Confederacy of a Dunce - Monday, June 05, 2006

Monday, June 05, 2006

Supporting my World Cup team(s?) There are once again great hopes for England in the World Cup (starting on Friday in case you're living under a rock or in many parts of the USA). Besides the inevitable media onslaught (Google News search for "Wayne Rooney" gives 9000 results at the moment) this is definitely reflected in the massive increase in the number of St. George flags on display

For example, when I ride my bike to work outside of World Cup season, depending on my exact route I typically see anywhere from zero to zero England flags. Today I saw them in more than 40 different places, ranging from the windows of council flats (typically the most heavily England-decorated), to white vans (as expected, the majority of vehicles flying the colours), to one snarling pitbull wearing an England bandanna. And no doubt there were more I didn't notice as my flag-spotting tendencies were somewhat curtailed by the need to watch traffic so that I could stay alive another day. Needless to say this boom in England flag-waving has not gone unnoticed by the handwringing brigade, mostly because the flag has been appropriated by certain groups as a sort of white power symbol (sorta like the Confederate flag, only in this case the St. George flag remains the official flag of England). Yawn.

My own allegiances are highly divided, especially with my recent naturalisation as a British citizen. Or at least you'd think so. But the truth is, I'm not sure whether my British citizenship entitles me to support England. I'm British but am I English? I suppose this really depends on the answer to the question "Were I fit enough to make the team, would I now qualify to play for England in the World Cup?" Concerning eligibility FIFA article 15 (Statutes in PDF) says this:

1. Any person holding the nationality of a country is eligible to play for the representative teams of the Association of his country. The Executive Committee shall decide on the conditions of eligibility for any Player who assumes a new nationality and for whom par. 3 of this article does not apply, or for any Player who would, in principle, be eligible to play for the teams of more than one Association due to his nationality.
2. As a general rule, any Player who has already represented one Association (either in full or in part) in an official competition of any category may not play an international match with another Association team.
3. If a Player has more than one nationality, or if a Player acquires a new nationality, or if the Player is eligible to play for several Association teams due to his nationality, the following exceptions apply:
(a) Up to his 21st birthday, a player may only once request changing the Association for which he is eligible to play international matches. A Player may exercise this right to change Associations only if he has not played at "A" international level for his current Association and if at the time of his first full or partial appearance in an international match in an official competition of any other category, he already had such nationalities. Changing Associations is not permitted during the preliminary competition of a FIFA competition, continental championship or Olympic Tournaments if a player has already been fielded in a match of one of these competitions.
(b) Any Player who has already acquired eligibility to play for one Association but has another nationality imposed upon him by a government authority, is also entitled to change associations. This provision is not subject to any age limits.

Quite clear then. I hold US and UK nationality, am over the age of 21 and and have not played for any Association, thus I am entitled to play for either the US or the UK at this time. However, it's a bit more complicated than this as the UK does not have a unified team in the World Cup. Fortunately some clarifying information is available at the England Football Online site (linky):

The national teams of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are, however, a special case because these four "home countries" are part of one national state, the United Kingdom. There is no such thing as English, Scottish, Welsh or Northern Irish citizenship.

The associations of these four countries entered an agreement regarding international eligibility in 1993 which provides that a player holding a British passport is eligible to play for the country of his birth, the country of the birth of either of his natural parents or the country of birth of any of his natural grandparents. If the player, his natural parents and his natural grandparents were born outside the U.K., he may play for the home country of his choice. Our understanding is that once a player has played for one of the home countries, even if it is only a friendly match, the 1993 agreement precludes him playing for another home country.

This is very interesting indeed -- it seems that at the moment I am very much a free agent, entitled to play for any of five national teams. Do I choose the long-established glory of England, the only World Cup winner among the five (but with perhaps more stringent selection standards)? Or do I go with official FIFA world rankings:

#5 USA (tied with Spain)
#10 England
#59 Scotland
#74 Wales (tied with Kuwait)
#96 Northern Ireland

Only the USA and England are in the World Cup final this year (current betting odds decisively differ from rankings: USA are currently 80-1 to win it all; England are second favorite at 7-1). Or maybe I go in the other direction, taking into consideration my poor level of world-class football fitness, and try and qualify for Northern Ireland, the lowest ranked team I qualify to play for. Or I could always rule out those countries I've never set foot in, leaving only Wales among the lower tier.

