I live in Vancouver now. Just one province away from Edmonton/Stony Plain, but still far enough to miss it.
Living in China was kind of a cheat when it came to staying engaged with my kung fu. If I didn't, I got hit with a stick. Now comes the real challenge. I'll have to rely on keeping in touch with my fellow students, along with the prodding of my roommates, to keep me motivated and practicing. I'll still be attending Friday classes by webcam, so expect many living room horse stances.
But I'm excited to be here. I'm living in a big city now, with all the grime, naiveté and potential that promises.
I live with a cat (appropriately) named Bitey. He rules.
2 months into this good year, and things are going well.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Sunday, February 14, 2010
i(don't)c
Perhaps I'm setting out to be unpopular here. Of course, that means I would have to be popular in the first place.
Anyways.
I don't like the Olympics. If I were in Vancouver, I would be protesting. Every time the 'Olympic report' comes on the news, complete with obnoxious fanfare, I get a bit angry. Forget the Olympics, is what I say. But why, oh why?
You would think, what with the UBBT and all, I would be stoked on individuals pushing themselves to peak levels and join in the celebration of that. And if the Olympics were just about that, I would be fine with it. I completely acknowledge the power of sport and individual achievement. The games sure aren't about that, though.
I'll even ignore the sanitized and corporate controlled image, the long history of politically (re: capitalist) motivated IOC dealings, the issue of Native land rights connected to these games, the 750 units of low income housing that were scrapped to build the athlete's village, and the enormous efforts which amount to trying to convince tourists they need to buy more useless stuff. Along with all the other problems.
I won't even take issue with the money being funneled into the games, because I know that those holding the purse strings wouldn't have spent it on anything of value anyways.
No, what I dislike most about the Olympics is that instead of celebrating individual achievement it promotes a mindless nationalism, a rabid need that most people have to see their country do better. Because if Canada doesn't get at least 10 golds, the terrorists win. I think. That's why it's such a big deal, right?
Ok, I get it. When you're watching a sport, it's more fun if you've got someone to cheer for. But once the closing ceremonies are done nothing will have changed on the world stage--no matter how many shiny medals we get. People are still starving and dying in various parts of the world and us blindly waving our little flags does nothing except subtly promote the worldview that our country is somehow better and dissent is a bad thing.
I just want to slow the rampant patriotism for a bit and try some perspective instead.
Anyways.
I don't like the Olympics. If I were in Vancouver, I would be protesting. Every time the 'Olympic report' comes on the news, complete with obnoxious fanfare, I get a bit angry. Forget the Olympics, is what I say. But why, oh why?
You would think, what with the UBBT and all, I would be stoked on individuals pushing themselves to peak levels and join in the celebration of that. And if the Olympics were just about that, I would be fine with it. I completely acknowledge the power of sport and individual achievement. The games sure aren't about that, though.
I'll even ignore the sanitized and corporate controlled image, the long history of politically (re: capitalist) motivated IOC dealings, the issue of Native land rights connected to these games, the 750 units of low income housing that were scrapped to build the athlete's village, and the enormous efforts which amount to trying to convince tourists they need to buy more useless stuff. Along with all the other problems.
I won't even take issue with the money being funneled into the games, because I know that those holding the purse strings wouldn't have spent it on anything of value anyways.
No, what I dislike most about the Olympics is that instead of celebrating individual achievement it promotes a mindless nationalism, a rabid need that most people have to see their country do better. Because if Canada doesn't get at least 10 golds, the terrorists win. I think. That's why it's such a big deal, right?
Ok, I get it. When you're watching a sport, it's more fun if you've got someone to cheer for. But once the closing ceremonies are done nothing will have changed on the world stage--no matter how many shiny medals we get. People are still starving and dying in various parts of the world and us blindly waving our little flags does nothing except subtly promote the worldview that our country is somehow better and dissent is a bad thing.
I just want to slow the rampant patriotism for a bit and try some perspective instead.
Saturday, February 6, 2010
cowt
Here's something I learned today. When I say 'moot' I mean irrelevant. A moot point is one not worth arguing. That's what I thought the word meant.
Well guess what? IT TOTALLY IS THE OPPOSITE.
Here's the Oxford English Dictionary's take on moot:
"1. Originally in Law, of a case, issue, etc.: proposed for discussion at a moot (MOOT n.1 4). Later also gen.: open to argument, debatable; uncertain, doubtful; unable to be firmly resolved. Freq. in moot case, [moot] point."
Seriously? What happened there?
That being said, the second definition acknowledges the use normal in North America:
"2. N. Amer. (orig. Law). Of a case, issue, etc.: having no practical significance or relevance; abstract, academic. Now the usual sense in North America"
You can almost taste the disdain dripping from the definition there. Despite (or maybe because of) it's massive authority, claiming that the OED is run by a bunch of snobs is hardly controversial. But still, I love how the dictionarians (made up word) needed to emphasize how North American the second use is by mentioning it twice.
