Is English Gender-neutral?

I constructed the word-histograms for the texts of the 100 books most downloaded over the last 30 days from Project Gutenberg. For the context see my posts on Numerical Text Analysis. Here is a summary and the top 10 words ranked by frequency of occurrence:

Corpus = Top100 in Project Gutenberg

If you think that English is a gender-neutral language, think again.  

Occurrences of 3rd person singular personal pronouns

The masculine pronouns occur almost thrice as often as the feminine ones, consistently for both the subject pronouns (she/he) and the combined (after stemming) possessive (her/hers/his) and object (her/him) pronouns. The proportion of use of the possessive and object pronouns vs. the subject pronouns seems (without running a statistical test) about the same for both genders; were the proportion of object pronouns to be higher for any gender one could interpret it as evidence of objectification of that gender. 

Shouldn't this be called feminist mathematics - mathematics applied to gender studies?, rather than the idiocies and nonsense spouted by the likes of Sandra Harding? I recall reading an essay possibly co-authored by her in the late 1990s on 'feminist mathematics', years after the Alan Socal Social Text hoax. Does anyone know this article? It is a little unfair to keep attacking her 1986 book, even though her 2006 book seems not to show any increased knowledge of science or maths. Poor little kupamanduka. There are biases against girls in math classrooms in the US, and when you google "feminism mathematics" you get mostly references to studies addressing those and other pedagogical biases in math - not what I am taking issue with in this paragraph. 

For another application of  my kind of feminist math, look at my post on sexism in one professional network.

A final aside: I've been reading Amartya Sen's The Conciliatory Indian, and based on one footnote, I think that the sokaled "Project Gutenberg" should really be called "Project Diamond Sutra" honoring the first dated printed book.

UptownOaklandFoodDistrict

That is what the sign says, on a lamp-post near the OccupyOakland GA location at the "Remember them" memorial park, "Uptown Oakland Food District"

So, we have 1) a pot full of green salad,

2) spicy kale, tomatoes and potatoes, 3) roasted potatoes Indian style (Cut, soak, rinse, dry. Coat with lemon juice, oil, dry onion, turmeric, chilli, garam masala, salt and bake with 1/2 cup of water at 350 till done, mixing often, 4) Missing Saiya samosas,

Big Ed, purveyor of fine food, he is there without fail at every GA and for numerous events during the week. Let's see what he cooked.

5) A traditional Spanish dish called "moros e Indios". If it is made with white rice (traditionally) instead of the brown rice, it doesn't have the same meaty texture, and is called "Moros y Christianos". Delicious!

6) Corned beef and cabbage. As they say in Cuba, "And where is the corned beef?"

7) Chef salad,

ans 8) Maudlin Mandarin Marmalade!

ElsaSong

Today after brunch the girls went out to play in the rain. Sometime later Elsa came to me with the following song: Elsa has written both their names at the top, but Maya did not claim co-authorship. The beginning scribble is a heart that she added after she'd written the song and didn't have space for. The 'v's in the 5th and 6th lines are short for 'very', and in those lines she has drawn pictures for 'stormy' (the spiral) and 'cloudy'.

Transcription:
Maya and Elsa
(Heart) Sany and some
rane. hawosis
ale overe
flowers too
hcerei blosum
estoo
olsoe it is
       v (spiral) too
olsoe v (cloud) There
are Trees! (Heart)

Translation:
Maya and Elsa
Love.
Sunny and some rain.
Houses all over.
Flowers too.
Cherry blossoms too.
Also it is very stormy too,
also very cloudy.
There are trees!
Love.




As one can see Elsa has the same singing abilities as I do.

MayaReviewsPersepolis1

Persepolis1: The Story of a Childhood, By Marjane Satrapi, is a graphic novel about a young girl living in Iran during a war. Satrapi leads a very happy life until war is declared on the unfair king. Her parents go to demonstrate every day, and when they come back, they are very tired. The girl and her friends demonstrate against the king in their backyards too. Soon all the girls find themselves wearing veils, and the men and boys are forbidden to have a beard. Other laws have been placed such as no parties, no wine, makeup or hugging on the streets. At the end, she moves to Vienna, where book 2 begins. I enjoyed the book a lot.

