Things that have diverted me lately

[undyingking]

Just a roundup of a few things which caught my eye / attention, and which other people might find similarly diverting.

• Word Strips, a Flash game of spotting cobinations of lettert aht form words, quickly. There are loads of games like this about, but this is a nice realization and the scoring mechanism is pleasingly straightforward. Also, it's too difficult to be a real time-eater. My best is about 300...
• The Slingshot -- "the Great British Paper for Young Chaps. Its watchwords are Patriotism, Clean Living and Fair Play... Immerse yourself in the healthy, hearty pages of The Slingshot and you will soon understand why it is that the sun never goes down on the British without asking permission first." Very much in the tradition of Ripping Yarns. Not truly brilliant, but with some good bits, especially the adverts.
• When cake-icing software goes wrong. Poor Aunt Elsa, I bet she ends up getting the slice with the code fragment.
• Did you know that Unicode incluides the Hebrew Alternative Plus Sign, for people who find the normal one looks a bit too much like a cross? I didn't.

On a random note, I was interested to see that some people think Barack Obama is not really black. Or, rather, that he may be black, but he isn't "black". That "black" in America refers to a cultural heritage going back to the days of slavery, which Obama, whose father came from Kenya, does not share. Of course, this could be code for being wary of him because his politics aren't those of more traditional black leaders such as Jesse Jackson. I don't know enough about the subtly overtones of American race politics... Did Colin Powell, whose family were Jamaican and thus descended from slaves of the British rather than the Americans, get similar comments?

When I went to university I was surprised to find that the Black Caucus group welcomed people of South Asian (Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Sri Lankan) descent as well as people of African or Afro-Caribbean descent. It seemed to me a regrettably loose definitiion to say that because we all have darker skin than Caucasians, we are all in some sense "black". (It may have been because at my university there were hardly any actually black people, but loads of South Asians.)

It's sometimes disconcerting when reading Pepys's diary and seeing him talk about the black woman who lives round the corner, etc, that in his day that description just meant that she had dark hair, in the same way you'd speak of a blonde woman. I guess an actual black person would have been described as a Moor.

On a related note, continuing the ramble, T was recently told at a diversity training event that to describe people from China, Malaysia, Japan etc generically as "Oriental" was considered insensitive. Apparently the thinking is (a) it covers some very different countries, cultures and ethnicities, and it shows callousness to lump them all in together under one adjective; and (b) suppose though that you don't know where they're from in any more detail, and so have to use a generic word, "Oriental" is historically associated with harmful ethnic stereotypes and slurs relationg to Fu Manchu, opium dens, cunning Oriental devils, etc -- a better because less value-laden term for such people is "East Asian". This was new to me, but I guess it kind of makes sense.

Comments

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Ooh, I love that cake !

[wimble.livejournal.com]

Did Jews not write down arithmetic before the Christians came along?

And frankly, why be so sensitive about it? Claim back the plus sign! Plus pride!

[mooism.livejournal.com]

I’d thought that plus and minus signs were invented in the middle ages, but Wikipedia says (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plus_sign) fifteenth century. The Jewish alternative seems to be much younger.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

I think arithmetical notation in any form is comparatively modern -- I'm not sure that Hebrew of that vintage even had any numerals.

(I wonder if St Andrew is particularly sensitive about the multiplication sign?)

[brixtonbrood.livejournal.com]

I'm having problems in my claasic white Guardian-reader way explaining to Small that the "correct" descriptions for people are "black" and "white" rather than her current "brown" and "pinkish". It's a bitch to explain, because a) there isn't a rational explanation and b) I'm reluctant to intrude the "real" world on her current prelapsarian innocence. (Similarly I read recently about US diplomats seeing no reason why they shouldn't refer to visiting Pakistani delegates as Pakis - just as they refer to the UK delegates as Brits - but they're not 4 years old, so it's easier to explain the problem to them).

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

You'd think there'd be some well-meaning picture book (a la "Jenny Lives with Alan and Martin" or whatever it was called) that lays out the subject sensitively.

