So confused...

I'm in a library at Oxford, in a silent study area, across from someone loudly eating a sandwich, next to someone rolling his own cigarette, by a few people talking...I'm just not sure exactly what happened/which dimensional portal I walked through on the way here. 

Too Good

Apparently, the band "The Doors" started as an opening act for a band called "Them"

So you could legitimately say "The Doors opened for Them", and it would be punny.

Tehehe.

*crack*

So...much...Russian...

Gasp

As a metic student who gets full, free health care, I find this absolutely shocking. 

On like nine levels. But we won't go there. 

Just seriously? Private deportation of sick people? 

Gah!

Naming

Just as whether or not men can open doors for women throws a lot of progressives into a tizzy, what to about last names is an unresolved question. 

As this guy points out, it still seems pretty unheard of for men to take their wife's last name. Hyphenation seems a popular option, but the double-barreled names (while sometimes super awesome, especially in England) can be unwieldy and sometimes pretentious-sounding. At any rate, it's very much a short-term solution; is the next generation to use four? And the magic of doubling means it pretty quickly gets über-ridiculous. Sometimes a woman simply keeps her own name, and the children take either the father's or mother's name. Sometimes they split the children up by gender. Some people have other creative solutions: I had one friend with three children in the family, and three last names: father's (first husband), mother's, and father's (2nd husband). 

I don't think any of it really gets to the heart of the problem, though. Even if a women keeps her "own" name, it's still just her father's name; you haven't escaped from what some find problematic about the old system, namely, that as the woman moves from her father's to her husband's household, she switches their names...as an object rather than agent. So what is to be done? 

I quite like the Russian system of naming (maybe cause its orderedness would have ruled out the mess I've got when ID is necessary). There is a first, given name. Then there is a last, family name. And the middle name is a Patrynomic - based on the name of your father. Now, obviously, this doesn't solve any of the previous issues, as the family name comes from your father as well as the patrynomic...but it might give us a hint. 

You could  just switch the a matrynomic and a patryomic, and abandon the family name altogether. Or, you could have a sort of hybrid system:

Give each child a first (given) name. This is their actual name, that people will call them. 

Children take their family name from their parents. 

So children have two names. 

When you get married, the couple chooses a new name to be their family name. 

So they then have three names: Given name, parent's family name (as middle name), new family name. 

When/if they have their own children, the children take the new family name, and their given names...and so on.

Obviously this has lots of problems: just off the top of my head, there's the loss of continuity (family names don't go down through the generations) and it obviously substantially privileges marriage which some people may not like. But given that the people for who this is an issue are ones who are torn between their progressive values and the charms of tradition, the latter may not be such an issue. And the former is sort of the problem expressed as a positive, as it stands the male line keeps the name through the ages and the female just disappears all the time. 

Anyhoo, I don't expect that anyone would actually do this, but I kinda like it --> especially that it gives the opportunity to actively found a new family with a new identity. 

Oh, and you could follow the Russian practice of identifying people by their first & second names in formal settings , so that you don't have a problem with names changing over a lifetime (i.e. your name since childhood stays your work name, even if you take a new family name). 

P.S. Nobody freak out, I realise I'm the only one keeping my family name going and I have no intention to drop it...

Cooking Failure and Success

recent cookings: 

Pancakes seem like a pretty safe bet. Aside from the time I forgot to put the eggs whites in, they seem to turn out pretty well. And people seem pleasantly surprised anytime it's not just white flour, milk and egg. I made them with jogurt for people after the election, and they seemed to be a hit (everyone certainly wanted seconds...) and I got envious looks as I made them in the house today. 

Recipes not necessarily so much with the safe. I made one last week for a "cajun black-eyed peas soup" from a book that's usually good, but this was definitely fail. It wasn't bad, it just wasn't really good (maybe didn't use enough of the hot spices?) and it made way more than expected so I had to eat it all week.

In contrast, tonight I made a tomato soup by combining elements from a few recipes, and although it looked worrying half-way through, it's definitely delish...especially with a blob of sour cream. So success! And happy, well-fed Teddy.

More hotness from the Obama Team

After a fantastic and just plain correct victory speech, Obama didn't even take a day off. 

His chief of staff pick seems to signal a willingness to fight to get the change agenda through - and recognises that crisis is also opportunity that must not go to waste. 

And now this - change.gov, which looks a lot like the campaign site except this time its about follow-through and getting the transition up and running in a way people can understand and participate in. 

Hot. Want for Canada. Can't have. But good for world.

Yes, I'm reduced to only semi-comprehensible non-sentences. 

P.S. OMGWYSIWIG this is amazing: america serves...they're really serious about public service

P.P.S. OMGLGBTQBBQ it just gets better -- most extensive nondiscrimination policy I've ever seen: details here but basically, the disabled and queer get more than just a shout-out in the victory speech

Confidence Intervals

Our society seems to basically work on a 95% confidence interval - anything outside two standard deviations from the norm might as well not exist. And I don't just mean that this is the confidence interval that we use when we have to pick confidence intervals. I mean that we think in these terms about pretty much everything, whether we are conscious of it or not. When we make statements about what is or is not, or will or not happen, this is what we actually mean. The 2.5% outside of this doesn't have any meaning or existence - or might as well not. 

Partly this is necessary - building up knowledge is, of course, principally an activity of tolerating the limits of our confidence in that knowledge. But where it become a problem is when we start talking about people. There, our epistemic habits (of working with the 95% interval) clash with our moral commitments to treat all people - or rather each person - with equal concern and respect. Suddenly, the mental tools we're so used to using don't have any way to keep up; they can't deliver what we morally need them too. I'm not sure we've come to grips with this. 

A lot of academic research does, in fact, take place about people outside the confidence interval. Certainly much critical work is precise an attempt to bring them in. But it very much seems to be an exercise of "oh, and what about ____". Until we can manage to overcome or foundations in the 95%, it's going to remain a sideshow. 

Judging the Wind

When you learn to sail, they teach you a whole bunch of ways to judge the wind: you can look at flags, low clouds, smoke, wind indicators on other boats, the waves, judge the different feelings on your cheeks, all sorts of things...and then, as you go along, you just sort of develop an awareness (at least when you're on/by the water) of where the wind is coming from. It stumps being and/or for all of these things, and becomes a sort of back-of-your mind awareness based on all of them.

I think I use something similar when I'm cycling to judge the general traffic condition, which is why I'm finding it so hard here. There are just the obvious differences - other side of the road, different signs, etc. - from what I'm used to. But there's also a lot of information you don't get: people don't really signal or act in any predictable ways. And then there's the conflicting information you get from people just not obeying the laws, driving on the wrong side, swerving out into your lane, parking in the bike line, and jumping out in the middle of the street. 

So over all, the back of your mind just ends up very confused and if you listen to it you get a start as you look up and there's a car hurtling towards you in your lane. Which makes biking a mental workout as well as a physical one. 

New British Coins

I got the funniest coin in my change the other day (it's a 5p piece): it looks almost as if it had been stamped wrong, because the design doesn't fit properly (its cut off all around). But that's the intention - it seems its part of an entire set that they're bringing out this year; the pound coin has the full royal arms on it, and then the rest of the coins each have a portion, arranged like so. 

I think its super cool - the coins look very interesting and distinctive, so I'll definitely be looking out for others in change.

Just as a place to put this...

really good article about food, written as a memo to the next president...I may want to come back this.