My vocation is to help people understand things. This is different from “explaining things”; when you “explain”, the person to whom you are explaining is passive. Helping people understand things is collaborative; I want to engage with the audience, not just lecture them. I don’t want them to be a passive receiver of verbiage. I want to provide the steps on which they climb to a higher level of comprehension. In my particular case, this is through technical writing, but I do try hard to apply this in all aspects where it’s needed. Explaining things to my autistic child, for example.

So words are my stock in trade. I operate in words in a way similar to how a sculptor might work in marble, or a painter in, well, paint. I craft words into information, and try to make it engaging and helpful. It’s how I earn my daily bread.

As you might expect from someone who has been crafting information in this way for a few decades, I have some strong opinions on words and phrases in regular use. Some delight me; some drive me nuts. And I wanted to share that a bit.

Almost everyone has some word or turn of phrase that drives them nutty. Online in social media lately you can see people mixing up “your” and “you’re” all the time, and you can see it driving lots of other people absolutely nutty. (Hint: I am your friend because you’re a good person. Extrapolate.)

I first got a hint of this in my high school English class, where my favorite teacher Mr. Rodriquez—one of two English teachers who encouraged my writing ability, and to both of whom I owe a huge debt—was driven crazy when a student used the word, “nice”. “‘Nice’ how?!” he would bellow. “In what way is it ‘nice’? What makes it ‘nice’? Then use those words! ‘Nice’ is useless!” I don’t necessarily agree, but it definitely doesn’t speak well of a word when it’s lexicography is:

late 13c., “foolish, ignorant, frivolous, senseless,” from Old French nice (12c.) “careless, clumsy; weak; poor, needy; simple, stupid, silly, foolish,” from Latin nescius “ignorant, unaware,” literally “not-knowing,” from ne- “not” (from PIE root *ne- “not”) + stem of scire “to know” (see science).

OED

Not very “nice” at all, is it? It drove poor Mr. Rod batty when we used it. (So of course some wags did it deliberately. Fortunately, he had a sense of humor.)

For my dad, it was “irregardless”. “It’s not a word!” he would say. “Why not just say ‘regardless’?” And I had to admit I had a point.

These and similar types of lessons encouraged me to not only be careful in which words I chose, but to make sure I didn’t choose one because it sounded “fancier” (“Irregardless!”) in the hopes it made me look clever. Don’t use “jejune” instead of “boring”, for example. Sure, sprinkle those kinds of word in your fiction to give it flavor, but just like you want a little cayenne in your gumbo, too much of that kind of thing makes it unpalatable.

As a bit of a contrast, author Dan Simmons is driven insane by the current use of “decimate” as equivalent to “utterly destroyed”. As Simmons points out, “decimate” comes from the Latin, meaning “to destroy one part in ten” (“deci” is from the Latin for “ten”). I understand his frustration. But despite many writers and grammarians desire to the contrary, English is a living language, words evolve, and sometimes they take on new meanings that don’t necessarily jibe well with their lexicographical origins. Almost everyone uses “decimate” as an equivalent for “utterly destroy” these days; Simmons’ efforts to the contrary, I think that ship has sailed. (Though personally, I use synonyms like “annihilate” or some such.)

What about me? Well, my “word irritation” comes from both a lack of precision in how these words are used, and the fact they in one case, it’s just wrong.

The first bone of contention is the sloppy way so many people use the words “couple” and “few”, often as if they’re synonyms. They’re not! “Couple” means “two”. That’s it; two. No more, no less. And yet some people mean it as if it’s equivalent to “a handful” or “a bunch” or “a few”. It makes me insane. No. It’s two. “A few” is “more than a couple.” Personally, I only use “a few” when it’s between three and ten, but I don’t expect everyone else to adhere to my OCD-enabled needs. (After “a few” comes “a bunch”, followed by “a lot”. But again, that’s me.)

A small digression: I apply similar precision to “probably” and “maybe”. “Maybe” means 50/50; “probably” for me is “a greater than 50% chance”. I know some people use them interchangeably; I don’t.

The other thing that’s been driving me batty on social media lately is when people want to make an exclamation of cuteness. That word, kids, is “Aw.” That’s what you saw when you see a cute cat video, or a baby smiles at you. NOT “awe”, which is “a feeling of reverential respect mixed with fear or wonder.” They’re not the same, and you need to stop using them as if they were!