Language evolves in different ways, words change meaning quite frequently over the course of years. A surprisingly common way is what we have here: at some point a bunch of people on this continent didn't get what moot meant. By using it wrong, they began to pass it onto friends and children and eventually the meaning changes by sheer force of numbers.
Due to my insanity, a dilemma pops up. Since the word is still at a point where the usual definition is kind of wrong, which do I go with? If I use moot the way I'm 'supposed' to, I'll be using it incorrectly as it applies to daily life. People won't get what I'm trying to say and it'll inevitably lead to some hilarious misunderstandings involving Mr Roper. So every reasonable part of my brain wants to keep using it the way I always have. But for the next 6 months or so I know I'll be haunted by the Ghost of English Major Past every time I use it.
Side note: I love the word moot, it's got a great niche meaning and is fun to say--so abandoning it altogether is out of the question. I challenge you to work it into conversation at least once today.
There's some politics at play here, which don't really concern me. People are always very quick to decry the americanization of our language, but that's really just holding onto our old colonial masters as opposed to embracing our new ones. Either side is a bit distasteful to me.
The real star here is my rampaging need to analyze daily speech. Lacking any clear goals or methods, I'm on this eternally unsatisfying quest to play with and dissect language. And, that, my friends, often doesn't work.
I am still reeling from this information. It's going to take some time to get to grips with.
Well guess what? IT TOTALLY IS THE OPPOSITE.
Here's the Oxford English Dictionary's take on moot:
"1. Originally in Law, of a case, issue, etc.: proposed for discussion at a moot (MOOT n.1 4). Later also gen.: open to argument, debatable; uncertain, doubtful; unable to be firmly resolved. Freq. in moot case, [moot] point."
Seriously? What happened there?
That being said, the second definition acknowledges the use normal in North America:
"2. N. Amer. (orig. Law). Of a case, issue, etc.: having no practical significance or relevance; abstract, academic. Now the usual sense in North America"
You can almost taste the disdain dripping from the definition there. Despite (or maybe because of) it's massive authority, claiming that the OED is run by a bunch of snobs is hardly controversial. But still, I love how the dictionarians (made up word) needed to emphasize how North American the second use is by mentioning it twice.
Language evolves in different ways, words change meaning quite frequently over the course of years. A surprisingly common way is what we have here: at some point a bunch of people on this continent didn't get what moot meant. By using it wrong, they began to pass it onto friends and children and eventually the meaning changes by sheer force of numbers.
Due to my insanity, a dilemma pops up. Since the word is still at a point where the usual definition is kind of wrong, which do I go with? If I use moot the way I'm 'supposed' to, I'll be using it incorrectly as it applies to daily life. People won't get what I'm trying to say and it'll inevitably lead to some hilarious misunderstandings involving Mr Roper. So every reasonable part of my brain wants to keep using it the way I always have. But for the next 6 months or so I know I'll be haunted by the Ghost of English Major Past every time I use it.
Side note: I love the word moot, it's got a great niche meaning and is fun to say--so abandoning it altogether is out of the question. I challenge you to work it into conversation at least once today.
There's some politics at play here, which don't really concern me. People are always very quick to decry the americanization of our language, but that's really just holding onto our old colonial masters as opposed to embracing our new ones. Either side is a bit distasteful to me.
The real star here is my rampaging need to analyze daily speech. Lacking any clear goals or methods, I'm on this eternally unsatisfying quest to play with and dissect language. And, that, my friends, often doesn't work.
I am still reeling from this information. It's going to take some time to get to grips with.
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
a greener blog due to the recycling
It's easy to forget how polarizing and strong a force the act of defining is in our world. I was at a recent debate over whether morality could exist without a god and one of the major points was what a person means when they say morality is 'objective'. Many people are on either side of the fence of the abortion debate due to how they define life (though that is by no means the only reason to feel either way). These are cases of conflicting definitions. But when it comes to the concept of knowledge, we have less a conflict of clear definitions but rather the frustrating issue of a concept getting murkier. Talking about knowledge is becoming increasingly alienating and unwieldy.
As a society increasingly obsessed with generating knowledge, we're finding our way of talking and thinking about knowledge inadequate to how we actually experience it. We've moved, at least partially, from storing to processing information--but until we reconsider how we are defining and classifying our knowledge, we're going to get frustrated and disconnected.
Right now, something like spellcheck is a crutch--I use it to hide my terrible spelling in my writing. That makes me look more intelligent (well, not less intelligent, at least) and helps get my points across. But it's not like any of my written communication is handwritten anymore. Every time I write, I'm using spellcheck. Can I call that a useful tool anymore? Or is it now a normal, even integral part of writing?
Let's take it a step further. Anyone you know with an IPhone or equivalent smart phone is about two minutes away from finding out any basic fact you want to know. Population of Uganda? 25,827,000. Who played the inventor in Edward Scissorhands again? Vincent Price. He also in this buddy cop/zombie movie called Dead Heat. That one's on the house.
As these devices become ubiquitous, what will be more important than knowing these basic facts is strategies for getting reliable information easily. I don't have to know these facts because I know where to get them. As this becomes more common, what counts are true knowledge may shift.
