The Trial By Existence

Works Cited

Works Cited

Corzine - Administration's Go to Guy for Economic Advice

Works Cited

Shuulinjii-in: A Practical, Phonetic Means of English Spelling

Yoga

His Brother was Going to Be Francis Bacon

Works Cited

Grammar Question

Works Cited

Exclamations

It's Hot

Works Cited

Cucina

How's that Movie Coming Anyway?

Works Cited

Birthday

Agujeros

Keeping Busy

In General

Rembrandt's Lucretia

WWI Vet Dies: Reminds Me of a Mamet Joke

Fun Fact

Works Cited

Works Cited

French Modernism vs. Chenoweth

Trivial

Works Cited

Plus His Grandfather Really Schooled the Spanish Communists

Osculation

The Elegiac Couplet

Neologisms

Really, her name c'est ne pas Booger

Charlemagne's Guinea Pig = Good Band Name

Works Cited

Spanish Speakers Should Capitalize More

Phonological Distinctions

Sequels

Works Cited

Watch Parks & Rec

Branded

Caca

Pets

Code

Works Cited

Open Borders Haiku

Oscar Best Picture Nominees

Musicals I Like a Lot

Schoenberg's Piano Concerto

Teutonic Tendencies

Czechs Mix

Language Death

Behold!

On the Chairlift

Mongol

Protestant/Catholic Constitutionalism

You brood of vipers

2010 Review

Send Me a Postcard from Pyongyang, Tovarishch

Argerich - Rach 3

Works Cited

Works Cited

Gift Horses

Holiday Parties are Fun

Works Cited

Does the Universe Have a Purpose?

It was a musical thing, and you were supposed to sing

Bilingual Pedantry

Works Cited

Google "viola jokes" for an example of what musicians find funny

Craig - Dawkins

In Defense of Prescriptivism

Herbert

Works Cited

On Flashcards

Dvořák Symphonies

Works Cited

La bitácora

About Four Minutes

El blues del dìa de elecciones

Etiquette

Though Fidel was a Lawyer, not -- as Carlos is -- a Doctor of Economics; Go Figure

Debate on the Resurrection

Now I Have a Friend on the Sea of Azov

Snack to the Face

The End of Meat

Quel beau jour! (I have no idea if this is grammatically correct)

TP Report

Works Cited

Real Name, Frank

Carlos Improbus

Being Smart is Fun

J-E-L-L-O

Morality, God

The Perils of Meetup Groups

Wien Weirdness

Meals, Español

2011-12-24T16:03:00.001-05:00

The boy who rode on slightly before him sat a horse not only as if he'd been born to it which he was but as if were he begot by malice or mischance into some queer land where horses never were he would have found them anyway. Would have known that there was something missing for the world to be right or he right in it and would have set forth to wander wherever it was needed for as long as it took until he came upon one and he would have known that that was what he sought and it would have been.

Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses

2011-11-14T22:30:00.003-05:00

Thus, if you liked a girl, you gave her a nickname. Elmore Weldon, for instance: a pretty, sturdy thing with whom he flirted furiously for weeks. He called her Elmo, after St. Elmo's Fire, that miraculous light seen about the masts and yardarms of ships during a storm. He liked to picture himself as a mariner in peril on the seas of life, while she illuminated the dark skies for him. Indeed, he almost became engaged to Elmo; but then, after a while, he didn't.

He was also much concerned at this time about nocturnal emissions, which had featured little in the Morte d'Arthur.

Julian Barnes, Arthur and George

2011-11-13T18:22:00.001-05:00

Joe Biden boasts of Corzine's grasp of global markets.

2011-11-12T16:30:00.001-05:00

Now that I'm more or less safe from him, and him from me, I can recall him with fondness and even in some detail, which is more than I can say for several others. Old lovers go the way of old photographs, bleaching out gradually as in a slow bath of acid: first the moles and pimples, then the shadings, then the faces themselves, until nothing remains but the general outlines. What will be left of them when I'm seventy? None of the baroque ecstasy, none of the grotesque compulsion. A word or two, hovering in the inner emptiness. Maybe a toe here, a nostril there, or a mustache, floating like a little curl of seaweed among the other flotsam.

Margaret Atwood, Cat's Eye

2011-11-08T22:11:00.000-05:00

I've created my own orthography for the English language. Many people have done this before, and it wasn't adopted, not even when Shaw gave it a go, nor will this be. Nonetheless, my orthography is eminently practical and sensible.

As anyone who's learned a foreign language knows, it takes a while to learn an alien way of representing sounds, no matter how simple the rules underlying it. Which means, this will sound more complicated than it is.

Attractive features of my spelling system include: (1) it uses less letters than the current English alphabet; (2) it uses no new letters; (3) it's entirely phonetic; (4) each letter, digraph, or trigraph represents a single sound; (5) the sounds of the letters are largely derived from traditional English spelling; (6) it has a sensible arrangement of voiced and unvoiced consonants.

Let us begin with the consonants. The consonants come in the following groups (1) the stops; (2) the fricatives; (3) combinations; and (4) the liquids. We start with the stops as they are generally regarded as the "strongest" consonants.

A stop is any consonant that completely stops the flow of air in the mouth. We'll present them based on where they are formed in the mouth (the so-called "point of articulation"), starting at the back of the mouth and moving forward.

Velar stops.

These are formed with the tongue touching the back of the mouth.

Without a pitch, the sound is of the "c" in "car." This is represented by "k." (A pitched sound is one when the vocal cords vibrate. Hold a finger over your throat. Make a "k" sound. Now make a "g" sound. Hear the difference?)

With a pitch, the sound is of the "g" in "gun." This is represented by "g."

Finally, with the nasal passages opened, the sound is of the "ng" in "hang." We represent this with "ng."

So this gives us the series: k, g, ng. All are articulated at the same point in the mouth, with the first non-voiced, the second voiced, and the last nasalized.

Now at a different part of the mouth.

Alveolar stops.

These are formed with the tongue touching the alveolar ridge, behind the teeth, and occur in the same order.

Unvoiced: "t" as in "ton." Represented by "t."

Voiced: "d" as in "dam." Represented by "d."

Nasal: "n" as in "note." Represented by "n."

Finally.

Labial stops.

These are formed with the lips.

Unvoiced: "p" as in "pit." Represented by "p."

Voiced: "b" as in "beat." Represented by "b."

Nasal: "m" as in "moose." Represented by "m."

This completes the collection of stops. It forms this pleasantly ordered square.

k g ng
t d n
p b m

The first column is unvoiced, the second column is voiced, the third column is nasalized.

The first row is velar, the second is palatal, the third is labial.

The next group is the fricatives. Again, we group this by point of articulation, starting farthest back in the mouth.

Glottal fricative.

There is only one fricative at this location, the "h" as in "hot." It is formed in the throat, and is unvoiced, and is represented by "h."

In some languages this fricative also occurs voiced, Sanskrit, for example, but in English we only have the unvoiced version. Moving forward towards the lips, we arrive at the palatal.

Palato-alveolar fricatives.

Unvoiced: The "sh" sound in "shin." This is represented by "sh."

Voiced: The "sh" sound in "measure." This is represented by "zh." Note that as "z" is typically the voiced variant of "s," so "zh" is the voiced variant of "sh."

Alveolar fricatives.

Unvoiced: The "s" sound in "sin." This is represented by "s."

Voiced: The "z" sound in "zoo." This is represented by "z."

There's a slight difference in the position of the tongue here (it reaches back for "z") but the location is pretty close.

Dental fricatives.

Unvoiced: "th" as in "thin." This is represented by "th."

Voiced: "th" as in "the." This is represented by "dh." These two sounds, typically spelled the same in English, have to be distinguished. As "d" is the voiced variant of "t," it makes sense that "dh" would be the voiced variant of "th."

Finally, as we move forward, we reach the lips.

Labial fricatives.

Unvoiced: "f" as in "fun." This is represented by "fun."

Voiced: "v" as in "vine." This is represented by "vine."

This completes the fricatives.

h
sh zh
s z
th dh
f v

Combinations.

There are two sounds in English that are combinations of a fricative and a stop. They occur in a voiced unvoiced pair and are articulated at the alveolar ridge. One option would be to simply write these consonants as a combination of the fricative and the stop that make them up, but since (1) it's closer to current English usage and (2) it's easier to type one letter than two or three, I've represented them as single letters.

Unvoiced: "ch" as in "cheer." This is represented by "c." This is a combination of the stop "t" and the fricative "sh," and thus could be written "tsh." But I've chosen "c."

Voiced: "j" as in "judge." This is represented by "j." This is a combination of the stop "d" and the fricative "zh" and thus could be written as "dzh." But I've chosen "j."

This gives us the following combinations.

c j

Liquids.

The final group of consonants is the liquids, which are tougher to order, so here they are in no particular order.

"r" as in "run." This is represented by "r." "r" is a weird consonant, since after a vowel it consists of bending your tongue backward, but in front of a vowel, it's more done with the lips. This "r" represents the front of vowel version.

"l" as in "laugh." This is represented by "l."

That completes the consonants.

Vowels.

We could arrange the vowels by where they are in the mouth, but it's generally easier just to go by the typical English arrangement, which roughly goes from the top to the bottom of the mouth anyway. The vowels are as follows.

"a" represents the vowel in "fun."
"aa" represents the vowel in "watt."
"e" represents the vowel in "fed."
"ee" represents the vowel in "they."
"i" represents the vowel in "bid."
"ii" represents the vowel in "meat."
"o" represents the vowel in "caw."
"oo" represents the vowel in "foe."
"u" represents the vowel in "wood."
"uu" represents the vowel in "food."

Generally speaking the double vowels in the list are farther forward than the single vowels. In the cases of "ee" and "oo" they actually represent diphthongs, but few English speakers have any sense of diphthongs vs. monopthongs, so the distinction isn't terribly important.

