Month: January 2007

opportunities

Phoebe got a cool toy as a gift for Christmas. (Actually, she got lots of cool toys, but I’ll spare you the details. For now, at least.) The toy I’m talking about is actually more of a set of toys: it’s the Fisher-Price airplane with Little People.

plane_people.jpg

The set came with 3 people: the pilot and 2 passengers. You have no idea how thrilled I was to see that the pilot is a woman. How cool is that? I mean, seriously. The small step of representing a woman as a pilot in a miniature toy represents a giant symbol: a woman is shown matter-of-factly in a prestigious and traditionally male-dominated pilot.jpg job, and this mass-produced representation is being sold as part of a mainstream popular toy. This is huge. (I once wanted to be a pilot, by the way, but that is a story for another day.)

So there we were, Christmas morning, looking at Phoebe’s new toys (once we finished wrestling to free the toys from their elaborate packaging). And I saw the pilot, and felt my thrill. And when I looked at the other two little people figures, I said to John “hey, the passengers are women, too. They must be a newlywed lesbian couple heading off for a tropical honeymoon.” I was joking when I said it, but honeymoon was what came to mind when I saw the two passengers all decked out in their Polynesian-inspired garb. I live in Massachusetts, one of only a few US states to have legally recognized same-sex unions, and apparently the only US state to recognized such unions as marriage. (By the way, when working on my wedding anniversary post, I discovered that the definition of marriage was under dispute on Wikipedia. That in itself tells quite a story. But I see now that the flags announcing the dispute have been taken down. I’d be curious what the changes made were…I found one older version in Google cache but haven’t had a chance to look.)

So here’s the thing. I’d like Phoebe to grow up accepting diversity in people: diversity in ethnicity, race, religion, sexual orientation, etc. Ideally, she would get to know people of such diverse backgrounds and beliefs in person. And hopefully she will. But the reality is that we live in fairly rural Massachusetts. In a town where there is not a whole lot of diversity. It struck me that toys and playing games offer opportunities to supplement the exposure to diversity she might get through school and the media. We don’t actually particularly know any married same-sex couples. But we can matter-of-factly say that pat.jpgthe two women figures in the play set are married. Just as the set matter-of-factly depicts a pilot who is a woman.

Of course, John now has me half-convinced that one of the passengers in the set is actually supposed to be male. I still think of her as female. Just possibly a less girly female than the long-haired lei-wearing obviously female passenger. She, who is wearing shorts and purple sandals, and has a moderately short haircut, is at the very least of somewhat ambiguous gender. We have agreed to call her Pat. Just Post Jan 2007

More kick-ass women TV shows

Here’s continuing my ongoing kick-ass women project. (Check out my index to previous posts in the project, if you like.) Following up on my last list of favorite kick-ass women TV shows, I offer up another list of TV shows. These are are shows that I’ve watched and loved, or at least enjoyed, that prominently feature kick-ass women (and girls). I do have some reservations about some of these, though…(And again, shows are listed chronologically by start date.)

9 more kick-ass women TV shows

  1. The Avengers (1962-1964)
    This incarnation of The Avengers starred Honor Blackman (who later gained more fame playing Bond girl Pussy Galore) as Cathy Gale. I didn’t get to know the Gale episodes until quite recently, when they were released on DVD. But they are well worth watching, in spite of the poor video-taped quality.
  2. Get Smart (1965-1970)
    Barbara Feldon was great as Agent 99, the competent foil to the bumbling agent Maxwell Smart. However, I was never too thrilled with the plots developing to woo and win Max. I don’t really buy her desire to get married, especially to him…
  3. The Avengers (1968-1969)
    I was mostly just going through the motions when I watched this incarnation of The Avengers. Linda Thorson played Tara King, a much softer, wimpier partner to Steed. But she still played a secret agent who could kick some moderate ass.
  4. Remington Steele (1982-1987)
    Stephanie Zimbalist plays Laura Holt, a brilliant private investigator who finds she gets more clients by operating under a man’s name, even a man’s name that she’s made up. Unfortunately, the whole premise of the show is that Pierce Brosnan comes along and usurps her success, and she has to go along with it.
  5. Teen Titans (2003-????)
    This Cartoon Network animated series featuring bunch of adolescents with superpowers has a couple of pretty kick-ass girls. Starfire (voiced by Hynden Walch) is a bit too needy-touchy-feely for my tastes, but I guess can kick some ass in a fight. I’m partial to Raven (voiced by Tara Strong), who is cranky and dark.
  6. Star Trek: Voyager (1995-2001)
    It’s been absolutely ages since I watched this. I didn’t even realize it was on the air that long. Anyhow, I seem to recall some pretty kick-ass women characters: Roxann Dawson as B’Elanna Torres and Jeri Ryan as the Borg Seven of Nine. There was also the kick-ass character Captain Kathryn Janeway, portrayed by Kate Mulgrew. (I am remembering a story about Kate Mulgrew publicly proclaiming that she wasn’t a feminist, though, which made me lose quite a bit of respect. Jenny, care to remind me of the details?)
  7. Futurama (1999-????)
    Leela (full name: Turanga Leela) as voiced by Katey Sagal shines with competence as a spaceship captain surrounded by dimwits in this animated series created by Matt Groening. (I never really bought her attraction to clueless Fry, and am suddenly noticing the parallels to 99’s infatuation with Max Smart…It’s a theme we’ve all seen too often…)
  8. Jackie Chan Adventures (2000-2005)
    Animated Jackie’s trouble-making little niece Jade (voiced by Stacie Chan) shows some potential to grow up into a kick-ass woman in this kid-oriented cartoon. She’s got some of the key ingredients: courage, daring and wit. (Forget sugar and spice.)
  9. The Tick (2001)
    This inpsired gem of a show, the live-action version of the zany superhero cartoon, only lasted 8 episodes. Liz Vassey was great as the tough-as-nails-in-her-shiny-gold-boots Captain Liberty, a character inspired by Wonder Woman.

