End of 2005 News

Dear Family and Friends,

Another year has gone by, and I'm so thankful to God for all that has happened! Sure, there's been some bad times, but whether the times were good or bad, God used them to teach me some lessons. There's a saying, which I am hopefully rendering somewhat correctly, that goes: Someone foolish doesn't learn from their mistakes, someone smart learns from their mistakes, and someone wise learns from other people's mistakes. Reflecting on this past year, it looks like I'm upgrading from foolish to smart (woo-hoo!). At any rate, I just wanted to take some time to update y'all on some stuff I've been doing, and what might be in store for me in the months ahead. Some of you I haven't talked to in ages (not more than a decade, tho'!), and some of you I've talked with just this past week. If it gets boring (or you just don't want to read a lengthy e-mail) just skip to the last paragraph. Alright, here it goes.

This August, in the midst of reflecting on my life and worrying about my then current situation, I broke down crying in the shower at my parents' house. Over the past few years I wasn't liking who I was turning into. I wanted to be true to what I believed, and I wasn't. My parents had done their part in instilling in me the values of loving others and God, yet like so many things in my life I had a "book knowledge" of them rather than an "experiential knowledge" (sorta like UCSD Engineering students, save people like Hart). I thought more along the values of being loved by others and God (and, unlike the former, I had great experiences of both). That's not to say that I never did do the former (i.e., love others and God), it's just that they were not as valuable to me as the latter. Sometimes the former was fueled by the latter. But notice the grammatical difference: the former is in the so-called active voice; the latter is in the passive voice. I was wanting things to happen to me, but (if I could help it) I was not really active in making things happen. At any rate, from August I've been focusing more on how to love than be loved: how to love both God and others. So far, it has been really hard, but the rewards have already been wonderful when I do: less stress, less strife, more joy out of life:

Last November I started a "relationship" with Margret Gonzales. I use the quotes because we had a relationship before, but it wasn't a "relationship" ;) She's a third-year at UCSD who's majoring in Religion and Political Science/International Relations, and probably the sweetest person you'll ever meet (if you are lucky enough to do so). She's from San Jose, and has a wonderful family of two parents (like all of us) and five siblings (definitely not like me). Some of her favorite hobbies include painting, journaling, and learning guitar. What attracted me to her in the first place was how she treated others, her apparent bright outlook on life, her smile, and, well, how she looked

Hmm...apparently she's not ready to be introduced. Maybe by the end of this paragraph she'll open up a bit. So as I was saying, Margret's a great gal, and we've been able to share wonderful moments together, from walking on the beach at night (one of her favorite things to do) to walking around in Balboa Park to practicing Italian or another language (one of my favorite things to do). In every situation, I've learned more about how to love someone better and better instead of nurturing my Goddamned selfishness. I've enjoyed spending all my time with her, and have learned something which might have been apparent to all of you already: quality time takes a quantity of time. Let's see what Margret's up to:

Even tho' we've had great times together, our relationship hasn't been free from the bad times, as some of you know (I blame myself for all of them, and rightly so as you will see). I broke up with her in January for a couple months when I needed to "focus on my relationship with God" (notice the use of quotes again). After a couple of months of personal reflection, some kinks got ironed out on my end and we started dating again in March. Then at the end of November, in the midst of many changes in my life that I didn't know how to handle all at once, I broke up with her again. Coincidentally, it was right after our one-year anniversary (in hindsight, really bad timing). Despite the bad timing, we were able to talk about my (yes, they are my) problems and she agreed that our "relationship" needs some time off. And so whether for a month, a few months, or more, we're not going to date. We still consider each other best of friends, but realize that if we want this to work out in the long run, sometimes a step back is better than a step forward...especially when a person like me can't even walk straight. Seriously tho', I thank God for her. I know I don't deserve to know such a great person. Oh!, looks like someone is happy to hear that compliment!

This year was my last year as an undergrad and was also my first year living off-campus. I lived with four other guys, and now that I think about it, it was a good experience. I got along with all of them most of the time, and strengthened relationships with them. Probably the biggest thing (even tho' it was a small thing) that I learned was to handle the sight of this (sans the rubber ducky and companion):

In June I graduated from UC San Diego. Some of you might have thought I was going to make a career out of being a student, so sorry to disappoint. :) I received a Bachelor of Arts in General Linguistics, even tho' I spent just little over a year in the major (I received a minor in Electrical Engineering for my other three and a half years of college). I did some research on stop epenthesis in nasal-fricative clusters (e.g., the homophony of 'sense' and 'cents') with one of my professors, Amalia Arvaniti. I finished up working on that over the summer, and realized at the end that phonetics wasn't the subfield I liked the most (I think I like syntax or semantics (particularly pragmatics) the most):

Fortunately, another of my professors, Eric Bakovic, forwarded me a job listing that was sent to him, and my first real job out of college landed me at Parity Computing where I work on developing grammars (yes, my title is "Grammar Developer"). What my job entails is better described (albeit a bit succinctly) by the company website, but it does a better job than I probably could. The blue area in the middle, yeah, that's what I work on. It's a really wonderful job and I've learned a lot from just being in the work environment. I actually get to work with one of my former TA's, Karen Tanenbaum (no relation to the Royal ones). She's my direct supervisor, and she's really helpful in providing feedback and helping me when I get stuck with something. I've learned that I can't do everything (surprise!) because I want a life outside of my job, and she definitely helps me in my job. There are a couple bonuses from having the job, too. I don't have to dress up every day, and I can work practically any hours I want, as long as I put in 8 hours a day. I do try to dress up a bit and get to work early, because that means two things: I can slowly get used to dressing up for whichever job I have next, and I can enjoy the afternoon sun even in the wintertime. All in all, I'm excited to have this job!

Now for my plans for the (many) months ahead. I have a few short term goals and a few long term goals, but I'll just share the shorter ones (i.e., less than 5 years to complete). My first short term goal is to save enough money to (easily) relocate if I need to. My second short term goal will hopefully be made easier by the first: teach abroad (hopefully East Asia) for at least a year. My third short term goal will hopefully be made easier by the first two: visit a few different countries outside of North America, especially in Europe.

Do you see a pattern there? All my short term goals involve movement (the first involves moving money from my wallet to my bank: very hard). I want to explore a bit of the world, and God willing I will. I have only been to Mexico (San Felipe) and Canada (stepped foot on Canadian soil right above Montana), but besides that have never been outside of the United States. The goal to teach abroad in East Asia is driven mostly by my desire to learn more about that part of the world and the many cultures thriving there. The goal to visit Europe in particular is mainly because I met some really cool people in I-House a couple years ago who now live in Europe; it would be great to see them again and to catch up with what's going on in their lives. I actually hope to get the first and second goals done by the end of 2007, and see a I-Houser in Europe by the end 2008, but I know things don't always work the way I want them to, so I'm trying to keep that in mind as well :)

So yeah, those are what I'll be working toward in the upcoming months. Sharing some of the highlights of my life from this past year hopefully allowed you to see my perspective on events in my life and how I've changed (hopefully for the good of us all). Because you are my friends, I wanted to make sure you knew at least some major events that have been going on in my life, despite any lack of communication we've had recently. I'm so thankful to each of you for your friendship, and I wish you the best for the new year. I hope we keep in touch.

God bless,
David

David!

I am so glad to have heard from you! It sounds like you have had a wonderful year.

Yay! to all your goals; they sound very realistic and attainable. You are quite a driven person and I have no doubt that you will soon be making a new goal list because you've accomplished these!

I'm going to be moving down to San Diego once again on January 1. Perhaps we can grab a bite and really catch up.

Merry Christmas!

*mwah*
Kristel

David "The Italian Stallion" Romano,

Good to hear updates from you. I had feared you had return to the Valley of Yuca to engage in mundane activities such as roosting dirt bikes while high on PCP, but luckily you have a solid head on your shoulders... I've always respected that about you. "Grammar Developer" huh? We don't need no stinkin' grammar *cue ogre battle*. Anyhow, just wanted to wish you a happy "give-your-atheist-child-a-present" day (credit Dave Barry, a more PC term was never created). Good luck with work, women, and weblogging, and lest I should commit any more heinous acts of forced alliteration, good day sir.

Hart - you said it right, Romano is the "Italian Stallion"!

Romano, thanks for the update man. We haven't been able to talk a lot lately and it was good to hear about what has been happening in your life lately. I'm glad that you've been able to recognize some of your personal problems and that you're working to change how you live your life. You were cool before, you can only get cooler

Come by Cuzco if you ever want to hang out. Stay cool man, you're a lucky man. You and Margret are too cute ;) Oh yeah, and I loved the quote about UCSD engineering students, too much "book knowledge" haha.

hey Dave! so... good update! i guess that explained things a little better than you wanted to last night. It was so great to see you. sorry i ditched out on you guys but i'm sure you had a great time. I'll be keeping in touch! bye bro! ~BEKA~

what's with these epic updates? you and charity are ruining my evenings... i haven't read this much in one sitting since i cracked blue like jazz. but for real, tahnks for teh soulbaring and comprehensive update. I feel like i just stepped out of the confessional booth with you :) keep it real and i can't wait to hang soon!
-the other stallion (del norte)

i just wanna give you a BIG hug after reading all that. why? becuase i love hearing about your life--whether it's lil tidbits over the phone (the usual) or epic updates online (rare, but oh so cool!). i'm so grateful to have you for a lil bro! I love that you tried to share from your heart and really reflect on the past year...oddly enough, reflection is such a powerful tool in moving forward in life...and I def see you moving forward. (and usually it's hard for a big sis to recognize a lil bro's growing up). i admire so much about you--you're so different from me in so many ways and i'm amazed at your intellect, passion and dedication (among other things). (i'll stop with the big sister bragging now). Not to say that you don't have your weaknesses (but who doesn't--it's not so much about what you're weaknesses are, but what you decide to do about them). As for your goals, hopes and dreams....just remember "seek first the Kingdom of God and then all those other things will be added unto you..." (and since you're quite literary, i'll say that context with this passage DOES matter so look it up and figure it out for yourself)! (and now i'll stop with the big sister guidance lesson). :)
loveya,
charitts

hi dave!
the old school SDers got a hold of this website and now we are passing it around to try and see what you are up to, glad to hear that your life is going well, and i hope to hear from you soon. oh yeah, you should really check out www.ftta.org. there is a school like that located in London. you could prolly travel out here and what not. i am here in London/ Cambridge, and visiting for a little bit, welps, catch ya later. hope all your plans and dreams work themselves out.
ciao!
-helena chu
ps. i taught english in the south of china and i suggest it, it was an experience which i will never forget. if you get the chance, i suggest you take it.

