Point of Reference

I've been reading the various reports on the successful navigation of Bill C-38 through the House of Commons, and I've noticed something interesting: article after article talks about opposition from the Conservatives, about the Cabinet Minister who resigned rather than vote for it, and especially about objections made by representatives of the Catholic Church, various conservative Christian groups, and other religions who are strongly opposed to same-sex marriage and fear they may now be forced to perform such marriages, despite government assurances to the contrary. What I have yet to see is a single article quoting representatives of religions that support same-sex marriage. The United Church of Canada--the largest Protestant denomination in the country--has been urging the government to legalize same-sex marriage for years now (and offering what blessings they could to such pairings in the interim). Why are its leaders not being quoted? I'm not Christian, but if I were, I think I'd be offended at the way all Christians are being portrayed as intolerant nutjobs.

While prepping for my Soc 101 tutorial, I noticed that the author of the first reading in the supplementary reader seems to have a rather strongly negative attitude towards qualitative research. "Okay," I thought, "this isn't the attitude I'd present to first year students, but I'm sure future articles will balance it out." I'm still waiting for that future article. The rest of the articles have all taken one of two positions: they ignore qualitative research, or they talk about it as a good preliminary technique that's useful for identifying the variables you're going to study once you get down to the serious, quantitative work. So far, there's not a single article that treats qualitative research as a legitimate enterprise unto itself. I'm disappointed, but not terribly surprised. The qualitative-quantitative divide remains a major one in sociology, driving otherwise reasonable people to do completely idiotic things like quit their job upon the passage of a proposal that enabled Ph.D. students to include a qualitative section on their methodology comprehensives. At this year's Annual Meeting of the Canadian Sociology and Anthropology Association, the discussant for the "Future of Anglo-Canadian Sociology" suggested that the meeting really ought to divide the panels by paradigm rather than substantive topic, on the grounds, one imagines, that people would be more likely to attend panels if they knew they wouldn't be subjected to a conflicting ontological position. My current school falls even more heavily on the quant side of the spectrum that my previous school (the one from which those foolish faculty departed so as not to have to bear graduating doctoral students with a knowledge of both qual and quant), and so I suppose it's only to be expected that the textbooks we use would parrot that message.

Up with numbers, down with Verstehen!

We spent the weekend on a deck improvement project. We set out to get a grill, an umbrella, chairs, cushions, and some plants and assorted plant things (soil and pots to plant them in, fertilizer to keep them alive, brackets to hang them with, et cetera).

B already had one large, soil-and-weed-filled box on his deck. For that, we bought three varieties of tomatoes and some red peppers. For cooking, we also bought a little herb box and some oregano, sweet basil, and cilantro to grow in it (along with some English lavender just for fun). And for pure decoration, we purchased a princess lily plant and a lovely dark blue pot which we suspended from the railing of the deck.

Unfortunately, the plants were all we got done in the four hours we were out. Everything else will have to wait until next weekend. Apparently this is what happens to people who insist on going to bed at 4am and rising at noon.

I'm supposed to be engaged in coding interviews right now, so instead I ran a Google search on myself and all of my siblings. We have what appears to be (from my North American vantage point) a not-uncommon Japanese surname that becomes highly unusual when paired with our (extremely common) European given names. This has the advantage of ensuring that we'll never be hit with bills that actually belong to someone else, or be kept off a plane because our name closely resembles the name of someone on the no-fly list. It has the disadvantage of making us exceptionally easy to stalk, if someone were so inclined, and of making it impossible to pretend that the name on the no-fly list really refers to someone else. And finally, it means that we do ego searches on Google, every hit actually refers to us.

semiotic_trader got the most hits with 34. Many of these were academic, including one that looked like his newly published article (yay!), although I'm not sure because the link didn't work. The rest were mainly leftover articles from his days as a university reporter and news editor, floating in various archives on the web, which is often not as ephemeral as we think.

I had the second largest number of hits with 22. Most of these were also academic, although there was one hit leftover from a second year co-op job. There's a lot of university service stuff, a couple of conference references, and my profile for the collaborative program I'm enrolled in. [Nothing, however, from my home department, which has yet to get around to putting grad student info on their badly outdated website, much to the frustration of myself, the department computer committee, and presumably a whole host of universities looking for promising new graduates to hire ;)] I also get three hits with Google Images that actually lead to pictures of me. That's kind of scary. Although, again, unusual name combination = easy stalking. Which is one of the reasons I rarely use my real name when I participate online. (There are lots more pictures of me floating out on the web on websites belonging to various friends, but they typically label the pictures only with my excessively popular first name, so it's not really a problem.)

steninja had two hits, both from the meeting minutes of a club she belonged to in first year.

