Who says?

An interesting post over at Language Log discusses how, apparently, native speakers of French, intended to serve as a control group in a second-language acquisition experiment, were remarkably inconsistent in the genders they assigned to nouns. This is important because native speakers are generally assumed to be fairly consistent and correct in their use of the language and it is this usage, alongside written grammars, that is therefore used to measure the success of non-native speakers' language acquisition.
Ayoun was investigating second-language learning of grammatical gender in French -- a major difficulty for learners from non-gender languages like English. She had constructed a couple of tasks: grammaticality judgments of sentences where there was a gender agreement mismatch, and a gender-assignment task, where subjects were given a noun and had to choose among "masculine", "feminine", "both", or "I don't know".

In both tasks, to her great surprise, she found a great deal of disagreement among her native-speaker controls! In these tasks, there is always a normatively 'correct' answer -- French dictionaries and textbooks all agree on what the genders of nouns are, and how gender agreement in sentences should turn out -- in the same way they agree on how to form relative clauses, and how to form passives, and where to put clitic pronouns, and so on. Native speakers would be expected to perform close to ceiling on this grammatical task, as on others. But, surprisingly, they don't.

What is interesting is that the greatest variation existed among the youngest participants.
On most grammatical tasks, for all intents and purposes, teenagers' native-language abilities are identical to adults' abilities. But when she broke down the gender-assignment task results by age, she found that teenagers showed considerably more variation than the adults. On the 50 feminine nouns, for example, the 14 adults all agreed on 21 of them, while the 42 teenagers agreed on only one: cible, 'target'. Of the 93 masculine nouns, the adults agreed on 51 of them, while all adults and teenagers agreed on only 17 (of 93!!)

Apparently, no systematic study of native French speakers' assignment of grammatical gender has been done for about 30 years, so we don't know when or how this inconsistency developed. It's interesting though, because it makes me wonder whether it has anything to do with the increasing amount of 'noise' being overlaid on language. Teachers and all manner of pedants have been bewailing the deterioration of language quite possibly since we started using language in the first place. What I find odd though is not just the change in the way people use language, but the fact that they don't really seem to 'have the idiom', as it were. I hope that's not just me turning into a stuffy old lecturer before my time and ranting about 'kids these days' - I'm particular about usage, certainly, but I try not to smother living language.

As the post points out, the experiment was not set up to provide answers to questions regarding the variation between native language speakers so we'll have to wait for another study before we can do more than wonder out loud. But in the mean time, I shall happily speculate to my heart's content.

Token human

Tell me if this sounds familiar: you hear of something awful/upsetting/annoying/stupid happening in a foreign country or a community that's been in the news a lot. You, in your wonderfully informed and astute way, watched an ABC special or read an article about this culture/community in the Economist, both of which are respected institutions. You might even have worked with this girl who was dating someone from there once - you know because she brought him/her round for drinks once and you had a lovely 15-minute chat. So, armed with your indignation about said event and your vast body of knowledge on said culture, you a) declare your indignation and/or b) proceed to locate the nearest person belonging to that culture and demand an explanation.

Yes?

Well I'm tired of being that chai-colored person you immediately go to for that explanation. I have yet to meet an Australian who can give me a thorough, nuanced historical explanation of the political and symbolic importance of last week's Apology to the Aboriginal peoples. I have yet to meet an American who can, at the drop of a hat, explain why Americans don't want to vote for a woman or a black man and how the fuck a bible-bashing lunatic who wants to destroy the Constitution is even being considered as a potential presidential candidate or what the fuck Scientology is. But then I wouldn't ask them why their societies are so fucking racist and sexist and homophobic and downright illiterate. Oh and xenophobic too. Gotta love that xenophobia.

Why? Because as it happens, the individuals I know from these countries are not any of those things. Or, if they are, they're open-minded enough to challenge themselves a bit and get the fuck over it. See, I've lived there. Sure there's some bad stuff, but mostly, I've seen good stuff. Decent people, good friends, intelligent conversation, that sort of thing. If I did have a question though, you know what I would do? I'd go look it up. I'd go read. Gosh, I might even watch the news for more than five minutes. And once I'd figured out what impact, if any, it might have on my life, I'd go do something else.