In any event, since I definitely qualify to play for England at the moment, there's no reason I cannot officially support them as well. So be prepared to deal with a drunken, lairy Dunce starting about 10am on the days of England games (10 June, 15 June, 20 June for sure), and when they finally (inevitably) crash out in the elimination rounds, be ready to console me (and/or fight me).

Monday, June 05, 2006 12:56:13 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)

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Sunday, June 04, 2006

Special import Coca Cola

It's not unusual to find strange international products in London shops, but what about strange international versions of familiar products? I must admit I'm an occasional consumer of Coca-Cola products, and quite often our local shops stock an import version rather than the readily-available British products. I quite frequently find bottles from Poland, which does make some sense as there have been loads and loads of new Polish shops opening around London. But more curious are the bottles from Georgia (not the US state), all written in that distinctive Georgian script, except for a UK import sticker. It's amazing to consider that someone could profit from transporting a product thousands of miles to sell it in the UK when that same product is readily available here already (thoughts of ice cubes and Eskimos come to mind).

I'm by no means the first person to notice this; see the following posts from Anders Jacobsen a couple years back: 1; 2. But it's still quite unclear to me how this could work. Perhaps the answer's out there already; it's just quite hard to sort out anything relevant from the masses of information about Coca-Cola and (US state) Georgia.

consume

Sunday, June 04, 2006 11:02:46 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)

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Wednesday, May 31, 2006

Blogging for the obsessive-compulsive sort

One of my real difficulties with blogging is the extent to which it outright encourages obsessive-compulsive behavior on my part. Under ordinary circumstances I already score quite highly on whatever OCD scale is thrown at me. Although I no longer count continuously as I did as a youngster (counting under my breath simply for the sake of counting to a high number: 12,000 on one long family trip as I vaguely recall), I do occasionally fall into the number trap. The most recent example, determining which of the various local bus stops is actually closest to our front door:

414 paces: bus stop on Seven Sisters road serving routes 259/279 towards Manor House (and its counterpart headed toward Seven Sisters station and beyond just across the street, and approximately 50 paces further). Not very useful for my own journey to work, though. Hence,
588 paces: bus stop at Stamford Hill rail station, serving routes 253/254 (both directions approximately equidistant). However, on the way home it's slightly faster to get off a couple of stops earlier, getting home a little faster despite the added walking length of
614 paces: bus stop on Amhurst Park serving routes 253/254 towards Stamford Hill and Hackney. The best bet for minimizing the time waiting for a bus toward London, however, is a few steps further,
756 paces: bus stop on Seven Sisters Road, all four routes (253,254,259,279) converging. As Mrs. Dunce's commute can involve any of 253,254,259, this is her best bet (and often my own as well). Although sometimes a 259 may pass by while we trek the 342 steps between the nearest stop and this one.

I should note that there remain a few nearby bus stops not listed here: the 67 goes fairly close, along St. Ann's Road, but we seldom have occasion to take this bus. Another pair of 253/254 stops (between the two noted above) is closer to our house as the crow flies, but not on foot.

Anyway, erm, this is all to say that I occasionally fall into the trap of obsessive-compulsive behaviour, and that this is exacerbated by blogging as I occasionally feel additionally compelled to document these sorts of records rather than tracking for the short term, and then discarding them forever. As a frightening illustration of meta-obsessive-compulsive behavior here's a short list of my obsessive-compulsive topics, only covering my first six months of blogging (frankly, because even I have a limit, and I had no idea there were so many. Thus I haven't even reached what are in my mind the most egregious examples)....

