students teaching students

Although my idea for education reform is different in some regards than what breakthrough collaborative.org offers, some of the major principles are the same. I heard about them through their sponsorship of a radio program on KPCC and I like what they're trying to accomplish. Anyway, for any of you who are still in college (or high school, for that matter) you might be interested in helping improve the education of those younger than you.

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Don't get G-Face!

Staying up late watching one of my new favorite shows, Battlestar Galactica, I saw a commercial for GWhiz. First of all, I can't believe someone is actually selling something like this. Second of all, I can't believe people are actually buying it. I sure hope it's a joke, but if it's not, (using a bad Mr. T impression) "Ah pidee tha foo'! " (who buys it). The company is not only manufacturing a "solution" to a problem, but actually creating a problem where there isn't one in the first place! It reminds me of what Ackerman mentioned about the rise of Listerine in the 1920's. But honestly, Listerine still makes more sense to me than GWhiz. Maybe, the product's name says it all, "Gee whiz, why didn't I think about stating a problem, creating a solution, and then selling it to the naive?". The company also is selling the Moto-go Grip and the Hey Horn.

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can't we all just get along?

i visited my dad at work a week ago, trying to find a quiet place to do some work. i found a quiet place, but it was after i saw this: if only it were that simple...

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Walk the Line

After an early afternoon dinner with my parents and some time to just sit around and relax, I went with my parents to Walk the Line, starring Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon. If you didn't already know, it's a story about the life of Johnny Cash. Since I only heard about him and his music here and there, I'm glad to have learned more about the man behind the name and the music. If you haven't seen it, don't worry I won't (hopefully) say too much :-) I just wanted to mention one of the important things I've taken away from the movie.

<IMPORTANT THING STARTS HERE> Life is messy. This may be common sense to most people, but it has only become apparent to me recently. Or maybe it was always apparent, but I finally recognized that it is a part of every life, especially mine. Back to movie. From the movie, I felt that Mr. J. R. Cash had a rough life for a little over a decade (1955~1965), and I think it's safe to say that he had "life" problems during this time. These problems of his did not resolve themselves immediately, nor was he able to resolve them himself. He had to go through hell, and the only way he got out of hell was through the love of a friend. The movie hinted that this love was an integral part of that friend's family, but didn't go down the road showing the root cause of that love. At any rate, the point is that his problems were finally resolved because of someone reaching out and helping him. You see, the whole time he was living with guilt and nothing was able to relieve him of his wrongs. He tried to do it, but it just wasn't working. He couldn't make it on his own. He was not self-sufficient. He was helpless, unable to combat the person he had become. The solution was the action of another. Another's love rescued him from himself, and restored him to being truly human. With all the mess that life is, a friend can help you when you cannot help yourself. Life is messy, but there's a point to it. <IMPORTANT THING ENDS HERE>

Besides that important thing, the movie was quite enjoyable. From my dad, I learned that Reese and Joaquin did the singing themselves, and each did a superb job. The portrayal of Johnny by Joaquin reminded me of the portrayal of Ray by Jamie Foxx. Joaquin did a great job acting, and really made me feel that he was Johnny Cash. I hope it gets the recognition it deserves at the Oscars.

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Internet Non-Discrimination Act of 2006
Going to see representative Ed Royce (R) tomorrow at the Orange Circle tomorrow morning (Deidrich Coffee), and want to get his opinion of the Internet Non-Discrimination Act of 2006, and hopefully give mine (time and context permitting). Go read it if you're interested in corporate influence on the internet's infrastructure.

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A whole new world...on a Mac

In case you haven't been following news in the Mac world lately, there's a lot going on. Mac is now rolling out desktops and laptops with Intel Duo Core techonology: two processors on one die. The new laptop, MacBook Pro, looks sick and I'm resisting the temptation (for now) of buying one. Maybe even sell my MacMini to go all out and get one? Anyway, go over to apple.com and check out the keynote address at that Steve Jobs gave this last Tuesday. The hardware is not the only change either. Steve demo'ed the new capabilities of MacOS X Tiger 10.4.4 (the version releases are starting to look more like open source software: interesting), iLife, and iWork. Another company, named Google, finally released another killer app for the Mac: GoogleEarth for Mac! I've run a leaked beta two times, but now I'm glad the real deal is here. The gap between what's available for Windows that isn't available for OSX is becoming so small, while all the capabilities and applications you can do on OSX are (in my opinion) dominating over all you can do on Windows. If you ever want to switch, it's not too late ;)

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"I've got my GMail"

In case you didn't sign into gmail yet, here's a lil' video that Google links to on the log-in page. I sorta dig it. :)

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Net Neutrality
Some links: Link to www.youtube.com Link to www.publicknowledge.org Q-O-S Argument Link to www.njtelecomupdate.com

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What's Your Problem?

I was actually thinking about this a few months ago during a period of watching a lot of TV. I found it odd that "irritable bowel syndrome" was something that required medication. Oh advertising...

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Mid-2006 News
Hello again!

I'm going to try to pick up where my last update left off, so if you hadn't received that, you can go here (password's the same).

January was pretty uneventful from what I remember. Actually, I don't remember much of January, so I'm assuming it was uneventful. At any rate, it must'nt've been that important, and if it was I apologize. (I had never seen a double contraction until a few months ago, and I *like* it. It was actually on a mailing list I subscribe to: someone used "should'nt've" as a contraction for "should not have". The one I just did is sorta harder to pronounce, tho'. Woot.)

Let's go to February. February is the time of my dad and my birthdays. For my dad's birthday, I went kayaking with him and my mom in the Newport backbay. I hadn't kayaked since the summers of high school, when I went to Hume Lake, and it was as enjoyable as I remember it. My mom and dad shared a kayak, and I had a single one. My mom liked enjoying the scenery and paddling whenever she thought it was good, but my dad was getting a little frustrated when she didn't keep very good timing (playful frustration). We were out for a few hours, and by the end of the afternoon, my dad had decided was going to buy a kayak. I've been out with him a few times since then, in a double kayak he got from Costco.

February is also when Valentine's Day is. I didn't have one. I actually had something better by the end of February: my own bonnie lass, Margret. We decided to date again and took a trip up to Disneyland together (so that day it really was the happiest place on earth for me). Through this June, I'm happy to say we've been doing really well. Sure, we've had our problems, but the sheer goodness of our time together has made those problems inconsequential. The goodness was increased when I joined her at her sister's wedding (where she was the maid of honor) in June, having a wonderful time hanging out with her family. Her house holds two of her brothers and two of her sisters (not counting the one that got hitched), one of her aunts, one of her grandmoms, her parents, and plenty of fried food. I'm not a big fan of fried foods, but I got used to it real quick. Anyway, it was definitely some good times spent with her family.

