Photo woes

Okay, I can't remember everything I've ever done. Kate gently reminded me about one of the more interesting gifts she brought me during her stay. Remember how I said I was on the cover of an Esperanto magazine but I didn't have a copy of it? Kate brought two copies, one for me and one for my parents. Here it is:

The photo was taken at last year's International Youth Congress of Esperanto in Liberec, Czech Republic. From left to right are Esperantists from South Korea, Togo, Ukraine, and Vietnam. And then there's me.

Another postscript: When I got home after seeing Kate off, I noticed that the dry erase board on the refrigerator still had a Russian sentence that Kate had written. I took a picture of the board and then went to put the picture on my computer. But... the camera wouldn't read my memory card. My last memory card.

It had already stopped reading each the others, most recently a few days before. It was now official: I really needed a new camera. My beloved Sony DSC-P73 was a brick.

I had been wanting to buy a new camera for a while, but now I really have a good excuse. My ideal camera is a compact point-and-shoot with manual controls. Oh, and it has to take good pictures. I don't ask for much, you see. But it turns out that new lower-end point-and-shoots have done away with manual configuration entirely, leaving me with no choice but to jump up to the next price range.

I didn't want to get a Sony again because I knew how much they love pushing their own proprietary formats, particularly their Memory Stick storage format for cameras. My dad pointed out that some of their new cameras also accept SD cards, which have apparently become the standard while I've been busy fiddling with Memory Sticks.

That made me feel a little better, and knowing that Sony products tend to give you a lot of bang for your buck, I had a look at what Sony had to offer. The DSC-H20 and the DSC-HX5V caught my eye. I liked the former because it was cheaper and had already been released. I liked the latter because it was smaller, didn't have a lens cap, took SD cards, and shot higher-quality video (in stereo, yet).

I've decided to go for the HX5V, but apparently it's not coming out until the end of March. Till then, I am cameraless, which kind of sucks because... I'm going to Washington, DC this weekend!!

That's right. I'm the secretary of the UF chapter of Students for Free Culture, and we've decided (sort of at the last minute) to make the trek to George Washington University for the organization's Free Culture Conference 2010 this weekend. We'll be staying with Gavin Baker, the legendary founder of our chapter whom I've never met (apparently everyone else who's going has.

It won't be snowing, but it will have snowed, so it'll be the first time I actually see snow. (what jordan u've never seen sno? what is wrong with you, dont u ever travel in the winter?? its not like its incovenient or anything...) I'm pretty excited about that. I should have enough warm clothes, but I think I'll need boots or something to actually walk through the stuff.

If you have a car, you may be interested in this: How to Decode Your Car's VIN. (Via Lifehacker)

Scientology Sucks is a contest in which participants submit videos of themselves pranking the Scientology cult. The submissions should be posted online tomorrow, and the winners (as judged by the judges) will receive cash prizes.

Kate's visit, part five

I was tired on Monday night, the 18th, but Kate had been wanting to jam with me and Andy. She had brought sheet music for a couple of songs—"Sunshine of Your Love" and "Tears in Heaven"—and we played them in Andy's room. Kate played Andy's keyboard, Andy played his bass, and I played my guitar. Kate also sang on "Sunshine of Your Love."

The next day was the Kate's last full day with me. She and I had Krishna lunch on campus again. After lunch, she spent a while in one of the computer labs making arrangements for the last leg of her trip, a few more days in New York. Later, she joined me for my Databases class.

In the evening, Andy, Kate, and I had a good video chat with Kate's French-Canadian friend. We mostly used Esperanto, but we slipped into English sometimes because her friend was more of a beginner. After that, Kate said her goodbyes to Andy in case we didn't get a chance to see him in the morning.

Later, I tried figuring out how we would get to the Greyhound station by bus (it's conveniently not located along a bus route). After much frustration in trying to figure out the best combination of buses, which would have taken at least an hour and a half anyway, Kate suggested that we call for a taxi.