Unfortunately this doesn't exhaust the vowels.

The vowel sound in "cat" was represent in Old English by the letter "æ." This isn't easy to reach on a modern keyboard though, so it's easier to just spell it as "ae."

The vowel sound in "fight" is represented by "ai." This vowel is a diphthong, and the spelling makes phonetic sense, since, using the vowels we've already established, it's a combination of "a" and "ii." I've simply omitted an "i" for simplicity's sake.

The vowel sound in "five" is represented by "aai." This vowel is a diphthong, and the spelling makes phonetic sense, since, using the vowels we've already established, it's a combination of "aa" and "ii." I've simply omitted an "i" for simplicity's sake.

The vowel sound in "boy" is represented by "oi." This vowel is a diphthong, and the spelling makes phonetic sense, since, using the vowels we've already established, it's a combination of "o" and "ii." I've simply omitted an "i" for simplicity's sake.

The vowel sound in "south" is represented by "au." This vowel is a diphthong, and the spelling makes phonetic sense, since, using the vowels we've already established, it's a combination of "aa" and "u." I've simply omitted an "a" for simplicity's sake.

To my ear, a vowel plus an "r" produces a sound so different from the vowel and consonant that makes the sound up, that we might as well just count the combination as a new vowel, in much the same way in French we count nasalized vowels as a new vowel.

So, the r-vowels, or "rhotic vowels" are the following.

The vowel sound in "car." This is represented by "ar."

The vowel sound in "wear." This is represented by "er."

The vowel sound in "fear." This is represented by "ir."

The vowel sound in "core." This is represented by "or."

The vowel sound in "fur." This is represented by "ur."

The vowel sound in "bower." This is represent by "aur."

The vowel sound in "foyer." This is represent by "oir."

The vowel sound in "fire." This is represent by "air."

So that completes the consonants and the vowels. This leaves the so-called semi-vowels, which are vowels used like consonants. That means that the vowel is said very quickly while leading to another vowel. Again we'll start from the back of the mouth forward.

The "y" sound in "yarn" is represented by "y."

The "w" sound in "warm" is represented by "w."

That's it, the complete palette of English sounds.

Leftover letters.

"x" wasn't used, but it could be used as a substitute for "ks" for the sake of speed, or alternatively represent foreign glottal sounds, like German "ich" or "nach" or Scottish "loch." "q," since it always occurs as "qu," which we can spell just as easily "kw," is completely superfluous and not to be used.

Hiatus.

It may be necessary at times to distinguish between two separate vowel sounds and diphthongs. In this case, as has historically been done, an umlaut can be used. This is somewhat difficult in modern keyboards, so feel free to substitute an n-dash.

Allophones.

Certain sounds are different in English but the difference is generally ignored by native speakers. The "t" sound in "ton," for example, is aspirated, meaning it is followed by a puff of air. The "t" sound in "stun," on the other hand, has no aspiration. Yet we spell them the same, and unless made of aware the distinction, native speakers are generally unable to distinguish the two. This is to be contrasted with, for example, Sanskrit, where the distinction between the two sounds is perceived by speakers.

As native speakers ignore the distinction, it hardly seems necessary to represent it. However, for foreigners learning to properly pronounce the language, the distinction might be beneficially marked, in which case, an apostrophe could easily be used, as in Ancient Greek.

"Pun" would thus be spelled "p'an." "Spun" would be spelled "span."

There's also the matter of the dark and bright "l" sounds, but that's far too abstruse to be represented as this level.

Stress.

Another distinction that isn't typically marked in English is the stress of a word. Again, this needn't be marked, but for purposes of teaching foreigners, an accent mark on the vowel can easily be used.

Alphabet.

For the purposes of ordering the alphabet, using digraphs as actual letters (e.g., treating "sh" as a letter by itself rather than simply a combination of "s" and "h") simply makes things more difficult. So to order the alphabet, we will simply use single monographs, and organize them by phonological position and quality.

Kk Gg Tt Dd Nn Pp Bb Mm Hh Ss Zz Ff Vv Cc Jj Ll Rr Yy Ww Aa Ee Ii Oo Uu

The order being:

Consonants
Stops (Velar[Unvoiced, Voiced], Alveolar[Unvoiced, Voiced, Nasal], Labial[Unvoiced, Voiced, Nasal]),
Combinations,
Fricatives(Glottal, Alveolar[Unvoiced, Voiced], Labial[Unvoiced, Voiced]),
Liquids,
Semivowels,
Vowels

Summary.

k, as the "c" in "cat."
g, as the "g" in "gun."
ng, as the "ng" in "ring."
t, as the "t" in "ton."
d, as the "d" in "dirt."
n, as the "n" in "not."
p, as the "p" in "pear."
b, as the "b" in "bear."
m, as the "m" in "mile."

c, as the "ch" in "chop."

j, as the "j" in "joke."

h, as the "h" in "hoe."
sh, as the "sh" in "shoe."
zh, as the "sh" in "measure."
s, as the "s" in "soap."
z, as the "z" in "zoo."
th, as the "th" in "thin."
dh, as the "th" in "that."
f, as the "f" in "fun."
v, as the "v" in "vote."
l, as the "l" in "loan."
r, as the "r" in "row."
y, as the "y" in "yell."
w, as the "w" in "woke."
a, as the vowel in "fun."
aa, as the vowel in "watt."
e, as the vowel in "pet."
ee, as the vowel in "they."
i, as the vowel in "pin."
ii, as the vowel in "sheet."
o, as the vowel in "raw."
oo, as the vowel in "show."
u, as the vowel in "book."
uu, as the vowel in "lewd."
ae, as the vowel in "cat."
ai, as the vowel in "fight."
aai, as the vowel in "five."
au, as the vowel in "cow."
oi, as the vowel in "toy."
ar, as the vowel in "car."
er, as the vowel in "care."
ir, as the vowel in "cheer."
or, as the vowel in "sore."
ur, as the vowel in "fur."
aur, as the vowel in "tower."
air, as the vowel in "fire."
oir, as the vowel in "sawyer."

A Robert Frost Poem.

Sam see dha wurld wil end in fair.
Sam see in ais.
Fram wat aaiv teestid av dazair
Aai hoold widh dhooz huu feevur fair.
Bat if it haed tuu perish twais,
Aai thingk aai noo iinaf av heet
Tuu noo dhaet for distrakshan ais
Iz olsoo greet
End wud safais.

Raaburt Frost

Note how easy it is to tell which lines rhyme.

Skaat Shuul

2011-11-06T19:23:00.004-05:00

I did a couple of fitness classes the other day at my new gym. This was after the gym had sent me an email calling me a lazy bastard for not coming in more often. This turns out to be an effective service.

After hobbling out of the first class, I saw another class, Yoga, beginning, and thinking that sounded relaxing, I wandered in.

I didn't notice that somehow my iPhone had been turned on and started playing my current playlist, a Couperin suite for solo harpsichord. I was pretty out of it, so I somehow missed that there was harpsichord music coming out of my pants. I did hear the music as I entered the class, got a mat and started stretching. And it was harpsichord music I heard--very pleasing, and very calming, but still, I thought, an odd choice for a Yoga class. I expected new agey, or a few ragas or some such. Still I wasn't complaining.

So I went through the stretches for ten to fifteen minutes, never realizing Baroque era tunes were coming out of my rear, said rear now being thrust in the air in a pathetic reach for downward facing dog, said dog deserving to be shot and put out of its misery. Eventually the Yogi came up and told me to turn off my crotch-radio, at which point I realized I'd been broadcasting for a quarter of an hour. What really amazed me is nobody had hissed at me or shot a quizzical look--as if this was something people normally do, go around with a cembalist being pumped from your loins. So I turned off the iPhone, and realized, yes, there was new agey music playing in the background all along.

This being my first Yoga class in ten years or so, today, two days after, my legs form, at full stretch, a 120 degree angle with my torso. I woke up with my legs and arms pointing in the air like a tipped cow.

2011-10-20T18:22:00.005-04:00

SCOTT: I was going to get a pot-bellied pig, but apparently they count as livestock in Virginia, so you need a couple acres.

JAY: That's too bad.

SCOTT: I know. Cause I was going to name him Hamilcar Barca, Carthaginean Conqueror!

JAY: Meh.

SCOTT: Barcelona was named after him!

JAY: Meh.

SCOTT: Meh? That is singularly one of the greatest pet pig names available!

JAY: Ok.

SCOTT: Plus Hamlet was too easy.

2011-09-03T16:14:00.003-04:00

One clue that there’s something not quite real about sequential time the way you experience it is the various paradoxes of time supposedly passing and of a so called present that is always unrolling into the future and creating more and more past behind it. As if the present were this car--nice car by the way--and the past is the road we have just gone over, and the future is the headlit road up ahead we have not yet gotten to, and time is the car’s forward movement, and the precise present is the car’s front bumper as it cuts through the fog of the future, so that it is now and then a tiny bit later a whole different now, etc. Except if time is really passing, how fast does it go? At what rate does the present change? See? Meaning if we use time to measure motion or rate--which we do, it is the only way we can--95 miles per hour, 70 heartbeats a second, etc.--how are you supposed to measure the rate at which time moves? One second per second? It makes no sense. You can’t even talk about time flowing or moving, without hitting up against paradox right away. So think for a second: What if there is really no movement at all? What if this is all unfolding in the one flash you call the present, this first, infinitely tiny split-second of impact when the speeding car’s front bumper’s just starting to touch the abutment, just before the bumper crumples and displaces the front end and you go violently forward and the steering column comes back at your chest as if shot out of something enormous? Meaning that what if in fact this now is infinite and never really passes in the way your mind is supposedly wired to understand pass, so that not only your life but every single humanly conceivable way to describe and account for that life has time to flash like neon shaped into those connected cursive letters that businesses’ signs and windows love so much to use through your mind all at once in the literally immeasurable instant between impact and death, just as you start forward to meet the wheel at a rate no belt ever made could restrain--THE END.

