Learning Japanese on a moderate budget

It has been an inordinate amount of time since my last post so here is some info that others may find useful. I already covered some books to learn Japanese. If you want an immersive leaning environment and are willing to pat with a few hundred bucks to get it you can supplement your education quite nicely with just a few items.

Genki is an integrated immersion course with materials published by The Japan Times. It is geared towards those in college with a lot of the vocabulary but it isn't as if one wouldn't need to know how to say college or physics in Japanese. The entire course materials include a textbook, workbook, CDs, flash cards etc. The Japan Times has an entire course site of useful resources. Some elementary courses at universities and colleges use the materials. Retailers have them at varying prices but you can buy them directly which ships from Japan or you can search for local retailers. Of course some of the materials can probably be found in the usual dark alleys of the internet.

JapanesePod101 is a great way to take in a short daily lesson. You can find it in iTunes or just go to their website. The basic podcast is free which is a few minutes of vocabulary or grammar with practice phases thrown in. This is a simple way to lean something new or practice in the car or at the gym. The paid memberships add access to the forums which can be useful with the community feedback. The forums are great if you are stuck on something o need help finding a tutor or school.

You gain access to the dictionary and quiz area which help to get you off of the romaji crutch. The most useful, to me at least, are the transcripts and the videos. Nothing quite like seeing the phrases on the page as you listen or watching someone speak a language.

If you have a Nintendo DS you are in luck since there are some great games that can be supplementary aids to your learning. My Japanese Coach is the most obvious. It features a quiz when you first start it up and create your profile that tests your knowledge of vocabulary, grammar, basic phrases etc. Once it determines your level it proceeds though a series of courses. These courses cover the elementary level of Japanese. I wouldn't recommend it as your only source but the writing practice, speech practice, and fast recognition of words in the mini-games are a decent supplement to Genki and JapanesePod101.

If you have the desire for true mastery, a DS, and a little cash you can do a lot worse than Zaidenhoujin Nippon Kanji Nouryoku Kentai Kouinin: KanKen DS. This game is basically a huge amount of kanji that you practice writing correctly. This is designed to prepare you for the kanji certification. This can also be useful to improve fluency even if you're not looking to be certified. There are other software options such as Kageyama Method - Dennou Hanpuku: Tadashii Kanji Kaki to Rikun. I'd also recommend checking the prices between PlayAsia and National Console Support.

Games are a good option along with movies to give yourself some immersive practice. You might as well take advantage of the fact that the games for DS, PSP, and PS3 systems are region free. Especially, with the PS3 setting up a Japanese PSN account and downloading a demo from Japan isn't that hard. Understanding what is being said in the movies or the games? YMMV

Language Instruction Part 3: Russian Books

There aren't as many good books for Russian instruction, surpassingly considering the Cold War. Saying that I can unqualifiedly recommend Live from Moscow: Russian Stage One. This is the textbook series that I learned from in college so take my recommendation with a grain of salt. The series has a textbook, workbook, audio cassettes, and VHS tapes. The textbook gets the learners toes wet with some loan words before getting into some of the grammatical differences as well as some of the more complicated subjects. The audio is used to reinforce lessons with exercises in conjunction with the workbook. The VHS tapes presents a soap operaesque story of an American visiting Russia. This reinforces the lessons of the textbook and shows how they would be used in conversation.

If you are looking for a comprehensive Russian-English Dictionary you can do much worse than this. They also do a decent job presenting the grammar and basic verbs of Russian.

Fortunately for language learners, Russian has a lot of its greatest writers who are out of copyright. You can find the odd poem by Pushkin on Gutenberg or through the links on Wikipedia. If you are yearning for a dual language printed book this may fit the bill. I personally love Mikhail Kuzmin whose books are pretty expensive if you are looking for them in print but are available on-line. He wrote on of the first gay novels in Russian, Wings.

Community (data) properties

The use of community generated metadata is an interesting example of the potential of social networking. The community can generate terms that are meaningful for them instead of having them generated by an intermediate body such as the Library of Congress does for cataloging.

I'm looking at Delicious, which has revamped their site.

The lack of comma delaminated tagging seems like an oversight and adds to the potential for mislabeling but it can be overcome with a slight redesign. I've used Delicious in its previous incarnation and will check it out further. One of the problems, or at least oddities, that I noticed before is that many of the metadata tags that users create are not that descriptive, relevant, or just plain bad. Tagging a website as cool is useful on an individual basis but not so much on a community basis.

Another site that I'm excited about for a number of reasons, mostly game news related. However they are using community generated content and metadata in a very interesting way in a wiki site.


Video games would seem to be a nightmare to tag. Some of the problems such as the widely creative staff sizes and similar titles have been solved in relation to movies. Some of the issues such as repeated themes, character archetypes etc. have been solved in literature. The means of interaction however is unique. It will be interesting to see how much of a distinction, if any, is made between approaches to linear story telling for example. There are linear games that go from A to B, branching games where on decision effects chooses later on, and there are free roaming games. Some games have a mix of all three. It is always interesting to see how an untrained person approaches metadata creation and descriptive analysis.

Video games, child-men, and anti-feminist editorials

There were a few editorials about men who play video games and how they are immature. The cause of the immaturity is put to women not being subservient enough. I was going to write something talking about how idiotic the whole thing is but someone beat me to it.

Language Instruction: Part 2 Japanese Books

Here is the second part of the list of language instruction resources. There are a lot of resources for Japanese some of which are of dubious quality. Even if you ignore my list take my advice and try to avoid materials with a profuse use of Romaji. Written Japanese can be represented by Romaji the phonetic spelling of the language in Roman characters, in other words English with phonetic symbols. Books that use a lot of Romaji can make the learner dependent upon it and prevent one from picking up the writing systems of Japanese (Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji). Books with CDs or tapes should be preferred the sounds of the consonants and vowels in Japanese is a little more consistent than English which can take awhile getting used to hearing or saying.