Words have meanings, kids. And while yes, those meanings do evolve (much though it may frustrate Dan Simmons), if you want to communicate, if you want to help people understand what you’re saying, it’s important to use the right words. So think before you speak.

So tell me: What words or phrases drive you crazy? (And tell me if you want a similar rant on grammar, which I will entitle “Why We Shouldn’t Give a Damn About Split Infinitives, and Other Grammar Rules Doug Ignores”.)

When we are growing up, we just don’t question the individual character traits of our parents. They are who they are, sort of like the sun and the moon. Their actions are all-but-incomprehensible, how they developed into the people you experience a mystery. They just…are.

One of the major changes a person goes through is when they realize their parents are actual people, with thoughts and feelings and histories and motivations. It can be painful, or lead to conflict, especially when our parents are very different from the person we are developing into. We saw this on a societal level during the 1960s, when many of the Boomers revolted against the strictures—social, sexual, behavioral—under which their parents and grandparents had operated for decades. (That the Boomers, in Stephen King’s words, “could have changed the world and instead settled for the Home Shopping Network” is a whole different topic.)

My Dad has been gone for nearly a quarter-century now, taken at age 63 by colon cancer that he, in classic Silent Generation fashion, dismissed the warning signs of. (“If you ever see blood in your urine or stool, Doug, be sure to tell the doctor,” was his conclusion. The entire extended Moran family went for colonoscopies after he died.) And yet his influence over me has remained and, if anything, deepened in the intervening years.

As I have aged towards grandparenthood my own self, I have had a lot of cause to reflect on these influences. And one of the biggest I’ve noticed recently, in the aftermath of being laid off, is how I connect with people.

When I was little, I never considered it at all remarkable that my dad could chat just as easily with janitors, sanitation workers, and gardeners as he could with Admirals, Congressmen, and his engineering colleagues. He was DAD, and he did what he did. It’s only in the last few years I’ve come to realize both how remarkable a skill that was, and how much of it he passed on to me.

Recently, I was laid off from my job. This always comes as a shock when you’re a high performer with heavy expectations for yourself. Though of course at my age in this particular industry—high tech—which is notoriously both sexist and ageist, it wasn’t totally surprising. High tech is going through a lemming-like period right now where everyone is laying people off because…everyone is laying people off. The executives say it’s to cut costs and prepare for a (presumed) upcoming economic downturn. I don’t believe that for a moment. To me it’s clear that companies are doing it because other companies are doing it, with a side hope that this will relieve some of the pressure put on employers to be more reasonable to workers recently. They want their power back.

(I’m sure people like Larry Summers would go to great lengths to convince people I’m wrong. Fortunately, he doesn’t even know I exist, so it’s not a big worry on my part.)

Why am I mentioning this? Because I have been absolutely astounded at how many people have reached out tell me how shocked they are; how they can’t believe my company would lay me off; how it’s a stupid move on the part of my company; asking how they can help. This isn’t just friends; it’s coworkers, former coworkers, and even distant acquaintances. I received the following text from a person I am embarrassed to admit I can’t remember at all:

I’m not putting this in to brag—or not much—but rather to note that, somehow, I seem to make an impact on people, and they remember me. People from jobs I worked at 15 years ago are reaching out. People I’ve never actually physically met. I make connections somehow.

Like my Dad did.

I have only recently realized that my tendency to chat with anyone and everyone, to try to make connections, find shared experiences (“Oh really? I was born in Connecticut!”), ask people about their backgrounds, interests, and thoughts, is something I acquired from my Dad. It’s something I picked up subconsciously. Something that I have never, ever thought about, and that I’m incredibly grateful for.

People are interesting! Almost all people. And it is the incredibly rare person I run into who I haven’t found some kind of connection with. You’re from the Canary Islands? Don’t they speak French there? I’ve been to France and speak really bad French; can we speak French? Oh, you’re Jewish, too? Oh, you like to dance West Coast Swing? You like Lord of the Rings too? How old were you when you first read it? Really? Wow; that’s young! Like my dad, I don’t care if they’re a garbage collector or a CEO; a sewer worker or a high-ranking naval officer; a teacher or a waiter or a phone support person. They all have lives, they all have stories, there’s almost always something in common.

I’d like to say “I make the effort,” but really, it doesn’t feel like an effort. It’s something I’ve done for almost as long as I can remember.