Personally, I don't give a rat's ass what you believe, who you fuck, or what you eat. I would appreciate it, though, if you would extend me the same courtesy. I am not the spokesperson for all things Pakistani, Muslim, Islamic, South Asian, female, queer, Pakistani + female/queer, Muslim + female/queer, Islamic + female/queer or South Asian + female/queer. I don't care how fucking concerned you are about those poor benighted savages whose plight you feel so deeply for that you must make asinine statements about their 'rights' and 'freedoms' while ignoring completely that there are people on the ground from those societies working the asses off to actually make a difference. You have the gall, instead, to feel sorry that you can't do more, because obviously, nothing will ever get fixed until you get your big fat pink ass over there to really turn them into beggars. Fuck. The angst must be unbearable.

And don't for a minute think that this isn't also addressed to the fucking desi morons who make equally stupid assumptions about people cultures that they know nothing about. They pity you folks too, and in much the same nauseating way. Tsk tsk. All these women having babies by themselves, without even a maid to help. Poor old man dying alone after raising five children. You know, they put him in a nursing home! Oh you know them, no families or religion or values or anything. Wonder how they survive, poor things. Oye stay away from them - you know they'll fuck anything that moves. It wouldn't happen if they'd just get married when their parents told them to.

The only difference is whose words get heard more. I have the enviable good fortune of traveling between these two poles of stupidity. In Pakistan, I'm trying to explain the big, bad, warmongering, female-exploiting West, outside it, I'm trying to explain the evil, fundamentalist, female-oppressing Islamist world.

Fuck that.

No I don't think America-the-Asshole is right. No I don't think bloody goat-raping Al-qaida is right. No, Pakistan is not part of the goddamned Middle East. No I don't think there is a Zionist conspiracy. No I don't fucking cover my head and I never will. No I am not oppressed. No I'm not gay. No I'm not straight either you fucking moron. No I wasn't taught any Islamic creation myths. No I wasn't taught that men are better than women. No I do not speak Arabic. No Urdu is not my first language. No I don't defer to my little brother, to my father, to my husband, or to any random idiot male on anything relating to my personal freedom. No I'm not Indian. No I don't fucking want your approval for speaking my first language so well or for being so 'progressive'. No I'm not 'exotic' or 'fascinating' (you're fucking ignorant). No I fucking do not need to apologize for being from wherever it is you think I'm from or whatever it is you think I am.

I do not owe you a fucking explanation.

Language habits

Scientific American interviews Alice Gaby, a linguist working at UC Berkeley (and a University of Melbourne alumna), about her research on how language affects our perception of the world. She explains, however, that language isn't some sort of "straitjacket" that limits us to thinking in only one way, but rather a "habit" of mind that we fall into and that can and does change. Culture both reinforces and results from these habits.

The discussion ranges over other interesting topics, including Gaby's project regarding the concept of time in language, which sounds fascinating.

SciAm promised a transcript of the interview a week from the post, but nothing's been posted yet. I'll link to it as soon as it's up.

Benazir Bhutto's book, women, Islam, Pakistan, etc.

The Australian published an excerpt from Benazir Bhutto's book yesterday in which she speaks of starting college in the US in 1969, where she experienced firsthand the rights and freedoms that Americans took for granted. She also arrived at a time when feminism was finally gaining some ground in the US. What struck me though, was this passage:
My parents had taught me that men and women are equal in the eyes of God, that the first convert to Islam was a woman, that the prophet of Islam married a career woman, that the line of the prophet was carried through his beloved daughter Fatima, and that on the day of judgment all souls would be called in the name of the mother.

She goes on to add that,



...despite this emphasis on women's rights and the importance of women in Islam, all around me I could see that women were not treated with much importance in Pakistan, nor did they have many rights.

The rest of the article deals with her realization that any true improvement in Pakistani society would come only with an improvement in the condition of women, starting with education. That's not exactly a revelation, but I don't think it's meant to be - I think this is simply the story of how she came by her beliefs. Which is why I'm not taking it up.

What struck me about the excerpt was the first paragraph that I've quoted above. It shows, I think, the basic class divide that exists in the country, not so much between rich and poor as between educated and illiterate (though the two are obviously related and overlap considerably). That right there is the version of Islam that we were taught as children in school and at home - that at bottom, there is no difference in the worth of men and women - and that formed the basis of our idea of what this religion that we were born into stood for.

