One question that occasionally pops into my head is, "Why is that English word made into a Spanish word?" This normally happens when I stumble across a banally common word that is so obviously from English that it makes me wonder, "Why isn't there a word for this in Spanish?" I then check the RAE to see if it is an officially recognized word, and - if it is - I look to see if there are any handy Spanish synonyms that could have also worked. And when there are, then it makes me think the complementary question of, "Why is this English word not made into a Spanish word?"
Case in point with the word drogar. I knew already that there was the noun droga, and that it means "drug." Interestingly, I also knew that the RAE cited a very different origin for the word droga (Hispanic Arabic) than what is cited as the origin for the word "drug" (Middle French). But okay. Whatever, right? Well, not so quick: the word origin for drogar is that it's from English ("to drug"). *sigh*
But the definition for drogar translates to "to administer a drug" (administrar una droga). And this point would be less irksome to me if Spanish would have the verb bicicletear, which would do the job of the phrase andar en bicicleta, which is the most common way to say, "to bike." Well, no; it's the most common way to say, "ride on a bike," since there is no verb for "to bike" (which is what bicicletear would be, much like drogar is the verb of "to drug," which is the shortened form of the phrase administrar una droga).
Breathe....
Okay, so as long as I continue to be a cyclist, I will admit that this will likely remain a pet peeve of mine. But, as an ecologist, I have to find fault with another verb in Spanish, namely evolucionar, which is the verb of "to evolve." There is no verb, evolver, despite the fact that the following verbs that share the same root all exist: volver, revolver, devolver, envolover, desenvolver, and the list almost certainly goes on.
But it does not include evolver.
No, the word for "to evolve" in Spanish is, evolucionar ("to evolutionate"). And when you go to look up the etymology of evolucionar, you get that it's from evolución (which is like a big, "no duh"). But if you go an look up the etymology of evolución, you find that it comes from the Latin, "evolutio, -ōnis," which is basically what you get with the English entry for "evolution." But if you go to look up the English word, "evolve," you get, "equivalent to ē- + volvere to roll, turn." Ah-hah! "Volvere" looks a lotlike volver, and, indeed, if we look up its etymology, we find that it's from the Latin, "volvĕre."
So the Spanish word volver derives from the Latin "volvere."
The English word "evolve" derives from the Latin "e + volvere."
But Spanish doesn't have the word evolver, even though it has the term devolver. No, the term is stuck as an awkward back-tranformation from the English "evolution" to a verb of that Latin-based word.
Argh!
But that's language for you, and I'm not the one to make the rules, so as much as I would love that I could write about how fish evolver and talk about how I bicicletear to work, I have to stick understanding that languages evolucionar and let that sink in while I andar en bicicleta on my way home.
Showing posts with label about me. Show all posts
Showing posts with label about me. Show all posts
Monday, July 25, 2016
Monday, April 25, 2016
Random health assessment: Resting heart rate
Just for shits and giggles, I decided to check my resting heart rate. I had been riding my bike as a daily commute, averaging 25kph to work and 22kph from work, and I wanted to see if there was a benefit to all this bike commuting.
According to topendsports, an average resting heart rate of someone 35-40 years old is 71-75 bpm.
My resting heart rate prior to re-starting my bike commute was about 70bpm (and I was 37 at the
time), which put me right around average, maybe slightly on the border with "above average." As a point of reference, my resting heart rate when I was a vasity swimmer in high school - at 16 years of age - was 47 bpm, which put me well within the athlete level.
Now, it's not surprising that resting heart rate will increase with age, but moving from an athlete level to average means that I knew what it was like, and 70 bpm seemed really fast. But now, my resting heart rate is roughly 55 bpm, which works out to being on the upper end of "athlete" for a man in my age category.
And that feels nice.
Maybe it is also time to check my BMI (with recognition of problems of height and muscle density) and my blood pressure?
According to topendsports, an average resting heart rate of someone 35-40 years old is 71-75 bpm.
My resting heart rate prior to re-starting my bike commute was about 70bpm (and I was 37 at the
time), which put me right around average, maybe slightly on the border with "above average." As a point of reference, my resting heart rate when I was a vasity swimmer in high school - at 16 years of age - was 47 bpm, which put me well within the athlete level.
Now, it's not surprising that resting heart rate will increase with age, but moving from an athlete level to average means that I knew what it was like, and 70 bpm seemed really fast. But now, my resting heart rate is roughly 55 bpm, which works out to being on the upper end of "athlete" for a man in my age category.
And that feels nice.
Maybe it is also time to check my BMI (with recognition of problems of height and muscle density) and my blood pressure?
Monday, January 11, 2016
Arguing with someone who sees the world fundamentally differently than you do
A friend of mine recently posted a link to a great article, "The 'Other Side' Is Not Dumb", which makes a very valid point:
But, more broadly, I know that this sort of thing is a problem; I know that it is a fundamentally human problem in how the brain organizes and understands information. As such, I know that I am prone to this sort of echo chamber logic and being on Facebook makes me even more prone to it (especially in terms of US politics and social topics, since I am living outside the US and Facebook is one of my major sources of information about US politics and social topics). For this, I am actually grateful that I have friends (only a few, admittedly) that regularly post topics on which I differ with them. It makes me think honestly, since I know (as well as I can know) that they are not dumb, that they didn't drink the Kool-Aid, and that they aren't just being reactionary.
...but then there are their friends or their family members. You know: people that I don't know, which means that these are people whose intelligence I know next to nothing about, and who I tend to judge quite harshly based on the words they write, the reactions they have, and my interpretations of their meanings.
...and it is (perhaps) worse with those friends of friends or family of friends on Facebook who I do know somewhat through past interpersonal interaction. And I do form a sort of idea of their intelligence, and (often) recognize that they might be very good people, but that (sometimes) they don't actually take time to think beyond the rhetoric they speak in person or online. To them, perhaps strangely, I am the least sympathetic.
One example came with a family member of a friend of mine, who seemingly can never find a good thing to say about the current US president and the former Democratic Speaker of the House. (Well, perhaps they might think that something they posted was flattering, but only in the sense that it was incrementally less anti-administration than normal.) Whenever I point out their inconsistencies in argumentation or factual holes in their argument, it is never met with approval or recognition that their facts were wrong. Indeed, when I point out problems with their logic about their arguments against the government, it often comes to a point in the back-and-forth where they state the following:
"I want to return my country to what made it great. Why do you have so much disdain for this country?"
Hmm.... That always struck me as odd. I mean, who is being more disdainful of the country: the person writing anti-establishment things about the sitting president and (from 2006 to 2010) the sitting Speaker of the House or the person explaining how their arguments just don't hold water?
And I never get a good answer as to when it was in the US's history that they want the country to return. At what point was the US great in a way that is now lost (and presumably was lost ever since that black, Kenyan, nazi, marxist, socialist, muslim, ineffectual dictator was voted into office by an overwhelming majority of fellow citizens back in November 2008)? When I get things like they want to "return the country to what the founders envisioned," I ask them if this means that they want a return to slavery? Well, no, they don't. Maybe just segregation? Well, no; not that, either. What about when women didn't have a vote, couldn't get employment in almost any profession, and when husbands could legally rape their wives? Well, no, they don't want to return to that USA, either. Maybe when we had a nation-wide military draft and we were stuck in a quagmire of a war in Vietnam (which was starting to spiral radically out of control)? *Cough, cough.* No. Maybe they want to return to the Reagan years, when the government illegally sold weapons to a nation that had held several US diplomatic staff hostage, when the government sold weapons to Afghanis who would later become the Taliban, and when the government gave amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants (all things that these commenters tend to hate about current US policy)? Oh, not that, either? Seems that the whole "return my country to what made it great," is merely a nostalgic longing for a yesterday that never existed. Which is rich when you think about it, since their desire for a "return" is actually a desire to change the country into something that it never was before: it isn't conservatism at all, but merely luxuriating in nostalgia.
However, when people ask why I seem to "hate my country" because I criticize it so much, I ask them why not criticizing the faults of a nation is actually a show of love. To me, a lack of criticism indicates that you don't care about how something could be. After all, I don't criticize the efforts of those I care little about. I criticize specifically because I care. Criticism is praise. Criticism means that I expect that you have the capacity to do better. Criticism means that the potential has not been reached. On the other hand, the US doesn't need another flag-waver. Waving flags says nothing about how to make a country great again. Waving flags does nothing but serve to distract from pointing out the problems inherent in the system. Dictatorships have their whole populace out waving flags; it is not a sign of a great country.
My love for the US is embodied in my criticism of it.
My concern for the US is embodied in my criticism of it.
In contrast, I do not criticize North Korea: I condemn it, because I do not expect it do be capable of better. I do not criticize ISIS: I mock it, because I know it is doing what it wants to do.
I also do not criticize Luxembourg: I have little care for it, either way, despite the few people I know who live there and love it.
What is emerging is the worst kind of echo chamber, one where those inside are increasingly convinced that everyone shares their world view, that their ranks are growing when they aren’t. It’s like clockwork: an event happens and then your social media circle is shocked when a non-social media peer group public reacts to news in an unexpected way. They then mock the Other Side for being “out of touch” or “dumb.”My response to my friend was that there are times when the other side is actually, factually wrong, and for those cases, seeking to understand the echo chamber of factual incorrectness is - itself - problematic (unless you are conducting a psychology or anthropology experiment).
But, more broadly, I know that this sort of thing is a problem; I know that it is a fundamentally human problem in how the brain organizes and understands information. As such, I know that I am prone to this sort of echo chamber logic and being on Facebook makes me even more prone to it (especially in terms of US politics and social topics, since I am living outside the US and Facebook is one of my major sources of information about US politics and social topics). For this, I am actually grateful that I have friends (only a few, admittedly) that regularly post topics on which I differ with them. It makes me think honestly, since I know (as well as I can know) that they are not dumb, that they didn't drink the Kool-Aid, and that they aren't just being reactionary.
...but then there are their friends or their family members. You know: people that I don't know, which means that these are people whose intelligence I know next to nothing about, and who I tend to judge quite harshly based on the words they write, the reactions they have, and my interpretations of their meanings.
...and it is (perhaps) worse with those friends of friends or family of friends on Facebook who I do know somewhat through past interpersonal interaction. And I do form a sort of idea of their intelligence, and (often) recognize that they might be very good people, but that (sometimes) they don't actually take time to think beyond the rhetoric they speak in person or online. To them, perhaps strangely, I am the least sympathetic.
One example came with a family member of a friend of mine, who seemingly can never find a good thing to say about the current US president and the former Democratic Speaker of the House. (Well, perhaps they might think that something they posted was flattering, but only in the sense that it was incrementally less anti-administration than normal.) Whenever I point out their inconsistencies in argumentation or factual holes in their argument, it is never met with approval or recognition that their facts were wrong. Indeed, when I point out problems with their logic about their arguments against the government, it often comes to a point in the back-and-forth where they state the following:
"I want to return my country to what made it great. Why do you have so much disdain for this country?"
Hmm.... That always struck me as odd. I mean, who is being more disdainful of the country: the person writing anti-establishment things about the sitting president and (from 2006 to 2010) the sitting Speaker of the House or the person explaining how their arguments just don't hold water?
And I never get a good answer as to when it was in the US's history that they want the country to return. At what point was the US great in a way that is now lost (and presumably was lost ever since that black, Kenyan, nazi, marxist, socialist, muslim, ineffectual dictator was voted into office by an overwhelming majority of fellow citizens back in November 2008)? When I get things like they want to "return the country to what the founders envisioned," I ask them if this means that they want a return to slavery? Well, no, they don't. Maybe just segregation? Well, no; not that, either. What about when women didn't have a vote, couldn't get employment in almost any profession, and when husbands could legally rape their wives? Well, no, they don't want to return to that USA, either. Maybe when we had a nation-wide military draft and we were stuck in a quagmire of a war in Vietnam (which was starting to spiral radically out of control)? *Cough, cough.* No. Maybe they want to return to the Reagan years, when the government illegally sold weapons to a nation that had held several US diplomatic staff hostage, when the government sold weapons to Afghanis who would later become the Taliban, and when the government gave amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants (all things that these commenters tend to hate about current US policy)? Oh, not that, either? Seems that the whole "return my country to what made it great," is merely a nostalgic longing for a yesterday that never existed. Which is rich when you think about it, since their desire for a "return" is actually a desire to change the country into something that it never was before: it isn't conservatism at all, but merely luxuriating in nostalgia.
However, when people ask why I seem to "hate my country" because I criticize it so much, I ask them why not criticizing the faults of a nation is actually a show of love. To me, a lack of criticism indicates that you don't care about how something could be. After all, I don't criticize the efforts of those I care little about. I criticize specifically because I care. Criticism is praise. Criticism means that I expect that you have the capacity to do better. Criticism means that the potential has not been reached. On the other hand, the US doesn't need another flag-waver. Waving flags says nothing about how to make a country great again. Waving flags does nothing but serve to distract from pointing out the problems inherent in the system. Dictatorships have their whole populace out waving flags; it is not a sign of a great country.
My love for the US is embodied in my criticism of it.
My concern for the US is embodied in my criticism of it.
In contrast, I do not criticize North Korea: I condemn it, because I do not expect it do be capable of better. I do not criticize ISIS: I mock it, because I know it is doing what it wants to do.
I also do not criticize Luxembourg: I have little care for it, either way, despite the few people I know who live there and love it.
Monday, November 23, 2015
Facts about the human body. Did you find them as (un)fascinating and (un)weird as me?
A friend posted a link on his FB wall whose click-bait title blares, "23 Fascinating and Weird Facts About The Human Body. Wow."