Great to hear from you Helena! Thanks for the tip about ftta.org: I'll check it out. Hope you're having a great time in England, and we definitely need to have an "old school" reunion :)

Website? Me, a website. We will leave that to the "what generation are you?" generation. Dave, as your mom, I'm sad to hear of your tears, but those times are so beautiful between us and God, that the pain and cleansing are worth the sadness that brings us there. I love you so much. Your life has changed me for the better.

I look forward to more updates and the newer David I will meet each time.

Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor entered into the heart of man, the things which God has prepared for those who love Him. 1 Cor 2:8-10

I can attest to this Truth.

Love
MOM

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pay per performance

While I was thanking God that the Patriot Act didn't get passed by the Senate, I heard about what those in the EU have to go through: full recording of every phone/digital transmission by every person in the EU. The Patriot Act doesn't just permit this kind of "governmental oversight", but strengthens the power of a copyright owner to prosecute others for supposed violations of fair use. Anyway, one society in Britain, the Performing Rights Society, is trying to flex its muscle for supposed violations of copyright as well. One music shop owner is told that he must pay a license fee for anyone to try out a copyrighted tune before buying an instrument (a commonplace thing at the Guitar Center here in the US) because it counts as a "public performance". Seriously, that's a whole lot of crapola.

[update: now Britain is taking it a step further and tracking all vehicle movement...hopefully that's not happening already in the US without our knowledge. I know they do it at the Mexico-US border, but that's not half as bad as what's now going to happen in Britain.]

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let your blog speak for itself

Via Perlcast I learned about Talkr, a free service that converts a blog to audio. Well, it's free for up to three blogs of your choosing (on top of some popular ones they already offer for free) when you sign up for a free membership. If you want to listen to more, or listen to your own blog, then you can subscribe for a small fee (at least I think it's small). Anyway, I was just talking about text-to-speech technology today with a co-worker, and thought it fortuitous that I listened to this Perlcast today :)

yoyoyo

what up dave. i'll call you up for sure when i'm back in town. i hope all is well with you. i dunno man, these tests they throw at us are pretty gnarly. definitely tougher than anything i've ever done before. worse than the mcat, more energy draining than those interviews. i'll tell you about it when i get back. can't wait to chill, bro.

louis

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free music

Lately I've been checking out garageband.com, a site where artists can upload their music and people can rate it on a scale of 1 to 5 stars. Perlcast is where I first heard about this site, and the great thing is that it's legit, since the artists themselves are the ones submitting music. Today I was listening to APM's Future Tense, and the story was about Jane Siberry, a reputable Canadian musician, who is distributing her music for free online. More precisely, she allows the fan to choose the price. So anyone can freely download her music, but she also gives the option to actually pay for a song to support her. She says that sometimes people give more than the suggested amount, and that the business model has been good so far. Kudos to her! Also, I thought she said an interesting quote about this development for music: "Maybe we're heading toward where we came from, which was, we never used to have physical medium ".

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start your own band!

Via /., I found out about some students who have created the ability to rock out to air guitar. Altho' the article says anyone can "create their own guitar solos", but it actually improvizes parts for you. I think it would be difficult to sell something that didn't do a little "magic" to make you sound good, so maybe that's why they decided to do that. Or maybe they're just lazy ;)

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First Literary Crush

Sauvage Noble talks about a story from Slate where highly influential people were asked what book most influenced them in college. I have to say I wasn't too surprised that I hadn't heard of most of the books, but was surprised that a few of my favorites weren't on there (I guess that means I'm probably not going to be that influential). After reading the article, I decided to add a few more books to my never-shrinking reading least:Seven Types of Ambiguity by William Empson and Henry IV by Shakespeare. The books that were already on my list (but I haven't touched yet) were The Iliad and The Odyssey, both by Homer, and The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand (Michael Nalwalker would be proud of me), all which I've heard good stuff from.

Since Angelo on Sauvage Noble listed a book that he loved in college, I'll follow suite and list a couple of the books I found most beneficial in college: Beyond Personality by C.S. Lewis and How to Read a Book(actually, this one I didn't get to until the summer after my fifth year, but that still counts, right?) by Mortimer J. Adler.

Beyond Personality is actually quite small (like my attention span) and simply explained seemingly complicated theological questions. After savoring that book for awhile, I went on to read a few other books by Lewis, and have learned much from him in the process. He, along with G.K. Chesterton, always seemed to find a way to express ideas clearly, and never failed to add wit in his writing. It's a hope that I could some day write as simply, powerfully, and as carefully as he.

How to Read a Book was actually assigned as optional reading in the intro course to Electrical Engineering the first quarter of my freshman year, but most of the students in that class, including myself, were quite cocky and thought we didn't need to learn how to read something for more than information (that song by Rod Stewart, "I wish that I knew what I know now" comes to mind). Anyway, I re-discovered How to Read a Book via another book (Scripture Twisting by James W. Sire) and a course I took my last quarter in college, LIGN 176: The Language of Politics and Advertising (which was my favorite course, btw). I actually didn't realize it was the same book that was recommended to me at the beginning of my college life until I looked it up on Amazon.com and recognized the funky-looking cover for it. For now, if anyone asks me a book that they should read, I recommend this one first. So go read it. ;)

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caloric intake: you do the math...

Tonight I was listening to a podcast of "These Days", a local public radio broadcast series, when the first couple sentences from the speaker made me play the segment over again:

A typical American eats three thousand calories during Thanksgiving dinner. That's about five thousand calories more than an adult male needs in a whole day.

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Instant language translation

Via /., there's an interesting article about a Darpa project intending to develop an "instant-translation" device. The article is good in that it points out the limitations of such a device, but still, if near-instant translation can be done between English and Iraqi Arabic that will be awesome. I wonder how it can be extended to signed languages...perhaps using something like the new iPod to generate a video showing the signs?

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VitaGoat

In part of catching up on what technology is doing, I decided to subscribe to the podcast APM's "Future Tense", and heard about an interesting "contraption" for fighting malnutrition in under-developed countries. It's called VitaGoat, and from what I understand, it allows the very efficient food-processing without the use of electricity, thereby allowing food to be preserved for consumption later. There are already nine being used around the world (in Africa, India, and North Korea), and the technology is being transferred to India and Africa for cheaper manufacturing and maintenance. So this invention is not only helping against malnutrition, but providing more jobs too!

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Phalanx Flanks and Dogs Are Drags

Recently I've been listening to podcasts like crazy during work. It not only helps me catch up on news, editorial pieces, and great songs, it also has allowed me to learn more about the great culture that is Perl via Perlcast. The guy, Josh McAdams, who does Perlcast sets up interviews, talks about the latest news, discusses aspects of the language for beginners, and also highlights modules that many other Perl users have found useful. Besides all that goodness, he segues in and out of the podcast with music he has selected from garageband.com. Anyway, just that alone has made the podcast a great experience! The song that I'm getting addicted to right now is called Sun Years by Scotland Barr and The Slow Drags. Just thought I'd share the goodness :)

Another great thing about Josh McAdams, at least for me, is his Southern accent. For example, he was talking about a project called Phalanx, and it sounded like "flanks" to me (is there a connection between the words?). I have always pronounced it (ever since playing Civilization, that is) like ['fele?ks], with the stress on the first syllable. He, however, in Perlcast 9, sounds like he pronounces it ['fle?ks]: only one syllable, albeit with a lot of consonants (soundclip). Nothing wrong with it (of course), but I just thought it was interesting because it made me try to think of words that I do that to (i.e., that I drop a vowel). The only one I could think of of the top of my head was philanthropy [f?'lan?r?pi]/['flan?r?pi]. The schwa is present when I'm speaking more carefully, but that's not that often. ;) The similarity I saw was that both had the same onset cluster [fl] and similar codas: a nasal followed bya voiceless consonant. Other than that, I guess it's just that he drops an unstressed vowel between a fricative and a liquid regularly, whereas I just do it intermittently. It just sorta caught me off-guard because for me I've never heard "phalanx" pronounced with the first vowel unstressed/dropped.

Also, another fun one for me was when I was first trying to find the band's name for the above-mentioned song. To me, it sound like he's saying Scotland Barr and the Slow Dogs (soundclip). I don't know where he grew up, but I have an aunt who lives in Louisville who sounds nothing like him, so I don't think he's from there. Anyway, this one I can't wrap my head around. How is "drags" pronounced "dogs" to my ears? I gotta think about it more. Ahh, language is great :)

Hey David, thanks for listening to Perlcast. As far as my accent, it is south Arkansas.

I've had a lot of trouble with saying Phalanx on the podcast. At first, I pronounced it like 'fay-lanks', but was told that it really sounded more like 'flanks'. Now, I just avoid saying it as much as possible. Why did Andy choose such a difficult word? :)

The Slow Dogs pronunciation... well, that is just a case of my mouth not saying what my eyes were seeing. I said dogs but should have said drags. Oops.