Unfortunately, those good times won't repeat soon because Margret left me. What I mean is that she's in Italy studying abroad for six months, so I probably won't visit her family up in San Jose until she gets back. She'' be in Rome until the beginning of August, and then she's going to Trento until the end of December. It actually looks like I'll be able to take a trip over there to visit her (my first trip outside NA) ! However, the time when we'll both be the least busy isn't until December, so all we get to do is wring our hands in anticipation. In between the wringing, we still get to shared keep in contact through Skype (which works pretty well, I might add: david.romano is my screenname), GoogleChat, and Shutterfly. So although we're apart, we've been able talk quite frequently, her telling me all about how wonderful Rome is, and me telling her how work is going.

I'm still working at Parity Computing, but things have changed quite a bit. In mid-February, I was shifted over to doing software development for a new project, and so I wasn't developing only grammars anymore. I still was using regexes, but also took part in developing the software that used the regexes. Since the company has been using Java for their solutions, I am now a Java developer (my heart still bleeds Perl tho'). During the months of March and April, I worked like crazy, but since I liked doing what I did it made the hours more bearable.

Now I'm digressing a bit and telling you about the completion of my plans that I mentioned in my last update. It looks like my short-term goals are going to sorta be fulfilled. First of all, I'm going to Europe this December, second of all, it doesn't look like I'm going to be teaching abroad within the next few years, nor will I have a quick sum of money to be able to relocate easily. The last few months I decided to move back to Orange County at the start of this month (July) and live with my parents as I pursue a teacher's credential for secondary education math and a Master's in Education. I've applied to a small liberal arts college called Concordia University (no relation to the one in Canada) and will find out in the next week or so if I have been accepted. I hope to be done with my credential and have a job secured by the beginning of 2008, and I hope to be able to coach a sport wherever I teach. In my off-time (during the summer months) is when I hope to spend time abroad, traveling and maybe helping out with some missionary and linguistics organizations.

Now back to work! I knew it would be impractical for me to commute down there every day, especially with the cost of transportation, so I decided to try my hand and negotiating employment for just the summer or possibly even for part-time when classes start at the end of August. I let my supervisor know about my plans of moving up to OC (n.b. no "the") a couple months before leaving San Diego and during that next month or so my supervisors didn't really broach the subject much. However, during the last month I planned to be there, it seemed I was talking with one of my supervisors about my employment every couple of days. We came to an agreement where I would work from home and just come in in Fridays.

Before that work schedule started, and before I moved up to OC, there is still some of May and June to talk of. I believe almost every weekend I was gone doing something (must've been nice for my roommate). I worked with my dad (who's a land surveyor) up in Yucca Valley some weekends, went to some weddings, went up with Richard Ahn to visit Vincenzo di Nicola and Ben Strong at Stanford, went to Disneyland again with Margret (it was happy that time too), hung out with Margret and my family on Memorial Day in San Luis Obispo, and hiked Half Dome with my brother and my cousin Vaughn. I wa really getting tired with all the traveling, but it was good kind of tired. Anyway, the climax of my travels was taking a week off from work at the end of June and going to Chicago for YAPC, where I had a wonderful time learning more of Perl and meeting interesting people.

When I got back from YAPC, I had a memorable meetup with "one Mr. T.J. Tallie" in Old Town. We hadn't been able to hang out in a while, and we were able to spend some quality time catching up on each others' lives. The next day I moved out of my apartment (which I shared with three cool guys: Ravi, Tony, and John) up to Orange. That was July 2nd, July 3rd was a Monday I had off from work, and July 4th was, well, a holiday. Since then I've been on the commuting schedule, working from home. You would think that that would afford me ample time to do other things, but, as it has turned out, I feel more busy than ever. Work is just a few keyboard strokes away, so I've ended up still spending more time working than I originally intended. It's nice that there's work to be done, but right now there's too much for this current project and I feel I'm never getting caught up. The project is going through the end of this summer (at least), and I'm thinking of leaving when school starts so I don't get sucked into work during my studies.

Anyway, I think that about sums up the last six months. Sheesh, I wrote a lot. Maybe I should start doing quarterly or monthly updates. I hope y'all are doing well, and would love to hear anything new with you guys.

Peace,
David

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kid and his drums...

man, i love google video. Here's another one I saw that is just insane. a young kid playin' the drums like nobody's business. (offtopic but worthy of mention: wedgie is OED's word of the day today.)

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Spanish Yo/Llo

I'm teaching math review courses for different grade levels right now for the summer at Santiago Canyon College. Today was the first day of class, so it wasn't planned to be that rigorous. Anyway, the topic of language was brought up, where one student said they only spoke English and that Spanish was easier than English. I decided to insert my foot in my mouth by talking about something I didn't know a lot about: Spanish.

As a counterexample to what the student said, I asked one of the Spanish-speaking students how one says "I like it" in Spanish. Naturally, they replied, "Me gusta". I then explained how the phrase's construction is different than the way it is in English, and counter-intuitive for someone learning Spanish who knows English, and surely they would have a problem flubbing that expression. Yet I also stressed that for someone learning English who knows Spanish, it would be counter-intuitive to say "I like it," and they also would have the same problem as the Spanish-learner. The whole point is that each language has its complexities and no language is "simpler" than another, although each language may be simpler in a certain linguistic category, e.g., phonetic inventory.

I then explained that some things are just as simple in English as Spanish. I asked a Spanish-speaker how to say "I am eating food". They replied, and I transcribed it on the chalkboard as "Yo como comida". However, when I wrote the "Yo", both Spanish-speakers in the class protested that that's not how you write it, which was a real surprise to me, since I thought that part of my Spanish knowledge was sound. When I asked them how they write it, they both spelled out "Llo." I had never heard of that form of "I" in Spanish, so I asked where their families came from: one's family was from Mexico on both sides, the other's had one side from Mexico and the other from Cuba. So that just really stumped me, because I thought if I was familiar with any sort of Spanish, it would have been Mexican Spanish.

So when I got home today, I decided to google the "Yo/Llo" thing.[1] Unfortunately, I only found three sites (here, here, and here), that even mentioned "Llo". So where in the heck is "Llo" coming from?

[1] The search terms I used:

llo yo
llo yo spanish
llo yo espanol first person singular pronoun
"Yo llo"

Update:
I tried searching with:

yo llo orthography
yo llo spelling

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Fireworks are Dangerous and Illegal in the City of Ventura

Margret and I visited my good friend Joe and his wife Maria this last weekend, and it was an excellent time. On the way to catching a matinée for Ratatouille, I noticed a poster at a police station, in all caps:

FIREWORKS ARE DANGEROUS AND ILLEGAL IN THE CITY OF VENTURA

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Chicago YAPC
i'm dumping my mind of at least some of what i'm experiencing at yapc chicago at my use.perl journal, in case anyone wants to follow along.

