwritten sign would likely have little long-term effect). Generally with this type of thing you want to give the offender an 'out' so they learn what their error was while still saving face, pretending that they knew all along how it was supposed to be.

I figured if I was going to fix this, I was going to fix it completely. No leaving the Kettleman's sign-scribblers to solving it halfway. I am a perfectionist, when I have the patience to see something through.

My solution? I made this sign, with Kettleman's trademark red and yellow colours (mimicking the arched text of the word "BAGEL" on their outdoor sign). As an added flourish, I used the whitespace for a not-so-subtle plea for an end to apostrophe abuse:

This isn't just a piece of paper, it's a big sticker. You see, when I took the picture of the sign in the first picture, what I was really after was the hole, using the pop can for scale. From there I could tell how big a curve I needed for a sign to fit neatly in.

I've got a little device designed for cutting circles in paper (functionally equivalent to a compass with an X-Acto knife at the end), with which I scored the arced bottom edge of the sticker, and I used a straight edge and knife to score the sides.

As for delivery, again, subtlety and minimalism is the rule of the day.

Sure I could go there, tear off the taped sign and stick this thing on, but there are enough staff in the store that I'd probably get some questions. And the whole point of this exercise is to avoid directly confronting them about their bad grammar and terrible sense of signage style.

So I did what any psychology-conscious trickster would do: I brought in a newspaper, read it during my visit, and left it there. Underneath the newspaper on the counter was the sign. Odds are, I gambled, that a staff person would be the one to put the newspaper away, and would see the sign.

I told a few people about this plan, with various responses. One person was particularly incredulous that the plan would succeed, and suggested I should have just put the sticker on myself. But the next time I visited, lo and behold:

Now that's satisfying. The best part, aside from the perfect size and design, is that the plan involves the intervention of the target. That's the key to any successful practical joke. The requirement for conscious thought on the part of the mark changes things from a mere object to a message.

And try to imagine what would be going through someone's mind: somebody, somewhere, went to the trouble of making this very specific sign for this very specific purpose, and just left it here. Who would have done that? What was their motivation? On its own, it's such an innocent sign that you can't deduce any reasoning from it.

Unless they thought that some other manager had left it there, I'd like to believe that after a certain amount of head-scratching they gave up, shrugged, and thought to themselves, God thinks it's Friday.

The only kink in the plan--a very minor one--was that the offending sign had already been replaced with another paper-and-marker sign, sans erroneous mark of possession. Obviously someone had gotten the message through to them, making my little "stop abusing apostrophes" message redundant. In the interests of minimalism, I pulled that part of the sticker off, leaving just the "Recycling" sign. This left it with even less context, adding to the psychological aspect.

This isn't the first time I pulled this kind of thing. One of these days I'll tell you about the prank I pulled at Bridgehead.

Oh, and I should give a shout-out to Rob Cockerham of Cockeyed.com, who does a lot of this kind of stuff (like the McDonald's drive-thru menu prank and the TGI Friday's Menu Prank).

Also, a shout-out to Elmaks (RIP), whose swap boxes helped me realize that anything we can touch, we have the power to change.

- RG>

Error: Friday not found

A childhood friend of mine, with whom I still get together regularly, only just figured out one of my tricks last week when he had me over for Vegan Lesbian Thanksgiving. "You're just putting together random words [that don't make sense], aren't you?" he asked, after something I said hurt his brain.

Well, close. It's actually a bit of an art--hacking the brain--to put together a combination of words whose meaning is truly ambiguous, and not simply silly or wrong. It's easy to take a common expression and toss a "not" in front of it, and people will understand what you're saying, find it doesn't flow well, think you unoriginal, then go right on disagreeing with you. If you instead create a puzzle whose pieces cannot fit, those who try to piece it together stumble because they can't.

As a case study, take the expression "Thank Goodness It's Friday". I never bought the claim that the "G" in "TGIF" meant anything but "God". As a stubborn Atheist, this is one of the reasons I don't use the expression in any form.

The easy way out is simply to rearrange the words to say something cheesy like "Good Thing It's Friday", which is at least unambiguous that the G doesn't stand for "God". But the people who do this are the same people who refer to Christmas as "Holiday"--it's a copout.

Really, in satire, you've got to really make a go for it--don't just use a cheap euphemism. If you're going to bastardize a well-known acronym, don't just try to say the same old thing while politely avoiding the parts you don't like; say something that doesn't make a damn bit of sense--but sounds like it should.

Therefore, I present to you the new slogan for Thursdays (sic):

GTIF: God Thinks It's Friday

Think about all the things this might mean, none of which stands out from the others: What does this mean? If you said this because you were offended by TGIF, surely you'd have taken the "God" out of it? Am I sure I heard you right--you didn't just say "Good Thing It's Friday," did you? And what do you mean that God thinks it's Friday--surely God knows damn well what day it is! Or are you just trying to tell me you won't be coming in to work tomorrow? Does it mean that God is optimistic? or just wrong? If you're trying to say "God is wrong", it sure is a roundabout way of getting your point across...

