An oddity spotted on the streets of Windsor, Ontario (where I live)



The first thing that I imagine draws the eye is the unusual word stanchion. I'd usually just say pole or post. One could even say sign; although it's possible for a stanchion to have more than one sign mounted on it, and if the sign read "Do not relocate this sign", there would be some wacky recursive stuff going on that would just lead to more confusion. But few people have stanchion in their active vocabulary, few enough that I wonder why it is used here.

The other oddity here is the nominal phrase utility locates, because locate used as a noun is exceedingly rare, but that's what is going on here. Here, the phrase is refering to the action of professionally determining the location of buried utilities, and the sign is presumably intended for public works officials who would understand the context.

Tags: language

So apparently Arthur has learned (properly) that the glottal stop is not really phonemic in English. I can tell this because he pronounces uh-oh /ʌ.ʔou/ as utt-oh /ʌt.ou/. Also, yesterday he was watching some previews on one of his video with Julia, and she remarked, "It's the Hunchback of Noter Daim" /nou.ɾəɹ deɪm/, to which he replied, "No, no, it's the Hunchback of No-tre Dawm!" / nou.tɹə dɑm/. However, when I told him that "Notre Dame" means, "Our Lady" in French, he said, "No, no, that's just gibberish" and, "We live in Canada - we speak English!"

Tags: arthur, language

Dear America,

So it's been a year since I started to penetrate your depths, and I feel like I'm still getting to know you. It isn't like what we've got is that serious. You're not as clean and wholesome as Back Home. In fact, I can only take you in small spurts, and I'm spending today Back Home, just like I spent her birthday Over There with you. That doesn't mean I don't care, though. After all, you pay the bills (although it costs me $3.00 just to enter you). I'm sure you don't mind that I'm two-timing you with the woman who I've been with since my birth, and no, not my mom, you sick disgusting country, that would be wrong. It takes a lot more than a year to get the maple syrup out of these veins. Besides, your politicians are all two-timing their spouses, so why shouldn't I have my fun back in the land of real freedom? But know that as long as you keep paying me, I'll be there for you at least four days a week, nine months a year.

Happy birthday anyway.

Tags: politics

Dear Canada,

So you and I haven't been as close as in the past. Sure, I still live in you (although just about as far south as you can get without being Over There) and yes, I just sent you a $6000 tax payment (don't ask - you really don't want to know). But let's face it - I've been two-timing you with that lady Over There for the past year, since she pays the bills. I'm with her right now, actually. I even bring my son to meet her every weekday. And sure, you're just as attractive as always, what with your socialized-ish medicare and generally sane social policies. And Over There they've got a bunch of real nutters running the place. But it certainly is a lot more interesting, I have to admit - they've got this one fellow who talks a good talk, and even if nothing actually changes, it sure is a good time, hearing all that stuff. And to be honest - well, things are just a little on the dull side back home. Do you think you could arrange for a coup or a scandal worthy of the name or at least, I don't know, a debate on the role of the appointed Senate in a postindustrial democracy? I hear they just elected Stuart Smalley to the Senate Over There - maybe we could get Austin Powers? I promise I'd come back for that.

Oh well. Happy birthday anyway.

Tags: politics

Well, we're back at home after our week-long vacation with family in Gloucester, Massachusetts, which is really an excellent place to visit, and if you're incredibly wealthy, also an excellent place to live. But I don't want you to think for a moment that I spent my time idly touring quaint New England scenery (truth be told, the weather was miserable for most of the trip), without thinking of you, dear reader. Today's topic: misleading traffic signs.

Now, I realize that a certain amount of mental effort on the part of drivers is necessary. Upon seeing a sign that says simply 'CHILDREN', only an idiot would fail to realize that what is meant is that children might be walking nearby and thus to exercise caution. And while I find the sign saying 'SLOW CHILDREN' to be endlessly amusing, I don't think it actually causes anyone any real confusion as to what direction is meant. No, the signs I'm talking about are the ones that are completely opaque and that leave you saying 'guh?' and potentially committing moving violations without being aware of the fact.

The first sign I'd like to complain about is 'END SPEED ZONE' (and its counterpart, 'BEGIN SPEED ZONE'). Now, not being a complete ignoramus, I obviously know that these have something to do with a change in the speed limit, but what change? These signs have no accompanying indicator of what exactly the speed limit is to be. Now, at least if I saw a sign like this one, I would know what the speed limit used to be, but that still doesn't tell me what the speed limit is now. Am I supposed to simply remember what the previous speed limit was (possibly miles back)? Just tell me what the speed limit will be from that point onward and be done with it! Is that so complicated?

