Linguistics, Dancing, and a Few Good Books

20 February 2003

It's so good to finally be working again. Between Christmas and Chambana and intersession and Hawai`i and interviews, I pretty much hadn't gotten anything significant done for two months. Which made it that much harder to get started again---I was staring at the screen, reading notesfiles and web comics obsessively and in a non-multitasking way. Finally, though (yesterday, really), I managed to gain purchase and now I'm back to my old system. Namely, work until I have to wait for something---a download, a compile, a run---and then switch to the notesfiles or comics or whatever until that's done. I've got a compile running as I type this sentence, but I've already switched back and forth between typing this and working three or four times over the course of the post.

So anyway, it really is nice to be back. Now let's see if it's true what I said about it being possible to finish the thesis by mid-May. :)

"Kids are sent off to spend six years memorizing meaningless facts in a world ruled by a caste of giants who run after an oblong brown ball, as if this were the most natural thing in the world. And if they balk at this surreal cocktail, they're called misfits." --Paul Graham

Posted 11:57 PM [+]

19 February 2003

In our Renaissance Singers rehearsal tonight, our director brought her mother-in-law, who is French, to advise us on the pronunciation of one of the songs we're singing. She complimented me on my French pronunciation!

That's all.

"Why do people move to suburbia? To have kids! So no wonder it seemed boring and sterile. The whole place was a giant nursery, an artificial town created explicitly for the purpose of breeding children." --Paul Graham

Posted 10:08 PM [+]

I just spent 45 minutes digging out and moving my car from the faculty lot (which is closer to my house) to the student lot. Unlike nearly everyone else around here, I'm still not complaining about the snow. I guess that means I'm well-suited to life in the snow belt, or something.

The weird thing, though, is that the Brown Facilities people shovelled some areas around here in very odd ways. I counted no less than three places where they shovelled a nice path that dead-ended in a huge snowdrift (and it wasn't just plowed in---they just stopped shovelling). Since I rent from Brown, they take care of our front steps; the steps and the walk up to them are totally clear down to the wood and concrete. But the sidewalk isn't cleared, and it looks like the snow removed from the steps and walk was shovelled onto the sidewalk, so looking out my front door I see a little cul-de-sac of cleared pavement. It's actually less snowy to leap over the roadside snowdrift and walk in the street than it is to try and use the sidewalk... but they didn't shovel all the way to the street, so there is still a formidable drift to vault over. From my patio door, they cleared a path down the steps and around back to our basement door (which is bolted from inside and disused). This path does not actually lead anywhere except between two doors to the same house. The driveway between here and 166 was cleared, and at the end a walkway was cleared into the faculty lot out back... except that the path just ends in the trunk of a car (which was parked there when they did the shovelling). Finally, the walkway to the student lot was mostly cleared, except that a huge (seriously, ten feet high, ten feet across) mound of snow that had cascaded off the swim center roof was almost totally blocking the path. There was a shovelled path either side of it; and judging from the way the path ended, the mound had not fallen into a cleared path, they'd just... stopped.

But whatever. It's pretty, and it's fun. I wish it were going to stick around, but judging from the forecasts, it looks like we'll be lucky if it's still here by Friday. Too bad. :(

"[Nerds] were a bit like an adult would be if he were thrust back into middle school. He wouldn't know the right clothes to wear, the right music to like, the right slang to use. He'd seem to the kids a complete alien. The thing is, he'd know enough not to care what they thought. We had no such confidence." --Paul Graham

Posted 6:35 AM [+]

18 February 2003

Today's entry is a few online essays and articles you should read. Long, but worth it.

First, a report on CNN's manipulation of the American public. It seems they saw fit to edit out part of a transcript without marking it as edited. Seriously, check this one out.

Next, an essay by Paul Graham on why nerds are unpopular, why high school and junior high suck so bad in this country, and what we might think about doing about it. This one's the long one, but bookmark it and come back to it, especially if you are, were, or plan to be a high school or junior high teacher; have, had, or plan to have high school or junior high-age kids; or do, did, or plan to attend high school or junior high. Really.

Finally, on the lighter side, a tandem essay written by two college students. It's fun, and short.

"The American dream is to be born in a gutter, grow up and make *all* the money in the world, stick it in your ears, and go *THHBBBBBTTT!*" --Eddie Izzard

Posted 10:59 PM [+]

16 February 2003

Got up early this morning to go to Mass at St Brigid's in downtown Lexington. It's a nice little church... no, actually it's a nice big church. Old-style, with the two columns of pews, but it probably seats close to a thousand. Which made it look really empty, but I bet there were about a hundred people there, which isn't bad for an 8:30 Mass. The acoustics are really good, though: even when not standing at a mike, the priest and the other people by the altar could be heard relatively well all through the church. (Unfortunately, the poor cantor wasn't used to dealing with an organ that sat at the back of the church---and it was big enough to have a significant sound delay from back to front of the church---so there were some synchronisation problems.)

The homily was a fairly good anti-war commentary, and among other things revealed to me that Tariq Aziz (Saddam's right-hand guy) was a devout Roman Catholic! I mean, I have been and continue to be against war in Iraq, so this doesn't affect me directly, but why have we not heard that a major leader in this supposedly hyper-Muslim, working-with-al-Qaeda government is a Christian? No... nevermind, I know why.

"Sam, you're not just going to hide a bow in your pants that you can pull out and unload ten shots at someone." --Matt Lease

Posted 11:06 AM [+]