An 'Aha' moment

English is a terrible language to express in writing (he says, doing just that). Perhaps it's the choice of alphabet, which was never meant for English (which isn't even a Romance language, & we've dropped all of the Anglo-Saxon letters), or the fact that English just isn't anywhere near its roots, being about a third foreign by definition, or simply that, over time, we've tried to use writing (as a concept) for things it was never intended for.

Once, writing was done by professionals. The intended audience were the elite - those who could read. Now, everyone over the age of about three in the developed world (at least) could have a fair crack at writing their own name. 200 years ago, a fair percentage of the population couldn't do that. Not only are we using writing to do more things (like writing our own name & putting that down in a permanent state of spelling), but more people are doing it. Almost all adults in the developed world (I don't know how better to express the idea of places where there is a regulated education system) reads & writes daily. Social media has made it worse, because we're all obsessed with reading & writing opinions. That doesn't make us better at reading or writing, but it does make us all think we can do it, & attitude is everything.

We're far more likely now to write what we say. By that, I don't just mean speech bubbles as thought bubbles, but I mean, quite literally, inserting pauses & mumbling & contractions & incorrect word choices & bad grammar. That's making it real. Again, it doesn't make us better at writing, but it does give the writing attitude.

When I was in school (yes, don't ask how long ago), it was drilled into us to avoid contractions unless we were representing actual speech (or giving birth, which was also to be avoided as a teenager). Heaven forbid that you should actually write in Strine! For the uninitiated, Strine is the Australian dialect, where we proudly have a plural for 'you', being 'youse', which is pronounced like a herd of sheep. Sorry, no, it's pronounced in the same way that you pronounce 'ewes', which is a herd of sheep. This is not a load of bull.

It's about now that I get to my point - well, I'm getting closer. If you're writing all of these speech-oriented interjections & such, then you're going to have to somehow indicate ... well, attitude. There's no other way to describe it. Sure, you could write 'he said with a small voice' or 'she shouted', but you're kind of ruining the flow of the conversation if you're trying to represent two people freestyling & they're using their voices like musical instruments, producing a whole range of emotions & feelings in their choice of word, their volume, their pace, their ... yes, attitude.

English is so limited in giving you the capability to do this within the quotes!

A Norwegian friend of mine was telling a joke, in German, & then complained that you can't explain it in English because the joke's punchline was all about the pronunciation & tone, & English is atonal, to which I responded "Oh really?" & he didn't get it.

Neither can you! Did I use a rising or falling inflexion? A rising inflexion would have been a polite query, & a falling one would have been sarcasm or skepticism. How do you differentiate those without tone? How do you differentiate those in print? I'm sure that someone has come up with a system. I should have looked it up before I started writing this post, but I had all of the stuff I wanted to say in my head & I just had to voice my opinion without thinking too hard about my purpose or my audience, & just writing exactly as I would argue it if I spoke to you in person.

The real 'Aha' moment - by which, I actually mean 'Eureka!' without the bathtub - came when I tried to write each of 

• 'Aha' = I understand you
• 'Aha' = I'm still listening (I'm not asleep)
• 'Aha' = I agree
• 'Aha' = I disagree
• 'Aha!' = Eureka (not the stockade)

All of these come down to where you accent the word, rising or falling end, & vowel length, with possibly more context like how long a pause before you say it. Don't get me started on pauses in print. You can pause by ellipsis, or you can pause by cutting things into sentence segments, or you can pause by expressly saying "then she paused".

But  I guess that's where I should.

The 'Do Something' Effect

I am trapped at home. We all are. They call it self-isolation because it's good for us, & for some bizarre reason, we believe them for once. We're all being socially responsible by being socially disconnected - except through social networking. We're connecting more without touching. We're doing more to be connected because we've been told not to connect.

We're all 'doing something' by not doing stuff - not going out, not congregating, not travelling, trying to minimise the shopping. Sometimes, we're 'not doing stuff' in the extreme - like hoarding toilet paper so that we don't have to buy it tomorrow, but if you miss out, then you have to keep coming back until you beat the other people trying to hoard it & make them turn up the next day to try & hoard. But, on the whole, we're pretty good at adjusting to 'not doing stuff'.

