social experiment, apartment setting

May 20th, 2004 § 0 comments § permalink

there is an old politically incorrect russian jokes that goes:

do you know how chinese people name their children?

(pause)

they throw some silverware down the stairs and name the child by the resulting sound.

well, as an american liberal arts enlightened student, i dismissed this as culturally insensitive nonsense.

but just now, i dropped a spoon in my room, and my flat mate (whose chinese name I cannot pronounce and out of sensitivity for the shortcomings of our pronunciation he introduces himself as john) suddenly responded from his room down the hall, ‘yes’.

bewildered, i thought, is there anything to this? does it deserve a follow up experiment?

update: 3 hours later.

my friend was over this time, so i say this with the weight of 4 ears. i accidentally clanked my cup on the table. this time john was in the kitchen. ‘yes’, he said but then walked over to the door and checked to see if anyone was there.

it must be that he has sensitive ears and timid quietly knocking friends, which actually is the case.

speech acts of inanimate objects , or, At the Turnstile in the Moscow METRO

May 3rd, 2004 § 0 comments § permalink

The turnstile — gate keeper of the Moscow metro which collects your fare — is a welcoming sight devoid of blockading doors. It caters to the invited glance and exposes a path to the atrium of the people’s palace where efficient trains are waiting to transport you to any corner of the city. If you take the bate and proceed, two rusty crutches will emerge from the sides and cap your knees. You can proceed if the controller did not see you. (Rumor has it that the heft of the blow has been tuned down from that of the Soviet times when you’d be lucky to hobble away.) Otherwise, you have probably been warned and head to the ticket booth. When you pass a second time, having paid the 14 ruble fare, you meditate, what have I paid for? It is a painless passage through the turnstile! The absence of pain is what you’ve purchased.

people’s palace – term accompanied dedication of Moscow metro system in early soviet times.

lunch …

March 20th, 2004 § 0 comments § permalink

he cut himself off a large slab of cheese and picked out of the bag the biggest tomato and as he was making a sandwich thought his choices representented the most pleasant of provisioning practices — provisioning for the present, exactly! — more for the now and less for later.

American Students and Czeck Conscientiousness

March 19th, 2004 § 0 comments § permalink

today, i was talking to a professor about the divergent in-class speaking practices of students in england vs. america. in england they remain intelligently silent. in america students take as a general rule to ask a question or say something per class. is my following remark true:

In American classrooms (and possibly as a microcosm for wider academe) talk is used to dispel misconceptions. To talk in class is to expose yourself. May as well say things with conviction which your evidence allows you to conclude. Ideally this will serve as incentive for the next piece of evidence which contradicts your assertion to emerge. The louder a conviction is broadcast the more likely someone who is in possession of such evidence and whose interests are (or sense of dignity is) sufficiently perturbed will respond. This is a healthy classroom discussion.

It also helps to know that the disbursement of social activity is different in American colleges. Classes have to be more conversational because they are replacing other communication venues, such as: supervisions, tutors, meetings with the director of studies, even the pub. A classroom setting is often seen as a plebeian assembly. Besides classes are 3 to 4 hours a week. Some lecture seminars are three hours long. Or when considered from the perspective of educational economics in large classes you have to talk to ever lock eyes with a professor.

***

the fact that she is originaly from czekoslovakia, reminded me of an absurdism i used to assert to my friends after czeckoslovakia (in my lifetime) became two countries; you may find it humorous:

the humbled people of the independence movement of the czeck republic and slovakia arrived at the respective names of their counties out of consideration for the many people in the world who have purchased a map which lists them as one country. to minimize universal inconvenience, they drew the border in pen on the bestselling map. this line crossed through the ‘o’ and it was settled, one side “czeck” and the other “slovakia” and a convenient rule of thumb for where the border passes.

in simplest terms …

February 23rd, 2004 § 0 comments § permalink

i have also fallen madly in love with my handwriting and have spent the last hour scribbling thoughts on paper with a mechanical pencil–i only mention the mechanical pencil because for the duration of the past hour it was just as much of my social output as i was. i have grown rather fond of mechanical pensils over this hour. over this hour i have decided to buy a proper mechanical pencil that can hold its lead in a sturdy enough grip to allow long arcs with the sharp pencil tip without rotation and minimal breakage.

Language Barrier

December 23rd, 2003 § 0 comments § permalink

for the last couple of days, we’ve been staying with a spanish couple. they speak very little english and our communication involves playing sharades and occasionaly passing the dictionary. however, some words do not need to be looked up. she knows numbers in english and he knows days of the week; and both correct the other with a hefty score of pride when within their specialty.

forgivable

December 22nd, 2003 § 0 comments § permalink

it would be less forgivable to have neglected to meet a person from the area than to have missed a tourist attraction.

lucas, the catalanian dj mr.kmp, is our redemption. peretz met him in san francisco this summer.

he let jane try out his scooter.

Functional Thinking

November 26th, 2003 § 0 comments § permalink

is there any precedent for a dynamic, function based law? for example, what if the discussions about retirement age resulted in a functionally encapsulated principle, (encapsulating the reasoning that lead to it) say:

    retirement age = 80% of life expectancy modulated slightly by the needs of the job market as represented by some other metric, and some vague proportionality of the present social security coffers.

or another example:

    suggested jail time for given offense = some coefficient proportional to the severity of the crime, inversely proportional to the population behind bars for this offence to a lesser coefficient, and inversely proportional to the population behind bars in general for any crime to an even lesser coefficient.

it seems that such logically, dynamically phrased solutions (except the social security, that was me being facetious) may cast the inevitable reconsideration of laws farther into future.

there is also a strange futuristic appeal to the idea of jail time market speculation, and people buying derivatives on retirement ages, etc. that such formulations may lead to.

Youth Culture Insight

November 21st, 2003 § 0 comments § permalink

an eloquent girl provided the closing argument to a spontaneous performance by her prenubile troupe. though i’m not clear on what she said, the whole flock scurried away quickly and not without a fuss when i expressed an intention to “hand these videos over to the authorities.”

Young Girls Smoking in Christ’s Pieces, Cambridge, UK from Peretz Partensky on Vimeo.

Coincidentally, these 12 year old girls are 18 now and of legal age, so I feel it’s ok to post this video. I took it in on a stroll in the park in Cambridge, UK with my friend Dana in 2004.

“Cause I want to smoke”

Dana – “Is smoking Cool?”

“Yeah! Yeah!”

“I’m high, so high.”

“Do these look like chocolate cigarettes?”