And now that I’m a bit on my heels from being laid off, I’m finding that this gift I received basically by osmosis from my Dad is something that actually gives back. That’s not why I do it; it’s not a transactional kind of thing at all. I do it because I enjoy it. Because it’s part of me. And it’s just incredibly gratifying to find out, so many years on, that people appreciate it.

I have gone through most of my life thinking I basically blend into the background, don’t make a mark on the groups and organizations I’m part of, that I’m essentially the Invisible Man. This was engrained in me in Middle and High School, where it was absolutely true; when I wasn’t being ignored, I was being bullied. That this changed significantly in college, and a very different experience has been true since I started working in high tech, just completely escaped me.

To all you people out there who think well of me, I just want to thank you. Finding out after so long is an incredible blessing.

Lord give me the serenity…

For a while there were numerous articles on a phenomenon that the press labeled “quiet quitting.” (Why am I convinced that term was generated by management and not workers?) If you read these articles, there really isn’t any “quitting” involved; people are still perfectly willing to do their jobs, no matter how crappy. What they’re not willing to do is extra, unpaid work that is outside of the scope of their job. They’re not willing to do work before clocking in; they’re not willing to take on extra responsibility without being recognized for it (preferably with a promotion); they’re not willing to work extra shifts when they’re ill, and especially not feeling as if they have to be on the hook to find someone to cover their shifts when ill (that’s what you’re getting paid for, managers).

And this is being called “quiet quitting.”

When I started work in earnest after I got my degree in computer science at 22, I had been working in the service industry for 7 years. I had put myself through college with service jobs; kept myself fed and clothed with service jobs; and was acutely aware of just how many employers tried to abuse their power in squeezing more work out of you for free. (In fact, I think everyone should be required to work in—and live off the pay of—hourly service jobs for at least a year before they take on a non-service job. And anyone getting an MBA should have to put in an additional year.)

My first day on the job in high tech, one of my coworkers, as part of his training, told me, “Well, we’re scheduled to work 8 hours/day, but you’ll get lots of overtime.” And I thought, “Yeah, no way.” And then and there I came up with three rules for my work-life balance that I have stayed with to this day:

1. No overtime
2. No working lunches
3. No trade magazines on my free time

(I think the implementation of “brown-bag lunches”, where execs schedule a talk during lunch time and strongly hint you should give up your lunchtime to attend, is yet another example of management trying to squeeze workers. My lunchtime in mine; you want my attention, you go ahead and pay me for it.)

Word, Agent Sully

Now yes, I have occasionally broken those rules in extremis. I’ve attended working lunches, mostly for political reasons (ie to make my team look good in front of an executive). I’ve read some articles in trade magazines, but almost always on company time. And while I have sometimes stayed late or worked weekends because of the press of events, it is extremely rare.

Plenty of people have told me over the last 35+ years that I was limiting myself by being so stringent; that I would get poor performance reviews, wouldn’t get promoted, wouldn’t get bonuses, etc. And that’s turned out to be nonsense; not only have I gotten raises, promotions, bonuses, and accolades, I have regularly been tagged as a top performer. I’m not saying this to brag; I’m pointing out you can have a good work-life balance and do solid work that gets appreciated.

What aggravates me with the current situation is this: Workers finally have some leverage with business, and business is whining that they’re using that power to demand a reasonable work-life balance. And I’m actually thrilled that Millennials and GenZers are fighting back against the soul-sucking demands of pushy, fascistic, out-of-control managers. That the workforce is saying, “Enough!” is nothing but healthy, in my opinion.

I want to make clear that I don’t believe all management are pushy, fascistic, and out-of-control. But far too many, especially in service jobs, absolutely are. (Read any story about Elon Musk for examples.) You have all read the stories about Amazon drivers urinating in bottles, and factory fulfillment people being monitored by the second. Or Walmart workers forced to do work off the clock. Restaurant workers made to feel guilty for not coming in and working while sick. That’s absurd. It shouldn’t be borne. And I’m glad to see fewer and fewer people are accepting it. Because you don’t have to.

So those are my three rules. What are yours? And how have they worked out for you?

The wisdom of Stephen King

I turn 60 this year. And like plenty of folks my age (and most of my friends), my body is doing its best to betray me by falling apart and attempting to cripple me with various maladies.