Before we read any actual scripture or learned to say our prayers, we were taught that Islam meant progress, equality, tolerance, kindness, honesty, and so on. And even when we did come to reading parts of the Koran in Islamiat classes, they only confirmed all that we had been taught before. As a girl, I was never fed the patronizing "you're as good as any boy" line but rather, "you're a person; you can be as good as you want to be."

So when people ask me now about how "intolerant" Islam is and how difficult it must be to live in an "Islamic" society, it takes me a minute to process the question. First of all, I don't think Pakistan is an "Islamic" society (despite the unfortunate change of name), but a Muslim one, at least for the time being. I say that because the term 'Islamic' now describes strict adherence to the letter of the law, as it were, at the expense of the spirit. To me, the term 'Muslim', in contrast (and probably in reaction) means pretty much what the term 'Christian' means today: someone brought up in a culture that grew out of a religion and that consequently maintains some contact with the spirit and trappings of that religion. (As I write this though, I'm aware that in some parts of the world, most notably the USA, 'Christian' increasingly means evangelical or fundamentalist. Here's hoping secular America and Europe manage to hold out.) To me, Pakistanis are - or at least have been until recently - what Faiz called 'cultural Muslims' - public rituals, such as weddings and funerals, are carried our according to a certain formula, but personal belief (or lack thereof) is, well, personal.

Secondly, the reason the question of the "oppressiveness" of Islam doesn't compute, is because I have never directly experienced it. I know that there are some horrific laws in place in Pakistan, but all my life all I've heard is how 1) there is no place for them in Pakistan and 2) that even if Pakistan were to go ahead with the "Islamic" thing, that these laws contravene the spirit of the religion and that the powers that allowed their institutionalization did so by fooling the uneducated masses into believing they were doing something sanctioned by religion, ie, 'good'. I am aware that there are people who routinely suffer as a result of these laws and also as a result of other laws in place in other countries that also purport to be 'Islamic'. But I am also aware that there are people - Muslims - fighting tooth and nail to change or remove these laws altogether and to protect and advocate for their victims.

My own beliefs notwithstanding, I still cannot equate the word "Muslim" with "fire-breathing, bearded/hijab-ed fundamentalist" despite the best efforts of the international press (generously assisted by the fundamentalists themselves). I had, however, forgotten why, until I read what Bhutto had written. As I've said before, I was no supporter of hers, but I realize that she did represent 'my' kind of Pakistani - she went to school with my mother, for heaven's sake. I don't know that she would have done Pakistan any good as PM this time around (except in terms of appeasing the 'West'), but she was certainly more 'one of us' than any of the people who'll be vying for power next Monday.

Multilingual poetry!

I found this bit of gorgeousness via languagehat, a blog I've only just started reading.

Antoine Cassar writes in five different languages, but rather than write one poem in one language, he has attempted to "braid" all five together into single poems, called Muzajik or Mosaics. The results are intriguing. The first and third link will take you to some of his poems, and while you're there I'd recommend listening to the posted recordings. I've found, in my brief encounter with them, that the different languages gel well with each other and form very interesting poetry. He's woven the sounds of the different languages together wonderfully in the poems I've heard so far (Go listen).

In the Chimera piece(first link), Cassar says:

"...the mosaics are more than a mere linguistic challenge. Having lived in five different European countries and languages, I find it difficult to decide which tongue I feel more at home with. Although I still write monolingual poetry occasionally (particularly in Maltese), I believe that selecting one, or even two, would mean sacrificing others, and to a certain extent, I feel that making a choice would also imply a political decision. Why the fixation with one as opposed to many?"

I think that's what immediately appealed to me. Being multilingual, one tends to code-switch - or at least want to code-switch - quite a bit, and it is sometimes frustrating to have to limit oneself to just one language when another would fit a particular situation so much better. Given that there are probably more bilinguals and multilinguals in the world than monolinguals, it is worth asking why the majority has to limit itself for the sake of the minority. (And the over-generalized answer, probably, is that the minority is more powerful or influential - neither of which is to be construed as pejorative.)