Kate woke up at 6:15 on Wednesday, January 20. Her alarm woke me up, but I lay in bed for a while, trying to go back to sleep. At 7:00, I got up and prepared her usual breakfast of bread and cheese. Even though she was packing her things frantically, I thought we would be late for our cab, which was arriving at 7:30. But somehow, she managed to pull it off, and we were early. She got another chance to say goodbye to Andy, and we went outside, where the taxi was waiting for us.

It was cold and foggy, and I couldn't remember the last time I was out that early. The drive to the bus station seemed very long. It was essentially a drive across town through some minor streets. Along one of the streets were statues of the planets in planetary order. I hadn't seen them since my visits to Gainesville as a child, and since I had moved here to go to college, I had always wondered where they were.

The cab driver made small talk, asking how we knew each other and what Kate thought of the country and things like that. I didn't really feel like answering questions, but I did my best. After all, being a taxi driver has to be one of the most boring jobs. At one point, he got a call on his cell phone, apparently from his son. "Not now," he said, "Daddy's got people in the car." I didn't ask him about it.

Finally, we arrived at the bus station. I had never been to a Greyhound station before. It was pretty much a large room with a ticket desk, some rows of benches, and a few other people. It didn't look fancy, but I should have expected as much. We were about a half an hour early, so I sat next to Kate for the last time, away from the TV that was competing for my attention.

We exchanged words. I could see the tears coming down from her eyes. I was starting to get emotional too. This was it.

The bus came. We shared one last kiss, and she got on.

She sat by the window where I could see her. I fought back tears. But she smiled.

She smiled, and I smiled back. The bus moved forward. I followed it through the parking lot until it stopped at the street. She smiled at me again.

The bus turned right and drove away.

I walked the other way, toward the nearest major road, where I could hopefully catch a bus to campus. Cars zoomed past me. It was still kind of cold.

I saw Firpo's, a diner that we used to go to when I visited Gainesville as a kid. At least, it used to be Firpo's. It was something different now.

Not far away was my bus stop. According to the bus schedule that was posted there, I had missed the bus by five minutes and would have to wait 55 minutes for the next one. I decided to keep walking instead.

One of my pet peeves is when people treat walking as a last resort, a mode of transportation for only the most destitute and desperate—worse, even, than riding the bus. People are always oddly fascinated if I tell them I spent more than 15 minutes walking to get somewhere, as if using my legs as nature intended were something I should be ashamed of. But what could be more beneficial? It's good exercise, it's entertaining, and you're actually getting something done.

So, I kept walking. I had never seen this part of town. It looked like a lot of other parts, with gas stations, small strip malls, and even some neighborhoods. I passed by a historic house. I had never heard of it, but it was apparently one of the oldest in the city, dating from before the Civil War. I never would have been able to read the historical marker if I were in a car or a bus.

I kept walking. On the opposite side of the road, there was a real estate agent's office with a marquee in front. I expected it to say something about houses, but it said:

LET GO OF
WHAT EVER HOLDS
YOU BACK

Walking further, I made it to University Avenue and started walking toward campus. This was the way I had walked with Kate when I first met up with her 12 days ago, and now I was making the same walk alone.

I made it to campus and to the building where I work. I had been walking for a little less than an hour. The sun had come up some more, but it was still early for me; I wasn't supposed to be at work for another hour. But I got started early.

My room seems quiet and empty without Kate here. All of her stuff is gone except for a few things that now decorate my room: the monthly calendar of St. Petersburg, a few more yearly calendars printed on single sheets of paper, a New York City subway map, a tiger-shaped bag containing coins from around the world, and a couple of record albums: a Soviet Beatles compilation album called A Taste of Honey and Paul McCartney's Снова в СССР.

On my desk, she left a sticky note that she had written on early in her stay. It reads:

Life is a movie
without
a happy end.