David Foster Wallace, Good Old Neon

2011-07-27T13:58:00.002-04:00

English is my native language, but I'll confess I'm not 100% clear on this particular detail. Which of the two following sentence fragments, in your opinion, is correct?

Option 1. "What I've experienced is slowly developing sensations..."

Option 2. "What I've experienced are slowly developing sensations..."

I mostly want to go with option two, but I thought I remembered some rule learned long ago about "what" being considered to be in the singular and the verb therefore having to agree with it. Can anyone set me straight on this?

SCOTT:

Both sound perfectly correct to me.

I think the confusion comes from "What" being potentially plural or singular (e.g., What are these? What is this?). If we replace "what" with terms that are marked for being plural, we can see the difference. Here, I'll replace "what" with "thing":

Singular: [The thing] I've experienced is slowly developing sensations...

Plural: [The things] I've experienced are slowly developing sensations...

Now, both of those sound perfectly correct. Some might be tempted to object that in the first sentence, the sentence equates a singular thing--the thing--with a plural thing--sensations. But there's nothing wrong with that: consider the sentence "The team is eleven people," which does the same thing.

The difference between the two, if there is any difference, is the subject of the first--the thing--stresses the singularity of the experience. You're talking about one thing, one singular state, a state of slowly developing sensations. With the latter, you're talking about the individual sensations.

Bottom line: if these are the type of issues you're dealing with in English, then you're fluent. Use either construction and be happy.

2011-07-26T10:01:00.000-04:00

Everyone's heard the supposed fact that if you take the English idiom "It's Greek to me" and search for equivalent idioms in all the world's languages to arrive at a consensus as to which language is the hardest, the results of such a linguistic survey is that Chinese easily wins as the canonical incomprehensible language. (For example, the French have the expression "C'est du chinois", "It's Chinese", i.e., "It's incomprehensible". Other languages have similar sayings.) So then the question arises: What do the Chinese themselves consider to be an impossibly hard language? You then look for the corresponding phrase in Chinese, and you find Gēn tiānshū yíyàng 跟天书一样 meaning "It's like heavenly script."

David Moser, Why Chinese is So Damn Hard

2011-07-25T10:21:00.002-04:00

PORTUGUESE COWORKER: Of course, my favorite movie is Pan's Labyrinth.

SCOTT: Meh. Good movie, sure, but that's all.

PORTUGUESE COWORKER: It resonates with me.

SCOTT: Why? It's about Spain.

PORTUGUESE COWORKER: Well, we had a similar situation. We had a dictator.

SCOTT: Different dictator! Different country! Franco was not Salazar! Spain had no Carnation Revolution!

PORTUGUESE COWORKER: How do you know these things?!

SCOTT: How is Pan's Labyrinth your favorite movie!?

___________________________________

SCOTT: Jesus Christ!

MOM: Stop saying that!

SCOTT: Stop doing things that justify saying it!

2011-07-22T13:38:00.001-04:00

DENEN: It's supposed to be even hotter in August.

DICK: It's a tough day to be a bum. Then again, most days are a tough day to be a bum.

SCOTT: Except for Bum Christmas!

DICK: Or Bring Your Bum to Work day!

SCOTT: That's actually how I got this job!

2011-07-07T10:54:00.004-04:00

The emphatic period

English V2.72 introduced the multiple shriek stop, intended to allow subtle distinction in emphasis. In practice this facility has been abused, and has lost its force. In the following dialogue, it is not clear whose presence is more surprising, Julie’s or Wayne’s:

Who did you see on the High Road???

It was Julie!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Who was she with?????

She was with Wayne!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Long term users will recall English V2.96 attempted to persuade heavy emphasisers to group their emphatic punctuation in bunches of five for easy counting

It was Julie !!!!! !!!!! !!!!! !!!!! !!!!! !!!!! !!!

and a V3.03 offered system using a suffix convention to denote the intended repetition

It was Julie !33

but neither has ever been much taken up by the big public.

Now, top punctuation boffins have come up with a solution that reintroduces the power of exclamation but has a built-in mechanism that defeats attempts at repeated-stop hyperbole. Here is the emphatic period in action:

It. Was. Julie.

Ooof. Pretty emphatic stuff, eh? Now watch what happens when the user attempts to introduce more emphasis by tripling the number of full stops used:

It... Was... Julie...

Instead of increasing the impact, the repetition activates the safety feature and introduces an effect of hesitancy—not what the writer intehttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifnded at all.

However, I have to warn you that this feature may not make the final release of V3.31. There has been a legal challenge from the telcos, who stand to lose many £millions per annum if it goes through. Apparently a significant proportion of text traffic comprises teenagers sending !!!s to each other.

Verity Stob, "Excuse me, Miss, but your pronouns need upgrading," Speculative Grammarian, Volume CLXII, Number 2, July 2011

2011-07-06T09:47:00.003-04:00

LOREN: What languages do they make you learn in Uruguay?

CARLOS: If you want to be a lawyer, Italian.

LOREN: Italian? Not Latin?

CARLOS: Italian.

SCOTT: That doesn't make any sense. I could see if you were going to be a chef, then Italian might be useful.

LOREN: French.

SCOTT: Or French. And you'd be required to completely forget English.

________________________________

LOREN: Did you enjoy your draconian lunch, Carlos?

SCOTT: Right now he's thinking, "I didn't eat a dragon."

2011-07-03T00:01:00.003-04:00

MOM: Scott, can you do me a favor?

SCOTT: Only if you call it a "solid."

MOM: Can you do me a solid?

-------

Later.

MOM: Can you do me another favor?

SCOTT: What did I tell you to say?

MOM: Can you do me a sordid?

SCOTT: That's not what I taught you. And now I'm kind of scared.

------

DAD: So what'd you do today?

SCOTT: Same old, you know. Richard and I spent a couple of hours watching various animals giving birth.

DAD: Like?

SCOTT: Like elephants. We watched this mother elephant plop one out. Not like a horse, you know, when you've got three or so people with Larry-the-Cable-Guy accents yanking on the thing, but no, it comes out at the bottom, like the eggs from the ovipositor in Aliens 2, and no sooner is this thing on the floor then a wave, and I mean a wave, of afterbirth comes out. I mean it comes and comes. It is like the finale of Carrie. Then the baby's not breathing, so the mother starts freaking out, and she begins to wail on it. Not like with little playful kicks or anything. She beats the living crap out of this thing, until finally it starts breathing. It's a beautiful thing.

________________

Watching Independence Day.

SCOTT: Richard, see the little girl playing the President's daughter?

RICHARD: Yeah.

SCOTT: She was Ann on Arrested Development.

RICHARD: Her?

2011-06-16T15:07:00.002-04:00

One need not go far to find examples of completely unpredictable semantic shifts which would no doubt be rejected as far-fetched were they not verifiable by phonology or historical circumstances. A few English examples will suffice: fascist, based ultimately on Lat. fascis ‘‘bundle (of twigs or straw)’’, which refers to a bundle of rods bound around a projecting axe-head that was carried before an ancient Roman magistrate by an attendant as a symbol of authority and power; fornicate, based on Lat. fornix ‘‘arch’’, where prostitutes lingered in Republican Rome; fiasco ‘‘complete failure’’, based on the Italian word for ‘‘flask’’ in an obscure stage allusion; go ‘‘say’’ (in narrative); and finally bus ‘‘vehicle of mass transportation’’, ultimately the dative plural inflection which remains after the clipping of the Lat. omnibus ‘‘for everyone’’.

Baldi, Philip and B. Richard Page, "Review: Europa Vasconica-Europa Semitica..." Available at: http://www.cls.psu.edu/pubs/pubs/LINGUA1158.pdf

2011-06-03T00:07:00.002-04:00

MOM: It was one of the best days of my life.

SCOTT: Yeah, Mom, mine too.

MOM: Early this morning, 1982, I was in quite a bit of pain because of you.

SCOTT: I know, Mom. Have I apologized for that?

MOM: No.

SCOTT: Sorry.

MOM: It's OK. You cause me less pain now.

SCOTT: The sweetest thing anyone's said to me all day.

2011-04-27T15:51:00.008-04:00

D: que ha pasado por tu vida? algo emocionante?

Scott: Sì! Hoy, vine a la oficina. Entonces, Denen, mi colega, me dijo, "Escosès! Tienes un agujero grande en tu camisa!" Vi a mi camisa, en el lomo. "Ay!" dije -- "Tengo un agujero gigante en mi camisa!" Todos aquì vinieron a mi cubìculo para reirme. A las mediodia, vine a Macy's y comprè una nueva camisa.

D: okay, now the weather is nicer, so I'm thinking on a BBQ on my house. My only issue is that my house is small so I don't want to invite a lot of people, however I don't want those I don't invite to feel offended.

D: any ideas on how to address that?

Scott: Una barbacoa... secreta.

D: hahahah, there is not such thing. It would be odd to say, "hey come to my place but don't tell anyone"

Scott: Women tell me that all the time.

....

Carlos: Scott, since you're the expert translator here, what is the English equivalent of "Del árbol caído todos hacen leña"?

Scott: "From the fallen tree, everyone makes a log?" What does that mean?

Carlos: You know. When somebody's down, everybody can make fun of him.

Scott: That's awful! English speakers don't have such a saying.

Loren: Schadenfreude!

Scott: Leave it to the Germans to do it in one word.

Denen: It's like throwing someone under the bus.

Scott: But that doesn't really capture it. You have to get that sense of everyone throwing someone under a bus. Like how, because I wore a shirt to work today with a hole in it, everybody will make fun of me, today and forever.

Carlos: Exactly.

Scott: Well, we can use that. From my shirt, everyone gets a patch. De la camisa de Scott, todos consiguen un parche. Y ahora, ¡tenemos un modismo!

2011-04-07T19:42:00.001-04:00

RICHARD: What are you doing?