There are more things to address here, not the least of which is Cassar's project to include languages he does not speak into the mosaics, but as the project is, as far as I can tell, still gathering steam, I expect there will be more opportunities to do so. In the mean time, I'm just going to go enjoy what there is.

It's official

I'm enrolled in the PhD program. Till 2012. And I'm being paid to do it, which is utterly cool.

There were delays, of course - it's taken almost a month and a half to process everything. You'd think, with an unconditional offer and two full scholarships, there'd be no reason for any holdups, wouldn't you? I thought so too. I have seldom been so horribly wrong.

See Australia requires international students to have health insurance while they're in the country. In itself, this is not a problem. It becomes a problem, however, when you want to switch insurance companies. They don't like each other and while they're happy to have you, you need to be punished for ever going over to the competition in the first place. Once they work you over good and proper and make you swear a blood oath to never ever leave the fold again on pain of torture by red tape, you are finally redeemed and accepted into the fold.

You can imagine, then, what the company you're leaving does to you. Honestly, if my parents had divorced when I was 12 and I'd been forced to choose between them, it could not have been worse.

The incompetence of the people who are supposed to 'handle' us international students  was the next hurdle. Yes you need health cover for three years. No you don't. Yes you do. No you don't. Unfortunately, it was 'yes you do' when I went to accept my offer and I was sent packing straight to the insurance company with offerings of money and vows of eternal fidelity. They were in a benevolent mood - and hey, who isn't when you give them money - and back I went to finally, finally accept my offer. And then, naturally, I find out that the department of immigration only requires you to have cover for the first 12 months of your degree, after which it is your responsibility to keep it updated.

That stupidity aside though, it's done and I'm ready to start. I'm quite excited and nervous, but I have about four years to get over that.  I've started exploring German on my own, though I'll sign up for proper classes once I sort out where to go. I'm also sorting through what resources I've found at the library and looking for stuff online, though the amount of material searches turn up is a little frightening. Ah well, as I said, four years to go through it all.

I realized something else that's 'official', or at least will be by the time I finish: in 2012, I will have lived in Melbourne for just under six years - that's longer than I've ever lived anywhere before.  Who'd'a thunk?

Russell revisited

I didn't rush to read Dawkins when The God Delusion came out and I've only read the first chapter because it's available online. That isn't because I don't want to read him - I do and I think it's important to do so if only because his writing has, for better or worse, formed a lot of the basis of what is, at least in the US, being dubbed 'new atheism'. Vocabulary and focus shift over time, I suppose, and it's good to stay current. That said, I re-read Bertand Russell's "Why I Am Not A Christian" this morning after doing a random search and it struck me how little one would need to change his arguments - first articulated in a speech made in 1927 - to apply them to today's so-called 'debate'. For example:

On 'First Cause'
I may say that when I was a young man...I for a long time accepted the argument of the First Cause, until one day, at the age of eighteen, I read John Stuart Mill's Autobiography, and I there found this sentence: "My father taught me that the question 'Who made me?' cannot be answered, since it immediately suggests the further question `Who made god?'" That very simple sentence showed me, as I still think, the fallacy in the argument of the First Cause. If everything must have a cause, then God must have a cause.

On the 'natural law' argument, which today could be applied to the 'intelligent designer' argument and which served as an unwitting precursor to the inane 'it's just a theory' statement:
the whole idea that natural laws imply a lawgiver is due to a confusion between natural and human laws. Human laws are behests commanding you to behave a certain way, in which you may choose to behave, or you may choose not to behave; but natural laws are a description of how things do in fact behave, and being a mere description of what they in fact do, you cannot argue that there must be somebody who told them to do that, because even supposing that there were, you are then faced with the question "Why did God issue just those natural laws and no others?" If you say that he did it simply from his own good pleasure, and without any reason, you then find that there is something which is not subject to law, and so your train of natural law is interrupted. If you say, as more orthodox theologians do, that in all the laws which God issues he had a reason for giving those laws rather than others -- the reason, of course, being to create the best universe, although you would never think it to look at it -- if there were a reason for the laws which God gave, then God himself was subject to law, and therefore you do not get any advantage by introducing God as an intermediary. You really have a law outside and anterior to the divine edicts, and God does not serve your purpose, because he is not the ultimate lawgiver. In short, this whole argument about natural law no longer has anything like the strength that it used to have. I am traveling on in time in my review of the arguments. The arguments that are used for the existence of God change their character as time goes on. They were at first hard intellectual arguments embodying certain quite definite fallacies. As we come to modern times they become less respectable intellectually and more and more affected by a kind of moralizing vagueness. [my emphasis]

