The Grey Literature – Page 14 – The Grey Literature

Answering my readers’ questions

Everyone gather ’round. It’s that time again! It’s time for me to answer my readers’ questions!

And by that, I mean, it’s time for me to see what strings of words people have typed into Google that brought them to my blog. Then I look through the search keywords that are (more-or-less) well-formed questions and answer them as best I can. It’s the least I could do, since they took the time to visit my site with these questions on their mind.

“Why can’t the space shuttle leave conventionally from an airport?” (July 26)

Mostly because it’s not an airplane. Those booster rockets that the space shuttle normally uses for take-off are not decorative.

“If I fired a laser beam at my hand would it come out the other side?” (Aug 4)

Yes.

“How to castle in chess with friends?” (July 31, Aug 7, 14, 17)

Begin a chess game with a friend, castle normally.

“How do you move your king and castle at the same time?” (July 26)

You probably meant “How do you move your king and your rook at the same time?”

“Rook” is the name for the pieces that start at the corners of the board.

In chess, “castle” is a verb. It’s the verb that means to move your rook and king at the same time, two spaces toward each other, provided that the intervening spaces are not occupied and that neither the king nor rook has been moved before in the match (and that you’re not trying to castle out of check).

“Cheat on MCAT tips?” (Aug 1) / “How to cheat the MCAT?” (July 30)

Are you really asking me to help you to cheat on the MCAT? Get out.

“Has anyone ever cheated on MCAT before?” (July 28)

No. No one in the history of mankind. No one whose motives were so pure as to aspire to medical school has ever even considered cheating to attain such a goal.

“Grammar is one of the greatest joys in life, don’t you find?” (Aug 8)

Actually, now that you mention it, grammar is the greatest joy in life.

“How to avoid getting your bike stolen [in] Montréal?” (Aug 25)

Sell bike, and buy Bixi pass with the proceeds.

“How to get your thesis bound at McGill” (July 27)

You gotta do it yourself, I’m afraid. You can get Acco-Press binders at the bookstore.

“How to take someones fortune?” (Aug 21)

Twitter-stalking.

“I bought wrong grammar?” (Aug 10)

You sure did.

“I might have strep throat I don’t got insurance?” (Aug 7)

That’s quite the predicament! Are you a Canadian citizen?

“Is there a Montréal métro pass for mature students?” (Aug 19)

Nope. No such thing. Once you’re 25, you pay full price, whether you’re a full-time student or not.

“What happens after you accept a TA-ship offer?” (Aug 4)

Heh … Do you really want to know?

“What is giving you the most problems with Microsoft Word?” (July 26)

Thank you for asking! Mostly crashing, interface glitches and the fact that there’s no separation between content, formatting, comments and meta-data.

“Where can i get hasperat?” (July 28)

Bajor, if you want it authentic.

But if you would make the brine for a really strong hasperat—I mean eye watering, tongue searing strong—you’d make an old man very happy.

First draft of my IQA hoop design contest entry

Earlier this summer, the quidditch team noticed that the hoops that we’ve been using were flaky at best. The bases for the hoops worked well, but the hoops themselves were, well … hula-hoops duct taped to the tops of ABS pipes.

They would fall over or break easily. The duct tape would lose its stickiness quickly and it became a chore to keep them in working order.

So, we started working on a replacement for the hoops. We wanted something sturdier. After a few tries, we eventually came up with a design that’s simple, modular, portable, affordable and very, very durable.

While we were working on this, weeks ago, I remember having a conversation where I mentioned that the IQA has “official” brooms, quaffles, etc. and that we should apply for this to be the official hoop of the IQA. Then, as if they read our minds, on July 28th, the IQA launched a hoop design contest. I guess I’ll have to brush up on my occlumency.

Here are the prizes for the contest:

The best design will be promoted in the IQA handbook as the “official” hoop design and may be used at the World Cup.
The designer and her/his team will be always credited as long as that design is used, wherever it is used, and the design of the hoops will be named after the designer.
If the IQA chooses to produce and sell this design at an affordable price to teams, the designer’s team will receive a share of the funds raised as long as the design is used.

So a couple days ago we went back to the hardware store to look up the prices and the real-people names for all the component parts of the hoops that we built, and over the past little while I’ve spent a few hours putting together a construction manual for building one of our hoops. I’m pretty proud of it, really.

The IQA contest deadline is August 11th, so there’s still time for revision. I would appreciate any feedback (from the quidditch team especially, but all comments are welcome) regarding the construction manual and its contents before that date. Tell me if you notice any inconsistencies, grammar/spelling mistakes, or any parts of the instructions that aren’t clear. Also, please note any advantages of the design that are not mentioned on the last page.

[Download the construction manual as a PDF file here.]