Like with any language in general I prefer to have a good textbook first. As with Spanish I'd recommend the Living Language series of books since they are comprehensive and well structured. Of course the main problem with this particular series is its high cost. Like most of the Living Language series the glossary leaves a little to be desired but that is solved with a good dictionary.

If you don't want to put up the money for the Living Language books and are willing to deal with a college textbook Elementary Japanese is an easy to follow gentle introduction to the language. There is only the briefest use of Romaji to introduce the phonetics of Japanese. Some of the exercises and vocabulary make it clear that it is aimed at college students. There is also a good mix of vocabulary and discussion of the different levels of politeness.

The Genki series from what I've seen of it is geared mostly towards students in college who are going to be studying in Japan. A lot of the vocabulary and drills are of situations that students living abroad may find useful. It can be a great book if couple with a good teacher or other resources. It seems designed for increasing your score in the Japanese Language Proficiency Test.

The textbook I had in college is Japanese: The Spoken Language. My general recommendation is unless you already have the language almost mastered or have a really good teacher skip the title. It is geed very heavily toward grammar but is very slim on vocabulary. It is all Romanji and doesn't introduce the Kana or Kanji until later in the series. The presentation and exercises are a little unwieldy but some people may benefit from the mostly Romaji approach though the Romaji used here can be hard to grasp.

Japanese in Mangaland is a decent way to back up a more comprehensive textbook especially if the interest in Japanese comes from manga or anime. For the teachers and parents out there be aware that a lot of the more colorful language is presented. So if you are worried about your kids cursing behind your back in a foreign language it is something to keep in mind. If your interest in Japanese is only in reading manga then this can be a primary book, you'll get basics of the language without a complex approach to grammar.

Now that you have an idea of the textbooks on the offing it's time to get serious with some vocabulary and grammar. One of the main considerations is the Japanese writing system. There are three main writing systems in Japanese. Katakana and Hiragana are collectively called Kana and are syllabaries, meaning they represent phonetic elements. Katakana is used to represent foreign words and in manga represents mechanical sound effects. Hiragana is used to represent native words in books for children, grammatical particles, sounds by humans in manga. Kanji is the other main writing system, it consists of ideographs borrowed from Chinese. Kanji is used for writing native names, words, it can be used for numbers etc. There is no one system that can be ignored since all of them could be used on one page of a manga or a newspaper.

The complexity and sheer number of the ideographs being what it is you'll need a few books and I would suggest gravitating to the ones with the Kanji "spelled out" in Kana. This reinforces your understanding of the phonetic systems which can help learn new words.

Modern Japanese Vocabulary is a good up to date resource for vocabulary. The words are broken into sections with the Kanji, Kana, and meaning in separate rows. You'll find many computer, business, and science terms listed here as well as the general vocabulary of colors, directions etc.

Kanji Pict-O-Graphix is a book of Kanji with little drawings that act as mnemonics. It works off of the principle of relating a ideograph to an easy to remember visual. If you are a visual learner it can make the study of Kanji a lot easier than the usual rote method. I bought the similar Kana guide for my nephew, it's really helping him pronounce them on site.

If you are looking for more of a systematic approach to learning Kanji you may wish to check out Guide to Remembering Japanese Characters. The book presents the 2000 Kanji that are needed to be considered proficient in Japanese by the Education MInistry. The ideographs are presented in the order in which they are learned by Japanese children so you won't get into the 20 or more stroke ideographs until you are fairly comfortable. This book also has the etymology of many of the ideographs which is quite helpful as they can be mnemonic devices. I know it helped me pick up some of the roots of other ideographs and get the meaning quicker, seeing the trees in the ideograph for forest for example. Some people may hate the etymologies but for those language nerds like myself we can't get enough of etymologies.

Building Power in Japanese is a book on suffixes and prefixes. It's a decent way to increase your vocabulary with little effort if you memorize a few affixes to attach so that your speech and writing becomes a little richer.

Japanese Particles are one of the hardest parts of grammar to get a handle on. How to tell the Difference between Japanese Particles does a good job of making it all more digestible. The included quizzes are great for review and drilling.

The fact that Japanese adjectives and adverbs conjugate makes learning them a little hard to master. The Handbook of Japanese Adjectives and Adverbs makes it a little easier to get through.

Now that you have some vocabulary and know how to conjugate some adverbs let's move onto the verbs. Japanese Verbs: Saying What you Mean is a good introduction. You'll need some grounding in the basics and some vocabulary but it gives decent coverage of verb conjugation. Has loads of examples of usage. It presents the verbs in Kanji, Kana, Romaji and English translation.

A little cheaper but harder to follow as well is The Complete Japanese Verb Guide. There are less examples and no glossary so you'll be doing a lot of flipping to find the right word. If you don't need the usage information you can save a few bucks.

Now on to everyone's least favorite part of language learning, but arguably the bone structure of the corpus. Japanese grammar requires a good book since the sentence structure isn't close to English. If you want to speak fluently or at least move your sentence patterns out of a kindergarden level don't skimp too much here. A dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar is laid out like the grammar guides in the backs of dictionaries so you can find relevant sections quickly. It's part one of a series. The intermediate book goes further in depth to help in the mastery of the language.
The books covers the particles, politeness etc. Not all of this is used in everyday Japanese but the same can be said of guides to English grammar. If money is tight don't get a book on the particles or affixes but get this book.

The last part of the foundation is a good dictionary. Fortunately, one can find a few inexpensive Japanese-English dictionaries. The Oxford Beginner's Japanese Dictionary has the best layout. You can look up words in English to find Japanese equivalents or vice versa using Hiragana. The Kanji are presented beside the Hiragana so the learning of them is aided.

