Author: The Grey Literature

This is the personal blog of Benjamin Gregory Carlisle PhD. Queer; Academic; Queer academic. "I'm the research fairy, here to make your academic problems disappear!"

Too dependant on the Metro

Lionel-Groulx
Lionel-Groulx

This morning I got up and I actually got out the door early for the class that I’m a TA for. I got on the Metro and when I arrived at station Lionel-Groulx, I discovered that there the Metro was not running on the green line, and would not be until my class was halfway done.

I surfaced at that station and thought about taking a bus but I had no idea which bus would get me to campus or whether it would be any better than waiting for the Metro, so I just admitted defeat and ordered a cab.

I was five minutes late. Grr.

Quidditch practice

Last night was my first Quidditch practice. I showed up on the McGill field in my gym clothes, wearing my big boots, and carrying a broom.

It was fantastic. It rained the whole time.

Here’s how the game works, for the non-initiate. You can play one of a number of positions: you can be a chaser, whose goal is to throw the quaffle through one of the opposing team’s three hula hoops, or you can be a beater (this one was my favourite) whose goal was to throw one of three bludgers at the other team’s chasers or beaters. The keeper is the goal-tender, and the seeker chases the Golden Snitch (in the case of last night’s game, a small girl dressed in white and yellow.

In order to participate, one had always to be straddling a broom, and the team had some excellent-looking brooms at their disposal, I must say. The only exception is that when a chaser or beater is hit by a bludger of the opposing team’s, that player must get off his broom and run around his team’s goal-posts.

I’m not sure how points are calculated. The game ends when the seeker catches the Golden Snitch of course.

The game is very fun to play on its own merits, to say nothing of the sheer silliness of playing a sport based on a game for fictional flying witches.

Because of the torrential rain last night, we were all soaked and muddy by the time the practice was over. After the game, I noticed a number of the other players literally sliding through the mud in the field that we had so unceremoniously destroyed. When I got to the Metro station, covered in mud and dripping wet, a girl from the other side of the platform must have noticed my broom and figured out what I had been up to, because she called across to me, “How was Quidditch?”

A non-paternalistic justification for human research subject protections

Just this morning I had a great meeting with my prof regarding my thesis. I showed him the outline for my thesis and we put together a schedule for completing it. He even gave me a few references to go on in terms of researching the topic. I’m starting to feel good about it.

I’ve had a number of people asking me what my thesis is about, so here it is in brief:

There are restrictions that institutions place on the sorts of human research that can be done, and the justification for such restrictions are usually given in terms of subject harm or benefit. Unfortunately, such justifications are paternalistic. By that, I mean there is a sense in which, if someone wants to engage in a very risky research protocol as the subject, what right does the institution’s ethics board have to stand in her way?

That said, there is also a sense in which we do not want human research to just be a free-for-all house of horrors, where anything goes. My thesis is that we should rather justify human research subject protections in terms of protecting the integrity of the human research project as a whole.

So, in colloquial terms, I’m suggesting that rather than saying, “We won’t let you do that risky research because we know better than you what ends you should be pursuing,” rather we should say something more like, “We won’t allow such risky research because allowing such research to go on would make the human research enterprise look sketchy.”

An interesting application of this thesis is in the area of phase IV human research studies. A phase IV study is one that occurs after the drug is already approved for use, and it is essentially a marketing study. The drug company wants to see how to best market the drug to doctors and patients. Often it is even the marketing division of the drug company that applies for the phase IV study.

Ethicists have generally been trying to criticise phase IV studies on the basis of some sort of risk that it may pose to the research subjects. This position is difficult to hold because really, the drug has already been approved for use on humans. I will argue that it is much more defensible to say that such studies are unethical because they do violence to the integrity of human research.

Et voilà. My thesis. All I have to do now is write 80 pages on that, and I’m golden.

Something I should have done when I lived in China

When I lived in China, I let a wonderful opportunity pass me by, but I may be able to do something similar now that I live in Quebec.

It is a not altogether uncommon thing for children or mildly racist grown-ups to imitate other languages by making sounds that are both nonsense to the speaker, and of course, to a speaker of the language being imitated. I’m sure we’ve all heard at some point, an English speaker imitate Chinese, by uttering a stream of disconnected monosyllabic exclamations.

When I used to live in China, I had more than a few friends who could not speak a word of English, and I have a hard time believing that only English people do this sort of imitation of other languages.

I wish that I had recorded a native Chinese speaker with no English ability pretending he was saying something in English. Now that I’m in Quebec, though, I might be able to find some French-only speakers, and get them to imitate English.

