Cotton-Pickin’ Days

Alister Cameron at Blogologist just joined the b5media family and while i was poking around his blog, I saw that he was apologizing for some sort of screw-up. Turns out he’d revealed someone who’d hired an “assistant” (I’d almost call the hire a spammer) as part of a link exchange/SEO strategy and this assistant had taken it upon herself to leave a poorly worded comment under her boss’s name on Alister’s blog. The comment got red flagged because it was clear via a RDNS lookup that the assistant was not the boss. Why did Alister have to apologize and what did people find most offensive? Alister pointed out that the boss was a white Canadian while the assistant was Filipino (later revealed to be Filipina).

Readers skewered Alister for making a big deal out of where the assistant was based and for calling this person a “filipino dude.” One complaint was that he should have capitalized Filipino. Oooook. Word Police on patrol. I’m a member of the Word Police too but if I were to go around tagging everyone who didn’t capitalize what they should, it’d be a full time job and then some. Then people got bent out of shape because Alister associated bad grammar with being Filipino in the Philippines. The horror! How dare he!

At the risk of getting trashed myself, I’m going to stick up for Alister, who probably has a harder time defending himself in the ethnic wars because he’s a white male. I’m a Chinese-American woman with a very Chinese name. (Hsien-Hsien Lei. Bet you don’t even know how to pronounce it. And don’t forget the Dr.!) I have a good grasp of the English language, if I may say so myself, but in the online environment, I am certain that many people who first come across my name immediately think “FOB – fresh off the boat.” Fortunately, most give me the benefit of the doubt once they read my work, but it’s a fact of life that we are judged by our appearance and our names and ethnicity are part of that.

English may be the most commercially popular global language right now (soon to be overtaken by Chinese and Urdu…haa) but that doesn’t mean people speak the same English everywhere. Jayvee points out that English is a national language in the Philippines. Yeah, and English is the national language in the US, the UK, and Singapore. That doesn’t mean everyone is capable of expressing themselves adequately in each of those countries.

Bad grammar exists everywhere and even people whose mother tongue is English engage in it routinely, deliberately. Remember ebonics? I’ve been living in London for over a year and only recently did I realize that “pants” here means underpants, and not trousers. I’m sure my friends were wondering why I needed to tell them that I’d gotten myself two pairs of new pants at Marks & Spencer. TMI!! And what about Singlish, Singaporean English? To me, it’s reasonable to expect that a person from the Philippines will use English differently than someone from Canada.

Frankly, I am MORE offended when someone ignores the fact that I am an English, Mandarin Chinese, Japanese-speaking Chinese-American woman scientist with a unique name. Being all those things makes me special. I don’t want you to pretend like I’m like everyone else. I’m not. Political correctness be damned.

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“Each home has been reduced to the bare essentials — to barer essentials than most primitive people would consider possible. Only one woman’s hands to feed the baby, answer the telephone, turn off the gas under the pot that is boiling over, soothe the older child who has broken a toy, and open both doors at once. She is a nutritionist, a child psychologist, an engineer, a production manager, an expert buyer, all in one. Her husband sees her as free to plan her own time, and envies her; she sees him as having regular hours and envies him.”

~Margaret Mead (December 16, 1901 November 15, 1978) was an American cultural anthropologist.

NB: Rachel left a comment yesterday inviting us to participate in a study of parenting views and practices being conducted by Dr. Kim White-Mills and Dr. Catherine Dobris of Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. Head over and express your opinion!

Photo: libraryman

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Every now and then, I’m reminded that I should be more diligent about teaching Stephen Mandarin Chinese. A UK government report earlier this month recommended that state (public) schools teach “economically useful” languages, such as Mandarin.

One way of making language teaching in secondary schools more engaging will be through offering a wider range of languages, including Mandarin, which is increasingly valued by employers. The language is growing in popularity in independent schools, in recognition of the growing importance of China to the British economy, but is available only in a small number state schools.

Business leaders are now calling for more Mandarin teaching. They expect sales to China to be worth 10 per cent of their global revenues, equivalent to nearly ?200 billion a year, by 2009, making China Britain?s most important export market.

A survey of 500 business leaders conducted by the Hay consultancy group found that many companies believed that poor language skills and a lack of understanding of the Chinese market were holding Britain back.

Sally Low, director of policy at the British Chambers of Commerce, hoped that the report would go further. She said: ?The needs of business are changing. In an increasingly globalised economy, Mandarin and Urdu are in more demand than the traditional French and German.?

What’s Urdu*? I’m more behind than I thought! Not only have I got to teach Stephen Mandarin, I’ve got to get on the ball with Urdu.

*Spoken in Pakistan, India, and Afghanistan

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What’s going on in Iraq? Do you know? Yeah, I lived in blissful ignorance too.

Yesterday, top U.S. military commanders recommended an increase in U.S. troops. Wonder if any of them have read What Was Asked of Us: An Oral History of the Iraq War by the Soldiers Who Fought It by Trish Woods. I read the book this past week and was sickened, heart broken, and very disturbed by the stories shared by marines and soldiers.