He tackles the 'design' argument directly as well, though I think Russell's use of the word is slightly different from what we mean today:
...since the time of Darwin we understand much better why living creatures are adapted to their environment. It is not that their environment was made to be suitable to them but that they grew to be suitable to it, and that is the basis of adaptation. There is no evidence of design about it.

When you come to look into this argument from design, it is a most astonishing thing that people can believe that this world, with all the things that are in it, with all its defects, should be the best that omnipotence and omniscience have been able to produce in millions of years. I really cannot believe it. Do you think that, if you were granted omnipotence and omniscience and millions of years in which to perfect your world, you could produce nothing better than the Ku Klux Klan or the Fascists?

On the moral argument:
Kant, as I say, invented a new moral argument for the existence of God, and that in varying forms was extremely popular during the nineteenth century. It has all sorts of forms. One form is to say there would be no right or wrong unless God existed. I am not for the moment concerned with whether there is a difference between right and wrong, or whether there is not: that is another question. The point I am concerned with is that, if you are quite sure there is a difference between right and wrong, then you are in this situation: Is that difference due to God's fiat or is it not? If it is due to God's fiat, then for God himself there is no difference between right and wrong, and it is no longer a significant statement to say that God is good. If you are going to say, as theologians do, that God is good, you must then say that right and wrong have some meaning which is independent of God's fiat, because God's fiats are good and not bad independently of the mere fact that he made them. If you are going to say that, you will then have to say that it is not only through God that right and wrong came into being, but that they are in their essence logically anterior to God.

There are more arguments than just these, naturally, and I recommend them highly not just for their content but for the elegance and wit with which they are made. Russell talks about how religion is based on fear and emotion and argues that it has retarded, and continues to oppose, progress. While parts of the essay feel a bit dated now, it is remarkable that they only need a tiny bit of trimming to be applicable 81 years since they were first written. Also, although Russell speaks of Christianity specifically and devotes part of the essay to Christ, it should be obvious from what I've quoted above that his argument is quite portable and argues against religion in general. And, despite the title, the essay is a positive one that ends on a hopeful note.
We want to stand upon our own feet and look fair and square at the world -- its good facts, its bad facts, its beauties, and its ugliness; see the world as it is and be not afraid of it. Conquer the world by intelligence and not merely by being slavishly subdued by the terror that comes from it. The whole conception of God is a conception derived from the ancient Oriental despotisms. It is a conception quite unworthy of free men. When you hear people in church debasing themselves and saying that they are miserable sinners, and all the rest of it, it seems contemptible and not worthy of self-respecting human beings. We ought to stand up and look the world frankly in the face. We ought to make the best we can of the world, and if it is not so good as we wish, after all it will still be better than what these others have made of it in all these ages. A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage; it does not need a regretful hankering after the past or a fettering of the free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men. It needs a fearless outlook and a free intelligence. It needs hope for the future, not looking back all the time toward a past that is dead, which we trust will be far surpassed by the future that our intelligence can create.

Blogs

At Ameel's insistence, I finally started using Google Reader a few months ago. It was a bit weird at first because one of the things you lose is each blog's individual look and feel. But although there are a few blogs that I still mark as read in GR and then go and read at the actual site, I'm mostly over that and am quite happy to say that it's very handy. It's also somehow made it easier to keep adding blogs to my list now that they come to me. And that is what this post is about. My blogroll is out of date and I've been meaning to fix that, but as I do, I thought I'd write a bit about the blogs and feeds I read, particularly the new ones. In alphabetical order, too!

Ameel's Career & MBA Exposition(ACME): This is Ameel's "professional" blog, in which he talks school, career, and tech. I find it interesting not just because he's my husband (of 4 years as of today) but because it's full of information and links to information on technology, particularly as it relates to the WWW.