Another option around the same price but is usually a few bucks cheaper in most bookstores is the Random House Japanese-English English-Japanese Dictionary. The layout is a little more conventional, presenting Romaji forms of Japanese Words beside Kanji. Some may find this easier to use but it does delay learning Hiragana if you use the Romaji as a crutch.

Now that you have a foundation it is time to jump to that higher level, reading for fun. Seeing a language used in entertainment tells the learner a lot about the intricacies of the language and the culture that are hard to find anywhere else.

Breaking into Japanese Literature is a parallel text covering seven graded stories. There are downloads of sound files, dictionaries etc. A good choice if you are looking for a guided approach and just getting your feet wet.

If you want to take the manga approach, let's be honest anime and manga re the main reason many people learn Japanese in the first place, there are a multitude of choices.

The Japanese in Mangaland Workbook is a good companion to the main book and it can be approachable for Japanese learners in general. The book presents a manga story with exercises to translate the text from Japanese.

For those looking just for a good manga to read in the original Japanese Amazon has a whole category just for you. For those low on cash and without concern for copyright you can just do a search for raw manga and you'll find resources. Some comic book stores carry raw manga, if you are in a big city.

If you are looking for Japanese books but not a fan of manga resources are not as readily available as with SPanish but you can find the occasional book in the foreign language section of bookstores from time to time. or you can always try Amazon's Japanese website to have something shipped.

Language Instruction: Part 1 Spanish Books

I like to spur my nieces' and nephew's interests in language. Their grades have gone up overall since they have more confidence and they are doing something they find enjoyable. The only problem is that my nieces are into Spanish and my nephew is interested in Japanese. I try to help them with the languages and am also tying to improve the Russian I learned in college.

In the spirit of Larry Ferlazzo and his list of tools I'll make lists of some of the books, websites, podcasts, etc. that are indispensable to me. Here are the Spanish books that I've bought for myself, the kids, or borrowed from the library.

I know plenty of people don't have the funds to buy all the books and some people just hate books versus on-line materials. I've always liked books as a primary or secondary source of instruction since they are portable, easily browsed, and can be a nice change of pace.

I think a comprehensive textbook is always a good place to start. The Ultimate Spanish Beginner-Intermediate gives a decent coverage of Spanish. It does cover vosotros and the intricacies of the Spanish of Spain, as the reviewer on Amazon points out the Spanish of Latin America is the most common. It's very comprehensive and worth the expense.

Spanish Now! is a flawed but serviceable textbook series. There are some typos and inconsistencies which can get in the way of a true understanding but it's good for the price. If you are really tight on funds you might be able to find Ultimate Spanish or another text in the library or use the Internet sites I'll list as primary references.

Once you have a decent textbook books on verbs and grammar are a good way to refine you understanding. The Big Red Book of Spanish Verbs is a great way to familiarize yourself with common verbs and their conjugations. The included CD is good for getting some practice with the verbs.

501 Spanish Verbs is an old standby, it is widely available in most bookstores. There isn't a CD just common verbs conjugated for study.

Only a brave few actually enjoy grammar but it is a necessary evil. Spanish Grammar for Independent Learners is a good reference in an easy to follow format. If you can deal with a more regimented format Spanish Grammar is an inexpensive option.

Once one has a decent foundation and has refined their understanding of verb conjugation and grammar the last part needed for the basics is a good dictionary. The cock of the walk would be the Oxford Spanish Dictionary which has CDs, Latin American and European Spanish words and phrases, etc. The only problem is unless you have a lot of money lying around you'd do better with a cheap dictionary and some web pages.

Short stories, poems, novels are all great ways to see the language in use. Spanish Short Stories is a good parallel text suitable for a intermediate learner. For the more advanced learner there is Short Stories in Spanish. Poetry is a great way to see the possibilities in meter and turn of phrase of a language.

Of course who someone would prefer to read is very subjective, personally I love reading Frederico Garcia Lorca. There are quite a lot of manuals, novels et al. that have been translated into Spanish so one isn't limited to works created in Spanish but can also pick up works that you've already read in English. Whether one is looking for Oscar Wilde, Jane Austen, or Stephen King.

I'll write up the Japanese and Russian books as well as the podcasts, web sites, computer programs etc. If you have any suggestions leave a comment.

Google: Statistical machine translation

ArsTechnica has a mini review of Google's translation service. They have switched from the rules based machine translation that they used to have and most machine translation services use.

I remember studying linguistic rules and statistical machine translation methods in college. Like the article suggests neither one is great but they can work well enough for someone to feel their way to the actual translation. The linguistic rules approach parses texts into an intermediary state using former grammar rules of the source language. The intermediary text is transformed into the target language former grammar rules of the target language.

The main problem with the linguistic rules approach is that it is similar to taking a sentence and marking it a parse tree and rearranging it into the parse tree of the target language and then changing it word for word. Another major problem is the grammars do not do too well with slang since there may not be a direct translation. The other problem is one of syntax there may be structures missing from the source that are needed in the target. For example, to properly translate "I went to the store" from English to Russian one needs to know if I traveled on foot or in a vehicle, since that changes the verb.

The statistical approach basically uses an algorithm to weigh the probability of the part of speech and/or meaning of a word. The statistics can be modified with the help of volunteers marking up a sentence or providing a more accurate translation. Given enough corrections and a large enough corpora the system can improve. Google appears to be using their index of web pages as a potential corpora and users of the service as the volunteers instead of the usual college student looking for beer money.

Googles approach reminds me of a few journal articles on using web pages as an inexpensive means to develop a corpus. Most corpori are rather expensive proprietary collections of text of language in everyday use. The statistical approach seems like a no brainer for Google since they have a corpori lying around and harnessing users even a poor algorithm is bound to get better. The linguistic rules approach only gets better with the development of more elaborate syntactical and transformative rules. The only question is what took Google so long to figure this out?