It's the logical equivalent of smoke bomb: use it to make your escape from an uncomfortable argument while your opponent's brain is occupied trying to figure it out. There's a certain type of person that is unable to move on until they've figured out this type of puzzle. If your adversary isn't this type of person, they'll act like they understood what you just said, or at least ignore it. In that case, it's usually safe to assume they won't notice you just walking away either.

For other logical brain-hacks, pore through the archives of NotAlwaysRight.com (H/T Loth). Especially the ones where the last line is "What???" That's the response you're looking for.

- RG>

Only for hip, urban, planners

I'd heard the term "forced road" used in City Hall transportation meetings before. Since it was in the context of "Goulbourn forced road"--i.e. someplace I didn't expect to find myself anywhere soon--I didn't pay the term too much attention.

Then the other day I heard a more recent--and local--reference to the term regarding Richmond Road. I looked it up, and didn't find it in any online dictionary.

I did a google search and had to dig around. Apparently it's primarily a Canadian/Ontario term.

I was quite pleased with myself when the definition I provided was accepted by Urban Dictionary.

I was even more amused by the mugs, t-shirts, coasters and other "forced road" souvenirs you can buy. They have an interesting software that displays the word and definition on the product as though it were a picture, with the text curving with the folds.

Not sure what a forced road actually is? Duh, look it up!

- RG>

Holy fuck! Google Wave!

Back a few years ago, Google introduced a paradigm shift to e-mail with Gmail. Those of you who have and use Gmail at home, for example, know how annoying it is to have to go back to work and use the traditional e-mail interface, which doesn't make threads of e-mail discussions, and doesn't allow multiple tags for conversations.

Google Wave, designed by Lars and Jens Rasmussen (creators of Google Maps), is the next paradigm shift in communications user interface. Frankly, it does so much that I'm a bit afraid of it.

Here is a 1hour, 20 minute video on YouTube introducing Google Wave from a developer conference in May. (You can safely skip the first 2-3 minutes)

As an example of what problems Google Wave solves is this:
- On a wiki (such as Wikipedia), it's very easy to edit a document collaboratively, but the discussions on that page are difficult to do. You have to manually structure the tree of the conversation, and manually add your user signature.
- Conversely, on e-mail, it's easy to see who made what comment about a document, but it's very annoying to pull that together.
- With Google Docs, they made a bit of inroads, by allowing discussion via Google Chat (or whatever their chat module is called; I hate using chat), but that's in a sidebar to the Google Docs window.
- With Google Wave, the whole thing is all together, you can see comments about parts of the document inline, as well as who made them and when, and you can also hide the comments to see just the document itself. You can add someone new to the document, and they will see the most recent version, but they can also see a playback of where that document came from.

Another example:
- In Gmail, messages with the same subject line are grouped into threads or conversations. Gmail tries its hardest to figure out when these are the same conversation and when to split them.
- If someone in the conversation changes the subject line, it will start a new thread, which is annoying when a non-Gmail user replies with their own comments in the subject line.
- Furthermore, when you're having a conversation among a dozen people, and you separate comments out to have a private conversation with one of the others, you have two options: you can change the subject line--making it harder to find the sub-conversation when looking at the main conversation, or you can keep the subject line the same, burying the private conversation in the larger group thread.
- Google Wave solves this very well, and keeps privacy relatively secure. (I'll note, however, that it seems anybody can add an additional party to a conversation very easily, and that additional party will be able to see back into that conversation. This is a security risk, as when someone on a private e-mail list forwards the message to someone outside the list.)

Google Wave has lots of extensibility and existing integration with other services, such as image searches and (*sigh*) twitter, but the neatest aspect is the live interaction:
- Google Wave updates the conversation/discussion/collaboration live on other participants' Google Wave interfaces as well. So unlike in a chat client, where at most you'll see that someone is typing a response, your response will appear character-by-character as you type it (you can disable this when composing more delicate messages).
- Google Wave also corrects your spelling live. Not just identifying non-word typos, but contextual typos. The example they use in the video is "I would like some been dip": even though "been" is a valid word, it understands from the context that it is not the right word, and it corrects it live. Grammar Nazis rejoice: It also recognizes to/too/two errors and, I assume, their/there/they're errors. If it is not highly confident, it will underline the word instead of automatically replacing it.
- Even more rock-awesome, it has a translation feature, so you can converse--live--with people in other languages, and it will translate your message as you type it! (Toward the end of the video, last 5 or so minutes)

The best part is they plan to open-source it, and users on different implementations will be able to communicate amongst each other.

It's really hard to understand what Google Wave does without seeing the video. The video is a bit long-winded at times, but watching the whole thing reassured me of some of the concerns I had with it early on (such as privacy and version control). I'm still not sure if I've got my head wrapped entirely around the paradigm, but it looks like a promising extension of productivity tools. (There's even a text-based terminal interface!)