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Definition of Windows
I'm pretty sure I've seen this before, but it just came up again on the Catalyst mailing list:

Windows (n.): 32-bit extensions to a 16-bit graphical shell for an 8-bit operating system originally coded for a 4-bit microprocessor by a 2-bit company that can't stand 1 bit of competition.

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My Star Trek Character
Thanks Louis :-) I see it as surprisingly representative of my personality too. Your results:
You are Chekov

Chekov 70% Will Riker 65% Mr. Scott 65% Uhura 60% Data 59% An Expendable Character (Redshirt) 55% Jean-Luc Picard 50% Geordi LaForge 45% James T. Kirk (Captain) 45% Worf 40% Mr. Sulu 40% Spock 39% Leonard McCoy (Bones) 25% Deanna Troi 20% Beverly Crusher 20%

Brash, rash and hasty, but everyone loves you.

Click here to take the "Which Star Trek character are you?" quiz...

Call me Welshie.

"An Expendable Character (Redshirt) 50%"

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mindless amusement

Saw a link to this on Julie's homepage (congrats on going to UPitt for grad school!):

D	Dysfunctional
A	Appealing
V	Virile
I	Inspirational
D	Dirty

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Travel Map

So I went to this website referred to from this blog and realized how little I have traveled.

Luckily I stepped foot inside Canada when I was up in Montana with the family, and also went down to Mexico a couple times. The two countries in Europe (France and Italy) I just happened to visit just this past year. Unfortunately, both of them are small compared to all three of the countries I've been to in North America. Even though the European countries are small, I find them absolutely beautiful. I recommend anyone to go if they haven't been already. Anyway, I hope to travel to Asia, Africa, and South America within the next three years to make the map more decent.

create your own visited countries map

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Perl Regexes and Math

Just a few weeks ago, I started solving some of the problems on projecteuler.net. The third problem asks you to find the largest prime factor of 317584931803, which I did by modifying the sieve method that I picked up from the second chapter of the Perl Cookbook (2nd Ed.). I've been reading a few pages from the Perl Cookbook (2nd Ed.) for the past couple months, and so I was glad that I was actually able to use some of it for fun. Tonight, I just read recipe 6.16, which discusses detecting doubled words. I had almost skipped chapter six entirely because I'm already half way through reading Mastering Regular Expressions (2nd Ed.), but I'm glad I didn't. I found these two little gems (not very practical, but interesting) in recipe 6.16:

for ($N = ('o' x shift); $N =~ /^(oo+?)\1+$/; $N =~ s/$1/o/g) { print length($1), " "; } which calculates prime factors when given a number as an argument, and # this solves the equation 12x + 15y + 16z = 281 if (($X, $Y, $Z) = (('o' x 281) =~ /^(o*)\1{11}(o*)\2{14}(o*)\5{15}$/)) { ($x, $y, $z) = (length($X), length($Y), length($Z)); print "One solution is x=$x; y=$y; z=$z.\n"; } else { print "No solution found.\n"; } # One solution is: x=17; y=3; z=2. which solves for Diophantine equations of order one. The regex can be modified to give different solutions: ('o' x 281) =~ /^(o*?)\1{11}(o*)\2{14}(o*)\5{15}$/ # One solution is: x=0; y=7; z=11. ('o' x 281) =~ /^(o+?)\1{11}(o*)\2{14}(o*)\5{15}$/ # One solution is: x=1; y=3; z=14. Now I'm not sure which shocked me more: that others experimented with regexes like this or that I actually understood how and why each worked. Either way, like I said, I'm glad I didn't skip over this chapter. :-)

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Is GTA available in prison?

Someone on irc.perl.org#catalyst posted this link. A guy thought he could outrun the police because, allegedly in his own words, "I've been playing a lot of 'Grand Theft Auto' and 'NASCAR' on PlayStation. I thought I could get away." He ended up injuring an officer and dragging his girlfriend's 11-year-old daughter when she was attempting to get out of his car. Since he's most likely going to jail, I'm wondering if he'll be able to brush up on his GTA skills...for next time.

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Wikipedia: Liberal Arts

From this article:

So did Larry think Wikipedia's fate was an inevitable consequence of an open model? He put more emphasis on the sociological composition of the editors. "It's really that the skills to marshal an argument, and represent the facts correctly are all skills encouraged by a solid liberal arts education. It's a problem associated more with a lack of training in the liberal arts." It's true, he agrees, that Wikipedia articles "shift back and forth between an entry someone crafted, and a stitched together Frankenstein's monster."

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easter weekend

spending Easter weekend with the fam was wonderful, as i hadn't seen my sibs in a while nor been able to spend time with my mom or dad. since SLO (San Luis Obispo) is a good five hours from Orange County, it was a great time up with my mom on the way up there and back (no, i don't visit home a lot).

we got into Shell Beach at around 6ish (damn that LA traffic) after leaving from Orange at 1pm. my brother has bought a house to fix it up and sell it, and has already worked on it quite a bit. the day after we got to SLO (i.e., Saturday), my dad and i helped him install his dishwasher in his brand spankin' new kitchen. we had pizza frite for breakfast (yum, yum!), and walked downtown to do some book shopping. (in the meantime, my sister and mom were doing their own shopping elsewhere.) my dad is a surveyor, and he likes to collect old surveying books, so we first went to Leon's Used Bookstore. He found one book he wanted, and I found two: Semantics (Volume 1) by Lyons, and Language in Thought and Action by Hayakawa. we then went to barnes & noble, and perused some titles there. he didn't get anything, but i ended up buying The Big Book of National Insults by Julian L'Estrange and Wuthering Heights by Emily Bront?, and almost bought (but didn't) Between You and I: A Little Book of Bad English.

Sunday morning, i went to a Easter celebration at my brother and sister's church, Calvary Chapel SLO. it was a nice service, and whenever i have visited their church, i have enjoyed Bryan Stupar's (the pastor) talks. this time, he had three reasons to follow Christ: 1) history; 2) the human heart; 3) the Bible. his first point was that history has shown us that nothing satisfies us on this earth ( he used the example of Alexander the Great's conquest, and how Alex felt bummed in the aftermath because there were no more worlds to conquer). his second point was that the human heart, throughout all humanity, yearns for immortality. his last point was that the Bible explains what has happened to the human condition and how the the letdown of Alex (and all others in history) is healed by following Christ, and that the heart's desire for eternity is satisfied by following Christ.

anyway, the point for bringing up Bryan's points is that it seems similar to the authoritative statements many make about language and the concepts (or desires of concepts) of every human on this planet. I think Bryan's main assumption is that every person desires eternity. this does not seem to be compatible with Pirah?, which shows "the absence of any individual or collective memory of more than two generations past". if this is how Pirah? is, then what are the speakers' conception of eternity, age, etc.? do they agree with Bryan's statement? it just seems omniscient of Bryan to know this kind of information. anyway, Pirah? is also reported as having "the absence of numbers of any kind or a concept of counting", but Mark Liberman wrote recently that the "absence of numbers" statement is not exactly true, so the "individual or collective memory" claim might be wrong too, and perhaps Bryan isn't wrong. it just seemed like a huge, unsubstantiated generalization, and that's why i first questioned it. anyway, that's all i coud think about when Bryan was talking. hopefully others thought about what assumptions he was making as well. alright, off to a meeting!