Justice for the Jenna 6

This is an important case and a sad commentary on race relations in America. Here is the link to the Justice in Jenna site so that you can keep up with events and get involved. For those who may not have heard about the case NPR has a good run down of the facts but I'll try and present them here.

In the small central Louisiana town of Jenna there was a large shade tree outside of the high school. White students would sit underneath it while Black students stayed close to the cafeteria. At an assembly a Black student asked if he could sit under the shade tree and was told he could sit wherever he liked. Three White students who were part of the rodeo team tied nooses under the tree. The school gave the boys in school suspension, but the Black students though that the punishment was too lenient.

The Black students lead by star players on the football team organized a sit in under the shade tree. The authorities were called and the district attorney told the children, "with one stroke of my pen, I can make your life disappear."

There were fights though out the year which escalated into the school being burned down but who was responsible was not determined. Robert Bailey (16) tried to enter a party accompanied by other Black students that was attended by Whites. He was beaten up by some of the White boys and no charges were filed against them. During the fracas he was hit over the head with a beer bottle by Justin Sloan, who months later was charged with simple assault and given probation.

At a convenience store the next day Bailey argued with one of the White boys from the party who ran to his truck and retrieved his pistol grip shotgun. Bailey ran at the the armed teenager and wrestled for the gun. Eventually getting the gun away from the boy and heading home with friends. Bailey and his friends were charged with theft of a firearm, robbery, and disturbing the peace. The white boy who pulled the gun wasn't charged with anything.

Justin Barker (17) was bragging to friends that Bailey had been whipped by a White man. He was attacked by Black students when he went into the courtyard. The first punch knocked him out and some of the boys kicked him in the head. The wounds were slight enough that he was treated, released and out that very night at a social function.

Six Black students were charged with assault but the D. A., Reed Walters, bumped the charges to second degree attempted murder. The first trial is over with the defense resting its case immediately after two days of the prosecution presenting the charges. Mychal Bell was found guilty by the all white jury and faces a possible 22 years in prison.

Fo anyone who has a hard time understanding let's make it simpler. A black kid asks for permission to sit under a tree on the campus of the public high school that he attends and nooses are hung from it. The kids who did it get a slap on the wrist. Some of the Black students decide to protest by sitting under the tree and they are threatened by the district attorney. One of the Black students and his friends try to get into a party and he is beaten up. He argues with one of the kids from the party the next day and he has a shotgun pulled on him. He wrestles the gun away and is then charged with theft and related charges for getting the gun away from the guy (the gun turned out to be unloaded but there was no way for them to know that while the gun was pointed at them). A white kid boasts about the "gun thief" getting charged and is then beaten up, which wasn't right but charging the kids with attempted murder is idiotic and spiteful. At most they should have been charged with a mutual fight or assault, give them a fine or probation. The boy didn't have any life threatening injuries and was able to amble on down to a ring ceremony after being so "viciously" attacked.

I could do the whole metaphorical thing with the tree of intolerance and the shaded truth. But a case like this is just depressing and a stark reminder of how short a distance we've come as a nation in 40 years. I guess the defendants should take consolation that 40 years ago they would have been swinging beneath that shade tree instead of being lynched by the legal system and the tree turned into kindling.

Building Blocs of the Gay Community

There was an article awhile back about the study the Equality Forum did of GLBT voting patterns in the Philadelphia mayoral primary. The interesting thing about the report is that gays and lesbians seemed to vote as a bloc for the eventual winner Michael Nutter. For those outside of Philly or who live here but don’t follow the local political scene, Nutter climbed up from next-to-last to first in a matter of months to win the nomination.

The methodology of the study was pretty interesting in that it necessarily relied on a number of key assumptions. It looked at the Census information for areas with large concentrations of self-identified same sex couples. Then looking at the poll results they were able to show that in areas with large same-sex couple populations Nutter received a plurality of the vote.

This is interesting for a number of reasons if one can take the interpretation of the statistics seriously. First it shows that the GLBT community can vote in a bloc to express political will. Used properly bloc voting can be a carrot or a stick to make sure more than lip service is paid to an issue. Used poorly and you wind up like the Black community nationally ignored by the Democrats until election time and trotted out by some Republicans as the boogeyman during elections but mostly ignored since there is little upside in trying to capture your vote.

For an example of how the bloc vote can go bad; Lee Atwater, Ronald Reagan’s political advisor made a really good point when describing the Southern Strategy as reported by Bob Herbert in the New York Times. (Copy and pasted from Wikipedia).

Atwater: As to the whole Southern strategy that Harry Dent and others put together in 1968, opposition to the Voting Rights Act would have been a central part of keeping the South. Now [the new Southern Strategy of Ronald Reagan] doesn’t have to do that. All you have to do to keep the South is for Reagan to run in place on the issues he’s campaigned on since 1964… and that’s fiscal conservatism, balancing the budget, cut taxes, you know, the whole cluster…

Questioner: But the fact is, isn’t it, that Reagan does get to the Wallace voter and to the racist side of the Wallace voter by doing away with legal services, by cutting down on food stamps…?

Atwater: You start out in 1954 by saying, 'Nigger, nigger, nigger.' By 1968 you can't say 'nigger' - that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now that you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is that blacks get hurt worse than whites.
And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me - because obviously sitting around saying, 'We want to cut this,' is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than 'Nigger, nigger.'

The strategy is alive and well today one need only look at the “McCain’s Black Baby” phone calls in South Carolina during the Republican primary for the 2000 campaign. It was sleazy but effective, with an anonymous call votes for all candidates would be suppressed by those who would be offended that such an accusation would be made. But McCain lost the most because enough people would be disturbed by the alleged extramarital affair and/or the race of the woman involved. As a side note a similar issue was brought up about Nutter and Brady not being Catholic or Catholic enough, since the flyer endorsed Knox as being the one true Catholic anyone upset by the sleaziness likely took it out on him.

