I feel like I just got sucked into a chain email: I stumbled across The Gender Genie, and of course I spent a good 10 minutes plugging in copies of my own text, and then text of a few other people. Interesting...
If you're too lazy to explore the link, there's the idea: the Gender Genie uses a pretty simple algorithm based on male and female patterns of syntax. To paraphrase, women talk more about relationshiops (no, don't cringe, I just resisted italicizing that, this is serious), men more about objects. So it follows that women use more words like "I", "myself", "should" and so on. Men, on the other hand, like definite articles and things that quantify (I kid you not, this is what the study the algorithm is based on says). And there's more: women, perhaps due to their favoured subject matter (me, myself, I, my relationships to her and him, how my relationships should be?) adopt a more engaging, involved style. Men like to stick to the facts (and like when I typed relationship up above, I cringed. Saying "the facts" makes me want to stand up straight, lower my voice, and flex pectoral muscles that most definitely are girls' muscles.)
The Gender Genie has categories for fiction, non-fiction, and - likely addressing its chief user group, the on-line geeks - blogs. According to the on-line stats, the algorithm is right almost 90% of the time when it comes to non-fiction texts of more than 500 words.
And of course I punched a whole bunch of my stuff in there - entries here, stories on the main web site, that sort of thing. And about 80% of the time, it was wrong (I used the nonfiction category, not the blog one - I refuse to yield to the blog label)! Not only that, but then I plugged in Markus' opening page, and it was wrong again. Now, I'd be tempted to say, this is all a bunch of BS, obviously, the gender genie don't know nothin'... except, when I plugged in other people I know, it worked beautifully.
So... that means, even though I am obviously full of me me me (exhibit A: my website. Exhibit B: you're looking at it) and thus prone to using the words "I" and "me", I still have some overridingly "male" syntax. Two explanations that I can think of:
1. This is the obvious one. I don't write about stuff that is personal to me, except perhaps in emails to girlfriends. I don't keep a diary, I don't like the whole written record of my neuroses when it comes to that sort of stuff. So, by default, my subject matter tends to be more object-oriented. I like to talk about ice, igloos and kayaks, and when I rant publicly, I tend to rant about stuff that is a bit more removed from who I am as a person and how I relate to the people in my life than I would if I was having tea with my sister. Oh, and I *hate* the word "should", with a passion, and I think 90% of the time when "myself" is used, it is done so incorrectly. It's not "Carolyn and myself are the coolest women on the planet", it's "Carolyn and I are the coolest women on the planet". After all, I would say "I am too cool for words", not "myself is too cool for words". You don't invite "myself" to dinner, you invite ME (at least you should, because I am, as I just pointed out, very cool. And a geek who is full of herself, but nevermind).
2. The world I inhabit for work demands that one be able to write, and to do it to a standard approved by one's peers. This means that my text has to be more than grammatically correct - it has to push the right buttons. That's true whether it's a funding proposal or a journal article. Things are changing, but my peers are predominantly male. I would hazard a guess that successful academic writing will almost always come out in the "male" category on the Gender Genie algorithm. Not just because it's often produced by males, or because it's written for a male peer group - but because many of us who've succeeded in my field have maybe done so because we have traditionally "male" patterns when it comes to comprehension and writing. I don't think it's a coincidence that I liked the mathematical and the quantitative aspects of everything I was doing in the first four years of my university education - I knew how to succeed there. I was accustomed to doing well, because I knew the pattern.
I also don't think it's a coincidence that, since then, I've been attracted to the more traditionally feminine side. Qualitative knowledge, our role in the research process, the meanings and identities we create through our choices, those are some of the things I've really become intrigued by over the past 10 years. But I write about these things with a careful voice. I have to get this work past my male peers, and thus it must be rigorous, repeatable, transparent, scientific (and I'm doing that flexing my pecs thing again). And I wonder - is it because I feel the need to justify what I've observed and hide behind the established ways of knowing?
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Out of curiosity, I punched in the text of this entry so far. And despite the deliberate use of me me me and I, as a non-fiction text, it still scores in the male category. Huh. And here I always thought that I engaged readers in what I write. Apparently not. According to the algorithm.
Coming up with an algorithm, of course, is a very male thing to do, isn't it?
Heh, I'm listening to Boney M's "20 Greatest Christmas Songs". Until very recently, I had no idea that Boney M wasn't quite the cultural icon I took them to be - I mean, we are talking about the first pop song I have a conscious memory of loving - "Rivers of Babylon", in 1978. Markus recorded it onto a tape using the stereo in the living room we weren't supposed to go to (the "hi-fi", pronounced by me at least as "hee-fee") sometime in late 1979 or 1980, and I'd sneak the tape and listen to it over and over. I can tell you some of the other tracks on that tape - there was "Gloria", but not the Laura Branigan version, "Born to be Alive" (Patrick Hernandez), "I flought the law (but the law won)" (The Clash version) and "Call me" (Blondie) as well as, I think, a Dolly Parton song.