What color is the new black?. In which I do a bit of Googling to try and decide which color (of many) is "the new black"
Saarbruecken. Saints of July 18, ranked in order of "saintliness"
Pub misery. Searching pub review sites to find the most miserable in North London.
London by Routemaster. First in a series of maps depicting the shrinking coverage of London's Routemaster buses.
Tip of the tongue. Documenting in slightly painful detail my long-running tip-of-the-tongue experience for the name "George Formby"
Could Do. Describing the tendency in UK English to use expressions like "Well, I might do."
Meal Time. Various English terms for meal times used in different parts of the world.
Recent speechifying. A shockingly dull breakdown of word frequency in a couple of speeches by George Bush and Tony Blair.
Beer festival. Box-ticking and ratings of beers consumed at a festival.
Eatin' vittles. Variation in the terms "vittles" and "victuals".
Not so obligatory plurals. Terms like "spectacles" and whether they should remain plural in phrases like "Spectacle wrangling".
Lady Marmalade. A bit too much on the origin of the term "marmalade"
London by Routemaster II. Another map depicting the further-shrinking coverage of London's Routemaster buses.
Breaking the Law, Breaking the Law. One of three sequential entries describing my attempt to cycle to work, strictly observing the rules and guidelines of the Highway Code. Sadly, based on a strict interpretation beyond the Highway Code itself.
Travel Games. Happy memories of childhood obsessions.
The Next Day. Overly detailed description of my journey to work through various roadblocks that remained in place a day after the London bombings of 7 July 2005.
Olympic Fever. My random selection of badminton as the sport I will pursue in the 2012 Olympics. At least now I can compete for Britain.
Of Nerds, Spazzes, Wonks and Dweebs. Etymology of various terms related to geekery.
Traffic Calming. A bit too much on the various devices and systems used for traffic calming. Here's where you find the difference between speed cushions and speed bumps.
More Ideal US Locations. Learning a little more about the cities that appear high on the list of "Your ideal US locations" generated by findyourspot.com
Route Planning. Fine details of minor variants in my commute.
Absorbubbles. Why does the nasty marketing term "absorbubbles" sound so bad?
Slug Bugs Gone Wild. Detailed rules for our own variant of the "Slug Bug" game.

meta

Wednesday, May 31, 2006 12:35:19 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)

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Tuesday, May 30, 2006

Party favo(u)rs

On Saturday we had our long-awaited "Becoming British" party to celebrate our naturalisation as British citizens. The British theme was provided by some British flag bunting, and a boot-load of tasty real ale from the Milton Brewery. Much to our suprise, many of the guests arrived with gifts in the British theme, welcoming us into the fold with traditional offerings of all kinds. Including:

drinks: numerous bottled real ales; gin & tonic; a bottle of Pimm's; and one of Babycham. Not to mention quite a few lagers "brewed under license in the UK".
foods: salt & vinegar crisps; Marmite; a truly dire-looking tin of Fray Bentos steak and kidney pie (you can order one for a knockdown price of $19.97 here, or maybe a little cheaper here, although in either case I doubt the tin will be as dusty as ours was). Perhaps most appropriately a tin of SPAM, a product originating in the U!!S!!A!! but which has been enthusiastically adopted by the British (just like us new citizens).
cloth goods: a high quality necktie depicting a stylized version of St. George's Cross; a bow tie depicting same; a one-size-(almost)-fits-all Union Jack t-shirt; a lovely tea towel honoring the Queen on her 80th birthday. All of which I ended up wearing at some point in the evening.
How can I leave out the miscellany? A packet of British-themed beer mats which may or may not be for real products or establishments; a small US-English/English-US dictionary; a small hand-held "England fan" which is a battery powered fan, in the shape of an England fan (as in football supporter) with the fan blade where his face should be. And I'm pretty sure there are plenty of other things I haven't thought of at the moment.

We set up the beer dispensing station just outside the back door, and various nibbles around the lounge, dining room and kitchen. The density of partygoers per room seemed very well matched with the ease of floor cleaning: a critical mass in the kitchen (stone floor tiles), significant numbers outdoors (pavement slabs) and in the dining room (wood), with the living room totally unused for the duration. The Milton beers went down a treat; it seemed like my preference ("Sparta") was slightly preferred over Mrs. Dunce's ("Nero") but this might also reflect the generally higher popularity of golden ales over (stronger) stouts. And the party continued into the wee hours.

