Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for the ‘Bruce Byfield’ Category

My 7 Favorite Victorian Novels

Posted in 19th century English novels, Bruce Byfield, Emily Bronte, George Eliot, Jane Austen, Personal, Robert Louis Stevenson, Thomas Hardy, Wilkie Collins, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on October 2, 2013| Leave a Comment »

For someone who has taught courses in the 19th Century English novel, I have decidedly unorthodox tastes. For instance, I have yet to read Anthony Trollope or William Thackeray extensively, because I find them almost unbearably superficial.

Instead, my preferences run to the Gothic and psychological, like William Godwin’s Caleb Williams or James Hogg’s Confessions of a Justified Sinner. Although I haven’t taught now for years now, I still keep a library of novels drawn from the century, and periodically renew my acquaintance with old favorites.

Over the years, the book I find myself returning to are:

7.) Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights: This novel is for the young. It is a vision of romance by someone with little or no first-hand experience, who can see dying for love as a desirable ending. I suspect its intensity scares many scholars, who prefer Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre to it. But if Wuthering Heights is morbid to an extreme, it has ten times the poetry of Jane Eyre, and a tighter structure as well, both of which justify the somewhat guilty pleasure of reading it.

6.) Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island: You know that a writer is under-rated when they are treated as children’s writers. But the vivid descriptions and memorable characterizations show how unfair this treatment is in Stevenson’s case. His work may be light, but it is also intelligent, making it first rate reading just before bedtime.

5.) Charles Dickens, Great Expectations: Dickens is usually at his best when he fictionalizes his early life or dabbles in the macabre. In Great Expectations, he combines both, although it is his early aspirations rather than actual events that inform the plot. Scenes like the meeting of the convict Magwitch in the graveyard, or the passages about the reclusive Miss Havisham are dark and full of wonder. As always in Dickens, comic workers (Joe) and misogynistic portrayals of women (Estella) grate on modern sensibilities, but in general I agree with Dickens that Great Expectations is his finest work.

4.) Wilkie Collins, No Name: No Name is the best depiction of a woman by a man in 19th century literature. Deprived by an accident of her legal rights, a young woman descends to impersonation and fraud to retrieve what is rightfully hers, meeting a comic and grotesque set of characters that out-Dickens Dickens. Naturally, she must repent at the end of the novel, saved by her virtuous sister, but Collins clearly sympathizes with her until then.

3.) Jane Austen, Emma: Today, Austen is popularly known for only Pride and Prejudice, but Emma is far more interestingly psychologically. Somehow, Austen manages to make the protagonist’s mis-perceptions humorous while ensuring that she keeps readers’ sympathies.

2.) Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure: Hardy’s knowledge of rural life and lore is unique in his era; although he sometimes uses comic rustics modeled on Shakespeare’s, ultimately he has a familiarity and respect for the working class that few of his contemporaries share. The earnest, self-taught protagonist is a figure with a dignity of tragic proportions – and who surprised me by having an inner life that often sounds like an echo of my own.

1.) George Eliot, Middlemarch: This novel explores different aspects of marriage through a variety of sub-plots. The main plot involves an intelligent, but inexperienced young woman, who, restricted by the roles available to her, makes a disastrous first choice in marriage, and has to live with the consequences. Unlike most of my selections, Middlemarch is more about eccentricity than the macabre, but the depth of characterization make it the greatest English novel of its century, if not of all time.

I could easily double or triple this list, but by the end I would probably be slipping in titles to impress, or because I think more people should read them. These are the books from the 1800s that I have not only read dutifully, but five or six times of my own free will. They are the ones that catch my eye when I’m scanning my bookshelves – the ones I am likely to pull out to re-read a favorite scene, and then find myself starting all over again, renewing my acquaintance with them like with an old friend who has just come into town.

Read Full Post »

Why I oppose public shaming

Posted in Adria Richards, Bruce Byfield, Personal, public shaming, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on September 26, 2013| Leave a Comment »

Regardless of the rights or wrongs in a case, I have always found public shaming something to avoid. People acting in a mob are rarely at their best, and they can end up harming themselves as much as their target.