Rating: *****

OKupyCupid1

Mel,

You wrote to me. Asked me to look at your profile. So I did.

In that first message, you said you'd liked what I'd written in my profile, that I was very direct, that I defined and declared myself and my tastes so I didn't seem to be appealing to a broad spectrum, that I “came out” as feminist, atheist and progressive. You contrasted that with “spiritual but not religious” and “middle of the road” that, seemingly, a lot of guys declare themselves to be. That I said nothing about “going from hiking boots to a tux in ten minutes”. That I seemed to be someone whose company you would enjoy, and would I mind taking a look at your profile to see if you interested me. 

So I did.

I mean, you wrote to me. Not that many women do. Not that many even favorite me. Plus you are very attractive in your photos – hair falling to the side of your face, as well as swept back, both photos do you honour. Then I looked at your profile, in some detail. Sure, you were a match (liberal, agnostic, right age, education, liked dogs, a foreign language, open to a range of ethnicities, little TV, Mervyn Peake (!), conscious food, no shopping etc.) but you already knew that, perhaps the GYMBII algorithm had suggested me to you. You came across as intelligent, unafraid yourself to distinguish yourself from the crowd, with a sense of humour about yourself and your expectations from web-dating (I have to say that there seems to be a lot more web-match-making going on (fifteen a day?!) than possible web-dating, though that feeling might just be a result of sour-grapes.). You were straightforward as well, without the earnestness and sincerity that just bores the hole out of me sometimes. And Mervyn Peake?! Seriously, I don't know anybody else who has even heard the name, other than Takla, who lent me the books in college, and the Englishwoman at the end of the affair. Also, no pretense about yoga! No humble but super-honed inverted postures at the edge of Half Dome. If all the women on the dating sites who claim to do yoga actually did so there wouldn't be enough space to do ek-padasan in the studios –you know how much space Americans need to be wunnn with the universe– leave alone one of the postures where you are on your palms, your forehead nearly kissing the ground, one leg extended back and the other over your elbow with your foot in your neighbour's underarm, don't you wish?

I wrote back to you. I asked you about your hiking (five to six times a year) and we exchanged emails about the kinds of hikes and landscapes we liked (all). I asked about your social justice work and you told me about your involvement with PP rallies, local Green candidates, food banks, water security and your current involvement with the local Occupy movement, which you said was very active. I said I was quite involved as well, though in a supporting role, taking food there for distribution to the homeless and hungry as well as for their General Assemblies every other weekend that I had my young daughters with me. You were curious that we hadn't noticed each other, you were there almost every weekend, with or without your tween, usually at the left front of the gathering as one faced away from the memorial to Cesar Chavez.

Memorial to Cesar Chavez? How had I missed it? That's when it occurred to me to look at your headline. But you are twelve hundred miles away from me! When I pointed that out, you checked as well, and oops, you'd thought I was located in the city you are moving to next month. I'm flattered, and you should be too, that we both got so carried away with each other over a few emails.

Mel! (I don't yet know whether it is Melissa or Melanie.) Stay! Don't go! 

But what am I saying? That I am offering or asking for a commitment without our having met even once? Based on a “match” determined by a third party? Based on physical, not even chemical attraction? Without knowing what sex –which, going by the sensual nature of your descriptions, I suspect is as important to you as it is to me– would be like?

But I've tried that before, an arranged marriage fifteen years ago. “Everything matches!”, my aunt had said, “Caste, economic status, education, family background –they are related to my Akka through the father's side– family outlook, the grandfather moved from a village in Mallapuram district but they have modernized quite nicely by now, they have dogs too, you know, family is Malayali but they speak Tamil as well, she is willing to move to US, one cousin-brother is already there, and the family is willing to overlook your age, I was so worried when you insisted on waiting till after your PhD, but no matter now! It's okay. Just take a look at the photos na! And read the ad., see if it interests you.”

So I had. And look where it has gotten me.

climbert8

MatricesForKids

Fig 1.

 In Fig.1 above
0) How many properties does each piece have? There is a "correct" relevant answer, but answer this your own way.
1) How many pieces should there be in total to make the set "complete"?
2) How many colors are there?
3) How many shapes are there? 
4) Now answer question 1.
5) How many pieces are missing?
6) Is there any set of the same shape with all the colors?
7) Is there any set of the same color with all the shapes?
8) What are the missing pieces?