Tuesday, May 30, 2006 1:52:20 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)

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Friday, May 26, 2006

Impending assessment

In two weeks' time, I'll receive my first formal assessment in British Sign Language... taking the test for CACDP (Council for the Advancement of Communication with Deaf People) Level 1 certification. The test criteria (taken from the CACDP's website) are whether the person is able to:

identify and use simple, commonly used expressions, question forms and conventions associated with BSL/ISL*;
request and provide information appropriate to the context;
express themselves in the language clearly enough so that a sympathetic native user of the language would understand questions and contributions.

*ISL = Irish Sign Language; CACDP certification is available in either.

The test is conducted face-to-face with a fluent signer, and takes about 10 minutes, with three components: basic conversation (what's your name, what do you do for a living, etc.), question and answer, and storytelling (take a minute or so to tell a story based on a series of pictures). Everyone seems fairly confident that I will breeze through it, mainly because I get a lot more practice than the others in my class (I share an office with three fluent signers, and the informal rule is that I should try to use BSL first in office conversations, particularly those of a social nature). But that doesn't help when it comes to the examination jitters -- the assessment was arranged yesterday and I've already had my first "Level 1 assessment nightmare". I swear this blog isn't going to turn into a dream journal, but here goes anyway:

The format of the Level 1 exam was a little different than specified above: it was a panel interview in a large auditorium. The content was a bit different as well: I was asked to describe my Ph.D. thesis research in BSL and answer questions of a technical nature. I had of course not prepared for this type of examination, instead rehearsing things like "I grew up in America, now I live in north London. I work as a language researcher and I have a wife and a cat." Needless to say this was not suitable to deal with (signed) questions like "how can you justify making a distinction between conceptual, nonlinguistic representations and semantic representations that are strictly verbal in nature?". The only thing missing (or not missing as the case may be) was that I was fully clothed.

language

Friday, May 26, 2006 11:37:24 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)

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Tuesday, May 23, 2006

online sheep market

A while back there was an interesting "HIT" on Amazon's Mechanical Turk. The instructions were to draw a sheep (facing left) using a simple mouse-based drawing interface. Artists (including me!) were paid the princely sum of two US cents for creating a sheep of sufficient quality (presumably, anything that vaguely looks like a sheep. The requirement that it be facing left is clearly not a strict one; see sheep #7653 for example). Now the project is complete, and the creators have unveiled The Sheep Market ("10000 sheep created by online workers"). A chosen sheep can be sent for free by email, or you can also shell out $20 for a "one of a kind plate block of lickable adhesive stamps... complete with a certificate of authenticity in a collectable package." That's $1 per sheep, which seems like a hefty markup indeed as the professional artists' services were obtained for a mere $200. Now, one of those sheep is mine. If you can guess which one it is, you'll receive a special prize. One guess per person, offer subject to additional restrictions not specified here.

Tuesday, May 23, 2006 2:05:11 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)

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Friday, May 19, 2006

And now it's done!

And now it's happened. Just before noon today, the Dunces gathered at the Civic Centre in Wood Green, where we were naturalised as British citizens, along with about 25 others (none of whom seemed to be from North America or western Europe). It was a group ceremony of the "repeat after me" variety ("I, state your name"... "I, state your name" and so on). Although they dodged the "your name here" bit by asking each person to state his or her name before the actual swearing/pledging allegiance to the queen. Despite this, responses were nowhere near unison; one gentleman in particular seemed inclined to try and say his bit faster than anyone else (much like a young Dunce might have done), while others didn't quite catch on to the concept, reading the card along with the Registrar instead of with the rest of the group. The mayor of Haringey (our local council) said a few words about diversity, tolerance and respect (the only detail I remember is that he claimed that a mere 190 languages are spoken in Haringey). The national anthem (instrumental version) was played as we stood reverently, and then we were called up to shake the Mayor's hand and receive our certificate of citizenship and a Haringey council goodie bag (contents: 1 pen, 1 keychain, letter of welcome from (ex)Home Secretary Charles Clarke [bearing a replica signature], information sheet re: dual citizenship and right of abode, information sheet and application for British passport, a voter registration form, a list of local councillors' contact information, a Haringey streetmap, and a voucher good for a free exercise class, swim, or steam/sauna at local leisure centres). Once we were finished, we were given the chance to pose for photos with the Mayor (and a picture of the Queen). How could we not? And then it was over; everyone disappeared in a matter of seconds it seemed. Getting on with being British, I suppose.