SCOTT: ... ... ... ... shit. Watching Gilmore Girls. Man, I was trying so hard to think of a lie.

2011-04-04T22:33:00.002-04:00

I don't know if I say it enough, but I have the most wonderful set of friends and family, and though I may envy people in some particulars, I never envy anyone in that sense. Jay, Richard, David, Joshana, Carol, Mom, Dad, you are the sparks of this life of mine. I wouldn't trade you all for anything.

2011-03-14T11:02:00.005-04:00

Rembrandt's Lucretia is at the National Gallery. The copy here doesn't do it justice; the contrast between the color on Lucretia and the darkness surrounding her isn't as evident, the candlelight effect of Rembrandt's lighting isn't apparent. Even the facial expression is missing something that can be seen in person.

Lucretia was a noblewoman of the Roman Kingdom who was raped by a relative of the king. After telling her husband what had happened to her, she took her own life. Rembrandt's paintings are often dark, but--for me--here that darkness represents the depth of time, how distant the history is: just this one story and a few others emerge from the Roman Kingdom (ca. 7-5th c. BC), and the rest is unknown. (And those few stories are impossible to confirm.)

But it's the facial expression that draws me. It's sadness, of course. But it's more than that; it's an apologetic sadness. As if to say, "It's too much. I'm sorry. It's just too much."

2011-03-14T10:43:00.001-04:00

Faithful readers will recall several entries since November about a line in David Mamet's Heist that I [Roger Ebert] said was the funniest he had ever written. Gene Hackman is a thief who wants to retire. Danny DeVito wants him to do one more job, for the money. Hackman says he doesn't like money. DeVito replies: ''Everybody needs money! That's why they call it money!''...
Many readers said they did not see anything funny about this line. I quoted Louis Armstrong: ''There are some folks that, if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.'' More protest. I quoted Gene Siskel: ''Comedy and eroticism are not debatable. Either it works for you or it doesn't.'' This also failed to satisfy many readers.
In desperation I sent the whole correspondence to David Mamet himself, and have received the following reply:
Thank you for your update on the Heist controversy. A lot of people didn't even think 'World War One' was funny. So it just shows to go you.

2011-03-12T22:56:00.001-05:00

The etymology of slave:

late 13c., "person who is the property of another," from O.Fr. esclave (13c.), from M.L. Sclavus "slave" (cf. It. schiavo, Fr. esclave, Sp. esclavo), originally "Slav" (see Slav), so called because of the many Slavs sold into slavery by conquering peoples.

2011-03-11T00:10:00.002-05:00

The English word 'defeatism' is formed from the French word défaitisme current in 1915, which is not officially French: that is to say, in the early Twenties Marshal Foch, as a member of the Académie Française, vetoed its adoption into the Dictionary, on the ground that it was an un-French concept and intolerable.

Graves and Hodge, The Reader Over Your Shoulder

2011-03-10T23:56:00.003-05:00

That I am the Man in the Cloak. In other words, I am by no manner of means the Man of the Cloak, or the Man under the Cloak. The Germans call me "Der Mensch mit dent Mantel", the Man with the Cloak. This is a deplorable error in the nomenclature of that otherwise intelligent people; and I am speechless with astonishment that they should have fallen into it. Why? Because my cloak is not part and parcel of myself. The cloak is outside, and the man is inside, as Goldsmith said of the World and the Prisoner; but each is a distinct entity; of that I am satisfied; on that point I, as the Persians would say, tighten the girdle of assurance round the waist of my understanding, though, perhaps, there is no waste of my understanding whatever. I admit that you may say, "The Man with the Greasy Countenance," or "The Chap with the Swivel Eye;" thus, also, Slawkeiivbergina (vide Tristram Shandy) calls his hero ''The Stranger with the Nose," and reasonably enough; for, although it was at one period conjectured that the nose in question might extend to five hundred and seventy-five geometrical feet in longitude, not even the most incredulous amongst the Faculty of Strasburgh were found to advance an opinion that the nose was not an integral portion of the individual. With me the case is a horse of another colour. I do not put my cloak on and off, I grant, but I can do so when I please by a mere exercise of volition and muscle; and therefore it is obvious to the meanest capacity (I like original tours de phrase) that I am just the Man in the Cloak, and no mistake.

James Clarence Mangan, My Bugle and How I Blow It

2011-03-07T10:28:00.003-05:00

JOSHANA: So the Kennedy Center website has crashed from the amount of people trying to buy Wicked tickets. I'll do what I can.

SCOTT: All you can do. Now, amazingly, I had absolutely no problem buying tickets for Turangalîla. In fact, when I bought the tickets, they offered to bump me up to play with the second violins.

2011-03-07T09:20:00.003-05:00

SCOTT: I want to say the etymology of "trivial" is something like this. It comes from the Latin word "trivium," a combination of "tres" and "via," meaning where three roads meet. In Roman times, the "trivium" was our modern day water cooler. It's where you would go to talk about last night's "Lost" episode.* So the sort of mindless things people would chatter about came to be called "trivial." I want to say that's the etymology, but I suspect I made that up awhile ago and I can no longer distinguish the fact and the fabrication in my mind.

* Actually, "Lost" had not yet premiered in classical Rome. I throw that in there just to make it understandable for the modern audience. In truth, a Roman was more likely to be watching "Three's Company."

NB: The real etymology, according to the Online Etymology Dictionary:

early 15c., "of the trivium," from M.L. trivialis, from trivium "first three of the seven liberal arts," from L., lit. "place where three roads meet," from tri- "three" + via  "road." The basic notion is of "that which may be found anywhere,  commonplace, vulgar." The meaning "ordinary" (1580s) and "insignificant"  (1590s) were in L. trivialis "commonplace, vulgar," originally "of or belonging to the crossroads."

2011-03-07T07:06:00.002-05:00

"All right," said the major. His eyes twinkled. "Maybe you aren't so dumb as you let on. Maybe. We got one last question. This here's a cultural type matter ... listen up close. What effect would the death of Ho Chi Minh have on the population of North Vietnam?"

"Sir?"

Reading slowly from his paper, the major repeated it. "What effect would the death of Ho Chi Minh have on the population of North Vietnam?"

Paul Berlin let his chin fall. He smiled.

"Reduce it by one, sir."

Tim O'Brien, Going After Cacciato

2011-03-04T14:55:00.006-05:00

LOREN: I'm sick of hearing about James Franco. Anyone feel me?

SCOTT: How can you be sick of James Franco? He's got two ph.D.'s he's working on. What is more impressive than that?

LOREN: Yawn.

SCOTT: Now, I was not always a Franco fan. Those Spiderman movies, for example, were complete shit.

LOREN: Right.

SCOTT: But he's come back from them. Which is all the more impressive. It's as if Spiderman 3 was a giant rock that pinned the arm of Franco's career against a canyon wall, and he ripped his way free. How can you not be impressed by that?

2011-03-03T10:12:00.002-05:00

BOOGER: What was that word you used?

SCOTT: I said "We osculated."

BOOGER: What does that mean?

SCOTT: We kissed.

BOOGER: I thought you were just mispronouncing "oscillate."

SCOTT: I should be so lucky.

2011-03-01T23:51:00.004-05:00

The elegiac couplet was one of the most common forms of Latin poetry. It consists of two lines, one hexameter followed by a pentameter. An example is Martial's 1.38, here without macrons:

Quem recitas meus est, o Fidentine, libellus;
sed male cum recitas, incipit esse tuus!

Latin poetic forms are adaptations of forms originating in Greece, and thus, like Greek, the Latin forms are based on syllabic length (English poetry, as a contrast, is based on accent strength). To understand this, let's first investigate the basics of Latin meter.

The most common unit (or foot) is the dactyl, which consists of one long syllable (the thesis) followed by two short syllables (the arsis), with long syllables being roughly twice the length of a short syllable.* "Dactyl" is, incidentally, the Greek word for digit --you can figure out the connection between the meanings by looking at the length of the segments of one of your fingers.

The two short syllables may usually be replaced by a single long syllable -- this makes sense, since one long syllable is the same length as two short syllables: the result is called a spondee. This gives us two possibilities (- represents a long syllable, u a short one) for a foot.

Dactyl: - u u

Spondee: - -

We can refer to both of these with the following short hand:

- U

Where U indicates either a long syllable, or two shorts.

When we refer to a hexameter, the prefix tells us how many feet (dactyls or spondees) we find in a given line: six. So the following are some examples of a hexameter line:

- - | - u u | - - | - - | - u u | - -

- u u | - - | - - | - u u | - u u | - u u

And so on.

(Note that u u - (called an anapest), though metrically the same length, does not occur.)

Now we can understand the typical elegiac meter. The first line is a hexameter, with the following pattern:

- U | - U | - U | - U | - u u | - -

So, as you can see, in the first four feet either a spondee or dactyl is possible. The fifth foot is always a dactyl, and the last a spondee: this gives the last two feet the rhythm of "Shave and a haircut."

The latter line is a pentameter with the following pattern:

- U | - U | - || - u u | - u u | -

The double line indicates a pause, called the caesura. In the elegiac couplet, it sets up the punchline. As you can see, the first two feet can be either dactyls or spondees. After those two a half-foot occurs, a single long syllable. The caesura is then followed by two dactyls and another half-foot long syllable.

Now, before we apply this to Martial's couplet, we have to know a few rules of determining the length of a syllable.

1. A long vowel (in Latin, some vowels always occurred long, just as in English some vowels are always diphthongs) or a diphthong is always long (it's long by nature).

2. A short vowel, if it's in a syllable that ends in a consonant, is also long (long by position). Generally consonants attach to the following vowel, if possible. If a consonant cluster occurs the first consonant remains with the preceding vowel, the latter with the second. (It's actually a bit more complicated. See note ** at the bottom.)

Here's the couplet again, with the long vowels marked.