I've requested an invitation to Google Wave, and I hope that those I collaborate with will also be early adopters. It has a lot of potential, and I hope to be able to use it.

- RG>

Illogical Unviersity Doodles

I'm clearing out my old university notes, and I've came across some doodles which I feel compelled to share.

While a recent study suggests that doodling can help memory, these doodles were mostly to occupy my mind while bored in class.

This first one depicts the "Velotone", which I drew in Cognitive Psychology class (with a professor who was otherwise really fun and interesting!):

The rest are all from a philosophy course. I had already taken two other formal logic courses in my studies, and did astoundingly well in both. So when we got to the logic portion of this philosophy class, things between me and Steve (the guy who sat next to me) began to get silly.

Aside from things like deriving equations for pi and writing it out to 101 digits from memory, there was evidence that I was indeed paying a minuscule amount of attention to the subject matter...

Do deaf people hear sound arguments?

If an argument takes place in a forest and nobody is there to hear it, is it still sound?

Then I got to the doodling:


Some of it was even on-topic!

On the next page, Steve and I started to pass notes back and forth. I think he was trying to write with his left hand:

Steve: THESE PEOPLE ARE ALL STUPID! (EXCEPT FOR THAT GUY WITH THE BEARD)

Me: That guy is particularly stupid.

Evidently people didn't understand these really simple logical principles, as evidenced by my note "He's [the professor] making this way too complex."

I even had the foresight to predict that "eventually, he will start saying stuff we don't understand, and we'll completely miss it." (My subsequent test scores proved otherwise, luckily)

Then I got to more doodling, and the creative juices started flowing. Here is an illustration of those juices, as well as the exclamation "Fart-in-a-hat!" (Making use of the equals-sign-three technique of illustrating wind, which I got from watching Art Attack years ago)

On the next page was another doozy:

All straight lines are phallic.
Therefore, geometry is full of phallacies!

Here's a tip for when you're bored: grab a black pen and draw a line that crosses itself before meeting up with the end. Then fill in the alternating segments. If this doesn't occupy you enough, when you're done, rotate the page to look at it from different angles to see if you can pick out anything. Here's a bear doing a somersault:

Eventually, he got into stuff that I didn't already know, and my doodles turned into notes. I will leave you to ponder the logical implications of the statement "if this is boring, then I will not say so."

- RG>

Don't ask the homeopath if you need a haircut

The November 14, 2008 edition of the Now EMC Ottawa-Orléans was kicking around my bag, and a couple weeks ago I got a chance to skim through it. This article on homeopathic flu remedies really got my goat and I wanted to write a letter to the paper's editor about it, but it was a bit late. Now it's really past due to respond in the paper, but I read the article again today and had to respond somewhere. So I'm doing it here, and I've spent all night to write out a full response (pardon any sleep-related errors). Click the article image for a closer view.

As my scribblings suggest, I have a great deal of problems with this article, and it's hard to figure out where to start. I could just embed a video of James Randi's critique of homeopathy, but that doesn't do this article justice. So I've put his video at the end of this post.

First, let me get out of the way the most obvious objections to the article:

• The byline refers to her as "Dr. Irma Boyle," which in the context of medical advice, suggests an M.D., which Boyle does not possess. However, this unfortunate attribution was likely made by the newspaper editor.
• Right off the bat in the third paragraph, Boyle suggests that "an oral homeopathic flu remedy" has the same effect as a flu vaccine. (If you're not already familiar with homeopathy and why it's a sham, see the YouTube video below, or read through the Wikipedia article)
  
• In fact, the article and headline both suggest that a "remedy" can be used for "immunization." This is impossible, as remedies cure problems, whereas immunization prevents them from happening in the first place.
• Boyle says "asking your doctor and getting information from the internet will give you more details on [the flu vaccine's] material chemical content." Repeat after me: DO NOT USE THE INTERNET TO SEEK MEDICAL ADVICE. If you have concerns about the flu vaccine, talk to a doctor. Preferably your doctor. Definitely a medical doctor. (Incidentally, this is not medical advice. This is criticism of something that closely resembles medical advice.)
  
• It has obviously been a long time since Boyle has associated with real medicine, because she claims that "the flu shot is injected directly into your bloodstream." It isn't. It's injected into your muscle tissue.
• She goes on to say frightful things about the flu shot, culminating in "it by-passes your natural defenses and weakens your overall immune system." Which is also patently false.
• The four final paragraphs (only the last three are italicized) advertise Boyle's services. While it references her "free homeopathic flu remedy clinic dates and locations" (two locations and two dates are listed on her website), Boyle's appointments normally cost $200 for the initial visit.
  

Before I delve into the details of the above points, I'd like to share some gems about the claims made on Boyle's website, healthdynamics.ca:

On the "flu vaccination vs homeopathic flu immunization" page, Boyle cites "the Dolisos(Boiron) Research Letter," which contains a text block of medical-sounding gobbledigook about Influenzinum and Thymuline, which apparently "are homeopathic remedies that are used in the oral homeopathic flu remedy."