The Mayor, the Queen and Mrs. Dunce

The Mayor, the Queen and Mr. Dunce

Friday, May 19, 2006 2:38:51 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)

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Thursday, May 18, 2006

Becoming British!

Dear friends

It is our pleasure to announce the normalisation of our place in this fine country. On Friday the 19th of May at 11:30am we will publicly affirm our allegiance to the Queen and take our place among you as upstanding British citizens.

Then a week later on Saturday the 27th May at 8pm we would like to invite you to our home to demonstrate that we can still party like hooligan immigrants. We will be serving a couple of fine real ales from the Milton Brewery (Sparta and Nero) and some nibbles, please bring anything else you would like. If you don't already know our address please drop me a line (EMAIL).

consume

Thursday, May 18, 2006 3:09:44 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)

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Tuesday, May 16, 2006

Terror on the high seas

This past weekend we joined some friends of ours at sea, on an attempt at a sailing journey. Seven of us were involved, of whom only the Captain had significant sailing experience. He's recently moved his boat (BUGLE) from the very inconveniently located Isle of Wight to the much more accessible (from London, anyway) Chichester, a small city in West Sussex perhaps best known for its cathedral. Last summer Mrs. Dunce and I took a very relaxing and enjoyable sailing journey on this same vessel, under the same command (see here), although several of the other guests had experienced less delightful conditions (a Channel crossing featuring copious vomiting; hanging up on a sandbar on choppy seas, again featuring copious vomiting). The Captain had warned us in advance that we should not underestimate just how cold it would be out there, and to bring a variety of waterproofs we don't actually own. Fortunately there were a number of extras, and once we were outfitted and some safety instructions were given, we set out.

Bugle's mooring is at Chichester Marina, which as you can see from its location at the very top of this map is quite some distance into the harbor. So we had plenty of time motoring along the narrow channel (we'll get back to the channel soon) eagerly anticipating the excitement when we would finally set sail. Not without a bit of dread, however. The winds had kicked up to force 4-5, reaching 6, a scale which is fairly meaningless to me, but indicates that they're 15-20 knots, possibly into the mid 20s. Again fairly meaningless to me; even conversion into good ol' mph (15-25 or a little higher) doesn't actually tell me anything. A lot more informative were the subtle clues, like the significant number of small sailboats in the harbor resting on their sides while wet folks struggled to right them. Or the mayday call on the radio while we were being shown how to use it (just in case).

It took us the better part of an hour to make it to the mouth of the harbor, where we approached Chichester Bar. Unbeknownst to most of us (all of us?) this area might offer some interesting seas. The navigation report says "Mariners should be aware that ebb tides in the entrance to the harbour can attain a rate of up to 6 knots on springs. When falling tides coincide with strong winds from a southerly sector a dangerous sea may be encountered.". This local website puts it in perhaps more comprehensible terms: "Spectacular seas can sometimes be seen at the entrance to the Harbour at times of high winds from the south combined with spring ebb tides which reach their fastest around 3 hours after high water. If the conditions are right, the sea state over Chichester Bar (an area of shallower water) can be very exciting. You will not see many boats around as their skippers will hopefully have anticipated these conditions.". Well, it seems we were approaching the Bar under near-optimal conditions for seeing spectacular seas. It was already getting a bit exciting, especially as the depth gauge was indicating shallower and shallower water, as the boat's rising and falling increased dramatically. Fortunately for all involved, a quick decision was made to turn back, and we negotiated the channel back to the marina.