donuts are evil

John just walked by, looked at the title line I just typed and said: “you are in a wacky mood today.” Yes, it’s true. Wacky. Perhaps it’s the sugar. Because I have eaten 3 donuts. We are now down at my in-laws. And whenever we visit, John’s mother lays out various breakfast “treats” for us. Every morning. A different box of Freihofer’s each morning: coffee cake, cinnamon rolls, donuts. This morning was donuts. I can largely resist the coffee cake. But I seem to have little will power to resist donuts. Even though I know how bad they are for me.

Here are some of the donuts I have not (yet) eaten.
donuts.jpg

There is a popular tendency to call donuts “baked goods.” But, and I realize I may be disillusioning someone out there, donuts are not baked. Unless an alternate meaning of bake is “cook by means of dropping into a big vat of boiling fat.” Yes, donuts are fried. (There may be some exceptions to this rule, but I warrant you they are not nearly as tasty.) Check out this early reference from Wikipedia’s entry on donut:

Washington Irving’s reference to “doughnuts” in 1809 in his History of New York is an early printed use of the word. Irving described “balls of sweetened dough, fried in hog’s fat, and called doughnuts, or olykoeks.”

According to the same Wikipedia entry, modern donuts contain between 20 and 25% fat. Happily, hog’s fat is no longer the norm, though.

In defense of donuts, though, they are tasty. Check out ytsl’s list of favorite American specialty foods: Krispy Kreme donuts top the list. (I’m not sure I’ve had many Krispy Kreme donuts. I live in New England, where Dunkin Donuts is the fried ring king. There are practically more DD shops around here than even Starbucks…Not that I frequently buy donuts. As I said, donuts are evil.)

morning cup of funny

Good morning. I would like to share with you this, which has made me laugh before 10:00 a.m.:

The Ad Generator

When I used it, I got catchy slogans like:
“Smile less” and “It’s everywhere you say to make.”

Thanks to LGM for pointing me this way. (John says I should say hat tip. But it’s a new term for me. So I should practice using it in a sentence first. As in “John told me I should say hat tip.”)

I’d also like to point out that this looks to be a case of Computational Linguistics in action, and used for good (and not evil). It probably uses some sort of n-grams and conditional probabilities. (And also photos from Flickr.)

The generated slogans also remind me of things you might fight with Engrish text. (Another fun website. You must check it out. It’s everywhere you say you make.)

I am…someone I’ve never heard of

John just sent me a link to this quiz:
Which science fiction writer are you?

It was an enjoyable quiz, with a number of questions that made me laugh. But then my answer:

I am:

Hal Clement (Harry C. Stubbs)

A quiet and underrated master of “hard science” fiction who, among other things, foresaw integrated circuits back in the 1940s.

Don’t you hate it when you get results on these things that you find disappointing? I mean, I appreciate the underrated, and also the evidence of great foresight. But why not somebody cool? I mean, John got Ursula LeGuin as a result. That is so cool. It’s the sort of thing that makes me want to go back and change my answers. (Now what does that say about me?)

Okay. Here’s an update. My brother-in-law, who is a dyed-in-the-wool Republican with books on his shelf at home by Evil Bitch from Hell that Anne Coulter and Scary Dork of an Asshole Sean Hannity as well as other “authors,” just took the quiz and got the same frickin’ author as me.

What did I do wrong?

the power of pants

Fooled ya! This post isn’t really about pants at all. Well, I guess it’s about “pants,” the tag.

