CBC, patriotism, télévision

Canadian Animation Gone Wiiiild!

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What It’s Like Being Alone: The Series

Whoa! Didn’t expect that! Is this what people have been talking about, in my back?

Watched tonight’s episode about an American orphanage opening next door. Man! Funny, creative, technically well-made, even insightful! These guys (Frederic Fuchs, Marc Lougee, Bradley Peyton, and Orphanage Inc.) must have gotten some good stuff growing in their backyards.

Interestingly enough, IMDb votes are mostly at 10 and 1. Not for everyone. You’ve been warned.
Thanks, gang!

joie de vivre, Montreal, naïveté

lightspeed chronicles: carifiesta

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lightspeed chronicles: carifiesta

t’es fatiguante quand t’es heureuse

C’est juste trop facile de faire son blasé. Être de bonne humeur, être heureux, c’est pas un affront, c’est une façon de voir les choses en face.
De toutes façons, la joie de vivre à Montréal, l’été, c’est une ressource inestimable. Suffit de sortir de son trou un tant soit peu pour s’en rendre compte.

expertise, fun, innovation, Learning, music, play, playfulness, pleasure, specialization, training

Effort vs. Talent

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Fascinating overview by Philip Ross on the notion of expertise from a psychological perspective. An article has been published in Scientific American and the magazine’s podcast has a segment with Ross.

One interesting issue is the very emphasis on expertise. Experts, like race horses, are heavily specialized. Examples in the article are mostly from chess and musical composition in the classical style. The study refers to “effortful study” which sounds a lot like Csikszentmihalyi’s notion of flow. In both cases, performance and achievement are allegedly easy to assess. But, well, where’s the fun?

Ross talks about golfers who stopped improving because they always play with the same people. But what some people seem to forget is that playing golf without improving can in fact be quite fun, especially if golf is just a part of the complete activity.

In the interview, Ross does allude to the link, common in the U.S., between schooling and work training. Schools are there to prepare a workforce and improving society as a whole is less important.

An important claim in the article and in the interview is that talent, if it does exist, is less influential than some people seem to think. We see similar things in music, especially if we adopt a broader perspective than simply thinking about skills. “Talented” musicians, those who have a specific predisposition for some musical practise, can succeed in many ways but music doesn’t simply progress by accumulation of skills. This notion is quite important in Ross’s article. Today’s experts are now more numerous and more proficient than during previous generations. Part of this must have to do with today’s emphasis on expertise (people are becoming over-specialized just to fit in the workplace). There’s also the well-known “standing on the shoulders of giants” principle, which accounts for the rapidity in training (although today’s Ph.D. candidates are, on average, much older than previous generations of Ph.D. holders!).

A lot of other things to think about this. But, recently, my policy has been to blog in short bursts. Hey, it’s fun!

consumerism, groupthink, Nation-States, nationalism, Québec, Radio Open Source, standardization

NYT Mindset, Nationalism, Wars

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On a recent episode of his Radio Open Source podcast, Christopher Lydon admits that the fact that the recent Israeli attack came between issues of the New York Times had an impact on his ability to reflect on the issue.

The episode itself, especially near the end, linked “normalcy” in Israeli society with a culture of consumerism with strong “Western” influences, the notion of a “Free State” (in this case, a free Jewish state), and being too boring for U.S. media. Fascinating. But quite specific. Many people do think through these notions and many of them either read the New York Times themselves or listen intently to those who do.

The notion of sovereignty came regularly in that podcast episode. Israel is a “sovereign state” and is allowed to defend this sovereignty. Interestingly enough, the notion of sovereignty has been a major part of the nationalist discourse in Quebec for a while. In fact, that version of sovereignty is less linked with protecting borders than with building a society on its own terms. Self-determination. Many Quebec sovereignists hope, in fact, for a world without national borders. Hearing comments on Radio Open Source, it seems like many people are still clinging to the existence of “Democratic Nation-States.” Hence the attitude that wars can be won by one of the countries involved.

Ah, well…

Blogging, French, language, language ideology, language sciences, open-source, rants, snobbery

Normative Language and Spontaneity

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In an interview (in French) with Bruno Guglielminetti (site not yet updated with the interview), copy-editor François Hubert discussed the “quality” of the French language on blogs (by which he means the grammatical, typographical, and spelling correctness of blog posts in French).

This concept of language quality, as described by Hubert and many others, is an important component of French language ideology. While speakers of other languages often complain about the poor quality of other speakers’ speech (and, especially, writing), normative language seems to be a more important part of the language ideology for the French language than, say, the language ideology for the English language.