When friends post these sort of fact lists, I often like to go through them to challenge their initial premise (usually that I will be shocked, amazed, fascinated, tickled, or some other sharp reaction). I have yet to find a list that actually I actually found lived up to its premise, and I have also yet to find a list of facts that is 100% factual.
So here's the list of the 23 "Fascinating and Weird Facts" and my responses to them:
1.The brain doesn’t feel pain: Even though the brain processes pain signals, the brain itself does not actually feel pain.
2. Women have a better sense of smell better than men: Women are better than men at identifying smells.
3. Babies are stronger than oxen: On a pound for pound basis, that is. For their size, babies are quite powerful and strong.
4. A higher I.Q. equals more dreams: The smarter you are, the more you dream. A high I.Q. can also fight mental illness. Some people even believe they are smarter in their dreams than when they are awake.
5. Your smell is unique: Your body odor is unique to you — unless you have an identical twin. Even babies recognize the individual scents of their mothers.
6. A sneeze can exceed 100 mph: When a sneeze leaves your body, it does so at high speeds — so you should avoid suppressing it and causing damage to your body.
7. Your nose remembers 50,000 scents: It is possible for your nose to identify and remember more than 50,000 smells.
8. Your hearing decreases when you overeat: When you eat too much food, it actually reduces your ability to hear. So consider eating healthy — and only until you are full.
9. Babies always have blue eyes when they are born: Melanin and exposure to ultraviolet light are needed to bring out the true color of babies’ eyes. Until then they all have blue eyes.
10. Most men have regular erections while asleep: Every hour to hour and a half, sleeping men have erections — though they may not be aware of it.
11. Sex can be a pain reliever: Even though the “headache” excuse is often used to avoid sex, the truth is that intercourse can provide pain relief. Sex can also help you reduce stress.
12. Your brain operates on 10 watts of power: It’s true: The amazing computational power of your brain only requires about 10 watts of power to operate.
13. Chocolate is better than sex: In some studies, women claim they would rather have chocolate than sex. But does it really cause orgasm? Probably not on its own.
14. Your feet can produce a pint of sweat a day: There are 500,000 (250,000 for each) sweat glands in your feet, and that can mean a great deal of stinky sweat.
15. Throughout your life, the amount of saliva you have could fill two swimming pools: Since saliva is a vital part of digestion, it is little surprise that your mouth makes so much of it.
16. You probably pass gas 14 times a day: On average, you will expel flatulence several times as part of digestion.
17. 80% of the brain is water: Instead of being relatively solid, your brain 80% water. This means that it is important that you remain properly hydrated for the sake of your mind.
18. Bones can self-destruct: It is possible for your bones to destruct without enough calcium intake.
19. You are taller in the morning: Throughout the day, the cartilage between your bones is compressed, making you about 1 cm shorter by day’s end.
20. Your tongue is the strongest muscle in your body: Compared to its size, the tongue is the strongest muscle. But I doubt you’ll be lifting weights with it.
21. Being right-handed can prolong your life: If you’re right-handed, you could live up to nine years longer than a lefty.
22. It takes more muscles to frown than to smile: Scientists can’t agree on the exact number, but more muscles are required to frown than to smile.
23. Pinkie toe: There is speculation that since we no longer have to run for our dinner, and we wear sneakers, the pinkie toe‘s evolutionary purpose is disappearing — and maybe the pinkie itself will go the way of the dodo.
So, yeah, a bunch of *yawn*, with one blatant falsehood (#9) and one general arm waving (#23). I remain unfascinated.
When friends post these sort of fact lists, I often like to go through them to challenge their initial premise (usually that I will be shocked, amazed, fascinated, tickled, or some other sharp reaction). I have yet to find a list that actually I actually found lived up to its premise, and I have also yet to find a list of facts that is 100% factual.
So here's the list of the 23 "Fascinating and Weird Facts" and my responses to them:
1.The brain doesn’t feel pain: Even though the brain processes pain signals, the brain itself does not actually feel pain.
Not fascinating; the brain was not evolved to be in direct contact with the environment. If the brain actually could feel any pain, *that* would be fascinating.
2. Women have a better sense of smell better than men: Women are better than men at identifying smells.
Women - on average - have a better sense of smell than men - on average. Again - on average - women are better than men - on average - at identifying smells. Many specific cases will differ.
3. Babies are stronger than oxen: On a pound for pound basis, that is. For their size, babies are quite powerful and strong.
This is not only limited to babies and oxen. This is a general characteristic among any group of animals of a type. Pound-for-pound, a mouse is stronger than an elephant; an ant is stronger than a samurai beetle; and a house cat is stronger than a great dane. But so what? This is due to issues of scaling and inherent limitations of physics and biology that come with larger body size.
4. A higher I.Q. equals more dreams: The smarter you are, the more you dream. A high I.Q. can also fight mental illness. Some people even believe they are smarter in their dreams than when they are awake.
I am skeptical. I haven't heard of the study that came up with this result, and given the problems of whether IQ tests actually measure intelligence and the many flaws with dream recollection studies, I'm wondering how much validity this statement carries.
5. Your smell is unique: Your body odor is unique to you — unless you have an identical twin. Even babies recognize the individual scents of their mothers.
No duh. Just like finger prints and DNA. Even between identical siblings; if one sibling eats only Indian food and the other eats only Japanese food, they will have different body odors. If they grow up in different places, they will also have different body odors.
6. A sneeze can exceed 100 mph: When a sneeze leaves your body, it does so at high speeds — so you should avoid suppressing it and causing damage to your body.
Yes, this is true. But learned once, its repetition hardly fascinates any more.
7. Your nose remembers 50,000 scents: It is possible for your nose to identify and remember more than 50,000 smells.
Yes, this is true. But learned once, its repetition hardly fascinates any more.
8. Your hearing decreases when you overeat: When you eat too much food, it actually reduces your ability to hear. So consider eating healthy — and only until you are full.
Ah. This is something new. And now that I have read the blurb, it is no longer fascinating.
9. Babies always have blue eyes when they are born: Melanin and exposure to ultraviolet light are needed to bring out the true color of babies’ eyes. Until then they all have blue eyes.
This is blatantly false. Go to East Asia. Go to the maternity wards. Look at the eyes of the East Asian babies. You can go through ward after ward without coming across a blue-eyed newborn. (Although blue-eyed East Asian babies do exist; they are really friggin' rare.) I was not born with blue eyes. My wife was not born with blue eyes. Our daughter was not born with blue eyes. The only fascinating thing about this "fact" is that it blatantly isn't.
10. Most men have regular erections while asleep: Every hour to hour and a half, sleeping men have erections — though they may not be aware of it.
Not really fascinating; if you are male then you have personally experienced this, and (unless you are a solipsist or an egomaniac) you likely have come to realize that you are not a special case. If you are female, you likely don't really think about this.
11. Sex can be a pain reliever: Even though the “headache” excuse is often used to avoid sex, the truth is that intercourse can provide pain relief. Sex can also help you reduce stress.
If you've had sex in the past, you might well have encountered the many psychological and physiological benefits that sexual intercourse *can* bring about. If this is a fascinating fact, you either haven't had sex, or you haven't had sex that moved you in this manner.
12. Your brain operates on 10 watts of power: It’s true: The amazing computational power of your brain only requires about 10 watts of power to operate.
Key word here is *about* 10 watts. The other thing though, is to recognize that your brain is an energy *hog* - and that energy conversion from food is not terribly efficient. A significant portion (if not the majority) of your caloric use during the day actually goes to feeding your brain.
13. Chocolate is better than sex: In some studies, women claim they would rather have chocolate than sex. But does it really cause orgasm? Probably not on its own.
Chocolate is better than sex for some women and almost no men.
14. Your feet can produce a pint of sweat a day: There are 500,000 (250,000 for each) sweat glands in your feet, and that can mean a great deal of stinky sweat.
See comment on #8.
15. Throughout your life, the amount of saliva you have could fill two swimming pools: Since saliva is a vital part of digestion, it is little surprise that your mouth makes so much of it.
See comment on #8.
16. You probably pass gas 14 times a day: On average, you will expel flatulence several times as part of digestion.
See comment on #8.
17. 80% of the brain is water: Instead of being relatively solid, your brain 80% water. This means that it is important that you remain properly hydrated for the sake of your mind.
See comment on #8.
18. Bones can self-destruct: It is possible for your bones to destruct without enough calcium intake.
Yeah. It's called osteoporosis.
19. You are taller in the morning: Throughout the day, the cartilage between your bones is compressed, making you about 1 cm shorter by day’s end.
See comment on #6.
20. Your tongue is the strongest muscle in your body: Compared to its size, the tongue is the strongest muscle. But I doubt you’ll be lifting weights with it.
See comment on #3.
21. Being right-handed can prolong your life: If you’re right-handed, you could live up to nine years longer than a lefty.
As a lefty, I learned about this study a long time ago. It's based on correlation, not causation. Also, see comment on #6.
22. It takes more muscles to frown than to smile: Scientists can’t agree on the exact number, but more muscles are required to frown than to smile.
See comment on #6.
23. Pinkie toe: There is speculation that since we no longer have to run for our dinner, and we wear sneakers, the pinkie toe‘s evolutionary purpose is disappearing — and maybe the pinkie itself will go the way of the dodo.
Or it could go the way of the appendix. This is not so much fact as wild conjecture. True, there is no apparent value to the presence of a pinky toe, but there also isn't any natural selection pressure to get rid of the pinky toe.
So, yeah, a bunch of *yawn*, with one blatant falsehood (#9) and one general arm waving (#23). I remain unfascinated.
Wednesday, July 22, 2015
Responses to: 12 Mainstream Baby Lies You Likely Believe
I always find these sorts of things fun, since I likely grew up outside of (and currently reside outside of) the cultural norms of those authors that come up with these lists. In that light, I often read these lists to see how "in tune" I am with the cultural norms of the author.
This list of cultural norms about how to raise babies came across my Facebook feed, and so I was tempted to see how many of them I:
1. “Let your newborn cry it out or he’ll never learn to sleep.”
Never heard this while I was growing up. I only learned about it when I was living in the States during grad school, and thought that it was rather silly nonsense that likely was a rationalization for leaving your baby alone in the crib while you try to sleep in your bed. (I don't know if that is the origin of this lie, and it sounds a bit like a just-so story, but it seems to be used in that sense among those new parents that I did know.)
Next!
2. “Your newborn is manipulating you/getting spoiled when you answer her cries.”
Yeah, I heard this one, and it makes a sort of sense, but it requires that you have a very different understanding of "manipulating you" and also understand that getting comfort and nutrition is not the same thing as getting spoiled. But more on that first part: for a new mother, it is not necessarily an ingrained habit to take care of a helpless being, and so the crying can help as a reminder to let you get to know your baby's needs better. Also, from the baby's perspective, it is the way to communicate needs and wants, since human babies are born at such a far younger stage of development than every single other placental mammal on earth. Hell, all other placental infants can at least crawl on their own at birth, and many (especially herd animals) are able to walk within a couple hours. Heck, in some ways, human infants are even less physically capable than marsupial newborns (which can at least climb their way into the maternal pouch).
So, yeah, I heard this one, but not in this rather... twisted and culturally embedded sense.
Next!
3. “Add rice cereal to his bottle so he’ll sleep longer.”
Nope. Never heard this specific one before. It likely did seem to work for some babies, but there's also likely a large amount of confirmation bias associated with whatever successes that did happen, or it was the only viable source of supplemental nutrition for the baby (i.e., it was advice that predated powedered milk or among people where the equivalent of a wet nurse wasn't available).
Next!
4. “Limit breastfeeding to ___ minutes per side so she doesn’t make you sore or eat too much.”
Never heard this one. Yes, I am a man, but what I did hear was about as diametrically opposite to this as potentially possible. I learned that a mother should allow her baby to breastfeed for as long as the baby suckles and then to change sides. After all, the amount of breastmilk that any one mother produces is somewhere along a spectrum that runs from no/effectively no breast milk in either breast to far more than a newborn can consume in each breast. To give advice that one should only breastfeed for X minutes per side makes no sense, given this spectrum of breastmilk production that is possible among humans. This, much like #1, sounds like a rationalization for the adult's comfort.
Next!
5. “Your newborn has to be supplemented with formula because _____.”
I primarily heard this in commercials. The only time I heard this coming from actual adults was in a discussion about whether there was actually enough breastmilk being produced for the baby. In the case of my daughter, my wife and I decided to give supplement her diet with formula for exactly this reason. I am usually not one to use the "people have been doing X for thousands of years, and there hasn't been a problem before" line of (poor) reasoning, but in this case, the general framework does make sense (and in those cases where there were problems, yes, supplementing with additional milk - or formula - does help, but it ought to be the exception and not the rule).
Next!
6. “Jaundice is not normal and requires aggressive treatment.”
I learned that newborns normally get jaundice, and not to be too worried about it. (Seriously, people, newborns do not have the same physiology as an adult!)
Next!
7. “Co-sleeping is dangerous, your baby needs to sleep alone.”
I never heard this until I moved to the UK to start my undergraduate studies. And then I was skeptical of the validity of this advice. Sure, if your entire population of newborns are co-sleeping with their parents, then some of them will die as a result of that, but what percent is that? TINY! If one wishes to save the lives of infants, better advice would be to never let infants into a moving vehicle.
Next!
8. “Start your baby on newborn enrichment classes now so he’ll be smarter.”
I heard this about 10 years ago and thought it was a joke. This is a misapplication of social science and psychological studies that show that a rich social environment is associated with relative greater intelligence. However, this doesn't mean that your newborn baby needs to be go to friggin' enrichment classes! Furthermore, there is no evidence that absolute increases in intelligence are associated with enriched environments. In other words, if Albert Einstein had grown up in a highly intellectually stimulating environment, it's likely that he would have been relatively more intelligent than the historical Albert Einstein. However, if Forrest Gump grew up in a highly intellectually stimulating environment, he would never be an Albert Einstein.