WordPress has this feature by which you can check out other posts from WordPress blogs with the same tag. And for each tag, it will also show you a list of “related tags,” in case you want to follow up with other posts on similar topics. For example, for the tag “politics,” you currently get the following list of tags:
news, blogroll, life, culture, personal, religion, iraq, music, media and books

Recently, I decided to add the tag “pants” to my recent posts on pants. I am pleased to inform you that right now, at least, if you click on the “pants” tag, you get to see the following “related tags:”

  1. words
  2. linguistics
  3. humor

pants_tags.jpg

Those are actually the only related tags WordPress lists right now. (You’d expect to see “trousers” or “slacks”, perhaps “shirts” or even “fashion”…)

What I find even funnier, is that I see that the list of related tags for “linguistics“, which has related tags such as “languages”, “sociolinguistics,” and other terms you might expect, also includes “pants”. My friends, that is the power of pants.

linguistics_tag.jpg

By the way, this suggests to me that perhaps looking at blog tags would not be the most reliable means of investigating, say, semantic networks. (Though it could lead to lots of entertainment.)

return of the promised pants

I’m so embarrassed. I ran off to class on Monday, with my pants only half-way up. I mean, my pants post. I promised you some pants, and then I left you hanging. So, here I am again. Back with the pants.

Before I begin with the in-depth pants analysis, let’s pull our pants back up:

a. Listen to the pants. The file pair_of_pants.wav (and the streamed mp3 version of the same) contains two productions of the word pants, one “normal,” and one “funny.” (Before I tell you which is which, I’ll let you try the pants on yourself for size. I mean, judgements.)

Streamed version of pair_of_pants.mp3:

pair_of_pants.wav soundfile (can be downloaded):

b. pants methods. To recap:

The two productions of pants were spoken by a female native speaker of American English who was wearing pajama pants at the time of the recording. Each of the two versions of pants is of a similar length (roughly .7 seconds from the onset of the [p] burst), and produced in citation form with a similar f0 contour (H* L-L% in ToBI terms).

c. The funny pants. In my head at least, the second pants version is way funnier than the first. Especially when used in a sentence, such as “you’re not wearing pants:”

not_wearing_pants.mp3

d. Look at the pants. Let’s return to our citation form examples.

Figure 1: pair_of_pants.wav with accompanying Praat TextGrid, and some arrows and stuff
Note: The display shows waveform (top panel) and spectrogram with overlayed f0 track in blue (middle panel). The third panel, the TextGrid, shows orthographic transcription.
pair_of_pants_marked.jpg

e. Pants analysis. A couple of acoustic differences between the two versions are quite striking: 1) differences in aspiration and 2) differences in the second formant.

  1. differences in aspiration. Check out the much higher amplitude aspiration noise in the second version (on the right). The arrows marked with “1” point to this in the waveform. Further, you can hear the aspiration ([h]-ness) continuing through the vowel, which is produced with a much breathier voice than the first version.
  2. differences in the second formant. (Note: if you’re not used to reading spectrograms, the first 3 formants show up as more-or-less horizontal dark smudgy lines. The first formant is on the bottom. The second formant, marked with the red arrows marked with “2”, is the middle dark smudgy line.) In the “normal” pants version, the second formant falls rather steeply throughout the vowel (indicating that the vowel is diphthongized). In the “funny” pants version, the second formant stays pretty much horizontal.

f. Pants conclusions. Pants is a funny word. I like to say the word pants.

elated

I am so happy today. I have a brand new nibling! I got the news early this morning that my nephew has arrived. A bit earlier than planned, but he and my sister are both doing well. I laughed, I wept, and I danced a happy dance. (Lots of happy dancing, not much weeping.) And all this before 8:00 a.m.

back to school

So I started class again today. It’s been over a year since I last took a class. (Though not that long ago since I actually finished the work for that class….) I think I’m getting too old for this. 35 years old. Rushing off to a class where the average age of the students is probably 20. (My face, perhaps in an effort to make me feel younger, has graced me with a nice red zit on my nose. Just in time for the first day of school. It’s like high school revisited.) And can I just say that I didn’t quite feel prepared? As I was rushing around the house trying to get my essentials together for the ride in (car key, wallet, iPod…), I said to myself, “I should bring a pen. I think students use those.” So I grabbed a pen, and hoped that whatever papers were left in my backpack would serve for any note-taking purposes. (I did bring my laptop, though. So, here I sit in class, pretending to take notes. Just kidding! I’m really in the car driving home!)

So I rushed around this afternoon dealing with registering for class (which I should’ve done weeks ago). And I sat in class with 40+ other students. And I felt almost like I was back in a previous life. And I had various flashbacks to other days in the classroom. Other classes I’d taken, as a grad student, as an undergrad, and even back in high school. And oddly, I had flashbacks to the movie Back to School. Mind you, I’ve never seen more than a few minutes of this movie starring, and apparently largely written by, Rodney Dangerfield. Nor do I want to see any more. (Really not a big fan of Rodney Dangerfield.) But I could somewhat identify with the premise: an old guy goes back to college, where he stands out for being such an old guy. (Also for being loud-mouthed, lewd and crude. Hopefully I didn’t come off as such an oaf.)

I was going to put together a list of other movies of older folks going back to school. I mean, there must be others I’ve seen or know of. There’s that whole genre of parent/kid body swapping (like Freaky Friday and Vice Versa) that must have some misadventures of adults going to school with a bunch of youngsters. But I really should get to bed instead.

Oh yeah, and I still owe some pants. I ran off to class earlier with my pants only half- way up. I mean, my pants post. It’ll have to be tomorrow.