My objections have nothing to do with a belief in due process. I have a lifelong cynicism about the law and its representatives. In many cases, I see nothing wrong with non-violent responses to unjust statutes. But much of the time, public shaming has nothing to do with civil disobedience or a sense of justice. Far more often, it is about imposing a small group’s interpretation of events on everyone else.

Yet, even when public shaming seems justified, I dislike what it does to the people who participate in it. They cease to be individuals, and become part of a mob. They shut down discussion because, convinced that their perspectives are correct, they see no value in discussion. For the same reason, they become disinterested in facts or nuance, and cannot wait even a day or an hour for more information.

In this mood, not even the mildest opposition is accepted. Question their rashness or the venom of their comments or suggest that they might be hasty, and the members of the mob responds as though you physically assaulted them. Almost certainly, they will conclude that you side with their target, even if you emphasize your own misgivings or suspension of judgment.

What makes this form of socially-sanctioned bullying particularly objectionable to me is that most of what I value in human beings is discarded by members of the mob in a cathartic fury of self-righteousness. From being people of reason, the members of the mob become prejudiced rednecks. In their rush to stone a supposed monster, they become another type of monster themselves.

But the consequences can be far worse. Acting rashly and on too little information, the members of the mob, just like the advocates of capital punishment, can just as easily choose an innocent target as a guilty one, or at least an unproved one – not that they are likely ever to admit the fact. Having taken an extreme position, they have an interest in maintaining it long past the point when it becomes indefensible or a half-truth at best.

In the process, they can leave an innocent target dragging a ponderous chain of innuendo and mistaken assumptions, or even a guilty one with less chance of eventual forgiveness or reform. Public shaming can destroy lives, and for me that makes it a metaphorical form of murder – a deliberate infliction of trauma.

Nor do those doing the shaming always escape the consequences. Adria Richards, for example, tried to shame a couple of men at a conference for having a private conversation laced with sexual innuendo by posting their picture without permission on Twitter. She succeeded in getting one of them fired – but she was also deluged with hate mail and lost her own job as a consequence. Historical revisionism is now in the process of making her a feminist martyr because of the hate mail, but her self-glorifying attempts at public shaming are likely to be remembered long after her targets’ names. All of which goes to show that you shouldn’t risk messing with karma.

For most of those who publicly shame, the consequences are likely to be less extreme. Probably, most former members of a mob will never receive their own public shaming, the way that Richards did. But if nothing else, I hope that some day, if only in the back of their minds, they may receive their own moment of private shaming.

Personally, I prefer the luxury of looking at myself in the mirror first thing in the morning without flinching.

Read Full Post »

Hannibal’s Elephants

Posted in Bruce Byfield, Carthage, childhood, classical history, Hannibal's Elephants, Personal, Punic Wars, Rome, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on September 19, 2013| Leave a Comment »

I can still pinpoint the start of my interest in classical history fairly precisely. It was in the spring I was in Grade Three, when Mrs. Charlewood, the school librarian, in a desperate effort to direct my rapid consumption of the library, suggested I try a book called Hannibal’s Elephants.

I didn’t know who Hannibal was, or why the Carthaginians might be at war with Rome, but I was enthralled. If I remember correctly, the story was narrated by a teenage boy who marched with Hannibal, and possibly had some responsibility for the elephants. At one point early in the story, someone sang a song that began:\
Across the Alps and Apennines
In battles far from home,
His elephants lunge at trembling lines
When Hannibal conquers Rome.

At least once, I had a dream in which a woman with a malicious smile started to sing the song, which for some reason I dreaded hearing.

The book ended, of course, with the defeat of Hannibal’s Italian campaign and his recall to Carthage. But I was left with a burning question: how did Rome finally fall? I knew that it must have, since I had a vague idea that the Middle Ages were between Rome and my day, but I wanted to know the details.

I went to the librarian, who didn’t know. She asked a Grade 7 girl who was helping to with restacking books, who said that she wasn’t sure, but she thought that the “Greeks rose to power and destroyed them.”

Even at eight, I could sense that the girl was improvising and knew only a little more than I did. I realized that I would have to find out for myself, so that was what I started to do, reading all the Greek and Roman history and mythology I could find in the school and civic libraries. I remember that in Grade Four, after the teacher taught us about butterflies and metamorphosis, I showed her a reference to Ovid’s Metamorphoses, suggesting there might be a connection, only to receive a sniff for a reply – possibly because she thought Ovid too racy for me, but more likely because she was unprepared for the subject.