Next!
9. “If your newborn boy is intact, you should retract his penis to clean under it.”
What the what? Seriously, this is just a reaaaaally friggin' poor understanding of physiology. Likely due to a general lack of understanding in the US about how to maintain cleanliness with babies with foreskins, since so many US males have historically had circumcisions. Such a lack of understanding is then mixed with the mistake of assuming adult physiology (and care) directly maps on to babies. Again: babies are not simply small adult humans! The "advice" provided in #9 is just reaaaally bad. (Might as well just circumcise the boy.)
Next!
10. “Feedings should be scheduled every 3 or 4 hours so baby learns to eat when it’s the ‘right’ time.”
Yeah, I learned this. And then when I got to learn babies, I figured out that this piece of advice - for newborns - is b.s. For older babies, yeah, maybe. But for newborns? You gotta be kidding me.
Next!
11. “It’s safe to put the car seat on top of a shopping cart at the grocery store.”
I have never heard this silly piece of "advice." Seriously, if you look at this in any sort of light, the engineering is just WAAAY off.
Next!
12. “It’s safe/beneficial to start solids at 2 weeks/2 months/3 months/etc.”
I did learn that there was a safe time to start a baby on solid foods. But all the numbers I heard were WAAAY beyond 2 weeks, 2 months, and 3 months. My idea was closer to 6 months, and my baby's pediatrician basically gave her the green light for a very limited set of solid foods when she was 8 months old (given her delicate digestion). She loves to eat bread, sliced turkey, and olives. She also likes to suck on lemons. Still, most of her food remains liquid or only semi-solid, even though she's well over 1 year old.
So, looking back, I only really learned one of the twelve, and even that one I figured out on my own was almost certainly rubbish. True, some of the advice on this list is implicitly geared toward women and new mothers (and not non-mothers), but my mother did talk to me about parenting tips, since she had no daughters to impart such wisdom to. The majority of her parenting advice - as related to newborns - was let them sleep when they need sleep, feed them when they need feeding, burp them after feeding (because babies don't learn how to burp until much later), change their diapers (perhaps more often than you think they need to be changed), and don't drop them. (I suppose that last piece of advice is given to most men about babies, though.)
I'm somewhat surprised that these were 12 "mainstream" baby lies, though. Especially #11; advice about how car seats can fit onto shopping carts is not something that really could have been passed down through several generations (which I could see with most of the other ones), so if this really is a "mainstream" lie, then it had to have been disseminated through popular culture.
But I'm not surprised that most of these "mainstream" lies were completely (or mostly) unknown to me. I've encountered many cultural norms about babies and being a new mother, with almost all of them being completely foreign to me. It is, on the one hand, refreshing to know that there are new myths forming around motherhood and children that may be foreign to many people outside the US (or maybe even certain parts of the US). It is, on the other hand, frustrating that people who might readily believe in these myths and lies are not aware of the plethora of other myths and lies surrounding motherhood and babies that permeate the globe.
This list of cultural norms about how to raise babies came across my Facebook feed, and so I was tempted to see how many of them I:
- knew
- currently believe
- used to believe.
1. “Let your newborn cry it out or he’ll never learn to sleep.”
Never heard this while I was growing up. I only learned about it when I was living in the States during grad school, and thought that it was rather silly nonsense that likely was a rationalization for leaving your baby alone in the crib while you try to sleep in your bed. (I don't know if that is the origin of this lie, and it sounds a bit like a just-so story, but it seems to be used in that sense among those new parents that I did know.)
Next!
2. “Your newborn is manipulating you/getting spoiled when you answer her cries.”
Yeah, I heard this one, and it makes a sort of sense, but it requires that you have a very different understanding of "manipulating you" and also understand that getting comfort and nutrition is not the same thing as getting spoiled. But more on that first part: for a new mother, it is not necessarily an ingrained habit to take care of a helpless being, and so the crying can help as a reminder to let you get to know your baby's needs better. Also, from the baby's perspective, it is the way to communicate needs and wants, since human babies are born at such a far younger stage of development than every single other placental mammal on earth. Hell, all other placental infants can at least crawl on their own at birth, and many (especially herd animals) are able to walk within a couple hours. Heck, in some ways, human infants are even less physically capable than marsupial newborns (which can at least climb their way into the maternal pouch).
So, yeah, I heard this one, but not in this rather... twisted and culturally embedded sense.
Next!
3. “Add rice cereal to his bottle so he’ll sleep longer.”
Nope. Never heard this specific one before. It likely did seem to work for some babies, but there's also likely a large amount of confirmation bias associated with whatever successes that did happen, or it was the only viable source of supplemental nutrition for the baby (i.e., it was advice that predated powedered milk or among people where the equivalent of a wet nurse wasn't available).
Next!
4. “Limit breastfeeding to ___ minutes per side so she doesn’t make you sore or eat too much.”
Never heard this one. Yes, I am a man, but what I did hear was about as diametrically opposite to this as potentially possible. I learned that a mother should allow her baby to breastfeed for as long as the baby suckles and then to change sides. After all, the amount of breastmilk that any one mother produces is somewhere along a spectrum that runs from no/effectively no breast milk in either breast to far more than a newborn can consume in each breast. To give advice that one should only breastfeed for X minutes per side makes no sense, given this spectrum of breastmilk production that is possible among humans. This, much like #1, sounds like a rationalization for the adult's comfort.
Next!
5. “Your newborn has to be supplemented with formula because _____.”
I primarily heard this in commercials. The only time I heard this coming from actual adults was in a discussion about whether there was actually enough breastmilk being produced for the baby. In the case of my daughter, my wife and I decided to give supplement her diet with formula for exactly this reason. I am usually not one to use the "people have been doing X for thousands of years, and there hasn't been a problem before" line of (poor) reasoning, but in this case, the general framework does make sense (and in those cases where there were problems, yes, supplementing with additional milk - or formula - does help, but it ought to be the exception and not the rule).
Next!
6. “Jaundice is not normal and requires aggressive treatment.”
I learned that newborns normally get jaundice, and not to be too worried about it. (Seriously, people, newborns do not have the same physiology as an adult!)
Next!
7. “Co-sleeping is dangerous, your baby needs to sleep alone.”
I never heard this until I moved to the UK to start my undergraduate studies. And then I was skeptical of the validity of this advice. Sure, if your entire population of newborns are co-sleeping with their parents, then some of them will die as a result of that, but what percent is that? TINY! If one wishes to save the lives of infants, better advice would be to never let infants into a moving vehicle.
Next!
8. “Start your baby on newborn enrichment classes now so he’ll be smarter.”
I heard this about 10 years ago and thought it was a joke. This is a misapplication of social science and psychological studies that show that a rich social environment is associated with relative greater intelligence. However, this doesn't mean that your newborn baby needs to be go to friggin' enrichment classes! Furthermore, there is no evidence that absolute increases in intelligence are associated with enriched environments. In other words, if Albert Einstein had grown up in a highly intellectually stimulating environment, it's likely that he would have been relatively more intelligent than the historical Albert Einstein. However, if Forrest Gump grew up in a highly intellectually stimulating environment, he would never be an Albert Einstein.
Next!
9. “If your newborn boy is intact, you should retract his penis to clean under it.”
What the what? Seriously, this is just a reaaaaally friggin' poor understanding of physiology. Likely due to a general lack of understanding in the US about how to maintain cleanliness with babies with foreskins, since so many US males have historically had circumcisions. Such a lack of understanding is then mixed with the mistake of assuming adult physiology (and care) directly maps on to babies. Again: babies are not simply small adult humans! The "advice" provided in #9 is just reaaaally bad. (Might as well just circumcise the boy.)
Next!
10. “Feedings should be scheduled every 3 or 4 hours so baby learns to eat when it’s the ‘right’ time.”
Yeah, I learned this. And then when I got to learn babies, I figured out that this piece of advice - for newborns - is b.s. For older babies, yeah, maybe. But for newborns? You gotta be kidding me.
Next!
11. “It’s safe to put the car seat on top of a shopping cart at the grocery store.”
I have never heard this silly piece of "advice." Seriously, if you look at this in any sort of light, the engineering is just WAAAY off.
Next!
12. “It’s safe/beneficial to start solids at 2 weeks/2 months/3 months/etc.”
I did learn that there was a safe time to start a baby on solid foods. But all the numbers I heard were WAAAY beyond 2 weeks, 2 months, and 3 months. My idea was closer to 6 months, and my baby's pediatrician basically gave her the green light for a very limited set of solid foods when she was 8 months old (given her delicate digestion). She loves to eat bread, sliced turkey, and olives. She also likes to suck on lemons. Still, most of her food remains liquid or only semi-solid, even though she's well over 1 year old.
So, looking back, I only really learned one of the twelve, and even that one I figured out on my own was almost certainly rubbish. True, some of the advice on this list is implicitly geared toward women and new mothers (and not non-mothers), but my mother did talk to me about parenting tips, since she had no daughters to impart such wisdom to. The majority of her parenting advice - as related to newborns - was let them sleep when they need sleep, feed them when they need feeding, burp them after feeding (because babies don't learn how to burp until much later), change their diapers (perhaps more often than you think they need to be changed), and don't drop them. (I suppose that last piece of advice is given to most men about babies, though.)
I'm somewhat surprised that these were 12 "mainstream" baby lies, though. Especially #11; advice about how car seats can fit onto shopping carts is not something that really could have been passed down through several generations (which I could see with most of the other ones), so if this really is a "mainstream" lie, then it had to have been disseminated through popular culture.
But I'm not surprised that most of these "mainstream" lies were completely (or mostly) unknown to me. I've encountered many cultural norms about babies and being a new mother, with almost all of them being completely foreign to me. It is, on the one hand, refreshing to know that there are new myths forming around motherhood and children that may be foreign to many people outside the US (or maybe even certain parts of the US). It is, on the other hand, frustrating that people who might readily believe in these myths and lies are not aware of the plethora of other myths and lies surrounding motherhood and babies that permeate the globe.
Wednesday, June 03, 2015
More inconsistency in thinking about race
I'm almost surely never going to watch Aloha, which stars Emma Stone in the role of a Hapa on Hawai'i. But there is such a great backlash over this film, focusing primarily upon the race of Emma Stone and how it doesn't match the race of the character. However, I noticed something about this coverage: most of the coverage about how badly matched the actress was with the character's race gets the character's race wrong.
Emma Stone's character is supposed to be 1/4 Chinese, 1/4 Native Hawaiian, and 1/2 European mutt. But this is how Entertainment Weekly discussed the casting problem:
The problem is, of course, that "Asian" in this case means someone of Asian racial ancestry. And in that sense, the character of Allison Ng is "Asian." But the character is also "Hawaiian." And the character is also "European." The mix is even explained - again and again - by the various stories that are breathlessly saying how horrible it was that the actress didn't even come close to matching the ethnicity of the character. But then they all do the easy thing and just label the character "Asian" or "Half-Asian."
Why?
Why not label her "White" or "Half-White"? Indeed, why not label her "Hawaiian" or "Half-Hawaiian"?
The US remains stuck in a discussion and conceptualization of race that revolves primarily around a "White/Black" axis. Sure, there is a recognition that there are more races than "White" and "Black," but the rules of discussing them and assigning someone to them remains effectively the same as the rules that still remain about assigning race within the "White/Black" context: you are either fully White or you are Black. Therefore, we call Barack Obama "the first African American President," despite the fact that he's half-White.
In the same vein, since the character of Allison Ng not 100% White, Allison Ng is not - and cannot be - "White." This then leaves us with determining whether she's "Asian" or "Hawaiian."
I would hazard a guess that most mainland Americans have no idea about what a Native Hawaiian looks like, what Hawaii's culture actually consists of, or even what Hawaii's history entails. I doubt that most mainland Americans can name two Hawaiians from history or even name two Hawaiian traditional dishes. In short, most mainland Americans have next to no idea about anything relating to Hawaii other than (possibly) that it's one of the States of the United States, that it's in the Pacific Ocean, it's where Pearl Harbor is located, and it's got hula dancers. But ask most mainland Americans to describe how a Native Hawaiian is different from an Asian, and I would hazard a guess that most wouldn't be able to give a straight answer (except - perhaps - a circular one, like, "A Native Hawaiian is a native of Hawaii"). Indeed, I would hazard the position that Native Hawaiians are completely absent from the minds of almost all mainland Americans.
Add to this invisibility the comparative visibility of Asian Americans, especially in TV shows that are supposed to take place in Hawaii, such as all the Asians in Hawaii Five-O (which even cast an Asian American as a Native Hawaiian!!!). Add to this the way in which official census forms have the lumped-together category of "Asian Pacific Islander." That lumping effectively extends the geographic range of this "racial category" from Turkey to Hawaii. (As if Turkey to Japan wasn't large enough.)
... and so - for a variety of reasons, her Hawaiian-ness gets completely subsumed, her Whiteness gets disqualified, and she is left as "Asian" (or "half-Asian").
No.
If you're going to write an article excoriating Crowe for casting lily-White, Northern-European-descent Emma Stone in the role of Allison Ng, you must get the race of the character right and you must never get it wrong. The simple truth is that the character of Allison Ng is more White than she is Asian. The character of Allison Ng is as Hawaiian as she is Asian. Referring to her character as "Asian" (or even "half Asian") in these articles is just so stupidly wrongheaded that it beggars belief.