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light my way

BBC News has an article about a new discovery by researchers from University of Southern California, University of Michigan, and Princeton. Apparently researchers have developed a way to create OLEDs (Organic Light Emitting Diodes) that are very energy efficient and long lasting. Not only that, but these OLEDs emit that good, clean, appealing (to me, at least) white light. The only drawback appears to be the fragility of the OLEDs themselves. The OLEDs are sensitive to moisture, and so a moisture protector would have to be created for them. Yet despite their fragility to moisture, OLEDs appear to be able to be slapped on to anything: glass, walls, tables, chairs (altho' I don't think I'd want the last one: electric chair, haha) because they're paper thin. If they are properly protected, I don't see why I wouldn't want to use them to provide more natural, white light to where I live.

ELECTRIC CHAIR! Oh Dave, you’re so punny. I just found your blog. I didn’t know you had one. Whee!

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Two hearts, beat as one
I just finished reading a story on the BBC website about the first successful "reverse heart transplant". For about ten years, Hannah Clark had two hearts pumping blood for her. Just thought I'd mention it because I love to hear about what science has done and how it has impacted humanity in a good way. *If you don't know, the title is a line from a u2 song.

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Installing Lighttpd with Ruby on Tiger

I just got finished following the instructions for Building Ruby, Rails, LightTPD, and MySQL on Tiger (except the MySQL part because I already had that set up), and decided to move my play server to my mini instead of my laptop. Since my laptop is running Ubuntu at the moment, it wasn't a simple matter of just mirroring my directories on my laptop to my mini, but it still was quite simple.

I first had to install php with fcgi support (the default on os x is the command line interface). So I mozied on over to php.net and downloaded the source, and configured it with the following flags (taken mostly from here):

./configure --prefix=/usr/local/php5-fcgi --enable-fastcgi \\
--enable-force-cgi-redirect --disable-cli --enable-memory-limit \\
--with-layout=GNU --with-regex=php

Afterwards, I tweaked a bit here and a bit there the lighttpd.conf (which I put in the directory /etc/lighttpd), and fired up the lighttpd server with the -D option to make sure everything went okay. Well, fortunately it had, except for moving the database connection for WP. So I just backed up my database and installed it on my mini, re-configured phpMyAdmin, and I was set. Oh, and I had to add a new service to the firewall to allow port 80 thru...

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Checking Sources

I read some interesting news linked from Claude Mariottini's blog, the most interesting to me being scientific viability of Red Sea crossing. After some googling, I came to find out that it was old news from the beginning of 2004 (link to mentioned Moscow Times article, and unmentioned Washington Times article). Other than blogs and online articles here and there, I can't find anything else about the two supposed primary researchers, Alexei Androsov and Naum Volzinger, which makes me even more suspicious. This all reminds of my Language of Politics and Advertising, since it highlights the importance of primary sources (i.e., the article from the Russian Academy of Sciences, which so far has come up empty), without which it is really hard to even evaluate a claim.

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Earth to Titan

BBC had an article about two weeks ago telling how some scientists have announced the possibility of life on Titan. Because of the meteors that crashed into to Earth, "material" could have been ejected off Earth into space. The material could have contained living organisms, and scientists, using models, have shown that the trajectory of the jettison could have brought the material to moons of Saturn, specifically Titan and Europa. Scientists don't have real hope for Europa to have been seeded (because of the velocity at which the material would be entering its atmosphere). As Dr. Gladman is quoted to have said:

"It's frustrating if you're a microbe that's been wandering the Universe for a million years to then die striking the surface of Europa."

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swimmery

There's dwimmery, and now it looks like there's swimmery. I think it's a good idea to look at timing when trying to disambiguate meaning in searching, but I'm curious how effective it can be in general, interactive scenarios. Cool idea, tho'.

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Firefox Enhancements

I am finally catching up with some of my blog reading, and looked more into the extensions Ricardo Signes mentions. These are the ones I hadn't heard of before, and I just installed:

• Tab Mix Plus
• Stop-or-Reload Button
• Wikalong

• Greasemonkey
• Flashblock

And these are the ones I already have installed, that are quite useful:

• IE Tab (when I'm at work)
• Web Developer
• Hypertext DOM Browser
• Execute JS
• Long Titles
• del.icio.us
• Tab Catalog

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Whose Frustration?

Via The Register, an incident that makes me think how stubborn and ignorant a person (or I) can be at times.

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Chip on a molecule

Cool article on The Register about researchers at IBM who have created a working processor on a molecule. The scientists explain that the purpose for the research "isn't about making the circuits smaller, it�s about making them faster." The author, however, comments:

This latest experiment was a proof of the principle that nanotubes can be used as a basis for electronics. The technology is a long way off doing useful computation - the nanochip achieved a 52MHz crawl.

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Now if only I could think of a use for it...

An article was mentioned on the YAPC::NA 2006 site, and what it describes looks so freakin' cool! I especially like the Tux example, since I haven't forgotten how I loved my linux box before I got a Mac. Hopefully I can think of an interesting thing to use it for...maybe I'll mention it to a BSERC member or something...

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Awe-inspiring photo

I noticed this article on The Register, and thought I'd share. Creation is amazing.

No David, YOU'RE amazing.

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Religion Science

I've recently added the Mind Hacks blog to my bloglines, and I find practically every post an interesting read. A couple weeks ago, there was post mentioning two professors discussing the interplay between religion and science. A scientist who is an adamant evolutionist, but also Christian, criticized another philosopher who is attempting to persuade others that evolution and atheism are interdependent. As can be supposed, the Christian evolutionist doesn't think that is the case, and the disagreement has escalated into more of a heated debate, with mean words exchanged by both sides (survival of the meanest?). I don't think either of the philosophers are to be taken lightly, and I think a good is to read both sides with an attempt to understand what is elemental to each of their worldviews, and what elements are shared (and not shared).