Fortunately, at that age I was not very aware of nuance, and continued reading history, branching out into the Egyptians and Babylonians at one end of the Classical era and The Middle Ages at the other.

As an adult, I’ve made some half-hearted efforts to track down the book that inspired me. The only possible candidate is a book by Alfred Powers that was first published in 1946, and just might have lingered long enough in a school library for me to have read it. So far, though, I’ve resisted the effort to purchase it online. I doubt – and worry – that it wouldn’t live up to my memories. Anyway, unlike Rosemary Sutcliffe’s Eagle of the Ninth or Robert Lancelyn Green’s Robin Hood, I value the book for the lifelong interest that it started more than for itself.

Read Full Post »

Carol Young, “Wind-Rider”

Posted in aboriginal art, art, art appreciation, British Columbia, Bruce Byfield, Carol Young, First Nations art, Haida, Northwest Coast Art, northwestcoast art, Personal, Uncategorized, women's art, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 15, 2013| 1 Comment »

I have been meaning to buy from Haida artist Carol Young for a couple of years, but, until now my spare cash and opportunities haven’t coincided. Not only was Young the first recipient of the Mature Student Award that I fund at the Freda Diesing School, but she is also one of the strongest women carvers currently at work on the coast, with an awareness of line reminiscent of her teacher Dempsey Bob, and a realism uniquely her own. In less than five years, she has gone from an adequate beginner to a carver with a style that promises to make her one of the great originals in Northwest Coast art.

“Wind-Rider” seems an appropriate place to begin buying from Young. Before Young attended the Freda Diesing, she sold Haida dolls on the Internet, and continues to give classes in doll-making. A couple of years ago, she placed a similar figure on a mask for an all-woman show at the Steinbreuck Gallery in Seattle. With its removable hat and cedar bark hair, the figure seems to embody the entire span of her career, so much so that I suggested to her that she should use it as a logo if she ever prints business cards or sets up a web site.

One of the things that makes the carving unusual is that human forms – especially naked ones – are rare in the Northwest Coast Renaissance. Classical works and oral tales sometimes show a decided earthiness, but, by the time of the local Renaissance, Christianity had changed the standards of what was appropriate. As I write, the Bill Reid Gallery is about to host a show of native erotica, featuring younger and avant-garde artists, but in general, the current artistic tradition approaches the human form cautiously, if at all.

By contrast, “Wind-Rider” depicts a semi-realistic naked female form, with a sensuous appreciation of the curves of its spine, buttocks, and thighs. Yet, at the same time, I would hesitate to describe it as erotic, and not just because the figure suggests a young girl rather than an adult woman. This is not a figure poised for the male gaze in some impossible contortion – nor for any other gaze at all, for that matter, considering its wild array of hair. The posture suggests that the rider is absorbed with the act of balancing and holding on, while the upward tilt of the head conveys a sense of wonder, with the eyes – the only part of the sculpture that is painted – fixed on something that only the rider can see. Meanwhile, the blank expression suggests concentration and determination. Sensuousness and innocence are not usually thought of as going together, yet somehow in “Wind-Rider” they seem to co-exist without any difficulty. In fact, you might say that the figure is sensuous because she is self-absorbed. But, however you parse it, the depiction is original in a way that nudes rarely manage.

Sensibly, Young has left most of the spoon unpainted, leaving the lines of the sculpture to speak for themselves. With most of the attention focused on the rider, she has also left the spoon plain. Yet the spoon, too, is well-proportioned, with a graceful curve to the handle and a ladle that is deep enough and wide enough to serve as a visual counter weight to the rider.

One viewer on Facebook immediately thought of witches riding broomsticks (to which Young immediately replied that the Haida have no concept of Witches). Personally, though, my first thought was of Whale Rider, a film whose protagonist is a Maori girl who is determined to break with tradition and become a chief. Not only does the Maori culture resemble that of the local first nations, but, like the film, Young’s sculpture seems all about following dreams and female empowerment.

From any perspective, “Wind-Rider” is a powerful and unusual work. Examining it, I wonder why I took so long to buy from Young and I’m determined not to wait too long before I do so again.