The US (heck, most of the world) needs to get past the idea that 50% White, 50% Black makes you Black. They need to get past the idea that 50% White, 50% Asian makes you Asian. There needs to be a greater recognition that
Emma Stone's character is supposed to be 1/4 Chinese, 1/4 Native Hawaiian, and 1/2 European mutt. But this is how Entertainment Weekly discussed the casting problem:
Accepting Emma Stone as an Asian-American in Aloha requires a certain suspension of disbelief and no small amount of magical thinking. In the Hawaii-set romantic comedy-drama, she portrays Allison Ng: an aggressively peppy Air Force fighter pilot of Chinese-Hawaiian-Swedish decent who falls for an existentially angst-y military contractor played by Bradley Cooper.And EW isn't alone in this, either. Social-justice/femenist website Jezebel doesn't do much better:
But in order to process this idea of Stone as a bi-racial character, as someone whose genetic lineage can be traced back to the Middle Kingdom by way of Polynesia, you must first get past the obvious stumbling blocks: her alabaster skin and strawberry blond hair, her emerald eyes and freckles—past the star’s outwardly unassailable #Caucasity—if only because the movie hammers home her cultural other-ness in just about every other scene.
Emma Stone Playing a Half-Asian Character in Aloha: Literally WhyNBC News' coverage of the controversy shouts:
Cameron Crowe Apologizes for Casting Emma Stone as Asian AmericanThe Guardian's news story on this states:
Emma Stone: the whitest Asian person Hollywood could findYou get the idea.
The problem is, of course, that "Asian" in this case means someone of Asian racial ancestry. And in that sense, the character of Allison Ng is "Asian." But the character is also "Hawaiian." And the character is also "European." The mix is even explained - again and again - by the various stories that are breathlessly saying how horrible it was that the actress didn't even come close to matching the ethnicity of the character. But then they all do the easy thing and just label the character "Asian" or "Half-Asian."
Why?
Why not label her "White" or "Half-White"? Indeed, why not label her "Hawaiian" or "Half-Hawaiian"?
The US remains stuck in a discussion and conceptualization of race that revolves primarily around a "White/Black" axis. Sure, there is a recognition that there are more races than "White" and "Black," but the rules of discussing them and assigning someone to them remains effectively the same as the rules that still remain about assigning race within the "White/Black" context: you are either fully White or you are Black. Therefore, we call Barack Obama "the first African American President," despite the fact that he's half-White.
In the same vein, since the character of Allison Ng not 100% White, Allison Ng is not - and cannot be - "White." This then leaves us with determining whether she's "Asian" or "Hawaiian."
I would hazard a guess that most mainland Americans have no idea about what a Native Hawaiian looks like, what Hawaii's culture actually consists of, or even what Hawaii's history entails. I doubt that most mainland Americans can name two Hawaiians from history or even name two Hawaiian traditional dishes. In short, most mainland Americans have next to no idea about anything relating to Hawaii other than (possibly) that it's one of the States of the United States, that it's in the Pacific Ocean, it's where Pearl Harbor is located, and it's got hula dancers. But ask most mainland Americans to describe how a Native Hawaiian is different from an Asian, and I would hazard a guess that most wouldn't be able to give a straight answer (except - perhaps - a circular one, like, "A Native Hawaiian is a native of Hawaii"). Indeed, I would hazard the position that Native Hawaiians are completely absent from the minds of almost all mainland Americans.
Add to this invisibility the comparative visibility of Asian Americans, especially in TV shows that are supposed to take place in Hawaii, such as all the Asians in Hawaii Five-O (which even cast an Asian American as a Native Hawaiian!!!). Add to this the way in which official census forms have the lumped-together category of "Asian Pacific Islander." That lumping effectively extends the geographic range of this "racial category" from Turkey to Hawaii. (As if Turkey to Japan wasn't large enough.)
... and so - for a variety of reasons, her Hawaiian-ness gets completely subsumed, her Whiteness gets disqualified, and she is left as "Asian" (or "half-Asian").
No.
If you're going to write an article excoriating Crowe for casting lily-White, Northern-European-descent Emma Stone in the role of Allison Ng, you must get the race of the character right and you must never get it wrong. The simple truth is that the character of Allison Ng is more White than she is Asian. The character of Allison Ng is as Hawaiian as she is Asian. Referring to her character as "Asian" (or even "half Asian") in these articles is just so stupidly wrongheaded that it beggars belief.
The US (heck, most of the world) needs to get past the idea that 50% White, 50% Black makes you Black. They need to get past the idea that 50% White, 50% Asian makes you Asian. There needs to be a greater recognition that
Wednesday, November 05, 2014
Waiting at government offices is stressful and frustrating. Especially when you have to do it twice over.
I hear that sharing frustrations with people can help you diminish your stress level. To that end, I've decided to write about what was a stressful and highly frustrating two days of waiting at government offices.
I spent much of Tuesday standing in a line at one government office, only to find out that I actually had to first stand all day in a different line in a different office before I could stand all day in the line in which I was initially standing. Why? Because I didn't file my paperwork on time, and so I needed to get a piece of paper from that office to give to the person at this office in order for this clerk to process the papers as normal. *Sigh.* It's really hard not to let frustration turn to anger, even though many people might interpret my state of frustration as a state of anger. (Nope: they are not the same; I actively avoid getting angry.) Since it was already past 2pm - and since Chilean government offices (just like Chilean banks) close at 2pm - I would have to try again the next day. On the plus side, she said that I could come directly to her station when I did get the paper, which would (at least) save waiting in line again at this office. (Ah, the small blessings that come from not getting angry at clerks, who can't change the rules that govern their actions, but can either cut you a break if you're nice to them or make things even more difficult for you if they feel like you're being overly bitchy and/or assholey.)
Side note: The need to go to a different government office in order to pay a fine for not doing a particular piece of paperwork in time was due to a misunderstanding and lack of communications due to presumed knowledge and expected actions due to that fundamental misunderstanding of how the Chilean governmental bureaucracy works. Every bureaucracy has its annoyances, but these can be minimized (at least for people like me) if I understand the internal logic of the particular system. Of course, being a foreigner, I don't know the things that I don't know to ask about (and being nationals, the people I talk to don't know that I don't know until it's way too late). Of course, one of the main annoyances about Chilean government is that some offices are grossly understaffed (i.e., the ones I had to go to), of which I had an inkling on this day, but which I would find out when I went to the other government building.
After returning to my apartment (frustrated, fatigued, and trying to figure out explanations to questions that I was pretty sure I was not formulating correctly), I decided that I should probably figure out what my visit would likely entail, and after a lot of figuring and guessing and asking and trying to figure out yet again what the heck is meant by certain legal phrases (because government websites - even those aimed at foreigners - are written by people who implicitly understand the bureaucracy, which means that there's a lot of assumed knowledge that requires additional searching and additional frustration), I finally started to pull together an idea of what I had to do. People - like me - who have to pay a fine to this government agency, need to first wait in line to get a piece of paper from a clerk that says how much is owed. Then I would have to go to the government-run bank and wait in line to pay that amount (I suppose this might be to minimize petty bribes, which is a good thing, I guess, but why you can't just pay directly with a credit card or debit card - which also would minimize petty bribery - is beyond me), from which you will receive a receipt of payment. (Why the automated banking system of the government-run bank couldn't tell the government clerks the same thing as the piece of paper, I don't know; I'm guessing that it's just an anachronism that has remained from pre-cmoputerized banking days.) Then I would have to go back to the same office, and wait in line (again!) in order present the receipt of payment from the government-run bank to the government clerk in order to get the piece of paper that the original government clerk said I needed to have before she could process my paperwork.
Or, to put it more basically, I would need to go to a government office, get a number, wait in line, get a piece of paper from a clerk that says how much I need to pay, go the the bank, get a number, wait in line, pay the amount listed on the paper, get a piece of paper that said I paid, go back to the government office, get a number, wait in line, get piece of paper that confirms that I payed the fine, go back to the original government office (where I was the day before), and go see the clerk I originally saw there in order to get the business done for which I had originally waited in line.
*Sigh* Don't get angry. Don't get angry. Don't get angry. After all, all bureaucracies have really frustrating aspects. The only thing that getting angry would do is to (directly or indirectly) hurt me. Better just wake up early. (Yeah, I suppose this is turning into a mantra.)
Today, I woke up at 6am after a stressful night. *Grogginess.* I left the apartment at 7am, and got to the correct government office at 7:50am. As I pulled up to the main entrance, I noticed that there was no line, and my spirits were buoyed; perhaps this wouldn't take so long after all. But no. When I went in, I was greeted by a line stretching out a side entrance. Following that line, I exited the lobby and found that it literally was already stretched almost to the end of the block. I got in line far closer to the corner of the next street than the entrance to the building and proceeded to wait for the doors to open. Starting at 8:30, the line slowly started to shuffle forward, and at about 9am, I got my waiting-room number: R122 (the monitors were showing R008, alongside three other sets of numbers, against which I would - apparently - be competing). Well, at least I would definitely have enough time to go and get a coffee. This option was far more tempting than waiting in an already-crammed waiting room; so I left in search of an open coffee shop.
Coffee shops in Santiago don't always open early. In fact, many small cafes don't open until 10 or 10:30, but I was able to find one in the main downtown plaza, had a coffee, and forced myself to try and relax. (Forced leisure is difficult, especially when you are in my head space.) During that time, I tried to channel my stress and frustration into something (somewhat) constructive, and I came up with an idea about how to minimize crowding in government waiting rooms that are obviously waaaaay too small to adequately handle the numbers of people waiting in them. I'll talk with the Office of Technology Transfer at the university to see if it might be of use or interest. Fingers crossed.
After stretching out a relatively small and quite expensive coffee for an hour, I went back to the waiting room, only to find that the number had gone up to R018. *Argh!* Well, off again outside I go! I found a couple of Indian textile importers down the street from the government office, some electronics stores, a whole gallery of handbag shops, another gallery of barbers and hairdressers, and yet another gallery of various levels of jewelry. I also noticed scantily dressed women who "just happened" to be standing at regular intervals along the street, doing nothing much more than stand and look at people. Apparently there were many goods and services on sale around the area.
I returned to the waiting room at 11:30 to find that the number had risen to D025. *Sigh.* Well, off again outside I go! Since I was near the old central plaza, the main cathedral, and a couple of old churches, I decided that I'd play tourist for a bit. To that end, I checked out the cathedral (lots of school kids on field trips, very few worshippers, and renovation work going on all around), as well as another stonking big church nearby (a nearly empty mass presided over by a priest who literally mumbled and stumbled through his holy litany) and then decided to get lunch (arroz con pollo at a small eatery tucked between two government buildings and looking out on a fountain).
Back to the waiting room at noon. In the intervening 30-ish minutes (yes, it was a very quick lunch, and a very quick look around the churches), the number had "rapidly" climbed to D055. Well, considering that the offices would close their doors at 2pm, I decided to stay (with the hope that things would continue along at the rate of the previous 1/2 hour, instead of at the rate of the initial 2 hours). However, at the back of my head, I knew that I had to *still* go the bank, wait there and then return to this same waiting room before going back to where I was yesterday.
Arse...
During the next 1/2 hour, I played sudoku, and after one (somewhat) tough game, I looked up to see: D107! Well, I'd best get ready, then! My number was thrown up on the board at 1pm. Forward I stepped, and just as I looked for which clerk I needed to see, the D123 was called, and I was left in the lurch, not knowing where I was supposed to go. Luckily, the guard helped me out and one of the clerks said that I could see her after she was done with the person she was helping at the time. *Phew.* I was already having images of having to wait in line all over again, but luckily that didn't happen.
I then proceeded to wait nervously in front of the withering gaze of the hundreds of people stacked in the waiting room, with me seeming like I jumped the queue. Ah, well, screw 'em. I was supposed to be here, and anyway the clerk was finishing up.
I was called forward, and the clerk went through the papers and told me perhaps the best news of my predicament that I could have heard: there would be no charge for the paperwork I needed. This mean that that she would issue me the paper immediately. I therefore wouldn't need to stand in line at the bank, and I therefore wouldn't need to stand in line again at this same office. However, there was one catch. The paper she would issue me was an extension for only this day, which meant that I needed to go back to the first government office within the next hour (since they would close at 2pm), or else I'd have to come back tomorrow to get another copy of the piece of paper she was handing to me.
Three things went through my mind: "Yay!" "Crap." and "Fuck that." There was no chance that I would stand in line yet again, so back I biked to the offices I was at yesterday, and, there, I skipped the queue and went directly to the clerk who I met with the day before. (Hello, do you remember me? Yeah, I was the guy who did this, and who you told that, and I've come back with all the appropriate papers. Oh, and do you remember that you told me to come to see you directly? Yeah, I'm back. Hello again.) Luckily she did remember me, and after about 10 minutes, I was done.
Yeah, I know that I will likely have to wait at government offices again. But at least it won't be for a while yet.
I spent much of Tuesday standing in a line at one government office, only to find out that I actually had to first stand all day in a different line in a different office before I could stand all day in the line in which I was initially standing. Why? Because I didn't file my paperwork on time, and so I needed to get a piece of paper from that office to give to the person at this office in order for this clerk to process the papers as normal. *Sigh.* It's really hard not to let frustration turn to anger, even though many people might interpret my state of frustration as a state of anger. (Nope: they are not the same; I actively avoid getting angry.) Since it was already past 2pm - and since Chilean government offices (just like Chilean banks) close at 2pm - I would have to try again the next day. On the plus side, she said that I could come directly to her station when I did get the paper, which would (at least) save waiting in line again at this office. (Ah, the small blessings that come from not getting angry at clerks, who can't change the rules that govern their actions, but can either cut you a break if you're nice to them or make things even more difficult for you if they feel like you're being overly bitchy and/or assholey.)
