Asakiyume mita

many Tims
The other day I saw the two neighbor girls onto the bus as both parents had to leave the house very early. I went over at 7:15, and they were still in their bedroom playing an imaginary game together. They are nine and eleven years old (or maybe eight and eleven; not sure), and it was the most charming thing to hear them talking and dramatizing together so happily.

"There's many Tims; what do you expect?!" --that was the one line I wrote down from their game.

And they were so good about getting themselves organized and out the door on time. Their parents should be proud.

favorite word
The ninja girl tells me that one thing her students in Japan like to ask her is what her favorite Japanese word is. By this they don't actually mean just any old random-ass word; they're really meaning more like favorite concept, but they ask in terms of favorite word. She said she usually turns the question back to them and asks them what their favorites are, and it's interesting to hear what they say: they are concepts that are very approved of, admired, promoted, etc., like 一所懸命 (isshokenmei: all one's might/effort) or 思いやり (omoiyari: considerateness, attentiveness, thoughtfulness). You couldn't ask the question "what's your favorite word?" in English to get answers like this; you'd have to make it "What's your favorite virtue?" or something.

Tower of Babel
And that got me thinking how we can understand the story of the tower of Babel as a blessing that God gave people rather than a punishment. When everyone was working together on the tower of Babel--and incidentally, all speaking the same language--they were single minded. One language, one idea. But when the tower was broken and they all found themselves speaking different languages, suddenly they were multi-minded. Many languages, many ideas. Many ways of expressing how it is to be human. And, when we learn each other's languages in a world of many languages, we're expending effort to understand each other--not just "see through another's eyes" but "borrow another's tongue." If we all spoke the same language, we'd lack that diversity and that opportunity to make an effort to understand one another.

On Thursday I picked up Wakanomori from the airport--he's back from the UK. We stopped around 7 pm at a rest stop on I-90, and as I was coming out of the bathrooms, I noticed a Verizon payphone, and on it, this remarkable sticker.



It starts with a blessing and a prayer, then turns to special needs: a job, help with Social Security and EBT (for people overseas, this is government food assistance), and then on to the lesser financial deities.

After snapping the photo, I wandered back to the table where we were eating, but my curiosity got the better of me. What happens if I press *10? What happens if I press *12? Or any of the others. So I went back. I picked up the receiver, but there was nothing.

It said on the machine that it was 50 cents for a local call, so I put in two quarters, but they fell right through and came out the coin return. I felt more than disappointed; I felt bereft. A scam and a prayer--but then the phone goes and doesn't even work. When I wrote about it on Twitter, a friend said, "This feels like a metaphor for ... something," and it really does. There's some kind of archaeology of desperation and last-ditch hopes there.

Sometimes little online quizzes and things can be fun--things that tell you which character in XX show/book you are, or whatever. But as you've probably all experienced taking those quizzes, they reveal as much or more about the assumptions of the quiz creator as they do about you.

That's one of my huge--sometimes insurmountable--problems with health questionnaires or political polls, too. (With political polls, another huge problem I have is who the hell is actually answering them. I *never* respond to political polls--largely because of problems related to the questions, but also because I don't answer spam phone calls etc.--so what person has the time and inclination to answer them? How biased are all polls, when they only draw on the pool of people willing to respond to polls?)

One basic thing that all quizzes, polls, and questionnaires often do wrong is that when they offer you responses, they also supply reasons for the response. For example:

Q. Do you pick up roadside litter?

A1. Yes, always; I can't stand that jerks are always leaving their trash around.
A2. Yes, sometimes, if I'm not in a hurry
A3. No, never--why should I pick up after other people?

All these answers have rationales that may not be the respondents' rationale at all. For instance, maybe you never pick up trash because you're immunocompromised and don't want to get sick. Or maybe you always pick up trash because you're interested in what things people discard. Or maybe you sometimes do, but it's not so much whether you're in a hurry or not but whether you have a free hand. And so on. (Never mind that the answers don't allow for certain meaningful other answers, such as "Yes, but only cans and bottles that I can collect the deposit on.")

If the rationale in an answer isn't your rationale, then you're forced to either choose that answer, even though it misrepresents your thinking, or not answer at all.

For that reason, I prefer questions that don't put rationales in the response choices .... But of course, the quiz creators would still be assuming the rationales, only their assumptions are hidden from you.

All of this is to say, always, always be skeptical of responses to questionnaires and polls. You don't know what kind of crap thinking went into their creation, how they were worded, and so on.