1077994_10151516927180264_1214331885_n

Read Full Post »

Yahoo!, amateurs, and typography

Posted in Bruce Byfield, design, layout, Marissa Mayer, Personal, typography, Uncategorized, Yahoo!, tagged , , , , , , , , on September 7, 2013| Leave a Comment »

Like writing, typography is an art everyone imagines that they are competent to judge. From Dorothy Sayers imagining her opinion was better than Jan Tschichold’s to Mark Shuttleworth altering his company’s direction so that he could play with design, otherwise intelligent people are constantly falling into the fallacy that they can judge typography despite having no experience with it. The latest high-profile example of this fallacy is Marissa Mayer’s comments on the new Yahoo! logo, the majority of which reveals her lack of design expertise.

I knew the process is doomed to mediocrity as soon as I read her first criteria: “We didn’t want to have any straight lines in the logo. Straight lines don’t exist in the human form . . . so the human touch in the logo is that all the lines and forms all have at least a slight curve.” Aside from how arbitrary the limitation is, what strikes me is the immediate escape into metaphorical explanation. Such explanations are rarely a sign of someone with any expertise; in my experience, they are the sign of someone who does not know what to observe. A trained designer is more likely to reflect that giving all the otherwise straight lines in the logo a slight curve is mostly wasted space for the simple reason that most people are going to look at the logo carelessly, and see straight lines regardless, simply because that is what they expect to see.

Mayer’s next criteria is: “We preferred letters that had thicker and thinner strokes – conveying the subjective and editorial nature of some of what we do.” Not only is there more meaningless metaphor, but the logo will be largely seen online, and even a beginning designer knows that online legibility generally requires fonts with consistent strokes.

Further down the list of criteria, Mayer adds a “mathematical consistency.” Although this requirement sounds impressive, it becomes meaningless when you consider that all typefaces are designed to have a mathematical consistency. She might as well have said that she wanted the logo to have a breadth and depth.

Mayer goes on to explain that “we felt the logo was most readable when it was all uppercase, especially on small screens.” However, against what Yahoo! employees “felt” are centuries of practice and study that shows that lower case letters are more legible because they have a more irregular shape that a solid block of upper case letters of the same size – especially at smaller sizes.

In the end, only two of Mayer’s seven criteria are reasonable starting points: wanting to keep a hint of the old design (although having something serif-like as that hint is somewhat odd), and wanting to do something “playful” with the final “oo.”

Judging from the final result, it was already clear that the logo’s designers were less than expert. However, Meyer’s blog does have the advantage of confirming the visual evidence. Predictably, her confused and poorly advised priorities are reflected in the result, and Yahoo! has labored to replace an outdated logo with a poorly conceived one.

Read Full Post »

Starting with a quote

Posted in Bruce Byfield, journalism, opening paragraphs, Personal, Uncategorized, writing, tagged , , , , , on September 5, 2013| Leave a Comment »

A few weeks ago, an editor requested that I not start an article with a quote. They said it made them feel as though they were coming into the middle of a discussion they knew nothing about. I pride myself on being nothing less than professional, and don’t imagine that I am writing immortal prose, so I used another opening strategy as requested. However, I still believe that the request was more a matter of personal preference than a general rule.

To start with, in any opening paragraph, readers are coming into the middle of a discussion, so the same objection can be raised about any chosen tactic. Perhaps the quote I used wasn’t perfectly suited to its position, but that is no reason to condemn the use of an opening quote in general.

In fact, starting in the middle is a time-honored literary technique. It was recognized more than two millenia ago by the Roman poet Horace, who called it in media res, as opposed to ab ovo, or starting from the beginning. Admittedly, it is usually thought of as a technique for epic poetry or fiction, but a journalistic article is often a form of narrative, too. Personally, I figure that what was good enough for Homer in The Odyssey or Shakespeare in Hamlet is good enough for me.

For another, part of the purpose of an opening tactic is to attract readers’ curiosity. Sometimes the topic is novel enough or important enough that the first paragraph needs no embellishment, but that is an exception. An article published online is competing with thousands of others for readers’ attention, and, so long as you don’t mislead or make exaggerated claims, anything that helps it get noticed seems worth trying.