Or we would have, but for the particular shallowness of the low spring tide. Despite moving right along the channel, it was just not possible to get all the way to the marina, so after quite a few failed attempts a few feet apart from each other, we decided to tie up and wait out the tide with a picnic. Eventually the tide came back in, and we followed another boat of similar size through the (still quite shallow) channel, into the lock and back to the mooring. And from there it was off to dinner, than back below decks for the night.

There's definitely a lot going on in the area, so many mishaps that can involve boats. Maybe I shouldn't have read last year's report from the Chichester Harbour Patrol (pdf), or the local lifeboat launch summary. Perhaps I'm only a fair weather sailor after all.

travel

Tuesday, May 16, 2006 12:53:00 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)

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Wednesday, May 10, 2006

Capital adventures

There's been another temporary outage at Confederacy of a Dunce, this time because we took a long weekend in Washington DC. I figured I'd be able to write a little bit while we were there, but you know how that goes. We chose to spend a few extra quid to take Virgin Atlantic in order to take advantage of their impressive in-flight entertainment. You might laugh, but despite our desperate viewing from start to finish of both flights, we didn't even come close to watching everything that interested us. We did manage to get through Syriana, Junebug, The Constant Gardener and Murderball (three of which were disappointing), plus highlights of the Japanese program "Masquerade" (perhaps best known for the "Matrix Ping-pong" video clip that circulated widely a while back), a Chinese action game show "Challenge 321". Mrs. Dunce also saw Transamerica while I chose lowbrow comedy (Green Wing, Arrested Development, the American version of The Office). Of course this meant we didn't sleep on the return flight; thanks to that yesterday was a complete blur, and our 8:30 bedtime took forever to arrive.

We were graciously hosted by Mrs. Dunce's oldest friend who took time out of her busy schedule at the Peace Corps (especially busy as she has some responsibilities for East Timor) to hang out with us. And her boyfriend (although I heard her use the F-word on one occasion) who drives their apartment's only blog. Our main purpose for attending was the wedding of another of Mrs. Dunce's old friends, but we also managed to cruise through an impressive assortment of activities in our short visit.

I have to start with food, mainly because I'm a serial eater. Bring on those American-sized portions, that's my cry. We started on the eve of Cinco de Mayo at a Mexican restaurant; even though we now have a decent option in London, good Mexican is our first choice elsewhere as well. Mrs. Dunce and I are so closely tuned to each other that we ordered exactly the same thing, gigantic crab enchilada and a margarita (rocks, salt). Um about those American-sized portions, maybe not such a great idea for someone who's just eaten an airplane breakfast. The next morning we got in the car and headed for Bethesda, where Matuba Sushi awaited us. They offer a lunch special: all the sushi you can eat for a mere $11.95. From the "only rotary sushi bar in the DC metro area". Needless to say this was problematic for anyone lacking in willpower (that's me); the only solution was an afternoon nap. After which we headed out to the home of another of Mrs. Dunce's old friends (the capital area seems to be crawling with them) where we somehow managed to eat yet again.

It's starting to sound like our visit was only about eating, but we did some museuming as well. Like the new National Museum of the American Indian. I liked the approach of their displays, taking a central theme (e.g. history, cosmology, contemporary identity) and putting together parallel displays on that theme from different tribes from different parts of the Americas. And, (whoops, here I go back to food again) the museum restaurant was truly amazing. Our hosts had already mentioned how good it was, but I had no idea. The cafe is called Mitsitam, which means "Let's eat" in a local Indian language, and features a whole range of indigenous foods, grouped geographically (Northern Woodlands, South American, Meso America, the Great Plains, and the Northwest Coast and Columbia Plateau). I had an excellent black bean tamale; Mrs. Dunce a crab salad sandwich. Other choices included buffalo, venison, salmon, plus a whole variety of side dishes also generally representing the various locales (here are a couple of reviews).