Fig. 2

We've categorized the pieces by color, see how many of the above questions you can now answer easily.

Fig. 3

 Now we've categorized the pieces by shape, again, how many of the questions can you now answer easily?

Fig. 4

In Fig. 4, we've structured the information as a matrix, categorizing the pieces simultaneously along the vertical color axis (rows labelled by colors) and along the horizontal shape axis (columns labelled by shape, position in column indexed by color). You should now be able to answer question 8 very easily.

OccupyEggs4

Did someone donate these dozens and dozens of eggs? “No, you could say they were remaindered. I rescued them from the garbage, one of the grocery store's dumpsters had a caseload, there must have been upwards of 25 dozens. None of the cartons, none of the eggs were even broken. But Josh and I smelt them and we broke open a few to check and they smell fine. So as long as you cook them thoroughly you'll be fine.”

But she hadn't cooked them fully, considered cooked yolk a waste of her own cholesterol allowance, so sunny-side up the first time in the Occupy Kitchen, then deep fried in super-hot oil, the white crusted, the yolk warm but uncooked, and later fried whole in their shells, the white rubbery, runny and the yolk again warm and uncooked, pasting the insides of her mouth with that full yolky taste so rare in American eggs or even Indian ones, these days.

With the deep-fried eggs, she'd struggled single handedly, alternating the scissors and her fork in her right hand to cut the egg and bread and red peppers and then scoop it all to her mouth, until she realised with the last bite that for some length of time now she had been looking only at her plate – the yolk cascading down the bubbled and crisped egg-white, the red bell peppers with their flecks of black skin and bits of chopped garlic embedded in the flesh, the multigrain bread now soaked in the liquid from the peppers and the oil and yolk, she hadn't been reading the book still propped open in her left hand.

OccupyEggs3

Unlike Rutherford and rainbows, Hemingway had not analogously ruined fried eggs for her, nor even art, perhaps because artists didn't take on fried eggs on a plate in the way they took on fruit in a bowl or fish skeletons on a plate or a rainbow in the sky. Since she hadn't already gotten sick from these eggs, which she'd first eaten three days ago, she thought she would be okay. She'd delivered, to the OccupyHungerOakland kitchen, 

OccupyOakland Food drop 11 March 2012

 the sunchokes they'd given her the previous week, cooked with her homegrown fenugreek leaves, 

Add chopped methi and mint leaves to the fried onions.

Sunchokes with methi leaves.

 rapini sauteed with garlic and salted-yogurt chillies,

Sauteed rapini.

 a salad of blanched broccoli tossed with garlic, salt olive oil and vinegar,

and two gallons of rajma dal with rice.

Rajma dal over rice

She picked up produce to cook and bring back the following week 

Produce pick up

 – potatoes, tomatoes, a half bushel of kale, 7-8 dozen mandarin oranges

Delicious remaindered mandarins

(rejected as blemished and donated to OccupyHungerOakland, she'd found only 1-2% were unusable, she and her girls had eaten a dozen or so, and the rest she'd made into Melancholy Mandarin Marmalade)

Melancholy Marmalade, yes it is bitter-sweet.

and some lettuce for herself. Then she'd stayed, to help Fiesta, the Occupy Kitchen coordinator, yes the name suited her, and she herself had not yet dared ask whether Fiesta had chosen it herself or whether it had been chosen for her by one of her possibly hippie-throwback parents.

She'd stayed to help since she didn't have her kids that weekend, and it helped her to hang out with other people, younger people with so much energy that they could devote some of it to others. She helped Fiesta process all the rest of the produce – apples, tomatoes, papayas, watermelons, all either donated as “blemished” or de-dumpstered by Fiesta herself. She showed Fiesta how to fry the tomatoes, 

Cooking in the OccupyHungerOakland kitchen.

a few percent of which were beginning to get pale squishy spots with occasional mold, and not let them just cook or stew. Then she helped cut the apples. What was wrong with the apples? “They have spots.” Can't people just eat them, so it saves us the trouble of having to cook them? “No, it is sad, in this country, even the poor and hungry are picky about their food and won't touch an apple unless it is blemish free.” The watermelons looked bad, most had rot on the outside – black and white mold and softened outer flesh. But when Fiesta cut them open, the thick outer part had protected the pink inner flesh almost entirely, only one of the 8 melons had needed to have pink parts cut away. Fiesta chunked the melons and froze them, for later use in aguas frescas at one of the community outreach picnics.