In this case, part of the reason that I started with a quote is that it is a reasonably uncommon tactic. But, in addition, the quote made an unusual claim, which I was counting on to raise curiosity enough for them to read the next few sentences, where they would learn more clearly what the article was about.

Moreover, because a quote implies a speaker, it is automatically personal and direct. Writers of new releases know that a quote helps interest readers – so much so that many make sure that the a quote falls in the second or third paragraph to keep readers going. In a long news release, writers will often add additional quotes further down to reduce the odds of readers’ attention straying. Although articles are less mechanically structured than news releases, quotes can have similar advantages in journalism. Starting with a quote has a strong chance of attracting readers’ attention precisely because it is so personal and direct.

Anyway, even if none of what I said here were true, a part of me always regards a general rule about writing as a challenge. Tell me that something can’t be done – or worse, shouldn’t be done – and my impulse is to try to do it successfully. So, while I have made a note to avoid using an initial quote any time that I work with this particular editor (who otherwise shows a keen sense of how to improve a piece of prose), don’t be surprised if I use one elsewhere. Being told I shouldn’t only makes me all the more likely to try.

Read Full Post »

Kelly Robinson: “Ancestor of Today”

Posted in aboriginal art, art, art appreciation, art buying, British Columbia, Bruce Byfield, First Nations art, Freda Diesing School of Northwest Coast Art, indian art, Kelly Robinson, Northwest Coast Art, Nuu Chah Nulth, Personal, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on August 25, 2013| Leave a Comment »

Most of the Northwest Coast art in my townhouse is in the formline style favored by the Northern First Nations in British Columbia. However, I am always willing to learn more about other coastal traditions, and slowly that’s what I’m doing. The only trouble is, relatively little is written about these other traditions, so most of my knowledge comes from looking at what working artists like Kelly Robinson are doing.

Robinson is a young artist of mixed Nuxalk and Nu-chah-nulth descent who is exploring both sides of his ancestry. In the last year or so, much of his wood carving (he is also an accomplished jeweler) has explored Nu-chah-nulth forms. In particular, he has built on the work of artists like Joe David and Art Thompson who revived the tradition and elevating it into fine art based on his time at the Freda Diesing School.

Fortunately for me, “Ancestor of Today” became available when I had just cashed a few cheques from editors. I first saw the mask in Cathedral Close, the garden outside the Bill Reid Gallery in downtown Vancouver, and, a couple of hours later, I was taking it home on the Skytrain in a bag I was clutching in a death-grip.

The inhabitants of the west of Vancouver Island, the Nu-chah-nulth (formerly called the Nootka and the West Coast) were in a position to be influenced by both the Kwakwaka’wakw, Nuxalk, and Heiltsuk to the east, and the Haida to the north. In fact, unlike most first nations around them, by 1900, Nu-chah-nulth had at least two different styles, a newer one based on formline, and the older, original style. There also seems to have been a third style reserved for the curtains used in the ceremonial mysteries, although I am not altogether certain.

At any rate, these mixed influences may explain the mixture found on “Ancestor of Today.” On the one hand, the mask includes elements that are universal in the coastal traditions, including the U-shapes and the labret that indicates high status. The hair, too, is arranged in a buzz-cut that I have seen in works from every nation.

On the other hand, the facial features all seem to me to be typically Nu-chah-nulth origin, from the raised eyebrows to the high forehead and the nose that swells around the nostril. One of the strongest distinguishing features are the outsized, shallow eye sockets. Unlike in the northern style, the eyes themselves are barely distinguished from the sockets. Here, they are no more than crescents indicate a closed eye, although they would probably not be much more detailed if the eyes were open. The eye sockets join the high cheekbones – another distinguishing feature – not in a plane, as in a northern style, but in a single line.

The painting, too, differs strongly from the northern style. The traditional red and black are the primary colors, but, they cover most of the mask, rather than being used only to highlight features like the lips, nostrils, and brows. Moreover, instead of the designs being painted across the face without much regard for the carving, the way they would be in the north, the designs on the bottom of the cheeks are on their own planes. Between the lips and the nostrils, a different approach is taken, with the inverted U-shape merging into the top list, and the unpainted border on each side of it into the nostrils.