Arts & Letters Daily: As the name suggests, AL Daily is a listing of articles of note concerning books, writers, current events, education and culture. The articles come from a range of sources and represent differing opinions. If I'm at a loose end, I'll usually go there and browse through the archives or go through the links on the left - I don't know how many there are but I can safely say I have not looked at them all and probably won't be able to. There is seriously tons to read.

Bad Astronomy Blog: I probably would not have found this blog if Phil Platt (the Bad Astronomer himself) had not written about the bad physics in the Transformers movie. I've been hooked pretty much since I read that. The posts about astronomy are interesting enough on their own, specially given the enthusiasm with which he writes, but there's also quite a bit of coverage about the religiosity against which scientists and skeptics have to fight in the US. Some is scary, but mostly it's just very funny. The website also debunks such conspiracy theories as the moon hoax and tackles astrology and pseudoscience among other things.

Bitchitorial: Written by Natalie P., owner and webmistress of Heartless Bitches International, this blog replaced the Bitchitorial section of the site itself, although the site is alive and well. It's not updated very often, but I find her straight-talking, no-nonsense perspective on everything wonderful to read.

Eglantine's Cake: Author Penni Russon maintains this blog, where she writes about things that she wants to write about. This can range from writing about writing, books, work, kids, teaching, projects, home, cooking, people, research, issues or anything else, really.

Pharyngula:I heard about PZ Myers on the Bad Astronomy Blog and eventually followed a link to his blog. Myers is a biologist and a leader in the charge against nonsense like 'intelligent design' and other pseudoscience that seems to be gaining increasing currency, particularly in the US. Tangles with creationists and right-wingers are common and very entertaining.

PunkAssBlog: I've only just started reading this one, but it's quite interesting. Written by a number of contributors, its commentary on current events is sarcastic, intelligent and very entertaining.

Random Tangent: Ameel's personal blog.

Science Based Medicine: This is a vey interesting and informative new blog written by five regular contributors and a few guests. All writers have medical credentials and some are fairly well known online already. The point of this blog, as laid out here is to "scientifically examine medical and health topics of interest to the public. This includes reviewing newly published studies, examining dubious products and claims, providing much needed scientific balance to the often credulous health reporting, and exploring issues related to the regulation of scientific quality in medicine." Today's post about 'Alternative Flight' is well worth a look.

Stephen Fry: To quote a friend, "Stephen Fry has a blog? Stephen Fry has a blog? Stephen Fry has a blog? Heart of my heart, Stephen Fry has a blog?" And he's a geek. *swoon*

The Happy Feminist: This is another new addition to my reading list. I've been going through her posts as thoroughly as possible because what she seems to routinely make good points about women in (American) society. Take a look here, for example. She's articulate, interesting and thoughtful, which gets my vote.

The Little Professor: I don't remember where or when I came across this blog, but it's become something of an old friend. There are posts about novels, the Victorian novel, teaching, universities, teaching at university, grading, academics, and so on. I particularly like the lists of books and the 'numbers' posts.

I think that's it for the time being, though in the course of writing this I managed to find at least a dozen more blogs that look interesting, so I may be back with a new list once I'm done getting to know them a bit.  In the mean time, if I've misrepresented anyone's blog or got anything wrong, I apologize and will fix it if I catch it or if you let me know where the eff-up is.

Thursday music

Fiction Plane this time. They closed their set at the concert with this song. Lots of energy, great performance, fun to watch...but it's still kinda freaky. I suppose I'll get over it eventually. No sense not enjoying the music till then though.

The Police in concert - and a few surprises

So we saw the Police live in concert at the MCG last night. I'm still not over it, but at least now I can speak and write about it. It was absolutely amazing not just because they rock but because it was so weird to see them at all - they did break up in '85/'86, after all. Seeing them up there after being a fan for almost as long as I can remember and knowing that it was all over for most of that time was simply surreal. And I can't honestly say I know any other band quite like I know the Police. I actually have everything they've ever done as a band, plus a lot of what they've done solo. I know the band history. I even spent enough time poring over their biographies as a teen to have random details at my fingertips years and years later. But most of all, I know their songs so intimately that each time they'd vary the chords or beat slightly to start a new one, I'd know the words even before I registered what the song actually was and basically sang along with the whole concert.