Then, about a month ago, Lorenz informs me that I'm saying it wrong - it's supposed to sound like "bonnie" M, apparently. And that, even though they don't *look* German, the band came out of Germany. And then he tells me that nobody here listened to them, and he was polite about it, but he said something along the lines of Eurotrash! And accused them of being a manufactured band! (He is of course right. The genius behind Boney M is German Frank Farian, who later achieved a bit more notoriety when he created Milli Vanilli. Who also hail from Germany. I *know* Germany has embraced terrible pop. Yes, it is true that David Hasselhof achieved great popularity there.)
(The lack of North American success of Boney M at least explains why nobody ever gets it when I say things like "drinking and lusting and hungering for power" and "sing a summer song, skip along".)
Harumph. Apparently, I like bad 70s Euro-trash-disco-pop! When the CD is done, I shall start it again! It's perfect present-wrapping music! I feel very festive.
Everybody has guilty pleasures. Even if they're of dubious musical taste. Maybe, when I get tired of Boney M, I'll dig out Blondie's Greatest Hits.
Shameless endorsement #1:
There are two people whose websites make me embarrassed to even have one, because their design is so so good that I feel like I should just pack up my Duplo blocks (I don't even achieve Lego sophistication in comparison). Have a look at one of Chris Lawson's trip reports and tell me it isn't eye candy. And now Andrew Lavigne has announced a new central repository for his Adirondack hikes - beautiful and very functional. Now I'm jealous of Andrew on two fronts: his web page and all of his hikes.
WestJet rules my world. Last Tuesday, at 7:20 a.m., I got to on a WestJet flight in Regina. The idea was that I would catch another WestJet flight in Winnipeg, and then make my way to Toronto for 12:20. But there was a malfunctioning sensor, and we were taken off the plane again, and of course I thus missed my connection. The airline booked me on the next flight - which was waiting at the gate in Winnipeg, along with a customer service agent with my new boarding pass. Alas, this next connection had a quick stop in Thunder Bay - and it didn't take me long to realize that, with a new estimated time of arrival of 2:20, there was no way I would be able to deplane, collect my baggage, make my way to another terminal, check in, clear security and be at the gate for a final boarding call of 2:50 for a 3:00 flight. No way in hell.
Except there was a way. It involved someone pulling my bag in Thunder Bay and marking it for gate delivery, my being relocated to the front of the plane so I could get out first, and, in Toronto, the pilot hopping out of the cockpit and scurrying down the ladder to get my bag. This he handed to Marie-Eve, the world's coolest flight attendant, who then sprinted - I kid you not - through Terminal 3, all the way to the shuttle (which showed up within seconds of our getting outside). Vroooom over to Terminal 2 - checked in before 2:30. Cleared security with 25 minutes to go! Hurrah, WestJet. It could have been a disastrous day, because I suspect Air Canada would not have been overly friendly about switching to a later flight, but as it was, it was an adventure.
And then, today, I come home - and there is a nice letter of apology for WestJet for the whole thing, and a $165 WestJet voucher. Wow. It's no wonder this airline has grown by 44% in the past year. Well deserved.
Igloo Ed says he's coming to Ontario! To do product demos at Adventure Guide and Algonquin Outfitters in February. And me, I get to be his sidekick! And I get to go camping with him! Hurrah for the Ice Box Igloo kit.
Now, I just have to hope that work doesn't interfere with the fun I want to have. (But I've got nothing to be bitter about even if it does, because, these days, I am incredibly challenged by and interested in the work I do, even when it munches my personal life.)
And now -
because you must have fun -
let's make the annoying little man dance to our tune, shall we?
After that, how about some pithy commentary that is right up my alley?
Yep, it's the Johanna link farm today. What do you think, a good crop?
"White men think of ice as frozen water, but Inuit think of water as melted ice. To us, ice is the natural state"
- Nukapinguaq
Remembering back to grade seven Canadian history, I'm reminded that Quebec is "where the river narrows". This narrowing of the channel means that the tides from the Gulf of St. Lawrence are funnelled, meaning a tidal amplification. Hence, the freshwater flowing down the St. Lawrence is backed up, and the flow is reversed at Quebec. They told me it's the world's largest freshwater tide. It becomes brackish just downstream, at Île d'Orléans. Because the salt water is denser than freshwater, the fresh stuff is at the surface and the salty stuff further down.
I didn't know about the freshwater tide phenomenon. My first night in Quebec, I went for a walk - and ended up down at the river. It was cold, and there were chunks of ice racing past the docks. I was pretty sure that I was standing on the north bank of the St. Lawrence, so the flow direction confused me. I was surprised that there would be that much of a tide here, but I'd forgotten about the funnel effect. It was explained to me at coffee break in a meeting the next day, when I was staring out at the river and started asking questions.