Thank you for all of the comments. Other than all of the Perl that I've learned by hosting this podcast, I've also learned that I'm a very lazy reader and speaker. Feel free to correct me when I get too far off in how I pronounce words.

Hi Josh,
Thank you for producing Perlcast! Yeah, phalanx is a weird word: i think he should have been more careful about using such a rare word (but I do like the motto he uses with it). :) I'm glad that the Slow Dogs pronunciation was just a flub (which I do all the time, btw) because, like I said, I was lost with how to explain that variation. As for pronunciation, I didn't mean to "correct you" or anything like that, I just like noticing pronunciations that are different from my own, and trying to figure out the possible reason(s) for such variation. Maybe the reason for the laziness in speaking and reading stems from applying the three virtues of programming to other aspects of life (which I am definitely guilty of). ;)

Hey David,

Thanks very much for mentioning our song! It's nice to know that people are finding it and enjoying it! I wanted to take the opportunity to let you and Josh and any readers out there know that we've got other songs and more content up on our GarageBand website, and also on our band website, which is http://www.scotlandbarr.com. Thanks for the good word, and do keep listening!

Sincerely,
Chris Hubbard, Slow Drag

Thanks for the info Chris! I will keep listening, and make a point to keep checking the website for updates. :)

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lucky seven

After work yesterday, I went to my first perlmongers meeting. (well, I actually went to a meeting at UCSD in August to hear Damian Conway speak, but that was sorta a special occasion). I met some interesting people (Joel, Bob, Billy, Cathy with a 'C', and Amil) and even tho' we didn't talk about Perl all that much, it was just an all-around enjoyable good time. Anyway, what I really wanted to write about is that I've learned about a new website, thedailywtf.com, and decided to check it out today. Today's post was not showing "wtf" code, but still about people writing ridiculously stupid code. The post is about a problem a Dutch bank is having with its ATM matchines.: the machines don't allow people with the number "7" in their pin to access their accounts. Who says "7" is a lucky number? ;)

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pretty cool

my dad just showed me an e-mail he received from someone else, and i thought i'd pass it along:

If your eyes follow the movement of the rotating pink dot, you will only see one color, pink. However, if you stare at the black "+" in the center, the moving dot turns to green. Now, concentrate on the black "+" in the center of the picture. After a short period, all the pink dots will slowly disappear, and you will only see a green dot rotating. It's amazing how our brain works. There really is no green dot, and the pink ones really don't disappear. This should be proof enough, we don't always see what we think we see.

I have the same reaction as you. Maybe we're on the same wavelength. i need to sleep.

Same reaction as you, one green dot at a time goes round, BUT when I take off my glasses, that have antii=glare treatment from Walmart, there is a green blur slightly above and to the right of the pink dots, but I can never make them go away. Most strange

Hmm, Nancy, so you see a green blur rather than a dot? How big is the blur? Is it the same size as a pink dot?

Explanation is given at

http://electroneubio.secyt.gov.ar/non-optic_visual_intonation.htm

Quite technical (full grasp requires studying at least other three articles in the same journal) but worthwhile

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Bruce T. Hinman

Sometimes while I'm driving I notice (as I'm sure others do) the different parks, interchanges and highways named after people. During last summer, when I always carried a small notepad to jot notes onto, I wrote down these two lines:

• (134) Bruce T. Hinman Memorial Interchange
• Frank G. Borelli Regional Park (57) San Dimas

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never thirst again

Another thing via /. about a couple of German students whi invented mugmats which calcutate when a (beer) mug needs to be refilled. They must have had a great time "testing" the product out. :)

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Luke 2:14
gloria in altissimis Deo et in terra pax in hominibus bonae voluntatis

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Perl modules for Gmail

Josh McAdams, after a cool interview with Allison Randal, talked about Perl modules that he tried to use in order to pull off messages from his Gmail account. (Yeah, I know the podcast was in May: I'm slowly getting thru them :))He looked at Mail::Webmail::Gmail, WWW::Gmail, and Gmail::Checker. The last one was the only one that worked for him "out of the box". It was sorta funny tho', because I spent about two hours before listening to his podcast trying to work with Gmail via Net::SMTP::SSL. Unfortunately, I never got it to properly connect to Gmail, but (fortunately) I found out about Mail::Webmail::Gmail, and spent another half-hour making it work. Since I originally wanted to send mail from my Gmail account through a script, that was the only one I tried to get working out of the ones Josh mentioned (altho' I hadn't listened to his podcast yet :)).

Initially I didn't get it to work because the module was having trouble connecting with the SMTP server. Bummer. After fiddling around with it for a bit, I decided to do some googling. I finally got it working by finding an blog posting about it, and some guy named Julien put up a fixed Gmail.pm along with instructions to connect to Gmail these days (thank you Julien!). Anyway, sending mail has worked like a charm since then, so if you want to start scripting your Gmail stuff, you might want to check it out. Like I said before, I didn't check out other modules, but they may be better if you just want to check your mail and not send your mail.

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vocative and third-person alternation
I love you, O Lord, my strength. The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold. ... The Lord also thundered in the heavens, and the Most High uttered his voice, hailstones and coals of fire. And he sent out his arrows and scattered them; he flashed forth lightnings and routed them. Then the channels of the sea were seen, and the foundations of the world were laid bare at your rebuke, O Lord, at the blast of the breath of your nostrils. ... For who is God, but the Lord? And who is a rock, except our God? the God who equipped me with strength and made my way blameless. For who is God, but the Lord? And who is a rock, except our God? the God who equipped me with strength and made my way blameless. He made my feet like the feet of a deer and set me secure on the heights. He trains my hands for war, so that my arms can bend a bow of bronze. You have given me the shield of your salvation, and your right hand supported me, and your gentleness made me great. ... He made my feet like the feet of a deer and set me secure on the heights. He trains my hands for war, so that my arms can bend a bow of bronze. You have given me the shield of your salvation, and your right hand supported me, and your gentleness made me great. ... The Lord lives, and blessed be my rock, and exalted be the God of my salvation? the God who gave me vengeance and subdued peoples under me, who delivered me from my enemies; yes, you exalted me above those who rose against me; you rescued me from the man of violence.

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comfort possible in Sheol?
I made the nations quake at the sound of its fall, when I cast it down to Sheol with those who go down to the pit. And all the trees of Eden, the choice and best of Lebanon, all that drink water, were comforted in the world below. They also went down to Sheol with it, to those who are slain by the sword; yes, those who were its arm, who lived under its shadow among the nations.

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holy rusted metal, batman!

The Better Bibles blog was started up by Wayne Leman, one of the co-moderators of the Bible Translation (mailing) List (BTL) . There always seems to be something new and interesting that's being posted, and it's hard for me to keep up with it. Anyway, Wayne e-mailed the BTL list and suggested we have a look-see at Mike Sangrey's post. His post reminded me of a book on discourse and dialog that I started (but never finished) last summer. Go check it out (either the book or his post) if you have the time.

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views of man v. God
So Gad came to David and told him, and said to him, "Shall three years of famine come to you in your land? Or will you flee three months before your foes while they pursue you? Or shall there be three days' pestilence in your land? Now consider, and decide what answer I shall return to him who sent me." Then David said to Gad, "I am in great distress. Let us fall into the hand of the Lord, for his mercy is great; but let me not fall into the hand of man." [2 Sam. 24]

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why was it a sin?
Again the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he incited David against them, saying, "Go, number Israel and Judah."...Again the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he incited David against them, saying, "Go, number Israel and Judah."[2 Sam. 24]

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husband or no?...the law?

Tell me, you who desire to be under the law, do you not listen to the law? For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave woman and one by a free woman. But the son of the slave was born according to the flesh, while the son of the free woman was born through promise. Now this may be interpreted allegorically: these women are two covenants. One is from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery; she is Hagar. Now Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia; she corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children. But the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother. For it is written,

"Rejoice, O barren one who does not bear; break forth and cry aloud, you who are not in labor! For the children of the desolate one will be more than those of the one who has a husband."

Now you, brothers, like Isaac, are children of promise. But just as at that time he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, so also it is now. But what does the Scripture say? "Cast out the slave woman and her son, for the son of the slave woman shall not inherit with the son of the free woman." So, brothers, we are not children of the slave but of the free woman.

• the quotation Paul uses: didn't Sarah have a husband? why is he using this then?
• at the beginning, what is Paul's tone? is he encouraging them to listen to Christ as they tried so hard listen to the Law? is this just buttressing his argument immediately preceding this passage? (But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world, whose slaves you want to be once more? You observe days and months and seasons and years! I am afraid I may have labored over you in vain.)

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cost of sacrifice
Then Araunah said to David, "Let my lord the king take and offer up what seems good to him. Here are the oxen for the burnt offering and the threshing sledges and the yokes of the oxen for the wood. All this, O king, Araunah gives to the king." And Araunah said to the king, "The Lord your God accept you." But the king said to Araunah, "No, but I will buy it from you for a price. I will not offer burnt offerings to the Lord my God that cost me nothing." [2 Sam. 24]

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curse on everyone whether they do them or not?
Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them. [ Gal. 3] The one who does them shall live by them. [ Gal. 3] For if the inheritance comes by the law, it no longer comes by promise; but God gave it to Abraham by a promise. [ Gal. 3]

[all posts in /ling/]  [permanent link]

law and faith
Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. [Gal. 3] What does "in order that we might be justified by faith" mean? Is this result actually thought before the introduction of the law? I don't understand why the law was our guardian for us to be able to be justified by faith.