• However, I am unable to find such a letter online. Archive.org doesn't have any entries for www.dolisos.ca after February 2007, and for www.boiron.ca after December 2007.
  
• The only results for this letter that I can find in a Google search are other homeopathic websites with similar (if identical) references to this alleged letter.
• Google Scholar returns no results for "influenzinum." Thymulin (evidently our esteemed colleagues at Dolisos zealously added an "e" to the name), being a hormone produced by the thyroid, has many hits in PubMed; the only reference to "Thymulin AND flu" appeared beacuse of references to "immunofluorescence."
• Therefore, not only is there no evidence of this letter claiming clinical success in demonstrating the effectiveness of these two chemicals "in infinitesimal dilutions," but there appears to be no published research about these two chemicals at all!

This, while egregious to my sensitive sense, pales in comparison to what we find on another page. Under "List of conditions that can be treated," Boyle lists a litany of "conditions and disease that are treated with Heilkunst and Advanced Homeopathy at Health Dynamics. These include physical, emotional, mental, relational, financial, life, career and soul/spiritual issues, ailments, conditions and dis-eases." This is directly reminiscent of the snake-oil carnival vendors who would claim their potion would cure whatever ails you. But this isn't the egregious thing.

On the same page are listed thirty-seven benefits of Homeopathy and Heilkunst, including this tremendously unredundant sample:

• Have more confidence – self, body, mental, emotional, physical, relationally.
• Get yourself out there even more than you are and have the confidence and clarity to do so.
• Speak and act with more confidence. Have a strong and clearer voice.
• Be and feel more present in the moment.
• Step into the world more.
• Be and feel more present in your day to day life.

But that's still not the nasty bit. Following the glowing list of benefits are "more examples of everyday occurrences for which Homeopathy and Heilkunst can be used successfully." She goes on to explain a vaccination-related application that isn't mentioned in her New EMC article. In the article, the homeopathy remedy was touted purely as an alternative form of vaccination, but on her website, she suggests the remedies "before and after each shot to avoid the potential traumatic effect of the event and the toxins involved." Not to be outdone, she subsequently suggests "the use of the same homeopathic remedies to create natural immunity to disease for those patients who prefer to not take the risk of a chemical vaccination."

We're almost at the nasty bit. She talks about travel immunizations. The fact that people will use homeopathy to immunize themselves for travel is a serious public health threat. She cites the "successful treatment of Cholera during an epidemic popularized homeopathy on the European mainland 200 years ago" as evidence for the effectiveness of travel immunizations. I will note that this predates the development of the modern scientific method.

But this is the part that knocks my socks off: the part where she lies!

Here is what she says: "In one large-scale study in Brazil in 1974 more than 18,000 children were successfully protected with the homeopathic remedy Meningococcinum against Meningitis, with no notable side effects (Ref. British Medical Journal, 1987:294-6)."

Here (PDF) is the article referenced. British Medical Journal, Novemer 28, 1987, pages 294-296. The title of the article is "Vitamin A supplements and mortality related to measles: a randomised clinical trial." It refers to a study conducted in Africa, not Brazil. In fact, the terms "Meningitis," "homeopathy," and "Brazil" don't appear anywhere in the article. Nor, even, does "1974"!

A closer look.

All this fishiness warrants a closer look at this article.

Let us start from the top.

How qualified is Irma Boyle?

On the "Flu vaccination vs homeopathic flu immunization" page on her website, she draws out the alphabet soup: "Irma Ally Boyle DMH, DHHP, DynBC, B.A. Psych."

• Let's start from the end. She has a bachelor's degree in psychology. On her "about" page, she also says she has a degree in computer science. I have no reason to doubt either of those (though she doesn't say where she got those degrees or when).
  
• DynBC apparently refers to "Certificate in Dynamic Blood Analysis," according to Heilkunst.com. A Google search for Dynamic Blood Analysis returns only references back to heilkunst.com and homeopathy.com (which are effectively the same website), and some scientific papers. Unfortunately, the scientific papers are all in engineering journals, and are not of a medical nature.
• DHHP refers to "Practitioner Diploma in Homeopathy and Heilkunst," a diploma received after the completion of a 4-5 year course of studies. This includes a module on Dynamic Blood, which seems to make the above diploma redundant.
  
• Upon payment of annual fees to the Canadian/International Heilkunst Association at www.heilkunst.com, DHHPs can use the tile "Doctor of Medical Heilkunst" (DMH), making the DHHP also redundant. Kinda like saying "I have a Ph.D. in Economics, as well as a Master's Degree in Economics and a Bachelor's Degree in Economics! Three degrees!"
• However, the website of the Canadian - International Heilkunst Association (whose website is actually at http://heilkunstinternational.com) recommends "To make clear that one is not a “Dr.” or “Doctor” as such. For example, using the title before the name generally denotes an MD. Avoid using the title of “Dr.” or “Doctor” (before your name) and specify exactly what type of doctor is designated."
  