Kate's visit, part three

It was Tuesday, January 12. (I'm really falling behind here.) I went to work/school, and Kate met up with me for lunch. We had the infamous/not-really-infamous Krishna Lunch, served on the Plaza of the Americas outside my workplace, Peabody Hall. Fortunately, Kate liked the food.

After lunch, Kate sat in on my classes. First, there was Numerical Analysis (<sarcasm>fun!</sarcasm>), and later, Databases. Kate actually works with databases and stuff like that, so as the professor was giving a lecture on the basics of SQL, Kate told me that she could probably give the lecture herself. I wouldn't doubt it.

Tuesday evening was our Esperanto Club meeting in which we would introduce a real Esperanto speaker from an exotic land. I invited 100 people on Facebook, and only one showed up. I blame myself for not promoting the event more, but I didn't promote it very much because I didn't have enough time to reserve a room. So I blame myself for not reserving a room before winter break, although I'm not sure if that was possible, so maybe I shouldn't beat myself up over it. Anyway, the show went on, and we explained to the one guy there how Kate learned and had used Esperanto.

I think it was that night that Kate gave Andy and me a primer on the Russian alphabet. Andy was interested in learning Russian (or maybe just the alphabet, I'm not sure), so we went over the vowels and then the consonants. It took a while—there are a lot of them, and Andy and I were struggling to pronounce some of them. I thought it might be hard to learn a new alphabet, but surprisingly, in the weeks that have followed, I've been able to sort of pronounce Russian words that I see.

On Wednesday, Kate got ready in time to go with me to work and class. Wednesdays are kind of frantic for me this semester, so we grabbed a quick lunch at the KFC Express on campus. Kate didn't really like the food, but I could have guessed as much. I'm glad she tried it, anyway. After that, she sat in on my other classes, Software Engineering and Accounting.

We stayed on campus for dinner because Kate was interested in attending a lecture. We ate at Pollo Tropical at the Reitz Union, and she loved it, which made me happy. (Wikipedia has some bare facts on Pollo Tropical for those of you unfortunate enough not to be graced by its presence within a reasonable distance.) After that, we went to the presentation. A professor from UC Irvine talked about the history of criminal identification technologies, including the rise of fingerprinting and then DNA.

On Thursday, I had my weekly lunch with my sister. We eat at a different place each week, and this week, it was Moe's. She brought along her friend Nathalie, and I, of course, brought Kate. We didn't have much time, but Kate and my sister chatted it up.

Kate had been wanting to take an official tour. She had looked into it and said that there would be one starting at 2:00, so we hurried over to the Welcome Center after lunch. I was going to be late for Numerical Analysis, and I wasn't sure if they gave tours to non-prospective-students, but I thought we should give it a shot. When they asked about her potential relationship to the university, I just told them that she was a junior computer-science major at PBCC looking to transfer, and when asked why I was doing most of the talking for her, I just said her English wasn't very good (even though it is, I hasten to point out). We had to give her contact information, so I wrote a fake address, and we hurriedly parted ways: my class had just started, and her tour had just started.

Later, while I was at work, she said she had gotten lost from the tour group and would meet me at my Databases class. So she met me there, and afterward, we had a little bit of time to grab coffee (well, she grabbed coffee and I helped her drink it). After that, we went to the Gator Freethought meeting. Kate had asked about any student organizations she might be interested in, so I suggested Gator Freethought, which promotes science, skepticism, and critical thinking. The topic of the meeting was logical fallacies, which I thought was kind of interesting, but the discussion was pretty chaotic, so I wasn't sure how much of it Kate could follow.

So that was Thursday.

Back to the present for a moment. Today (well, yesterday, since I'm writing this after midnight) I found out that J.D. Salinger had died.

I first read The Catcher in the Rye in my freshman year of high school. It was influential on me, as I noted at the time:

(As a side note, my writing may seem unusually informal today. That's because I have to read The Catcher in the Rye for English, and it's written in very informal speech. It's a good book, if you really want to know. I was actually reading it today while I was waiting for about five hours for my sister to get off the lousy computer. I was that much into the darn book. I mean it.)

