The Growlery

Sad telegram

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 00:23:26 GMT

I am probably the only person in the world who feels a little bit sad after reading today's Toothpaste for Dinner:

toothpastefordinner.com

You see, one of my favourite stories about my late mentor, Bruce Trigger, came about when I phoned him up one day, probably in about 2001. The conversation went like this:
S: Hi Bruce!
B: Oh hi Steve! I just sent you a telegram!
S: ...
B: I mean an email!
S: [uproarious laughter]
B: Well, you know, that's how I see them, like little electronic telegrams!

I've also heard it said that Bruce was one of the last users of the McGill library card catalogue, long after it had faded into obsolescence, although that may be exaggerated. He's been on my mind a lot lately - as editor of his memorial volume, I've been compiling anecdotes from contributors about his influence. This one made me a bit melancholy but in a very different way.

Stanchion relocation

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 01:38:57 GMT

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.

Utt-oh

Sun, 05 Jul 2009 21:08:17 GMT

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!"

Birthday redux

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 19:33:33 GMT

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.

A birthday affair

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 13:59:49 GMT

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.

Thickly unsettled

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 02:35:42 GMT

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.

Transform and fold out

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 14:15:59 GMT

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.

(C)antelo(u)pe

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 12:28:38 GMT

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.

Words, words, words

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 02:58:48 GMT

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.

Gloucester, day 1

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 20:26:11 GMT

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

Up-down

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 22:06:46 GMT

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.

Solidarity for a few weeks

Sun, 14 Jun 2009 18:36:02 GMT

So, yesterday was the one-year anniversary of our closing date (it will never be hard to remember, since our mortgage payments always come out on the 13th) and our leap into homeownership as Windsorites. I have to say that although Windsor has every amenity one might reasonably want, it's not exactly home (any of our friends from Montreal want to move here, please?). Right now the biggest annoyance in Windsor is the ongoing CUPE strike which means that all sorts of public services have been shut down for a couple of months, including, park maintenance and, most importantly, garbage collection. So right now our garage (which is really too small for our cars anyway, even the Matrix) is holding three big bags of regular trash and eight big bags of recyclables. And all the local parks have wonderful wildflowers, but aren't much good for kids to run around in. I have to admit that I have some sympathy for the striking workers even though virtually everyone else in this otherwise union-friendly town seems to have lost their goodwill. Seems like the city has decided to use the economic downturn as an opportunity to slash costs in the long term by removing some benefits for all newly hired employees. But short-term economic woes don't justify long-term consequences like that, particularly ones that will make it very difficult for the city to attract good workers in the future. And right now the workers are prepared to go to binding arbitration but the city isn't - that tells me something too. The problem is that the city stinks (or so I'm told) and is an eyesore, right in the middle of the big tourism season, and people are understandably less inclined to be generous than they were in April. And at a time when the auto workers are losing their jobs left and right, they aren't too sympathetic to people who haven't even been hired yet losing some benefits, and are sympathetic to the city when it threatens a tax hike to pay for these things (in a city with a declining tax base already). You have to give the city credit for cunning, knowing when they have their workers at the greatest disadvantage, and for having the good fortune to be doing contract negotiations when they have the greatest leverage to extract concessions. Fortunately we compost most of the smelliest of our food waste. There are also a couple of ad-hoc door-to-door services that will take garbage away for people (of unknown legality). Things are all getting pretty tense here, which is probably the biggest annoyance, and weren't helped much by the fact that the Wings lost the Stanley Cup. But I mean, seriously - are we now to believe that the guy who mows the lawn at the park is an essential service? Ah well, it will get straightened around soon enough.

Jars of dead animals

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 18:33:02 GMT

I really don't mind the editing process; I end up finding errors that would have been embarrassing if they appeared the final version of my book, and any number of more mildly annoying verbal infelicities. For instance, I just encountered the phrase 'jars of some liquids and dead animals', which made me think inevitably of Bonsai Kitten. Why yes, I am bored, thanks for asking!