Similarly, while traveling to western Massachusetts we found an area marked 'THICKLY SETTLED'. Apparently, this actually means an area where the houses are less than 200 feet apart on average and where the speed limit is 30 mph, by statute. Okay ... but how on earth is anyone who is not a master of Massachusetts traffic law supposed to divine this fact? Granted that one would be foolhardy not to slow down in a fairly densely inhabited stretch of highway, one would think that the public would be better served by actual indicators of the speed limit in any given area. I do have to say, however, that 'Thickly Settled' would be a great name for a blog about weird traffic signs.

A perplexing if ultimately not too important sign we encountered was 'BEGIN VERNAL POOL AREA'. Now, being a word guy, I was able to figure out that this must be some sort of pool of water that exists in the spring, or primarily so, and the Internet confirms that indeed, this is what it is. But why is there a sign telling drivers about it? As far as I can tell they don't relate to flooding of roads, or of anything else of interest to drivers, and they aren't exactly tourist destinations either. Although the Vernal Pool Association does have a selection of vernal pool animal T-shirts for sale, if you're into that kind of thing.

Julia and I had an interesting discussion while driving through some areas where the freeway had been cut through a hilly area thus creating rocky cliffs on either side, some of which were marked with 'FALLING ROCK ZONE' and others with 'FALLEN ROCK ZONE'. Now these are clear enough, I suppose, but I find it interesting that they should coexist. To my mind, the chances of actually getting hit by a *falling* rock - requiring one to look up and to the right to see whether one is about to be crushed and have one's body lay undiscovered for 87 centuries - are fairly low. Conversely, though, the chance of encountering a *fallen* rock on the road - requiring you to pay attention immediately in front of you to avoid debris - seems rather higher. Do you think that these two signs are synonyms - and do you suppose that there has been a change in signage policy to favour one rather than the other? Or, rather, are both signs being used properly but in different contexts - and what could those be?

Finally, I'd like to mention to the lovely folks who maintain Highway 133 between Gloucester and Essex that your yellow warning signs are gravely in need of repair or replacement. We passed by about five signs in a row where whole portions of sign stickers had fallen off, most notably a couple with the iconic children walking, except that all that was left of them was a torso, or two pairs of disembodied feet. Because really it is quite alarming to go driving around scenic Cape Ann only to be confronted with grisly reminders that this is Lovecraft country.

Tags: language

We're in Buffalo, staying in a much nicer place than the dump in Albany where we stayed on our way eastward. On our way home the rest of the way today, which hopefully will be uneventful and uninteresting. Arthur has been going around since last night saying, "This is a very nice hotel" which it isn't. He was particularly impressed by the foldout couch where he slept (part of) last night, which I marketed to him as a Transformer couch that transforms from a couch into the bed (along with accompanying transforming noise). Which reminds me of a complaint. Dear Burger King: It's all well and good that you want to have media tie-ins in your kids' meals, but if you are going to give away Transformers-related toys, do you think you could actually have toys that, you know, transform, rather than shooting out a little card with a sticker showing what Bumblebee would look like in robot form?

Okay, a longer post to follow tonight when we actually get back.

Arthur: I would like some more canteloupe.
Dad: Would you also like some antelope?
Arthur: No! They have ants in them!

He does seem to be enjoying his vacation here in Gloucester, at least when you can pull him away from his ever-growing collection of Transformers. The other day, after we went on a drive around the city, he reported, 'They have good decorators in this town'. It is a gorgeous place (if fiendishly difficult to navigate), so at least I know he has good taste.

Tags: arthur, language

Reply to this meme by yelling "Words!" and I will give you five words that remind me of you. Then post them in your LJ and explain what they mean to you.

The illustrious a_d_medievalist gave me:

numbers: A much better descriptor of what I do than 'math' - I've really never felt a strong research interest in mathematics, but numbers really get me excited. The vast majority of my research agenda over the past decade has been focused on the anthropology of numbers, and I can honestly envision doing it for the rest of my career. Numbers interact with so many other things of interest to anthropologists - literacy, economics, language, technology, cognition, and media, just to name a few. So it's a specialized topic (but what academic's work isn't?) but it has tendrils everywhere. And unlike math, which runs up against people's math phobias and general incompetence, I find that there is a real interest among academics and non-academics alike when I pull out my inventory of number stories. I love to ask questions like, "Why don't we use Roman numerals any more?" and see what people say, even though they all say the same things.