Ha ha. I didn't say "damn."

Anyway, The Catcher in the Rye instantly became one of my favorite books, and it's one of the few that I still reread with any regularity. In fact, I was just thinking of picking it up again the next time I go home, which will probably be soon. After recent re-readings, I've wondered whether I can still identify with Holden Caulfield. I'm older than him now, after all, and I'm in college. Who's to know? I guess I'll have to keep reading to find out.

The Onion has responded to the news in the style of The Catcher in the Rye: Bunch Of Phonies Mourn J.D. Salinger. It actually works well if you think about it.

Kate's visit, part two

Let's continue this story.

Sunday, January 10, got off to a slow start. I hadn't been online much in the past few days, so I was surprised to hear that Ocala and other relatively nearby cities had recorded snow. Gainesville didn't get so much as a flake.

On my list of places to visit was the Florida Museum of Natural History, located next to the Harn Museum of Art, where we had gone the day before. This time, we made it a group thing, with Andy's dad driving Kate, Andy, and me to the museum.

I had been looking forward to seeing the museum's butterfly garden, which is probably the star attraction of the whole place. I hadn't been there since 2005, before I even considered enrolling at UF. I remember my first visit fondly, but apparently I didn't actually like it that much. I noted at the time that I

could see butterflies flying around everywhere and stuff. Some were small, some were big, some were bright, dark, old, young, whatever. But there were a whole lot of them. I wasn't at ease with the whole situation. Butterflies and colleges scare me.

This time, the weather meant that our trip to the butterfly garden was kind of a bust. The plants were all covered up due to the cold. Also, the butterflies were going into quasi-hibernation, said a random worker who was so bored that she decided to act as a tour guide for us. They were just lying around on the ground. She would pick one up and open its wings to show us, but some of them broke when she did that. They were dead.

To make up for the freezing-cold walk through the covered garden with dead butterflies lyin' all over the place, they let us go into the Rearing Lab, where the butterflies (and moths, to be politically correct) are reared. It was there we encountered the mighty Atlas moth, the world's largest. I remembered seeing one during my last visit, but I think it was a specimen. In the lab, there were a few just hanging out, and one was flying around. You could hear its wings flap. It was intense.

One of the guys at the rearing lab gave us some fun behind-the-scenes facts. He said they were keeping a lot of the butterflies and moths in the lab instead of letting them go out into the butterfly garden, where they might freeze to death. In lieu of fruit, many of them fed on sugar from Q-Tips soaked in—what else?—Gatorade.

After going to the museum, Andy's dad treated us to dinner at Olive Garden. Kate seemed to like it, so that was good. I think it was a lot of food for her, so she took her leftovers home and I helped her finish them later.

The next day was Monday. Kate wasn't ready by the time I had to go to work, so she decided to stay behind and meet me on campus for lunch. When lunchtime rolled around, she said she wouldn't be able to make it (I think she was catching up on sleep), so she agreed to meet me when I got off of work. That would have been all fine and good, except I had to stay late because I'd just received the files for the new Multicultural and Diversity Affairs web site, and they had to go up that day.

So Kate met me at work while I was working late and got to see some of the typical things I do. She works with databases and programming and stuff like that, so it wasn't unfamiliar to her. I was worried that she would be bored though, so we looked up things to do. It turned out that they were going to screen The Invention of Lying at the student union, so we decided to go to that. On the way there, I called my friend Natasha to wish her a happy birthday.

I liked the movie, and so did Kate. After that, she got an ice cream cone, and I helped her eat it while we were waiting for the bus home.

Kate actually posted this link on my Facebook page a while back. It's a quiz called "Can You Guess Where My Accent Is From?" See if you can beat my score of 23.