[all posts in /ling/]  [permanent link]

angelogy and unity of God
Why then the law? It was added because of transgressions, until the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made, and it was put in place through angels by an intermediary. Now an intermediary implies more than one, but God is one. [ Gal. 3] What is he trying to say? Who is the intermediary? What is the relation of the intermediary to angels and God? My first guess would be the intermediary is Christ, but why do I say that and how is it supported?

[all posts in /ling/]  [permanent link]

Group Social Structure

Just finished reading an article about patterns of societies and groups that one should keep in mind when designing social software (hat tip to Alias). The author separates his talk into three sections: 1) why and how a group is its own worst enemy, 2) why is the social software explosion happening now, and 3) what things that, if integrated into social software, it support large-scale and long-lived groups. It's well worth the read.

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racism in the media

One of my linguistics professors, Eric Bakovic, posted on Language Log about possible "systemic racism" in the media's coverage of Hurricane Katrina. He refers to an animated gif which shows that the verb "loot" is used for describing black people's activity, and "find" is used to described the same activity of white people. Many comments mention that the description of blacks "looting" is found in an AP article, while the description of whites "finding" is found in an AFP article, and since they are different news agencies, it somehow weakens the evidence for (word usage) racism by the media. Eric replies that he's just trying to show that there's systemic racism, i.e., that there's a problem 'with the distinction between "looting" and "finding", as the title of my post says explicitly, and with the fact that the former is attributed to blacks and the latter to whites.'

I decided to go to GoogleNews and Yahoo!News and search for "looting". There are articles by non-US media describing what was happening in New Orleans, yet none of them had pictures describing the looting: for each of these articles, there's no distinction made between "white finding" and "black looting". An article from Britain and an article from down under both mention that tourists even joined in the "looting", but unfortunately (for this post) neither give the skin color of the tourists. In response to Eric's problem with the distinction between "looting" and "finding", I think he'd have to suppose that the groups of tourists mentioned by the Aussies and Brits were comprised of blacks.

Eric makes clear that he's not suggesting malicious intent by the media, but I think there is a connection between malicious intent and systemic racism. For what it's worth, photographer Chris Graythen, who took the photo of the white people "finding", has stated here why he described them as "finding" and not "looting". From what he says, and from the use of the word "looting" by so many different sources without an accompanying photo/caption, I don't see the support for "the prevalent racism in the US media" (malicious, not systemic): the photo/caption pairs with "loot" and "find" are nugatory compared to the amount of articles I noticed. ( In truth, I actually didn't find any photo/image pairs). Of course, I'm writing this a few days after the AP and AFP articles were posted, so it may be that I just don't see the many photo/caption pairs with "loot" and "find", or it may be that those were all taken down when people like Kanye West spoke out about the inequality. If anyone knows where all these photo/caption pairs are, please let me know.

[all posts in /ling/]  [permanent link]

one use only

Via /., there has been a Ninth Circuit ruling that states you violate patent law if you use a product more than specified by its container. Altho', in all likelihood, the individual will never get sued, it does make me consider how much sense judges have nowadays. As one slashdotter (mfh) said, "Getting down to ownership; if I buy something, I guess it's not really mine, eh?" I have yet to read the ruling, but I'm interested in how they're going to define "one use only".

With the way IP rulings are going these days, I'd define 'one use only' in court as, 'don't touch. EVER.' But in real life, it means 'use as much and however you want, and ignore those stupid jurists.'

On my audio entry I said "disc golf" it's my 3rd love or something like that.

Behind Jesus.
And my wife.

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what's that sound?

While scrolling back through the discussions on irc.perl.org#catalyst, i noticed a discussion about last.fm. So I decided to check it out. The privacy policy is simple enough, so I signed up, downloaded the iTunes plug-in (that tells last.fm what music I have), and downloaded the last.fm music player (which is freely available for all major OSes). I'm still exploring it, but so far it seems pretty rad.

I might have to check that out. Know what you’re gonna do yet this fall?

Nope. Not for sure, anyway. Probably going to be substitute teaching in OC, but may do some other job on the side. Yay for student loans! ;)

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get a new skin

Slashdot post about artificial skin development, and the ability to allow for skin to sense even more things than human skin can (e.g., changes in humidity, light, sound, etc.). I'm wondering if the new skin will be available for burn victims, or for others who have lost skin. What kind of interface (assuming there is one) will there be with the nervous system to handle these new sensory perceptions? Or would they just have an exterior (computer) interface that notifies the wearer of environmental changes?

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what i didn't foresee anytime soon

here's a link from a link from macslash. it describes how to dualboot os x and windows on x86. since os x for x86 has been illegally distributed and hacked, there's been a lot of development in getting it to work on any x86 system. i'm really curious what apple is up to by now allowing (more easily, at least) their os to be run on unapproved x86 hardware...maybe playing hardball with windows? it is interesting that the deal between apple and intel popped up a couple months before microsoft released vista for beta testing...

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ogg vorbis

This /. article reminded me about ogg vorbis, a patent-free encoding technology. This means that, unlike mp3's, there will never be a royalty you have to pay for mass distribution. I used it as my primary audio format when I was back running linux, and used it on OS X up until I moved to 10.4. Since I haven't really been listening to much music on my computer lately, I sadly haven't noticed the absence of it. If anyone wants to know what programs already support ogg vorbis, check out this page. There is a QuickTime plugin, which allows you to play songs iTunes (but not via Airport Express). The plugin does not work with QT7 or Tiger, unfortunately, so if you have either you're as SOL as I am.

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revolution in speech-recognition software?

I just saw an article on /. that states scientists can now "read thoughts". Scientists have discovered consistent fMRI patterns for a given audio and visual input. In the news release,

Dr. John-Dylan Haynes of the UCL Institute of Neurology, who led the research, told the BBC News website: "What we need to do now is create something like speech-recognition software, and look at which parts of the brain are specifically active in a person."

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for those who have a pbook or ibook

I can't remember what I was searching for earlier today, but I came across this article. I found that this command was useful: ioreg -w0 -l | grep Capacity. Now, every time I fire up the terminal, I can see how close I am to having to get a new battery for my ibook. Mine has lasted two years already, and I must say it's longer that I thought it would last. (I think it has helped that I've mostly used "Better Energy Savings" mode in "Energy Saver...".)

Whenever possible, I try to compute plugged in. Now, what does this mean?

| | | "IOBatteryInfo" = ({"Capacity"=4400,"Amperage"=0,"Cycle Count"=58,"Current"=4318,"Voltage"=12429,"Flags"=1090519045,"AbsoluteMaxCapacity"=4400}) | | | | "IOBatteryInfo" = ({"Capacity"=4400,"Amperage"=0,"Cycle Count"=58,"Current"=4318,"Voltage"=12429,"Flags"=1090519045,"AbsoluteMaxCapacity"=4400})

Your battery life is great, Angelo! The "Capacity" is supposed to tell you how much charge your battery is currently able to retain, the "Current"is how much it is currently charged (from the looks of it, you're at 98%), and the "AbsoluteMaxCapacity" is how much the initial capacity was when it was shipped. My battery has really taken a beating (I used to "go wireless" a lil' too much). Just to realize how great a condition your battery is in, here's my current output:

| | | "IOBatteryInfo" = ({"Capacity"=2815,"Amperage"=0,"Cycle Count"=318,"Current"=2766,"Voltage"=12413,"Flags"=838860805,"AbsoluteMaxCapacity"=4200}) | | | | "IOBatteryInfo" = ({"Capacity"=2815,"Amperage"=0,"Cycle Count"=318,"Current"=2766,"Voltage"=12413,"Flags"=838860805,"AbsoluteMaxCapacity"=4200})

So even tho' I'm at 98%, my battery is still suckin' wind. Oh yeah, and the "Cycle Count" is the number of recharge cycles your battery has gone through. I beat ya by about 5 times in that count, but that's nothin' to be proud of. :) It's just a guess, but do you have a powerbook? Your initial capacity ("AbsoluteMaxCapacity") is a bit larger, and I seem to remember that powerbooks have longer battery life than ibooks.

Thanks, David! Yeah, Powerbook, which I must have had about 16 months now, I think.

This is a weird output I got for about a minute today:

| | | "IOBatteryInfo" = ({"Capacity"=2815,"Amperage"=0,"Cycle Count"=318,"Current"=2826,"Voltage"=12509,"Flags"=838860805,"AbsoluteMaxCapacity"=4200}) | | | | "IOBatteryInfo" = ({"Capacity"=2815,"Amperage"=0,"Cycle Count"=318,"Current"=2826,"Voltage"=12509,"Flags"=838860805,"AbsoluteMaxCapacity"=4200})

Within a minute, "Current" when down to 2815, but it just make me pause for a moment and think if there might be a way to exceed capacity. Then I read this article and decided not to mess with it. :)

When I detach my battery, here's the output: | | | "IOBatteryInfo" = ({"Capacity"=10000,"Amperage"=0,"Current"=0,"Voltage"=0,"Flags"=838860929}) | | | | "IOBatteryInfo" = ({"Capacity"=10000,"Amperage"=0,"Current"=0,"Voltage"=0,"Flags"=838860929})

Makes sense...

what os version/powerbook r u using? my daughter's 800mHz titanium, osX.4.2, has its original battery, and it's been running for about an hour on battery. the output of ioreg is: "IOBatteryInfo" = ({"Capacity"=65235,"Amperage"=18446744073709550742,"Cycle Count"=155,"Current"=63766,"Voltage"=14785,"Flags"=4,"AbsoluteMaxCapacity"=4000})

obviously f.u.:-( i've reset nvram, prom, et al, but it's still whacko...