As the Atwater quote states candidates can’t be as blunt as they once were in trying to court a particular groups vote, at least when the way to do it is on the backs of another group. The McCain example notwithstanding subtlety is crucial. When politicians want to make political hay out of attacking the GLBT community they rarely come right out and say the Jerry Falwell line about 9/11 happening because of the gays, lesbians, feminists, and abortionists. Invectives like that will backfire; you say you’re against special rights and only for state’s rights. When someone brings up Loving v. Virginia and the possible precedent it sets for gay marriage with the 14th amendment, you say you’re against judges legislating from the bench and such decisions should be left to the legislature. As long as the voting bloc isn’t sufficiently large and the general public will take such answers you’ll get re-elected. The vocal voting bloc is itself a get out the vote tool for their opposition, which can be placated into a stable base.

A side note is that with the higher than average rates of Black and Latino voters attending mass regularly “family values” can be an effective wedge strategy. One needs look no further than the 2004 elections, opposition to gay marriage brought out the evangelical vote in large numbers. There are some obvious problems with this strategy though. There are only so many anti-gay laws that can be passed before you start to look a little mean spirited. The mean spirited bar is a moving target since the more out GLBT people heterosexuals know they tend to view homosexuality less negatively on average. The big problem is the statistic showing that negative feelings toward homosexuality are less among those under 40. Among those who will vote in upcoming elections speaking negatively, may backfire.

The election results are interesting because the five candidates were decent to good on the GLBT issues. One candidate, Dwight Evans, tried hard early on to cultivate the GLBT vote for his campaign but was dead last at the polls. The results may have a lot to do with the tangible legislation Nutter passed awarding domestic partner benefits to city employees.

The key to a successful bloc is to vote the issues and hold the candidates responsible for their votes. That’s how the NRA became such a force in politics. It’s a shame that the Logo “debates” were business as usual. We’ll get nowhere nationally kissing the asses of people who give us a kick in the shins in public. The Democratic candidates are better than the Republicans but not by much really.

Domestic partnership is a joke and like “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” would only serve to keep us in limbo. Domestic Partnership is a denial of equal rights. Using the argument that all but two of the candidates have expressed that gay marriage shouldn’t be recognized because it would violate the religious rights of churches is a way to sidestep the issue.
It's not like people want babies to get married. Under the same argument Rudy Giuliani isn’t married since he divorced his previous wife and under Catholic tradition one can’t get divorced, therefore the state should not allow Giuliani to enjoy any of the rights afforded married couples since his living arrangement would scandalize some religious institutions.

The point is the Catholic Church has every right to deny Giuliani Communion and refuse to officiate his marriage since it violates their religious beliefs but the state could not deny his rights because we don’t live in a theocracy, the same principles could be used for gay marriage. Only Kucinich and Gravel approach this view, Logo should have called the front-runners in the Democratic Party on it. Sure the Democratic Party is the lesser of two evils in this case but as Eugene Debs once said, “The lesser of two evils is still evil.” Politicians will give the least that they can to get you vote; don’t give it away for free.

It was a "Big Black Man"

I don't know why people even use variations of this excuse anymore. It makes them look not only like liars, but racist jerks who think that the general public is even dumber than they are. The excuse goes something like this: "I'm not to blame it was some Big Black Man who caused me to (insert unlikely sequence of events)." It has to be said that it has a history of working.

As is mentioned in the article Charles Stuart made good use of the "Big Black Man" excuse when he killed his wife. The Boston police were quick to pursue the preposterous story and charge Willie Bennet. After Susan Smith drowned her kids in a lake she was able to convince the country to be on the lookout for a "Big Black Man" who kidnapped her kids and stole her car. Of course Hispanic men appear to be the new dark skinned bogeyman as evidenced by the runaway bride.

Florida State Rep. Bob Allen would have done better to just plead out the solicitation charge. His tory that he offered 20 bucks and oral sex to an undercover officer because he was scared of the "Big Black Man" smacks of the Mandingo myth, the untamed "Big Black Man" understands nothing but violence and sex. The myth has been fostered in popular culture by pornography, obviously, music and television. Poulson-Bryant makes a decent point that the myth of the ubiquity of large penises among Black men leads to an idea of hyper-masculinity among Black men in the broader society. This idea of hyper-masculinity gives plausibility to the "Big Black Man" in the mind of the broader society. So much testosterone is flowing through their brains that they can't think clearly and only understand violence and sex.

Allen's excuse is rather odd when one considers that while hyper-masculinity has homo-erotic elements (just look at the cover of a hip-hop magazine) offering to give a robber some of the money from your wallet and a sex act would seem to increase the chances of getting hurt not lessen them. While homo-eroticism is part of hyper-masculinity in the Mandingo myth it is merely there as an underlying element more as a response of the observing male to the Mandingo who is sex personified. The hyper-masculine is hyper-heterosexual at least outwardly.

Allen's excuse also rests on the unstated racist assumption that the Blackness of a man further up the walk is equivalent to a gun or knife, a threat in itself that demands mitigation. According to Allen's account he made the offer of money and sex without provocation of what turned out to be a police officer. His excuse also has a unique twist on the gay panic defense. The gay panic defense had mixed success in the Matthew Shepard case.

Usually with gay panic the defendant says they went temporarily insane and had to kill the victim for coming on to them. It is a form of jury nullification basically saying that the defendant was within their right to prove their masculinity by killing the victim. In this case Allen turns gay panic on its head, "I had to offer him oral sex or he might have raped and killed me." Not to put words in Allen's mouth (poor choice of words) but this appears to be where his defense is heading.