Quem recitās meus est, ō Fīdentīne, libellus;
sed male cum recitās, incipit esse tuus!

We can now tell which vowels are long.

Long by nature: the ā in "recitās" is long, as is the ō, and the two ī's in "Fīdentīne."

Long by position: "Quem" has a long vowel, because the syllable ends in a consonant, as does "est". Similarly the first "e" in "Fidentine" is long because the syllable ends in "n", as does the "e" in libellus, because the syllable ends in "l". The "us" in "libellus" must be long because the syllable ends in "s". "Sed" ends in a consonant, so must be long. Likewise with "cum". The first syllable of "incipit" is long, ending in a consonant. The last syllable is not long however, because as we've noted, the consonant goes with the following vowel if possible (even across word boundaries!), so here it attaches to the first syllable of "esse". The first syllable in "esse" is long, as it ends in a consonant (it's impossible to move both consonants of a double consonant to the next syllable: Martialis serpens non erat). The "us" in "tuus" is long: there's no following vowel for the consonant to move to!

So, knowing that, let's break the couplet into its feet with their length marked:

Quem recit | ās meus | est, ō | Fīden | tīne, li | bellus

- u u | - u u | - - | - - | - u u | - -

sed male | cum recit | ās, || incipit | esse tu | us!

- u u | - u u | - || - u u | - u u | -

Altogether, this give us:

- u u | - u u | - - | - - | - u u | - -

- u u | - u u | - || - u u | - u u | -

Compare this to the prescribed pattern of the elegiac couplet:

- U | - U | - U | - U | - u u | - -

- U | - U | - || - u u | - u u | -

It matches perfectly (Greek poets would frequently break the "rules," the Golden Age Latin poets less so, and the later Latin poets seldom if ever).

I mentioned the caesura being the break before the punchline. Here's the same couplet translated into English with the caesura marked to give you an idea what this means:

What you recite, Fidentinus, is mine
But when you recite badly || it begins to be yours!

Let's try another Martial. This is 1.47:

Nūper erat medicus, nunc est vespillo Dialus.
Quod vespillo facit, fēcerat et medicus.

Scanned:

- u u | - u u | - - | - - | - u u | - -

- - | - u u | - || - u u | - u u | -

Note this meter is identical to the last couplet, save the first foot of the second line was before a dactyl, but here has had a spondee substituted, which we know is acceptable in the meter. Our "Shave and a haircut" ending is: "... illo Diaulus"

And translated (with the flexible Latin word order shuffled a bit to sound more natural), with the caesura marked.

Diaulus was recently a doctor, now he's an undertaker.
What the undertaker does ||

(Wait for it.)

the doctor also did!

One of the benefits of the strict meter is it aids in memorization, which may be one of the reasons for its strict adherence in a time where poetry was written to be recited, not read. These are just couplets, but the Iliad, written in dactylic hexameter, is over 15,000 lines long, and began as an oral tradition, only written down by Homer later on.

In fact, I was surprised a few days ago to find that I had, without intending to, memorized the first Martial couplet just by having spent some time figuring out how it scanned.

* When it comes to dactyls, spondees, anapests, etc., these are all also used in languages that rely on stress rather than length, with the long syllables corresponding to stressed syllables, the short syllables to unstressed ones.

** Nothing's easy. First h's don't count as consonants, so "ch", "th" and "ph" are just one breathy consonant that moves together to the next vowel if possible. "Gu" and "qu" are likewise considered one consonant and move as a group. A stop (b, p, d, t, g, c) plus a liquid (l, r) can move together as well, or they may be broken apart if the poet wants to.

Second, if a word ends in a vowel and the following word begins in a vowel, the first vowel disappears. Thus, "vita est" (3 syllables) is pronounced "vit-ast" (two syllables). That's easy to buy, but somewhat more surprising is that the same rule holds if the first word ends in an "m". So "vitam est" is also pronounced "vit - ast."

Why? Probably because Latin had started to develop a degree of nasalization, whereby the "m" simply nasalized the preceding vowel in certain positions but didn't sound by itself at all. This may be why so many words with "m" endings in Latin ended up with vowel endings in the daughter Romance languages. (After those endings were gone, French and Portuguese underwent a secondary nasalization, using "m" and "n" to nasalize another set of vowels. It may have been something like this: "Bonum" (Classic Latin) --> "Bono~" (Later Classic Latin) --> "Bono" (Proto-Romance) --> "bon" (Old French) --> "bo~ɔ̃" (Modern French). The clear significance is the French will eventually express approval of something by a loud "b" sound.)

Note that the poet could also avoid this elision at his discretion.

2011-03-01T17:13:00.004-05:00

Webster's occasionally publishes lists of user-submitted new words. Some are quite good.

#2: Ecotistical
Definition:

(adjective) : having or showing an excessively high opinion of oneself because of one's conservationist ecological practices
Example:

"Pret a Manger is never done with telling you how worthy it is. … [It] ecotistically plasters its greener-than-thou credentials all over its walls, napkins and the packaging of everything it sells." – Brendan O'Neill, The Guardian, April 4, 2007

#6: E-cquaintance
Definition:

(noun) : a person known to another through online communication only (as via email or Internet social networking)
Example:

"... Peter Watts, brilliant Canadian hard SF writer, marine biology PhD, good e-cquaintance of mine, and by all accounts all round nice guy in the flesh ..." – blog post at Richardkmorgan.com, December 12, 2009

Volume 5
Volume 4
Volume 3
Volume 2
Volume 1

2011-02-28T14:37:00.006-05:00

10:27:30 AM: Booger: did you have fun?

10:29:03 AM: Scott D. Scheule/NATL/TAX/EYLLP/US: A lot. Except for Friday. I was so sick Carlos drove to a drug store, bought some Day-Quil and insisted I do a few shots.

10:30:59 AM: Booger: seriously?

10:31:01 AM: Booger: I'm so sorry!

10:32:00 AM: Scott D. Scheule/NATL/TAX/EYLLP/US: Yeah, it's going around.

10:33:15 AM: Booger: aparently.

10:33:18 AM: Booger: I don't wanna get it.

10:34:57 AM: Scott D. Scheule/NATL/TAX/EYLLP/US: It's unavoidable. It's to be got.

10:35:36 AM: Booger: tu ne parle pas de c'est la

10:36:21 AM: Scott D. Scheule/NATL/TAX/EYLLP/US: Do you know where the "pas" comes from?

10:36:38 AM: Scott D. Scheule/NATL/TAX/EYLLP/US: In Latin it means "step", like pace. Why is it also the negative marker?

10:36:56 AM: Scott D. Scheule/NATL/TAX/EYLLP/US: I shall tell you.

10:37:25 AM: Booger: please do.

10:41:22 AM: Scott D. Scheule/NATL/TAX/EYLLP/US: In Old French, there used to be a phrase that was something like, I can't walk a step."Are you going to go to the discotecque, Emperor Charlemagne? I won't go. I won't go a step." Eventually, people were extending that use in all sort of ways. "Would you like some horse, Ms. of Arc?" "No, not a step." And eventually, the "pas" became so commonplace, people forgot the figurative meaning and just threw it onto any negative sentence. Now, amazingly enough, in spoken French, people have started dropping the "ne" entirely but kept the etymologically ridiculous "pas." So it's something like "Ms. Binoche, will you marry me?" "I marry step you!"

2011-02-28T08:47:00.005-05:00

SCOTT: I was listening to some lecture about the Early Middle Ages, and Charlemagne's -- you know, Carlomagno, tu cobayo -- spreading of Christianity in pagan Anglo-Saxon England, and... wait, cobayo? ... No ... tocayo! Tu tocayo! Namesake. What did I say? Charlemagne, your guinea pig? You must have had no idea what I was talking about.

CARLOS, EL TOCAYO DE CARLOMAGNO: I knew what you were trying to say.

SCOTT: Reminds me. In Latin yesterday, we were reading a passage about a boat during a storm, and it being filled with water: aquā implērī. Only Robert, reading it, said equā implērī, meaning filling with female horses. I imagine the sailors at that point throwing in the towel. "Look, we've been bailing water for the past five hours, and that's cool, but this shit? There are fucking female horses falling from the sky. Nicely played Neptune. You win, keep the boat."

CARLOS: Time to start swimming.

2011-02-24T22:48:00.003-05:00

He didn't know who was right. or what was right; he didn't know if it was a war of self-determination or self-destruction, outright aggression or national liberation; he didn't know which speeches to believe, which books, which politicians; he didn't know if nations would topple like dominoes or stand separate like trees; he didn't know who really started the war, or why, or when, or with what motives; he didn't know if it mattered; he saw sense in both sides of the debate, but he did not know where truth lay; he didn't know if communist tyranny would prove worse in the long run than the tyrannies of Ky or Thieu or Khanh -- he simply didn't know. And who did? Who really did? Oh, he had read newspapers and magazines. He wasn't stupid. He wasn't uninformed. He just didn't know if the war was right or wrong or somewhere in the murky middle. And who did? Who really knew? So he went to the war for reasons beyond knowledge. Because he believed in law, and law told him to go. Because it was a democracy, after all, and because LBJ and the others had a rightful claim to their offices. He went to the war because it was expected. Because not to go was to risk censure, and to bring embarrassment on his father and his town. Because, not knowing, he saw no reason to distrust those with more experience. Because he loved his country and, more than that, because he trusted it. Yes, he did. Oh, he would rather have fought with his father in France, knowing certain things certainly, but he couldn't choose his war, nobody could. Was this so banal? Was this so unprofound and stupid? He would look the little girl with gold earrings straight in the eye. He would tell her these things. He would ask her to see the matter his way. What would she have done? What would anyone have done, not knowing? And then he would ask the girl questions. What did she want? How did she see the war? What were her aims--peace, any peace, peace with dignity? Did she refuse to run for the same reasons he refused--obligation, family, the land, friends, home? And now? Now, war ended, what did she want? Peace and quiet? Peace and pride? Peace with mashed potatoes and Swiss steak and vegetables, a full-tabled peace, indoor plumbing, a peace with Oldsmobiles and Hondas and skyscrapers climbing from the fields, a peace of order and harmony and murals on public buildings? Were her dreams the dreams of ordinary men and women? Quality-of-life dreams? Material dreams? Did she want a long life? Did she want medicine when she was sick, food on the table and reserves in the pantry? Religious dreams? What? What did she aim for? If a wish were to be granted by the war's winning army--any wish--what would she choose? Yes! If LBJ and Ho were to rub their magic lanterns at war's end, saying, "Here is what it was good for, here is the fruit," what would Quang Ngai demand? Justice? What sort? Reparations? What kind? Answers? What were the questions: What did Quang Ngai want to know?