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moment of truth

Man, I'm really getting a lot out of irc.perl.org#catalyst (and not just concerning Catalyst either). Here's something else that someone put up on the channel that just made me go, "Oh my gosh":

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OS X Security

Again from The Register, an article about the security of a Vanilla OS X on a Mac Mini with open SSH and HTTP ports.

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

Small Ambiguity

Reading an article online, I came across the following sentence, and thought of a few different ways of parsing it:

Prosecutors say Stone pleaded guilty to four abuse counts after Hatcher got involved and was jailed for 14 years.

• Stone pleaded guilty and for 14 years was jailed
• Hatcher got involved and for 14 years was jailed

• Hatcher, for 14 years, got involved and was jailed

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

Gibson to speak Maya(n)?

Not quite sure how this is going to work out, and the news article doesn't give much information besides a simple statement. I remember Mark Liberman was disappointed with the trailer for Apocalytpo not even having one syllable of Mayan, so maybe Mel's making up for it by speaking it at the Oscars

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

possessive phrases
http://plouffie.wordpress.com/2006/02/23/bob-solow/ plouffie said:

Dr Solow was my economic growth professor (Mark Machina)'s teacher for economic growth back in his grad school days at MIT...

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Sex:1, Masturbation:0

From the Register, scientists now have evidence that masturbation isn't as good as sex. Was there ever any doubt? Seriously, for those who don't believe anything unless it's "scientifically proved", it's good for them (I don't think I know anyone like that, btw), but I hope most people have already realized this without scientific evidence. (As a side note, I like the euphemisms in the article: I had never heard of "The Beast with Two Backs" before today.)

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US Troops Taught Iraqi Gestures

The picture next to this article made me think about how often images and text don't go mesh well: I think it's a no-brainer deciphering that kind of body language.

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

tack the duck on the track

I was invited by my friend, Hart Woolery, to join thefacebook group I Wanted Sex/Money/Power From Hart When He Becomes Rich/Famous, So I Joined This Group (you must have an account to view it). Knowing I belonged to that group, I visited the group's page, and noticed the following in the announcement box: If you want to be an officer, state your title and if He is not too busy feeling grand and powerful, He will dismount from His high horse to anoint you. Also, not explicitly stated, but implied in the title of this group, those who join are also entitled to (in the place of sex/money/power): vast tracks of land, camels, virgin nubiles, and my grandmother's phone number.

Maybe I'll ask for the title of The Blob, my title during our first year RA'ing together. But anyway, the thing I first noticed was the presence of an eggcorn. It reminded me of the first time I ever heard "tract of land". My dad is a surveyor and when I was 11 or 12 I remember asking him about why it is called a "track". He then explained that it's spelled differently, and ever since I've had the fortune of knowing the difference between the two. :) I decided to google "track|tracks of land" and found a good amount of hits (20,600). In comparison, the query "tract|tracts of land" gave 734,000 hits. I figure that a "track" of land reminds people of "track and field" or a railroad track.

Anyway, this got me thinking about some other ct >> ck changes that might be from eggcorns. pact >> pack has already been shown, but there are a couple that I noticed just recently. one of them is tact >> tack. "he|she has no tack" had only 46 ghits, while "he|she has no tact" only has 592 ghits. among the hits for "he|she has no tack", only 8 were actually shown by google, a few being:

• She has NO TACK. Seriously. She makes fun of her kids when they are going through puberty. found here
• He has no tack and speaks without regard for the cosequences of his statements. found here
• Again the conversation ends with hermione going off angry and ron still clearly clueless that he has no tack :D found here

Another one I noticed was just today, as I was out surveying with my dad in Joshua Tree. There are two things my dad says can fix almost anything: duct tape and twine. altho' i knew "tract" from "track" by the time i was a teenager, i didn't know "duct" from "duck" until the end of high school. I blame this on the Duck Products company, which makes a major brand of duct tape called Duck tape. Ken Lakritz was the first to notice that this might be an eggcorn, but no one has given it a full entry on the eggcorn database. When I looked at the OED Online, it gave "duck" as the probable original:duct tape orig. N. Amer. [perh. an alteration of earlier *duck tape s.v. DUCK n.3], a strong cloth-backed waterproof adhesive tape, originally used for sealing joints in heating and ventilation ducts, and (later) for holding electrical cables securely in place, now in widespread general use esp. to repair, secure, or connect a range of appliances, fixtures, and equipmentThis site, by answering who invented duck tape, seems to give a good explanation on why it wouldn't fit the eggcorn category. So, unfortunately, because of OED and this site, I don't think there's any solid evidence to support it being an eggcorn. :(

[update: tact>>tack was already in the Eggcorn Database, with the chief usage being "take another tact".]

I didn't have comments configured a day ago, but Chris Waigl wrote to me the following:

You describe precisely why "Duck/duct tape" isn't in the Eggcorn Database. There are still some obscure corners in the etymology, but one thing it isn't is a simple eggcorn.In any case, the Duck brand came into this fairly early on. And all three of the gaffers/sound technicians of my acquaintance swear that Duck tape is the correct, traditional use. Not that this makes them right, but it's an additional complexity. And all three of the gaffers/sound technicians of my acquaintance swear that Duck tape is the correct, traditional use. Not that this makes them right, but it's an additional complexity.

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

strife
Awhile back I looked up strife and got the following definition: The action of striving together or contending in opposition Now I only know "to strive" in the sense of "exert one's energy" or something similar, and strife only in the sense of "contention", and so the preceding definition seemed contradictory to me.

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revised place name rules (orphaned)

San Diego: S.D. San Dee

Juvenile Hall: Juvy/Juvee

Recreation Intramural Athletic Complex: RIMAC (i pronounce it 'ree-mack')

Middle Earth Lounge MEL

Student Activity Center The SAC

UC Los Angeles UCLA (spelled out or pronounced 'uck-la')

UC Berkeley Cal

California Cali

Southern California SoCal

Northern California NorCal

San Luis Obispo SLO (pronounced like 'slow')

Palm Springs area (from Yucca Valley, which is higher in elevation and also north of Palm Springs) down below

San Gabriel Valley or San Fernando Valley area The Valley

Dana Point Killer Dana D.P.

Jack in the Box: Gag in the Bag, Jack in the Crack

Las Vegas: Lost Wages

JC Penney: Jacques-Penn? (with a French accent)

Wal-Mart: Wally-world

Sierra Summit: Sierra Scummit

Caf? Ventanas: Coffee Windows (negative) Caf? V Ventanas Craptanas (negative)

Tapioca Express: TapEx

Black's Beach: Black's

Cane's Bar and Grill: Cane's

The Onyx Room: Onyx

La Jolla Shores: Shores

Tijuana: T.J.

Pacific Beach: P.B.