She looked at the papayas, 

Papayas with outer rot...

they were just about beginning to show some moldy spots, but the rest of the flesh was still hard. She mentioned that in her house she would put these papayas back in a paper bag for another week, then cut them open when the flesh would be that beautiful pink-orange. 

... and inner beauty.

 And these were being thrown away? It was true that Americans did not know how to eat tropical fruit, unless it was canned of course. Indians, on the other hand...

Still, she felt that many Indians could cure their feelings of rootlessness in America by eating beautiful, locally grown seasonal produce from a CSA, perhaps even work at a CSA to plant or harvest.

After all that work cooking, she'd gotten hungry. That was when Fiesta had offered her some eggs and “resprouted” bread – resprouted from a dumpster of course. She fried them and ate them with some of the simmering tomato sauce right there in the OccupyKitchen, before she had to leave for her late date that night.

Back at home, a few days later, she considered the irony of having taken $3.89/doz. eggs from the Occupy kitchen, to bring them back and eat them in her home, bought and paid for, no danger of eviction. But Fiesta had insisted she take a dozen, “God, yes, I still have 6 dozens left, and I've given away a hundred eggs each to two community kitchens here already. You liked them, and you bring us food every week, we are giving these away, and other produce, distributing them to our cooks to prepare and bring back for feeding the homeless or for the GAs, or just for their families. So go ahead and take them.” Did someone donate these? “No, you could say they were remaindered. I rescued them from the garbage, one of the grocery store's dumpsters had a caseload, there must have been upwards of 25 dozens. None of the cartons, none of the eggs were even broken. But Josh and I smelt them and we broke open a few to check and they smell fine. So as long as you cook them thoroughly you'll be fine.”

But she hadn't cooked them fully.

OccupyEggs2

OccupyEggs1

Why she liked Hemingway, DWM, misogynist because of all the women he'd loved who hadn't loved him back the way the rivers and seas and mountains did, she couldn't even begin to explain why she liked Hemingway. She'd never read him in school, none of the girls from school had, only certain and very few geeky and wannabe macho guys she knew had read him in school. In the Women's Studies course in college, he was their first assignment, and it was painfully easy to do a feminist deconstruction, and it was all over in a few seconds. Yet there were certain passages that had become ingrained in her brain, and fried eggs were forever associated with Hemingway the way rainbows were forever associated with Rutherford.

She'd learned Rutherford's analysis and explanation of rainbows in her third year in college, in a new physics class she'd taken as an elective, after her women's studies phase and after she'd gone back to her geek roots. Her artsy friends spoke as if science and understanding ruined one's love of nature, but Rutherford had not ruined her appreciation of the beauty of rainbows. Like Hemingway had increased her appreciation of fried egg sandwiches, after Rutherford she now gazed at rainbows for longer, observed them in all their nuances, in their environment, looking for all the features they could have but only sometimes displayed, and always just-so, the order of the colors, the geometry, the astronomical atmospheric effects. What Rutherford had ruined for her was her appreciation of “rainbow art” - the meaningless paeans to the “beauty of the rainbow”, telling without showing, without knowing, and the landscapes with fanciful rainbows, most of which got wrong the most elementary observational facts about rainbows and which, to her, indicated a disdain towards nature on the part of the artists. But Hemingway had not analogously ruined fried eggs for her, nor even art, perhaps because artists didn't take on fried eggs on a plate in the way they took on fruit in a bowl or fish skeletons on a plate or a rainbow in the sky.