Offensive message at Stratford’s Canada Day ceremony

Last week I went to Stratford, Ontario to celebrate Canada Day with my family in my hometown. The weather was beautiful and I got to see a bunch of old friends.

Behind City Hall, there were food vendors, booths from various organisations around Stratford, and live music and dancing. Some were done by actors from the Festival, and other acts were done by fiddlers and tap-dancers from around Perth County. I understand that they were recruited from a festival that was going on nearby.

Partway through the event, one of the groups of dancers came on stage, and there were two boys in the dancing troupe. After they finished, the person who was emceeing the dancers made a comment that still bothers me. She said in a very tongue-in-cheek way, “Look at that—those two boys are pretty smart, aren’t they? Learning to dance with all those girls.”

The audience laughed, while I looked around in horror.

What’s offensive about this comment is the suggestion that it’s not okay for boys to learn to dance because they like dancing. That would be beneath a man’s pride. That would be womanly. There are some things that men don’t do, and dancing is one of them, and if a boy enjoys that, he should be ashamed of himself.

But learning to dance in order to pursue sexual congress—that’s another story. You can still be a man if you’re dancing in order to get in a woman’s pants. It just means you’re really shrewd about it, that’s all.

Two things immediately come to mind that are really problematic about this:

This sort of thinking is fantastically demeaning to women. It puts women in the place of being a sexual object to be pursued by men. Not only that, but these girls were about ten years old! Why on earth is this even being hinted at?
Having attitudes like the one I outlined puts boys in a position where they have to rationalise all their actions, preferences and their own identity through the lens of manhood. Not only that, but it emphasises how fragile someone’s manhood actually is: If just the act of dancing publicly is enough to threaten it so much that it needs to be rationalised by appeal to the subjugation of women, then you are sending the message that a person’s manhood is a very fragile thing indeed, and that it’s okay to turn a few ten-year-old girls into sex objects in order to preserve it.

I would actually be interested in knowing if there’s a way to quantify how much violence can be shown to be directly causally related in a non-controversial way to some guy trying to defend his own manhood. These comments are not benign.

Canada Day grammar help

It’s the 144th birthday of our country, and to celebrate, here’s some grammar!

The word “oh” is an interjection. One often uses it to express surprise. For example, “Oh! Hello there! I didn’t hear you come in!”

The word “O” is not the same word. This will be easier to understand if you know a language that has cases, like Latin or Greek.

In Greek, nouns, adjectives etc. can take one of five cases, although sometimes there’s ambiguity among them. The nominative case is used for the subject of a sentence. The genitive is used to express possession. The dative is used for indirect object. The accusative is used for direct objects. Finally (and most importantly for understanding the word “O”) the vocative case is used for directly addressing someone or something.

“O” is a particle for introducing a classically styled address in the vocative case. You sometimes see this in religious texts in English: “Praise the Lord, O my soul!” So in this case the author is directly addressing his soul and telling it to praise the Lord.

You might also use “O” if you’re trying to be pompous or overly formal: “O great registrar! Hear my plea and grant me special permission to take Philosophy 601.”

You should not use “O” to express surprise. Saying, “O hi there” would be incorrect. You should also not use “oh” as an address, which brings me to why this is important for all Canadians.

If you write “Oh Canada” in reference to our national anthem, you are actually getting the lyrics wrong. It looks like you were surprised by Canada or something. “Oh, Canada, it’s you! I … I didn’t expect to see you here!”

The two words are homophones, like “you” vs “ewe”—different words, different spellings, same pronunciation. It’s “O Canada,” not “Oh Canada,” and there is a difference in meaning between them.

What grad students dream about

Last night I dreamed that I had to present my thesis to my readers orally—all 87 pages of it. Everything was going well until the end of chapter 2, when I came across a bunch of dummy text and references to tables and figures that I had never heard of. I slowly came to the realisation that in my dream I had incorporated the dummy text into the end of chapter 2 to get an idea of how much I would have to write to reach my desired word count, and forgot to replace it with real text before submitting it. All the professors and classmates who came to hear me speak started laughing as I flipped through the next few pages of my thesis, to see how much lorem ipsum I had padded my thesis with.

Two, three, four … eight pages. When the meaningless padding was removed, my thesis was only 79 pages long—one page short of the minimum required length.

I tried to explain to my readers that the next chapter was where it got interesting, and that I needed to finish with my thesis to start my next academic programme, but by that time, they had already begun walking out.

Apparently this is what grad students dream about. Well, this and dinosaurs. I drew a picture of that dream.