However, there are still people who tell us that we don't have to 'not do stuff'. It's all a hoax - not doing stuff won't help anything & it's not going to save you.
This is not your average crackpot, but someone with a wide audience of believers & a history of saying things counter to common sense. This is a person of great authority & influence who says that, this time, not doing stuff is a bad thing.

This is indeed the same person who says that climate change is a hoax & we shouldn't do anything about it. In that case, not doing stuff is what he is advocating, now, he's saying that we shouldn't not do stuff.
I'm confused. Perhaps he's confused.

Let's break it down. When it comes to climate change, doing stuff is bad, because it's not our fault - blame the leprechauns or ignore the data, it doesn't matter, it just isn't our fault (by us, I mean his audience, which isn't me).
When it comes to diseases, not doing stuff is bad, because it isn't our fault - blame the leprechauns (who don't look like us) or ignore the medical advice ... it just isn't our fault.

There's a consistency in denialism (no, there isn't!) that anything is obviously someone else's problem, & they should fix it, because we don't have to. Occasionally, we won't fix it, because they should, which is not any better.
It comes down to accepting no responsibility for anything, ever.
I am reminded, strangely, of the broken window policy (which is zero tolerance for aberrations) - if a window is broken, fix the window, & that will make it unlikely there will be a second or third window broken, & the policy will eventually lead to no windows broken in the first place.
This is (almost) a proven policy. Looking for someone to blame for the first broken window almost always leads to a second. It's a matter of resourcing - wasting your time looking for the culprit stops you from solving the problem.

This would appear to be the main thrust of denialism - if you 'do something' positive, if you follow the expert advice, then you are taking responsibility to fix a window you didn't break. You are taking responsibility for making the world a better place without actually finding out who's responsible for making it worse.
Heavens to Murgatroyd! What are you thinking? What are you doing?

Never ever do something - unless you've been specifically told not to, in which case you should ... or not.

They Fiddle While We Burn

Each night, I watch the news in the hope that something ... is new. Each night, I see the RFS Commissioner describe horrific events or explain the level of destruction to a bevy of politicians & our so-called leaders. Why? Because he knows these things. He knows his stuff. He has built a career in crisis management & he knows how to lead swathes of 'amateurs' to bring some sanity back to this state.
Said politicians nod & make promises. That's it. Definitely nothing new. These are the politicians we elect time & again. They don't understand, they do nothing, they have no leadership skills, no firefighting skills, & they hope that we, the voters, those burning & choking, have short memories by the time the next election comes up.
I believe them. We do.
All of the denialists who said that there is no such thing as climate change because it's always hot in summer - or worse, point to a cold winter! All of the reactionaries who immediately denounce anyone with a scientific explanation for the changes to our environment that every farmer in the fields & person in the street can see (through the haze). All of the apologists who say it isn't their fault, so they can't do anything about it.
That's who we pick our representatives from. That's who makes our laws. That's who lines up to listen to Uncle Shane tell stories about the big bad & ever-blackening real world.
Must we? Must we put up with this, year after year, election after election?
Do we have to sit on our hands & hope that people like Shane can pull us out of the fire again? Do we have to hope that he's done all the preparation he can - not preparation to minimise the risk, or preparation so that we all understand what's going on, but the preparation to make his people ready to get out there & clean up this mess, to minimise the damage, to deal with the consequences of our decisions.
We decide to drive rather than walk or take public transport. We decide to throw out packaging that doesn't get recycled, or simply can't be recycled. We decide to waste water, throw out food, toss rubbish, & close our eyes.
We decide to recycle politicians so that, with a little bleach, they come out looking exactly the same.

Shane deserves a medal. He'll get one - but there'll be a smiling politician standing beside him, basking in the glow.

Where's the Beef?

Those three words have become famous. If you're not an American or are just too young, you won't know why - or indeed, what it means.

It all started in 1984 with a viral hamburger commercial - Wendy's claiming that their hamburgers had more substance than their oppositions'.
At the time, pre-selection for the Democratic party's presidential candidate was underway, & the eventual candidate (Mondale) destroyed a losing candidate's (Hart) nomination by continually using that phrase.
The entertainment industry has dined on it ever since.

