Outwith

Miss Manners and the Evasiveness of the Cell Phone Era

But she is also aware that we are in a peculiar transitional period, when many people have all but abandoned telephoning, even though they carry telephones with them everywhere. They use its other functions to communicate in writing. These are less intrusive and more flexible about time.

By the way, why do the people who write into Miss Manners always try to sound like her?

One More Reason Your English Degree Is Worthless

I was at a lecture on freelance proofreading the other night and the topic came up of when it would be unethical to accept a proofreading job. Graduate theses, for example, which are judged according to the quality of the writing as well as content, would be problematic. Somebody asked about college entrance essays. The lecturer’s response staggered me. 

It would be “iffy,” she said, to “help” someone applying as an English major. Much less problematic would be “helping,” say, a hopeful MCB major. 

Wait, what?

So let me understand this. An English major has to have a flawless essay to get into college…and so does everyone else. No one is suggesting that students in the sciences turn in essays filled with errors and verging on the illiterate. They, too, have to write well in order to get into a good university, but they don’t actually have to do the writing themselves. It’s not cheating for them to turn in someone else’s work and get evaluated on it, but it would be cheating for someone in the liberal arts to turn in someone else’s work. Because that’s what cheating is, right? Turning in someone else’s work and getting the credit for it is cheating.

I’ve never seen anybody suggest that a potential English major should hire somebody to take the math portion of the SAT for them. When I applied as a Linguistics major, I killed myself for years (yes, years) to improve my score, and even after all that it was only decent and not stellar. But I didn’t have the option to just flunk out of math entirely in order to get into college, and I would have been horrified if anyone had suggested that those in the liberal arts shouldn’t have any math or science requirements.

And yet it’s perfectly acceptable for science students to simply opt out of being able to do as rudimentary an assignment as writing a two-page essay about themselves. This isn’t a thirty page advanced dissertation requiring months of research. It’s basically the teenage equivalent of “What I Did Last Summer.”

Writing is hard. Learning to write well takes sweat, tears, and time. Even learning to write adequately takes effort and talent. So let’s please stop giving a free pass to the people who don’t want to bother to learn this skill. Nobody should be allowed to graduate highschool, much less college, without being able to write. This is an essential part of education. It can’t be divorced even from the sciences, and people know this, which is why science and engineering students are still required to fulfill basic writing requirements for their majors. The trouble is that when they can’t actually fulfill them on their own, everyone looks the other way when they cheat.

This devalues education and writing for everyone and it is why liberals arts degrees are sneered at, often by those who can’t string three sentences together. This is why anyone who wants a job involving writing is expected to work for pennies, if not for free. Why should somebody get paid to do what no one, not even professors in the best universities, considers important or necessary? 

English majors get paid $11 an hour in student tutoring centers to help engineering students with remedial English so they can graduate with world-class degrees and get some of the highest-paying jobs available. Science students are allowed to pass writing classes in some cases in spite of blatant plagiarism. Their bad writing is overlooked and ignored because hey, they don’t NEED to write. 

At the very least, drop the pretense. Stop requiring writing of any kind from non-liberal arts majors. And stop requiring math and science from everyone else. This won’t help anyone achieve a well-rounded education, but at least it will be fair.

Hair Color in Iceland

From Ask Eyglo at icelandreview.com:

What percentage of women in Iceland is “true blue” blond?

A: I couldn’t find any statistics on this subject but I believe the most common hair color in Iceland (for men and women) is various shades of blond, ranging from platinum to a dark or ash blond, bordering on a grayish brown.

Darker shades of blond, or skollitaður as it is called in Icelandic, are more common than platinum. Women usually despise that hair color, likening it to the color of sidewalks, rats or liver pâté….

The reason is sometimes thought to be the lack of sunlight in the winter. 

Lack of sunlight is truly a terrible thing. But then again:

The fact is there are fewer natural blonds in Iceland than in some of the other Nordic countries…This may be explained by the mix of our gene pool. Celtic blood runs through our veins, which explains the many redheads, and fishermen from central Europe who fathered a number of children during their stay in Iceland may explain the number of brunettes.

Well, Duh

Interesting enough article on how young women talk, vocal fry, uptalk, and slang. Why does no one study how young men talk, though? I would like a serious academic explanation for why my brother’s friends spent a good portion of 2010 referring to each other as “son.” I’m fairly certain that’s a trend that did not first get popularized by girls. But let’s just pretend for a moment that we agree with this:

Girls and women in their teens and 20s deserve credit for pioneering vocal trends and popular slang, they say, adding that young women use these embellishments in much more sophisticated ways than people tend to realize.

I don’t think vocal fry is sophisticated. It’s a bit simple-minded, actually. I believe it’s intended on a subconcious level to convey having been at a concert the night before. Sooo…..I’m, like, a bit hoarse? Because I had to yell in order to communicate with my friends, and I’m also a bit deaf because we were standing right by the speakers, which is, like, also why I’m yelling now. Famous people who indulge in this have an even more straightforward reason for the fry: I’m always on tour, or at least pretending to be. I’ve given so many intereviews that my cords are just shot.