Hi airdrummer,

I'm using 4.2 on a 900Mhz ibook. so i take it you're just curious about why the "Capacity" and "Current" are so high, and your "Flags" is so low? (Since you're running off of the battery, your "Amperage" looks about right.) Have you let your battery run down all the way until it enters into "sleep mode"? (I noticed that suggestion this, but it may be what you meant when you said "i've reset nvram, prom, et al"). I'd either try that, or even let it run down all the way to nothing (beyond "sleep mode"). I also noticed this posts by periche and Chulo here, which suggests it might just be a Ti issue. How long does your battery last, anyway? more than an hour, it seems. i'm afraid that's all i can suggest. let me know if nothing works, or if you find anything else out. :)

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reminds me of a magic trick...

where sleight-of-hand is involved. Via /., quantum information can be negative. As I said, it reminds me of a slight-of-hand card trick, where the information you present actually makes the audience know less about what's really going on. It also reminds me of sci-fi and James Doohan's recent "beaming up".

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minglin' wit' da mac

This article reminded me that at the end of next month I will have been using a mac for two years, too. I agree with many of his points (he doesn't have too many to begin with) and suggest those of you who are windows users to check out this important page. ;) Of course, there are improvements to be made for any OS, but I really do like the overall support (at any Apple store) and hardware quality.

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debby-an and lie-nucks

phonoloblog just made a switch from RedHat Linux to Debian GNU/Linux. I think it's a good change, regardless of whether Red Hat's support license is expiring or not. Red Hat has become quite bloated in the last few years because they started including many applications in the "standard" install that most people never use. if they would have just kept with the basics and added only the apps to make it run well, i think the user base would have appreciated it a lot. i mean, really, do you need 2-3 cd's to install a version of an OS that can be fully functional (including X) with only 100MB of software?

anyway, seeing RedHat and Debian in one sentence made me think of how my pronunciation of certain words has changed. back in 1997, when i first toyed around Linux on my computer[1], i pronounced it lie-nucks. since i was the only one in a 100 mile radius using Linux, there wasn't much opportunity for me to hear others say it. i think i first heard someone say Linux like this during my last year of high school, and it is now my only way of saying it.

this brings me to how i pronounced Debian up until five weeks ago when John, the technical support in the phonetics lab, pronounced it differently than i do. i used to say it "dee-bee-an", but he, by pronouncing it debby-an, made me think about whether i said it like most other users of the software. i looked it up (on the internet), and lo and behold i had been saying it differently than the authors and the majority of users. so the last couple weeks i've been changing how i've said that too.

this whole topic of pronunciation of words made me think of pronunciation differences between members of the same "dialect". is it because of some processing rules that made me process the word "debian" and "linux" both with long vowels? i don't think it's because of the vowels being between a stop and an nasal (respectively), or else why are there words like "debit" and "finish" with vowels that are short? anyway, maybe i need to look at cases where the pattern IS the same, and then worry about how to resolve any differences. but for now, i'm off to program ;)

[1] i initially tried to run it on an 8088 (ELKS) , but i never was quite successful. i then persuaded my dad to let me run it on his computer, and the rest is history.

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random link of the day
click here

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randomness (not daily)

for those other guitarists *cough* jenchen *cough*: Guitar Center - June 24-26

/. at it again...well, actually it's the supreme court justices who are scaring me (and other /.ers): link.

useful phonetics site (maybe i'm the last one to know): link

finally, a framework for perl that's seriously competing against RoR: Catalyst

....and my new toy (the product, not the man): it's fully loaded with pretty much all the custom upgrades, and i'm probably going to start using it as my main computer while running webapps off of it (look here, here, and here if you're interested in getting a blog up and running on a mac really quickly.)

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circumnavimgate comment

I know it's been a little over 3 months since the discussion took place, but I wanted to put this up because it was what I was thinking about at the time, and I'm still interested. The discussion about circumnavimgate took place on phonoloblog at the end of April. I am no way an expert in spectrogram reading, but I looked back at the handouts I got in my Phonetics course (particularly this one) and agreed with Daniel Hall's analysis that the F2 formant suggests the nasal in question is alveolar. But then I thought about it a bit more, and I'm wondering if anyone knows of an instance where a velar nasal does show an even F2 or F3 transition, possibly because of the vowel before or after it. Or does anyone know what the formant transitions of a palatal nasal are? Even tho' a palatal nasal isn't in the word "circumnavigate" (and therefore wouldn't be an example of a copy), it still is what might be there, no? Maybe even because the speaker's target was [n], yet because of the following [g], the actual contact was palatal. (I'm thinking of what Browman and Goldstein talked about in "Tiers in articulatory phonology, with some implications for casual speech"(1987).) I have never seen a spectrogram of a palatal nasal, and I've never been told how to distinguish it from other nasals. In general, it seems there's more F2-F3 "pinching" the farther one moves toward the velum (from the lips). So a palatal would sorta be somewhere in between an alveolar and a velar nasal, right? Anyway, I did find Phonetic Explanations For Nasal Sound Patterns by John Ohala in Nasalfest: Papers from a Symposium on Nasals and Nasalization (which I scanned a portion of), which talked a bit about nasal acoustics. On page 294, Ohala mentions the very thing that this discussion is about: engma being confused with [m] and [n].

This may be totally off-topic, and probably shows the extent of my ignorance, but I'm curious about the categorization of the different types of speech errors that have been studied. On page 296, Ohala also writes:

Nasal-stop clusters tend be homorganic. This is undoubtedly follows in part from the acoustic similarity of the various nasal consonants, i.e., as they are auditorily ambiguous as to place of articulation they may be articulatorily re-interpreted.

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it got half of me right

Over the past few months, I've really enjoyed taking the random internet quizzes I come across. I guess the few that do describe you well make up for the so many that are totally off base. Although the Who's Your Inner European? quiz does not predict your ethnicity, it reminded me of my problem with labeling a person as fitting a certain ethnic category. Growing up going to public school, I remember a few times where tests asked for my ethnicity, which started me thinking about the difference between who I am and what I mark on a questionnaire. The problem does not come from my cultural heritage: I was raised with some Scottish and Italian tradition, but mostly I identify with culture of Southern California (which is broad, I know, but at least it's less general "American" culture). The problem for me comes from the racial factor of ethnicity.

My grandfathers' families are from Italy, my maternal grandmother's mom is from Scotland and her dad is from Whales, and my paternal grandmother was adopted and does not know where her biological family is from. For practical purposes, most just clump Italian, Scottish, and Welsh together as a "White"[1]< ethnicity, so I have no problem there. My problem is a conscientous one whenever I mark what ethnicity I am on a form. As far as I know, I do have "white" ethnicity, but my paternal grandmother has features and skin tone associated with Native Americans. So should I mark "Other" or "White/American Indian" on my form since my grandmother thinks she's probably Native American?

An argument for me marking "Other" or "White/American Indian"is that everyone relies on their ancestors' portrayal of who they are (to some extent), and therefore I should take my grandmother at her word. If my grandmother said that both her parents had only very dark skin tone yet she, her husband, and all her children had a very pale skin tone, I would have good reason to question the validity of her statement that her parents had very dark skin tone. But the fact is that my grandmother does have features that are associated with Native Americans, which have been passed on to my dad and his sibs. It is reasonable then, to accept my ancestor's portrayal of who she thinks she is, since she has support for it.

On the other hand, an argument for me marking "White" is that I should limit my expression of who I am to how I look, and for the most part I look "White". This would probably please statisticians since generally that is the ethnic group with which I most identify. The question seems to be used for producing generalizations anyway, so being the most general (without being too wrong) will help whoever is asking the question: "be a good chap now and answer us simply. we don't want the messy details."

As you can probably tell, I don't like the second argument (but maybe there's a better reason to go with marking "White"). It all just becomes frustrating because I don't fit the "model" that everyone is supposed to know where they are from. The ethnicity of others doesn't seem to be so cut and dry either, and I seriously wonder what good it is (besides propagating ethnic divisions or conducting serious research for medicinal or ethnological purposes) to factionalize people by ethnicity and race. Anyway, that's my $0.02. Oh yeah, and before I forget, this is what the Who's Your Inner European? quiz told me: :)

Your Inner European is Italian!

Passionate and colorful. You show the world what culture really is.

[1]but what is a "White" ethnicity anyway? It seems to broad of a term to be useful scientifically or historically, but yet people accept its use and continue to use it on a daily basis. The same goes for all the other "codes" used for determining ethnicity: what a bummer.

c'mon dromano, you're not really italian; just an italian-poser, you white boy. ch. psh. tsk.

Your Inner European is Irish!

Sprited and boisterous!

You drink everyone under the table.

Who's Your Inner European?

Hey Dave. I hope your summer is going swimmingly. I'm glad I'm a stereotypical Irish because I do like to drink and my moral prudeness does match a typical Catholic.

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/. articles producing scary thoughts in twentysomething

yikes! i could help but shudder at the post on /., especially since i took a course a few years ago at uci called social analysis of computerization that showed how much computerization of society is changing the way we think and live. i think the biggest lesson i took away from the course was the responsibility of those who know about technology to inform citizens and influence those in power. politicians do not have enough time to understand all implications of technology integration in society, so it is the burden of the experts to make sure the politicians don't go too far. i don't think it's been going well lately, considering how the whole issue of software patents in europe is turning out. hopefully my government won't become too paranoid that it restricts the rights of its citizenry and monitors all its activities.

*edit* originally had ./ instead of /. (oopie!) :)

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apparently i'm who i am

alright, so while spending time avoiding writing a summary for my 199 class, i decided to peruse some friends' blogs. one of them happened to be one of my favorite people (go figure!), and she had a just done a stupid (as in not erudite) survey, which I decided to do as well. What's with my doing these sophomoric surveys? hehe, oh well! :)

Your Brain is 40.00% Female, 60.00% Male

You have a total boy brain Logical and detailed, you tend to look at the facts And while your emotions do sway you sometimes... You never like to get feelings too involved

What Gender Is Your Brain?