In the former case, one might think that 'beef' refers to the explicit animal product, which would be an optimistic association.
In the latter, 'beef' refers to 'substance' - a policy you can sink your teeth into.

Americans generally only eat one red meat - beef.
They don't eat much lamb, moose, deer, goat, etc.
There is an almost one-to-one correlation between red meat & beef in the minds of most Americans.
In most western countries these days, the term (in English) 'meat' generally means some animal product.
In recent years, there has been some debate over this usage with alternative non-animal products trying to call themselves meat, & producers being up in arms as a result.
This could see the general usage narrowing of the term becoming more formal - possibly government regulated. That's an odd thing, when you realise that English has no regulations in general.
There was once an advertising campaign claiming that mushrooms are "meat for vegetarians".
It made perfect sense to me, but it was short-lived.

Once upon a time, 'meat' was ... some solid food (as opposed, say, gruel) - a food of substance, something to sustain you.
You could think of it as a proper meal, not something you pull out of your pocket while out working, for example.
Like in so many things - such as the use of 'mutton' (from Norman French) to mean the cooked meat product, while 'sheep' (Anglo-Saxon) refers to the animal in the field - the usage in upper society becomes dominant over time.
The manor would have been far more likely to have animal products in the main meal, & therefore the association stuck: if you sit down to eat, then your meat includes animal products.
If you want to be considered like the best of society, then you have animal products in the meal.
Scientifically, biologically, chemically, this is unnecessary & leads to flatulent grass-eaters filling the atmosphere with toxins, but don't get me started..

Over time, we got to the narrower use of 'meat' in general.
Then, in another step, Americans, with a limited range of meats, managed to narrow the term once used for the contents of a meal down to one animal product.

Just to make it interesting, "beef" as a term for conflict allows the question "Where's the beef?" to be answered quite reasonably with "Where's your beef?", as in, "Why do you have a problem with the substance of my policies?"
This is, however, somewhat cross-cultural, because it is likely that this use comes from Cockney rhyming slang in the eighteenth century. They wouldn't have had much of the animal product, either.

That's What She Said

On a corporate training day, I challenged two teams to climb a mountain.
They didn't necessarily have previous experience, but they all had basic training in the tools & equipment, safety, scaling techniques, etc, & the climb itself was generally considered "do-able". On completion, the team leads were to report to me with their experiences.
The first team lead came to me rather disheveled. She had her hair, which had obviously been tightly bound in the morning, blowing freely around her face if it wasn't plastered down with sweat. She was covered in scratches & scrapes, her clothes loose with patches of grime. She probably would have preferred to sit down at this point, but she was determined to do this last part of the exercise.
"How did it go?"
"That was exhausting! But it was so amazing, too! I've never done anything like that, & the team really pulled together. I think we've taken our trust in each other to the next level. Even from the beginning, where they said not to rush it just because it looks easy, there were times when we could see that a wrong move - a slip - could have brought us all undone. We plodded through, though - we moved as quickly as was safe. We made sure that everyone understood the next challenging bit that was coming up. We'd pause to work out a few scenarios that would get us up steep bits - you know, the sheer wall? - or over the large cracks. We had a few near misses, & my heart was in my mouth more than once - not just for me, but for some of the less able in the team. But we did it. We got to the summit & looked out over ... everything. It was worth it! The repel coming down was a cake-walk by comparison - even if two of the guys got silly & had to be untangled. We all had a laugh over that, & they were a bit sheepish coming down the rest of the way."

I found the second team lead bent double still trying to catch his breath. He looked up with a wicked grin.
"How did it go?"
"I stuck a flag in that sucker!"

From the audience point of view (me), what did I expect of the two team leads? Did I want the detail, so that I could empathise, or did I want the result so that I could simply mark off the success?
Know your audience.