Here's a CPU-hungry but cool Flash animation about planetary orbits. (Via The Presurfer)

Kate's visit, part one

I have returned. Actually, I didn't go anywhere. Well, actually, I did go somewhere for part of the time, but that doesn't really have to do with it.

I met Kate at an Esperanto event over the summer. I didn't think I'd ever see her again, but we stayed in contact, and she came to visit me. I had her as a guest for some twelve days, which I'll try my best to recount over the next two, three, or however many posts.

On Friday, January 8, she flew from Washington to Orlando and took a bus to Gainesville. We had agreed to meet at the Bo Diddley Community Plaza downtown sometime after 4:00, which was when her bus arrived and my last class got out. I walked downtown. It was cold, and the sky was gray. I was hoping we could do something downtown because there were some interesting things to do there.

I got to the plaza and waited there for a while, taking inventory of the sketchy folks hanging around and making sure none of them were going to sneak up on me. Clearly, this wouldn't be a good place to go for a stroll. On one turn-around, I saw her approaching on the plaza from the opposite direction I was expecting. We greeted each other in Esperanto and hugged. She had a large backpack and was dressed more warmly than I was.

It was cold and there was nothing to do there, so I figured we should just go back to my apartment. We walked back toward campus, and I reminded her to take pictures of anything she thought looked interesting. We talked about how her trip had been so far and how pleasantly surprised we were to see each other again. We made it back to campus, where I gave a mini-tour in which I talked about everything we saw. Then we took the bus back to my apartment.

Once she got settled in, or maybe even before, we exchanged gifts. Mine were a Florida Gators sweater for cold weather (she had said that she was terribly cold in New York) and a Gators tank top for the hopefully but not actually warmer climes of North Central Florida. (Yeah, I know: "Boo," "Gators suck," etc.) Kate presented me with a monthly calendar of St. Petersburg, where she currently lives. I hung it up right away. It's in Russian and English, and I have it directly above my computer, so I can see that this month is Январь.

We did a lot of things, and it's been kind of a while now, so there may be some gaps or question marks in the narrative. As I recall, Andy was there to say hello to her (he was traveling with me when I met Kate, so he had already met her too). She wanted some tea, and, as I expected, Andy was there to provide. He didn't have the exact kind she most wanted to drink, but she drank the regular Lipton stuff anyway. I mentioned that I didn't exactly know how to make tea, and they joked about it. I would soon be making lots of tea for Kate, who bestowed on me the nickname "Mr. Teamaker."

Later, Andy's dad came over and got to meet Kate. I hadn't heard Kate speak much English, so it was interesting to hear. Andy and his dad went out to eat and made a run to the grocery store after. They asked if we wanted anything, so Kate asked for some things like bread, cheese, and fruit. Later, they brought back the food, and Kate enjoyed her bread and cheese.

On Saturday, I believe it was, Kate surprised me by saying that she wanted to speak Esperanto and English on alternate days so she could practice both. Saturday was an English day. I had made a list of things to do in Gainesville, and we thought about what might be best for that day. After a slow morning, we went to the Harn Museum of Art on the UF campus; it was open, easy to get to, and free. Also, I had never been there, so it would be a new experience for me as well.

I'd seen some pretty crappy art galleries in my time, so I was pleased when the art they had was not so crappy. There was a collection of stuff by American artists, mainly from the early 20th century. New York came up in a lot of the paintings, and I asked Kate if she had been to the places they showed. There were also some African and East Asian artifacts.

By the time we got out of the museum, it was cold. We stood around for a few minutes waiting for the bus when Kate mentioned that she wanted to stop at the supermarket along the way. Being the American that I am, I at first scoffed at her suggestion that we take the 10-minute walk there instead of waiting for the bus. Then I caved, realizing that we could spend up to an hour in the cold while waiting for the bus.

At the supermarket, Kate bought some of her favorite things, including yogurt. I was hoping we could have pasta for dinner with Andy, so I got some tomato sauce. We made it back to the apartment and got cookin'. Actually, Kate and Andy were kind enough to do most of the work. I insisted that Kate didn't have to do anything because she was the guest, but she wanted to help out.

