Linguistics, Dancing, and a Few Good Books

21 June 2003

I finished the socks! Pictures forthcoming.

"I started to cry as I sat down with a gigantic piece of meat, a schnitzel, which is like a fried continent. I mean it, I pulled my hat off my head and started to cry. *This is what it is all about.* If getting drunk at eleven in the afternoon and eating a huge piece of meat is wrong, then *I don't want to be right.*" --Tycho

Posted 7:42 PM [+]

I'm attending a linguistics workshop here at Brown, and meeting all sorts of people who I've heard about, and whose papers and theses I've read. It's really cool and interesting.

And the stories they tell over alcohol are really funny, although it occurs to me that they probably wouldn't be if you weren't in the field...

After the main conference dinner a bunch of us went out to a bar. We talked for a while, and a couple of us joked that the movie they had playing there---on the TV screens in all corners of the bar, always in at least peripheral vision---was just plain dreadful, closed captions and all. (Fwiw, it was Eight Legged Freaks. And it was really dreadful.) And after a while, the conversation lapsed and there were, like, four of us sitting there, watching it. MST3King it to some extent. It was just So Bad. And slowly some left, and the last two linguists in the bar (me and Alexis Dimitriadis) were watching it right to the bitter end. And then we left (though annoyingly enough the best music the bar had played all night---"Counting Flowers on the Wall", Eric Heatherly---had just started playing as we walked out) as the credits were rolling.

God, it was bad.

"Between Venice and Rome, I've seen about nine different varieties of Monks, Priests, and Nuns. What do these differences represent, I wonder---is it for intramural sports? At the vey least, I'd imagine that each type has different skills and bonus feats. " --Tycho

Posted 1:19 AM [+]

17 June 2003

About a half an hour ago I mailed out a link to some people who'd been asking for my function tagger and/or Eugene's parser---I finally managed to put a version of it online. And you can tell that the people I was mailing to were grad students, because I've already gotten two responses!

"If you want to see as compelling a demonstration of Ethernet as you are ever likely to see in your life, head on over to Rome and try to cross the street. Don't wait to cross it, they'll never stop. Everyone goes at once. That's right, there are forty motorscooters and tiny Smart Cars and what looks like a motorized wheelbarrow going where you're trying to go at the same time you're tring to go there. You may momentarily feel as though you are floating in a sea of careening metal. That is actually fairly accurate. But you are in no danger." --Tycho

Posted 11:05 PM [+]

16 June 2003

A weight has been lifted from my shoulders.

I decided that there was essentially no way I was getting a draft done by today, possibly not even by tomorrow, and so I've decided to go with the later defence date, after I get back from Chicago. This gives me a couple more weeks to pound out a draft. Ahhhh.

"I'm sure we could manage a reasonable middle ground, what with that "intelligence" and "flexibility" stuff going for us as a species." --Jonathan Prykop

Posted 1:40 PM [+]

You know, chances are really good that I'm the only person in this entire building right now. *sigh*

"To point out to others that they are short, tall, fat, thin, pregnant, using a wheelchair, looking anxious or blushing is not as informative as many people imagine, and to inquire why is not likely to enlighten or amuse even the one who asks." --Miss Manners

Posted 4:05 AM [+]