You scored as Gluttony.

Gluttony		63%
Wrath		50%
Pride		50%
Sloth		44%
Envy		31%
Lust		25%
Greed		6%

Seven deadly sins
created with QuizFarm.com

You Are 30 Years Old

30 Under 12: You are a kid at heart. You still have an optimistic life view - and you look at the world with awe. 13-19: You are a teenager at heart. You question authority and are still trying to find your place in this world. 20-29: You are a twentysomething at heart. You feel excited about what's to come... love, work, and new experiences. 30-39: You are a thirtysomething at heart. You've had a taste of success and true love, but you want more! 40+: You are a mature adult. You've been through most of the ups and downs of life already. Now you get to sit back and relax.

What Age Do You Act?

You are 59% Sketchy

How sketchy are you?

You Belong in 1969

1969 If you scored... 1950 - 1959: You're fun loving, romantic, and more than a little innocent. See you at the drive in! 1960 - 1969: You are a free spirit with a huge heart. Love, peace, and happiness rule - oh, and drugs too. 1970 - 1979: Bold and brash, you take life by the horns. Whether you're partying or protesting, you give it your all! 1980 - 1989: Wild, over the top, and just a little bit cheesy. You're colorful at night - and successful during the day. 1990 - 1999: With you anything goes! You're grunge one day, ghetto fabulous the next. It's all good!

What Year Do You Belong In?

You Will Die at Age 64

64 You're pretty average when it comes to how you live... And how you'll die as well.

What Age Will You Die?

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more "quizzes"

apparently i can't get enough of these online quizzes, and i seriously have to thank my good friend Jen Chen for clueing me in on these quizzes. i took what political party i most agree with quiz and its suggestion that i'm an anarchist isn't that far from the truth, but it's not that close either (and again, i think an anarchist political party oxymoronic). in taking the quiz, i was confused quite a few times in how i should answer a question, since some of them were blatantly ambiguous. anyway, you can take the quiz yourself to see what i mean, but honestly i think i'm more green or democrat than the other political beliefs.

the other quiz i took attempted to figure out which Disney character is my alter ego. this one accorded more with my opinions of what Disney character i'm like. Donald Duck enjoys life but also can go off like a firecracker in certain situations. he also always reminded me of a very determined individual, and i see myself very determined too (i think stubbornness goes with this trait). anyway, the results for this quiz and the political party one are below.

You scored as Anarchism.

Anarchism		92%
Green		83%
Democrat		67%
Socialist		58%
Communism		42%
Fascism		33%
Republican		25%
Nazi		8%

You scored as Donald Duck. Your alter ego is Donald Duck! Try as you might, you have a nasty temper that is hard to control. But you try hard to please, and you arn't one to go down without a fight.

Donald Duck		75%
Goofy		69%
Snow White		69%
The Beast		63%
Sleeping Beauty		50%
Ariel		44%
Pinocchio		38%
Peter Pan		31%
Cinderella		19%
Cruella De Ville		19%

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jenga!

while waiting to be relieved from my oh-so-cushy job at the SAC, i started to play a game of Jenga with Margret. mind you, i can't even remember the last time i played it, but my memories don't suggest that i am totally enthralled with the game. despite my memories, i had an enjoyable time playing Jenga! Margret and i antually did a perfect game, with the end result being that it would be physically impossible to remove any block without making the tower tumble. i'm a pretty competitive person, and there were so many times that i was confident no other block couldn't be removed by Margret (she actually had the same opinion for some of my situations, too). but despite those opinions, we actually were very patient, and after an hour we reached the end goal! i'll post pictures here when i get them (hell yeah i wanted to document this monumental feat!), but near the end it was so nerve-wracking because the instability of our hands were accentuated next to the instability of the Jenga tower. at any rate, it was a lot of fun, and i'm glad Margret suggested that we play. now, i need to get ish done. :)

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fartlick

this entry doesn't have to do with stormicide's butt, but it is about instance of another eggcorn. i went in to get my teeth cleaned this last Wednesday. my dentist has a really nice setup: a nice chair that can move up, down, left, right, recline, etc. (which aides her in doing dental work), and a nice tv so a patient can zone out during any procedure being done on them. the channel is usually set to the Outdoor Network or set to a channel that runs programs that make you want to be outside and not at the dentist. anyway, this last time, the program was talking about an active lifestyle and giving pointers for various sports. after learning about some cycling workouts, the program moved on to running. one of the workouts they described was what's called a fartlek (the text on the the screen said fartlek is Swedish for "speed play"), and that was when i realized that i had been saying eggcorn ever since cross country during high school.

my buddies and i would do fartleks at least ten times a season, so they were not too uncommon, but i never once remember my x-country coach writing the word down. however, me and my fellow runners had always thought it was "fartlick", and made the typical juvenile jokes whenever we had to run them. anyway, for those who don't know, a fartlek is running at a fast pace for a certain distance, and then jogging for a short distance, and then running fast again, repeating this cycle for an extended period of time. so my teammates and i developed a reason why it was called a fartlick: you "lick the fart" of the person ahead of you when you are running fast and they have slowed down ahead of you. so we thought that when you jog slowly, that's when you let the farts out, and then the person behind you catches wind of it during his sprint (we usually did it around the track).

so anyway, our idea of why it was called "fartlick" was based on our ignorance of fartlek being a borrowed word. i google'd "fartlicks | fartlick", and got 155 ghits, while "fartleks | fartlek" got 34100 ghits. oddly enough, there seems to be an example of the "fartlick" spelling in a spanish context: Sistema Fartlick cambios de plano, alternando aer?bica y anaer?bica. so it seems that me and my teammates weren't the only ones who represented the spelling as "fartlick". yay for eggcorns and dental work!

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turnin' japanese, i think i'm turnin' japanese, i really think so...

Your Japanese Name Is...

Ryoichi Yamamoto

Huh. Do you know how they do the conversion? How am I "Yasuo Shimizu"?

Ah. Looks random based on gender. Cf. Irish name generator, whereby I was "Brendan Kavanagh" then "Gill O'Mahony".

Thanks Angelo, I didn't know how they did the conversion. Thinking about it, it's sorta sad that that's all they do to generate a name. It would much cooler if the name was based on the meaning of your name (e.g., David = beloved) or on the sounds (roughly) used to pronounce your name, and constructed so as to fit the phonological rules of the target language. oh well, maybe some day, eh? :)

Your name in Japanese is Deividdo. Hehe.

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sushi documentary

the great tradition of sushi in Japan. Thanks to Louis "Keanu" Nguyen for the pointer! :)

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copytrademarkright

Bob Kennedy's post on phonoloblog brings up the always interesting issue of trademark and copyright. after reading the article, i was as confused as Bob appeared to be. for almost two years now (ever since ICS 131), i have known that copyrights are different from trademarks, yet the author of this article does not make a distinction. so is it copyright or trademark that "kills [a] movie title"?

i agree with what Bob and the United States Patent and Trademark Office(USPTO) say, that "you need to have a product first, and then name it, and then trademark the name". however, just to make sure the rules are the same in Toronto, i looked up how the Canadian Intellectual Property Office(CIPO) defines trade-mark. apparently CIPO distinguishes between copyright and trademark the same way USPTO, and requires "wares or services".

So i see four possibilities of how to interpret the article:

1. the woman heard the word "wannabe" from her husband and labeled a product or service she had developed "wannabe", thereafter trademarking "wannabe".
2. the woman heard the word "wannabe", and copyrighted the word as a literary work.
3. the author of the article is not writing truth.
4. i am misunderstanding how copyright and trade-mark law interact in Canada.

being prideful, i don't think it's the last one. :) i don't know how to figure out which of the other ones it is (without contacting Robin Devine, CIPO, or CP). also, i may have missed another possibility for interpretation. my inclination, though, is to assume the author was writing truthfully, and that there is some fact the article is based on. of the remaining possibilities, i don't see which is more likely because there's no quote of Robin Devine "trademarking" or "copyrighting" the word.

Bob, assuming that the third possibility is not true, points out that this has implications for band names and movie titles. he suggests to the phonolobloggers to trademark names now lest a similar thing happen to one of them. i agree, but of course you have to have a product. the simple way is to put whatever you have up on e-bay for bid, and then submit the trademark application (along with fee)...or is there a better way?

wannabee appears in the canadian trademark office as being in use since the 1980s....
i know i bought this persons products.

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labiodental flap description

I read about the introduction of the labiodental flap to the IPA a month or so ago over at Phonoloblog, and I finally read the NY Times article linked to by Language Log. The best part (for me) was Geoff Pullum's description of the symbol representing it:

The new symbol had been recommended by a fellow linguist, Geoff Pullum, who described it "as if a fishhook R had been slammed leftward into a lowercase v so hard its vertical had merged with the right leg of the v, and the dangly bit had been left hanging there like the drain pipe out of an upstairs toilet in a partially demolished building."