Or, who knows? Maybe there’s a Quebecois equivalent of Foux du Fa Fa (an excellent example of an English person making up words that sound French).

This is interesting to me, because as a native English speaker, I don’t really know what English sounds like. I’ll work on this. :)

A taxonomy of sarcasm

An old friend of mine once explained this to me, and now I will pass this precious wisdom to the rest of the world. Here is how to identify what degree of sarcasm you are using or experiencing:

  1. First degree sarcasm: Saying what you don’t mean, and saying it insincerely.
    E.g. “Oh! Now that was intelligent!” [said sardonically after something stupid is done]
  2. Second degree sarcasm: Saying what you don’t mean, but saying it sincerely.
    E.g. “Oh, now that was intelligent.”  [said in a complimentary way after something stupid is done]
  3. Third degree sarcasm: Saying what you mean, but saying it insincerely.
    E.g. “Yeah, you’re a good friend.” [said in a mocking tone of voice to a true friend]
  4. Fourth degree sarcasm: Saying what you mean, and saying it sincerely.*
    E.g. “Yeah, you’re a good friend.” [said in a matter-of-fact tone of voice to a true friend]

Or in tabled form:

  Say it insincerely Say it sincerely
Say what you don’t mean 1st degree sarcasm 2nd degree sarcasm
Say what you do mean 3rd degree sarcasm 4th degree sarcasm

The first degree of sarcasm is the least subtle. It is the easiest to use in conversation and the hardest to misunderstand. It is also not very funny.

Metasarcasm can occur when someone realises that first degree sarcasm is undesirable, but makes a statement that is, on the surface, first degree sarcastic—saying what one doesn’t mean, and saying it like one doesn’t mean it. This is done in full knowledge of the comedic limitations of this degree of sarcasm, and as a mockery of first degree of sarcasm itself.

The second degree of sarcasm is slightly more subtle, and depending on timing and other contextual factors, it can be very witty or very harsh. The power in this degree of sarcasm depends on the contrast between the sincerity of the statement, while actually conveying the opposite meaning.

Third degree sarcasm can be used when first or second degree sarcasm are too coarse or obvious. Imagine that your friend is obviously working very quickly at some task. You could use first degree sarcasm to say, “Wow, you’re working really slow.” That would not be very funny at all, unless it is an example of metasarcasm, so instead you might try saying in a matter-of-fact tone, “Could you pick up the pace a bit?” which would be better—a good example of second degree sarcasm—but that might seem obvious. Another option is the use of third degree sarcasm. You might say while rolling your eyes, “Yeah, that’s impressive.” You actually are impressed by your friend’s industriousness, but you say so in a way that seems to convey the opposite meaning.

The third degree of sarcasm is also sometimes used to express vulnerable truths in a way that protects the speaker. The speaker is protected by the ambiguity of the statement. Coated with a thin layer of sarcasm, the speaker can, in subsequent sentences, make the third degree sarcastic statement appear to be either an attempt at humour or alternately, a heartfelt expression of feeling, depending on how the speaker feels it has been taken.

The fourth degree of sarcasm is the most subtle, and many deny that it is sarcasm at all. Indeed, by its definition, “a sincere expression of what one really means,” it is not hard to see why it is often missed. I leave, as an exercise for the reader, the task of coming up with some examples.

[ * I have put an asterisk after this definition because this definition gives the necessary, but not the sufficient conditions for a statement to be fourth degree sarcastic. That is, not all members of the set of statements that are sincere expressions of ideas that one means to convey are also members of the set of fourth degree sarcastic statements.]

Memories of French class

Téléfrançais - Bonjour, allô, salut!
Téléfrançais – Bonjour, allô, salut!

Does anyone else remember Téléfrançais? It was a children’s programme meant for French-language instruction made in the 1980’s by TVOntario, starring the crime against nature that you see in the picture attached to this post.

I take it as a sign that my French is still at an immature level, that sometimes, after conducting a conversation entirely in French, I walk away feeling very satisfied with myself and humming the Téléfrançais theme song.

The very last Téléfrançais émission that I remember seeing in elementary school ended with a puppet flying an airplane for some reason, and Ananas (the pineapple puppet) and the children were passengers. Les Squelettes were on the wings of the aircraft too, as I recall. At the last moment, the puppet lost control of the airplane and they were about to crash, when the closing credits started to roll over the screen. I never saw the next émission, so as far as I know, that’s how the television programme ended—with the death of all the characters in a fiery airplane disaster. Actually, that wouldn’t be so hard to believe.

There’s an obvious life-lesson to be learned here: Don’t fly in an aircraft where the pilot is a puppet.