Side note: The need to go to a different government office in order to pay a fine for not doing a particular piece of paperwork in time was due to a misunderstanding and lack of communications due to presumed knowledge and expected actions due to that fundamental misunderstanding of how the Chilean governmental bureaucracy works. Every bureaucracy has its annoyances, but these can be minimized (at least for people like me) if I understand the internal logic of the particular system. Of course, being a foreigner, I don't know the things that I don't know to ask about (and being nationals, the people I talk to don't know that I don't know until it's way too late). Of course, one of the main annoyances about Chilean government is that some offices are grossly understaffed (i.e., the ones I had to go to), of which I had an inkling on this day, but which I would find out when I went to the other government building.
After returning to my apartment (frustrated, fatigued, and trying to figure out explanations to questions that I was pretty sure I was not formulating correctly), I decided that I should probably figure out what my visit would likely entail, and after a lot of figuring and guessing and asking and trying to figure out yet again what the heck is meant by certain legal phrases (because government websites - even those aimed at foreigners - are written by people who implicitly understand the bureaucracy, which means that there's a lot of assumed knowledge that requires additional searching and additional frustration), I finally started to pull together an idea of what I had to do. People - like me - who have to pay a fine to this government agency, need to first wait in line to get a piece of paper from a clerk that says how much is owed. Then I would have to go to the government-run bank and wait in line to pay that amount (I suppose this might be to minimize petty bribes, which is a good thing, I guess, but why you can't just pay directly with a credit card or debit card - which also would minimize petty bribery - is beyond me), from which you will receive a receipt of payment. (Why the automated banking system of the government-run bank couldn't tell the government clerks the same thing as the piece of paper, I don't know; I'm guessing that it's just an anachronism that has remained from pre-cmoputerized banking days.) Then I would have to go back to the same office, and wait in line (again!) in order present the receipt of payment from the government-run bank to the government clerk in order to get the piece of paper that the original government clerk said I needed to have before she could process my paperwork.
Or, to put it more basically, I would need to go to a government office, get a number, wait in line, get a piece of paper from a clerk that says how much I need to pay, go the the bank, get a number, wait in line, pay the amount listed on the paper, get a piece of paper that said I paid, go back to the government office, get a number, wait in line, get piece of paper that confirms that I payed the fine, go back to the original government office (where I was the day before), and go see the clerk I originally saw there in order to get the business done for which I had originally waited in line.
*Sigh* Don't get angry. Don't get angry. Don't get angry. After all, all bureaucracies have really frustrating aspects. The only thing that getting angry would do is to (directly or indirectly) hurt me. Better just wake up early. (Yeah, I suppose this is turning into a mantra.)
Today, I woke up at 6am after a stressful night. *Grogginess.* I left the apartment at 7am, and got to the correct government office at 7:50am. As I pulled up to the main entrance, I noticed that there was no line, and my spirits were buoyed; perhaps this wouldn't take so long after all. But no. When I went in, I was greeted by a line stretching out a side entrance. Following that line, I exited the lobby and found that it literally was already stretched almost to the end of the block. I got in line far closer to the corner of the next street than the entrance to the building and proceeded to wait for the doors to open. Starting at 8:30, the line slowly started to shuffle forward, and at about 9am, I got my waiting-room number: R122 (the monitors were showing R008, alongside three other sets of numbers, against which I would - apparently - be competing). Well, at least I would definitely have enough time to go and get a coffee. This option was far more tempting than waiting in an already-crammed waiting room; so I left in search of an open coffee shop.
Coffee shops in Santiago don't always open early. In fact, many small cafes don't open until 10 or 10:30, but I was able to find one in the main downtown plaza, had a coffee, and forced myself to try and relax. (Forced leisure is difficult, especially when you are in my head space.) During that time, I tried to channel my stress and frustration into something (somewhat) constructive, and I came up with an idea about how to minimize crowding in government waiting rooms that are obviously waaaaay too small to adequately handle the numbers of people waiting in them. I'll talk with the Office of Technology Transfer at the university to see if it might be of use or interest. Fingers crossed.
After stretching out a relatively small and quite expensive coffee for an hour, I went back to the waiting room, only to find that the number had gone up to R018. *Argh!* Well, off again outside I go! I found a couple of Indian textile importers down the street from the government office, some electronics stores, a whole gallery of handbag shops, another gallery of barbers and hairdressers, and yet another gallery of various levels of jewelry. I also noticed scantily dressed women who "just happened" to be standing at regular intervals along the street, doing nothing much more than stand and look at people. Apparently there were many goods and services on sale around the area.
I returned to the waiting room at 11:30 to find that the number had risen to D025. *Sigh.* Well, off again outside I go! Since I was near the old central plaza, the main cathedral, and a couple of old churches, I decided that I'd play tourist for a bit. To that end, I checked out the cathedral (lots of school kids on field trips, very few worshippers, and renovation work going on all around), as well as another stonking big church nearby (a nearly empty mass presided over by a priest who literally mumbled and stumbled through his holy litany) and then decided to get lunch (arroz con pollo at a small eatery tucked between two government buildings and looking out on a fountain).
Back to the waiting room at noon. In the intervening 30-ish minutes (yes, it was a very quick lunch, and a very quick look around the churches), the number had "rapidly" climbed to D055. Well, considering that the offices would close their doors at 2pm, I decided to stay (with the hope that things would continue along at the rate of the previous 1/2 hour, instead of at the rate of the initial 2 hours). However, at the back of my head, I knew that I had to *still* go the bank, wait there and then return to this same waiting room before going back to where I was yesterday.
Arse...
During the next 1/2 hour, I played sudoku, and after one (somewhat) tough game, I looked up to see: D107! Well, I'd best get ready, then! My number was thrown up on the board at 1pm. Forward I stepped, and just as I looked for which clerk I needed to see, the D123 was called, and I was left in the lurch, not knowing where I was supposed to go. Luckily, the guard helped me out and one of the clerks said that I could see her after she was done with the person she was helping at the time. *Phew.* I was already having images of having to wait in line all over again, but luckily that didn't happen.
I then proceeded to wait nervously in front of the withering gaze of the hundreds of people stacked in the waiting room, with me seeming like I jumped the queue. Ah, well, screw 'em. I was supposed to be here, and anyway the clerk was finishing up.
I was called forward, and the clerk went through the papers and told me perhaps the best news of my predicament that I could have heard: there would be no charge for the paperwork I needed. This mean that that she would issue me the paper immediately. I therefore wouldn't need to stand in line at the bank, and I therefore wouldn't need to stand in line again at this same office. However, there was one catch. The paper she would issue me was an extension for only this day, which meant that I needed to go back to the first government office within the next hour (since they would close at 2pm), or else I'd have to come back tomorrow to get another copy of the piece of paper she was handing to me.
Three things went through my mind: "Yay!" "Crap." and "Fuck that." There was no chance that I would stand in line yet again, so back I biked to the offices I was at yesterday, and, there, I skipped the queue and went directly to the clerk who I met with the day before. (Hello, do you remember me? Yeah, I was the guy who did this, and who you told that, and I've come back with all the appropriate papers. Oh, and do you remember that you told me to come to see you directly? Yeah, I'm back. Hello again.) Luckily she did remember me, and after about 10 minutes, I was done.
Yeah, I know that I will likely have to wait at government offices again. But at least it won't be for a while yet.
Sunday, August 31, 2014
When symbology means something completely different to you
I saw that one of my friends changed his Facebook profile pic to this:
The first thought that came into my head was, "Well, so, too, were the dodo and the passenger pigeon..."
The next was, "...and shouldn't it read, 'You are the result' - unless the message is for a 3rd person plurality, which is strange given how signs accompanied by messages to "you" are generally meant for the 2nd person...?"
My thoughts on grammar continued with, "...and shouldn't it be '... evolutionary successes...' since evolution is a process requiring consistent - and relatively constant - successes in mating and survival...? I know that the sign could mean to use success in the uncountable form, but that would be incongruous, given how "results" is used in its countable form."
My thoughts then strayed back to the implications of the wolf, given the message, and it was something like, "...and what's the point of using a wolf... a species that has been extirpated in much of its native range, and is - in many ways - a prime example of a species that, despite it being the culmination of billions of years of evolution, has until recently been going the way of the dodo and the passenger pigeon?"
Maybe - as an ecologist with an evolutionary background and a great interest in grammar - I'm just thinking about this too much?
The first thought that came into my head was, "Well, so, too, were the dodo and the passenger pigeon..."
The next was, "...and shouldn't it read, 'You are the result' - unless the message is for a 3rd person plurality, which is strange given how signs accompanied by messages to "you" are generally meant for the 2nd person...?"
My thoughts on grammar continued with, "...and shouldn't it be '... evolutionary successes...' since evolution is a process requiring consistent - and relatively constant - successes in mating and survival...? I know that the sign could mean to use success in the uncountable form, but that would be incongruous, given how "results" is used in its countable form."
My thoughts then strayed back to the implications of the wolf, given the message, and it was something like, "...and what's the point of using a wolf... a species that has been extirpated in much of its native range, and is - in many ways - a prime example of a species that, despite it being the culmination of billions of years of evolution, has until recently been going the way of the dodo and the passenger pigeon?"
Maybe - as an ecologist with an evolutionary background and a great interest in grammar - I'm just thinking about this too much?
Thursday, September 12, 2013
Racial Identity and Me
On federal employment forms, I am (now) allowed to choose any and all races that I belong to. It used to be that I had to choose "Other" and then write in the various races that I claimed. Why the federal government is asking me about race is something that I can understand - at least I think I can understand, given the steep historical imbalances between Whites and not-Whites. However, the racial categories puzzle me:
Even when I was a kid, growing up in the 1980s, I always had problems with this set of pigeonholes, since the pigeonholes all seemed ... wrong. Even now that I can check more than one box (yeah, that "other" box was also problematic), why do we as a nation continue to use such heavily outdated definitions of "race"? I mean, an American from Easter Island would be classified as "Other Pacific Islander", right alongside a person from Papua New Guinea, but what similarity could be drawn from that? Nothing!
But - depending on how you define the association of Easter Island - this person could also define themselves as American Indian. Why? According to the Office of Management and Budget:
And what about Russian Aleuts? Would the fact that they aren't from Alaska mean that they wouldn't count as "Alaska Native" and therefore have to call themselves "Asian"? Does the fact that movement between Western Alaska and Eastern Russian occurred since before the European "discovery" of the "New World" qualify Russian Aleut-descended people to claim that they are as much Native Alaskans as their closely related kin who happened to live on the other side of the Bering Straits? Or does the fact that Alaskan Aleuts are on the East side of the Straits mean that they are somehow the same "race" as the various Athabaskan tribes that lived in the interior of Alaska?
And what about my "Black" friends who are as bi-racial as me? Why were they supposed to check "Black" and couldn't instead choose "White," even though I was given the option of choosing between "Asian" and "White"? (This was before even the "Other" option.)
And then someone told me that race was about culture. (I later learned that this wasn't technically true, even though race and culture and ethnicity are often conflated around the world, since a distinct culture is often held by a distinct ethnicity, which is often - but not always - perceived to be of a distinct race from other, neighboring populations.) But - even then - I had to wonder why my Japanese mother was the same "Asian" as my friend's Pakistani mother. And why was my naturalized-American friend from a Senegalese family considered to be the same "Black" as my friend who could trace his ancestry to slavery? So the culture definition didn't make sense to me, either.
When I was about 9, I came to realize that the construct of "race" - that thing that so many think is simple and by which racialists and racists both ascribe with pride - isn't really that simple at all. Indeed, when I read in high school about the changes to the concept of "White" to expand to include the various non-Anglo Saxon European ethnicities (so now even Italians, Spaniards, Irish, and Russians are as "White" as WASPs), this whole notion of "race" showed itself to be about as solid as shifting sand.
So now federal and state forms don't really cause me to re-evaluate my racial identity every time I fill them out (and make me try to remember what I chose last time, since I didn't want to be accused of lying on a government document). Now I can just choose a whole bunch of things to which I can stake some sort of ancestral claim, and then let some clerk sort it out to make my notion of my ancestry fit into their arbitrary constructs of race. I'm not a big fan of the "race" part of the form, because I think that it's a question based on a fundamentally inconsistent assessment of a culturally derived concept based on a historical condition that itself is no longer valid.
But I'll just be happy in checking multiple boxes and letting the government try and determine what I meant by my selection.
- American Indian or Alaska Native
- Asian
- Black or African American
- Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander
- White
Sometimes, "Alaska Native" and "Native Hawaiian" are their own unique categories, but at other times they aren't. (This makes me wonder whether there is actually any functionality in separating these groups, since these two categories don't always exist as separate in all government forms.)
But - depending on how you define the association of Easter Island - this person could also define themselves as American Indian. Why? According to the Office of Management and Budget:
American Indian or Alaska Native refers to a person having origins in any of the original peoples of North and South America (including Central America) and who maintains tribal affiliation or community attachment.So the Easter Island-American would have the option of claiming to be an American Indian or an "Other Pacific Islander." Confusing.
And what about Russian Aleuts? Would the fact that they aren't from Alaska mean that they wouldn't count as "Alaska Native" and therefore have to call themselves "Asian"? Does the fact that movement between Western Alaska and Eastern Russian occurred since before the European "discovery" of the "New World" qualify Russian Aleut-descended people to claim that they are as much Native Alaskans as their closely related kin who happened to live on the other side of the Bering Straits? Or does the fact that Alaskan Aleuts are on the East side of the Straits mean that they are somehow the same "race" as the various Athabaskan tribes that lived in the interior of Alaska?
And what about my "Black" friends who are as bi-racial as me? Why were they supposed to check "Black" and couldn't instead choose "White," even though I was given the option of choosing between "Asian" and "White"? (This was before even the "Other" option.)