The insistence on normative language, on the part of French-speakers, seems to have very important effects on both non-native speakers of French and native speakers of French. For instance, many non-native speakers of French will refrain from using the language with native speakers because they fear the native speakers will judge them negatively. While this does happen with learners of other languages, it seems especially debilitating for people trying to use French across language communities. In fact, insistence by Hubert and others on the “quality” of written French might be one of the motivating factors for my blogging mostly in English.

Of course, Hubert has the right to his opinions on the matter and his preference for normative language could be interpreted as a part of his job as a copy-editor (my wife is also a copy-editor…). Yet, even those who work on prescriptive grammar in other languages may be more open to non-normative language. For instance, comments by the editors of the Chicago Manual of Style in their Questions and Answers monthly column often display a much more tolerant attitude to non-normative language than many French-speakers with minimal interest in language issues.

There’s a strong tendency in language sciences (my wife and I are both in the field) to adopt a much more neutral view of language prescription. Some language scientists may talk in private about their preference for «un bon français» (“a good French,” as close to the standard register as possible) but the general agreement is that any language variety is as good as any other in linguistic terms.

In this specific interview, Hubert was mostly discussing blog entries and their spontaneity. Pinpointing a known phenomenon linking mistakes with online communication (“What? There’s a ‘Preview’ button?”), Hubert sets up a model opposing spontaneity to quality.  Hubert himself not only sends his blog entries in a word processor to check for typographical mistakes (a spell-checking browser makes this much easier to do) but he even prints out some of his entries before posting them. Thankfully his advice to bloggers is less extreme as it centres on rereading posts before submission and going back to older posts in order to revise them for posterity’s sake.

None of this is inappropriate advice, but it leads us to think about the blurring line between oral and written communication. Hubert’s argument is that, if we care about communication so much, we should revise our texts as they might remain available for a long time. Bloggers often take another approach to revision: readers are like an open-source community of copy-editors. Blogs with active readership communities often attract comments on language issues. Simple typographical mistakes are usually spotted by some astute reader quite early on and deeper issues are sometimes solved by the community. “Given enough eyeballs, all typos are shallow.” This is especially true if the author of the entry is perceived as somewhat condescending to her or his readers. Nothing will motivate someone to write a comment than showing the mistakes the author has made!

This all has to do with not only spontaneity but the “release early, release often.” Bloggers do revisit older entries, if need be. Not necessarily by editing the original entry but by posting a follow up. Blog étiquette seems to have it that entries should be left untouched as much as possible. Otherwise, comments on those entries cease to make sense. And when bloggers are trying to get to publishing quality, they might in fact use the power of the community as an editing team. As such, a blog entry is like a recorded conversation. You don’t change the conversation but you can use it to go further. In such a context, normative language makes fairly little sense. As long as you can post quickly and the gist of your ideas can be understood well-enough to enable readers to ask questions, heavy revision of every single entry is contrary to the very principle of blogging.

IMHO, such emphasis on revision and “language quality” is a reason why so many people have difficulty with writing. Nothing prevents someone from writing more abruptly than thinking about peculiarities of written language. Except if those peculiarities are what this person is writing about, of course!

One thing that few people seem to discuss extensively is the fact that younger people are in fact writing inordinate amounts of text online. Of course, those with a prescriptive and normative view of language will just say that what is written online by a thirteen year old has no value because of the “poor quality of the language.” Yet those teenagers who are instant messaging their way to becoming extremely fast typists are really writing. They are putting ideas into written form. And they develop ways to be as efficient as possible in their writing while still being understood by their interlocutors. More than a skill, it’s an important social change. Writing is not what it was when only a precious few scribes were able to use it for specialized communication and archival (like accounting and religion). Scribes of old have been responsible for a number of changes in language. Why can’t millions of teenagers have more of an impact on written language than a few dead scribes?

Beer, CBC, Montreal

Beer Comments by a Wine Expert

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CBC Montreal – Programs – Homerun

Norm Bélanger recently made a few comments about beer during one of his segments on CBC Radio One (listened to it on the Quebec This Week podcast).

My comments to them:

