October 2002 Archives
Peter's bored with hearing about my bikes. Does he think I'm running this blog as some kind of public service? Anyway, here are some links just for him.
Find out here what gas the Russians used, as well as about a more efficient alternative the US has developed.
Read here about another fascinating Gore Vidal essay, suggesting that Bush and his mates allowed the towers to be hit as a pretext to carry out an existing plan to attack Afghanistan. The full article's not on the web, though.
And if you want to worry about whether Osama's got nukes, try here.
Sure you wouldn't rather hear about bikes?
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Well, I've got it. They didn't have the blue and black one, so I've got a silver one instead.
It's not the most flash bike you could get, but it's perfectly fine. I believe the 'limited lifetime' warranty applies to this one too, so they could be supplying me with new bikes for the rest of my life. Can't complain, can you?
Right, I'm off to try to control 60 fiend-obsessed kids at a halloween party. Don't you just love the little horrors?
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But this IS funny.
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This isn't funny.
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This makes no sense to me. The latest RAJAR figures claim that Radio 4 is doing better than Capital FM and Virgin in London. So how come I can't find anybody who listens to Radio 4 outside my little elite clique of guardian-reading liberati?
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Just heard from Cycle Surgery. They've heard back from Trek who say that a new frame will be too much bother, seeing as how my bike was made back in the days when the Starship Enterprise was still considered fairly modern. So they want to give me a whole one of these instead:
Now I just need to pick up an old frame, shove all the bits that I've got in the garden shed onto it, and we'll become an 8-bike family (yes, I know there are only 4 of us - sad, isn't it?).
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(2 of our bikes are in Devon, btw)
This Science Daily report says that 'Kids With Down Syndrome Learn Language Beyond Adolescence'
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More links from Karen Chung:
The 'Vital Signs' section of the October 15, 2002 New York Times online has a short piece entitled 'Complications: After a Stroke, a New Accent by John O'Neil
A news release from the original source of the research findings, Oxford University, together with the 'before' and 'after' audio links, can be found here
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Karen Chung is a regular contributor of useful links to LINGUIST. Here is her latest posting:
I expect lots of us are subscribed to Anu Garg's 'A Word A Day' - considering his circulation of over 300,000. I've been aware for some time, though, that there are other 'Word of the Day' sites and services, and thought I'd do a Google search and put some of the links on my site for my students, to add some interactivity.
I was a bit amazed to find just how many 'Word of the Day's there are out there, and the sheer variety! There are 'Word of the Day's for all different levels of English proficiency for one thing - but even more intriguing were the non-English ones I found. There are the more pedestrian 'Wort des Tages' and 'Mot du Jour' and ones for other well-studied European languages, to be sure, but also daily words in numerous native American languages, with Alaska and Hawaii especially well represented! Many include sound files. There are also a 'medical' word of the day, and a bilingual one for Chinese civil law! I'm not sure how conscientious each Webmaster is about updating their material, but I did choose what looked like the best of the sites I visited.
The 21 'Word of the Day' links are available at: http://ccms.ntu.edu ..tw/~karchung/Extras.htm
- just click on 'Words of the Day' in the index at the top of the page.
Please write and tell me if you know of other 'Word of the Day' sites you think should be included.
Also of possible interest are the 'Language and Linguistics' links at: http://ccms.nt u.edu.tw/~karchung/linguistics.htm
Karen Steffen Chung, karchung@ccms.ntu.edu.tw
I told her about wordlog. Do you know of any others?
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You can read Kurt Cobain's journals here
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According to quote...unquote on Radio 4 today, Clint never used the word 'punk' when he said go ahead, make my day. My memory is that he said it a bit later when he said:
The question you've got to ask yourself is 'Do I feel lucky?' Well, do you, punk?'
Looks like I'm going to have to watch Sudden Impact again. Next thing they'll be telling me there was no red-eyed baby at the end of Rosemary's Baby ;-)
Interesting discussion of placenames at the languagehat. Should we really change from Peking to Beijing just because trhe Chinese government ask us to? Apparently, 'Beijing' is closer to the Mandarin pronunciation than 'Peking' but both are pretty far from 'Pak-king' which is the Cantonese, i.e. equally Chinese, way of saying it.
Reminds me of the great HimALayas debate
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There's a good article by John Harris about Nirvana in the Independent today.