Let's call the whole thing off

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 00:58:57 GMT

Today at supper Arthur was reading the Heinz ketchup bottle and asking us about some of the more obscure markings on it, such as the number 57 on the pickle and the kosher marking in Hebrew script (which did require me to make a trip to the Internet to confirm that, as I suspected, that was what it was). But the real debate emerged from one of the more prominent words, when Julia read the word 'tomato' as to-MAT-to. Arthur corrected her, "No, no, mummy, it's to-MAY-to' and despite Julia's rebuttal that no, either pronunciation was acceptable, Arthur would have none of it, and would only accept to-MAY-to. Of course, he initially pronounced Heinz as 'hens' until we corrected him, so what does he know? But it's enough to make me tear up just a little at how my boy is growing more like his dad every day.

In other word-foolery, I was very pleased to be able to come up with a couple of instances of verb-verb compound words in which the first verb is irregular: plea-bargain and breakdance. I couldn't think of any others a couple of days ago when Julia brought to my attention an article on 'run-walking' in which the author conjugated the verb as 'ran-walked', which we both agreed was very odd. Of course, it shouldn't, and doesn't matter whether the first verb in a verb-verb compound is irregular: you don't conjugate it either way, although the second verb usually is conjugated irregularly, so if the verb were 'walk-run', it would clearly be walk-ran, not *walked-ran, *walk-runned, or *walked-runned. Which led me to wonder whether there was a tendency, in verb-verb compounds, to put the irregular verb (if there is one) second, which was reinforced by inability to think of other verbs of the form of run-walk. The short answer: probably not.

But is it any wonder that my son is turning into a language maven?

Yes, but is it writing?

Fri, 05 Jun 2009 15:28:17 GMT

Today's XKCD presents the solution to a centuries-old mystery:

It will perhaps come as no surprise that I actually think this one may be near to the truth. For the record, I have three icons with artificial scripts on them, none of which are Voynich-related (yet).

All hail the great god Timmint!

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 13:57:21 GMT

Yesterday we went out to rent some movies, which basically entails running around the store after Arthur as he reads various inappropriate DVD covers until he finds one that is less inappropriate than the others. When we finally corraled him into the children's section, he pointed to one and said, "Look, Timmint!" Which was, of course, TMNT, as if he were reading a consonantal script like Egyptian (where it would clearly be indicating the Great Turtle God Temenet). He doesn't turn most other initialisms into acronyms, though; I wonder what's special about that one.

Never did no workin' after all

Sat, 30 May 2009 14:41:06 GMT

For a man whose official term ended two weeks ago, I am desperately overworked right now, and yet I really need to recharge. Last night Julie and I went to the Spinal Tap Unwigged & Unplugged concert, which was COMPLETELY AWESOME, if you like Spinal Tap and the Folksmen, which you do, if you have any sense.

But I was only in to work two days this past week, because Julie's dad was in town (which was excellent, just not-work-conducive), and when I was at work, I was dealing with a bunch of crap, most of which doesn't really belong in print, anywhere, never mind a public journal entry. And the things that were not getting done while I was dealing with those are still there. But you know what? I can already tell that today is not going to be productive for those things - I can't even imagine dealing with them today. So I'm going to do some yardwork, and reorganize our storage room, and make a Glossographia post that has been delayed for a couple of weeks, and hang out with Arthur and Julie, and play Oblivion. Possibly not in that order.

Book!

Wed, 20 May 2009 03:57:12 GMT

Those of you who have me on Facebook have already probably seen the news today: my book now has an ISBN and a rather attractive cover. Further good news today also, from the Press, in that it looks like the book will be out by November, as opposed to spring 2010 as I had feared. The price on Amazon is $87.83 which is a little higher than I had anticipated, but not actually too bad for a thick hardcover monograph. Huzzah!

I'll tell you no lies...

Fri, 15 May 2009 15:14:23 GMT

All right, I'm at home today enjoying a well-deserved day off (For values of 'off' that include assembling a media storage unit and reading a book for a review article), and so I figure I'll try this again, since I haven't made that many un-filtered posts lately and so some of you must be wondering whether I've dropped off the face of the planet:

Ask me a question - any question, any topic, from the personal to the political to the academic, I don't care - and I will answer it below.