Arthur: That's my boy! (Did you know that tomorrow is his birthday? Notice is now given!) I like to think that I'm a pretty awesome dad, but it's fortunate that I have a pretty awesome boy. I see so much of me, or more properly, what I must have been like at that age, when I see him struggling to fit in socially with kids who just aren't of intellectual interest to him, and I see so much of what I love in Julia in him every day. And yeah, you don't hear so much about the bad parts here, but that's okay - it's not like I really want to remember them anyway. What I really love about Arthur is how much joy he brings not only into our lives, but into the lives of all our friends and family, and how happy that makes him too. If you haven't met him already, I can recommend it wholeheartedly!

Canada: My country, and if I may say so, the best country! All right, I actually get rather tired of my American friends and colleagues telling me how much better we have it up in the wild North, because Stephen Harper is still a clod, but I have to admit that it's a pretty nifty place and I'd be sad to leave it entirely. It's great to be able to live in Canada while working in the US. I have to admit that over the past year I've paid a great deal more attention to American politics than to Canadian politics, if only because the latter have been so consistently boring. But as a place to live, I've never experienced anywhere more tolerant and free, and I would recommend it to just about anyone.

fiction: This is interesting because I think of myself as woefully unread. My fiction reading has stayed closely within SF/F for the past twenty years or more with only occasional forays into Literature. And I still have a weakness for New Wave socially-informed science fiction and its successors. And Tolkien of course - for the worldbuilding, and for the language, despite the plot. But as I've advanced professionally (thus requiring a good deal of nonfiction reading in my "spare" time), I haven't read as much fiction as I would like. A few of the books I've read and enjoyed particularly over the past year include Mary Doria Russell's The Sparrow, Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake, and Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex.

gaming: I've been a gamer since I was eight years old, which probably means I'm hooked for life now. For most of that time I was more or less exclusively running games as a DM/GM, which catered to my sense of intellectual play and love of worldbuilding and megalomania and whatnot, but over the past ten years I've found enormous pleasure in playing in Julia's games as well, which are every bit as carefully crafted as my own, but which I don't have to run myself. I'm afraid I don't have time to run any games right now, but I have already posted about the next game I've been thinking about. I'd really like to get back into actual tabletop weekly gaming, honestly, but I have very high standards for those sorts of things (and for the sorts of people I'm comfortable gaming with). So unless a bunch of my friends move to this area (anyone?) that's not likely right now.

We're here in lovely Gloucester, Massachusetts staying with Julia's relations for the next week. Our trip on Friday was uneventful (and thankfully, we were able to get the repairs on our car initiated, and paid for by the other party, so it'll be ready when we return). Alas we ended up staying in what I initially described as the second-worst motel in Albany, but after actually staying there, I revised my analysis downward. I was horrified to realize in the morning that the tub had an 18-inch-long crack down the middle of it that had been artfully covered up by a rubber mat. Fortunately it was just one night. Yesterday we got into Gloucester around noon-ish and Arthur spent the rest of the day charming his relations (who hadn't seen him for almost two years) and impressing them with his intellect. Apparently he can now use an iPhone ... uh-oh. Today has been a splendid Father's Day - Arthur and I, and Julia's aunt and uncle, went to the maritime museum here in Gloucester, which Arthur really loved. But really I am just glad to be able to take a whole week off from work - even if it is only one week. And while the lure of the work keeps calling me in (I have an extended abstract due the week we get back), so far I've managed to resist

Finished the edits on my manuscript, all 500+ pages of it, this afternoon. I still have to go over the bibliography but I have had a lot of help from Julie on that, so that's fantastic. I'll be sending it off via Fedex tomorrow to my copyeditor so that the typesetting process can begin in earnest. I also got word from HIC that my project has approval and so I can go ahead and start collecting consents tomorrow night. I had been told that virtually everyone is required to submit revisions, but they didn't ask for anything, which is fantastic.

And then: I was driving home with Arthur in the car, heading to the pharmacy to pick up a prescription. I was in a left-hand U-turn lane waiting for traffic to clear when a kid rear-ended the Corolla in his van. It looks like the rear bumper is going to have to be replaced and who knows what else. Arthur and I both seem to be completely fine - I was stopped and the kid wasn't going that fast. When I first spoke to him he was very flustered and told me that he didn't have his car's registration and that they didn't have insurance, at which point I told him I was going to call the police right then and there. He eventually found it, and gave me his contact information. His dad wants to pay out of pocket and avoid the insurance company entirely, and I can see his point, in that the kid is going to have astronomical insurance rates for five years if it goes through the insurance. But we'll have to get a quote, which is going to be a huge pain since we're supposed to be leaving on vacation on Friday and there's no way we can get the car in tomorrow. And I don't know at all whether it's a good idea to sit on this for a week until we're back before taking it into the shop - and if I'm going to file a claim with the insurance company then I definitely want to call them today. So I'm not sure what to do.