And then someone told me that race was about culture. (I later learned that this wasn't technically true, even though race and culture and ethnicity are often conflated around the world, since a distinct culture is often held by a distinct ethnicity, which is often - but not always - perceived to be of a distinct race from other, neighboring populations.) But - even then - I had to wonder why my Japanese mother was the same "Asian" as my friend's Pakistani mother. And why was my naturalized-American friend from a Senegalese family considered to be the same "Black" as my friend who could trace his ancestry to slavery? So the culture definition didn't make sense to me, either.
When I was about 9, I came to realize that the construct of "race" - that thing that so many think is simple and by which racialists and racists both ascribe with pride - isn't really that simple at all. Indeed, when I read in high school about the changes to the concept of "White" to expand to include the various non-Anglo Saxon European ethnicities (so now even Italians, Spaniards, Irish, and Russians are as "White" as WASPs), this whole notion of "race" showed itself to be about as solid as shifting sand.
So now federal and state forms don't really cause me to re-evaluate my racial identity every time I fill them out (and make me try to remember what I chose last time, since I didn't want to be accused of lying on a government document). Now I can just choose a whole bunch of things to which I can stake some sort of ancestral claim, and then let some clerk sort it out to make my notion of my ancestry fit into their arbitrary constructs of race. I'm not a big fan of the "race" part of the form, because I think that it's a question based on a fundamentally inconsistent assessment of a culturally derived concept based on a historical condition that itself is no longer valid.
But I'll just be happy in checking multiple boxes and letting the government try and determine what I meant by my selection.
Friday, August 23, 2013
No, Ki Energy Does Not Explain the Unbendable Arm (Not even when the assertion is published in an academic journal)
A few years ago, I saw a link to an article titled, "The Physiological Study of Ki in Ki Aikido (2)" (PSoKiKA2) published in the Journal of International Society of Life Information Science in 2001. As a person who used to practice aikido (a lot) and who still dabbles in it from time to time, the concept of Ki and the practice of Ki Aikido were familiar to me.
And I've long felt they they were bunk.
What is ki?
Okay, so I've revealed my position right away, but the evidence for the physical existence of ki is paltry at best; along the lines of evidence for ghosts, bigfoot, and the yeti. Indeed, the idea of ki is an embedded concept in Japanese culture, and it is used in forming many words (denki: electricity, kibun: mood, tenki: weather, and aikido: literally "harmonious-spirit way"), and it also has a spiritual/religious meaning. A good analogue of ki is the word (and concept of) pneuma, which has the double meaning of "breath" and "spirit/soul": it has both a physical and a mystical meaning. Indeed, like pneuma, ki is often associated in its physical manifestation as breath, especially in the spiritualistic extremes of Aikido practice. It also has a history of deep associations with Far-Eastern religions (much like pneuma had a history of deep mystical and religious associations in Classical Greek society and - through the works of Aristotle and the Stoics - the pre-Enlightenment concept of medicine, too).
Assessment of PSoKiKA2
Anyway, back to "The Physiological Study of Ki in Ki Aikido (2)." The article is built on the whole notion that the ki in Ki Aikido is a quantifiable physical phenomenon, with the very first sentence in the introduction unequivocally stating:
The methodology seems to be okay, but remember that the whole article is resting on the (untested) axiomatic premise that ki is real and can be measured. The introduction continues, though, thusly:
In short, when you do the unbendable arm, your arm cannot be (easily) bent by your partner, even if they are trying really hard to bend your arm (which is why it's called "unbendable arm"), and it's a concept that exists in other martial arts, too. All the stuff about the poses is hooey, and you definitely can do it as a party trick to impress people. (But it rarely does impress people, unless you use it to show a person doing pull-ups on your arm.)
Going back to the PSoKiKA2, the researchers hooked up a Ki Aikido master a bunch of apparatuses to see what physiological effects and brain activity there are when the master is (1) actively using muscular strength to resist someone trying to bend his arm, (2) using nothing to resist the person bending his arm, and (3) using the unbendable arm technique to resist someone trying to best his arm.
Not really a bad set-up, except for the premise that what makes the unbendable arm function is ki. *sigh*
Still, PSoKiKA2 gets what looks like decent data and shows that the physiology and brain wave activity is different between condition (1) and condition (3). (Side note: condition (2) is treated as if it were a refractory period between the two tested conditions, and ought to be no different than the baseline condition that was measured prior to condition (1)). Specifically, the results showed:
So what do I think causes the unbendable arm, if it isn't ki? Well, I think that it's two things: mechanical advantage in work and physiology.
Mechanical advantage in work (aka the dot product of orthogonal vectors)
Waaay back in undergraduate (or maybe high school), when we took physics, one of the things that we learned as a part of kinematics was the concept of the dot product. Now, dot products are important in kinematics, since forces can be represented as vectors, and vectors can be manipulated using that specialized area of algebra called linear algebra.
One of the more important lessons that we learned in basic physics (the one that tries to teach kinematics without relying on the students' knowledge of linear algebra) is that the dot product of orthogonal vectors is always equal to zero. In other words, the net work done by perpendicular forces is nothing. Nada. Zilch. Zeeero. (And - conversely - the net work done by parallel forces is always equal to one or negative one, depending on directions of the vectors.)
Why is this important?
Well, the unbendable arm is actually - on one level - about the application of forces. The one trying to bend the arm (the "partner") is actively exerting force on the arm of the one resisting the arm-bending forces (the "practitioner"). In order to not have his arm bent, the practitioner must be exerting a force, because of the Law of the Conservation of Energy.
When the practitioner is actively resisting by pressing back on the partner's force, they are effectively creating a force vector that is parallel to the partner's force vector. In practical terms, this means that the maximum potential force can be imparted in the task, and the person exerting more force will be able to bend the arm in the direction they want. Since the partner has better leverage (and is usually using two arms), the partner is almost always able to overcome practitioner's ability to exert the force necessary to keep his arm extended.
However, when in the unbendable arm, the practitioner actually exerts force perpendicular to the forces exerted by his partner. Watch the video again, especially from 1:30. The force that the instructor is exerting is actually in the direction in which his fingertips are pointing: roughly perpendicular to his partner's hand positions. Since the angle between the forces approaches 90 degrees, the total amount of force that can be exerted by the partner on the practitioner approaches zero, which makes it very easy for the practitioner to utilize muscle force to counteract the remaining force exerted by the partner.
This isn't only the case when you have a partner using their hands and arms to try and bend the practitioner's arm. It also works with simple weights strapped across the arm at the inside elbow (provided the practitioner can stabilize his wrist and hand on something). So long as the practitioner extends a forward force, the weights will not bend his arm. It still takes work, though, since the force vectors are not at precisely 90 degrees, nor is there any feedback that the practitioner can receive from the weights, which is why it's actually harder (at least in my experience) to do unbendable arm with dead weights. But this leads to the next factor: physiology.
Physiology (specifically the stretch reflex response)
The actions of the human body are not purely the realm of abstract kinematics. The forces it creates are derived from the musculature. No surprise there. However, human skeletal muscle has a stretch reflex response, and:
When practicing with a partner, the stretch reflex response continuously recruits different muscle fibers to optimize maintaining the position of the arm in its outstretched position. As the partner shifts his leverage (even minutely), muscle fibers in the practitioner's arm are automatically recruited and relaxed, which means that the practitioner isn't consistently using the same muscle fibers to continue keeping the arm extended.
Conversely, when practicing with weights, there is no shifting. (At least, there shouldn't be.) The weights have a constant, unchanging downward force due to gravity, and (if the stabilization point is a fixed surface) the stabilization point is also exerting a constant, unchanging upward force on the back of the hand. The stretch reflex response is to continue to keep the exact same muscle fibers recruited and leave others unrecruited. This means that the arm quickly tires (unless the practitioner moves his position or unless the practitioner uses the partner's shoulder as a stabilization point, or both).
Indeed, we would encounter this type of problem were we to simply keep an arm raised at shoulder height. We might start off by keeping the arm perfectly still, but our shoulder would quickly start to fatigue, and we would be sorely tempted to either drop the arm or move it to a different position. Even rotating the arm or changing the angle of the shoulder or bending the arm at the elbow will suddenly make the task feel easier (at least for a time). This is because the stretch reflex response recruits different unfatigued muscle fibers and releases fatigued ones in order to maintain the new position.
Closing Remarks
I don't know for certain that the unbendable arm is actually caused by the realization of the dot product of forces combined with the stretch reflex response in the arm, but these two things actually have an internal logic and consistency to them that ki doesn't have. If we believe that it was actually ki energy that kept the arm straight, that would mean that the practitioner can convert the partner's physical energy into ki energy. It also means that the process of such energy conversion just happens to look like it takes advantage of the dot product of orthogonal vectors on the physics side and the stretch reflex response on the physiological side.
In short, one doesn't need to rely on mumbo-jumbo non-explanations like, "it must be associated with ki," unless you happen to be using the concept of ki purely in its ineffable sense. However, to write a physiology paper that effectively says that we can measure and observe ki in the body's response to a set-piece in Aikido circles is akin to citing the "power of intercessionary prayer" in healing the cataracts in Sam's mum:
... and the evidence about the studies of the efficacy of the power of intercessionary prayer is that the studies are heavily biased with internal assumptions that cannot be tested, are - at best - serendipitously aligned with the outcomes that the experimenters expect to see, and so riddled with confirmation bias that negative or null outcomes are often explained away or not even included as "valid" results.
Take home messages:
And I've long felt they they were bunk.
What is ki?
Okay, so I've revealed my position right away, but the evidence for the physical existence of ki is paltry at best; along the lines of evidence for ghosts, bigfoot, and the yeti. Indeed, the idea of ki is an embedded concept in Japanese culture, and it is used in forming many words (denki: electricity, kibun: mood, tenki: weather, and aikido: literally "harmonious-spirit way"), and it also has a spiritual/religious meaning. A good analogue of ki is the word (and concept of) pneuma, which has the double meaning of "breath" and "spirit/soul": it has both a physical and a mystical meaning. Indeed, like pneuma, ki is often associated in its physical manifestation as breath, especially in the spiritualistic extremes of Aikido practice. It also has a history of deep associations with Far-Eastern religions (much like pneuma had a history of deep mystical and religious associations in Classical Greek society and - through the works of Aristotle and the Stoics - the pre-Enlightenment concept of medicine, too).
Assessment of PSoKiKA2
Anyway, back to "The Physiological Study of Ki in Ki Aikido (2)." The article is built on the whole notion that the ki in Ki Aikido is a quantifiable physical phenomenon, with the very first sentence in the introduction unequivocally stating:
Aikido is a Japanese martial art, in which Ki is very important and is not always a physical power. (1,2)Yes. There are references. In fact, the article cites a total of three references, each one of them about Ki Aikido. In this case, references 1 and 2 are books in the popular press about Ki Aikido (Ki Energy for Everybody and Ki in Daily Life). The final reference is actually the complement to this study (or "PSoKiKA1"), which was published in the March issue of the same journal.
The methodology seems to be okay, but remember that the whole article is resting on the (untested) axiomatic premise that ki is real and can be measured. The introduction continues, though, thusly:
To identify what Ki is in Aikido, we studied what physiological state is controlled when the unbendable arm is performed. The experiments to study the state of the unbendable arm consist of three different conditions: (1) the state of the arm being unbendable by applying only physical power, (2) the state of the arm being unbendable by being powerless without resistance, and (3) the state of the arm being unbendable by extending Ki. Through analysis of the differences among the three states examined, the difference between physical power and Ki should be understood.Um... Yeah. A little explanation is needed here, I think. First, what is "the unbendable arm"? Here is a quick video explanation (with a bunch of mumbo-jumbo, but not that much of it) that also shows the three conditions of the experiment (the guy in the video calls state (2) "floppy arms"):
In short, when you do the unbendable arm, your arm cannot be (easily) bent by your partner, even if they are trying really hard to bend your arm (which is why it's called "unbendable arm"), and it's a concept that exists in other martial arts, too. All the stuff about the poses is hooey, and you definitely can do it as a party trick to impress people. (But it rarely does impress people, unless you use it to show a person doing pull-ups on your arm.)
Going back to the PSoKiKA2, the researchers hooked up a Ki Aikido master a bunch of apparatuses to see what physiological effects and brain activity there are when the master is (1) actively using muscular strength to resist someone trying to bend his arm, (2) using nothing to resist the person bending his arm, and (3) using the unbendable arm technique to resist someone trying to best his arm.
Not really a bad set-up, except for the premise that what makes the unbendable arm function is ki. *sigh*
Still, PSoKiKA2 gets what looks like decent data and shows that the physiology and brain wave activity is different between condition (1) and condition (3). (Side note: condition (2) is treated as if it were a refractory period between the two tested conditions, and ought to be no different than the baseline condition that was measured prior to condition (1)). Specifically, the results showed:
- Relative to condition (2), the heart rate was elevated under condition (1) but not condition (3).
- There was more blood flow at the neck under condition (1) than condition (2).
- Both condition (1) and condition (3) showed almost instant blood pressure increase, but it was higher for condition (3).
- GSR increased sharply under condition (1) but not condition (3).
- Abdominal respiration ceased under condition (1) but was continued under condition (3).
- Neck temperature decreased under condition (1) but increased under condition (3).
- Condition (1) showed both alpha and beta wave brain activity, but condition (3) showed only alpha wave brain activity and no beta wave brain activity compared to condition (2).
Now, I would look at these results, and I would say that this conclusively shows that this Ki Aikido master is doing something very different between condition (1) and condition (3). In fact, that's all that PSoKiKA2 can show. If I had data from other subjects (like other aikido masters or complete off-the-street novices who were taught the basics of the unbendable arm mere seconds before testing), then I would be more comfortable to say that condition (1) and condition (3) are not merely artifacts created by the practitioner. (As an aikido practitioner, though, I would say that they aren't, but the data of one individual do not support my personal experiential - and therefore potentially subjective - observation.)
However, this isn't what PSoKiKA2 concludes. Indeed, here's what the authors thought the results meant:
... when resisting with Ki, the subject kept breathing and the exhalation dominated when starting to resist the power, this is presumably the factor functioning to resist the power applied.Yeah, mumbo-jumbo that is also self-confirmatory. Ki and breath are always connected, as is ki and the mind. Finding these things is not proof of ki, but is either an explanation of acculturation or associative physiological processes. For example, in Aikido, we are taught a form of demonstrating the unbendable arm in which we don't breathe when physically resisting. See what the instructor does from 1:00? He purses his lips when not talking; when watching a similar demonstration in other dojos, this is often done unspeaking and with a clenched position. To one extent, it's play-acting. To another extent, it is true that if we are actively resisting, it's difficult to breathe easily, but for the purposes of demonstrating the unbendable arm, it's not so difficult as to cause you to cease all breathing. (Here, the Aikido master in the study either consciously or unconsciously play-acting the role assumed in the active resistance portion of the demonstration.)
... Coordinative function of the frontal lobe of the left-brain with the region for vision in the right brain was observed. The force through Ki might generate this connection.
So what do I think causes the unbendable arm, if it isn't ki? Well, I think that it's two things: mechanical advantage in work and physiology.
Mechanical advantage in work (aka the dot product of orthogonal vectors)
Waaay back in undergraduate (or maybe high school), when we took physics, one of the things that we learned as a part of kinematics was the concept of the dot product. Now, dot products are important in kinematics, since forces can be represented as vectors, and vectors can be manipulated using that specialized area of algebra called linear algebra.
One of the more important lessons that we learned in basic physics (the one that tries to teach kinematics without relying on the students' knowledge of linear algebra) is that the dot product of orthogonal vectors is always equal to zero. In other words, the net work done by perpendicular forces is nothing. Nada. Zilch. Zeeero. (And - conversely - the net work done by parallel forces is always equal to one or negative one, depending on directions of the vectors.)
Why is this important?
Well, the unbendable arm is actually - on one level - about the application of forces. The one trying to bend the arm (the "partner") is actively exerting force on the arm of the one resisting the arm-bending forces (the "practitioner"). In order to not have his arm bent, the practitioner must be exerting a force, because of the Law of the Conservation of Energy.
When the practitioner is actively resisting by pressing back on the partner's force, they are effectively creating a force vector that is parallel to the partner's force vector. In practical terms, this means that the maximum potential force can be imparted in the task, and the person exerting more force will be able to bend the arm in the direction they want. Since the partner has better leverage (and is usually using two arms), the partner is almost always able to overcome practitioner's ability to exert the force necessary to keep his arm extended.
However, when in the unbendable arm, the practitioner actually exerts force perpendicular to the forces exerted by his partner. Watch the video again, especially from 1:30. The force that the instructor is exerting is actually in the direction in which his fingertips are pointing: roughly perpendicular to his partner's hand positions. Since the angle between the forces approaches 90 degrees, the total amount of force that can be exerted by the partner on the practitioner approaches zero, which makes it very easy for the practitioner to utilize muscle force to counteract the remaining force exerted by the partner.
This isn't only the case when you have a partner using their hands and arms to try and bend the practitioner's arm. It also works with simple weights strapped across the arm at the inside elbow (provided the practitioner can stabilize his wrist and hand on something). So long as the practitioner extends a forward force, the weights will not bend his arm. It still takes work, though, since the force vectors are not at precisely 90 degrees, nor is there any feedback that the practitioner can receive from the weights, which is why it's actually harder (at least in my experience) to do unbendable arm with dead weights. But this leads to the next factor: physiology.
Physiology (specifically the stretch reflex response)
The actions of the human body are not purely the realm of abstract kinematics. The forces it creates are derived from the musculature. No surprise there. However, human skeletal muscle has a stretch reflex response, and:
When a muscle lengthens, the muscle spindle is stretched and its nerve activity increases. This increases alpha motor neuron activity, causing the muscle fibers to contract and thus resist the stretching. A secondary set of neurons also causes the opposing muscle to relax. The reflex functions to maintain the muscle at a constant length.In short, skeletal muscle has a way of maintaining a certain level of stretch in them that helps maintain the lengthened arm position by creating fine-level manipulations within the muscle fibers to ensure that the overall tension of the musculature is maintained unconsciously. This is important when describing the difference between doing the unbendable arm with a partner and with weights.
Gamma motoneurons regulate how sensitive the stretch reflex is by tightening or relaxing the fibers within the spindle. There are several theories as to what may trigger gamma motoneurons to increase the reflex's sensitivity. For example, gamma co-activation might keep the spindles taut when a muscle is contracted, preserving their stretch-sensitivity even as the muscle fibers become shorter. Otherwise the spindles would become slack and the reflex would cease to function.
When practicing with a partner, the stretch reflex response continuously recruits different muscle fibers to optimize maintaining the position of the arm in its outstretched position. As the partner shifts his leverage (even minutely), muscle fibers in the practitioner's arm are automatically recruited and relaxed, which means that the practitioner isn't consistently using the same muscle fibers to continue keeping the arm extended.
Conversely, when practicing with weights, there is no shifting. (At least, there shouldn't be.) The weights have a constant, unchanging downward force due to gravity, and (if the stabilization point is a fixed surface) the stabilization point is also exerting a constant, unchanging upward force on the back of the hand. The stretch reflex response is to continue to keep the exact same muscle fibers recruited and leave others unrecruited. This means that the arm quickly tires (unless the practitioner moves his position or unless the practitioner uses the partner's shoulder as a stabilization point, or both).
Indeed, we would encounter this type of problem were we to simply keep an arm raised at shoulder height. We might start off by keeping the arm perfectly still, but our shoulder would quickly start to fatigue, and we would be sorely tempted to either drop the arm or move it to a different position. Even rotating the arm or changing the angle of the shoulder or bending the arm at the elbow will suddenly make the task feel easier (at least for a time). This is because the stretch reflex response recruits different unfatigued muscle fibers and releases fatigued ones in order to maintain the new position.
Closing Remarks
I don't know for certain that the unbendable arm is actually caused by the realization of the dot product of forces combined with the stretch reflex response in the arm, but these two things actually have an internal logic and consistency to them that ki doesn't have. If we believe that it was actually ki energy that kept the arm straight, that would mean that the practitioner can convert the partner's physical energy into ki energy. It also means that the process of such energy conversion just happens to look like it takes advantage of the dot product of orthogonal vectors on the physics side and the stretch reflex response on the physiological side.
In short, one doesn't need to rely on mumbo-jumbo non-explanations like, "it must be associated with ki," unless you happen to be using the concept of ki purely in its ineffable sense. However, to write a physiology paper that effectively says that we can measure and observe ki in the body's response to a set-piece in Aikido circles is akin to citing the "power of intercessionary prayer" in healing the cataracts in Sam's mum:
... and the evidence about the studies of the efficacy of the power of intercessionary prayer is that the studies are heavily biased with internal assumptions that cannot be tested, are - at best - serendipitously aligned with the outcomes that the experimenters expect to see, and so riddled with confirmation bias that negative or null outcomes are often explained away or not even included as "valid" results.
Take home messages:
- The PSoKiKA2 study does nothing to actually show the existence of ki.
- The unbendable arm can be explained through simple kinematics and physiology.
- Heavily biasing your scientific research with predetermined causative effects means that you will certainly draw the wrong conclusions from your science (even if your method of obtaining the data was decent or even good).
Friday, July 26, 2013
My sense of "home"
It's the normal question that seems to follow the standard small-talk of getting to know someone in the United States:
"Hello." pause for the reciprocated greeting What's your name? pause for the response and the returning of the question. respond with your name. Where are you from?" pause for the response and the returning of the question. respond with where you are from.
It is with this question of, "Where are you from?" that I get hung up, because I don't have a good answer. I despise the question, "Where are you from?" and let me explain why:
I'm not from anywhere in particular. At least, not in the way that most people I encounter have understood the idea behind their question. To many, the question is roughly equivalent to, "Where were you born?" "Where did you grow up?" and "Where do you call home?" And - to many people (especially those who don't have families of their own) - the answer to at least two of the three questions is likely the same place. (And for many people I've encountered, the answer is the same for all three.)
I understand why the question is helpful: it gives the questioner a short-hand version of "getting to know you." I mean, if I meet a person who's from Boston, I know (or think I know) so many things about them. If they like baseball, they're likely a Red Sox fan. If they like football, likely a Patriots fan. If they like basket ball, they're likely a Celtics fan. Etc. Etc. Etc. And - heck - if I knew even more about the Boston area, I could even ask them what part of the city they're from (or even if they are from Boston itself, and not the greater Boston area).
But I'm not like that. The answers that I would have to give to those three implied questions would be, "I wasn't born where I grew up," "I grew up in seven countries on three continents," and "I call pretty much anywhere I've lived for more than 1 month 'home'". These answers aren't really conducive to people getting to have anything to go on when trying to get to the short-hand of "getting to know you." Indeed, when I've answered truthfully the locations I was born. grew up in, and felt at home in, most people look resentful or lost or put off (and some of them - I learned later - thought that I was trying to be arrogant by listing off so many different places so quickly and nonchalantly).
In short, I despise the question, "Where are you from?" because the truthful answers I give are nothing that most people want to hear.
And then I saw this video, where Pico Iyer eloquently explains why:
One excerpt really spoke to me:
"Hello." pause for the reciprocated greeting What's your name? pause for the response and the returning of the question. respond with your name. Where are you from?" pause for the response and the returning of the question. respond with where you are from.
It is with this question of, "Where are you from?" that I get hung up, because I don't have a good answer. I despise the question, "Where are you from?" and let me explain why:
I'm not from anywhere in particular. At least, not in the way that most people I encounter have understood the idea behind their question. To many, the question is roughly equivalent to, "Where were you born?" "Where did you grow up?" and "Where do you call home?" And - to many people (especially those who don't have families of their own) - the answer to at least two of the three questions is likely the same place. (And for many people I've encountered, the answer is the same for all three.)
I understand why the question is helpful: it gives the questioner a short-hand version of "getting to know you." I mean, if I meet a person who's from Boston, I know (or think I know) so many things about them. If they like baseball, they're likely a Red Sox fan. If they like football, likely a Patriots fan. If they like basket ball, they're likely a Celtics fan. Etc. Etc. Etc. And - heck - if I knew even more about the Boston area, I could even ask them what part of the city they're from (or even if they are from Boston itself, and not the greater Boston area).
But I'm not like that. The answers that I would have to give to those three implied questions would be, "I wasn't born where I grew up," "I grew up in seven countries on three continents," and "I call pretty much anywhere I've lived for more than 1 month 'home'". These answers aren't really conducive to people getting to have anything to go on when trying to get to the short-hand of "getting to know you." Indeed, when I've answered truthfully the locations I was born. grew up in, and felt at home in, most people look resentful or lost or put off (and some of them - I learned later - thought that I was trying to be arrogant by listing off so many different places so quickly and nonchalantly).
In short, I despise the question, "Where are you from?" because the truthful answers I give are nothing that most people want to hear.
And then I saw this video, where Pico Iyer eloquently explains why:
One excerpt really spoke to me:
Home has really less to do with a piece of soil than with a piece of soul. If somebody suddenly asks me, "Where is your home?" I think about my sweetheart or my closest friends or the songs that travel with me wherever I happen to be. And I've always felt this way...The stats that Iyer points out about people like me (a member of "this great, floating tribe" - even if only in spirit):
The number of people living in countries not their own now comes to 220,000,000. That's an almost impossible number to imagine, but that means that if you took the whole population of Canada and the whole population of Australia and then the whole population of Australia again and the whole population of Canada again and doubled that number, you would still have fewer people than would belong to this great, floating tribe. And the number of us who live outside the old nation-state categories is increasing so quickly - by 64 million just in the last 12 years - that soon there will be more of us than there are Americans. Already, we represent the fifth largest nation on earth.And that's kewl. But what he says about the children of those people who are part of that great, floating nation really, really hit home for me:
The typical person that I'll meet today [in the world's biggest cities] would be - say - at half-Korean, half-German young woman and living in Paris, and as soon as she meets a half-Thai, half-Canadian young guy from Edinburgh, she recognizes him as kin. She realizes that she probably has much more in common with him than with anybody entirely of Korea or entirely of Germany.I can definitely relate to that statement, being half-Japanese, half-American, growing up in many different large cities around the world. But Iyer continues.
So [the young woman and young guy] become friends. They fall in love. They move to New York City. ... or Edinburgh. And the little girl who arises out of their union will of course be not-Korean or German or French or Thai or Scotch or Canadian or even American, but a wonderful, and constantly evolving mix of all those places.That sounds just about what I expect for my future. However, I wonder if I can get a "Great, Floating Tribe" passport...
Saturday, June 08, 2013
More bike companies need to make these kinds of bikes
If even Bianchi is making "City" commuter bikes like this:
then maybe we can have even more people choosing to become daily bike commuters. From The Urban Country, we are offered a different way to think about urban commuter cycling... It's for lazy people!
I love it that I'm too lazy for all that.
then maybe we can have even more people choosing to become daily bike commuters. From The Urban Country, we are offered a different way to think about urban commuter cycling... It's for lazy people!
I arrive on time, I’m not sweaty, and I rode my bike not for a workout, but rather au contraire, I rode my bicycle because I am lazy.Brilliant. I also ride my bike because I'm lazy. Too lazy to go to a gym to work out. Too lazy to go park a car. Too lazy to wait for the car to get cool enough in the summer or warm enough in the winter. Too lazy to go and pump gas.