Up till now, I’d chosen not to pay much attention to the war in Iraq except for the headlines. But the nitty gritty everyday experiences of the people there are what matter the most. Luckily for me, Renee Supriano of Hachette Book Group sent me a copy of What Was Asked of Us and I took it as a sign that I could no longer pretend the entire world was happily celebrating the holidays with shopping and eggnog lattes at Starbucks. And I don’t think you should continue pretending either.

Learn more at the What Was Asked of Us MySpace.

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Starting a couple of weeks ago, I began to see people in London wearing artificial red poppies similar to the ones pictured here. I had no idea what they symbolized. I eventually learned they were for Remembrance Day otherwise known as Veteran’s Day in the U.S.

Ilona Meagher of PTSD Combat (who I featured earlier this year at Genetics and Health) wrote me today to share her book review of
What Was Asked of Us: An Oral History of the Iraq War by the Soldiers Who Fought It by Trisha Wood.

In What Was Asked of Us, author and award-winning investigative reporter Trish Wood lets 29 young men and women who fought in and returned from the Iraq War speak without anyone spinning, packaging, cherry-picking, or pre-digesting their words. Some of the voices are convinced of America’s rightness to be in Iraq; others are less sure. Some are angry; some feel guilt. And chillingly, others admit to missing the adrenaline rush of the fire fights, the “fun” of posing dead bodies for photographs–and even the killing.

I want to read more but a part of me would rather stick my head under the warm blankets. Not everyone has the luxury of doing so. The rest of us should at least have the courtesy of listening to those who’ve been involved in the messier, more brutal side of human life.

NB: Ilona has her own book coming out next year – Moving A Nation to Care: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and America’s Returning Troops.

Photo credit: gnb

Technorati Tags: ptsd, veterans day, remembrance day, post traumatic stress disorder

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Marv isn’t feeling well today and I ain’t doing so hot either. Was wallowing in my misery until Kerri told me about Atomictumor. His 29-year-old wife is in critical condition in the ICU. She got sick on October 30th and became critical on November 3rd. From today:

She cried through her eyebrows. I whispered to her, and her face smoothed.

She wants to stay.

She never believed in an afterlife. I did, to an extent, but we never talked about it. I wish now that we had agreed on a place to meet, just in case.

Life sucks and yet I wish everyone could stay right here.

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The history of women in science has always fascinated me for obvious reasons. As much as we would all like to believe that sexism doesn’t exist anymore, it’s still a daily experience for women around the world. I doubt anyone will forget the remarks made by Harvard President Larry Summers on women and science last year (he later apologized).

Dr. Paul Greengard is of a different breed. After winning the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, he used his award to create the Pearl Meister Greengard Prize in honor of his mother.

From his New York Times interview:

Q. In a recent article in Nature, the Stanford neurobiologist Ben Barres complained that male scientists rarely speak out against antiwoman bias when they see it. Would you agree?

A. Whenever I?ve seen it, I?ve spoken up.

One of the most outrageous things I ever saw was at an Ivy League university. A faculty couple were divorcing. The husband told his male colleagues it upset him to see his ex when she went to the ladies? room, near his laboratory. So this female scientist was ordered to take this circuitous route to the washroom ? up a set of stairs, over a hallway and down another staircase ? to protect the husband?s sensibilities. I said, ?If you don?t change this, I will report it and we?ll all lose our grants.?

I hope Dr. Greengard and others like him continue speaking out.

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Yet another reason why I’ll never get hair extensions.

Trade in hair forces India’s children to pay the price

Away from the crowd sits 19-year-old Uma, one of dozens of girls living close to Chennai’s [India] main Egmore suburban rail-line, who have had nastier experiences with more unscrupulous hair collectors. ‘I was held down by a gang of men who hacked at my hair,’ she says. ‘I’m not the only one who has been attacked. I know other women who have been blackmailed and threatened to shave their own heads, in some cases their husbands have received money for their hair and ordered their wives to have their heads shaved. There is a lot of money to be made from hair not just from temples but from villages like ours, the police don’t care, they will do nothing to protect women.’

Is there nothing we won’t exploit? This makes me feel sick.

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In memory of Katie McCarron –
a beautiful, precious, and happy little girl.
Learn more about her at Autism Vox.

I’m so grateful to have my Stephen with me today.

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After our spirited discussion regarding Paris Hilton’s apparent cluelessness about world society, I was gratified to see Jamie Johnson, heir of the Johnson & Johnson fortune, talking about his films on Oprah – Born Rich and The One Percent.

I’d known so many people in my situation at 20, who were going to inherit a great deal of money at age 21, but somehow managed to live unproductive and tragic?and even in some cases miserable?lives.

What a strange paradox?You have access to something that almost every person in this world wants?and yet so many people manage to really screw it all up.

I think the most important thing I learned is that when you’re born rich, you have to really create your own life for yourself. You have to go it your own way, create your own identity. It’s tempting to fall back on your family name and your family wealth, but you have to do something different from your family that you have created for yourself.

Now to do some research on the Johnson & Johnson family to discover their parenting secrets. (Although I think they’re not without some dirty laundry.)
~~~~~
It has been two months and five days since I lost Wanadoo Wireless & Talk broadband.

Technorati Tags: wanadoo, wireless and talk, orange, broadband

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