(The mask’s use of gray and the unpainted wood as additional colors is also untypical of the northern style, although they may be Robinson’s innovations rather than indicating any particular tradition; I’ll have to ask him next time we’re in touch.)

The overall impression is of a simpler, bolder style than would be likely to come out of the north. It is enhanced by the slightly rough knife-finish – Robinson’s first effort at this technique, he tells me. To my modern eye, the closed eyes give it Buddha-like sense of calm dignity in keeping with the mask’s name, which asserts a claim that the tradition is still alive and evolving today.

I admire Robinson’s Nuxalk style work, especially the “Four Carpenters” and “Mother of Mischief” paintings, which hang in my living room. However, his Nu-chah-nulth work has its own fascination, especially since he is one of the few artists in the tradition who is trying to evolve the tradition. With “Ancestor of Today,” he manages the difficult trick of re-introducing the tradition while adding first-rate finishing and the steady hand on the paint brush that modern buyers expect. I’m looking forward to what he does next in this style.

100_1603

Read Full Post »

Goblin market / Farmers’ market

Posted in Bruce Byfield, farmers' markets, Personal, Uncategorized, Vancouver, tagged , , , , on August 24, 2013| Leave a Comment » 

“We must not look at goblin men,
We must not buy their fruits:
Who knows upon what soil they fed
Their hungry thirsty roots?"
- Christina Rossetti, "The Goblin Market"

The idea of the goblin market haunts me. Whether in the form of Christina Rossetti’s poem or the faery market in Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, it seems to me a place where anything can be found among its motley booths and awnings – a place anything can happen and anyone can be encountered, where promise and nightmare meet, and you can never be quite sure which is which. That is why I can never resist a farmers’ market, and will even get up early on a Saturday to visit one.

True, these markets are pallid reflections of the goblin market. Many of the half dozen or so that have sprung up around the Vancouver area in the last five years are already starting to have all the same booths, so that they sometimes seem to be rapidly devolving into outdoor shopping malls. All the same, they continue to fascinate. An evolutionary psychologist might claim they appeal to the hunter-gatherer in us all, a Jungian that they evoke an archetype reinforced by school fairs and music festivals, a partial holiday from routine.

Foodies, no doubt, are attracted by their wish for the organic and a locally produced diet. Nor can I deny that’s part of the appeal. Show me fresh cloves of garlic, or multiple species of tomatoes of different shapes and colors that were on the vine a few hours ago, and my curiosity and intermittent sense that I should be eating better immediately get the better of me. Promise me alternative strains of corn bred for tastes other than sweetness, and I want to decide for myself how different they are. Show me an artisan displaying belts or handmade canes, and I have to slow to look.

Never mind that, at least half the time, my palate is too unrefined to detect enough difference to make the effort and extra cost worthwhile. Never mind that almost none of the artisans forge or cast their wares. I can tell myself that I’m too gullible and that next time I need to be more discerning in my efforts to separate the true from the false – and next week, I will be as careless as ever in my purchases.

Part of what makes a farmers’ market so irresistible is the personal touch. Maybe some people can trudge up and down the lines of booths without talking to those staffing them, but I” m not one of them (perhaps I need to get out more). I can’t just get out my wallet. Instead, before I buy, I find myself asking about what I’m buying, maybe passing a disparaging remark or two about what’s usually available in the supermarkets, and asking questions about small businesses that are now in their second or third generation. Then, ten or fifteen minutes later, I’m at another booth, starting a similar conversation. The experience is as far from the exchange of “How are you?” at the checkout stand as it could possibly be.

But the major appeal comes from the fact that even the worst farmers’ market offers alternatives. Most of these alternatives are not radical, but they are just different enough to trigger impulse buying – something I rarely allow myself, thanks to habits required in my days of poverty. Usually, I approach a market in much the same way as I would a casino: I give myself a spending limit of, say, $100, and stop buying when it’s gone. Often, that’s an easy habit to keep, because most vendors are not equipped to handle credit or debit cards, and I’m restricted to the cash I’m covering.

My habit is to circle the market once, then return to the booths I’ve marked for closer attention. What I buy remains remarkably consistent, too, generally consisting of random fresh vegetables and cheeses and various organic or at least artisanal foodstuffs.