Language is gender-biased. We all know that. It's also gender-identifying. By that, I mean that you can tell from the way someone speaks what gender they are. Sure, you're thinking, the high-pitched ones are more likely female. I mean speaking on paper, too - not writing reports or business correspondence, which is more formally structured (& usually male-oriented), but speaking on paper - telling a story on the page.
One of the keys is pronouns - it's well known in analysing text that a female writer will use more pronouns than a male. Also, there is the detail - the level of detail that a woman will go into to convey more depth, more context. If you like, it's about the nouns, the things that are there, rather than the verbs, the action that happens. The only exception is fight scenes, where men will write endlessly about the 'action' where a woman might touch lightly on the 'violence'.

This was never more obvious to me than when I recently read two series of first-person fantasy novels from one (male) author, then moved directly to two series of first-person fantasy novels from a female author (don't judge my tastes). Obviously, one doesn't do this often, so the revelation - the comparison - of how the (male) main character was portrayed was blindingly obvious in hindsight. Neither author lived the fantasy, of course. Only one of the authors had been a male.
The male author portrayed a series of challenges that his main characters went through, where grim determination, fear, bloody-mindedness or resigned-ness to fate drove the character forward against & through his opposition - often taking a devil-may-care attitude to the next death-defying scenario.
The female author's challenges were thrust at the reluctant hero who always seemed put-upon by events "Oh no - not another damsel in distress!" he might have opined. The hero was the continuing victim of circumstance, with no control over his fate, even though we were told he had a very good survival instinct.

I have a male colleague who love's the male author's works, & a female colleague who has never felt more connected than she does with that female author's works.

Although it would be a generalisation to say that this differentiates authors by gender, I believe that this epitomises authors' gender-oriented viewpoints from life impinging on their writing. Having read a lot of female fantasy authors before (yes, I know), none of them had been written in such a way that the female perspective was applied to a male hero. I can even correlate how this particular male hero acts in a similar way to a female hero in a different (female) author's work I read recently.

It's not a good thing; it's not a bad thing; but, it is very interesting how authors (those who gender-identify) can imbue their characters (regardless of gender) with the author's gender's world-view.

All Rise

I recently read an article about a woman who was fined for contempt of court for wearing inappropriate clothing - in this case, shorts short enough to reveal her ethnicity - I leave that expression up to your imagination. Suffice to say, a defendant appearing before a magistrate "sets a tone" for how they expect to be treated - or how they feel about the courtroom - in how they dress. For a man, that would be to traditionally don the suit-&-tie combo. For a woman, it's something demure, at least.
It's a good thing that the magistrate was female, because otherwise the article would have gone on about the sexism or misogyny of the magistrate, or courtrooms, or the court process in general. Perhaps it would have picked on the elitism of the bench, anachronism of the ideals represented by those who sit in judgement ... it really doesn't matter, because the article was only about getting a reaction out of the reader - not even sympathy for an opinion (or the defendant), but a reaction against ... something, anything.
In juxtaposition, there was probably an article about what a Kardashian or a Princess was wearing - & how you should look like them if you want to be noticed - & you don't, so why would we bother noticing you? Somewhere between irony & hypocrisy, such articles only fill me with disgust.
The intention of newspapers should not be to make money through exposing advertising to its readers, expanding its readership to charge more for its advertising, or expanding its advertising to bombard & confuse those who don't read all that well. They should be there to inform. It's a simple idea - the media are a channel (by definition) to information that most people don't have direct access to - preferably truth. Opinion comes into it, but that should be considered, from knowledgeable, experienced, communicative individuals with some level of altruism. Anything else is noise - the space between the adverts.
In this case, the opinion - because it was no more than that - attacked a member of the judiciary for doing their job - & doing it well.
The judgement end of the legal system is full of trained, experienced professionals who try very hard to get at the truth, generally make decisions for the good of society, & priding themselves on both their impartiality & their independence from, say, the media & politicians. Historically (for an English system), they represent the Monarch's justice - an impartiality born of having no agenda & no possibility of gain from any decision. Sure, that's just an ideal, but it's one we all hope for & sort of believe in. It's the kind of ideal that brings calamitous repercussions down on the head of anyone who subverts the course of justice, as it should.
Magistrates have an expectation - not through being out of touch, but through being in the system - that the courts are a meaningful process that should be treated with the utmost respect across society. Courts are not just the place where the criminal class meets its just desserts, they are the place of austerity & independent judgement where society is held up to the mirror to find its own faults - whether it's homicide, burglary, or speeding offences. Those who sit in judgement are the "Picture of Dorian Gray" - they show up the ugliness that we, daily, tend to ignore.
In this case, a magistrate has said quite clearly that society does not appreciate its courtrooms being treated like a back alley where smokers congregate. A newspaper - one that equally treats society with a modicum of respect - should applaud that magistrate's dealing with the individual, & in fact point out how we, sheep-like, are more likely to follow the vain, the stupid, the anti-social, & those who think that bearing their backside in a courtroom is normal.
That magistrate has shown us an expectation that we, as members of society, must step up to.

