Coming Back

I got back to Canberra this morning, after 10 days in Tasmania. Now that I'm back, I can't remember having actually done anything during the time. Sure, I read (logic papers mainly), wrote (notes on said papers and Z specification for an assignment), saw (a younger sibling's primary school sports carnival), and did (helped take some stuff to the rubbish dump) some stuff, but not 10 days worth of stuff. On the other hand, it was good to catch up with my family and my friends in Launceston.

Why does Canberra's airport shuttle bus not run on weekends and public holidays? If Launceston airport has enough traffic to make public holiday airport runs worth the operators while, I don't see how Canberra cannot.

In a similar manner, I don't see why so much stuff is closed here in Canberra. I've just got back from town and everything (with the exception of a few cafes) is shut. Even the supermarket. Strange city...

Cultural Pollution

I've been reading quite a bit of fan fiction recently and it has caused me to ponder cultural pollution. A lot of the stories I have read recently have been for fandoms with a non-American background. In spite of stories being set in the UK and with a cast of characters from the UK, many of these stories are littered with Americanisms, some of which indicate an alarming lack of knowledge about the rest of the world.

I have encountered time and again such terms as 'college' for a university, 'freshmen' for students (of some variety), 'sidewalks' for footpaths, 'trash cans' for rubbish bins, 'cable' for pay television, etc. The ways in which American usage has diverged from the rest of the English speaking world (i.e. the Commonwealth) never ceases to amaze me. That I encounter so many stories in which allegedly British (or Australian, New Zealander, etc) characters utilise the language in ways that I'm not sure they would even understand makes me wonder just how one sided the "pollution" is. Just how much the average American (or more correctly, the average American fan fiction writer) knows about the world outside the USA.

In some cases (such as 'cable', 'trash can' and 'sidewalk') the slips can be forgiven as the authors unfamiliarity with what amounts to foreign usage. In other cases though (especially 'freshmen', 'seniors', etc and 'college') such terms are not just "out of character", they can be plain wrong. In one story, a character described a class at Oxford as being "college freshmen" in spite of the facts that the character probably wouldn't know what 'freshmen' meant in any more than the most general sense and that using the word 'college' in reference to a collegiate university is not only contrary to usage, but so ambiguous as to be wrong.

Is such ignorance endemic to the US? Is the flow of culture so one sided that they do not realise that we speak differently? Perhaps they simply do not care? What ever the case, I find myself agreeing with Jacques Chirac and those like him: measures must be taken to protect other cultures from being overwhelmed. We must not allow our differences in usage, the peculiarities that help to give character to our language, be subsumed by the behemoth that is American English. Our idiosyncrasies, our peculiarities, our divergences are part of what make us who we are, as communities. The world, I feel, would be a sadder place without that variety.

On the other hand, you probably don't agree with me.
:-)

Stupid Apple!

As much as I love my iBook, want a iMac and find my iPod handy, I hate Apple. I recently bought a remote control for my iPod. You know, the one that goes in between the ear-phones and the iPod. The one with the clip to conveniently attach it to your clothing so that you can get to it.

As it is designed to be used in a manner that makes it susceptible to the buttons being knocked, the Apple engineers put a hold switch on it, so that you can disable the buttons while not in use. After less than a week of use, the hold switch fell of my iPod remote control. While it was locked. Needless to say, I was a little surprised.

Naively, I took my remote to the Apple store at which I purchased it. After a bit of a wait (they were busy) one of the staff told me that I had to phone Apple and gave me the number. When I phoned Apple, the telephone operator told me (after a while on hold) that I needed to fill in a form on the Apple web site and then take it and the item to be returned to Australia Post (what I do with it then was left as an exercise for the reader). As annoying as this is, I can accept that Apple is a big company and, as such, they need procedures like these to get anything done.

What really shits me off, is that I can't submit the form on the Apple web site because it requires credit card information. I don't have a credit card, I don't want a credit card and if I did have a credit card, I most certainly wouldn't give it to a company in these circumstances.

While I love Apple's computers and find my iPod and Airport Express base station handy, I can't help but be appalled at:

1. the fact that a remote control, a device designed to be carried around, broke after less than a week; and


2. that I need to enter my credit card details to return an item that, as I see it, was not fit for the purpose for which it was sold.

I suppose that I need to phone the help line again to find out what I'm supposed to do, but in the mean time, I can't help but resent it.