Tim O'Brien, Going After Cacciato

2011-02-22T17:18:00.004-05:00

SCOTT: What are you reading?

CARLOS: Lanación.com.

SCOTT: Como, ¿la cosa de la oveja?

CARLOS: No, it means Argentina.

SCOTT: Lana, sí? Wool, right?

CARLOS: ¡La Nación! ¡La Nación! ¡Dos palabras!

SCOTT: I'm thinking, lana is wool, so lanación is "wooling" something.

CARLOS: No.

SCOTT: Like, the act of wrapping something in wool. That is called lanación.

2011-02-21T14:19:00.001-05:00

I’ve noticed that when I learn about a phonological distinction that English lacks – length of vowels, tones, palatization of consonants – I tend not to treat it seriously. On an intellectual level, I know and believe that, yes, e.g., vowel length is distinctive, and is very important to a, let us say, Estonian speaker. On a gut level though, I figure it just sounds a little different and whoever I was speaking to in Tallinn would understand me perfectly well. I mean, I don’t notice the difference in English, so how could anybody else?

This is a result, I surmise, of not having any real world experience with native speakers who would actually be confused by one of my mistakes. If I speak to other English speakers learning Estonian, then chances are they are similarly indifferent to vowel length; they don’t notice my mistakes, because they’re making the same ones. (This is particularly apropos when you’re learning Latin—it is quite challenging finding a native speaker. Our group has been looking for one for a year now with no success. I blame the harsh US immigration restrictions.)

The first time I really bought that different phonological distinctions really matter for native speakers, even if they don’t for me, was when I was having a conversation with my Uruguayan friend, Carlos. I was speaking in Spanish, and I said, “pero,” meaning “but.” But that’s not what I said – I actually said “perro,” meaning dog, rendering whatever sentence I was saying nonsense. A single “r” in Spanish is a single flip of the tongue, whereas a double “r” is a full trill – three or four taps. Learning to trill my r’s was difficult for me, and then after learning it, it proved equally tricky to limit a trill to a single tap. But because we don’t have that distinction in English, I tended to overlook it, figuring a long “r” in place of a short one would just sound a little like an accent, without sacrificing meaning. Plus, surely given the context of the sentence, the meaning would be obvious even if the word sounded a bit off.

But Carlos just stared at me, dumbfounded. Eventually, he snapped his fingers, and said, “Ah, you mean pero.” I’m sure it’s the reaction I’d have if someone said, e.g., “rack” instead of “rock.” (Or when Carlos foretold the Apocalypse). That was when I first really started to take that distinction (and others) seriously.

2011-02-21T13:26:00.002-05:00

SCOTT: I have an idea for a movie: "The Social Network 2: The Rise of FarmVille."

2011-02-20T20:52:00.001-05:00

"Ah! Then you have found an answer?" Li Van Hgoc beamed. He looked genuinely relieved. "Our difficulty has been solved?"

"A piece of cake."

"Marvelous! Honestly, I cannot tell you how happy it makes me. Please, what is the solution to our puzzle?"

"This," the lieutenant said softly.

Li Van Hgoc frowned. "I must be mistaken. That appears to be a rifle."

Tim O'Brien, Going After Cacciato

2011-02-19T10:51:00.001-05:00

Just when did Parks and Recreation become the best show on TV?

RON: I have been developing the Swanson Pyramid of Greatness for years. It's a perfectly calibrated recipe for maximum personal achievement. Categories include: Capitalism, God's way of determining who is smart, and who is poor. Crying, acceptable at funerals and the Grand Canyon. Rage. Poise. Property rights. Fish, for sport only, not for meat. Fish meat is practically a vegetable.

2011-02-18T13:21:00.012-05:00

CARLOS: You know what we should do? We should come up with a Latin name for all of the value drivers.

SCOTT: No.

CARLOS: Come on.

SCOTT: Go away.

[Carlos stares at Scott.]

SCOTT: All right, what?

CARLOS: Translate "Branding and Marketing."

SCOTT: They didn't brand and market, Carlos. They raped and pillaged.

CARLOS: Come on.

SCOTT: Let me think.

CARLOS: I know "and" is "et."

SCOTT: Yeah, but we're going to be fancy.

2011-02-16T13:32:00.000-05:00

My friend Carlos, from Uruguay, speaks excellent English. Occasionally there’ll be a phrase he gets a little wrong, and I’ll correct it. “Scott, let me explain you something.” “No, Carlos, let me explain something to you.” Or… “Thanks God, I speak English so well, Scott.” “Thank God, Carlos, indeed.”

Nonetheless, I can’t quite bring myself to correct him when he says, “That’s a crap.”

“What do you think of this presentation, Carlos?”

“I think it’s a crap. Why are you laughing?”

2011-02-15T12:57:00.003-05:00

SCOTT: In Europe, on the other hand, people are very welcoming to pets. They let them in the restaurant, feed them, et cetera. Here, they're kept outside. Hell, the other day they wouldn't even let Carlos bring me into a restaurant. And the thing was, there were already a few dogs in there. And I was like, you let in that Great Dane! C'mon!

WOMAN: That was funny.

SCOTT: Good.

OTHER WOMAN: So, are you done for the day now? Like, check, said something funny, I'm out?

SCOTT: Later!

2011-02-09T10:23:00.003-05:00

SCOTT: Me gusta el pelo de ella.

CARLOS: You know everyone sitting around here understands Spanish right?

SCOTT: Capillum ejus mihi placet.

CARLOS: Good, but now I don't understand you.

2011-01-28T17:21:00.002-05:00

Our team of linguist-translator-statisticians assures us (with 99.99897% certainty), that the Future English Bible represents the dominant dialect of world English of the 22nd century.

The Future English Bible, The Speculative Grammarian

2011-01-25T13:46:00.001-05:00

Bryan Caplan's, not mine:

Markets chomp at bit
To end global poverty
But statists say no.

A commenter replies:

It is champ not chomp
Please forgive my pedantry
I cannot help it.

2011-01-22T12:06:00.001-05:00

Watched Network with Jay and Emily last night. Weird, and a bit incoherent. Top notch acting though.

2011-01-21T13:53:00.013-05:00

Bold movies are ones I haven't seen yet. The first in each year's list of nominees is the winner.

1920s
1928 (1927-28) (1st)

Wings
The Racket
Seventh Heaven

1929 (1928-29) (2nd)

The Broadway Melody
Alibi
The Hollywood Revue of 1929
In Old Arizona
The Patriot

1930s
1930(1929-30) (3rd)

All Quiet on the Western Front
The Big House
Disraeli
The Divorcee
The Love Parade

1931 (1930-31) (4th)

Cimarron
East Lynne
The Front Page
Skippy
Trader Horn

1932 (1931-32) (5th)

Grand Hotel
Arrowsmith
Bad Girl
The Champ
Five Star Final
One Hour with You
Shanghai Express
The Smiling Lieutenant

1933 (1932-33) (6th)

Cavalcade
42nd Street
A Farewell to Arms
I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang
Lady for a Day
Little Women
The Private Life of Henry VIII
She Done Him Wrong
Smilin' Through
State Fair

1934 (7th)

It Happened One Night
The Barretts of Wimpole Street
Cleopatra
Flirtation Walk
The Gay Divorcee
Here Comes the Navy
The House of Rothschild
Imitation of Life
One Night of Love
The Thin Man
Viva Villa!
The White Parade

1935 (8th)

Mutiny on the Bounty
Alice Adams
Broadway Melody of 1936
Captain Blood
David Copperfield
The Informer
The Lives of a Bengal Lancer
A Midsummer Night's Dream
Les Misérables
Naughty Marietta
Ruggles of Red Gap
Top Hat

1936 (9th)

The Great Ziegfeld
Anthony Adverse
Dodsworth
Libeled Lady
Mr. Deeds Goes to Town
Romeo and Juliet
San Francisco
The Story of Louis Pasteur
A Tale of Two Cities
Three Smart Girls

1937 (10th)

The Life of Emile Zola
The Awful Truth
Captains Courageous
Dead End
The Good Earth
In Old Chicago
Lost Horizon
One Hundred Men and a Girl
Stage Door
A Star Is Born

1938 (11th)

You Can't Take It With You
The Adventures of Robin Hood
Alexander's Ragtime Band
Boys Town
The Citadel
Four Daughters
Grand Illusion
Jezebel
Pygmalion
Test Pilot

1939 (12th)

Gone with the Wind
Dark Victory
Goodbye, Mr. Chips
Love Affair
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
Ninotchka
Of Mice and Men
Stagecoach
The Wizard of Oz
Wuthering Heights

1940s
1940 (13th)

Rebecca
All This, and Heaven Too
Foreign Correspondent
The Grapes of Wrath
The Great Dictator
Kitty Foyle
The Letter
The Long Voyage Home
Our Town
The Philadelphia Story

1941 (14th)

How Green Was My Valley
Blossoms in the Dust
Citizen Kane
Here Comes Mr. Jordan
Hold Back the Dawn
The Little Foxes
The Maltese Falcon
One Foot in Heaven
Sergeant York
Suspicion

1942 (15th)