This morning, for example, at the Burnaby Farmers’ Market, my purchases (in approximate order) were:

  • Bantam corn, consisting of ears about eighteen centimeters long and four in diameter, promised by the vendor to be less sweet than most modern variants.
  • Cloves of organic garlic
  • A strong goat cheese made in the English way with embedded garlic and chives
  • A blackberry and peach tart
  • Half a dozen ears of normal sized corn, described to me as a local variant of Twilight
  • A Neufchatel cheese
  • Two lemon tarts with a cookie crust
  • Whole wheat bread made with honey (a sort of Gentile’s challah, bought in part because the descriptions of the type of bread and some of their names made me wonder what pages of mild erotica were doing scattered among the loaves)
  • A raspberry lemon concentrate

I would have gone on to see what the organic beef, chicken, and fish sellers were offering, but at this point I had spent my quota.

Strictly speaking, these purchases put a serious dent in my monthly food budget. But, by a rationalizing sleight of hand, I counted them as part of my discretionary funds. Of the items on this list, only the normal sized corn was actually on this week’s grocery list, but I know that I will enjoy all of them, sooner or later.

Then, sooner or later, when they are gone (or possibly a bit before), I will be headed to another farmers’ market, just as eager to beguiled and to buy with a child’s impulsivity as ever before, sure that, if I just look hard enough, I will find fresh moly salad or unicorn flank steak, just waiting for me to try.

Read Full Post »

Rights vs. Utilitarianism

Posted in Bruce Byfield, ethics, feminism, FLOSS, FOSS, Free Software, open source, opensource, Personal, rights, Uncategorized, utilitarianism, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on August 18, 2013| Leave a Comment »

I consider myself pro-feminist. I was one of the first professional journalists to talk about sexism in free software, and I make a point of mentioning newsworthy women whenever possible. However, my position does not mean that I support every argument in its favor. I am particularly hesitant about the argument that free software is missing something if its developers are mostly male, and that having a more equitable proportion of women will automatically make free software better.

The idea is probably true in the sense that more women in free software means more developers. Perhaps, too, more testing with female users might affect usability to a degree.

But unless I’m mistaken, the people making this claim mean more than that. Without actually saying so, they seem to be hinting that there is a female sensibility or perspective that is currently missing in free software. That seems a valid argument in literature or other arts, but I can’t help suspecting that there are only so many use-cases in software development, and that few – if any – are related to gender.

The argument isn’t helped by the vagueness with which it always seems to be made. How, exactly, does a database become better because a larger percentage of woman wrote its code? How might more women improve the features of a word processor? I am ready to consider such arguments, but, aside from an issue with name changes in Git,  I have never heard any made except in the most general terms. The main exception, as Anita Sarkeesian continues to document, is video games – but games fall into the category of story-telling, in which gender issues are self-evident.

Anyway, the argument has been made at least a couple of times before. Some suffragettes claimed that giving women the vote would eliminate war and poverty – a claim that we now know to be untrue. Eco-feminists made similar claims about innate nurturing tendencies a couple of decades ago, but their arguments from alleged evolutionary fact are no more solid than the biological arguments that misogynists use to prove female inferiority.

As Cordelia Fine relates in the wonderfully titled Delusions of Gender, the differences between male and female intellectual capacity are simply too minimal for them to be taken seriously. Given a coding project to a group composed entirely of women, and statistically the result is as likely to be as satisfying – or as messed up – as what is produced by an all-male group.

However, my real objection to the argument is the fact it is utilitarian, which seems a dangerous way to argue what comes down to a matter or rights. The trouble with a utilitarian argument in such matters is that, at least in theory, it can work both ways.

For instance, when the question of women serving in combat is raised, most of the arguments against the idea claim to be firmly grounded in the practical. The claims are made, for instance, that women lack the necessary strength, or that male soldiers would be distracted by their wish to protect their female peers. Yet even if these claims were true – and I believe they are not – would that stop anyone insisting that women should have the chance to serve in combat? I know that it would not change my opinion.

In the same way, women’s greater participation in free software is a right, a possibility that should be open to any woman who proves her competence. It seems to me that to lose sight of that basic fact is to risk being distracted by arguments that can just as easily work against the cause as for it. Argue that everyone deserves a chance, that everyone should be able to fulfill their potential – but don’t argue that the result will be noticeably different in other ways, because the odds are that it won’t be.