And what, exactly, is Heilkunst? Best I can tell, it's an euphemism for "homeopathy," presumably that particular branch that jives with Canadian regulations on homeopathy. If you're not already familiar with Homeopathy, I again beseech you to take in the YouTube video at the bottom of the post.

• The German word for "Homeopathy" is "Homöopathie," so it doesn't mean that. It doesn't remotely resemble that.
• "Heilkunde" is the German word for "medicine". It definitely resembles that word.
  
• "Heil" means "well-being"; "Kunst" means "art", so "Heilkunst" presumably means "the art of well-being"
• "Heilpraktiker(in)" means "non-medical practitioner"
• Therefore, in English, "Medical Heilkunst" seems to suggest "Medical non-medical practise."
  
• But whatever the word might mean in German, the term is being used in English. What you need to know is that "Medical Heilkunst" is not English for "Medical doctor." Therefore, you should seek a medical doctor for medical advice. Not a Doctor of Medical Pixiedust. Not the Internet.
  

What does she say about flu shots?

Well first, let's look at what is known about flu shots from empirical data:

• According to Health Canada, "an estimated 10-25% of Canadians may get the flu each year," and "an estimated 4,000 to 8,000 Canadians, mostly seniors, die every year from pneumonia related to flu and many others may die from other serious complications of flu."
• Because of this, Canada's National Advisory Committee on Immunization encourages all Canadians over 6 months of age to get a flu shot.
  
• The Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care says that "Ontario is the only jurisdiction in North America to make the influenza vaccine available free to all residents."
• It is free, and it is likely to reduce your chances to get the flu. The only reason an objective person would advise against getting a flu shot is if it is dangerous.

While she doesn't outright say it, Boyle certainly paints the flu shot in frightening terms. I've already pointed out and refuted her erroneous claims that "the flu shot is injected directly into the bloodstream" and that it weakens the immune system. She also point out that:

• "Getting the flu shot means that your body is injected with substantial amounts of several viruses along with other toxic materials used to preserve the vaccine." (Okay, "substantial" amounts if you're used to dealing with homeopathic dilutions)
  
• "Along with the virus material, the vaccine fluid may contain chemical carrying agents." (And your homeopathic pill contains lactose as a carrying agent. Lactose is also a chemical. As is water.)

She contrasts this with the wonderful and painless homeopathic "remedy" which has the following benefits:

• It's not an injection, but "processed orally through the mucous membranes, as it would be if the virus were contracted naturally."
  
• This dose provides "an extremely minute amount of the virus material alone," and "because the viral agent is so diluted, it's a lot less toxic and doesn't place strains on the body's filtering system (kidney, liver)." (This suggests that the flu virus is toxic (i.e. "Having a chemical nature that is harmful to health or lethal if consumed or otherwise entering into the body in sufficient quantities."), which is technically true (in the sense that water is toxic if consumed "in sufficient quantities"), but highly unlikely. The net result of a flu vaccination is to boost health, not harm it.)
  

Now, the article proceeds, that you've been presented with this frighteningly terrible flu shot, and this painless and riskless homeo-pill, "what would you like to introduce into your body"? Oh, by the way, the author has some free homeopathic flu remedy clinics and more information on her website.

Except the homeopathic stuff doesn't do as promised. Health Canada's "Evidence for Homeopathic Medicines" guidelines require homeopathic remedies to be diluted to at least 12CH. Which, according to this page, means one part per 10²⁴ parts--Avogadro's limit. Simply put, beyond this degree of dilution are not likely to have a single molecule of the active ingredient present in the solution. Yet homeopaths claim that this still has remedial properties--indeed, that the more diluted something is, the better!

After 200 years of practise (older than modern medicine!), certainly you'd expect there to be lots of research showing how Homeopathy works.

Frankly, skeptics like Randi and me would settle for evidence that it works, much less how. Scientific literature on the topic of homeopathy returns this type of conclusion:

• "Up to now, no research has categorically proven that homoeopathy has a specific pharmacological action, consequently it is not a proven scientific therapy. " (Mudry, A. "Is Homeopathy a Scientific Therapy?" Rev Med Suisse Romande. 2000 Feb;120(2):171-7 )
• "Contrary to many claims by homeopaths, there is no conclusive evidence that highly dilute homeopathic remedies are different from placebos. The benefits that many patients experience after homeopathic treatment are therefore most probably due to nonspecific treatment effects. Contrary to widespread belief, homeopathy is not entirely devoid of risk. Thus, the proven benefits of highly dilute homeopathic remedies, beyond the beneficial effects of placebos, do not outweigh the potential for harm that this approach can cause." (Ernst, E. "Is homeopathy a clinically valuable approach?" Trends Pharmacol Sci. 2005 Nov;26(11):547-8. Epub 2005 Sep 13. )
  

The burden of proof is not on me to prove that Homeopathy is ineffective; the onus is on homeopaths to prove that their dilutions actually do anything. Nevertheless, criticisms by skeptics are often met with accusations of bias, and claims that skeptics aren't being open-minded. Open-mindedness, however, can have serious consequences when extended beyond the rational...