Mrs. Miniver
49th Parallel
Kings Row
The Magnificent Ambersons
The Pied Piper
The Pride of the Yankees
Random Harvest
The Talk of the Town
Wake Island
Yankee Doodle Dandy

1943 (16th)

Casablanca
For Whom the Bell Tolls
Heaven Can Wait
The Human Comedy
In Which We Serve
Madame Curie
The More the Merrier
The Ox-Bow Incident
The Song of Bernadette
Watch on the Rhine

1944 (17th)

Going My Way
Double Indemnity
Gaslight
Since You Went Away
Wilson

1945 (18th)

The Lost Weekend
Anchors Aweigh
The Bells of St. Mary's
Mildred Pierce
Spellbound

1946 (19th)

The Best Years of Our Lives
Henry V
It's a Wonderful Life
The Razor's Edge
The Yearling

1947 (20th)

Gentleman's Agreement
The Bishop's Wife
Crossfire
Great Expectations
Miracle on 34th Street

1948 (21st)

Hamlet
Johnny Belinda
The Red Shoes
The Snake Pit
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

1949 (22nd)

All the King's Men
Battleground
The Heiress
A Letter to Three Wives
Twelve O'Clock High

1950s
1950 (23rd)

All About Eve
Born Yesterday
Father of the Bride
King Solomon's Mines
Sunset Boulevard

1951 (24th)

An American in Paris
Decision Before Dawn
A Place in the Sun
Quo Vadis
A Streetcar Named Desire

1952 (25th)

The Greatest Show on Earth
High Noon
Ivanhoe
Moulin Rouge
The Quiet Man

1953 (26th)

From Here to Eternity
Julius Caesar
The Robe
Roman Holiday
Shane

1954 (27th)

On the Waterfront
The Caine Mutiny
The Country Girl
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers
Three Coins in the Fountain

1955 (28th)

Marty
Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing
Mister Roberts
Picnic
The Rose Tattoo

1956 (29th)

Around the World in 80 Days
Friendly Persuasion
Giant
The King and I
The Ten Commandments

1957 (30th)

The Bridge on the River Kwai
Peyton Place
Sayonara
12 Angry Men
Witness for the Prosecution

1958 (31st)

Gigi
Auntie Mame
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
The Defiant Ones
Separate Tables

1959 (32nd)

Ben-Hur
Anatomy of a Murder
The Diary of Anne Frank
The Nun's Story
Room at the Top

1960s
1960 (33rd)

The Apartment
The Alamo
Elmer Gantry
Sons and Lovers
The Sundowners

1961 (34th)

West Side Story
Fanny
The Guns of Navarone
The Hustler
Judgment at Nuremberg

1962 (35th)

Lawrence of Arabia
The Longest Day
The Music Man
Mutiny on the Bounty
To Kill a Mockingbird

1963 (36th)

Tom Jones
America, America
Cleopatra
How the West Was Won
Lilies of the Field

1964 (37th)

My Fair Lady
Becket
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
Mary Poppins
Zorba the Greek

1965 (38th)

The Sound of Music
Darling
Doctor Zhivago
Ship of Fools
A Thousand Clowns

1966 (39th)

A Man for All Seasons
Alfie
The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming
The Sand Pebbles
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

1967 (40th)

In the Heat of the Night
Bonnie and Clyde
Doctor Dolittle
The Graduate
Guess Who's Coming to Dinner

1968 (41st)

Oliver!
Funny Girl
The Lion in Winter
Rachel, Rachel
Romeo and Juliet

1969 (42nd)

Midnight Cowboy
Anne of the Thousand Days
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Hello, Dolly!
Z

1970s
1970 (43rd)

Patton
Airport
Five Easy Pieces
Love Story
MASH

1971 (44th)

The French Connection
A Clockwork Orange
Fiddler on the Roof
The Last Picture Show
Nicholas and Alexandra

1972 (45th)

The Godfather
Cabaret
Deliverance
The Emigrants
Sounder

1973 (46th)

The Sting
American Graffiti
Cries and Whispers
The Exorcist
A Touch of Class

1974 (47th)

The Godfather Part II
Chinatown
The Conversation
Lenny
The Towering Inferno

1975 (48th)

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Barry Lyndon
Dog Day Afternoon
Jaws
Nashville

1976 (49th)

Rocky
All the President's Men
Bound for Glory
Network
Taxi Driver

1977 (50th)

Annie Hall
The Goodbye Girl
Julia
Star Wars
The Turning Point

1978 (51st)

The Deer Hunter
Coming Home
Heaven Can Wait
Midnight Express
An Unmarried Woman

1979 (52nd)

Kramer vs. Kramer
All That Jazz
Apocalypse Now
Breaking Away
Norma Rae

1980s
1980 (53rd)

Ordinary People
Coal Miner's Daughter
The Elephant Man
Raging Bull
Tess

1981 (54th)

Chariots of Fire
Atlantic City
On Golden Pond
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Reds

1982 (55th)

Gandhi
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
Missing
Tootsie
The Verdict

1983 (56th)

Terms of Endearment
The Big Chill
The Dresser
The Right Stuff
Tender Mercies

1984 (57th)

Amadeus
The Killing Fields
A Passage to India
Places in the Heart
A Soldier's Story

1985 (58th)

Out of Africa
The Color Purple
Kiss of the Spider Woman
Prizzi's Honor
Witness

1986 (59th)

Platoon
Children of a Lesser God
Hannah and Her Sisters
The Mission
A Room with a View

1987 (60th)

The Last Emperor
Broadcast News
Fatal Attraction
Hope and Glory
Moonstruck

1988 (61st)

Rain Man
The Accidental Tourist
Dangerous Liaisons
Mississippi Burning
Working Girl

1989 (62nd)

Driving Miss Daisy
Born on the Fourth of July
Dead Poets Society
Field of Dreams
My Left Foot

1990s
1990 (63rd)

Dances with Wolves
Awakenings
Ghost
The Godfather Part III
Goodfellas

1991 (64th)

The Silence of the Lambs
Beauty and the Beast
Bugsy
JFK
The Prince of Tides

1992 (65th)

Unforgiven
The Crying Game
A Few Good Men
Howards End
Scent of a Woman

1993 (66th)

Schindler's List
The Fugitive
In the Name of the Father
The Piano
The Remains of the Day

1994 (67th)

Forrest Gump
Four Weddings and a Funeral
Pulp Fiction
Quiz Show
The Shawshank Redemption

1995 (68th)

Braveheart
Apollo 13
Babe
Il Postino
Sense and Sensibility

1996 (69th)

The English Patient
Fargo
Jerry Maguire
Secrets & Lies
Shine

1997 (70th)

Titanic
As Good as It Gets
The Full Monty
Good Will Hunting
L.A. Confidential

1998 (71st)

Shakespeare in Love
Elizabeth
Life Is Beautiful
Saving Private Ryan
The Thin Red Line

1999 (72nd)

American Beauty
The Cider House Rules
The Green Mile
The Insider
The Sixth Sense

2000s
2000 (73rd)

Gladiator
Chocolat
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Erin Brockovich
Traffic

2001 (74th)

A Beautiful Mind
Gosford Park
In the Bedroom
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
Moulin Rouge!

2002 (75th)

Chicago
Gangs of New York
The Hours
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
The Pianist

2003 (76th)

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
Lost in Translation
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
Mystic River
Seabiscuit

2004 (77th)

Million Dollar Baby
The Aviator
Finding Neverland
Ray
Sideways

2005 (78th)

Crash
Brokeback Mountain
Capote
Good Night, and Good Luck
Munich

2006 (79th)

The Departed
Babel
Letters from Iwo Jima
Little Miss Sunshine
The Queen

2007 (80th)

No Country for Old Men
Atonement
Juno
Michael Clayton
There Will Be Blood

2008 (81st)

Slumdog Millionaire
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Frost/Nixon
Milk
The Reader

2009 (82nd)

The Hurt Locker
Avatar
The Blind Side
District 9
An Education
Inglourious Basterds
Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire
A Serious Man
Up
Up in the Air

2010s

2010

127 Hours
Black Swan
The Fighter
Inception
The Kids are All Right
The King's Speech
The Social Network
Toy Story 3
True Grit
Winter's Bone

2011-01-19T18:53:00.005-05:00

Annie Get Your Gun
Anything Goes
Bye Bye Birdie
Cabaret
Camelot
Candide
Chicago
A Chorus Line
Company
The Fantasticks
Fiddler on the Roof
Into the Woods
A Little Night Music
Little Shop of Horrors
Man of La Mancha
The Music Man
My Fair Lady
Oklahoma!
Phantom of the Opera
Pippin
Ragtime
The Sound of Music
South Pacific
Sweeney Todd
Urinetown
West Side Story
Wicked

NB: Alas, Rent had to be removed. It turns out inspired music cannot outweigh dreadful lyrics and a pasteboard plot.

2011-01-18T14:46:00.003-05:00

People have been telling me about this for years, particularly my friend, David, who was abducted by aliens. I just listened to it for the first time, and it really is great. I seldom like a classical work on a first listen, and even after a score of times I never warmed to Pierrot.

My recording is Uchida and Boulez. Here she is, eagerly speaking about the work.

If you listen to some of Schoenberg's early twelve-tone piano pieces and nothing else (this is all one is usually exposed to in an introductory music class), you're tempted to dismiss the composer altogether. In fact, I still don't like these. But listen to the Pelleas or Verklärte Nacht, early, "tonal" (frightening) works, and the talent is clear. Even before I did that, I read some of his writings about his own music: the man was a craftsman, and an intelligent one at that, like the result or no. It's nice to learn even his dodecaphonic stuff can be attractive.

Belmont Music distributes Schoenberg's music. Figure that one out.