OccupyEggs3

OccupyEggs1

OccupyEggs0

She'd cracked the first egg on the edge of the frying pan, but as she'd held it over the oil it had fallen out of her hands when she'd tried to pry it apart. It had been a bitch to get all the pieces of shell out of the hot oil, but it had been worth it just for the idea that had occurred to her – to deep-fry the egg, whole, in its shell. Of course it had cracked in the hot oil, but what oozed out of the crack coagulated and sealed the rest of the egg. She'd let it fry, rolling it around for about a minute before taking it out. Now, with the shell cool enough to touch, she tried to peel it, but that pesky inner membrane stuck fast to both the shell and the egg. So she lopped off the top and scooped the egg out with a spoon, holding the egg in her hand, just as she used to do with soft boiled eggs as a school child. Of course, she'd known even before tasting it that the white would be rubbery, egg proteins have to cook slowly to avoid that texture. But she liked her eggs best that way – unevenly cooked, the outer part of the white rubbery, the inner part runny and the yolk warmed but silkily fluid. It handily beat the fried-egg sandwich Hemingway ate over the course of a paragraph in a bar in Florida. She couldn't fish, couldn't play a bull, and her mountaineering days were long past, but she'd outdone him, Old Hem, at last. If she could only avoid sticking a double barreled shotgun in her mouth, she would outdo him forever, outlast.

Why she liked Hemingway, DWM, misogynist because of all the women he'd loved who hadn't loved him back the way the rivers and seas and mountains did, she couldn't even begin to explain why she liked Hemingway. She'd never read him in school, none of the girls from school had, only certain and very few geeky and wannabe macho guys she knew had read him in school. In the Women's Studies course in college, he was their first assignment, and it was painfully easy to do a feminist deconstruction, and it was all over in a few seconds. Yet there were certain passages that had become ingrained in her brain, and fried eggs were forever associated with Hemingway the way rainbows were forever associated with Rutherford.

OccupyEggs2

OccupyEggs0

OccupyEggs = Insemination? Would only a guy have thought of that? Why had she thought of it then?

Reluctant to put her book down for even a few seconds, holding it in her left hand while the BookEasel © lay unused within easy reach, she tried to cut into the deep-fried egg with the fork in her right hand, using its edge to press the egg down, but the fork couldn't cut through the crusty, brown parchment like egg-white. The roasted bell peppers –she'd marinaded them overnight in olive oil, salt and garlic– squeezed out from between the egg and the holy numbered 9-grain X 12-nut bread, the bread itself crumbled pastily and finally she had the browned egg-white with its back to the plate, and still the fork wouldn't cut through it. She grabbed the kitchen scissors which happened to be on the table from cutting open the packet of “lonely” seaweed soup –if she'd had company, she would have served dal or squash soup or clam chowder, not seaweed soup– and used them to cut the thin leathery egg crust. Now she could scoop up part of the warm yolk, the egg-white, the bread and the peppers.

As she mashed the yolk against the roof of her mouth, and felt that sunny explosion of salt fat sticky coagulating tooth coating creamy yellow in the inside of her mouth, she was reminded of afternoon sex during the early days with …, and of Old Hem, of course, always Old Hem. Fried eggs and Hemingway like rainbows and Rutherford. Then she wondered if she would die of salmonella poisoning from eating free range, organic, cage-free, all-natural, vegetarian fed, family farmed eggs. Her concern arose not from any of the above, but from the fact that they were past their expiry date. She smiled at herself, she'd been about to think “due date”, had in fact thought “due date” before correcting herself –as she'd been doing with the date on egg cartons ever since she'd become pregnant with her first child.

She ate the two eggs she'd deep-fried sunny-side up like her soon2BX husband used to like them until he started worrying about his high cholesterol and its effect on their non-existent sex-life, and turned to her experiment. She'd cracked the first egg on the edge of the frying pan, but as she'd held it over the oil it had fallen out of her hands when she'd tried to pry it apart. It had been a bitch to get all the pieces of shell out of the hot oil, but it had been worth it just for the idea that had occurred to her – to deep-fry the egg, whole, in its shell. Of course it had cracked in the hot oil, but what oozed out of the crack coagulated and sealed the rest of the egg. She'd let it fry, rolling it around for about a minute before taking it out. Now, with the shell cool enough to touch, she tried to peel it, but that pesky inner membrane stuck fast to both the shell and the egg. So she lopped off the top and scooped the egg out with a spoon, holding the egg in her hand, just as she used to do with soft boiled eggs as a school child. Of course, she'd known even before tasting it that the white would be rubbery, egg proteins have to cook slowly to avoid that texture. But she liked her eggs best that way – unevenly cooked, the outer part of the white rubbery, the inner part runny and the yolk warmed but silkily fluid. 