Well, I've come to the end of my allotted time today, and I haven't even mentioned baseball or street numbering/naming conventions. I guess I need to threaten another DC entry next time.

consume | travel

Wednesday, May 10, 2006 4:08:03 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)

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Wednesday, May 03, 2006

Accessible research

One real challenge for me as a wannabe scientist is communicating my work effectively. I've had plenty of practice writing for an advanced audience (peer-reviewed publications in academic journals) but practically none intended for the general public. Until now, that is. I was recently asked to write a short piece about the sign language research I've involved in, to be published in a magazine whose primary readership is British signers. Fortunately I received plenty of feedback from one of my colleagues, a native signer who is substantially more experienced in writing for the community. It'll be interesting to see how people respond to it (if they respond at all). But I thought I'd post the article here as well, just to give a general idea of the kind of work I'm doing with sign language. All flaws, overstatements and errors of any kind are strictly my own and should not be attributed to my co-authors in any way. If you'd like to see the "academic journal" paper reporting this work please drop me a line.

Words, signs and imagery: when the language makes the difference.

In spoken languages, the way most words sound or are written has nothing to do with the actual thing each word represents. For example, neither the sound of the English word "hammer", nor its written form, have any resemblance to a hammer. Nor do the sounds of words for hammer in other languages ("kakas" in Hungarian, "martello" in Italian, "kanazuchi" in Japanese, "mlot" in Polish to mention but a few). This fact has led to a view held by many researchers: that "language" can be defined, in part, by the fact that words do not resemble the things they refer to. However, this view is based almost entirely upon research on spoken languages. Words referring to real-world things and events almost never resemble those things and events, because the languages are limited to sounds that can be produced by voice.

On the other hand, signed languagescan express far more information about the real world. In BSL, for example, numerous signs look like the object or action they refer to. For example, the sign HAMMER is produced by moving a fist up and down, resembling the typical use of a hammer, and the sign SCISSORS is produced by moving the index and middle fingers outward and inward, as if they were a pair of scissors. This sort of similarity between things in the world, and the form of signs, has often led people who know little about signed languages to the wrong conclusion that sign languages are somehow inferior to spoken languages, we know that research on sign languages shows otherwise.

We conducted an experiment designed to test whether the visual information of BSL signs affects native signers' judgements of similarity between different kinds of objects and actions, compared to English words which do not resemble things and events in the world. We used three types of signs/words: tools (e.g. SCISSORS, BROOM), tool-actions (e.g. DRILLING, DRAWING), and body-actions (e.g. SLAPPING, PUNCHING). The difference between objects (tools) and actions (tool actions and body actions) seems to be extremely important in understanding how language works, especially as they have very different roles in sentences (objects are nouns, actions are usually verbs). In BSL, all three kinds of signs are visually linked to their meanings, but tools and tool-actions are especially similar. For both of them, BSL signs look like the act of using a tool, while for body-actions, the signs look like the body movements:

Stills from BSL video clips used in the experiment. Arrows reflect direction of movement.

In this experiment, we showed BSL signers groups of three video-clips and asked them to decide which two of the signs were the most similar in meaning. We also asked English speakers to do a similar task, but using spoken words instead of video-clips. This kind of task has been used quite often to examine words' meanings in spoken languages, and speakers of a language tend to agree highly in their judgements. Because we wanted to look at the effect of the visual properties of signs, we looked at signers' and speakers' judgements of signs and words referring to tool actions. BSL signers were twice as likely to judge tool actions as more similar to tools than to body actions, while instead English speakers were four times as likely to judge tool actions as more similar to body actions. For example, SAWING and SPANNER were chosen as similar by BSL users 77% of the time, while English speakers chose them only 5% of the time; in contrast, SAWING and SCRATCHING were chosen as similar by BSL users only 5% of the time, but English speakers chose them 50% of the time.