If Allen is lucky he can find a jury racist and homophobic enough to reduce his sentence or perhaps let him off. I say homophobic enough since they would have to buy into the stereotype of gay men that they will have sex with anyone and if possessing enough power will rape smaller more fragile men, the prison myth. While their obviously is some rape in prison there are obviously some Black men with above average penis size. The two generalizations are combined in the "Big Black Man" myth to form a hyper-sexed, hyper-violent, thug who has a huge penis that he'd love to stick in the White man. It's miscegenation and homosexuality wrapped in a bow looking for the right jury, one that is bent on taking a stand for "traditional values" against a railroading Democratic government. Allen is taking a big risk because he is going to alienate not only the Black and gay vote, who probably wouldn't have supported him in huge numbers anyway, but also some of the conservative backbone of his constituency who may just stay home.

If the Republican party is lucky Allen will plead out before the next election gets too close. One congressman's hypocrisy has a quick way of branding the whole party, see how fast the Democrats dropped support of Jefferson. The Republicans seem to be playing it right so far, let him hang himself. If McCain is lucky no one will remember that this guy was his man in Florida. It doesn't help to appear to have a record of appointing felons when you're making a run for the White House. Once you get in you can spin this type of situation like a top. Every president in the modern era has had some questionable people in their cabinet but you don't want to start off with the plausible deniability game before the inauguration. To be honest Lyndon LaRouche has a better chance than McCain of winning the White House.

The Democratic party will probably just sit back and bide their time. This isn't a huge national issue but can provide a regional opening if they let Allen commit political suicide. They don't have to worry about the body they'll just blame the "Big Black Man."

Pop-up teacher reprise

The teacher who was facing 40 years for pornographic pop-ups in the classroom is getting a new trial. This is good news in my opinion since she was railroaded. It's understandable as soon as you mention sex and kids people's minds shut down. It's not right but understandable.

Another teacher had a similar incident this week. Fortunately she wasn't hauled into court. As is mentioned in the article the likely cause was the duplication center dubbing the educational material onto a porno tape.

Top of the pops

Following a post on Angry Asian Man, I saw The New York Times has an interesting article on the challenges Asian American singers have in trying to break into the music industry. This could be seen on American Idol this year when Paul Kim was given the boot in the first round of voting. Despite being one of the best singers he couldn't overcome the fact that he was Asian.

The article goes on to talk about how racially ambiguous singers fair better. As someone who grew up during the 80's I could only think of how African Americans crossed over onto the mainstream charts. Creating a parallel market where acts such as Diana Ross and Michael Jackson could eventually break through. Performers such as Prince could start their careers with the mainstream in mind. Of course as the article states the Asian American market is about half that of the African American market. The Asian American market also has the problem of not being uniform because there are many subcultures and backgrounds, Japanese Americans or Korean Americans for example.

There is still hope since there is so much talent waiting in the wings there just need to be that one big hit in the mainstream. As soon as the mainstream audience is used to seeing an Asian singer in their living room it gets easier for the next act, but never easy. Nat King Cole having his own show paved the way for the rappers and singer one sees today. The irony of it all is that because of the stereotypes that many have of Asians and the market realities the first big Asian star is probably not going to be Asian American.

The recent interest in J-Pop crossing into the mainstream may eventually translate into more tours and CD sales (or downloads if the regionalization of iTunes and other stores ever gets looser). Because of the stereotype of a fifth generation Japanese American as being straight off the plane from Japan this interest could be used to promote domestic singers and bands. A bit of a long shot but waiting for the industry to judge people on talent and not the color of their skin or the shape of their eyes is going to take longer and a lot more luck. Just look at Living Colour or Bad Brains two of the best heavy metal/fusion and punk bands respectively but they've never really gotten as far as white bands with less talent. The British invasion is not a direct parallel but is a study in the sound and look of an American subculture being ignored until it is repackaged and shipped back from another country. The mainstream market likes to fit people into niches Asians do classical and Blacks do hip-hop and never the twain shall meet.

An epistle on epithets part 1

I’ve been reading Covering by Kenji Yoshino – well I actually bought it awhile ago but got sidetracked – and I’ve been thinking about the problems some celebrities have had with epithets. Mel Gibson, Michael Richards, Isaiah Washington and most recently Tim Hardaway have run into some difficulties for using slurs. The religious, racial and sexual derogatory terms that were used by Gibson, Richards, and Washington / Hardaway respectively have force mainly in how they differentiate the target from the “norm.”

This categorization and classification as being different grants the more “normal” or “ideal” among us power – to greatly summarize Foucault – in the form of the gaze. The epithet is in a way the verbal expression of the gaze; it allows one to point to those who have not successfully assimilated themselves as being freaks outside of normal human discourse. It is a means to objectify the targets of the gaze and the epithets subjugating humanity and reducing them merely to the epithetic difference.

I’ve been the target of all three of the types of epithets that the above-mentioned celebrities espoused as have several others. The most recent controversy over “Grey’s Anatomy” star Isiah Washington’s use of the “F word” struck a nerve because so many people trotted out the same old tropes. First some people I know who shall remain nameless – who know that I am gay, mind you - said that it wasn’t a big deal because he was using the word to deny using the word. T. R. Knight, the person he was ostensibly referring to with his comments stated that Washington said them in October during the big kerfuffle. The brouhaha forced Knight out of the closet. This is the “you people have always been so thin skinned.”

The other trope is the old “some of my best friends are (insert oppressed class I just insulted)” which Washington brought out when he brought up his role in Spike Lee’s “Get on the Bus” as a Gay Black Republican. While it is true he was a poster boy for Mary Cheney, PFLAG and others it doesn’t give him a free pass on the use of epithets. If it did Richards could have just pointed to Kramer having an African American attorney after his outburst.

