Monthly Archives: February 2014

Unnamed feature #2: “plus tax” vs. “tax included”

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Let’s get another easy one out of the way as long as we haven’t even named this feature yet. In Australia, the price on a menu or price list is the actual price that something costs. In the United States, without even getting into tipping yet, the sales tax is added onto the listed price.

In the US, you end up reflexively adding X%–the amount varies from state-to-state–and still you stand at the register and think, “Gee, with tax that added up to more than I thought.” It’s so much more convenient to just have the price you see be the price you pay that it even takes some getting used to when buying more expensive items. That is, I realized it’s a regular part of my routine when buying something to think, “OK, but what does it cost really?” that it takes some doing to recognize that what you see is what it is.

Jeremy’s winner: Continue reading →

Beckie rereads Attachments by Rainbow Rowell

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Why did you read this book? I read it the first time after seeing good reviews. I reread it because I was in the mood for something sweet and light-hearted and the only unread book at hand was Dissident Gardens by Jonathan Lethem.

Has Jeremy read it? Yes, pre-blog.

42-word review: Lincoln is responsible for monitoring employee email, but he enjoys reading Beth and Jennifer’s exchanges too much to reprimand them. Sounds creepy, but Lincoln falling for Beth somehow avoids crossing that line. More than a little contrived, but a sweet romantic comedy.

Overall rating: 4 flagged emails (out of 5)

 

Jeremy reads The Antidote by Oliver Burkeman

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Why did you read this book? This was Book #3 in my resolution to read 24 books related to personal growth in 2014. I chose this after reading The Happiness Project, as I thought something about the downside of pursuing happiness might be a useful juxtaposition.

Has Beckie read it? No.

42 word review: Basic premise: focusing on happiness and positive thinking often makes people angsty and miserable in short-run, or bad decisions that provoke extra hardship in long-run. Yay, melancholia! All the good ideas toward the front; last half either filler or redundant.

Useful quotes:

  • The worst thing about any event, Ellis liked to say, ‘is usually your exaggerated belief in its horror’.
  • Taking a non-attached stance towards procrastination, by contrast, starts from a different question: Who says you need to wait until you ‘feel like’ doing something in order to start doing it? The problem, from this perspective, isn’t that you don’t feel motivated; it’s that you imagine you need to feel motivated.
  • ‘The truth that many people never understand’, he wrote , ‘is that the more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer, because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you, in proportion to your fear of being hurt.’

Overall rating: 3 out of 5 imps of the perverse.

Unnamed feature #1: Greenbacks vs. monopoly money

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Time to get real here on the blog. I’ve written a bunch of Vernacular Spectacular posts that have compared different ways that Australia and the US say things. But there’s also all the differences between life in Oz and America that aren’t just a matter of words. I don’t know what to call this feature yet. Probably some play on whether, compared to the US, the country Oz is more like the utopic Judy-Garland Oz or like the HBO-series prison Oz.

Let’s start with the money. Or at least the bills, coins maybe deserve their own posts. Australia is like Europe where every denomination is a different color. It’s also a different length, to help the blind, although I didn’t notice that until somebody pointed it out. American money is not as uniform as it used to be, as a result of various efforts to dissuade counterfeiters, but it’s still far from Rainbow In Your Wallet.

This one is pretty easy. If the US already had colored money, no way would they switch to a system where the bills looked so much alike. There would be news stories about how people accidentally thought gave somebody $50 thinking it was a $5, and on and on. I would predict that it’s only a matter of time before the US moves to colored money, but of course it’s really just a matter of time before everywhere goes cashless.

Jeremy’s winner: Continue reading →

Beckie reads Eleanor and Park (again)

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Why did you read this book? I enjoyed Rainbow Rowell’s first book, Attachments. I was happy to read it aloud as a road trip book because I first experienced it as an audiobook, and, while I enjoyed it a lot, I prefer reading to listening.

Has Jeremy read it? Yes.

42 word review: Adorable high-school love story tempered by bullying and scary home life on one side and more typical teen angst on the other. Their progression from reluctant seat-mates to falling in love was well done, as was the portrayal of their family relationships.

Overall rating: 4 Watchmen issues (out of 5)

Vernacular Spectacular #24: “gas” vs. “petrol”

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“Petrol” has the unique-word advantage: if it’s usage as short for petroleum went away, then that’s it. Whereas “gas” has various uses, including one that is rather confusing given that gas-short-for-gasoline is a liquid. Also, I tend not to like one syllable short-a words, for if a word is only going to have one vowel-sound it’s the harshest one to have. But gasoline is also a simple and very common thing, so having a very simple word as its everyday form makes sense, especially since it ends up getting combined into a lot of short phrases (“step on the gas”, “gas station”, “gas guzzler”).

Jeremy’s winner: Continue reading →