Santa Monica Beach and Venice Beach: Muscle Beach

Arrowhead Pond: The Pond

Garden Grove: Garbage Grove

Conveying sentiment about place: play with prosody

1. Translate the name to another language that conveys the speaker's regard for the place (e.g., Jacques-Penn?, and Coffee Windows).
2. If mimicking the prosodic structure, change a few sounds of the original (e.g., Gag in the Bag, Jack in the Crack, Lost Wages, Sierra Scummit).
3. Keep the first syllable of the placename and add a couple syllables, with the stressed syllables copying the first syllable's first sound (e.g., Wally-world).
4. Keep the first syllable of each word (e.g., TapEx).
5. Keep one word (e.g., Black's, Cane's, Onyx, Shores).[1]
6. Create an acronym[2]. If it produces a pronouncable sequence, spelling out the acronym is optional.

1. first syllable of one or more morphemes
2. the first two syllables of the place name

[1] This is actually taken from the Hypocoristics Database (rules 6 and 7), but I said keep one word because it may turn out that a middle word can be kept for SoCal English. [return to text] [2] Taken from the Hypocoristics Database (rule 10). [return to text] [3] Taken from the Hypocoristics Database (rule 9). [return to text]

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Tag, you're it

So I was tagged by Angelo last week. I figure I might as well continue the tag game :)

Remove the blog in the top spot from the following list and bump everyone up one place. Then add your blog to the bottom slot, like so.

1. Anastasia
2. Haligweorc
3. King Alfred
4. sauvage noble
5. unobe.com/blog

Next select five people to tag.

1. Jayson Whelpley
2. Hart Woolery
3. T.J. Tallie
4. Jen Chen (she rhymes)
5. Benson Lee

Angelo: I read the post from the bottom-up, sorry :( But here are my answers anyway.

What were you doing 10 years ago?

Wow. Ten years ago. That was half-my-life ago (give or take a few years). Alright, well, ten years ago I was in eighth grade. I was having a fun time doing club soccer and riding BMX with my friends after school (both of which would abruptly end on March 22 because of a broken leg). I also had just transferred to a different English class and was enjoying the new atmosphere (I hated my former teacher). Valentine's Day was coming up, but since I wasn't that interested in girls (probably because Shawna Cooper ripped up my childish love letter to her in 4th grade), I think I was mostly focusing on learning as much as a I could about languages called HTML and C. (I received a C compiler from my friend's dad, and was working my way through figuring out how to program, compile and link in C, and looking at C coding examples from a Dr. Dobb's Journal CD archive. No, it wasn't the best way to learn, and yes, I wish I had someone around to teach me.) Around the same time, I was building up animosity toward my mom because of stupid little things (oh, hindsight). It has taken 5-6 years to tear it down.

What were you doing 1 year ago?

A year ago I was freaking out about what I was going to do after I graduated from college. I was enjoying my classes immensely (all Ling classes!), and was taking "time off" from dating Margret to sort some stuff out (once again, hindsight reveals it wasn't the best thing to do). I was living with four other guys: Richard Ahn, Vincenzo DiNicola, Kyle Maxwell, and Louis Nguyen. I've never been good and telling people when I'm getting frustrated. I usually bottle it up and try to internalize it, hoping it will go away, and last year was no different. Thankfully, I don't think any of the guys hold that character weakness against me, and were patient while trying to understand how to help. That was my first year living off-campus, and I was having a good experience overall. I was also learning Zapotec, an indigenous language from Oaxaca, Mexico, but not putting enough time into it to see results I was satisfied with :(

Five snacks you enjoy:

1. CheezIts (but am trying to not give in as much anymore)
2. (fresh) whole tomatoes
3. honey-roasted peanuts (from Trader Joe's)
4. Reese's peanut butter cups
5. Mochi

Five songs you know all the words to:

1. You by Switchfoot
2. Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen
3. Ultra Violet (Light My Way) by U2
4. Brown Eyed Girl by Van Morrison
5. In The Light by dcTalk

Five things you would do if you were a millionaire:

I'll answer this question sorta like Angelo, and say what I'd do if I had a million to blow

1. Invest in stocks (~10k)
2. Buy gifts for family and friends for the next 4 years (~40k)
3. Give money to some charities (including my sis ;)) (~150k)
4. Travel the world for a year (~200k)
5. Invest in real estate (buy a house, and other land) (~600k)

Five bad habits:

1. Biting nails
2. Stirring things with my index finger (my friend Jen Chen reminded me how unsanitary this is)
3. Getting involved in too many things at once
4. Eating few but large meals (family history of diabetes)
5. Not keeping it touch with those I care about (no news is *not* good news to others)

Five things you enjoy doing:

1. Running (exercising, in general)
2. Reading
3. Programming
4. Guitaring
5. Helping others

Five things you would never wear again:

1. Hammer pants
2. My friend's sister's pink dress
3. Bra (not a bro)
4. Size 28 jeans
5. Speedo

Five favorite toys:

1. iBook
2. Mac Mini
3. Soccer ball
4. Legos
5. iShuffle

Angelo added another category, which I'm feeling up to answering:

Five things you have in common with your tagger:

1. We procrastinate
2. We have learned Latin (he by far better than I)
3. We live in southern California
4. We have Apple hardware :)
5. We blog about stuff related to linguistics from time to time

that was a memorable time in that house. we had our moments from the bizarre introduction (sorry about giving you that "who the heck are you?" look) to video games to surfing to sushi to exquisite parties. our conversations are among the most significant i've had. no worries, bro. even though i'm out here on the other side of the country, it doesn't mean i've forgotten. to the good times of the past, and to the brilliant times of the future. trogdoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooor!

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well-chosen words, methinks

Today's word of the day from dictionary.com is spoony. Yesterday's was concupiscence (many a spoony lad probably has that today). Both those words seem awfully calculated, considering what today is. I wonder if Trojan or Hallmark is behind all of this...or maybe it's just a programmer having fun.

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First Bay Trip

I went to the Bay Area for my first time about a month ago, and man is it a cool place! [1] Having lived in SoCal and being used to the late and at times inconvenient mass transit, I was quite impressed with the practicality and efficiency of BART. Anyway, the main area that I was so amazed at was downtown San Francisco, which I visited for a whole 8 hours. I went there with Margret (I was staying with her family while I was up there) and we met up with Kirk in SF at the Civic Center. We meandered through Chinatown and Little Italy, and then walked up all the way to Coit Tower.

We decided to go all the way up to the top of the tower, in hopes to get a nice view of San Francisco. The top of the tower gave us beautiful views of our surroundings, and, coincidentally, also allowed Kirk to be right next to a man who proposed marriage to a woman (who happily agreed)! It was pretty cool, because then we all just looked on as they hugged, had a terse but affectionate kiss, and went back to enjoying the view. Since Kirk and Margret brought digital cameras, they took pictures (*cough* which I still haven't received copies of *cough*) of the views (and I believe the newly-engaged couple).