Driving with a Nanny

Mark Webber, the formula one driver, once described Australia as a "nanny state" because Lewis Hamilton's car was impounded under Victorian "hoon laws".
He had certainly been out of the country too long if he'd forgotten that the larrikin who owns a hotted up Holden is basically an accident waiting to happen - & I, for one, would rather it simply didn't happen.
You can call that impinging on an individual's rights to be an idiot, or call it improving the likelihood of little old ladies crossing the street without being killed - it's a fine line. It's also a big distance if you move slowly.

Of course, sometimes these nanny state laws work too well. It's a sure thing that helmets save lives - bicycle & motorbike - but anyone stupid enough to ride without one should take up their complaint with Darwin. Children don't necessarily understand "survival of the fittest", but adults should be required to prove that they have a head as hard as the road before they are allowed to discard protection.
Seat-belts are the same - except that they don't even make your head sweat.

This is how we minimise risks to individuals - expert recommendations become mandated by law. It's a simple process supported by a large majority of the population, & railed against by anarchists whose contributions to society will be forgotten before even they are.

Of course, these are a relatively easy sell. There are no car manufacturers saying that we need cars so powerful that they break the sound barrier, so no-one advocates "relaxing" the hoon laws. We have manufacturers supporting safety initiatives, because keeping drivers alive is a good thing for their business - it keeps sales going & their target market returning.

What if we, as a society, started seeing the number of cars (or trucks) on the road as the ultimate danger that needs to be dealt with? I suspect that dealers wouldn't be so supportive.
In fact, they might concentrate advertising even more on the safety features of the vehicle - how you're safer being on the inside than the outside of a car, & could basically live inside one, parking outside your office or the school overnight.
How about if you remove the human factor, the risk, & have cars that almost drive themselves?

But right now, cars don't kill people - they can't because they're not autonomous.
We can't live without cars because they are seen as a tool that does our bidding.
It's our right to own & drive those cars.
Nobody wants to go back to the stone age when people were riding horses around & filling the streets with a stink that made it nearly impossible to breathe.
No-one wants that.

At some point, the nanny state - egged on by those who don't see driving as a right or even a privilege - will turn its attention to the statistics of road fatalities & find that "something" could be done.
A shifting focus within society - triggered by a few simple ethical dilemmas brought on by autonomous vehicles, for example, & backed by a new push by car manufacturers that separated out property damage from medical impact (where any accident is a good one where no-one gets hurt) - could make the nanny state move against something that could have been society-wise beneficial if developed over time & in the right way (for once).

Utopia would have autonomous vehicles on "rails" & out of sight (like magic). Society would give people the freedom to travel anywhere & see it all pass by (like an emperor in their carriage).
It's very hard to conceive of some compromise that will deliver both with equal usefulness.
"Market forces" won't. Government must. It won't be a popular decision either, so government won't.

Sometimes the "rights" of the individual - of the voter! - needs adjusting first.
Before changing the government as a knee-jerk reaction to their making a decision we don't like, we should learn how to change the government so that they make the decisions we don't like, regardless.

Everyone wants to breathe clean air. Nobody wants to drive an electric car.
Everyone wants to survive their next trip on the road. Nobody wants to obey all of the traffic rules.
Sometimes, a nanny state has to step in & say "No more lead in petrol! Slow down!"
Sometimes we have to accept that they're only doing it because we won't do it ourselves.