It is unfortunate that the New EMC was tricked into printing this homeopathic drivel as "health" advice, though I don't think the publishers will care. Ms. Boyle's article is a collection of FUD to promote distrust in evidence-based medicine while simultaneously peddling their overpriced sugar pills. If she has tricked herself into believing this stuff as well (which is questionable, considering the outright lies exposed above), then that is a pity as well.

And what, exactly is homeopathy?

For those who aren't familiar with how insanely impossible it is for a homeopathic solution to have any effect, please view James Randi's concise description of homeopathy:

If you can't believe his characterization, check out the Wikipedia article on Homeopathy, or browse a homeopathy book at the local library, and you'll see it's exactly the same as he describes it, only with a bit more pixie dust.

- RG>

Frustration with french numbers

I'm going to admit right off the bat that this is a fairly petty gripe, but it's a genuine one.

In my day job, I occasionally take credit card orders over the phone from people across the country. This includes francophones.

While I'm conversant in French, it takes me a great deal of effort to precisely record a name and address spoken to me in the language.

But when it comes to taking the credit card numbers, I feel like I'm running to catch a bus that has already left the stop.

When I take credit card numbers in English, people typically pause after each set of four numbers (sometimes every two!) until I repeat the numbers or otherwise indicate that I'm ready for the next set. I don't know if they do this because I'm subconsciously giving them cues to do so, or if it's just convention in English, but they almost always pause.

In French, the person quickly reads out the numbers with a slight pause, but continues without waiting for a confirmation from me. But the part that makes it worse is that it is apparently the convention to read each set of four numbers like a pair of two-digit numbers. That is, in English, "1234" would be "one two three four", whereas in French it is "douze trente-quatre" [twelve thirty-four].

And the nineties are the worst (and every card in French seems to have at least one pair in the 70s or 90s). While I'd like to write down numbers as fast as they give them to me, I can't because of the blasted nineties.

"Quatre..."

Okay, four...

"-vingt..."

Scratch that, eighty...

"et seize."

Er, ninety six.

Even worse is when I get a combination like 3096, which reads "trente, quatre-vingt et seize." While it is understandable that it isn't "trente-quatre, vingt, et seize", it takes a bit of processing time to figure this out--time that's required to listen to the next four numbers!

It's times like this, when I'm reminded at how fluent at French I am not, that I slightly regret having moved from Montreal at age three (my parents' decision, of course) and leaving French immersion after grade one. Oh, well; those times aren't too often.

- RG>

The trio that is driving transit ... into the ground

Imagine my surprise when I opened the City section of today's Citizen. My surprise was perhaps multiplied because I had actually spent money to buy this edition, Bridgehead's copies having been filtered away.

Crossing five of six columns on the page C1 was the image of three City managers--Mona Abouhinedy, Vivi Chi, and Nancy Schepers--in a Transitway station. They are dubbed "Three Wise Women of City Hall".

The article, which continues on the second page, rotates between patting these women on the head for being successful, reassuring the reader it's not a gender thing (cough cough), and offering unrelenting worship for their meticulousness.

Pity.

I've come to expect the Citizen's reporting to fall short of where I'd like it go, but such a one-sided story seems to be an endorsement of an apparent flawlessness in the City's Transit "vision". What room is there to criticize the plan if Staff have looked at every detail?

I use the word "vision" loosely, despite the media's relentless reference to a Transit "Plan". A plan, however, would contain detailed costing, timelines, and ridership estimates. In acknowledgement that this is absent, City of Ottawa Press Releases--and even our dictaphobic Mayor--refer to it as a "vision". Which is like calling it a "daydream".

The closest thing to criticism in this article is for the trio's predecessors, who are referred to only as "two white guys" (Rajean Chartrand and Peter Steacy). Bay Ward Councillor Alex Cullen, who chairs the City's Transportation Committee, praises the ladies, saying they differ from their predecessors in that they are not "'over-controlling' of information surrounding their plan, particularly on controversial matters." Indeed, they're not.

These three prefer to merely ignore information they don't like, lest they be accused of controlling it. Council complicitly refuses to insist they provide it.

I speak not of hyperbole. I spoke at length with Vivi Chi at one of the many Open Houses on Transit which have earned these three praise for "openness" in the article. Interestingly, and to their credit, both Nancy Schepers and Alain Mercier had taken the bus to this Open House at Lansdowne Park (I have yet to find a reference to Vivi Chi ever stepping on a bus). Mercier complained at how difficult the transit connection was from OC Transpo headquarters, though I don't think he went so far as to realize that this might be the reason only eight members of the public had been at the Open House there a few days prior.

Now, never minding that the alleged "openness" did not extend to allowing alternate options from being presented at these Open Houses--leaving Councillor Wilkinson to be treated like a blasphemous traitor for parting from canon, despite her proposed map being nearly identical to one of the maps on Staff's own easels.