The non-LJ sibling with no appropriate nickname got one hit, from an assignment he did as an undergraduate.

reiber has nothing, because he's apparently even more paranoid about putting his real name out there than I am.

Spent the morning at the gym, and now I'm back and almost ready to work. I'm falling behind on my marking, so I imagine that's what I'll be spending the day doing. Well, that and trying to put together some sort of supervisory committee who will sign off on my annual review before the end of the week. I have two of three, but I seem now to have exhausted all of the people remotely interested in my area. That's a bit of a problem.

Tonight's AmericanAnglo's birthday celebration, which ought to be fun.

semiotic_trader, if you're bored at work, you could try helping out this guy.

Someone in this building is smoking up, and the smell's coming in through the ventilation system. I can't decide if it's better or worse than the patchouli scent that usually wafts through here.

We're seriously considering moving when our lease is up.

Yesterday was MasseyPrincess's birthday and birthday celebration: a small dinner at Springrolls and a much larger party at Gypsy Co-op. Lots of fun had by all, except for the one poor friend who spent two hours at the bar unsuccessfully searching for us before finally giving up and going home. MasseyPrincess, her sister, ComedyWriter and I ended the evening with a quick stop at Mel's for poutine and Montreal smoked meat sandwiches.

This afternoon MasseyPrincess and I went reconnaissance shopping (and late birthday gift shopping). MasseyPrincess will be getting some money in a month, and wants to spend some of it on a new leather jacket, so we decided a preliminary look was in order. While there, she suggested that I try on a lime green jacket that she discarded because it looked fairly awful on her (unfortunately, because that was the colour she really wanted). Lime green is not a colour I normally wear. Blue and pink--yes. Black, grey, and white--absolutely. Green of any shade? Almost never. But MasseyPrincess has a history of picking out items for me that I'd never choose for myself, but that turn out to look good and so I tried it on, and well...the jacket worked. It really worked. So now I'm trying to convince myself that a $300 leather jacket is a completely justifiable purchase. And still trying to figure out what to get MasseyPrincess for her birthday.

Tonight's dinner and television night with FrenchWriter and AmericanAnglo, and then tomorrow I begin working on an article review that's due Thursday, an outline for the report on how Canadians use the internet for leisure, and the two papers that are due in two weeks. And I should also try to do those last five interviews.

I'm sitting watching SG:1, wondering what excuse they gave for Teal'c growing hair.

Tomorrow, the third section of my dissertation proposal is due for my research practicum class. The class has been very useful in forcing me to think through and write down my ideas, and the feedback from the other students in the class has been great, but the more I read about my topic, the more I realize how unfeasible my original idea was--and more importantly, the more I realize that it's not really what I want to do--and now I'm having a very hard time writing the third section, knowing that it's not something that I'm actually going to use.

Easter weekend is apparently laundry weekend in my building, because every time I go down to the basement, someone's using the machines. Ah well, I washed my clothing a few days ago. I was hoping to do some household stuff, but that can wait.

I've been celebrating the weekend by watching my Babylon 5 DVDs. I was going to watch Buffy, but B5 called out to me at the last minute, claiming neglect, and so I popped it in instead. Funny--when I was a kid, I knew nothing about actors or what was being watched on TV or pop culture in general. I never bought magazines, I had no posters on my wall...and then along came the Internet and everything changed.

Today I'm going to do some work before heading up to see the family and celebrate reiber's birthday, one day early.

I've noticed that I can't seem to cook for other people without subjecting my food to a full critical analysis after we've eaten, identifying all the things I need to change for next time. Actually, I probably do this when I cook just for myself too, but it's more noticeable when I cook for other people because I make them listen to the analysis as well. Last night, for example, I made chicken in rosemary-white wine sauce, Moroccan-seasoned roasted vegetables, and long-grain rice, and after the meal I sat explaning to my dinner companion how next time I'd pound the chicken so that it wasn't so thick, brown it for longer before adding the wine, and use fresh rosemary in the sauce rather than dry. (I actually wanted to use fresh rosemary yesterday, but couldn't find any.) The food was good; I don't think he really needed to hear how I'd make it better, and yet I couldn't seem to resist.

But it'll be a kickass meal next time I make it. Well, except perhaps for the risotto I'm going to make to replace the long-grain rice; that might require some further analysis.