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!

[all posts in /]  [permanent link]