We enjoyed our dinner in what might be called the dining room, a small area outside Andy's room that he had just decorated (the dining room, not Andy's room, although he had just decorated his room as well). We somehow got on the subject of animal onomatopoeias, and I learned that Russian dogs say "guff." We also practiced our own animal noises, and that's how barking (guffing?) became a running joke among us.

I didn't expect to use up that many bytes describing just two days, but this post is getting long and it's almost midnight, so I'll stop here for now and continue the narrative later. In the meantime, enjoy these links.

Here's a chart explaining How to Use an Apostrophe. (Via Lifehacker)

Here's another chart: Where Should I Eat? Fast Food Edition.

Whaddayaknow

If I'm not blogging regularly, it could only mean one of two things: either I'm busy or I have nothing to say. Well, it could be both, but I'm simplifying things. In this case, I am havin' a blast. I got home on Thursday night. I spent Friday night with my friends and most of Saturday with them as well. Today was a family day; my sister and I went with our parents to get a Christmas tree.

So, whaddayaknow, it's almost Christmas. As usual, I don't really want much stuff. I asked my parents for (i.e., bought with their credit card) a Creative Commons t-shirt. The money goes toward a good cause, and I can use my chest to advertise it. Sounds like a winning plan all around.

From the Stuff-Nobody-Cares-About Dept.: I used to use my own Update Notifier for my Greasemonkey user scripts. Almost everybody writes their own, but I've gotten tired of having to maintain it and figured that someone else would probably do a better job, so I'm switching to usoCheckup for my scripts. It has some interesting features that are too boring to describe here.

And hey, whaddayaknow, it's the end of the post already.

I've sleepwalked before, and I'm afraid of doing it again because it's really creepy. Case in point: sleep-emailing and other strange occurrences. (Via The Presurfer)

Watch as a woman attempts 21 accents in three videos: 1, 2, 3. She's pretty good.

Here's an interesting column that appeared in a UF student newspaper this semester: Social Media Emphasize Individuality. The author argues that when people we don't know very well pour their souls out in blogs and the like, it helps us understand that they're more than meets the eye.

The visitor

I survived Finals Week '09. Well, Finals Week Fall '09, to be exact. And, presumably, every previous one. (T-shirt idea: "I survived the first x years of my life.")

Now, have I really not mentioned Katja here since the summer? It seems that I haven't. This must be corrected.

I met her at an Esperanto event in Slovakia. She's Russian. Rather than communicating in English or Russian (the latter of which I don't know—ФЯ DФ I ИФШ?—eh, no, I don't), we used Esperanto. Her name is Ekaterina, which is Russian for Catherine, and her nickname is Katya. In Esperanto that's spelled Katja, and when speaking English, she goes by Kate.

Since meeting over the summer, we've stayed in touch, still writing to each other in Esperanto. (You may recognize Kate as the author of some recent comments on this here blog.) And as it happens, she had been planning to come to the States, so she's going to drop by when she's here early next year, i.e., in a few weeks. And no, it really isn't just to see me; she had been planning the trip before we met. Even so, it'll be really cool to have someone visit me from so far away.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to having her as a guest here in Gainesville (and at my home in South Florida, since we'll have a three-day weekend).

Stay tuned, because more exciting Europe '09 follow-ups are on the horizon. But first, I'm heading home for winter break. Yeeeaah!

Need to know how to pronounce a famous (or currently newsworthy) person's name? The Name Engine has got you covered. I had been wondering about Ndamukong Suh. And hey, it looks like their whole directory of sound files is accidentally browsable. (Via J-Walk Blog)

A graph: A Graphic History of Newspaper Circulation Over the Last Two Decades. (Via waxy.org)

Homegoing

It's that time of year again. Homecoming, a university holiday, was yesterday, so I had no classes (or work, since I work at the university). I took advantage of the opportunity to have some fun. As I said last weekend,

I'm going to Howl-O-Scream at Busch Gardens with Andrea and friends on Thursday night. I haven't been there since I was too short or wimpy to ride the brand-new Montu, and I've never been to a Halloween-type event at a theme park (omg omg omg so awesome how could you not ahve ever been).