A little pause here to quote from the disarmingly straightforward Saul--a passage I quoted on here in 2008 but is worth another look.
"[The general public] react to waves of expert truth which continue to wash over them with a sort of mute indifference. An uninvolved outsider might interpret this as the first stages of a purification rite. Indifference is often the manner behind which humans consider change. Given our history, it should be possible to decipher our intent. We are trying to think our way out of a linguistic prison. This means we need to create new language and new interpretations, which can only be accomplished by re-establishing the equilibrium between the oral and the written. This is a situation in which dictionaries should again be filled with doubt, questioning and considerations. They can then be used as practical weapons of change."
-John Ralston Saul, The Doubter's Companion
It's been two years since I first read those words and I find myself still struck by how obvious yet brilliant they are. As information becomes easier to obtain, we're forced to deal with more of it--assaulted from more sides we can't deal with info at the same rate it's coming in. As real knowledge becomes more specialized, we can no longer communicate across professions or interests. A particle physicist and a chemist, even though they're both scientists, would have very little in common to discuss beyond the basic info anyone has easy access to.
The point is that if you care to look you have instant access to the majority of human knowledge ever produced. As a result, just knowing stuff isn't good enough anymore. We've responded by making knowledge more specialized, but that's cut us off from each other. Culturally, we've arrived at a state of difficult evolution: used to solving problems by generating more info, but the real problems now require--to paraphrase Gregory Treverton--judgements on uncertain situations with no straight, factual answers.
Within the past 50 we've gained new ways of thinking. These new, technologically supported ways can help us--like a hydraulic press lifting a car for a mechanic we can make our lives/jobs easier by using the emphasis on processing rather than knowing to free up our brains for more important info. However, if we paralyze ourselves into obsessively gathering data, we'll be unable to keep up. Rather than info sponges, we need to learn how to become filters.
ps-Malcom Gladwell has a great article applying some of these ideas to the Enron scandal. Read it here.
As a society increasingly obsessed with generating knowledge, we're finding our way of talking and thinking about knowledge inadequate to how we actually experience it. We've moved, at least partially, from storing to processing information--but until we reconsider how we are defining and classifying our knowledge, we're going to get frustrated and disconnected.
Right now, something like spellcheck is a crutch--I use it to hide my terrible spelling in my writing. That makes me look more intelligent (well, not less intelligent, at least) and helps get my points across. But it's not like any of my written communication is handwritten anymore. Every time I write, I'm using spellcheck. Can I call that a useful tool anymore? Or is it now a normal, even integral part of writing?
Let's take it a step further. Anyone you know with an IPhone or equivalent smart phone is about two minutes away from finding out any basic fact you want to know. Population of Uganda? 25,827,000. Who played the inventor in Edward Scissorhands again? Vincent Price. He also in this buddy cop/zombie movie called Dead Heat. That one's on the house.
As these devices become ubiquitous, what will be more important than knowing these basic facts is strategies for getting reliable information easily. I don't have to know these facts because I know where to get them. As this becomes more common, what counts are true knowledge may shift.
A little pause here to quote from the disarmingly straightforward Saul--a passage I quoted on here in 2008 but is worth another look.
"[The general public] react to waves of expert truth which continue to wash over them with a sort of mute indifference. An uninvolved outsider might interpret this as the first stages of a purification rite. Indifference is often the manner behind which humans consider change. Given our history, it should be possible to decipher our intent. We are trying to think our way out of a linguistic prison. This means we need to create new language and new interpretations, which can only be accomplished by re-establishing the equilibrium between the oral and the written. This is a situation in which dictionaries should again be filled with doubt, questioning and considerations. They can then be used as practical weapons of change."
-John Ralston Saul, The Doubter's Companion
It's been two years since I first read those words and I find myself still struck by how obvious yet brilliant they are. As information becomes easier to obtain, we're forced to deal with more of it--assaulted from more sides we can't deal with info at the same rate it's coming in. As real knowledge becomes more specialized, we can no longer communicate across professions or interests. A particle physicist and a chemist, even though they're both scientists, would have very little in common to discuss beyond the basic info anyone has easy access to.
The point is that if you care to look you have instant access to the majority of human knowledge ever produced. As a result, just knowing stuff isn't good enough anymore. We've responded by making knowledge more specialized, but that's cut us off from each other. Culturally, we've arrived at a state of difficult evolution: used to solving problems by generating more info, but the real problems now require--to paraphrase Gregory Treverton--judgements on uncertain situations with no straight, factual answers.
Within the past 50 we've gained new ways of thinking. These new, technologically supported ways can help us--like a hydraulic press lifting a car for a mechanic we can make our lives/jobs easier by using the emphasis on processing rather than knowing to free up our brains for more important info. However, if we paralyze ourselves into obsessively gathering data, we'll be unable to keep up. Rather than info sponges, we need to learn how to become filters.
ps-Malcom Gladwell has a great article applying some of these ideas to the Enron scandal. Read it here.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)