More typos from The Witch Doctor’s Wife

“The witchdoctor grunted and clapped his hands.” (p. 176, In every other case “witch doctor” is written as two words.)
“As if that weren’t enough, the pimple-faced spy from Flanders was out to get the OP.” (p. 245, “Flanders” was the guy’s name, not where he came from.)
“Pardonez mois?” (p. 259)
“Cripple had gone from death’s door—literally—to suddenly becoming an icon of freedom.” (p. 302, Cripple did not literally come from death’s door.)
“Excusez mois” (p. 304)

Typos in The Witch Doctor’s Wife

Now that my thesis has been submitted, I’m reading a book for pleasure called The Witch Doctor’s Wife. It’s not a life-changing read or a very challenging one, but it’s a fun story, full of sarcastic pokes at historical political problems. It’s nice to have something light to read after mostly reading about moral theory, economic theory and human research protocols for a year.

And of course, I found typos!

“That invited infection, which often lead to crippling.” (p. 121)
“… believing she could lesson the threat by making noise …” (p. 131)
“Pardonez mois, monsieur” (p. 152)
“Excusez mois” (p. 153)
“Pardonez mois” (p. 155)

They seem to have a hard time with homonyms.

That’s all I’ve found for now, but I’m only on page 170 of 307. I haven’t even gotten to the murder promised on the back of the book.

I submitted my thesis today

When I woke up this morning, I was three steps away from submitting my thesis:

Get French translation of my abstract
Print thesis
Get my supervisor’s signature

Well, it turns out my translator’s computer crashed, and so I didn’t get the French version of my abstract until exactly 12h today.

I printed my thesis—all 87 pages—bound it in ACCO-press binders, applied the necessary stickers, packed everything up and then wondered why I hadn’t heard back from my supervisor. He’s generally very fast at responding to emails, and last night he offered by email to sign my thesis submission form this afternoon, so it was surprising that he hadn’t got back to me.

I called his office. I called his home. I sent another email. I decided to do a stakeout at the Biomedical Ethics Unit and see if I run into him. When I was putting on my shoes, I considered for a moment whether I should put on my running shoes or my regular shoes. I had this nagging feeling like somehow I would end up sprinting to the James Administration Building at the last second, and that I would be happy to be wearing running shoes. Then I dismissed that thought. All I had to do, after all, is get my supervisor’s signature and then walk across the street and submit it. Putting running shoes on would be silly.

I put my regular shoes on and went to the Bioethics Unit to look for my supervisor. I ran into the administrative assistant who informed me that he was having a terrible day. A few seconds later I got a phone call from him.

Apparently my supervisor had a minor car accident and spent the morning in the emergency room. He invited me to his house to have the forms signed. This would not normally have been a problem, but Villa-Maria station (where he lives) is closed until September 6, and so I went to Vendôme station and hired a cab to get me to his place.

I saw the back of his car when I arrived. There were indentations that I’m sure were never intended by the manufacturer to be there. My supervisor and his family are all right, I think, but understandably this has been a bad day for them.

The forms all signed, I sprinted to the nearest Bixi station and decided that it would be fastest to just ride the Bixi all the way to campus. This may or may not have been the case, but I made it back to campus in 25 minutes, which is probably better than what it would have taken to get to a métro, wait, transfer at Lionel-Groulx and then walk from station McGill to the James Administration Building.

On arrival, I was hot, sweaty and breathing heavily, but I still had the presence of mind to turn on the Voice Memo app on my phone, so that I could secretly record it when the person in the Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies office said, “Yes, everything appears to be in order.” (Thank goodness for iPhone headphones that have a built-in mic for clandestine voice recording.)

I guess I’m paranoid because I’ve recently had two separate experiences where I handed in everything on a document checklist only to receive a mystifying message later on, indicating that I failed to submit all the required documents. I don’t plan to use this recording for anything but soothing my own nerves, for the record. It just feels good to hear someone say that I submitted everything.

So after all that, I have now made initial submission of my thesis. Hooray!

Thesis abstracts in both English and French

Well what do you know? I have to write a French version of my abstract for my thesis.

This means it’s time to go out and buy some Newcastle beers. I have a friend who’s a translator who enjoys Newcastle beer, and if I’m going to exploit my relationship with her for my personal gain, I might as well make it worth her while.

There’s no way I’m going to risk writing my own thesis abstract in French. In French, I’m most confident in my ability to discuss whether pineapples can talk:

Catch-22: the final test of my master’s degree

In order to graduate, I must submit my thesis.

To submit my thesis, I have to hand in my Nomination of Examiners Form, available from Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies as a fillable PDF. In the top-left corner, it reads, “this form must be typed.”

If you look at the fillable PDF, you’ll notice that I can’t fill in the form completely until I know who my internal reader is.

I spoke to the Philosophy Department, and they told me that they would inquire as to which professors would be able to serve as my internal reader after I hand in the Thesis Submission form and the Nomination of Examiners Form. I’m not allowed to contact professors myself to ask them to be my internal readers.

This is my final test.