Some sort of comment by TextMate on the verboseness of Java?
Enforced collaboration through provision of forums
Home made transformer
Cat on a cushion
Brunel law students queue overnight to get dissertation supervisors of their choice
Wonder who “the big five” of EEE would be…
What's your BrainHex class?
Your BrainHex Sub-Class is Seeker-Mastermind.
You like finding strange and wonderful things or finding familiar things as well as solving puzzles and devising strategies.
Each BrainHex Class also has an Exception, which describes what you dislike about playing games. Your Exceptions are:
» No Fear: You do not enjoy feeling afraid, preferring to feel safe or in control.
» No Pressure: You dislike being asked to perform under pressure, preferring to take your time so you can make the right decision.
Persuasive Games: Little Black Sambo
Ian Bogost discusses the Scribblenauts racism controversy, where typing ‘sambo’ appears to create a watermelon in the game. The article is a thoughtful history of the term, what its racist connotations are, how it was included in the game, and some analysis of the internet’s discussion of the Scribblenauts inclusion.
Overwhelmingly, the comments on this and other articles about the issue are angry that this topic is being discussed. Many people say that they have never encountered the word, so this debate is bad for teaching them a new racist term. Others say that since they’ve never heard it, it’s lost its racist meaning. Finally, there are others who think the reasons for bringing this to light are to discredit or ban the game.
“The stir that is being caused over all of this is what I find disturbing. Everyone is on a witch hunt these days, and they are the ones causing the most harm.” Jeremy Miller
The level of anger and dismissal of the potential for offence is surprising. For a start, racist people are going use racist language, regardless of the size of their vocabulary. Highlighting the potentially racist meaning of aspects of a game isn’t going to inherently lead to a resurgence in the use of the term.
The people who have never heard this as a term of abuse are in a privileged position: they are likely not black, and generally younger, growing up in an environment where ‘sambo’ has been replaced by other derogatory terms. They are not aware of this term because it has never been used against them. That means they don’t have the moral right to tell others that that they shouldn’t be offended, or that it has lost its abusive meaning. Rather than blaming others for ruining the game by discussing this aspect, they would do a lot better by listening to the reasons for the perception of racism.
Words in themselves are not racist. They have a cultural context and history of usage that give nuance to their basic meaning. The most common defence against the charge of using racist language is “But I’m not racist, so I didn’t mean it that way” (c.f. Prince Charles calling a staff member Sooty). A fuller version of this would be “When I use this term it only means exactly what I intend, and you are wrong to take offence at the meaning you ascribe to it”. But language is a shared contract, and the intent of the speaker doesn’t negate historical usage and background of the listener.
When someone highlights the potential for a second meaning, generally they are trying to educate about the nuances that may cause offence, and to ask if that was intended, not berate or harass the speaker. This approach assumes careless language was used through ignorance, and gives the opportunity for a retraction, apology, or whatever response the speaker finds appropriate (including further discussion and explanation). If offence was not intended, only the most callous and self-centred would fail to modify their behaviour in the future, thinking the meaning they assign to particular language trumps others’.
If you are told that your behaviour is hurtful to some, the reasons for that hurt are explained, and you continue to dismiss that hurt without engaging in discussion, you are an asshat.
In the days of my youth, gum came in two pack sizes: the regular 5-stick pack, or the plenTpak with 15 sticks. This was pretty long ago, when the supermarket checkout gum rack was at eye level, and the contents were banned by my mum as a choking hazard. Yet the perfect shape of the packets fascinated me, and in the weekly queue I’d imagine the days when I’d be grown up enough to sample Orbit and Extra, my discerning palate giving preference to spearmint or peppermint (but probably spearmint, since the vivid green was far better than blue).
But something always puzzled me: why was it called a plenTpak? I parsed the ‘pak’ all right, but I couldn’t resolve first bit. I read it as ‘plent’, or maybe it was a ‘plen pak’ with coincidentally T-shaped decoration in the middle. And thus the plent pack of chewing gum became part of the background of my childhood: coveted in those supermarket queues, eventually deemed of minimal lethality, bought with pocket money, and no longer questioned. It was a full decade later, when I was firmly a teenager, than the parse finally resolved in my brain.
A plen-T-pak. A pack of plenty. As with all these things, you can’t unsee it, and it’s a mystery why it took so long for me to get it.
But now ‘plent’ is part of my internal vocabulary. You know, everyone has a list of words that began with a misreading or incorrect syllable weighting, that still remain in their adult vocabulary. The most difficult thing is keeping them alive in internal dialogue for the pleasure they bring, but censoring them from produced speech.
Other favourites of mine are Penelope, pronounced with three syllables (pen + elope); and interminable, with stress on the first and third syllables.
What are yours?