I step outside my front door and hop on my bike because I’m too lazy to go downstairs in the parking garage to get the car. I pull my bike up to the front door at my destination because I’m too lazy to drive around looking for a parking spot then having to walk from the car to the building.
I ride my bike instead of taking public transit because I’m too lazy to go to the store to buy bus tickets, and I am far too lazy to dig for loose change under my couch. I am also too lazy to transfer from the bus to the subway to the streetcar, preferring to ride directly to my destination without transfers.
Instead of walking 15 minutes to my destination, I ride my bicycle there in 5. Yes, I ride there because I am too lazy to walk.
I ride my bicycle past dozens of cars at rush hour because I’m too lazy to be stressed out sitting in traffic and too lazy to explain why I’m late all the time.
I love it that I'm too lazy for all that.
Wednesday, May 22, 2013
Ruminations on miscegenation
Recently, there was a Heritage Foundation study that a liberalized immigration policy would cost the United States $6.3 trillion. The Colbert Report did a good job of explaining why the context of the Heritage Foundation's report is just ... huh?
Over at The Dish, Andrew Sullivan started up a series of posts - "Is Race Only A Social Construct?", and the posts (in usual Sullivan style) have been thought-provoking.
In the most recent installment - "Racists Love Race Science" - Sullivan concludes the post with this:
I also sense that there is - in my generation and the ones following mine - less knee-jerk animosity or revulsion to the idea of being mixed-race. After all, it's not my "fault" that my parents didn't live up to someone else's idea about racial purity; I can't change my racial past anymore than anyone else. Being mixed race is - therefore - a moot point when it comes to the concepts of racial purity. I didn't ask to be born this way; I'm not asking to be different; if you can't deal with it, tough cookies.
Of course, the increasing presence of mixed-race (aka "hapa") people - I hope - seriously call into question the very concept of miscegenation, since it presumes that there are distinctions of race that can be made in the first place. However, if I'm half-Asian/half-White, and I get married to a halfie, then are my wife and I engaging in miscegenation, too? In an absolutist sense, the answer is yes: mixed-race individuals who procreate with mixed-race individuals are - by definition - mixing races. However, in the social contexts in which the term is used, the answer is far murkier.
The history of the term "miscegenation" revolves around ideas of racial identity and racial purity. Indeed, it is a relatively recent word, being coined in the US in 1863, in a pamphlet entitled "Miscegenation: The Theory of the Blending of the Races, Applied to the American White Man and Negro", as part of a political hoax to discredit Lincoln and his party by ascribing ideas of mixing the races (only seen as "white" and "negro" at the time; never mind that there were Asians and Native Americans around), which was seen by many Whites as disgusting. This animus of disgust - along with the associated idea of maintaining racial purity - has continued to be associated with the term. Indeed, even after the Civil War, there were laws made to make miscegenation illegal in certain states, and these were maintained through almost 100 years, until the SCOTUS decision in Loving v Virginia. Even after, though, the social taboo of miscegenation continued.
However, for my generation and for those following me, the idea that you could marry someone you love and want to spend your life with is not so strange, even if it means marrying outside your "race" or social class (or both). Of course, there are still some hold-outs (especially among the social conservatives), and a "good" example of this was the reaction among mostly White, mostly conservative, mostly Republican supporters of John Boehner to the marriage of his daughter to a black Jamaican who sported a respectable mane of dreadlocks. To say that the responses from the conservative base were all happy felicitations for the newlywed couple (i.e., the standard, polite, and well-meaning response) would be missing the mark. Indeed the Daily Mail had to stop any further commenting and expunged the existing comments. However, over at the New York Daily News, the comments by these readers were FAR from generous. Looking at the first dozen, we get a few prominently racist comments (and more were found throughout the comments section):
... so what will "racial politics" look like among a group of people who aren't a single race? Will social pressures (either overt or covert) pressure mixed race citizens to "choose sides" in the dirty politics of racial hatred and bigotry? Will a refusal to do so mean that we are left out completely? Will it be possible to create a "we-don't-care-about-your-single-race-politics" bloc that tries to move thing away from (at minimum) a discussion of "race-is-white-and-black-only" into the realm of increased nuance and understanding that will become our future?
Furthermore, what will "miscegenation" mean to groups of children for whom mixed-race is the norm? When the population of mixed-race individuals tops 50%, will "racially pure" families become the ones who are strange and unnatural? Will there be pressures going the other way; to push more-pure people to meet, date, and marry more-pure people from another mixed-race grouping? Or will people just stop caring about using race as a predominant way to group people? After all, into what stereotypical race-based category would you a "1/2 filipino, 1/2 scottish/german/english" young girl, a "hawaiian, chinese, english, irish, puerto rican" woman, a "half white (irish/german/swedish/italian), half asian (cambodian/thai/chinese)" little boy, a chinese, english, irish, and fijian man, or any person like me and those on the Hapa Project?
Over at The Dish, Andrew Sullivan started up a series of posts - "Is Race Only A Social Construct?", and the posts (in usual Sullivan style) have been thought-provoking.
In the most recent installment - "Racists Love Race Science" - Sullivan concludes the post with this:
I cannot analyze myself – but I’m sure I am affected by my history on this. One part, as I’ve written before, is that my entire education was made possible by an IQ test at age eleven, which gave me entrance to what Americans would call a magnet school. I owe a lot to that test – and it was initiated by the left. Today’s liberals forget that testing IQ was once a leftwing idea. It was designed to rescue the poor from the trap of poverty by giving bright kids from poor backgrounds a swift entry to the British elite. That was the left of the 1940s – and you can look up Keynes and eugenics for further insight into how socialist this idea was in origin. Another part was, indeed, the reaction to my convening a debate on “The Bell Curve” at TNR, in the best-selling issue in that magazine’s history. I saw how some liberals really do not believe in free debate where race is concerned.As a person who grew up - like Sullivan - in a cultural milieu different from the United States, the structures of "race" were rather puzzling to me when I found myself "back" in the US in 1999. The subsequent fourteen years have given me perspective on the issue, but it continues to remain somewhat of a "foreign" perspective than my own, and I find that I don't have as strong or as deep a sense of (the American construction of) race. However, I do fully recognize that I am the product of miscegenation: a White parent and an Asian parent, and I see no problem with that.
But I do not believe that critics of the whole project are fueled by groupthink or emotion alone. There’s a very solid case against race as anything meaningful in our culture, and an even stronger case that in the process of constant miscegenation, we are rendering the whole idea of race moot. I sure hope so. There’s also a strong argument that IQ is of extremely limited use – and, in fact, misses a whole range of intelligences that are often more important to our lives and cultures as humans.
I just refuse to wish the data away. The data shocked me when I first read it, and shocks me still.
I also sense that there is - in my generation and the ones following mine - less knee-jerk animosity or revulsion to the idea of being mixed-race. After all, it's not my "fault" that my parents didn't live up to someone else's idea about racial purity; I can't change my racial past anymore than anyone else. Being mixed race is - therefore - a moot point when it comes to the concepts of racial purity. I didn't ask to be born this way; I'm not asking to be different; if you can't deal with it, tough cookies.
Of course, the increasing presence of mixed-race (aka "hapa") people - I hope - seriously call into question the very concept of miscegenation, since it presumes that there are distinctions of race that can be made in the first place. However, if I'm half-Asian/half-White, and I get married to a halfie, then are my wife and I engaging in miscegenation, too? In an absolutist sense, the answer is yes: mixed-race individuals who procreate with mixed-race individuals are - by definition - mixing races. However, in the social contexts in which the term is used, the answer is far murkier.
The history of the term "miscegenation" revolves around ideas of racial identity and racial purity. Indeed, it is a relatively recent word, being coined in the US in 1863, in a pamphlet entitled "Miscegenation: The Theory of the Blending of the Races, Applied to the American White Man and Negro", as part of a political hoax to discredit Lincoln and his party by ascribing ideas of mixing the races (only seen as "white" and "negro" at the time; never mind that there were Asians and Native Americans around), which was seen by many Whites as disgusting. This animus of disgust - along with the associated idea of maintaining racial purity - has continued to be associated with the term. Indeed, even after the Civil War, there were laws made to make miscegenation illegal in certain states, and these were maintained through almost 100 years, until the SCOTUS decision in Loving v Virginia. Even after, though, the social taboo of miscegenation continued.
However, for my generation and for those following me, the idea that you could marry someone you love and want to spend your life with is not so strange, even if it means marrying outside your "race" or social class (or both). Of course, there are still some hold-outs (especially among the social conservatives), and a "good" example of this was the reaction among mostly White, mostly conservative, mostly Republican supporters of John Boehner to the marriage of his daughter to a black Jamaican who sported a respectable mane of dreadlocks. To say that the responses from the conservative base were all happy felicitations for the newlywed couple (i.e., the standard, polite, and well-meaning response) would be missing the mark. Indeed the Daily Mail had to stop any further commenting and expunged the existing comments. However, over at the New York Daily News, the comments by these readers were FAR from generous. Looking at the first dozen, we get a few prominently racist comments (and more were found throughout the comments section):
Michelle837 days ago
so many beautiful women ending up with human vomit on legs these days...
norman west7 days ago
she is just another white woman who went black except for who her father is.....she did this to hurt someone....most probably herself....she loathes who she is and despises her life and lifestyle....this is a real psycho that is laying a trip on her family and laying this nap head....with a 14 inch pipe for certain.......
HoChin7 days ago
Dominic doesn't look like he has a whit of education I bet the bride puffs the pipe as well.
Jon Player7 days agoBased on the tone of these comments, it's pretty clear (to me) that they were fueled by anti-miscegenation, racial purity, and social maintenance sentiments. But what about their future children (presuming that they have any)? What sense does the idea of "racial purity" have when you are not at all "pure" and see no problem with it? What happens when more and more Americans are less and less "pure"? The number of mixed-race individuals in the US is growing; according to the US Census Bureau, it grew by three-and-a-half times in the last decade, and in some places - especially in West-Coast cities (and Hawaii), mixed-race Americans make up significant portions of the population.
Boehner is actually darker than him lol
... so what will "racial politics" look like among a group of people who aren't a single race? Will social pressures (either overt or covert) pressure mixed race citizens to "choose sides" in the dirty politics of racial hatred and bigotry? Will a refusal to do so mean that we are left out completely? Will it be possible to create a "we-don't-care-about-your-single-race-politics" bloc that tries to move thing away from (at minimum) a discussion of "race-is-white-and-black-only" into the realm of increased nuance and understanding that will become our future?
Furthermore, what will "miscegenation" mean to groups of children for whom mixed-race is the norm? When the population of mixed-race individuals tops 50%, will "racially pure" families become the ones who are strange and unnatural? Will there be pressures going the other way; to push more-pure people to meet, date, and marry more-pure people from another mixed-race grouping? Or will people just stop caring about using race as a predominant way to group people? After all, into what stereotypical race-based category would you a "1/2 filipino, 1/2 scottish/german/english" young girl, a "hawaiian, chinese, english, irish, puerto rican" woman, a "half white (irish/german/swedish/italian), half asian (cambodian/thai/chinese)" little boy, a chinese, english, irish, and fijian man, or any person like me and those on the Hapa Project?
Thursday, May 09, 2013
Liking that song from ... Wait... WHEN did you say that was released?!?
I just realized that Laid by James:
... was released in 1993. That's 20 years ago. That means that this song came out when many of this year's crop of juniors at university were born.
Which got me thinking: what was a major song when I was born; a song that would be the analogue to Laid for that 20-year-old junior? A song that would likely have been playing as a "soundtrack throughout my life"? (Well, I don't know if Laid would have played so often in the US, but it was all over the airwaves in the UK whilst I was living there.)
On the week of my birthday, the chart-topper in the US (for people interested in the UK chart-toppers for that week, here you go) was Undercover Angel (I said, "What?"):
...Da Doo Ron Ron (which I did hear quite often growing up) was climbing the charts, moving in at #2:
... Coming in at #3 was Looks Like We Made It, up two places:
... and Bill Conti's Gonna Fly Now (better known as the theme from Rocky) dropped from #1 to #4:
Looking through the list of the top 40 for that week, I notice Margaritaville (in at #9), another song that's dogged me my whole life,
Abba's Knowing Me, Knowing You (in at #19), a song that was on the cassette (and later, the CD) that my mom would play in the car,
Life in the Fast Lane by the Eagles (at #21), and
Kenny Rogers' Lucille (#25).
ALSO: the main theme of StarWars debuted on the week I was born:
cool, but ... yeah, I'm getting old.
... was released in 1993. That's 20 years ago. That means that this song came out when many of this year's crop of juniors at university were born.
Which got me thinking: what was a major song when I was born; a song that would be the analogue to Laid for that 20-year-old junior? A song that would likely have been playing as a "soundtrack throughout my life"? (Well, I don't know if Laid would have played so often in the US, but it was all over the airwaves in the UK whilst I was living there.)
On the week of my birthday, the chart-topper in the US (for people interested in the UK chart-toppers for that week, here you go) was Undercover Angel (I said, "What?"):
...Da Doo Ron Ron (which I did hear quite often growing up) was climbing the charts, moving in at #2:
... Coming in at #3 was Looks Like We Made It, up two places:
... and Bill Conti's Gonna Fly Now (better known as the theme from Rocky) dropped from #1 to #4:
Looking through the list of the top 40 for that week, I notice Margaritaville (in at #9), another song that's dogged me my whole life,
Abba's Knowing Me, Knowing You (in at #19), a song that was on the cassette (and later, the CD) that my mom would play in the car,
Life in the Fast Lane by the Eagles (at #21), and
Kenny Rogers' Lucille (#25).
ALSO: the main theme of StarWars debuted on the week I was born:
cool, but ... yeah, I'm getting old.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)