I liked the bit about Kurt being in a dilemma over whether or not to spend $55,000 on a guitar that had belonged to Leadbelly. Apparently, he couldn't decide whether buying it would be 'a punk move' or 'an anti-punk move'
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I like his style (in more than one sense)
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Yes, my bike died today. After twelve years of loyal and trusty service, the frame broke on my way to work this morning. B-(
But now the good news. Trek frames come with a 'limited lifetime guarantee'. This means they'll replace it with the nearest contemporary equivalent if you are the original owner and have the receipt. And guess what? Ohna just found the receipt. So this evening I will be mostly collecting my bike and stripping it down before visiting Cycle Surgery tomorrow am.
Even better news. Sylvia is going to lend me a bike until the new frame comes through. Ah, the camaraderie of the road.
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You know how everyone knows by now not to believe the Nigerian letters that seem to come through email inboxes every day?
Well, now I don't know whether to believe this report of someone going for the world record of being scammed-dom . .
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Also found some science puzzles and links to pages on Simon Singh's 5 Numbers programmes here
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Just listened to Chomsky and others on Talking Politics. You can hear it via the bbc's listen again page.
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So Pax Americana: the United States discretely unveils its plans for a new American state in the Middle East. It will be called Iraq, and will be run by the American military. There will be war crimes trials held to try the previous regime.
From today's 'snowmail', a daily message sent out by Channel Four News.
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Thanks to pat at a blog with a name that keeps changing, I just read this article about language in the workplace and employers in the states who break the law by banning workers from speaking their own language. (I must not make another reference to David Blunkett, I must not ...)
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Yes, she was still here this morning.
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Kiloh decided she'd had enough today and tried to leave home. The first time she's thought of this. She stormed out of the kitchen and headed for the door with 'her bag' on her back. The bag was clearly symbolic since she picked up Ohna's bag which happened to be in the lobby. I hope the whole act was symbolic, although she proceeded to torture Apoa when they were in bed by constantly talking about how she plans to escape during the night...
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Here is the full interview with Chomsky on Iraq etc. which I mentioned earlier.
Also yet another really good piece by Robert Fisk in today's Independent.
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This cipher challenge looks like good fun. Tragically, you have to be a schoolkid and under 16 to play the first phases of the game. For the second part, anyone under 18 can play. Still not quite young enough for me, though.
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Renee pointed me to this article about the similarities between historical linguistics and science fiction.
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I'm not proud of reading popbitch, but I can't stop myself, especially when Jonathan draws my attention to stories like this:
Celebrity Parasites
Doing odd jobs. For big cash. Some of the best jobs in the world are to be found among the odd roles that surround dim celebrities.
Who wouldn't love to be Bash Dibra, Mariah Carey's dog trainer? Or Bobby Trendy, Anna Nicole Smith's interior designer? And can you imagine how much money you'd make if you were Shelby Marlow, the pet psychiatrist who helped Madonna's chihuahua Chiquita overcome sibling displacement syndrome when Lourdes was born? Well, there is a new contender to the crown of Celebrity Parasite Of The Year: Calista Flockhart has hired a "baby-linguist", whose job is to interpret what her adopted baby Liam is saying to her when he cries. At $350 per hour.
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Karen Chung just posted this on LINGUIST:
The October 1, 2002 online edition of the New York Times has an article entitled "Seeking Deeper Meaning in the Babbling of Babies". A few sample paragraphs:
An 11-month-old baby, her face spattered with food and her lips wet with drool, pushes her chin toward the camera and says, "Da da da da da" in a soft singsong voice. A few seconds later, though, the picture freezes and a small grid appears, superimposed over the baby's mouth. Look carefully and the lines enable you to see that as the baby babbles, her mouth opens wider on the right side than on the left. Suddenly, what was merely cute becomes scientifically interesting. If the baby babbles mainly on the right, the researchers say, it means that babbling is a form of language. ...But many experts argue that language is not hard-wired into the brain. Babies are not born with language, these scientists say, but rather learn language as they grow, making use of the brain's capacity for complex tasks, the tongue's ability to articulate and the instinct for socialization. Through imitation and practice, they learn to speak and understand the language they hear.
The nytimes article is here
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Jonathan writes:
re the great eskimo vocab hoax, there's been discussion recently on Shaksper of something a bit similar to do with anthropology and claims about shakespeare being universal - basically a paper which discussed an anthropologist trying to narrate Hamlet to some bushmen, and getting incomprehension. Turns out though, that it's not as simple as that...
Here is a summary of how the myth developed.
And here is the message which started the discussion at Shaksper
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