The other trope is the old “ruler contest” that is trotted out every time you have one person from a minority insult another minority. I saw this when some people jumped to Washington’s defense saying that if he is fired it is a sure sign of racism on the part of the producers. The reasoning works like this, Blacks have suffered through slavery, segregation and are still given less pay and opportunities in professions like acting so therefore the “F word” is bad but not as bad as the “N word” so Knight and everyone else should get over it.

The last trope that I’ll bring up is the “but you say it” argument. While I’m a Black Gay Man I try to avoid using the N-word or the F-word, because they have a dark history attached to them. Other people believe that they should be reclaimed, they tend to forget that reclaiming in the modern age means commercialization. When you commercialize a word it goes beyond the confines of the group. By using the words in pop culture it implicitly gives permission to people not of the effected communities to use them. Hence, “why can 50 Cent say it and I can’t?”

While it is true that the overwhelming audience of hip-hop is suburban Caucasians, one has to wonder why so many of them have the urge to use the N-word to show that they “are down with their boys.” I’ve never felt the urge to sling a few anti-Semitic words at my Jewish friends to show my affection.

The main problem is that on the one hand people argue that these are just words and they have no real power and on the other they show the power of the words by pleading to be able to drop them casually in polite conversation. If the words are not meant in a harmful manner then why insist on using them when others say that they are harmful to them.

For those who still think that people are just blowing things out of proportion and wish to affect a more laissez faire attitude in their speech they should try a simple experiment. The experiment goes like this replace their speech with the entire hip-hop lexicon, not just spinners, n****s and f*****s but b*****s and h*s as well. Do this regardless of the audience or to whom the term applies. For example a man should refer to his girlfriend as “this is my b***h, she’s chill wit’ whatevah.” No one who had any respect for his girlfriend would say something like this. Why would it be acceptable to say we can dance like some n****s (a la Paris Hilton)?

Pop-ups and jail time

A substitute teacher is facing 40 years for porno pop-ups during class in CT. This is despite the PCs running an unpatched, version of Windows 98 without antivirus, pop-up blockers, or spyware blockers. The teacher is being thrown under the bus by the school district on this one because parents want their pound of flesh. The only other alternative is to point the finger at the IT staff of the district for not doing a better job of network security. To be fair locking up the teacher or the staff in this case seems to be going a little too far. The children being exposed to pornography wasn't the intent of anyone involved in this case.

One thing that should be considered in relation to school libraries and even public libraries is the balance between privacy and security. One of the problems of large institutions is the desire to maintain a homogeneous environment and lack of disposable funds. Because of this the lowest common denominator in security is usually what is maintained. At the very least, a browser with a built-in pop-up blocker should be the default, antivirus and anti-spyware software has to be on every computer no matter what the operating system.

I'm hoping that she will get an appeal with a judge that actually understands that pop-ups are not sought out. I'm not holding my breath.

The Becky

The Language Log Blog just announced the winner of the Goropius Becanus Prize. More accurately, Jeff Nunberg announced it on Fresh Air. The award goes to a person or organization that has "outstanding contributions to linguistic misinformation.

I'd have to agree that this is a very good choice. I found the assertions that I heard in her radio interview on Radio Times to be just someone trying to cash in on stereotypes in disregard to actual scientific studies. For the sake of convenience here are the search results for articles talking about the "scientist" on the LLB.

The fact that she got so much attention and that actual linguistic research doesn't get too much of love is probably due to the preference for sound bite research that affirms stereotypes. The Northern City Vowel Shift didn't exactly burn up the phone lines on the radio. Still people have an interest in the sideshows of linguistics and science, researchers just have to do a better job of bringing people into the real show. A couple of letters to the editor or some such to say, "that was interesting load of crap but the true research is even more fascinating." I mean the fact that most studies show men talk just as much or more than women raises a number of interesting questions about gender roles and power. The stereotypes are not only wrong but pretty boring.

Small pipes part 2

The fact that almost everyone outside of Japan and Korean gets screwed on broadband speeds and prices is one of my favorite topics. I've had reason to think about the situation since the Verizon FiOS TV roll out in the Philly area but not in Philadelphia. Of course part of the reason Verizon hasn't rolled out the service in Philadelphia is because of issues over franchise fees as in Chicago. With the change in the congress we might see movement on NetNeutrality and statewide franchise agreements. Basically, municipalities prefer to negotiate with telecoms for franchise fees to offer programming. This allows a large municipality such as Philadelphia or Chicago make a lot of money in fees and taxes. Telecoms don't like this because it cuts down on profits. Statewide or federal franchise agreements allow telecoms to maximize profits and can speed up the roll out to some areas. The potential problem is that there may not be franchise agreements to carry local stations or to provide community services that municipalities can barter out of tlecoms.

An article that I read on Ars lays out what I've noticed over the years, there is more competition but the prices are increasing instead of getting lower. This makes sense for the reasons pointed out in the article that it is hard to move from one service to another. That is assuming that one even has a choice which a lot of people do not. My brother recently dropped Comcast after getting tired of their crappy service and high prices. For example, his old house was about twenty yards from a regional office where the trucks came from for installations but he had to wait nearly a month for a sometime between 9 and 5 installation. He's going with Verizon's FiOS but I live in the city and am thus screwed. Frankly, FiOS is overpriced in the greater scheme of things when one can get 100 MBPS in Japan and Korea. There are some differences in taxes and culture but the biggest thing is there is no real competition.

The Brand X decision is partly to blame and an inept FCC deserves a lot of blame as well. From an economic standpoint what the telecoms are doing makes perfect sense. If you can deliver the same product for more money why wouldn't you? Even the incremental increases of 1MBPS for the same price in the face of competition is rather insulting since they could go even faster. Of course profits would only remain steady doing that.