So we set off on Thursday afternoon. Once we got to Tampa, we had dinner at Friday's, where Andrea's friend Billy met up with us. Next, we headed to Busch Gardens. It was dark by the time we got there.

For Howl-O-Scream, the rides that aren't rollercoasters turn into haunted houses and the rides that are rollercoasters turn into rollercoasters at night. The haunted houses have different themes like haunted prison, haunted sorority house, haunted house, etc. I didn't think they were too scary, but some people in line behind me begged to differ. A lot. But as long as you realize that people are going to be jumping out at you and screaming at every turn, you can prepare yourself for it. (Actually, they seemed to single out the people who looked like they would be scared the most; most of them didn't jump out at me.)

Also, rollercoasters. I finally did ride Montu (and Kumba as well). The rollercoaster enthusiasts of us also wanted to go on SheiKra, but it would have taken an hour and a half to wait in the line, so we decided to go to some more haunted houses instead. Maybe next time. Rollercoasters are awesome at night.

The lines seemed to get longer and longer as the night went on; Andrea said it was much more crowded than it was when she went last year. At 00:30 (yeah), the park started closing, so we headed out. After parting ways with Billy, we headed to Andrea's house in Lakeland, where we spent the night.

The next morning, we enjoyed some doughnuts (courtesy of Andrea's parents) before setting off for Gainesville. The traffic in G-ville was terrible, probably due to the homecoming pep rally, Gator Growl, which was that night. I didn't go, as usual, but at least they got a comedian I had heard of. Today's football game is designated as the homecoming game, which doesn't really mean anything (I think) except that we're really supposed to win.

Anyway, I had a good time with Andrea and pals, and I'd be glad to go on some kind of trip like that again.

Here's a funny letter (supposedly) from John F. Kennedy. (Via J-Walk Blog)

The BBC has an interesting article on Samuel Johnson's influential dictionary of the English language.

Shaping thoughts

We're getting deep into the fall semester. Guess who has exams on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday? That's right, me! Basically, I should be studying all week. In the meantime, I leave you with a thought I've been wondering about.

Whether we realize it or not, the language we use carries our biases. When talking about generic people, we used to just say "he," but then we realized that women are also people, so now we say "he or she."

I think it's pretty clear that it works the other way around. For example, using positive language will help you maintain a positive attitude. And I'd bet that kids who are taught to say "he or she" find the previous usage of "he" at least a bit inconsiderate. (Especially if those kids are girls.)

The Free Software Foundation realizes the power of language to shape our thoughts. It publishes a list of Confusing Words and Phrases That Are Worth Avoiding. I don't think the list (which includes "cloud computing," "intellectual property," and "software industry") is going to be taken seriously by many people very soon, but the entries raise interesting points that help you get into their worldview. Here's just one example.

Please avoid using the term "PowerPoint" to mean any kind of slide presentation. PowerPoint is just the name of one particular proprietary program to make presentations, and there are plenty of free alternatives, such as TeX's beamer class and OpenOffice.org's Impress.

People who say "a PowerPoint" when they mean "a digital slide presentation" might not be aware that other slide presentation programs exist. If you insist on saying "slide presentation" around them, they should deduce that Microsoft® Office® PowerPoint® isn't the only player in town. Mission accomplished!

Here's another example. If someone asks me what an atheist is, and I say, "someone who doesn't believe in God," then I've presupposed that people only worship one god, whose name is (rather boringly) "God." But if I tell someone that an atheist is someone who doesn't believe in gods, I hope to kick open a door in his (or her) mind: we're all atheists with respect to some gods. Talk about broadening your horizons.