Emma stone might actually be sick in this video; not sure.

Meanwhile, vocal trends are definitely fascinating, such as the Prissy Nineties Small Voice, as practiced by Dana Skully in early X-Files episodes: skip to whenever. There is a whole undiscovered linguistics thesis there.

The Slate article also makes the claim that uptalk—ending sentences with a question mark—originated with Australians in California. I find this hard to believe. I’ve almost never met any Australians in California, and I have a much more convincing theory that I’m going to keep on the backburner in case I ever pursue an advanced degree in linguistics (very unlikely) and they reject my Prissy Nineties Small Voice Theory (somewhat likely).

Instead I’ll talk about the barista at Peet’s on Sunday. “Foamed milk? Yeah, it’s an iced latte? It is. Is it? Oh, foamed? I have foamed soy milk? Do you want that instead? Oh sure I’ll make you another one? Sorry about that?” 

Neither his vocal fry nor his uptalk made him sound authoritative, like the article claims it should, but apparently I did, in spite of having indulged in neither. But I mean, if I wanted espresso with cold milk, I would just order espresso with cold milk, and it would cost two dollars less. I mean, right?

I’m going to pioneer the next vocal trend: let’s all talk in sing-songy lilts. It’s easier than creaky uptalk but just as annoying.

Caps

“A Boy Scout or a Girl Scout is a Scout but not necessarily a scout; the word is a reference to the name of the organization, not the ability of the boy or girl to scout things. Social Security is the government benefits program; social security is the comfort of having a date lined up for Saturday night. The Secret Service protects the president; the secret service is a church event you weren’t invited to.”

False Idols

I like to think of myself as neither an Apple Snob nor an Anti-Apple Snob. I had many happy years with my little blue Nano until it finally gave its last sigh and it was time to get another. If I could have bought the exact same product again, I would have, but in the Apple world that’s about as realistic as finding a functional time machine to to transport me to the day when I first unwrapped Blue Dot under the Christmas Tree. 

I will miss that little guy, but I accepted the inevitable and decided to get one of these:

Having done my research ahead of time, I knew what I wanted in which color and how much storage space and what it was called and already had my card in my hand when I walked in the door. I barely put any money in the meter. This was only going to take a minute.

In front of me I saw a vast sea of Apple devotees prostrate before the altars of their gods, surrounding with blue-clad temple attendents. Are there more employees at Apple Stores than customers? How can they afford to pay so many people? Oh yeah, the sweatshops. Anyway, I figured my best course of action would be to find a counter and tell them what I wanted.

Only…there was no counter. I started to be confused and because the brainwashing had already begun to take place, I first blamed myself. Had I just imagined that stores have counters? What was wrong with me? I saw a long table at the end of the room and swam for it like it was life-raft.

A few unattached blue people studiously ignored me while I stood and glared at them. So many salespeople; no way to actually buy anything. I had no idea what to do next until a teenager with a friendly mass of curly hair reaching towards the vaulted white ceiling walked by. 

“Excuse me, I’d like to buy a Nano,” I said.

“No problem,” he said, putting away his iphone. He seemed about to launch into the Apple Credo so I cut him off by telling him exactly what I hoping to purchase. He shimmered away and returned and ran my card through what I vaguely remember to be the side of his Iphone. Is that possible? He asked for my email address.

“What…is that for?” I asked, eyes narrowing.

“So I can send you your receipt, unless you prefer a paper copy.”

“Paper would be better, actually.”

“No problem.” He walked over to one of the altars and mysteriously pulled my receipt out from underneath it. It was like one of those dreams where nothing makes any sense.

No, I didn’t need a bag. I wasn’t prepared to have it materialize out of the wall or something.

Leaving Curly Hair to continue on whatever mission I originally interrupted, I escaped into the sunshine with my small, clear box. 

Cafe Haunting

So I’m already a bit late but I was going to write something about resolutions or reflecting on the previous year or something. In fact, I think one of my resolutions was to be better at time management. Oh well.

Anyway, I’ve discovered that there are simply no seats in cafes around here. Every Peet’s and Starbuck’s is crammed from one wall to another with graduate students and Macbooks, morning till evening. Such crowdedness. I can’t keep sitting on my bed to type; I’m getting some weird spinal compression thing from it. What if one of these times when I stand up and have wobbly-legs from sitting funny I just end up with permanent wobbly-legs? Or what about when I can’t figure out how far down the floor is? I blame the Macbooks.

There is one cafe where I’ve managed to find a seat on a pretty regular basis, and they don’t have the music up so loud all the time that you can’t even hear the sound of your own genius. And you can sit in the window at a narrow little table rimming the wall and look out over the street to see the cars and drifters go by while searching for a word. Obviously, I’m not telling anyone where this is.

I just remembered another one of my resolutions:

So exciting!