Digital immigrant

So there I was on Friday, listening to someone asking whether there are Boerejode. He didn’t use that word but that’s what he was asking about, ie, Afrikaans speaking Jews.

He didn’t direct the question to me but I decided to be a know-it-all and answered his question in the affirmative. Yes, there are indeed Boerejode.

His response was one of incredulity; he couldn’t believe that there are Jews who speak Afrikaans — he’s never met a Boerejood. And that’s funny because I know of at least one such family.

It’s funny how our environment shapes our understanding of the world. Some of the things we consider weird or exotic are actually very much vanilla in other parts of the world. So why is it that so many of us are unwilling or unable to make that mental leap? Is it a form of hubris to want to define the world by the things we’ve experienced? Or rather, should I ask whether it’s a form of hubris to say ‘I’ve never encountered a Boerejood so ergo there can’t be any in existence’.

Is this error of thinking solely a ‘biased example’, or does it intersect with some other error of thinking that I have never heard of?

I’m one of the supposedly smallish percentage of people who talk to themselves. This won’t be news to you if you know me or if you’ve seen me walking down the road. And yes, I do sometimes talk to myself in public, though I’m quick to STFU when I realise there are people nearby.

I really enjoy talking to myself and I look forward to those sessions. This is pretty consistent with what some other people experience, though I know I’m looking at a tiny section of the self-talking population — people who admit to talking to themselves 2) in blog or forum comments on the internet. Some of these people are INTP or INTJ and they are or were only children.

So I had what started off as a debate about the advantages of self-talk last week. I couldn’t think of any off-hand but then I started to think about it on Friday.

I tend to talk to myself when I’m alone or when I think I am alone. But there are also differences — when I know that I am alone I’ll be a lot more expressive with my facial expressions and arm movements. When I’m walking somewhere for example, I’ll speak softly and I’ll try to keep hand and facial movements to a minimum.

There are definitely benefits to self-talk. I tend to plan things by talking to myself. I’ll consider what to do this month and then weigh that up to what I’ll do next month. It helps to clear up confusion, even if just by a little bit.

It also helps me to solve problems when I talk out loud like that. I remember doing this with math problems in high school. It also relieves stress but what’s strange is that I sometimes stop talking to myself when I’m under extreme stress. And then I get lonely.

At other times I’ll be commenting on an article that I’m reading, never mind that someone else is around with whom I can talk. It’s a pity that we’ve stigmatised self-talk as particular to schizophrenia. I don’t hear voices in my head so I kinda can’t be schizophrenic.

So now you know that you’re not the only one. And it’s really not such a crazy or unusual thing to do, this talking to yourself.

I want to dedicate this song to a spessal person who likes to listen to liedjies en sulke goed.

Eskom wants a $3.5 billion loan from the World Bank and it looks as though their application will be denied. The US won’t vote for or against awarding Eskom the loan but the other 23 members of the World Bank’s board of executive directors will. So I have a suggestion — those 138 companies who profited from reduced electricity tariffs should sommer give Eskom $3.5 billion, which is R25 billion all in all.

Bonus prize goes to those 10 companies who had had the most profitable business deals with Eskom — they get to pay the bulk of the prize.

Cause you see, these reduced business tariffs are part of the reason for Eskom’s failure to provide the proper service they should give us. And poor people have paid far too much for the parastatal’s incompetence and fraudulent tactics. Let big business pay for a change.

Caveat: This is only possible in a world where these companies won’t pass on the cost to their consumers.

An email exchange about Bushisms and Rumsfeldisms got me thinking a bit. Yeah, really just a bit because yesterday was unbearably hot. Our friend Donald Rumsfeld once made the following observation:

Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns — the ones we don’t know we don’t know.

So I’ve been in love with this since I read about it late last year. And I’ve been talking to people about it. But Mr Rumsfeld forgot about the fourth category — unknown knowns, ie, there are things we know but we don’t know that we know them.

Remember that time in Standard 1 when your teacher wanted to know what bees eat? Your hand shot up and you told her that the bees eat royal jelly. That is an example of an unknown known, ie, you didn’t even know that you knew the answer until the teacher’s question got your mind working. You were surprised and chuffed with yourself. And remember that time in Standard 9 when one of your teachers wanted to know which country had had a border conflict with Ethiopia? You surprised yourself by answering that it was Eritrea.

So perhaps I should write Mr Rumsfeld a friendly email to let him know about this fourth dimension.

So I had drinks with a friend last week and we had the conversation that I have so very often with some people: why is it that everyone else has so many friends and we don’t? Or rather, why is it that there are so many people around us — at restaurants, putt putt courses, and shopping malls — who are ‘accompanied’ by friends or family, and we often end up doing things alone? Because my friend and I do have friends. We probably have an average number of friends whom we can call to celebrate that promotion (I’m still working on getting mine) or on whom we can rely to go see a movie once a week or so.

But we feel it is not adequate. We feel that we should hang out with a different friend every night, and especially at the weekends.

I think part of the problem is the media. We watch Sex and the City and think we should all have 3 friends with whom to have breakfast — every single day of the week. And we want our posse to be as stylish, sexy, intelligent and independent as the SATC bunch. So we feel a bit abnormal when the posse doesn’t appear.

So I was thinking. Could it perhaps be that those accompanied people we see at restaurants, putt putt courses, and shopping malls also feel the same? Could it be that those accompanied people also only team up with a friend once or twice a week? And that you will find them lounging in front of the television for the rest of the week?

So the Richard Dawkins Forum kinda tanked last week and ‘our people’ are now like the Jews — scattered among several fora. Please, everyone, come join us at Rationalskeptimism where new topics won’t get moderated.

I don’t generally do nylon but this Prada handbag isn’t too shabby.

I’m not too sure whether I like or love this handbag. It’s very Samantha from Sex and the City. It’s a tiny bit gaudy, which isn’t something I’d expect from Valentino.

The only thing I dislike about this Miu Miu bag is the logo. I guess that’s why I like Woolworths bags so much: they don’t have any logos.

It’s funny how I can admire this Judith Leiber bag but not the fugly swan purse from that SATC episode. But no, I’d never buy something like this.

I like this Emilio Pucci clutch. It’s cute, it’s smallish, and it’s bean-shaped.