Not a geek

Mon, 11 May 2009 20:10:46 GMT

Last night we went out for sushi and then out to see Star Trek (much better than feared/anticipated), in our last night of freedom (we just got home after picking Arthur up from my dad). Anyway, before the movie, I was waiting for Julie outside the bathrooms when I spied a nerdish-looking lad, maybe about 14, waiting anxiously a few feet away. Aww, I thought to myself - a fellow geek, junior grade, taking his date to see Star Trek. A moment later, his mom came out of the bathroom. A moment after that, the two of them went into the Hannah Montana movie. Ouch.

K'zoo 3

Sun, 10 May 2009 13:53:57 GMT

Yesterday we decided to skip the morning session, where there wasn't much that appealed to us, and then hit the book room for an hour before heading off to our two afternoon panels (, both of which were exciting enough that I have half-scrawled proto-blog-posts in my notebook already, to be posted over at Glossographia when time and energy permit. Thoughts: I have them. Oh yes, I should also remember to post an abstract of my paper up there too. Eventually a bunch of us headed out to Gallagher's for dinner, which did not disappoint, and then back to the conference for the dance, where I drank overpriced beer in sufficient quantities for the purpose.

It's well into the morning already; Julia is still enjoying a well-deserved Mother's Day morning sleeping in, so I don't think we're going back up to the conference today. I might have liked one last romp around the exhibit halls, but I have enough damn books already, so probably it's for the best that I don't. We're going to head back around noon, then I'll call my mom. Then maybe try to catch Star Trek tonight before picking up Arthur from his grandparents on Monday. Then on Tuesday, reviewing the copyediting for my 200,000 word book MS. Yikes!

K'zoo 2

Sat, 09 May 2009 13:30:55 GMT

Yesterday a.m. we were up early to get to the blogger meetup, where I finally got to meet ancarett and a_d_medievalist and of course to see owlfish, plus we met a whole bunch of LJ and blog people whose identities remain obscure to me. Alas. Outside, we ran into angevin2 briefly, but unfortunately she was laid low with killer death plague. Mostly I just went to panels that were of interest to Julia throughout the day, but I did go to a neat panel on sociolinguistics in medieval England where all the papers were of interest to me. After that we went to the AVISTA reception (owlfish, being our connection to that august group, was of course there) and then we ended up chatting with numerous people including a_d_medievalist, doing what all academics do when they get together: complaining. Note to self: stop that! Then we headed out for dinner and eventually ended up at The Olde Peninsula, which one of my grad students recommended to me, and was every bit as good as promised, including a really great craft brew. Yesterday at dinner, owlfish had remarked that she didn't know enough good places to eat, and no sooner had I remarked that we ought to tell her about this place that we realized that she was sitting no more than eight feet from us. Yikes. One of us is stalking the other, but I'm not sure which yet.

Julia and I are taking the morning session off today because of general fatigue, plus there wasn't anything too interesting on the lineup for the 10am session. I am a little disappointed not to be going to the 8:30am plenary address on the Michael of Rhodes manuscript because it is chock full of interesting arithmetical calculations, but also because the website I just linked to embodies all the worst ideas about the transition from Roman to Arabic numerals. Boo. Our plan is to go in around 11, spend some time in the book room, and then off to a couple of really interesting afternoon sessions, followed by great revelry into the wee hours. But now I'm going to go write an email to Arthur who doubtless will want to hear about my day as well.

Conference update

Fri, 08 May 2009 11:42:55 GMT

So here we are in lovely Kalamazoo, doing what K'zoo people do. Yesterday morning Julia and I went to a rather odd session where I learned both the secret meaning of the Voynich manuscript and that the Cathars knew about the structure of the Milky Way and that we are in the End Times. Lovely. My own session (admirably organized by owlfish) was well attended and apparently, or so I hear, a few people crept in just to see my talk on the introduction of Arabic numerals into English printed books. I didn't think it was my best talk, from a presentation perspective, but the argument is sound and I really like the topic. So, whee! Then off to the exhibit hall for a small amount of spending and a great amount of longing, which will doubtless lead to future spending. Then a whirlwind tour of Kalamazoo with owlfish in an attempt to find food, but finally we returned to Bilbo's, a local eatery of considerable repute. Now we're off to the big blogger meetup about which I've heard so much.

Ach! A /x/!

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 23:43:23 GMT

After supper around the Chrisomalis household, we do nutty things like muck about with phonetics. So Arthur was playing around with clicks: /!a !a !a/ (the way kids do), and then I responded with some voiceless velar fricatives, /xa xa xa/. To which he remarked "That's literally in Chinese. Actually, it's in German." Which is really quite remarkable, because both Mandarin (though not Cantonese) and German have the phoneme /x/, although of course English doesn't. I have no idea whether he knew what he was talking about, but I really wouldn't put it past him.

The merry lives of Windsor

Sat, 18 Apr 2009 17:12:46 GMT

It appears as if it's been several months since I made an unlocked/unfiltered post just about what's going on in the phenomenally exciting life that is mine, rather than talking about work-related things. Let's remedy that, shall we?

Windsor is still Windsor. We have a gaming group that we're going to for a few hours once a month or so, mostly for board games / German strategy games. So that's good. But other than that our face to face social contact is mainly across the river, and even then is not as abundant as we would probably like. For years and years (really since we started going out), Julia and I were the centre of life at the Gamers' Guild at McGill and we didn't socialize a whole lot outside of that group in Montreal. And of course most of those people are still in our lives online (hello there!). And we've been gaming online for seven or eight years now with all our awesome Fredericton people, and of course those people haven't disappeared either (hello to you too!). And heck, in Perseity we got to combine the best of both worlds. But here in Windsor, our most natural source of social contact isn't in the city at all, but north of the river among my faculty colleagues in Detroit. And we have had some good luck there too, although we still haven't managed to have anyone over to our house. The international border is hardly a barrier at all for us (usually I am through it in less than a minute on an average commuting day), but for people who don't regularly cross it, it can be a bit of a psychological impediment.

We do know one of our neighbours a little bit, because their son is just a little older than Arthur. But the contrast between the two boys couldn't be more striking. Arthur is hyper-verbal and cerebral, whereas the kid next door is extraordinarily sports-inclined (to the point where, even though he's only four he's constantly firing pucks, balls, and frisbees over the fence). They do play well together, though. But other than that we don't have a lot of contact with our neighbours. Mostly they're auto workers or people involved in allied industries, and while that's not a problem for me at all (heck, half of my family is or was employed at GM), it presents a couple of barriers. I don't think most of them have probably imagined interacting socially with a university professor in any meaningful way. What's more, whereas my job is well-paid and secure, pretty much anyone involved in the auto industry in Windsor is either unemployed or living in fear of unemployment. Two-income families have been reduced to one income (or none). We got this house because the previous residents moved away from the city for employment reasons, and there are many other houses for sale on the street. Our neighbours on the other side took their house off the market after it didn't sell. It's pretty hard under these circumstances to want to make an effort to meet and talk to your neighbours, particularly those whose financial situation is more stable. And there isn't any other obvious source of social contact here in Windsor that we could avail ourselves of.

On the other hand, the Windsor area itself has most if not all of the amenities we would be looking for in a place to live, if we're just talking about things we would do as a family. The public library is excellent and there are a lot of great restaurants. Unfortunately because we have a three-year-old, whenever the subject of eating out comes up, the same sorts of places get mentioned again and again (I am freakin' sick of McDonald's, whose only redeeming feature is that it has a playland that gives us a bit of a break). Over the summer I'd like to find five new restaurants to add to our stable of local eateries, and particularly to find some good non-chain restaurants where the three of us can eat dinner for under $50. Shouldn't be too hard. I want to get to the art gallery again this summer (we went last year and it seems like the kind of thing that Arthur might now be old enough to appreciate) but I definitely want to get across the river both to the DIA and the Detroit Science Center. You see, although Detroit has a reputation (not entirely false) for being an abandoned rathole, it has some of the finest cultural facilities in the Midwest, no more than a 20 minute drive from our house. And we haven't yet taken advantage of those to the degree I'd like. We also want to get out to Colasanti's Tropical Gardens (which Arthur adores, but is also fun for us, what with the petting zoo and regular zoo and the like) and probably also to pick some fruit at a local food-growery. And realistically we have something on every weekend from now through the end of May, so it's not as if we are sitting around with nothing to do. Maybe what I'm just thinking that we need to diversify and get out more here in the region.