No, my beef with Ms. Chi--as with most of Council--has to do with buses. Thankfully, the Citizen has started to refer to this proposal as a "bus and rail plan", instead of blindly parroting the popular myth that it suggests that four billion dollars to be spent on rail.

I saw early on that this transit "plan" calls for 63 kilometres of bus Transitway ($900 million), plus $600 million in buses and other bus-related infrastructure. This would be built in the suburbs, to the far reaches of Kanata/Stittsville, Barrhaven and Orleans. When Staff presented the four "options" to Council, they mentioned this bus investment once, briefly, then said they would not raise it again because it was common to all four "options"!

The various reports provided by Staff scarcely mentions this bus investment. One reference in section 3.2 early of one report is explicitly referred to as a "planning assumption" (i.e. not justified; the conclusion of no logically-explained argument).

So I asked Ms. Chi about the blue lines on the map which represented the unbuilt bus Transitway, playing stupid. She told me that Transitway is cheap because all you have to do is lay down some asphalt and you're done. Cheap? Nine hundred million dollars is cheap?!?

I asked why we couldn't simply do today with buses what she plans to do with rail--namely, turning express buses around at Hurdman and Lebreton and forcing people to transfer to a platoon of Transitway buses. She said she was convinced that people will endure a transfer if and only if it is to a "higher order" mode. That is, people will transfer from the Transitway to a Light Rail train because the train is "higher order", but a bus-only trip requires a single-seat ride.

I then asked her why we couldn't build these suburban connections as rail instead. I can't remember which of the common excuses she recited, but the two I've heard before and since were "it's too expensive to build rail to the suburbs" and "there isn't enough density".

But that aside, I asked for her justification for building 63 kilometres of Transitway in the suburbs. What is the cost-benefit? Why were the existing reserved bus lanes insufficient? What is the need? How is busway justified, when the population "isn't dense enough" for rail?

I asked this because of the City's clusterfuck on Woodroffe. Some time ago, a good chunk of Woodroffe Avenue was widened from two lanes to four, with the outer lanes being reserved for bus traffic. As this was a bus facility, these lanes were built with Transit money.

Then, in 2004, for some reason unknown to me, the City built segregated Transitway lanes along the stretch of Woodroffe from West Hunt Club to Fallowfield. This, of course, was also built with Transit funding. Bus riders noticed few differences: the buses along this stretch went no faster than they had been going before (as there was no less non-bus traffic than on the reserved bus lanes), the people who accessed the #95 at the stop in the middle of this stretch could no longer do so, and about 30 seconds were shaved off by the Eastbound bus ride by no longer having to cross at Fallowfield.

Suburban car drivers, however, noticed a vast difference. They now had four lanes, not two, to sprawl through the greenbelt into Downtown. All paid for with Transit infrastructure funding!

The $900 million investment in Transitway is really a misdirection to repeat the Woodroffe Effect in all our suburbs, making our beloved Staff's "Transit vision" into a "rail and bus and road-widening" plan. Councillors Doucet and Chiarelli acknowledged elements of this argument as they voted--rightly--against it.

But I did not take this for granted that this was a singularly malicious and intentional action on Staff's part. I assume that Staff had done their homework and had come up with a good excuse for this. After all, the Citizen article says that this trio are "unassuming, exceedingly meticulous and professional", they are praised for "openness, frankness and honesty" and for having "provided as many details as possible at this stage of the process, including costs"--not counting what the women say about themselves.

So, in her defense, what did Ms. Chi's workbook have to say in defense of this busway investment?

"We figure," she said, burning those two words into my mind, "that people in the suburbs would want to upgrade to a Transitway in the next 25 years." I was floored. The last bit is paraphrased, but I assure you that nine-hundred million dollars of infrastructure investment is being justified with "we figure."

She wasn't even going to give me the courtesy of some bullshit brushoff excuse, like a reference to Chamin Appuhamy, the baby who was killed when the car carrying him was struck by a bus while stopped in a bus lane. Well, credit that to her "openness and honesty". And credit must go to Council for being so explicitly and willfully blind to not notice this!

Councillor Cullen still says it will cost another $4 billion to convert these currently-unbuilt busways to rail, despite Staff having since focused the estimate to $1.5 billion since the $4 billion figure was first floated. No estimate, however, has been provided for the cost of building rail to the suburbs without first building busways. Councillor Leadman had produced an easy-to-follow report (which seems to have disappeared from the internets) for which she sought out these details for herself, despite Staff's insubordinate refusal to assist her in its preparation. (To top it all off, Staff have told Councillor Leadman that they plan on building these bus connections in the first five years of the plan, before solving the downtown mess!)

After a community association meeting, I asked my councillor, Diane Holmes, why she wasn't following Councillor Leadman's lead by insisting that Staff provide a costing out of extending rail to the suburbs. Councillor Holmes said that it would cost too much to build out that far. Funny--how does she know this when staff hasn't provided Council with a cost estimate? I mean, they looked at a fucking bus tunnel, for crying out loud! How can rail to the suburbs be less worthy of consideration than that?!?

