Perhaps later

Anyway, so. Left work Monday morning at a quarter to 4, got home, couldn't sleep past 7, and went in to turn in my badge and key -- oddly, HR wasn't around when I headed out.

And naturally got dragged into staying from 9 to 6:15 or so, because they still hadn't quite managed to finish the project I'd been working on.

But you know the funny part?

Temp agency I'm working through ends their pay period at midnight on Sunday, so I had to submit the other hours for this week. As this'll add up to fewer than 40, rather than getting time and a half for working from midnight to 3:45 Monday morning, that would be paid at the regular hourly rate.

Yes, that was my reaction, too.

Any road up, was going to try writing something more about the half-formed notion of the misuse of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, and how it got tied into the idea that the local Other wasn't really inferior, it's just that their language (or culture generally) was the problem. Thought that Kenneth Branagh's character expressed similar notions in Rabbit-Proof Fence, and ran across this article looking for more info:

In most [Australian] states the “[chief] protector” was able to designate where an Aboriginal person could or couldn't live; could make local regulations governing their conduct; controlled their assets; had the power to decide who Aborigines could or couldn't marry and who could and couldn't work and where. In addition, the Chief Protector was designated the legal guardian of all Aboriginal children and had the power to decide which children would be removed from their parents, where they were sent, as well as being able to authorise their adoption.

Probably the best known of the chief protectors was A.O. Neville, who retained the position in Western Australia for 25 years. Neville was known to the Aboriginal communities as “Mr Devil”. In the eyes of many, he has come to symbolise the callousness of Australia's forced assimilation policies.

Up until the day he died, Neville remained a firm believer in forced assimilation and that it was his and other whites' duty to “save the natives from themselves”.

And that's quite enough for one day, I think.

Well, and adding that the (hate this term) neo-Whorfians, and other researchers like Deborah Tannen and Steven Pinker and the beat goes on, are all aware of the possible misuses of their work -- or oversimplified popular conceptions of their work -- when it comes to creating social policy, something scientists really shouldn't have to worry about. But given some of those possible misuses, suppose it's better if they do.

Oh, and thanks to Maureen Ryan for the kind words over at the Trib.

And that's it, I'm going to. . . finish doing laundry.