Glad to see beer is getting some media attention in a city which is getting international recognition for its beer scene.
Several factual errors slipped in this segment. The part of hops which are used in beer is in fact the flower itself, not the leaves. Typically, only female flowers are used. While hops are sometimes “macerated” in the beer (a process known as “dry hopping”), neither Schloss Eggenberg nor Moretti are brewed in this way, to the best of my knowledge. Hops are boiled in the wort to contribute bitterness and the length of this boiling process will determine the bitterness of the final beer (along with the percentage of alpha acids in the hops themselves). Hop flavour and aroma, on the other hand, come from late boil additions or dry hopping.
While lagers are typically fermented at lower temperature, the defining characteristic is the type of yeast used during their fermentation (Saccharomyces uvarum, formerly known as carlsbergensis). These yeast strains typically work from the bottom of the fermentation tank and are thus known as “bottom fermentating” yeast, while ale yeast (S. cerevisiae) works from the top of the fermenter and is known as “top fermenting” yeast. Yeast type affects the taste as ale yeast strains develop more of the fruity esters typical of Belgian and British ales while lager yeast strains tend to make for cleaner and crisper beer if it is used at lower fermentation temperatures. Some lagers are fermented at higher temperatures, such as California Common beers (Anchor Steam being the best-known example).
Wine glasses may work for some beer styles but are far from ideal for most. Snifter-style tulip glasses are preferred for some of the stronger examples of Belgian ales while pilsner glasses are closer to a flute.
Kilning temperature and method does affect colour but other factors are involved. Darker grains are not typically contributing more body than lighter grain. Guinness is in fact a very light-bodied beer (the impression of body comes from the nitrogen head and the general mouthfeel of the beer).
Too bad you didn’t focus on some of the many outstanding local breweries (i.e., not InBev’s Labatt breweries).
As for the more subjective aspects (beer being a summer drink, beer being somewhat less complex than wine, etc.), it’s hard to trust a wine enthusiast on other beverages but a training in wine tasting may not prevent someone from learning something about the wide world of beer (including the variety of its food pairings, some of the many seasonal varieties of the drink, the complexity of its aromas and flavours, etc.).
Information about beer is plentiful and it would be useful if your researchers could look deeper into the beverage. Montreal has a vibrant beer scene and your audience would surely appreciate the sophistication of the beverage if you could help them learn more about it.
You could also lead listeners to some of the following sites:
Beer guide to Montreal from a North American perspective

Beer guide to Montreal from a British perspective

Local organization for beer aficionados

Local beer publication

Another local beer publication

Yet another local beer publication

Local beer resource

Another local beer resource

Local brewing club

North American beer publication with Quebec coverage

Information about beer styles

General information about beer

Beer and brewery ratings

Beer ratings

Thank you for your kind help!

Alexandre
http://enkerli.wordpress.com/

Eventually, even the “wine people” of this world will give some credit.

Ah, well…

community-building, mailing-lists, online communities, ramblings, social dynamics

“Defending” Mailing-Lists (Draft)

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[Should edit this heavily. At some point. If time allows. It’s already somewhat on the long side of things…]

Been on hundreds of mailing-lists during the last thirteen years. Yes, literally.
All sorts of distribution lists, listservs, Yahoo! Groups, listprocs, Google Groups, majordomos, announcement lists, etc. Lists about community projects (ilesansfil.org, BiscuitChinois.net, AcadieUrbaine.net…), academic disciplines (linguist-list, Anthro-L, SEM-L…), open-source projects (BibDesk.sf.net, StrangebrewJava.sf.net…), commercial software (OmniOutliner-Users, EccoPro…), hobbies (MontreAlers.ca, SweetMarias.com…), communities (Causerie, MaliNet…), online stores (CalabashMusic.com, SAQ.com…). The list goes on and on.
Those who assume that “email is dead” probably give little consideration to mailing-lists. To them, mailing-lists may easily be replaced by Web-based forum- or blog-style comment systems. Yet, to me, and despite all the hype about what Tim O’Reilly calls “Web 2.0,” mailing-lists are one of the most interesting things happening online. Yes, even today. Maybe they’re not really here to stay but mailing-lists have yet to be replaced by “better” technology.

Mailing-lists are based on simple technology and vary greatly in the way such technology may be implemented on each list. Several announcement lists are quite similar in effect to XML-based syndication (RSS and Atom). You get a message anytime new content is added (for instance, on BorowitzReport.com or MarkFiore.com). Others are very interactive and dynamic, with dozens of people sending each other messages throughout the day (Members of Barleyment are part of one such list). In either case, a mailreader (Eudora, Thunderbird, Mail.app, Entourage, Outlook…) is a very convenient “aggregator” as list messages can be checked quite regularly, may be routed in different folders automatically or manually, are easy to label and archive, and use relatively little bandwidth or disk space (though my current mail folder weighs in at about 5GB and doesn’t include all of my mailing-list content for even the last five years).
On more interactive mailing-lists, using a mailreader is even more beneficial because mail editors are usually much more efficient than browser- or Web-based editors, especially when replying to somebody else’s comments. Furthermore, editing list posts in a mailreader makes it easy to archive and search their contents in a centralized place. On several occasions, looking through my list archives for my own submissions or those of others has been a very efficient way to find information and put it in its proper context.

Contrary to Web-based content, mailing-lists are not usually about getting larger audiences. While some list subscription numbers are rather impressive, many mailing-lists give more value to what happens on-list and off-list between listmembers than to the possibility of getting advertisement monies. As such, mailing-lists are much less likely to get hyped than Web-based “social” projects. Yet mailing-lists are often where important things are really happening online.