OccupyEggs1 

GarbageInCompostOut

DOANSA INSPIRED HOUSEHOLD GRAYWATER RECOVERY PROJECT

For a while I have thought of trying to do something about the sheer absurdity of flushing huge amounts of water down the kitchen sink - perfectly usable water whether it is from rinsing vegetables, washing dal, washing dishes by hand or even water from the dishwasher - while at the same time using clean water to irrigate.

The right-wing American approach would be to send other people's children out to attack Canada in the name of liberating them, and then build a pipeline from Hudson Bay to LA. [Want an excuse? Canada produces almost all of the world's Co60 which is used for treating cancer. The source is supposedly under repair, but Canada refuses UN inspections and is suspected of trying to develop a Co60 dirty thermonuclear bio-weapon terrorist bomb. Diplomacy has not worked, 3 Israeli cancer patients may die soon so the Knesset may authorize Mossad to bomb the facility.] Just think of all the jobs that War and Peace would create, and finally water-independency for LA so that Orange County is no longer dependent on crazy-arse gay-rights advocating NorCal tin-pot mayors for their God-given right to water.

The ObuDemocratMama approach would be to develop "alternate water" - something that you could carry around with you and when needed just add water and hey! Presto! you get InstaWater (C)! This would be achieved by giving PanIndra half billion dollars to develop their idea of cylindrical glass tube water evaporators and to set up a evaporated water manufacturing facility in the South Bay. Unfortunately, the only thing that will evaporate is the money.

Note that there is discussion of conservation - banning alfalfa farming, golf, or lawns.

So here is something I thought I could do personally -as one of those ingenious middle class American private individuals, BUSH's thousand points of light, take initiative into your own hands- to avert global warming, save trees, reduce my carbon footprint, salve my conscience. (Breathlessly and earnestly in school child voice: "If every American household were to implement this scheme it would save THOUSANDS of gallons of fresh water!" Really? Save the Earth!)

Coffee, banana peel, grapefruit peel and broccoli stems.

Banana peel down the hatch.

Broccoli stems down!

Coffee grounds gone.

Grapefruit peel down the food disposal.

The plumbing, the transparent hose takes it outside ...

... to PVC tube ...

which carries it across the patio ...

... and into the vegetable garden.

Next I tried a small bucket load of food scraps ...

Minor snafu ...

MAJOR fail!

Finally got it all working, and learned: no egg shells, more water flow, less food scraps flux.

But, it is not solved until it is all cleaned up.

LiveArtCinequest2012

On our way out from the Shorts3 collection, we saw 3 artists in the act. Both Maya and Elsa wanted to stay and watch, so we went in to see them.

Corey about to board the metro to school.

Sara's painting dedicated to International Working Women's Day - March 8, 2012.

"You accusing me of copying? I never even been to no fifteen or sixteen chapel!"

Joe talking about his work, right before I started to talk about his work!

Beneath those funky triangle symbols, there are 4 horizontal lines and Maxwell's silver hammer!

No! No! No! Gravity isn't a force!

 

Joe and myself, after we shared equations.

Joe had
F  = m a
Newton's law of gravitation
Maxwell's silver equations
Black Hole entropy
Informational entropy

I suggested the following:
G_ab = 8 Pi G T_ab (The Einstein equation)
[x,p] = i hbar I (The fundamental fact about Quantum Mechanics.)
The commutator between a simple loop and a trefoil knot with a "hand", representing Loop Quantum Gravity
and Maxwell's equations
d F = 0 (the EM 4-tensor is divergence free)
d *F = *j (the curl of its dual is the dual of the 4-current co-vector).

9 March update: Joe put in all those suggestions!

Ashtekar variables, and you can just about discern a loop commutator.

The Einstein Equation (Gravitation, or the E=mc^2 of General Relativity)

Joe also added my name next to Newton's Equation for Gravitation, I'll post that as soon as Rajesh Aji sends me a copy.