After hiking up to Coit Tower and down, we were more than ready to mangia [2]. On Kirk's suggestion, we went to Pomodoro's to eat, and it was pretty good food. I can't remember what I ordered, but I remember it tasted good. Kirk (he was sort of the guide that day) then took us to this place to get gelatto, and then finally to Cafe Trieste. The gelatto was good, but since I don't drink coffee, I can only take it on faith that it really does make good coffee.

We then decided to head up to Pier 39 to look at the shops. The only shop that we went in was a babushka shop. The shop had some pretty big babushkas, and some of them were based on past Russian leaders. There were also these signs (which Kirk had never noticed before) telling a bit about the history and facts of Pier 39. One of the signs talked about how the pier had to be totally re-done with a cement substratum, which saved it from eventual condemnation by making it much safer.

From there we went to Ghirardelli Square, which wasn't that exciting: good chocolate, but not much else going on. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that we're doing this all on foot, so our legs were getting a good work out by walking everywhere. Anyway, so on our way back from Ghirardelli Square, we went to Lombard Street. Lombard Street doesn't have anything that makes it really cool, save its crookedness, and that was enough for me.

From Lombard Street, we walked back down to Little Italy and went to ? Bookstore. Kirk and I immediately tried to find the language section, and Kirk dived into a book on Old English. I, on the other hand, just looked at the titles, and kept interrupting Kirk with a "Oh, look at this!" and a "Wow, this looks cool!". In the meantime, Margret was in another section of the store, and I didn't ever find out what she was flippin' through. We stayed there for about 1/2 hour, and since we weren't buying anything we decided to jet.

By this time it was getting dark, and so we headed back down to the Montgomery BART Station. We had decided to meet up with Ben Strong for a bit, so we had arranged to meet him in San Jose where he lives. Now Margret lives in Milpitas and so we had taken the BART from Fremont. Kirk, on the other hand, lives in Turlock so he had taken the BART from Dublin/Pleasanton. Therefore we decided to go to Fremont, drive to San Jose to meet up with Ben, and then drive to the Pleasanton station to drop off Kirk at his car. However, the direct line to Fremont was no longer running, so we had to hop on the Dublin/Pleasanton line, then transfer to the ?Richmond to Fremont line.

On the the Dublin/Pleasanton line, we had a good conversation with a parent about the relationship between them and their teenager. All of us agreed that teenagers don't realized how much their parents mean to them, and only realize it afterward; it's just tough for the parent to get survive those teenage years where the teenagers act stupidly. The parent was really nice, and we had a wonderful talk about their little son, who was with them too. The kid was very inquisitive and didn't seem to be causing his parent too much trouble.

Well, when we finally met up with Ben, it ended up being at the Denny's where Margret worked last summer. Her brother's girlfriend was our waitress, and we had a good time having a night breakfast and catching up with Ben. He's working at Stanford in a lab, and he's doing much better than he was doing when he first started it about a year ago. It really was good to see him so happy, and he's just one of those people who just makes me laugh every time around him. Anyway, he had to wake up early the next morning to catch a flight to San Diego, so we left after about an hour of chillage.

The other days I was up there I spent with Margret and her family: going to Boomer's (great company, but nothin' new for me), to Marine World (good rides and attractions, and Margret's family is tireless!), and to church (good homily). Nothin' came close to amazing me more than downtown SF did, and since I think this entry is way too long already, I'm stopping.

[1] I know, it's quite pathetic that I've lived in Cali for my whole life and never been to the Bay. However, I have been to NorCal in general: I went to Hume Lake once a year during high school, except for one year when I went to California Golden Boys State which was held at CSU Sacramento. I also went to the Monterey Aquarium with my family after freshman year of college, so that counts too, right? return

[2] Sadly, this is one of the only things I have that point to my Italian heritage (my last name is the only other one I can think off of the top of my head). I actually didn't know "mangia" wasn't English until I came to college and my friends didn't understand when I said, "Anybody wanna mangia?" Of course, I know it's not the right conjugation in Italian or anything like that, but like I said, it's one of the few things that I point to part of my heritage. return

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nicknames for places

The other day I was thinking about nicknames I've heard for certain places. Below are some examples of what I've heard either growing up or here at UCSD. Jack in the Box: Gag in the Bag, Jack in the Crack

Las Vegas: Lost Wages

JC Penney: Jacques-Penn? (with a French accent)

Wal-Mart: Wally-world

Sierra Summit: Sierra Scummit

Caf? Ventanas: Coffee Windows [update: Ventanas (neutral) Craptanas (negative)]

Tapioca Express: TapEx

Black's Beach: Black's

Cane's Bar and Grill: Cane's

The Onyx Room: Onyx

La Jolla Shores: Shores

Tijuana: T.J.

Pacific Beach: P.B.

Santa Monica Beach and Venice Beach: Muscle Beach

Arrowhead Pond: The Pond

Garden Grove: Garbage Grove

Altho' some of the above nicknames only change a letter or two, the change is significant, since it adds or changes the meaning. Searching for "nicknames for places" on google came up with the Hypocoristics Database. I actually got a lot of pointers from that website, and I hope to write up a rule system for SoCal English (if there is one). For now, I noticed some rules:

1. Translate the name to another language that conveys the speaker's regard for the place (e.g., Jacques-Penn?, and Coffee Windows).
2. If mimicking the prosodic structure, change a few sounds of the original (e.g., Gag in the Bag, Jack in the Crack, Lost Wages, Sierra Scummit).
3. Keep the first syllable of the placename and add a couple syllables, with the stressed syllables copying the first syllable's first sound (e.g., Wally-world).
4. Keep the first syllable of each word (e.g., TapEx).
5. Keep one word (e.g., Black's, Cane's, Onyx, Shores).[1]
6. Take the acronym[2]
7. Take the last (few?) syllables and add "The"[3]

If I keep finding more nicknames and rules to account for them (notice I don't have a rule to account for T.J.), then I'll probably just make another page to keep a better record of them, similar to The Eggcorn Database or the Hypocoristics Database.

[1] This is actually taken from the Hypocoristics Database (rules 6 and 7), but I said keep one word because it may turn out that a middle word can be kept for SoCal English. [return to text] [2] Taken from the Hypocoristics Database (rule 10). [return to text] [3] Taken from the Hypocoristics Database (rule 9). [return to text]

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Poland hall designer suicide bid

I was trying to decipher the meaning of the headline before I looked at the article, and just couldn't. Now that I read it, that use of 'bid' still doesn't make any sense to me.