On the whole, they didn't vary the songs very much from the album versions, and even where they did I knew where they were going because I've listened to so many concert recordings. Most of the variations were the kind the Police themselves made back when they played, but some were more Sting-y. Interestingly, they didn't really play any of the songs Sting has sort of absorbed into his own repertoire. I'd have loved to hear Bring on the Night, Low Life, Demolition Man or Shadows in the Rain, for instance. I don't know if that was deliberate or whether they just didn't feel like doing them. The set list itself was the same they've been playing throughout. They opened with Message in a Bottle and then went into Synchronicity II, following that with Walking On The Moon. Then came Voices Inside My Head, When The World Is Running Down. Don't Stand So Close To Me, Driven To Tears and Hole In My Life. Everyone went suitably mad for Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic and Wrapped Around Your Finger was really really good with Stewart Copeland using gongs, chimes, bells, xylophone, and all manner of percussion to give it that air that it has. De Do Do Do De Da Da Da was a fun follow up. Then we had Invisible Sun, which was accompanied by lots of images of children living in poverty. That theme continued with Walking In Your Footsteps, but then they changed the pace again with Can't Stand Losing You followed by Roxanne and then 'closed' with King Of Pain ( I think). They came back with So Lonely and Every Breath You Take, and then came back again to do Next To You before leaving the stage for good.

Fergie opened for the Police. Yeah. It was odd at first, but she was actually quite good - she's one hell of a performer and sings her guts out. Yes there's lots of posturing and posing - that's what her music is like after all - but along with that she did a Black Eyed Peas medley and, what was most surprising, a few covers of Guns and Roses-type music that were actually quite fun. I could have done with a little less ass-shaking (Yes, you have a bottom. Wow. I'm thrilled to bits for you. Really I am.) but that's really my only gripe and even that's a bit forced because it was, as I said, good fun.

The big shock though, was Fiction Plane. We weren't seated yet when they started playing so I couldn't see the stage, but I remember thinking, man, that sounds a lot like Sting, only it can't be because that's not a Police song. We might not have gone down at all, only the music was echoing horribly in the hallways so we thought we'd go ahead even though it was about 7pm and we knew the Police wouldn't be on till 9:30. I vaguely remembered that there were two opening acts listed on the ticket so I figured this was whoever it was that wasn't Fergie and thought they sounded pretty good once we got away from the hallway echo and started making our way down the steps to the ground (did I mention that we were on the ground? Not in the prime, thousand-dollar seats, obviously, but not too far from the stage either and the perfect distance from one of the big screens.). And there on stage was someone who was clearly not Sting by my god did he look like him. And sound like him. This is what he looked like. Go look. It's uncanny. And then I remembered that yes, Joe Sumner* has a band and yes, there was something about him touring with the Police. But it was weird to actually see someone whose existence I've been aware of pretty much as long as I've known anything about the Police. Anyway, I got over the weirdness enough to quite like the band and want to hear more. They're playing tonight at the Ding Dong Lounge in Melbourne and while I don't know if I'll make it, they're definitely worth a look.

* To clarify: I assumed that anyone reading this would be aware that Sting's actual last name is Sumner, and that his eldest son's name is Joe and would therefore get the reference. Obviously that wasn't entirely reasonable given that not everyone was a 14-year-old Police fangirl.

AKC's top ten dogs

The American Kennel Club has released a list of the ten most popular dog breeds in the US. Beagles have been on the list since 1915, apparently so that wasn't a surprise. Neither were the Labs and Retrievers, but I was quite happy to see German Shepherds at number 3.

This just makes me want a dog even more, but we can't at the moment - we don't have the space and even if we did I don't think the our building allows pets. When we do, though, I'm thinking of adopting a shelter or rescue dog instead of getting a puppy. While I love raising puppies and I think they're quite possibly the most adorable things in the world, I want a grown up dog. Of course it'll probably have to be trained to some extent and will need time to settle in too, but that's easy enough to do with all but severely traumatized dogs (and I don't think shelters would be handing those out by the cartload anyway.). Plus, with a grown up dog, what you see is what you get. Whatever the breed characteristics and parents' temperaments, a pup will develop its own personality and it may end up clashing with that of its owner. It's easier to gauge whether you'll get on with a grown up dog