I also couldn't figure out how the river could ever be ice-covered, given that much activity at its surface. That, too, got explained - it's never really iced up in the traditional sense, but you do get an ice pack. This happens when the wind blows all the ice floes into a bay, and it's cold enough that they freeze together. But the Seaway remains open from Montreal to Quebec City all winter, even if it means sending icebreakers through.
Given the first couple of points, the ICC lawsuit agains the US on the grounds of not ratifying the Kyoto Protocol makes sense to me. The Inuit are forced to adapt to rapidly changing conditions - and observed as well as predicted changes show the Arctic as a hotspot for warming trends - that they have no power over but that have greater impact on them than on the vast majority of those whose activities are contributing heavily to them. The Inuit Circumpolar Conference advocates for the right of Inuit. When it comes to self-determination and self-government, Canada's Inuit are leading the way among Canadian aboriginals (did you know, for example, that Inuit are not Status Indians? did you know that there are four major Inuit land claim regions - Inuvialuit, Nunavut, Nunavik and Labrador - and that all but Labrador have been settled?). But these sorts of changes, they're part of global environmental change, and those who are arguably most affected by them are powerless to do anything about them.
Given the issue of appropriate dissemination, it now makes sense to me that we need research licences - which require the support of northern communities in their application - to do any sort of work there. It already made sense to me, to need community approval for community-based fieldwork. But now it also makes sense to me to put this same requirement on physical scientists who may be working offshore, analyzing fish.
I've been busy.
Thursday: Hamilton - Thunder Bay
Sunday: Thunder Bay - Winnipeg - Regina
Tuesday: Regina - Winnipeg - Thunder Bay - Toronto - Quebec City
Saturday: Quebec City - Toronto.
I wish there were frequent flyer miles on WestJet! and I wish WestJet went to Quebec City.
At 1:42 p.m., Lee emailed and mentioned that he was going to a Fred Eaglesmith concert tonight. I read the message at about 2:30. I bitched to Stef that I couldn't handle the fact that this would mean that Lee has seen Fred *four* times this year, and I have only been to *two* shows, despite the fact that I had to whine to get Lee to go to his first show in April in the first place.
Stef's reaction was, wait, I've only been to two shows too (one of them was with me). We looked at each other. I said, so do you want to call for tickets, or should I?
Of course the show was sold out. We could, however, get our names on "the list". Not the cool list, just the waiting list - and with a place on the list, we could at least get standing room at the bar. Except when we got to Hugh's Room, they told us if we were willing to split up, we could have great seats - with total strangers. We took it.
I think I scored. I sat with some really cool guys. One of them has a record store, and I'm sure I annoyed him by mentioning the phrase "Vinyl Cafe". But I had a great time, hanging out with these guys - and Denny's generosity was phenomenal.
And of course, there was Fred. I've only ever been a groupie of one act. I first saw Fred in 1993, at the CD release for Things is Changing. That was about 48 hours after I listened to Doug's tapes of There Ain't No Easy Road. Never before or since did I get goosebumps like that. The first time I heard "Go Out and Plough", I had to look out the car window, because I thought I might cry. After I listened to the entire two tapes, I was blown away. Doug said, hey, he's playing in Dover in a couple of days. We went. That was it.
I followed Fred like a puppy thinking he's its mommy. St. Jacobs, Port Dover, Caledonia, Toronto, Guelph, Parry Sound, Hamilton... I didn't care. I had a car, and going alone was no issue. I'd go see Fred, Ralph and Willie. I obsessed about Fred so much, Marlene wanted to know what the big deal was - and went to a Fred house concert in Goulais. From then on, there were two of us who did the puppy thing.
I was happy when he started making a name for himself in the USA. I stopped going to the concerts, though - not because I thought, sellout, but because there were too many people with their own Fred stories. They weren't mine anymore. Suddenly, there were "Fred Heads". And I was no Fred Head. I just liked him.
So I didn't go see him for a few years. Oh, he'd play at festivals, and I'd be sure to catch his set - but then he'd piss me off because he wasn't a workshop kinda guy. I didn't go to Hillside because Fred was playing.
And then, in April, at White Squall, as we registered for the Symposium, they said, do you want Fred tickets? We keep some back for Symposium participants. Lee didn't want to go, I did - and my wanting to go was stronger than his not wanting to go. And of course, I love Fred as much as ever, and of course Lee didn't regret doing the nice thing and humouring me. I don't care if I've heard the jokes five times, I don't care that I have all the CDs already. Fred Eaglesmith still gives the best live show I've ever seen, even if he's having a grumpy day.
No, really, if you get the chance... go. If nothing else, you'll get to hear a chicken joke. And if Fred doesn't make you laugh at some point in the night, you probably wouldn't like me either.