Rants and raves

Michele and I were having a good time people-watching while waiting for a concert to start at the Greek in Berkeley last Saturday, and we were testing various hypotheses. One of the standard items is what kind of crowd it is, usually starting with how old and how diverse the crowd is. You would think that there would not be great variance in this, us being "upper middle aged" (for some versions of middle and upper) and therefore expected to attend "see them before they die" nostalgia-acts, but we have eclectic tastes so there really is. In the last three weeks, we've probably seen a 3x range in average age at shows, from college to middle-boomer. We were having a debate about Why Most Men Look Like Shit (there, I capitalized it, that makes it true). My expertise is largely based on watching Queer Eye, where season after season the leads try to fix someone in a week. Wardrobe and grooming are a big part of it. Standard question on the show: "Why are you wear...

The saying goes, You are what you drive. Many car and lifestyle magazines attest to the claim that the vehicle a person chooses may reflect their personality. I must admit I tend to act as though I believe this, albeit only in anonymity, of course — none of this applies to my friends who make unfortunate choices when acquiring a vehicle. So for the sake of the rest of this rant, let's take as the context that it applies only to people I observe randomly on the road.  Let me get the yada-yada-yada disclaimer out of the way. I am fully aware that it is important to remember that "this is a generalization and not everyone who drives a certain type of car fits the stereotype. Most people choose cars because of practical needs, cost, or simply because they like the way a model looks or drives" (that was Gemini's gentle way of scolding me for my judgmental attitude).  Like you live in Alaska and you want your car to start when it's 40 below. You don't have to f...

I felt creative this morning. This happens occasionally, but what was unusual about this morning was that it happened after a short night, while walking the dog, and as I was mildly pressed for time to get to San Jose for a meeting. And during all that, several coherent ideas started to form in my head.  Sometimes such random ideas are grand unification theories that are trite and untrue, like a stoner who starts to see atoms and molecules as possible planets and stars. Luckily, I have a reasonably good internal BS detector to shoot those down before they become embarrassing (more about my negative talents later). Sometimes they are correct (or sort-of-ballpark correct) rediscoveries of insights found long before by others. I once re-derived a whole bunch of logarithm math from first principles and felt very smart, even though John Napier had done the same thing in 1614. Same for figuring out some clever stuff about π and sines and cosines and the lot, only 300 years after William ...

I occasionally get this question "how many languages do you speak?" to which the answer is two, as it is for 43% of the world's population. Another 17% speak three or more languages fluently, so my skill is not a rare one. Admittedly, the percentage of bilingual or multilingual people is lower in the US, even in California, but it is still high. Over a quarter of the California population is fluent in English and Spanish, and many also speak Mandarin, Cantonese, Tagalog, Vietnamese, Korean, Persian, Hindi, Arabic, Armenian, or Russian. Over 40% of Californians speak a language other than English at home, and there are over 200 languages spoken in the state. My native language is spoken by only about 0.32% of the world's population and doesn't make the list in California, so the fact that I'm bilingual is a simple combination of roots and necessity.  What makes the question a bit awkward is the implied self-deprecation or deprecation of people who speak only on...

I started off today wanting to give a tutorial on simple tricks to make the English of non-primary speakers sound more authentic. You know, basic stuff like diction and articulation. Don't pronounce "Volkswagen" as "Wolksvagen," understand that "bed" and "bet" and "bid" and "bit" and "bad" and "bat" all sound very different, and don't randomly throw in interjections like "hè" or "eh" that are natural in one language but sound weird and completely out of place in another. All triggered by an observation that people from Denmark seem to speak excellent, albeit very distinct, non-native English, compared to the Dutch, who seem to wing it well but are sloppy. But that's for another time. Many people confuse fluent with native, first language with primary language, and accent with dialect, frequently under the illusion that there is such a thing as a standard or proper version of ...

I recently found myself in a seemingly endless back-and-forth with the state. As these things go, this case was mild. It was the DMV. But as it was happening, and as I kept finding new hurdles, I kept thinking  "I'm going to write about this when it's over. Not before it's over, because that might jinx it or make it worse. But afterwards."  So here goes. Disclaimer : I realize bitching about the DMV is well traveled territory. And everyone I actually talked with was nice, and reasonably competent (some more than others). And in defense of the DMV, it normally probably does not take seven months, countless back-and-forth documents, and more than half a dozen in-person visits to field offices to change the name on the registration of a car.  Let me digress. In Holland, where I lived as a kid, their equivalent of the DMV (CBR) is notorious for its brutality and inefficiency. It routinely takes months (if not years, as in my niece's case), and thousands of euros ...