All this to say that these women's success is most certainly not a "gender thing". These three women--"two of whom are visible minorities", as the politically-correct article helpfully points out--are clearly able to pull the wool over Councillors' and citizens' (and Citizen's) eyes not only as good as, but much better than the "two white guys" who came before them.

Taxpayers, unfortunately, will be left with nothing but a Mess Transit Plan.

- RG>

Finally, a label for me

When I was in grade 1, they pulled me out of class a couple of times to have me fill out some multiple-choice quizzes, then they gave me the option of changing schools.

Having no reason to think this was unusual for a child of that age, I thought nothing of it. I was given the choice between my then-current school--a French-language public school a kilometre away--and an English-language one downtown. My next-door neighbour went to the one downtown and I didn't like French classes (hey, I was six!), so I chose to change schools.

They told me I was given this option because I was "gifted", and I ended up staying in the gifted programme until the end of public school. I never really understood what it meant to be "gifted", and didn't really care to figure it out. The meaning was never evident, because I had no reference point: save the first grade, I only ever experienced the gifted programme. So any description of the term would have to rely on what others told me.

I was occasionally told that being in the gifted programme was like being in special ed, but for people who learn faster instead of slower than normal. I never internalized this description because it sounded like a roundabout way of saying you're smarter than others. I only like to sound arrogant when it's fairly clear I'm being sarcastic.

Despite this vague description, we were told as children that being gifted doesn't mean we're smarter, just that we learn differently. (I'm sure the kids in special ed were told the same...) This paradigm of "everybody is equal, but different" is something I've internalized and continue to live by.

Today in my apartment (which by coincidence is just around the corner from the school where I entered the gifted programme), I wondered once again what everybody had meant when they said I was "gifted." With the power of the Internet, however, I could find an answer to that question readily. Naturally, the first place I turned to was Wikipedia.

I was struck by the section "Characteristics of giftedness". So struck, in fact, that I stopped reading the article to write this blog post.

I've had plenty of personality tests, horoscopes, and aptitude tests based on ambiguously-worded questions, but never before have I seen something describe me as well as those short paragraphs. And I don't think it's just selection bias. Sparing the details, the first paragraph is entirely accurate, and I am often distracted by my excellent hearing.

The reason this is important to me is that I've never encountered a label that managed to fit me. Even literal ones, like "cyclist", I challenge. I define a "cyclist" as a person who is riding a bicycle. Right now, I am lying in my bed writing an entry on my blog. I'm not cycling, so to say "I am a cyclist" would merely be an approximation. RealGrouchy is a handle I use on the Internet to project a certain side of myself, but again it's an approximation--there is much about me that has not been reflected by RG's ramblings.

The more ambiguous labels I dismiss outright--ones like "left-wing", "progressive", "conservative", etc. What is meant by these labels? They can mean different things to different people (unless you're Ottawa Police Chief Vern White, who insists every word and symbol means to everyone else exactly what it means to him). For example, the term "liberal" referred to free-market type thinking in its earlier application--the opposite of what it means now.

Applying these types of labels also comes with a tacit expectation that you'll live up to them. Am I an environmentalist because I don't own a car? Such logic can stretch the "environmentalist" label a bit too far. I ride a bicycle mainly because it is logistically, economically, socially and time efficient. If sustainability is a corollary to efficiency, then good for the environment. I am able to live my life fully without owning a car, and my life is that much less complex for doing so. I could say the same for alcohol, coffee, and religion. Up until a couple of weeks ago, I happily lived my life without an mp3 player, but the phone I got happens to play mp3s, so now I can listen to music more.

As another example, I would say that I do not consider top-down hierarchies to be worthwhile (and perhaps hierarchies of any sort), but to call myself an "anarchist" would cause others to associate me with other "anarchists" more than with what the term sets out to describe. Heck, get a load of the rap that communism gets, simply because Russia and China called themselves "communist". The difference between denotation and connotation is a fundamental one when you strive to communicate clearly.

The only labels I would apply to myself are those which are so self-evident as to be rhetorical. I'm human. I'm a North-American, middle-class, white male. Yawn. None of those are likely to change in the foreseeable future.

All this is to say that I was quite thrilled to find a label that fits me like a glove. Not that it changes who I am. It's a descriptive label, not a proscriptive one.

Now that I can go on in life knowing that "gifted" is a label that fits me accurately, I will nevertheless continue to think of myself as Arthur Dent does: "more differed from than differing." I'm not an extraordinary person, but an ordinary person who may do or experience extraordinary things. I think that most people I encounter are also extraordinary in their own ways, and if I see someone doing an ordinary thing, that doesn't mean they're capable of nothing more.

Plus, you'd would have to be a real jerk to go around telling people you're "gifted".

- RG>

Thought of the [undefined period of time] #9

In French, the word « association » produces the "ss" sound three times, each with a different letter combination.

[Previous undefined period of time: 2 years, 8 days (and change)]

- RG>