Ideally, I'd go for a German Shepherd, but really any big, sturdy, intelligent and preferably slightly goofy dog would do. Dogs generally aren't stupid and generally are at least slightly silly, so that's not a tall order, really. I may also have to reconsider the size because of space and time constraints (though really if you can't give a dog the time it requires you might not want to get one at all). Jack Russells have recently tripped my radar and I've found the ones I've met absolutely adorable. And even though they're little, they've got tons of energy and I've seen them keep up with much bigger dogs. Beagles have some appeal too, though I tend to prefer sharp-muzzled dogs - I feel for some reason that I can read them better, but that's probably because those are the kind of dog I've always had. While I might consider adopting a Lab or a Golden Retriever because of the two lab mixes we had back in Islamabad and because they're such incredibly sweet natured and intelligent animals, I just don't see myself connecting with them the way I do even with random Shepherds or Russells (yes I stop to pet dogs on the street if they approach), much less my late, wonderful Shepherd, Pooks.

Some places I'll be looking at when the time comes (or now, really - no harm just looking, right?) include:

The RSPCA's adoptapet site which lists animals awaiting adoption in its shelters across Australia and allows you to search by animal, state, and shelter. On the left nav bar, you'll also find information on the adoption process, animal selection process, pet care and maintenance, as well as good reasons why shelter animals are the way to go.

Another great site is Pet Rescue, which lists a large number of independent shelters across Australia. It's not owned by any one shelter but is instead a volunteer-run service that enables shelters to place their rescue animals up for adoption online. The amount of information provided about each rescue animal is, from what I've seen, pretty thorough and they'll tell you right off whether the animal can be moved interstate. They too have lots of other information available and also put forward a good argument for adopting rescued animals.

For a straight list of Australian dog rescues and shelters, there's always About.com's list.

The price of happiness

In his article In Praise of Melancholy, Eric G Wilson writes:
I for one am afraid that American culture's overemphasis on happiness at the expense of sadness might be dangerous, a wanton forgetting of an essential part of a full life. I further am concerned that to desire only happiness in a world undoubtedly tragic is to become inauthentic, to settle for unrealistic abstractions that ignore concrete situations. I am finally fearful of our society's efforts to expunge melancholia. Without the agitations of the soul, would all of our magnificently yearning towers topple? Would our heart-torn symphonies cease?

My fears grow out of my suspicion that the predominant form of American happiness breeds blandness. This kind of happiness appears to disregard the value of sadness. This brand of supposed joy, moreover, seems to foster an ignorance of life's enduring and vital polarity between agony and ecstasy, dejection and ebullience. Trying to forget sadness and its integral place in the great rhythm of the cosmos, this sort of happiness insinuates that the blues are an aberrant state that should be cursed as weakness of will or removed with the help of a little pink pill.

He goes on to talk about the role of melancholy in creativity. He's not advocating the kind of depression that can be self-destructive or dangerous to other people, but talking about a kind of sadness or melancholy that comes from the knowledge that we are essentially fractured ephemera, but which makes us appreciate what time we do have and makes us strive towards some kind of wholeness.

That reminds me of something Coleridge said about the necessity of opposites. If we didn't have sadness, how would we appreciate joy?

Wilson's book, Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy will be published this year.

Thursday music

The Kooks. I first heard this at least a year ago and scribbled the song title (She Moves In Her Own Way) on a piece of paper so that I'd remember to get it. I found that little scrap of paper a few days ago - having forgotten completely about the song and the band - and since then have been addicted to this song.

"Morality"

I've heard the terms 'moral' and 'morality' thrown around often and what irks me is that it is assumed that these must flow from some kind of religious foundation. So it was heartening to read Steven Pinker's article The Moral Instinct in the New York Times yesterday. It's a fairly long article and just about all of it is quotable so I'd suggest just going there and reading it from beginning to end. It talks about what we perceive as moral, why we do so, how the 'moral sense' can be tricked, and how it evolves as we adapt to changes in our world. It's a very interesting read that will probably surprise, interest, and possibly upset you, all for good reason. I'll be looking into his books in the mean time - I've spotted a few titles that sound like they'd flesh out my own research into language rather well.