The visual properties of signs are quite important in signed languages. Because BSL signs for both tools and tool-actions are so similar to each other, resembling the act of using a tool, BSL signers were far more likely to think of the two as very similar in meaning. This was very different from English speakers who thought of objects and actions as extremely different in meaning, even though both of them were related to tools. These results show that language cannot be defined by a lack of resemblance to things in the world, and that research on signed languages is an important part of understanding language itself as a whole.

language

Wednesday, May 03, 2006 12:21:12 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)

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Tuesday, May 02, 2006

Serious cycling ahead

At the end of summer, I will be joining a few friends on a small bike ride: flying into Krakow, from whence we will head southward, towards the High Tatras in Slovakia, eventually reaching Stary Smokovec before looping back to Krakow. The plan at the moment is slow steady long days in mountains, 60-80 miles per day, and staying in hotels/B&Bs so we don't have to carry camping gear. It seems like quite a difficult ride: any mountain range that includes the word "High" in its name is bound to be threatening, and pictures of the area seem to give the same impression. And at least according to this map the most significant mountains seem to be between Poland and Stary Smokovec.

Now I'm a true flatland boy, and while it's an exaggeration to say that the highest elevation I've ever cycled was a highway overpass (readers in the know will already be aware that the Kokomo, Indiana metro area does not offer many overpass options), the closest I've been to mountain cycling is flying over the Appalachians with my bike in the luggage compartment. Or, riding in the rolling hills west of Madison, Wisconsin. Not quite the same as real mountain riding, that's for sure. Oddly enough, I'm not so concerned about having enough stamina for the climbs: I've been gradually increasing my mileage and trying to find uphill stretches wherever I can (and also planning on doing at least a little training on some "real hills" somewhere away from London). Instead, it's the downhills that worry me most: even on minor downhills I find myself clutching the brakes as if they're trying to escape. Of course this may be a product of riding in and near London: within the built-up sections there's almost always a road crossing, a line of traffic, a construction zone, a small family crossing the road without looking or some other hazard; in the surrounding countryside it's quite typical to find a speeding driver taking his half of the road in the middle. So I'm quite anxious about getting used to riding downhill without squeezing the brakes until they melt and/or my hands turn into cramped claws.

In the meantime, perhaps I will start working on my Polish vocabulary which at the moment is only a handful of words mostly referring to foodstuffs (an ad for Chicago's Czerwone Jabluszko [Red Apple] Polish all-you-can-eat buffet really belongs here). Somehow I doubt the online Polish translator will be very useful on the road. But just in case I've prepared a few useful phrases, even though the online translation may not be very accurate at all:

You can have my bicycle. Please don't kill me.
Wy mozecie miec mój bicykl. Prosze nie zabija mnie.

Thank you for your kindness, but I cannot drink any more.
Dziekuja za wasza dobrotliwosc, ale JA nie moze pic wiecej.

Have you heard of Vanilla Ice?
Ma wy wysluchaliscie Vanilla Ice?

Those should pretty much cover it.

bike

Tuesday, May 02, 2006 12:12:47 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)

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Friday, April 28, 2006

Citizenship approved!

It's official! We've received our official "CITIZENSHIP INVITATIONS":

"APPLICATION FOR BRITISH CITIZENSHIP BY
Dunce

I am pleased to tell you that this application for British citizenship has been approved. To complete the process of becoming a British citizen, you will need to attend a citizenship ceremony to receive your certificate. In the ceremony you will take an Oath or Affirmation of allegiance to the Crown and a Pledge of loyalty to the United Kingdom. This is a formal promise to Her Majesty the Queen and the United Kingdom."

The choice between Oath or Affirmation depends upon whether Almighty God is mentioned or not. We'll do the ceremony sometime in the next three months (to be scheduled quite soon). It only took one month for our citizenship to be approved (from the day we submitted our documents: 20th of March); we were shocked it happened this quickly as the official website gave an expected waiting time of four months. We haven't even thought about planning the party. I guess our applications were very straightforward.

The date on the official letter was the 20th of April (Adolf Hitler's birthday, the date of the Columbine school shooting, and also a date revered by numerous American cannabis users for its resemblance to the not-at-all-secret number 420). In a not very modern twist, both citizenship invitations arrived in a single envelope addressed only to me. I like to think this was only because my name was on the payment slip, rather than Mrs. Dunce being considered chattel.