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language is important

recently there's been some discussion on the attempted passage of bills that make English the official language of West Virginia and the United States. (the odd thing is that the latest version of the West Virginia bill does not reflect what AP news, but i'm sure there's a valid reason.) what interests me is how the debate has largely been framed, and how both sides view the issue. from what i gather, people against english-only do not want legislation because of the possible disparagement of other languages in the United States, which is arguably already bad enough, and because it's un-American (1). people for legislation have cited economic, cultural, and communicative concerns for having one official language. while this guy surely offers a simple solution, i don't know if everyone will agree on it, and you can't blame him for speaking up.

for me, all languages are cool! i like learning about how different (and similar) human languages are, and when i get the chance, i like learning other languages than my native English. do i see multilingualism as valuable? certainly. i hope that everyone in the Unites States learns more than one human language. yet at the same time, i am confronted with a particular aspect of this country's history: from its inception (as far as i am aware, and please correct me if i am wrong!), government documents have been in English. without a doubt, many of the aristocratic founders of this country were polyglots, yet they had used English as the primary means of communication (which i think can be attributed to being an accident of history, since the States' territories were British colonies). i agree with S.I. Hayakawa that "bilingualism is fine, but not for a country", and i suggest that this may have been the intuition of the founding fathers. on the other hand, i don't think the founding fathers would have wanted the widespread monolingualism in the U.S. today, but i still maintain that they would have wanted pertinent government documents in one language.

over and over in my linguistics classes, i have heard the same thing: "no language is better than another". my understanding of this mantra is that you can express anything in any language, and in large part i agree. however, to understand what a given text says, i think it extremely beneficial to be fluent in the cultural tradition of the language used. do i fluently speak late 18th century English, the language of the Constitution, specially the Bill of Rights? hell no! that is an unfair expectation for any resident of the United States today. but i do think it is a fair expectation to learn the cultural tradition and the language receiving and transmitting the tradition (2). frankly, i see it as short-changing anyone by providing them the U.S. civilian life without its cultural and lingual tradition. the understanding of this tradition and the ability to read and understand the "law of the land" allows for true liberty in the U.S., since a person can refer directly to their acceptance and understanding of the tradition (and laws) to support their rights. so while essentially "no language is better than another", in the case of the United States, i believe the English language is the best language to understand immediate cultural and civil tradition. for any country, to don the civil garb of citizenship, i think it requisite to have the cultural tighty-whities and the lingual shoes (3).

now the status quo suggests to me that, for the most part, there is no need for legislation. if a state or this nation wants to enact such legislation, i think it is not inherently detrimental, but my biggest concern is the possibility of lingualism: harsh and derogatory attitudes towards another language and its usage is unacceptable to me, and i hope the reader agrees. yet the possibility for more lingualism is just that, a posssibility. the possibility for short-changing someone living here in the U.S. is possible and real. therefore, i'm stuck between a rock (pro English-only) and a hard place (against English-only) when discussing this issue. i think it's an important issue the United States continues to deal with, and i hope the population comes to a consesus soon.

(1) whatever that means, but it sure sounds meaningful, and that's why i think we all like to use it. return to text

(2) this does not necessitate abandoning one's own cultural, lingual, and civil traditions. at times, it's hard for me to forgive my maternal grandfather for doing this. i love going to Little Saigon and Chinatown in LA, and i greatly hope that those who are taking part in the economic tradition this nation offers are doing justice to its linguo-cultural and civil traditions.return to text

(3) the shoes allow you to move around and show your garb, and, when duty calls, to show your tighty-whities. return to text

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Jesus' Heritage
I mean that the heir, as long as he is a child, is no different from a slave, though he is the owner of everything, but he is under guardians and managers until the date set by his father. In the same way we also, when we were children, were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world. But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, �Abba! Father!� So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God. [ Gal. 4] --sent His Son, born under the law...different than us who were not sent, yet Jews were born under the Law. --curious about the extent of Gal.3 where it says the "Scriptures imprisoned everything under sin": what is the context of "everything" here?

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(w)reckless driving

this evening, Marget and i went to Wal-Mart to pick up some planters for her daffodil bulbs. on our way there (from UCSD), we went on the 52 to the 15 (to Aero Drive). when i missed getting on the 15 from the 52, she mentioned how she was glad that I didn't swerve frantically in an attempt to get on the 52, recounting a story of her first drive in college:

after her parents had helped her move in, she went out with a couple friends to a philipino party. her friend who was driving was talking on the cell phone and going 80, and when he realized he was going to miss the right turnoff, swerved across three lanes to make it. she said she was scared for her life, and she began to wonder if all SoCal drivers were that bad. (living here for a couple years has made her realize that not all of us are bad.)

anyway, on our way back from Wal-Mart, i once again missed the optimal turnoff (this time from the 15 to the 52), and blamed it again on my feeling sick. so i ended up getting off on miramar, and traffic was moving at a nice pace. however, a bit past the marine base, the car in front of us was suddenly braking. naturally i thought, "what the heck is up with this guy?", thinking he was from out of state (the easiest way for me to blame a bad driver, similar to how NorCal peeps blame SoCal'ers). it turned out, however, that a car, with its left blinker on, was stopped in the fast lane at the intersection with a green light. there was a "left turn/u-turn lane", so i was wondering why they weren't in the right lane. my mind immediately jumped to thinking that the driver of the stopped car was from out of town. the cars behind us almost piled up, but fortunately nothing happened. when i got over into the other lane and passed the stopped car, i looked over and found that it was an older couple in the stopped car. although i hadn't cursed them or anything, i felt bad for their predicament and the apparent frustration they had caused the other drivers (including me).

anyway, after going by my townhouse, we headed up Gilman Drive (two lanes each way) to go to her place on campus, and our third near-wreck happened. someone in a jeep, parked along the curb, came into traffic and almost hit me (who was in the left lane). fortunately, with me slowing down and swerving a bit, the driver realized that i was there and got back in the right lane. that is when Margret said, "we could have been in a wreck with all these wreckless drivers," or something of the sort. that's when i thought about wreck and reckless.

i decided to see if anyone (according to google) jotted down wreckless for reckless, enough to constitute an eggcorn. since the verb to reck is never used by anyone that i know, it seems like wreckless for reckless would be a reasonable eggcorn for someone to produce, especially since wreck is usually never far away. then i looked at the Eggcorn Database and noticed that Ken Lakritz had just commented on it a few days ago! anyway, it seems that an eggcorn is never far away, no matter the occassion. :) i'll try to post it as an eggcorn later this week if someone doesn't do so first, but i'm not sure what category (citational, questionable, or genuine) i would put it in.

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Working Like a Dog

I received an e-mail from one of my friends recently that discussed how to be lazy. He also attached a comic strip that wasn't on the site but went along with the idea of being lazy:

I googled to try to find the origin of the word, but couldn't find anything authoritative. So I looked at the dog entry in the OED, and while I didn't find the idiom itself, I found an idiom which I think is the closest to the intended meaning:

g. to lead a dog's life: i.e. a life of misery, or of miserable subserviency; so to lead a person a dog's life.

It made me think of how much we pamper our pets (in the United States) compared to previous ages. If we still used animals instead of machines for manual labor, the comic wouldn't make much sense because most people probably wouldn't see animals just lying around doing nothing. Fortunately (for the animals' and humor's sake) that isn't the case.

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WordsEye

while waiting for something to happen today, i decided to browse some feeds of sites i subscribe to. my first (and last) stop was lemonodor - a mostly lisp weblog. the first post was cited Jim Thompson about WordsEye, software that will be presented at LispNYC tomorrow:

WordsEye allows untrained users to spontaneously and interactively create 3D scenes by simply describing them. By using natural language, ordinary users can quickly create 3D scenes without having to learn special software, acquire artistic skills, or even touch a desktop window-oriented interface. Creating graphics with natural language gives a new sense of power to words and suggests applications in education and creative play as well as the creation of visual art itself. WordsEye relies on a large database of 3D models and images to depict objects and surface textures. WordsEye is written in Common Lisp and runs on Linux.

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tip of the day

When I fired up TextMate, what I use for web development, this is what greeted me: First of all, how awesome is that?! My towel's hanging in my room (about 6 feet from where I'm typing), and I have a six-pack of Mississippi Mud in the fridge. Now if only I remembered the peanuts...

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paper chase

the internet has been slow for my entire neighborhood, so our cable provider decided to give everyone premium service for a month. my roommies and i normally only have the basic plan, so we're probably going to be using the TV more than we usually do this next month. tonight, i was flipping through channels after watching Groundhog Day and Death Becomes Her (both having to do with death and eternal life, oddly enough), and i stopped at the beginning of a movie in letterbox format. i didn't know what it was, but the words "Harvard Law School" flashed on the screen, and so i thought it might be interesting.

i watched for a good half hour, and was excited when i found out there weren't going to be any commercial breaks. it seemed like it was going to be a pretty good movie, so i decided to figure out the name of it by googling some of the characters' names. it turns out i was watching The Paper Chase (1973).

altho' i'm not planning on going to law school, it made me think about my plans on going to grad school. i felt that the movie was saying that you could get all the knowledge, be the best thinker, get the best grades, but still be nothing. just having knowledge and just thinking about problems will not satisfy the "irrational" (as one of the characters labels it) dimension of humans. knowledge and thinking are not like human relationships: the former are one-way streets while the latter are two-way streets. the movie seems to praise a life that sees the usefulness of knowledge and thinking, but prioritizes human relationships above them both. overall, i liked the movie, since it made me consider my expectations for graduate school and my priorities in life. i recommend it, especially since it tackles human interaction in many different contexts (among friends, companions, colleagues, a professor and their students, and lovers).

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you really got a hold on me
The famous song by Smokey Robinson has much to do with social psychology. Social psychology attempts to explain social phenomena, and a major social phenomenon is attitude. An attitude, in social psychology, is defined as as enduring evaluation of people, objects, or ideas. Sure, there are different levels to which an attitude can be affected by society, but attitudes are more malleable than you probably suppose. However, before I go off on a tangent, let me summarize the main types of attitudes, and how they interact with one another. The first is called cognitive based and is an attitude based primarily on people's beliefs about the properties of an attitude object. An instance of a cognitive based attitude is when you think of a car in terms of its utility, effectiveness (maker, model), cost, etc. and not in terms of "how it makes you feel". The second attitude is affectively based and is defined as an attitude based more on people's feelings and values than on their beliefs about the nature of an object. For most people (myself included), I think that their attitude toward spiders is of this type, since it is mostly determined by popular perception of this eight-legged freaks. The last kind of attitude is called behaviorally based: an attitude based on observations of how one behaves towards an attitude object. For me, the attitude toward drinking water is of this type: I do it a lot, so "I guess I like it". Now that we have the groundwork laid of the different types of attitude, the real fun begins...but I'm late for class, so I'll finish it some other time.

