Facebook Gets all Grammatical

\ Leave a Comment \ by

As Facebook grows in other languages, we are learning a lot about what the “Facebook Experience” is like for people around the world. One of the first challenges was getting words that are really long in other languages to fit on the screen properly. Recently, we’ve been figuring out how to deal with a new challenge—grammar.

Ever see a story about a friend who tagged “themself” in a photo? “Themself” isn’t even a real word. We’ve used that in place of “himself or herself”. We made that grammatical choice in order to respect people who haven’t, until now, selected their sex on their profile.

However, we’ve gotten feedback from translators and users in other countries that translations wind up being too confusing when people have not specified a sex on their profiles. People who haven’t selected what sex they are frequently get defaulted to the wrong sex entirely in Mini-Feed stories

.The Facebook Blog | Facebook.

Things get complicated when Facebook goes international… It’s odd that gender is so rooted in language– think of all of those Romance languages where everything is masculine or feminine– that it becomes a kind of Rosetta stone for translation. You wouldn’t want to get defaulted to the wrong sex in your Mini-Feed story.

Posted in: Language, Online Places, Writing

Think Again RPCVs: Robert L. Strauss Revisited

\ Leave a Comment \ by

Most Peace Corps volunteer placements will be in soft positions where big steps towards progress are not feasible. I have sent some students into Peace Corps. One gave up after 6 months. The other stayed an extra year and when her project failed because of local government interference it broke her heart.

The idea of bringing high school students to rural Haiti is ridiculous. I have been with undergraduate and graduate students. They have to be mature enough to deal with what they have to live in. College grads are just barely mature enough to be away from home in a strange country.

Not to sound like I am a Pollyanna for the Corps, but I do think that Volunteers have a big impact. Maybe not all of us, but enough come back and teach, enter public service, run for office, conduct research. The rest of us understand foreign events better than the average citizen, who I might add could use a better international education here. I served with some of the best of the best. I wasn’t one of them, but I tried. I could enter a short list here, but I don’t want to embarrass anybody.

Avram Primack, in a comment on Think Again RPCVs: Robert L. Strauss, May 20, 2008

My hurt little ego aside, I think Mr. Primack is simply wrong; to me, his post represents a lack of imagination that seems particularly upsetting given that in less than five months we may have the first African American president of the United States.

There’s no guarantee that Obama will succeed, but this seems like a good time to dream big. I can’t set out a detailed proposal, given space limitations, but I can sketch out how a program such as the one I suggested might work, starting with the 9th grade.

Continue Reading →

Posted in: Autobiographical, Economics, Online Places, Professional, Writing

The Myth of Multitasking

\ Leave a Comment \ by

In one of the many letters he wrote to his son in the 1740s, Lord Chesterfield offered the following advice: “There is time enough for everything in the course of the day, if you do but one thing at once, but there is not time enough in the year, if you will do two things at a time.” To Chesterfield, singular focus was not merely a practical way to structure one’s time; it was a mark of intelligence. “This steady and undissipated attention to one object, is a sure mark of a superior genius; as hurry, bustle, and agitation, are the never-failing symptoms of a weak and frivolous mind.”

Christine Rosen, “The Myth of Multitasking,” The New Atlantis, Spring 2008

I have to say that, despite being a dyed-in-the-wool computers and writing guy, I find this sort of discussion refreshing. In my own work, I find that a limited amount of multitasking is very helpful. Right now, for example, I am listening to WILL’s program Sidestep. (It’s pretty good, but amateurish in some ways).

I discovered as a teenager that this kind of white noise is helpful. On the other hand, after working online full time for a few years I have discovered that it’s best to turn off email while I am writing or commenting on papers. I sometimes put on a video instead of a podcast, but I usually listen more than watch.

There’s also been a few stories recently about “no email Fridays” and the like which seems to confirm that multitasking can be counter-productive. I am not sure that I would go as far as Chesterfield, but it may be true that what we thought was helpful is going to turn out to be much less so.

I sense an economic blind spot. I have been thinking about Twitter in these terms, too. A colleague, for example, shared this post (via listserv) on “25 Twitter Tips for College Students.” What I find so interesting is that each item on the list is either unnecessary or better done in other ways.

Why have so many online “presences” at all? I think Twitter– and the Iphone– illustrate the absurdities that arise when consumerism meets technological fetishism. I’m hoping for a backlash that focuses on using these tools well.

Posted in: Autobiographical, Composition, Language, Online Places, Professional, Writing

HNN Poll: 61% of Historians Rate the Bush Presidency Worst

\ Leave a Comment \ by

“It would be difficult to identify a President who, facing major international and domestic crises, has failed in both as clearly as President Bush,” concluded one respondent. “His domestic policies,” another noted, “have had the cumulative effect of shoring up a semi-permanent aristocracy of capital that dwarfs the aristocracy of land against which the founding fathers rebelled; of encouraging a mindless retreat from science and rationalism; and of crippling the nation’s economic base.”

HNN Poll: 61% of Historians Rate the Bush Presidency Worst, Robert S. McElvaine, April 1, 2008

This is old news by internet standards, but I am fascinated as much by the argument– which is specific and detailed and, finally, persuasive– as by the comments. The article is worth reading because it suggests the outlines of how reason might be returned to the public debate over politics.

I included the above comment from one of the surveyed historians because it neatly summarizes the criteria that underlies the assessment. An effective president should mute if not nullify capital, encourage rationality and scientific inquiry, and build the economic base.

I did not check all of the comments, but I doubt there is anyone willing to argue that the Bush administration fought for labor, nurtured the growth of knowledge, and created a thriving economy. At best, the argument is that he “did what he had to do” to fight terrorism.

The comments are interesting because the arguments against the survey’s conclusions reflect exactly the distorted political culture cultivated by the Bush administration. The goal of the anti-survey comments, in other words, is to shift the argument away from the criteria and towards the historians.

Ironically, these arguments reflect exactly the worst sort of bad-faith partisan arguments that the right wing so often attributes to academia. I think this “duck the issue” rhetoric is the best indication that the historians are on the right track. I doubt Bush will look any better in 50 years.

Posted in: Economics, Language, Online Places, Professional, War, Writing