Anyway, this is what I'm getting at: our lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender friends are still getting a bad rap. To be sure, their condition is improving, but they're still demonized by a large swath of our society and denied their civil rights in many states. It's no wonder that LGBT teenagers are much more likely to attempt suicide than their straight friends. How can you be well-adjusted when half of the world won't accept who you are?

A lot of the injustice, I think, stems from the fact we as a society still consider people straight until proven gay (or bi, or anything else). Look anywhere. Gay characters on TV are often reduced to cliches (if they exist at all); only men and women fall in love with each other. We say "homoerotic," but we don't say "heteroerotic" because that would just mean "erotic." A school that my friends went to wouldn't let students buy their prom tickets together unless they were boy-girl couples. They couldn't even buy tickets for their same-sex friends.

We can't presuppose people's sexual orientation and expect them to stand up to us if we're wrong. We need to change the way we think about others, and I think the best way to do that is to start with our words. We need some "his-or-hers" to fight heteronormativity. I don't think it would be as easy as dropping "or her" into every sentence, but there must be words and phrases we can use to train ourselves out of that old mindset and to teach our children what's taken us so long to learn ourselves.

So, what steps can we take to make our language, thoughts, and attitudes more reflective of our vast landscape of sexual orientation and gender identity? That's something for you to ponder and discuss here. Right after these links.

From mental_floss: The Strange Summer Jobs of 23 Famous People. (Via The Presurfer)

One of the dumb things about our current copyright system is that you no longer have to file for copyright; works are copyrighted automatically. There's no way to tell who's really responsible for a particular work, especially years down the line when it's no longer being commercially exploited but may be of historical or scholarly interest. Safe Creative hopes to fix those problems by serving as a copyright registry. (Via Jamendo Blog)

There's nothing to it

The Esperanto Club at UF kicked off its second year on Tuesday. Andy and I presented the story of our summer and how we used Esperanto.

The photo-within-a-photo you see there was taken while I was lining up to give a greeting at the Cultural Language Festival, which was part of the International Youth Congress of Esperanto in the Czech Republic. I'm on the far right; the others, from left to right, are South Korean, Togolese, Ukrainian, and Vietnamese. And yes, people from Togo are Togolese. I looked that up. (Hint to geography-types: if feel you have to add an extra letter when tacking on -ese, try a different suffix. I would have guessed "Togoan.") Incidentally, Andy had at least one good conversation with the South Korean, and I later hung out with the Ukrainian in Berlin (also mentioned in the aforelinked post, which is extremely long and thus covers a rather long time period).

And apparently, this photo was published on the cover of La Ondo de Esperanto (The Wave of Esperanto), a magazine I used to subscribe to but, alas, don't any longer. I'll try to hunt down a copy.

In my last post, I discussed my ambivalence about eating Krishna Lunch on campus. In the end, I didn't feel so ambivalent about it at all, and my sister and I enjoyed Krishna Lunch together yesterday. I think they have something different each day of the week. I hadn't had Krishna Lunch too many times before, but I must have had it on a Thursday because I recognized the food: rice and some yellow stuff with salad and some sweet blueberry-flavored mashed-potato-looking thing.

This didn't occur to me before, but I'm surprised that Aramark, the company that monopolistically runs all eating establishments on campus, allows Krishna Lunch to operate. It wouldn't surprise me if Aramark had considered giving the Krishnas the boot—they do siphon off Aramark's business, after all—only to realize that there would be rioting in the streets if students didn't have their $4 "karma-free" plates. (I say "karma-free" in quotation marks because karma isn't real.)

Also, I mentioned Krishna Lunch in 2006, when the price (technically, suggested donation) was a mere $3. It rose recently to little indignation.

For the nerds: song lyrics as pseudocode. (Via The Presurfer)

Art: the Preamble of the Constitution of the United States, spelled out on license plates from each state. (Via The Presurfer)