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butterfly bonanza

it all started two weekends ago, actually. i was on my way to Yucca Valley with my dad, and while going up Highway 62, after Painted Hills and before the Morongo grade, the attack began. a multitude of butterflies were attempting to cross the highway, heading west. that stretch of highway is divided (2-lane each way), so the butterflies, if they made it without getting clobbered, got a little break of about 40 ft. in the middle of traffic. by the time we got to the grade we probably had hit more than 100 butterflies. i figure there was an average of about 50 cars every ten minutes, so about 5,000 butterflies may have not been fit enough to survive every ten minutes (good ol' Darwin). we didn't see any coming back through the same area around 5pm (after a beautiful day in the desert!), so the butterflies may have already stopped traveling for the day.

up 'til then, i had only seen such a horde of butterflies one other time in my life. i think it was about 15 years ago, so i must have been around 7 or 8 years old. my family still was living up in Yucca, and it had to have been either the summer or a weekend, because me, my older brother, and my older sister were home the whole day. it was a hot day, too, since i remember coming indoors every once in a while for a glass of lemonade or sun-steeped tea. anyway, the occasion of tons of butterflies going across our backyard gave my brother the idea (who i followed faithfully) of getting a tennis racquet to swat the flies for hours. of course, when i tell most people i did this, they usually get a pained look on their face, feeling sorry for the butterflies: kids don't only say the darndest things, Bill.

but that brings me to two days ago, when the butterflies came in a swarm to La Jolla (coming from the south), and were constant companions all the day on campus. my friend, Jen Chen, posted about it, and it reminded me to write about it, since ever since i saw the butterflies two weeks ago, it's been jogging my memory of when the last time butterflies swarmed in my life. for those who are in the LA area, you might get the same experience, but i don't know how the butterflies will manage in so urban an area.

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stormicide's butt

for my birthday, i received the "Collector's Edition" of The Incredibles from my sister, but didn't actually get it until this last weekend (about a month after my bd). if you haven't seen it, the animated film is awesome and very entertaining. the "Collector's Edition" comes with a second dvd with many deleted scenes, outtakes, interviews, etc. one of the features is an NSA vault that tells more about the different Supers "in their own words."

listening to the Stormicide (a female superhero) audio, she talks of her ability to "absorb and emit vapors of various properties", mentioning how she is many times the "butt of jokes" when she is described as "making gas". at first, i wasn't sure if she said butt or bud, but immediately following that, she comments (with laughter in the background) on how she says "butt" and "gas" in the same context. i did a quick search on google with "bud of jokes" and only got a count of 35; when i searched with "butt of jokes", i got a count of 34,300.

my question is, which is the eggcorn? bud of jokes seems to make sense: bud in the sense of producing, so the object which produces jokes is a bud of jokes. however, google (supposedly representing most people) seem to disagree. butt of jokes makes sense in terms of being the bottom or root of jokes. i looked at The Eggcorn Database and noticed the bud >> butt, but only to "nip in the bud/butt". this made me think even moreso that the original is bud, not butt;. I also a have "Longman's Dictionary of English Idioms", printed in the 1970's, but it doesn't mention either "butt of jokes" or "bud of jokes". does anyone else have a better understanding or more information about which is the eggcorn?

[Update: so I was talking with Kirk Boydston about this, and he thinks the eggcorn is "bud of all jokes" since intervocalic /t/ becomes a flap. He also suggested that "butt" as in "objective end" of all jokes. Apparently, I should have checked dictionary.com, since when I looked up "butt", the first definition of the third sense of the word is: One that serves as an object of ridicule or contempt: I was the butt of their jokes. Well, at least it looks like there is an eggcorn (since I got a count on Google) floating around that I need to mention over at The Eggcorn Database.]

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old ladies rock: another funny google video

sick of those ill-mannered, self-centered career types? this old lady throws down the gauntlet. old lady++ (thanks for the link Camie!)

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Triaminic?

being sick is no fun, especially when you don't take care of yourself. when i was at Wal-Mart yesterday with Margret, she was thinking about getting some cold medicine. some of her friends (including me) have come down with a cold, and since she doesn't take care of herself, she thought it best to get some medicine in case she gets any of the symptoms. anyway, my mom is big on two drugs for a cold or flu, Triaminic and TheraFlu, so i suggested Triaminic to Margret. when i looked at the Triaminic boxed container, i decided to read about it (since i don't use it myself). on one side of the box, it had the following text (with graphics to make it more appealing):

Triaminic

What You Need to Make Your Child Feel Better.

Cold & Allergy Itchy, Watery Eyes Runny, Stuffy Nose Sneezing Itchy Throat Great Taste

Triaminic provides a broad range of formulas, in forms created with the needs of children in mind.

Trusted by Parents, Pediatricians & Pharmacists for over 40 years.

1. *a cold or allergy will/might produce these
2. *a cold or allergy will/might not produce these
3. *Cold & Allergy Triaminic will/might give you these
4. *Cold & Allergy Triaminic will/might not give you these
5. *Cold & Allergy Triaminic will/might remove these from you
6. *Cold & Allergy Triaminic will/might not remove these from you
7. *Cold & Allergy Triaminic gave these to a person who used it
8. *Cold & Allergy Triaminic did not give these to a person who used it

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is this really a surprise?

You are 'Latin'. Even among obsolete skills, the tongue of the ancient Romans is a real anachronism. With its profusion of different cases and conjugations, Latin is more than a language; it is a whole different way of thinking about things.

You are very classy, meaning that you value the classics. You value old things, good things which have stood the test of time. You value things which have been proven worthy and valuable, even if no one else these days sees them that way. Your life is touched by a certain 'pietas', or piety; perhaps you are even a Stoic. Nonetheless, you have a certain fascination with the grotesque and the profane. Also, the modern world rejects you like a bad transplant. Your problem is that Latin has been obsolete for a long time. What obsolete skill are you? -- brought to you by Quizilla

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visitor or sinister?
so starting yesterday evening, one of my roomies is having two friends (from back East) stay over until tuesday. i didn't mind, really, when i thought about it two weeks ago, but then a few situations have presented themselves that have made me re-consider my willingness to house guests:

1. his guests are two girls
2. both are using Louis' and my bathroom ad libitum*

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website (sufficiently) done

whew! i finally got done tweaking WP to the amount that will satisfy me for a while; now i can start the process of actually filling the website with data. as you may be able to tell from my site, i am partial to a clean and simple design, with an appropriate use of whitespace. as my footer mentions, i used someone else's design and just modified it to meet my own ends. it is by no means perfect, but i would like to think that it serves both the purpose of function as well as aesthetics. i actually like the pastel-colored theme: it's light on the eyes and doesn't seem too showy. anyway, if anyone has suggestions, i'd love to hear them, but of course, i'm not probably going to spend any more time on design for now. prepare for the content! :-D

It’s a lovely design, and I look forward to more data (esp. on linguistics and Latin).

Thanks for letting me know about your blog, Dave. The site is definitely stylish. :-)

Hope things are doing well. Good luck on finals!

nicely done, nicely done. I like the clean and simple. WordPress is great too. Very powerful and configurable.

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time for finals

alright, so next week is finals week, and i have a shitload of work to do before then. actually, my finals have already started in a sense, since my phonology class only has a problem set to do (which is due tomorrow by 2pm). i'm mostly done with the analysis, just need to touch it up a bit here and there. it's on complex codas in Lebanese Arabic, and it's a whole lot of fun! the "correctness" of having two consonants in the coda is determined by how sonorant the consonant is (sonority is pretty much the loudness of the sound, with vowels being obviously louder than consonants). it's pretty much that the second consonant has to be less sonorous than the first consonant in a coda. for instance, [n] is more sonorous than [t], so in English there is [nt], as in "bunt". sonority rules for languages, from what i understand, are pretty similar, but there are slight variations here and there and there are lot finer gradations in this sonority hierarchy, but you probably get the general idea. so back to the Lebanese Arabic consonants, the whole problem is about explaining these "finer gradations". and like i said, it's fun (at least to me)!

another thing i have to do is study for a final. one of my finals is actually going to be this saturday instead of the following saturday because it is more convenient for certain people in the class. so i have to read and review all the structure and vocabulary of Zapotec i have learned thus far. it's not going to be the funnest thing i've ever done, but i'm in the mindset of doing the bare minimum (i'm taking the class pass/no pass, and i'm not going to study it further next quarter, so "major on the majors and minor on the minors").

on top of that studying, i have to write up a research proposal by tomorrow afternoon, which explains in layman's terms what my phonetics-phonology research is about. i had actually already written up the proposal, but i used way too much linguistics jargon for the intended audience (according to my faculty mentor, and i totally agree with her criticisms). therefore, this is good practice for me to clearly express abstract ideas in simple terms without being too vague.

another item on my to-do list is to finish up reading for my two finals monday and tuesday, 1st and 2nd Language Learning: From Childhood to Adolescence and Language of Politics & Advertising, respectively. i have a lot to read for the one on tuesday, altho' the material is very engaging. for the one on monday, i only have about 20 pages to read, so no big whoop. anyway, that's all i really have to do before this weekend is over, and it will always be tough to struggle between what i need to do and what i want to do. best of luck to everyone who has finals, and to those of you who don't: punks!

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