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

Uriah's heap

Uriah was one of David's "thirty mighty men", yet still David instigated Uriah's death because David desired Bathsheba (the daughter of Eliam, another of the Thirty). [2 Sam. 11 & 2 Sam. 23]. Unless, of course, these are two different guys named Uriah. But if the Uriah who was one of David's "thirty mighty men" was also the husband of Bathsheba, and David had him killed, it's quite an egregious act. David would not only have gotten another man killed, but one that he knew fairly well, just so he could a) have Bathsheba for himself or b) hide his affair with Bathsheba.

It made me think of how insidious people are at times, myself not excluded. It made me think of what lengths I go to get my way, and also how artful I have become so that I don't step on anyone's toes in the process, and in the end fail to get my way and to not step on others' toes. Sometimes life just doesn't go as we hoped it would. For David, he first tried to get Uriah to go to his house to make it appear that Uriah caused Bathsheba to be pregnant. When Uriah didn't do what David expected him to do, he then devised a plot to put Uriah to death during a battle. After this plot was successful, and David apparently didn't seem worried about the matter anymore, Samuel was told by God to confront David. The result was David confessing his guilt (for killing an innocent man) and being very expressive in his remorse.

From all of this, I think it's safe to say David was very passionate. He was passionate with Bathsheba (producing a child), he was passionate about getting Uriah killed to cover his affair with another's wife, and he was passionate in realizing his wrongdoing. David was in a sense more human than I: he expressed who he was, even when the expression was evil. That is the lesson I think I see here, and what I want to learn. Maybe the "I" should be "we" above: maybe there are others who feel they've walled off reality between themselves and others, just as I feel I have, for the sake of saving face. At any rate, I'm going to practice being honest with others. It might be easy for others, but at many times it has been hard for me.

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

Sell your tunes on iTunes

Via merlyn's journal, I found out about Tunecore, a company which has arranged with Rhapsody and iTunes to allow users to sell their music -- without any money taken out of sale earnings! (You only have to pay for the initial upload cost, $0.99 a song or $7.98 an album.) Now if only I had written any good music lately...

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

An interesting evolution study

Thanks to the Trotter for posting about this study on the BSERC website (i didn't think BSERCers were using it anymore: apparently, I was wrong :)). Just thought others would be interested, but since I don't follow the hard sciences like I used to, I don't have anything worth adding. But it did make me think back to my typology class: the differences between analytic and polysynthetic languages. Has there been any recorded instance of a language that is mostly analytic becoming more polysynthetic in a certain area (e.g., nouns), or has it always been that more polysynthetic languages become more analytic (yes, the last part is an assumption on my part)? I seem to remember that there was speculation that languages limbo back and forth between analytic and polysynthetic, but can't recall any clear examples where a more analytic language became more polysynthetic or vice versa. At any rate, has a language which becomes more analytic (or polysynthetic) because of its contact with other languages ever been studied? Can any light be shed on this by the study of cross-fertilization of plants and the irreversibility of certain complex traits? Hmm...looks like I need to set aside some time for this stuff :)

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

Funny Ad for PS2
Talking about how to stream flash videos starting at different points in the file, Flashcomguru (back in November) used a PS2 ad that I hadn't seen before, and just busted out laughing when I finally "got it". Just click play, and see it for yourself.

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Great book deals

Alright, now I already know I'm a bibliophile, and that if I find a book in a store that looks interesting, I'll probably buy it if I have the money. Well, the Bookstar (Barnes & Noble) in the Costa Verde shopping center had an awesome deal a few days ago: 3 books for $10. Granted, you couldn't choose any book in the store, but the classics they offered seemed to be good deals:

• The Histories by Herodotus
• The Odyssey by Homer
• Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
• Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll
• The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan
• Aesop's Fables

They're all a part of the "Barnes & Noble Classics" series, and altho' the binding isn't top-notch, they're typical of many hardbacks you get anyway (glued not sewn, for those who care about book-binding). Anyway, I was beaming when I walked out of the store that day. Fast forward to this last Thursday, when I was helping a friend with some Latin. We ended up in Bookstar for a few minutes, and on the way out I remembered the great deals and was going to show my friend. However, the table that all the books were on wasn't there anymore! But nearby there was another table with a few books on it which were only $1: that's right, $1! These were "Barnes & Noble Classics" books too, but some were different titles that I hadn't seen a few days before. So in short, I couldn't help but see three more books that I liked:

• Grimm's Fairy Tales
• Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
• The Soul of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois

And when I got to the register, there were three more books there that someone decided they didn't want (and, fortunately, I did!):

• Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
• The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson
• Paradise Lost by John Milton

So now I have twelve more books to read, practically all of which I have wanted to read all the way through for some time now. It was worth the 25 bones. :-D

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Peise the Time

The Merchant of Venice is an awesome comedy and I enjoyed reading it the farther along I got. Besides being very entertaining, I also noticed some interesting linguistic elements, too. The one that interested me the most is in Act III, Scene 2, when Portia is talking to Bassiano right before he openes the caskets:

I speak too long, but 'tis to peise the time, To eke it and to draw it out in length, To stay you from election.

peise the time, (i) weigh with deliberation each precious moment, (ii) weight the time that it may pass slowly; whichever interpretation we adopt, 'peise' was the regular name for the weights used in winding.

• under pass (v.):

  1836 A. A. PARKER Trip to West 165 Two Indians..halted within a few rods of us, stared a moment, and then civilly passed the time of day.

• under time (n.):

  1680 BUTLER Rem. (1759) I. 114 To pass his Times of Recreation In choice and noble Conversation.
  1851 MAYHEW Lond. Labour (1861) II. 489/2 The police..they're very friendly, they'll pass the time of day with me.

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Bono interview

Quick thought: On the b-trans mailing list, Trevor Jenkins mentioned a post on dissonantbible.typepad.com which linked to the first page of a Rolling Stones interview of Bono. It's pretty good, but unfortunately I could only read the first page of the interview. For me, some of the philosophy of Bono reminds me of my friend Jordan Cross ( and, oddly enough, Jordan doesn't like u2.) At any rate, go check it out if you're so inclined. :)

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reconsidering consonantal
In their paper Reconsidering [consonantal] (Phonology 13 (1996) 345-376) Elizabeth Hume and David Odden consider the use of [consonantal] as a distinctive feature. After their short introduction of the history behind distinctive features, they state that [consonantal] is not a crucial distinctive feature. They provide three situations where [consonantal] is not required if approached from different directions. The first situation is when describing phonemic contrasts: "[consonantal] never functions as the sole feature responsible for distinguishing segments." The descriptions of the distinction between w (labial glide) and ? (bilabial fricative), and the distinction between y (palatal glide) and ? (palatal approximant) do not require the use of [consonantal]. Research done by Waksler (1990)

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