The first warning of this—well, “decline” is the only word that fits—was when I was 36, the same year my dad died (at only 63, of prostate cancer). I have read that many people of a physical/athletic bent experience an injury sometime in their 30s that marks the changeover from young to “guess I’m starting to get old.” For me, it was when I was skeet-shooting with my Pop (my father-in-law, this is), and I blew out a disk in my neck. The subsequent massive pain was almost unbelievable, and forced me to get the disk removed and two vertebrae clamped in place.

And consigned me to chronic neck pain for the rest of my life. Not to mention robbing me of feeling in two of my left fingers.

When your doctor tells you, “You shouldn’t lift anything heavier than a half-gallon of milk” (thought the doctor in Texas changed this to “a six pack of beer”), it gets your attention. When you ask if you can continue to ski and are told, “Well, sure, if you don’t mind risking permanent paralysis,” it focuses the mind. Yup.

And of course that accelerated in my 40s and 50s, as it tends to do. My neck is curving under the influence of gravity and my injury. I have “essential tremors”. Almost exactly two and a half years ago, I was diagnosed with prostate cancer. A year ago I had bilateral pulmonary embolisms (“blood clots in the lungs” to you, my friend). Late last year, my eye doctor notified me I have cataracts (“But not bad enough for insurance to pay for surgery,” she said helpfully). My knees have been a tragic wreck since a soccer injury at 17. And so it goes.

And you know what? Fuck it. Get busy living, or get busy dying.

It would be spectacularly easy to give in to these various maladies and setbacks and just declare defeat, as my ex seemingly has done after her stroke. But that is just not me. I hurt. I fucking ache all the time, to be perfectly frank. AND I DON’T CARE. Ima live life anyway.

I mean, of course I “care”. I see my doctors; I get scans; I take blood pressure meds, and blood thinning meds, and cholesterol meds, and god knows what else is in my pill organizer. I try to follow my doctors’ advice (which is hard, because sometimes it conflicts). I go in for regular appointments and checkups and get the tests they say I need—at least to the point where insurance and money won’t pay. I’m not stupid.

But Ima live my life, dammit.

Time of your life, eh kid?

I can’t play soccer, or ultimate frisbee, or even swim or play frisbee golf? To heck with it; I’ll learn how to dance! I can’t see my besties regularly because they are scattered all over the durn place? To heck with it; I’ll schedule regular Zoom DnD sessions with them so we can hang like we used to in college!

Yes, I’m pushing 60 (quite hard), and yes my body can’t do what it used to, and yes, I face certain physical limitations.

I’m going to get busy living. What about you?

Hardison gets it

When I was a kid, I loved a few things that made me a profound outcast:

• Comic books
• Science fiction
• Star Trek
• Musicals
• Animation

I cannot overemphasize just how unpopular and/or denigrated nearly all those things were when I was living my best GenX life. Comic books were particularly looked down upon, but there was plenty of opprobrium left over for Star Trek, science fiction, and what these days they call anime and in my experience was limited to Speed Racer, Astro Boy, and the like. (And yes, I had plenty of love for Warner Brothers, Rankin-Bass, Jay Ward, and others too.)

It was tolerated in children, but you were supposed to grow out of it and start reading, I dunno, Dickens and watching Shakespeare. (I like Shakespeare, too; I was a weird kid.) Comic books were very much “trash culture”, not something you read in any kind of serious way. And watching science fiction on TV? C’mon, man.

(How this attitude squared with grown adults painting their faces green or wearing giant cheese wedges on their head to cheer on men giving each other concussions for their entertainment being acceptable I’ve never fully understood, but let’s just move on.)

Through my childhood, teens, and 20s, I mostly nursed these loves quietly and at the constant risk of disdain. If a girlfriend caught me reading a Heinlein juvenile or, God save us, an X-Men comic book, or waiting on line to go see Star Trek: The Motion Picture, oof, it could bring up issues. It wasn’t manly, that’s for sure.

Luckily, I ended up at UC Santa Cruz, a veritable hothouse of weird, and frankly I fit right in. I found friends who were equally weird, who also enjoyed some or all of these things, with whom I could talk, exchange recommendations, play video games (and foosball), and yes, smoke weed and drink. (Although I was never much of a drinker, truth to tell.)

In the 70s and 80s, there was, to put it mildly, a dearth of science fiction films. Yes, Star Wars—more of a space western, or possibly a space fantasy, than actual science fiction—opened the door. But for every Blade Runner, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, or Empire Strikes Back, there were 20 films like Saturn 3 or (God save us) Moonraker. Even a wonderful film like Superman (1978) had plenty of camp, harking back to the that classic, the 1960s “Batman” TV show.

Valerie Perrine asking why she “can’t get it on with the good guys.” Seriously.

Don’t get me wrong; I enjoyed it all and was happy to take what I could get. I could even now happily lecture you on why Saturn 3 isn’t nearly as bad as you think (Harvey Keitel!). I won’t go all the way into the tank and say Superman: The Quest for Peace was a good film, but still; when you’re in a cultural-enjoyment minority, you really do eat what’s set before you.

All this generational nostalgia is a long prelude to the main point, to wit: I am absolutely staggered that all of the stuff that I was looked-down upon for when I was younger is now a major part of the culture.

Until 1982, there were three seasons of Star Trek, a one-season run of a cartoon version, and a single, critically-panned film. (“Star Trek: The motionless picture,” Harlan Ellison famously called it.) Now there are nearly 900 episodes of TV shows spanning 44 television seasons. There are five shows in active development. There have been 13 films. One Captain of the Enterprise has received a knighthood, for cryin’ out loud! The theme song is so iconic it only needs to be used sparingly in the various properties to evoke emotion in the massive fanbase. It’s as pervasive to the culture now as Westerns were (so I’m told) in the 50s and 60s.

And of course while science fiction is still often treated as the bastard stepchild of literature (and goodness, what they do say about sub-genres like Steampunk!), there’s simply no question that big budged science fiction films are treated as Serious Art by actual living, breathing critics. Directors like Denis Villenueve, Christopher Nolan, Doug Liman, and Alex Garland have made entire careers by creating high-quality science fiction films that people treat with reverence. Films like Inception, Arrival, Live Die Repeat, and Ex Machina not only receive praise, they show the deep ideas science fiction can address, and are sometimes credited with changing people’s perceptions of what film can do.

This film was a mind-bender, and catnip to a hardcore SF fan

A similar phenomenon has happened with comic books. Frank Miller and Alan Moore pushed the bounds of what could be done with the form. (And of course they built on the work of the people so famous it would almost insult your intelligence to mention them, but I will so as to not let people think I believe comics weren’t invented until 1980 or something: Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, Will Eisner, Bob Kane, Bill Finger, Steve Ditko, the immortal [and criminally-used] Joe Shuster and Gary Siegel, and many others from the “Golden” and “Silver” ages of comics. Too numerous to list, so I ask forgiveness from fans of, say, Mike Grell, or John Byrne, or whoever.) The outburst of creativity in the 80s was astounding.

Like science fiction, though, this didn’t necessarily lead to a wide acceptance of the medium, but it did help energize creators to take chances on comic book films. Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman, of course, as well as Sam Raimi’s trilogy of Spider-Man films, as well as the (sometimes messy) early X-Men films. And now of course the massive Marvel Comics Universe and the big-budget DC films, employing prestige directors like Christopher Nolan, Kenneth Branagh, and Ang Lee show that Hollywood, at least, is taking the source material seriously enough to bet millions on it.

(I could make a point at how many of these creators are GenXers, but I’ll let you look up their birthdays on your own.)

So I hope you can understand how the current culture looks to me, a person who furtively read his Spider-man and Legion of Super Hero comics furtively in his bedroom, hiding them under the bed. It’s quite a mind-bender. It truly is the Age of the Geek. And horrible capitalist wealth disparities aside, quite frankly I love it.

Let’s face it: The most handsome iteration

I started reading before I started school, and have been an avid reader ever since. I very much enjoy rereading my favorites both from childhood (eg Louisa May Alcott or Johanna Spry) and my teen and young adult years (an inordinate amount of science fiction and some fantasy). I suppose I’m not much different from a lot of habitual readers in that; it’s not unlike rewatching favorite films or TV shows. It’s just something readers do.

It is a trope that people—men in particular—get more “conservative” as they age. (The scare quotes are because the terms “conservative” and “liberal” have been so abused in the last 30-40 years, and especially the last 20, as to have lost all meaning.) I don’t think that’s the case in general, which I addressed in another post, and it is absolutely not the case with me. I have only become more and more radicalized as I’ve aged, and as a proud Banana Slug and graduate of UC Santa Cruz, I started out pretty well out on the left to begin with.

I mention this because it figures into my reactions and perceptions as I reread fiction that I loved as a kid and young adult. Like everything else in the world, fiction seems to obey Sturgeon’s Law, and 95% of it is crap, and time is the filter that helps us determine what is crap, and what is Good Stuff™. And yet even some of the Good Stuff ™is, with the passage of time, changes to the world and society, and improved knowledge of history, at best problematic, and at worst…well, pretty bad. I want to take a few posts and examine some of my favorite reads in this light. Today, it’s Sherlock Holmes.

I’ll be blunt: I love Sherlock Holmes stories. I love the pastiches, the homages, the dramatizations. Despite his height, I thought Robert Downey, Jr’s portrayal was quite faithful to the spirit of Holmes. I was a huge early supporter of Benedict Cumberbatch’s modern take in the TV show “Sherlock”. I watched quite a few episodes of the show “Elementary”, although its police procedural nature eventually got tiresome to me. I was a massive fan of Tony Shalhoub’s “Monk”. And…well, you get the picture. I love Holmes in almost all of his forms.

I love Tony Shalhoub

Recently I went back and started rereading (and listening to Stephen Fry’s excellent audiobook version) the original stories again. Aside from the four “novels”—A Study in Scarlet, The Sign of Four, The Hound of the Baskervilles, The Valley of Fear (which are all pretty short by modern novel standards)—they’re short enough to read in one quick gulp. You get through them quite rapidly, if you have a mind.

And what I’ve found is it was sometimes quite hard to reread the stories with a modern, “3rd decade of the 21st Century” eye.

The racism woven throughout the stories is, of course, appalling. Interestingly to an American reader, hardly any of this is focused on people of African descent. I don’t know enough of British Victorian history to say whether this is because there simply weren’t a lot of Black Britons in those days, or that Doyle simply didn’t see Blacks as any different, or what. Indeed, Doyle has a story that is still surprisingly racially enlightened for its day, and was probably shocking in its time: “The Yellow Face.” If you haven’t read it, I don’t want to spoil it, but it is both delightful in it’s ending, and in how Doyle pokes racists right in the eye.

What I do know about Victorian attitudes is, if you weren’t European, you were inferior.

Indians, unsurprisingly, take the worst hit. They are ungrateful for Britain bringing them “civilization” (ignoring that India has been civilized an awfully long time before Europeans came marching in); they are back-stabbers; they are superstitious; and on and on. None of this is stated baldly—according to what I’ve read, Doyle was quite broad-minded…for his era. And therein lies the rub.

Koh-I-noor diamond, ripped off from India and inserted in the literal British crown

Related is the inherent imperialism that is clear throughout (and which Downey impishly referred to in his first Holmes film; “What a busy little Empire!”). Britons were of course unapologetically imperialist during the Victorian era, and Victorian England became one of the largest empires in the history of the world by the end of Victoria’s reign. And to a modern reader, knowing what we do about colonization, slavery, cultural repression, religious persecution, and on and on, eliding all the Imperial references in the Holmes stories can be…a bit difficult.

In my view the best example of this is the Andaman Island native Tonga in Sign of the Four. The nature of the language characters use to describe Tonga makes it quite clear he’s viewed as somewhere between a wild animal and a pet. He was “venomous as a young snake”; “he was devoted to me and would do anything to serve me”; “we earned a living at this time by my exhibiting poorTonga at fairs and other such places as the Black cannibal”; etc. It’s clear Mr. Small cares for Tonga; it’s equally clear he doesn’t consider him quite human.

And of course the sexism is pretty bad. Yes, Doyle created one of the great female characters of fiction in Irene Adler, who I adore. And yet even Irene makes her way through the world by…well, to put it bluntly, marrying up. One could reasonably argue that there simply weren’t that many options for advancement during the Victorian era—”You will inherit your fortune; we cannot even earn ours,” notes Elinor Dashwood in Sense & Sensibility, only a few decades prior to the Victorians—and I would not dispute it. I will simply point out the number of women who are said to be suffering from “brain fever” and other female-specific “maladies” is enough that practically make it an epidemic.

Then there’s the classism. Even today, the classism in the UK can be problematic; in the Victorian era, it was probably at its height, and most entrenched. All of the upper class are assumed to be “gentlemen”, while all the lower class are, almost by definition, suspect and sketchy. And before someone complains yes, I am well aware that Doyle sometimes turns this presumption on its head. This doesn’t change the baseline assumption that, if you are a member of the upper class, you are trustworthy unless proven otherwise, and if you are a member of the lower, suspicion falls on you immediately. This attitude tends to drag on me after too many pages.

They had classism diagrams, FFS

It should be said that Doyle does regularly subvert this trope by having Holmes work closely with “the lower classes”; boatmen, factory workers, boxers, and most famously the street urchins “the Baker Street Irregulars”. This is definitely to Doyle’s credit. And it still doesn’t change the entrenched classism displayed in the stories.

Very much related is the absolutely appalling state of working class. There’s no minimum wage, of course; no weekends off; very little job mobility. Servants can be dismissed by the nobility immediately and on a whim, regardless of years (or even decades and, in Hound of the Baskervilles, a full century!) of loyal service. This is bad enough, but in many cases this not only deprives the servants of their livelihood, but also their home, as many live with “the master”. And several times the nobleman threatens to give them bad references, dooming them to joblessness and homelessness for heaven’s knows how long. This is…well, it’s disgusting.

(And yup, I’m well aware we have similar problems today. At least we have weekends, overtime pay, healthcare, 40 hour work weeks, no child labor…I could go on, but you get the point.)

Finally, there is a terrible tendency for Holmes and Watson (and other “experts” with whom Holmes consults) to rely on what we know today to be pseudo-science. Phrenology—ie the idea that the shape of a person’s skull, face, the bumps on their head, etc.—is in my view the worst, but there are quite a few other examples. Assuming someone is a criminal just because they have a particular shape to their face is a terrible form of prejudice. This is especially ironic given Holmes is one of the very first “scientific detectives”.

Many would argue that we have to take into account the era in which Doyle wrote. Yes, we do; but the whole point of this post is that I’m reading it in my era, and we currently don’t believe a few bumps on the skull indicate criminal intent. Indeed, this kind of toxic thinking is part of the reason policing is still so informed by prejudice.

In conclusion I want to say that yes, I still love the Holmes stories, I always will, and I will no doubt reread them in the future. Which absolutely does not preclude me from noticing their many built-in prejudices.

Next: Mote in God’s Eye.

Twit

I have been in high tech more than half my life. In that time, I’ve noticed that there while there are many different ways to phrase things, some of them are more prone to starting arguments and name-calling than others. As I am a hothead passionate and stubborn opinionated, I had to learn—often the hard way—ways of expressing myself that don’t sound like I’m trying to pick a fight. Because to be honest, I don’t want to pick fights. I hate fights. They exhaust me. But when I get worked up on a topic—and I can get worked up about semi-colon placement—I can sound like an arrogant, self-absorbed, unhelpful, uncooperative jerk. So what to do?

Find less confrontational or emotionally-charged ways to express my opinion, that’s what! After many (many many) years, I’ve established a decent-sized library of terms, which I am now foisting on an unsuspecting world. Enjoy! Or not!

You want to say: “That sounds really stupid.”
Instead try: “I’m not sure I understand.” A few things here: First, it’s very possible you didn’t understand it, and you’ll look like a right fool if you say something is stupid and it turns out you were just clueless. So it saves face for you. Second, if it really is stupid, other people now have the opportunity to chime in and express their own incredulity/lack of comprehension/skepticism/etc. If it’s a genuinely bad idea, that will quickly become apparent under extensive question. And finally, if it was stupid, it gives the speaker the opportunity to save face and not feel insulted. You’ll probably have to work with this person again, so not antagonizing them is a good idea. And besides; you might be the one to say something stupid next. Best be gracious.

You want to say: “You didn’t put that in your [document | project plan | web page | Word file | etc. ].”
Instead try: “I wasn’t able to find that. Can you point me to it?” Again, this has a twofold purpose. First, you may genuinely have missed the item in the [document | project plan | web page | Word file | etc. ]; heck, it happens to me all the time. I have a bad habit of quick-reading work documents—especially project plans!—and it’s all-too-easy to miss some piece of information somewhere. Second, it again helps the author save face; they may have simply forgotten to include the item, or included it in another draft and left it out of this one, or made a mental note to put it in and forgot, or some other totally valid reason. And besides, the next person who leaves something out might be you.

You want to say: “Stop wasting our time!”
Instead try: “Can we take that offline?” This is a hoary old chestnut in the high tech world, and everyone understands the subtext here: “You’re going down a conversational or topic rathole, and we just don’t have time for that in this meeting.” It prevents embarrassment while also acknowledging that, just because it’s a rathole now, it might not be under other circumstances.

You want to say: “It’s your fault not mine, you stupid twit!”
Instead try: “Let’s not assign blame; let’s just try to fix the problem.” No one wants to take the blame when something goes wrong, and it’s ingrained in American culture to blame someone—anyone—else. (“Americans want to fix the blame rather than the problem.”) And it’s a waste of time. Do you really want to spend 30, 60, 90 minutes (or even days!) trying to assign blame instead of using that time to fix whatever done did break? I mean, you can, but it’s not a good use of time, pisses almost everyone off, and leaves behind enemies and hurt feelings. Yes, yes, I know; in many companies, blaming other people is a good way to get promoted. I hate those kinds of companies and tend leave them pretty quickly. Your Mileage May Vary™.

To be sure, promotions and raises are often affected when you end up blamed for some screw-up. The way to avoid that is not to shift the blame, but to be careful when in doubt to do your due diligence. Then if something blows up in your face, you’ve done the best you can. If you have competent management—and despite the complaints in the industry on this score, I’ve tended to have competent managers more often than the other sort—they will recognize you did all that could be done and not hold it against you, or recognize who really was at fault…and not hold it against you. In other words, if you do your job properly and perform due diligence, you shouldn’t have to shift blame. Nor will you have to come up with excuses; you can just state facts: “I did X, Y, and Z. Was there something I missed?”

You want to say: “I did X.”
Instead try: “We did X.” While this is much more important for managers (as a manager, you actually don’t do anything, your team members do), it also applies to what we in the biz call “individual contributors” (ie worker bees). Hardly anything in high tech is done by one person, no matter how brilliant they are; it behooves you to keep that in mind. And when you give other people credit regularly, they tend to respond in kind. Further, it makes you a much more pleasant co-worker, and people will want to work on projects with you rather than avoiding them. And believe me, that is really helpful.

Yup, there are absolutely times when you did something all by your little self and deserve recognition for that fact. If you have competent management, you will usually get recognition for those things. And if you don’t, hey, go ahead and tell your manager privately. No one likes an arrogant braggart.

A side note to this: Give people credit when it’s due. Everyone loves being acknowledged for their efforts, and I have never, in my whole career, regretted complimenting someone when they’ve done something noteworthy; not as a manager or an individual contributor. Very few people not in management are paid what they deserve, and praise and recognition is a huge help in improving job satisfaction and retention rates. I mean, don’t you want to keep those folks around? Well, compliment them publicly, then! (A good rule of thumb: Praise in public; chastise in private. Far too many managers do the reverse.)

You want to say: “Well, if you had told me, then it wouldn’t be a problem now!”
Instead try: “I think I missed the notification on that. Can you please tell me again?” Yes, it drives me bats when people think they’ve told me/emailed me/DM’d me something and they absolutely haven’t. Of course it does! But again, recriminations waste time and only cause bad feelings all around. Admitting the problem may have been you missing something is both gracious, and allows the other person to admit it if it were actually their fault without feeling attacked. Which smooths the road and speeds things up. And besides, let’s face it: Sometimes we do miss notifications. What does it hurt to be kind about it?

You want to say: “Shut up and let [Jennifer | Sonia | Medhi | Kat | Michelle | Francoise | insert any other female name here] finish!”
Instead try: “Excuse me, I’d like to hear [female] finish her thought.”

I have written repeatedly on this blog on the built-in sexism in high tech. One of the best ways for male (especially white male) individual contributors and front-line managers to combat this (in addition to hiring more women) is to be proactive allies. If you see someone in a meeting running roughshod over one of your coworkers (and it’s almost always a female coworker that gets treated this way), don’t just sit there like a lump; speak up! But in the interests of comity and continuing to work with people, don’t stomp all over them in kind; politely note that someone else was trying to express an opinion, and give them the space to do so.

While I have focused on women in this particular instance, it also happens to other folks, notably: The neurodiverse, introverts, and historically-marginalized minorities. In the latter instance it gets trickier. For example, I worked at a company that had a very large Asia engineering contingent, and I’m sorry to say the men from India and China were absolutely horrible about letting women speak. Whether this was an outlier or part of their culture or just those particular individuals I have no way to know; I just want to note it’s not always white guys acting like mansplainin’ twits.

That’s all I got. What do you do to avoid sounding like a mansplain’ twit?