Girl talk

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"Girl Talk: What’s more annoying — vocal fry or the way we criticize how women speak?", by Sophie Goldstein, in The Nib ("Political cartoons, comics journalism, humor and non-fiction").

Also see xkcd on "How it works".

Unfortunately, several of the associated audio clips seem to be missing (e.g. here and here), and some others load for me but then don't produce any sound. I'm not sure whether this is a problem with the clips, or a problem with the "thing link" service used to add them to the images.

Or maybe it's because I'm in Vancouver, and the audio clips were turned back at the border. This possibility is on my mind because the other external member of a program review committee here at UBC was in fact held for several hours at the Blaine border crossing, and then sent back to Seattle for lack of a work permit.

Apparently that crossing is notoriously tough — a former dean who is also on the committee described driving back to BC from the Seattle flower show with another woman, and being greeted at the crossing by six guards pointing rifles at them because they had stopped the car at some point earlier on the journey to check for the reason that the "open door" light was coming on.



6 Comments

  1. Jake said,

    March 13, 2015 @ 10:12 am

    I want to say it used to be the case that crossing at Lynden got you on a better approach vector to UBC, but it's been over 15 years since I made that drive (the lines will certainly be shorter at Lynden, and it's a straight shot up the Guide Meridian from Bellingham)

  2. Rube said,

    March 13, 2015 @ 1:59 pm

    There is now a television show in Canada, "Border Security", which is all about Canadian border guards hassling people who want to work in Canada or take their weapons with them as they drive through Canada to Alaska.

    If the show ever gets picked up in the States, I expect our tourism industry to die.

  3. Chris C. said,

    March 13, 2015 @ 5:51 pm

    @Rube — It can't be worse than "civil forfeiture", where an American police officer making a routine traffic stop might ask how much cash you have, and then confiscate it if you have over a certain threshold on the theory that there's no legitimate reason for carrying that much.

  4. Nipo said,

    March 14, 2015 @ 6:39 am

    One of my tasks is to hassle (or rather, deal with the bureaucracy around the hassling) Russians, who cross our border carrying guns, tazers and other illegal items in their cars. I'm pretty sure that everyone here are perfectly happy without armed Russian tourists around. Who knows, Canadians might share the same feeling concerning armed USAireans.

    Sorry for derailing the derail.

  5. Rodger C said,

    March 15, 2015 @ 11:11 am

    take their weapons with them as they drive through Canada to Alaska

    54-40 or fight!

  6. Graeme said,

    March 17, 2015 @ 3:35 am

    Uptalk is fairly common in Australian speech too, as is well documented. If it weren't for the Valley Girl label it once attracted it wouldn't be something I'd have ever heard linked to gender in Australia, as opposed to youth or education. Even the latter prejudice is dying.

    Here's an example involving a foreign correspondent, Zoe Daniel, of the public broadcaster the ABC: http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2015/s4199424.htm (her inflection becomes more noticeable as the interview progresses).

    Only about two generations ago, you needed received English diction and preferably a private school background to front the news on the ABC.

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