In some ways, mailing-lists are “push technology” done right (anybody remember the hype surrounding PointCast? Anybody believes PointCast had that much impact?).
Some mailing-lists (Humanist, HomeBrew Digest) have long histories and their archives are among the most valuable sources of online information.

Much mailing-list traffic is made of threads. Threads have lives of their own, often splitting in multiple subthreads and follow-ups. As such, they do look like comments on a Web forum or blog, but are quite possibly more fluid. This fluidity might imply a lower “signal to noise ratio” in some cases as off-topic messages multiply, but some of the more open mailing-lists greatly benefit from the “stream of consciousness” effect of having threads develop in different directions.

Many mailing-lists are really about building communities. Though blogs and “social networking” sites are seen as community-builders, mailing-lists are, in my humble opinion, more efficient ways to build stronger and longer-lasting online communities.
Although subscribing to a mailing-list is almost as easy a process as subscribing to an XML-based “feed” (RSS or Atom), becoming a listmember is often an easy way to fully integrate a community. It’s common practise, on many interactive mailing-lists, to introduce yourself as soon as you subscribe to a list or before you start posting queries. Responses to these introductions are typically welcoming and often generate interesting discussions. On some of the more personal mailing-lists, unsubscribing to a list may also be an interesting process as people’s parting words can be quite revealing.
Mailing-lists often emulate societies as group dynamics grow from the meeting of individual personalities. Contrary to blogs, mailing-lists are often based on large numbers of “authors” and “replies” have the same status as “posts.”
Members of mailing-lists often develop long-lasting relationships. This is especially obvious on the more personal lists where members will go to great lengths to visit each other. But even academic mailing-lists often give way to important collaborations between members. In some ways, listmembers know each other on a deeper level than comment writers on Web-based content.
Even more important than list posts, listmembers interact through private messages. Yes, like many might do on “social” sites. The difference here is in the transition from list to private communication which, though not strictly codified, often follows interesting lines. Because listmembers form a specific group (however open and large that group may be), those who interact through private messages already have the possibility to refer to a shared “history,” especially if both of them have been active members of the list for a significant amount of time. Similar processes have been happening on some IRC channels, chatrooms, MMPORPGs, and in some blogging communities but private interactions stemming from mailing-lists tend, in my experience, to be broader-reaching than other forms of online communication.

None of this is meant to say that mailing-lists are the only “cool” thing happening online. In fact, the claim is that mailing-lists are simply more useful than “cool.” The hope isn’t to have mailing-lists remain what they currently are, but for mailing-lists to transform and integrate into other online technologies. For instance, a few Web forum commenting systems send detailed notifications when new messages are added in a thread. This could be improved by allowing replies to these notification messages as an easy way to post Web comments. Mailreader could greatly improve their handling of mailing-lists as, to this day, none of them seems to even facilitate the distinction between a list address and a personal address. While some scripts exist to facilitate the creation of separate folders for different mailing-lists, mailing-list content often remains difficult to distinguish from private messages. List messages received in digest formats are “unpacked” by only a few mailreaders. Threaded mailreading (in Gmail, Mail.app, and Thunderbird) has improved over the years but is still imperfect. Mailing-list software has come a long way but much more could be done in terms of archiving and repurposing list content.

Ah, well…

iPod, iTunes

Zune (Microsoft’s iPod/iTunes rival)

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Microsoft’s Zune to rival Apple’s iPod | CNET News.com

Little is known of this development yet apart from the fact that the Zune brand covers both hardware and software, that one device will be hard-drive based and have wireless capabilities, and that the first device will come out before the end of the year (i.e., before Windows Vista).

Microsoft’s reputation has changed a lot in recent times, in part thanks to its gaming devices. This is also a time at which Microsoft, a latecomer in the music device field, may have learned from the mistakes of others. As with the iTunes Music Store itself and Steve Jobs’s personal implication, a lot may hinge on Microsoft’s ability to negotiate with the “music industry” in order to improve the experience of music listeners and musicians, for instance by allowing people to share music over a wireless connection from a portable device. This could well be the “killer app” for digital audio players…
One can only hope that the “music industry” will eventually see the light. If Microsoft is to help them through this, more power to them.

ramblings

Shaving Seconds

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Today’s Rocketboom episode (for casual Friday, July 21, 2006) is about a method to tie shoelaces and the benefits of shaving two seconds off some tasks.

For someone who likes to take his time rapidly instead of hurrying slowly, it still fits in my way to do things. For instance, finding the right door to exit at a metro/subway station often means that you can catch a bus just before it leaves, especially if you run up the stairs in the station (as long as nobody’s in front of you).

Yeah, just the silly little things that make life funny.

A bilingual blog on disparate subjects. / Un blogue disparate bilingue.