During one of my free periods today, one of the newer Japanese teachers of English asked me if the students should call her "Miss" or "Ms." A reasonable question, deserving of a properly considered answer, I figured. Given that my understanding of things has been shown to be incorrect/unpopular/anachronistic in the past, I figured a little research into modern, popular opinion was in order. Which lead me to these links from the Guardian on-line. Incidentally, I was entirely unaware of the weight these terms seem to carry in old Blighty.
Anyway, my curiosity piqued, I started looking for other information about titles and gender, which lead me to a couple of abstracts concerning Congruence between a theoretical continuum of masculinity and the Rasch model. Which introduced me to the CMNI, a sort of 12 point manliness checklist. Honestly, I had no idea there was so much interest in quantifying crap like that. Then again, I'm not a social scientist and really don't get into those "What popular series/character/personal trait describes you?" quizzes so much anymore.
But that somehow led me to look up the geek hierarchy. Which naturally led to this discussion of how Lucy and Ricky wound up associating with Fred and Ethel in the first place...
See, this is more or less what it's like in my head all the time. Start off thinking about grammar, wind up wondering about what would have happened if the CIA had succeeded in removing Castro's beard.
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