The Language Thing

There was a bit of a translation controversy in the news. The outsourcing of the translation of Iraqi documents to amateurs on the Internet leading to the publication of nuclear weapon blue prints is kind of predictable, after all Saddam Hussein's nuclear program prior to 1991 is the reason Iraq was under sanctions. Open source intelligence has its uses, but you'd have to be pretty stupid to publish classified information that you haven't translated. That was the whole point of the site but that ground has already been covered.

I've been playing around with some more interesting language resources recently. The British National Corpus is a free corpus that can be analyzed for linguistic information. A free corpus is a rarity, usually they cost a few thousand dollars or you have to create your own. It's a pretty fun site in a language nerd kind of way. The Linguistic Data Consortium has some very interesting articles and a decent collection of corpora. New articles are free and the membership is reasonable if you have an organization paying for it. I've been playing around with the sites a bit checking the frequency of words, POS, reading articles, and anything else I can think up. Even if you don't have any experience with linguistics or natural language processing you should have some amusement from the two sites. At the very least you don't have to worry about revealing classified information.

Adam4Adam and Murder

Michael Sandy the nephew of "Calypso Rose" was lured to his robbery and eventual death by a chat on Adam4Adam. A4A is a gay chat site. This case isn't the first or the last of Internet robbery/beatdown attempts. One of the murderers apologized but the charges should go up to homicide, robbery and hopefully a hate crime. There are larger issues here. The depravity of the perpetrators of these crimes has power because of the larger society that perpetuates the closet. The closet makes the survivors of these hate crimes reluctant to come forward. Sadly in this case Michael did not live to see his attackers be punished. I talked to Michael a few times and he seemed like a wonderful guy. Its a shame something that shouldn't happen to anyone happened to such a nice guy.

Meme: Gays Tied GOP Hands on Foley

This is a perspective put forth by Newt Gingrich and the Family Research Council on the Foley affair. Will Bunch has already taken it apart and show how ridiculous it is as have the comments to his article.

The argument goes like this: the GOP knew something was wrong with Foley's relationship with the congressional pages but they were so afraid of offending the gay community that they could not stop him or start an investigation. The problem is that the Republican party won the last election largely on the idea of an amendment to the constitution on the idea of banning gay marriage. When sodomy laws were deemed unconstitutional by the courts Republicans like Rick Santorum made comparisons to bestiality and incest. It's pretty hard to make the case that the GOP is afraid of appearing non-PC by getting tough with a pederast. That is also part of the problem to make the homophobia argument you have to assume that gay men in general are attracted to teenage boys, I myself find most guys under 25 kind of scrawny with boring personalities. Maybe that's just me. But to use the FRC correlation that homosexuals are 3% of the population and 1/3rd of molestations are male-male and therefore endemic of homosexuality then the necessary corollary follows that the 97% of men who are heterosexual are responsible for the majority of child molestation over 66%.

It is a dumb attempt by the FRC to try and protect the GOP by diverting attention from the congressional leadership and put the harassment of teenage pages by a staunch conservative Republican into the hands of the Democrats. The FRC has obviously not thought this argument through because if it was true, which it obviously isn't, then the GOP put getting elected above protecting children. It argues the Democratic point from the other position, its unintentional but with a few weeks before the election the press may pick up on that point. If it was a day before the election it might be a useful, if cynical argument. A few weeks before you have to wonder who their political advisors are and if they really want the GOP to keep the seats.

Foley is trying to argue that alcohol and molestation as a teen is the cause of the problem. He is perhaps thinking that he can resurrect his political career. He might as well forget it his current (former) election battle was heavily in his favor before the revelations, as the former LA governor once said "The only way I can lose this election is if I'm caught in bed with either a dead girl or a live boy." He wasn't caught in bed but IM is pretty close. Hastert can save himself but he'll probably drag the party down to losing the House. The press loves a story of a politico pimping out kids.

It's not that I'm enamored with the Democrats it's just that they are the more honest liars in this instance. To quote another LA governor Huey P. Long once said, "The only difference I ever found between the Democratic leadership and the Republican leadership is that one of them is skinning you from the ankle up and the other, from the neck down."

Queer Response to Gay History in Philadelphia

A lot of people in Philadelphia are up in arms over the school district recognizing gay and lesbian history month. Most of the parents seem to be objecting because "it involves sex." That is a very narrow minded definition of homosexuality, I've always been gay even before I knew what sex was. In a way the reaction of the parents and the 70% of people who voted in the local CBS poll on whether the school district should have the calendars are the reason there is a need for the school to recognize Gay and Lesbian month. Parents flipping out and taking their kids out of class because "Gay and Lesbian History Month" is printed on a calendar they may not even notice. In a city with a climbing murder rate and a school system that is under funded and undermined continually by the state to have parents put their prejudices against a some of the students, potentially their own children, is offensive.

It isn't the first time that the school district has received flak for the calendars. People complain about Black History month and the noting of Ramadan. The district also notes Asian and Pacific Islander Month, Hispanic Heritage Month, and Jewish and Christian holidays. The school district has to train students to compete and work alongside others in a global marketplace with people of different nationalities, races, genders, and sexual orientations. The school district has to be The only problem I have with the calendar is that there are no lesson plans to go along with it. They have the opportunity to tie in many other communities as well. There areBayard Rustin, Sappho, Socrates, James Baldwin, Bessie Smith, Alan Turing, , Michael Foucault, Virginia Woolf. The list really is endless lesbians and gay men have contributed to the world as much as anyone else to fear talking about their existence is to give into the belief that acknowledging their existence is somehow going to "turn" the kids gay is as idiotic as thinking Rosh Hashanah or Ramadan being marked is going to "turn" the kids Jewish or Muslim. It would be nice if things worked that way then September 21st of every year all violence would stop.