[t--m--i.livejournal.com]

Surely it just demonstrates that brixtonbrood never uses the terms "black" "white" etc in front of Teh Kidz much at all, or they would have picked it up from her. Unless they're going to get beaten up, I'd be inclined to let them find out in their own sweet time.

When I was at primary school, we used to sing the black and white song which, being seven, we thought nothing of: after all, the board was black, the chalk was white, the children were also (more or less, if you weren't too pedantic about the actual shades of brown/cream/pink etc) black and white (certainly we were as close to black and white as the daisies were to silver and the dandelions to gold!). So it was just another song.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

We sang that too -- good old Spinners!

And of course there's ebony and ivory, which sit together in perfect harmony side by side on my piano keyboard.

I digress

[brixtonbrood.livejournal.com]

What I really want is one that introduces the concept of religious belief in a sensitive manner "Maria, Mohammed, Sanjit and Rachel talk to their Imaginary Friends" for example (and the fact that that is the title that leaps to mind gives you a rough idea of why I could do with a book that gives a slightly more PC spin).

There is a very good book called The Wibbly Wobbly Tooth about a little boy who learns from his friends about their various superstitions about what to do with teeth (particularly nice in that the protagonist is Chinese so his cultural whatsit is shown as the default, good for Chinese kids of course, but very good for WASP kids to give a real sense that other people's traditions are exactly as valid as one's own, and not just curios) which does it for me - but using it as the basis for my analogy does reduce all religious belief to the level of the tooth fairy.......

Left to my own devices the word "magic" does tend to creep into the discussion - which is not too bad a tactic actually as Small knows exactly what that means (Just A Story), but it's unlikely to get her into too much trouble in the playground (though it might get her marked down a tad in citizenship classes).

Re: I digress

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Difficult to know who might write such a book. Anyone religious would probably scorn to treat all such as essentially the same category of belief, but anyone non-religious would have the same problem as you of how to handle it at all generously.

[thetravelpit.livejournal.com]

My Pakistani friend at high school always took great delight in calling him self a Paki. After all, he reasoned, Afgahnistan is the land of the Afghans, Kazahkstan is the land of the Kzahaks, so Pakistan must be the land of the Pakis. But there we go.

I had to change manage a change on the ethnic apperance codes of the police system I once worked on, to change 'Oriental' to 'Chinese, Japanese or other East Asian'. It was a lot more effort than one supposes.

Note this is ethnic apperance (the IC codes, you may hear occasionally on the bill), not ethnicity, which is a self defined code, and something quite different.

You may have a North European Apperance (IC1) but self define yourself as ethnically Jamaican.

And it's an important distinction... how someone looks is important for identification, whereas someone's ethnicity is maybe be about how you deal with them.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Mm, I was quite bemused when interviewed by police a little while ago that they asked me to describe my hair colour, eyes, build etc, when they were looking at me and clearly could quite easily see for themselves what they were. I wonder what extra annotations they would have made if I'd claimed I was 6' tall, blond and blue-eyed. ("Unreliable witness.")

[thecesspit.livejournal.com]

Was this due to a certain gentleman who lived down the street? (Mind you for all I know that could be your description).

Thats a bit odd, as PDFs (personal description forms) should be completed by the interviewing officer, during the interview. They are quite notorious for being wildly different from reality, mostly as it's hard to describe someone consistently.

I've seen PDF's for a missing person (well actually one of my colleagues doing a training exercise) vary quite wildly from what I'd describe him as. At least a self description checked by one person could be reasonably relaible.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Yes, I think everyone in the street got interviewed a couple of times. (Actually I look more like this usericon.)

[celestialweasel.livejournal.com]

It is interesting to see Americans on TV bristle when UK reporters say 'black' not 'African-American'.

[celestialweasel.livejournal.com]

The thing about Obama also brings this news story to mind
OMAHA, Nebraska (AP) -- Officials disciplined students who papered their nearly all-white high school with posters advocating a white student from South Africa for the school's "Distinguished African American Student Award."
http://www.cnn.com/2004/EDUCATION/01/22/king.controversy.ap/

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Heh, yes.