Read Full Post »

Blind assessment

Posted in affirmative action, blind assessment, Bruce Byfield, essay marking, feminism, hiring practices, Personal, teaching, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on August 13, 2013| 2 Comments »

When I was a teaching assistant and sessional instructor, I spent a lot of time worrying about fairness in my marking. I didn’t have much problem at the start of a semester, because I hadn’t put names and faces together. However, by the second and third week, I knew all the students, and how they behaved in class would start affecting how I marked their essays. Those I liked would get the benefit of the doubt, while I could never be sure if I was marking fairly those who disrupted their classes or skipped them. Worrying about such biases, I came up with an obvious but effective way of making marking fairer that I believe would also go a long way towards increasing the gender and ethnic diversity in hiring.

My solution was simple: early in the semester, I distributed a formatting guide. Besides the usual suggestions for font selection and citation methods, and a suggestion that students should not waste their time adjusting margins and fonts to fit each assignment’s page count, I asked students to provide a title page. I asked that the title page include their name and contact information, but no other part of the assignment. When students submitted papers, I asked that the title pages be folded back.

In this way, I had no idea whose paper I was marking, and could feel confident that I was marking the contents alone. Only after I had assigned a grade and made a final comment did I turn to the title page so I could enter the grade in my mark book.

I pride myself on fairness, and the ability to put personalities aside when considering an issue. Yet the first times I marked blindly, some of my worst suspicions about myself were confirmed. Before I started marking blindly, by the semester’s second or third assignment, I often would save certain student’s work to cheer me up after a dismal run of papers, or put off marking another student’s work because I knew it would likely challenge my patience. Naturally, my expectations tended to be confirmed, although if I had the time (which I rarely did), I would check the best and the worst and sometimes change my marks.

However, after marking blindly, I would often be surprised by the results. The students I judged as talented were still at the top of the class, but often their ranking was lower. Similarly, the students I disliked sometimes ranked higher than before.

But the real difference was in the middle. Students I had little sense of because they rarely contributed in class almost always received higher marks when I marked blindly – occasionally, as much as two or three grades higher. Even more so than the students at the extreme, I had been short changing those in the middle, due entirely to my personal reactions or perhaps their lack of social skills.

What I had been doing was no different from what other instructors were doing. In fact, in the department common room, I regularly heard professors and instructors exchanging stories about students. Sometimes, they even spoke with vindictive glee about how they would punish students with bad marks. I had generally keep aloof from such discussions, but now I was forced to admit that my sole saving grace was that I believed I should try to be fair. Too many of the other department members didn’t seem to care about fairness at all.

In fact, some tenured professors seemed to regard punitive marking as one of the perqs of their position. One even marked me down in a grad seminar because he had a longstanding feud with my mother, who lived near him. When I described my efforts to mark blindly, these professors were surprised that I would take such concerns for people who only students, after all.

All I knew for sure was that marking blindly made living with myself much easier. I was proud of the procedure, and, having discovered it, inevitably followed it.

Years later, I learned that I was not the only person to make such a discovery. I remember seeing one study in which the number of women in orchestras rose considerably when auditioners could hear the music, but not see the musician.

Why, I wonder, should employment policies not be required to be similarly blind? Obviously, a time comes when interviewers have to see the job candidates face to face. But we regularly hear that male or English-sounding names have an advantage in the initial screenings, so resumes, at least, could be screened blindly.

I can easily imagine other procedures, such as one person doing the interview and the decision-maker reading the transcripts. But such steps, although fairer, would make the arduous process of hirer harder yet, and perhaps are not essential.

After all, it is the initial selection that seems to be the main bottleneck for women and minorities. Discrimination is much easier when exercised against a name than a person on the other side of the table, and many women and minority members acquit themselves well enough in interviews if they can only get one in the first place.

In fact, I sometimes think that blind assessment would accomplish as much as affirmative action, but with less resentment. Arguments can be made against affirmative action, although I believe that I can disprove them. But what can anyone say about procedures that are fairer for everyone? Give everyone the chance to be judged on their accomplishments rather than their background, and equal hiring practices might follow naturally and unobtrusively.

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »