Guess the Sport III

What sport are these men playing?

Hint: It is a slightly decelerated version of the original, with, perhaps, not so many royals milling about.

The Break Up

For 20 euros (about $30), a German “separation agency” will phone your spouse/partner/lover to tell them that you no longer want to be with them. For 50 euros ($70), they’ll do it in person.

Oh, man! This is the get-out-of-relationship-free card that Jerry Seinfeld advocated in his stand up routine! How nice would it be to finish with a failing relationship in one easy motion (like a band-aid – right off!). There could be no long, drawn out conversations about where you went wrong, no forced falsehoods about how it’s not you, it’s me (it’s totally you), and no awkward explanations about why you stopped liking someone because of the way they punctuated a phone message (ah, Elaine…). For the price of a good bottle of wine, you can be free of the guilt and uncomfortable atmosphere that a break-up conversation evokes.

But really, do we need to pay for this? Surely there are cheaper ways to split from a partner. However each break-up method has its social rules…

PHONE-CALL FADE-AWAY

Involves, rather simply, just not calling someone back. Easy, low-stress and should be picked up easily by the undesired partner. Perfectly acceptable in the first month of dating. If being let go by this method, you are allowed one (1) phonecall after the first unreturned phonecall (to allow for undelivered messages etc.). After that any contact within a 6 month period is unacceptable.

TEXT MESSAGE OR E-MAIL EXPLANATION

Not really cool unless the partner you are trying to dump is proving hard to shake. If he or she doesn’t get your subtle hints (see PHONE-CALL FADE-AWAY), perhaps a written explanation in the “it’s not you, it’s me” genre is required. Do not attempt this method of separation if you’ve been together for several months (see FACE-TO-FACE).

FACE-TO-FACE

Required if you’ve been dating regularly for two months or more. Should be done in a public place that offers some privacy so that a) dumpee can’t go mental on you and, b) dumpee crying won’t cause a scene. Not acceptable on Valentine’s Day, dumpee’s birthday or any major religious holiday. Amount of time acceptable to spend discussing the relationship and where you went wrong can be found by taking the number of months spent together, multiplying by 20, then converting that number into minutes.

And of course, never forget the formula that Charlotte from Sex and the City employed after a break up: it should take exactly half the time you spent in the relationship to get over the person that dumped you. (This, of course, is only applicable to women. The men’s formula for time spent getting over someone is a quarter of the time spent in the relationship.)

Phew. When did this get all so complicated? Maybe the German company is onto something…

Zimbabwe Business

Death is one of the few growth industries in Zimbabwe due to the number of people dying of AIDS.

Vancouver's Bilingual Signs

Now I’ve Heard It All…

In the sleepy county of Cornwall in England, police have served a man with a notice for "placing a garden gnome with intent to cause harassment".

Stop for a minute. Re-read that last sentence again. Okay, continue.

Apparently the gnome is solar-powered and lights up at night, annoying neighbours and upsetting potential home buyers in the area. And I thought I was uptight…

Gnome Story from bbc.co.uk

Secret Agent Search Engine

In an article that appeared in The Guardian a week ago, Andrew Brown reveals the vast tracts of information that search engine Google maintains on its users. The major case study in the article is the story of a Portuguese soccer fan from Florida whose wife has left him, and is told through chronological search words, starting with “marriage counseling” and “spying on the wife,” and ending with “motorcycle insurance” and “video surveillance.”

Google gathers this information by identifying each computer with a cookie, assigning a number to the user, and storing all search records. This kind of Big Brother monitoring, although seemingly anonymous*, is kind of scary. And I wonder what kind of records Google has on me, with the random search words I type in to solve crossword puzzles.

This type of invisible monitoring makes me think of the Sitemeter webcounter I have linked to this blog. If you go to the very bottom of the page, you’ll see a little square icon in rainbow colours. Clicking on this will take you to the Sitemeter website which keeps information on who goes to this website. If you click on By Details (under Recent Visitors) it will give you a whole whack of information about who is checking the blog, complete with where in the world they are, what type of computer they are using, and, if they found it through a search engine, what search words they used to get to the blog.

My number of hits increased after an entry entitled “Naturally Nude Naturists” was posted because (as I discovered with the use of Sitemeter) people were coming to my blog after searching the words “nude” and “naturist.” I also see hits increase when I send out e-mails with links to a specific post (like Guess the Sport) and I can tell if people have entered my blog from one of these e-mails. Given that almost every detail except someone’s name is provided, I sometimes like to guess who each user is, based on computer type, time of hit, and entry method.

My data analysis is rudimentary compared to that of Google. And my motives are for passing interest, whereas Google uses its information to inform advertising (I’ve always wondered how Hotmail knows to put Lavalife ads in the bar to the right of my inbox), which seems innocent enough when compared to lawsuit that saw Google fight to keep its collected information out of the hands of the US government.

And do you remember the ruckus caused when China tried to censor its citizens’ use of the internet earlier this year? Brown notes that “the real power for a totalitarian government is no longer just censorship. It is to allow its citizens to search for anything they want – and then remember it.”

Who would have thought that such a clear picture of someone’s life could be constructed based on words you type into your search engine’s window – the spurned Portuguese soccer fan certainly didn’t.

Careful what you search for.


* Brown’s article mentions the case of a Midwestern church lady whose penchant for Christian quilted wall hangings caused her to be exposed for using search words for vibrators and frigidity because her interests were so specific (the wall hangings, not the vibrators).

Lavalife, c. 1850

I have read theories that the rise in popularity of internet dating sites like Lavalife, and match-making events like speed dating, is due to our increasingly busy lives – singletons just don’t have enough time to find that special someone.

However, a 150-year-old Irish festival held in Lisdoonvarna every year shows that “putting yourself out there” is an age-old tradition.

It started out as a small event for farmers to find brides and grooms for their children, but has since grown, attracting visitors from across Ireland, the UK and beyond. There is an official Matchmaker (whose father and grandfather before him held the same title) who sets up introductions between potential partners during the festival.

I could find no statistics as to the number of people who hook up at Lisdoonvarna (or on Lavalife) and how many actually stay together for the long term – I wondered if the antiquated Irish festival was just as good as internet dating for finding your soul mate…

The fact remains, though, that both the festival and websites like Lavalife serve the same purpose for participants: they act as that friend in real life who facilitates the meeting of potential partners: The web designers for Lavalife are to the dating website as the Matchmaker is to the Lisdoonvarna festival. And when a singleton has run out of friends with other friends to introduce, they have to step outside their circle and dip into other pastures (pardon the farming metaphor).

Personally, I have yet to be convinced to try any kind of dating service. Perhaps this is because I haven’t run out of friends with other friends yet. Or maybe my life isn’t busy enough. Or maybe I’m just happy watching the cows in my pasture…