*The only exceptions that come to mind are the Claire de Lune and Górecki's Third (I just discovered the latter's passed. Sad). I can actually remember the first time I heard both of these, one while combing through sample mp3's that came with one of our computers when I was 17, the other on a car ride to the Red Cross the summer I volunteered. I got to the office, then spent a half hour waiting for the piece to finish to find out what it was called.

2011-01-18T09:54:00.005-05:00

J---: although google fight is most amusing

J---: it does not provide a refresher on 8th grade grammar and indefinite and definite articles

J---: china responded

Scott: I saw. And the Netherlands Antilles split into two countries!

J---: didnt see that yet

Scott: Have to update my chart.

J---: we better hurry.... belgium might as well...

Scott: Yeah, after we already screwed the pooch on South Ossetia last year.

J---: i obviously no longer am familiar with the english lang. screw the pooch?

Scott: You are not familiar with the extremely archaic version of the English language that I aspire to: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/screw_the_pooch

J---: i see

J---: did we mess up with s ossetia? as in the us?

Scott: South Ossetia's one of the breakaway republics of Georgia.

Scott: You know, south of Atlanta.

Scott: J---, you have to realize, you may be a native speaker, but your head is all filled up with other languages too. It's screwing up your command of the language. So, I'm the authority here--the only foreign language I can kind of speak is Spanish, and as Carlos will attest, when it comes to that I merely produce gibberish.

J---: yes but i think russia did well.

J---: on that one.

J---: us was looking to pick a fight and georgia was silly enuf to play ball

J---: silly georgians

Scott: I read in one of the Wikileaks that Putin's got his eyes on a chunk of the Ukraine. Cartographers are going to have a busy decade.

J---: as he should

J---: cartographers should not have been as busy as they were post berlin wall collapse

J---: did you see lux's answer?

J---: very amusing

Scott: Yes. I sent a pedantic email back explaining the difference between the two abbreviations [i.d. and e.g.], while conceding that most English speakers goof it up too.

Scott: But we have more atomic weapons than Luxembourg, so we're allowed.

J---: oh no, you didnt?

Scott: I pick on landlocked countries. That's how I roll.

J---: How German of you...

2011-01-18T00:28:00.005-05:00

I've changed my mind about the Dvořák symphonies. After a half dozen listenings, the early ones have grown more and more charming.

Nonetheless, typing the haček over the r in his name is a pain in the ass (as is typing the haček over the c in haček), so I won't be writing much about the guy. (If you want to hear how it's pronounced, here you go).

Czech also (I'm aware I'm rambling) uses a vocalic "r", which means what we call a consonant can serve as a vowel all by itself. This was a feature of Proto-Indo-European, where you could use "m" "n" "l" "r" et al as vowels (this occurs in English in limited contexts: the vowel in the second syllable of "button," for example, is essentially just an "n"). In PIE, it gives a nice primitive sound to the language, but the effect was unstable: the daughter languages tended to develop actual vowels around these half-vowels. For example, *wĺ̥kʷos in PIE (the "l" is a vowel) developed into *wulfaz in Germanic, "gorg" in Persian, волк (volk) in Russian, lupus in Latin, etc.

But Slavic languages are notoriously conservative. Indeed, "wolf" in Czech is "vlk", which is amazingly close to its PIE ancestor.* Czech's preservation of the vocalic "r" gives us the fun vowel-free tongue twister "Strč prst skrz krk", meaning "stick your finger through your throat," which is, incidentally, exactly what you have to do to pronounce it correctly.

Anyway, my point is, the Sibelius Violin Concerto is awesome.

*This is interesting, but misleading. "Vlk" comes from the Proto-Slavic *vьlkъ (asterisks in front of words, by the by, mean the language wasn't written down, so these are reconstructions based on other sources). That "ь" between the "v" and "l" indicates a vowel of some sort, probably something close to [i] or [ɨ], which means after PIE a vowel snuck into the word and then snuck right on out again. Query whether something similar happened to all the vocalic consonants in modern Slavic languages.

2011-01-17T23:12:00.004-05:00

I found a fabulous article by John McWhorter about language death.

Yet the going idea among linguists and anthropologists is that we must keep as many languages alive as possible, and that the death of each one is another step on a treadmill toward humankind’s cultural oblivion. This accounted for the melancholy tone, for example, of the obituaries for the Eyak language of southern Alaska last year when its last speaker died.

That death did mean, to be sure, that no one will again use the word demexch, which refers to a soft spot in the ice where it is good to fish. Never again will we hear the word 'ał for an evergreen branch, a word whose final sound is a whistling past the sides of the tongue that sounds like wind passing through just such a branch. And behind this small death is a larger context. Linguistic death is proceeding more rapidly even than species attrition. According to one estimate, a hundred years from now the 6,000 languages in use today will likely dwindle to 600. The question, though, is whether this is a problem.

The thrust is languages die, but there's little reason to care besides the aesthetic. That isn't to say language death isn't often accompanied by moral nastiness, things that are rightly condemned, but the language death in itself isn't morally important.

Now compare UNESCO's endangered language page:

Half of the 6,700 languages spoken today are in danger of disappearing before the century ends, a process that can be slowed only if urgent action is taken by governments and speaker communities. UNESCO’s Endangered Languages Programme mobilizes international cooperation to focus attention on this grave situation and to promote innovative solutions from communities, experts and authorities.

I love languages, particularly the exotic, particularly the ancient. I wish the Proto-Indo-European revivalists the best of luck. There are apparently a handful of native Sanskrit speakers out there, and I'll be sad when they're gone. But if you're going to spend money on social problems, spend it on food.

2011-01-16T16:43:00.003-05:00

My first blueberry pie. Envy that crimping.

And I made some chocolate chip cookies.

2011-01-10T18:03:00.003-05:00

DAD: Get a phone call?

SCOTT: Nah, I'm just checking my mail.

DAD: Checking for fan-mail from a flounder?

SCOTT: Ha, sure.

DAD: That's from Rocky and Bullwinkle.

SCOTT: Ah. I had no idea what you were talking about.

DAD: It's a line.

SCOTT: Is it a joke?

DAD: I dunno.

SCOTT: Fin-mail from a flounder. That would be funny. Kind of.

DAD: Did you hear about Sugarloaf?

SCOTT: Hmm?

DAD: Where all those chairlifts fell down?

SCOTT: Right! How'd that happen?

DAD: Cable snapped or something.

SCOTT: Hmm. And since then, many have blamed Sarah Palin's anti-cable rhetoric for the incident.

DAD: Was that a joke?

SCOTT: Funnier than your flounder e-mail line.

2011-01-05T18:08:00.001-05:00

I am tempted to learn the language based on nothing more than this poster.

Via the Volokh Conspiracy. (I totally know some guys who blog there.)

2011-01-05T15:50:00.002-05:00

Professors Randy Barnett and Sandy Levinson have an interesting daivlog about the Tea Party. Levinson brings up an interesting metaphor (reprising one of his earlier books) of a Protestant and Catholic approach to Constitutional law. The Protestant view is, just as everyone is fit to interpret the Scriptures, everyone is capable of interpreting the Constitution. The Catholic view is that only a particular elite is capable of interpreting the Constitution, represented by the Supreme Court.

That's not the focus by any means, but the discussion is interesting.

I often tell Catholic friends that, were I not an atheist, I'd be a Catholic. In fact, though the past is murky, from what I can tell my great great grandfather was a German Catholic. Prussian, in particular--a soldier for Bismarck, who wasn't exactly pro-Catholic, so maybe that's why he fled to religiously tolerant Pennsylvania.

2011-01-05T12:33:00.001-05:00

Running Wilde canceled. J'accuse, America! (But please continue to watch Community, the League, and, yeah, Cougar Town. When does Parks and Recreation come back on, anyway?)

2011-01-04T14:39:00.001-05:00

Dave Barry's look at 2010:

Let's put things into perspective: 2010 was not the worst year ever. There have been much worse years. For example, toward the end of the Cretaceous Period, the Earth was struck by an asteroid that wiped out 75 percent of all the species on the planet. Can we honestly say that we had a worse year than those species did? Yes, we can, because they were not exposed to "Jersey Shore."

Read the whole thing.

2011-01-03T12:33:00.004-05:00

SCOTT: So what do you do?

CUTE POLISH GIRL: I work for Homeland Security.

SCOTT: Ah. So what happens in a typical day?

GIRL: Basically, I interview people about their requests for entrance into the country, and go down the checklist, asking if they've ever been members of Al-Qaeda, Nazis, Communists, etc.

SCOTT: Whoa! We still don't let people in for being Communists?

GIRL: Yep.

SCOTT: That's awesome!

GIRL: Glad you approve.

SCOTT: Say... if I give you a list of law professors from Georgetown that are Communists... could you get them kicked out of the country?

GIRL: Sure!

SCOTT: I'm so glad we met.

2010-12-30T12:09:00.005-05:00

I just a found a webbed video of Argerich performing the Rach 3 with Chailly -- I assume the famous one of which we have the recording.

Chailly can barely keep up. At times, one is proud just to be a member of the human race.

The video's in five parts.

2010-12-19T13:20:00.003-05:00

This God embodied a single idea (he had no other wishes or concerns): he forbade extramarital sex. He was therefore a rather comical God, but let's not laugh at Alice for that. Of the Ten Commandments Moses gave to the people, fully nine didn't endanger her soul at all; she didn't feel like killing or not honoring her father, or coveting her neighbor's wife; only one commandment she felt to be not self-evident and therefore posed a genuine challenge: the famous seventh, which forbids fornication. In order to practice, show, and prove her religious faith, she had to devote her entire attention to this single commandment. And so out of a vague, diffuse, and abstract God, she created a God who was specific, comprehensible, and concrete: God Antifornicator.

Milan Kundera, Eduard and God

2010-12-18T21:10:00.002-05:00

This is not so difficult to understand. Those who had fought for what they called the revolution maintained a great pride: the pride of being on the correct side of the front lines. Ten or twelve years later (around the time of our story) the front lines began to melt away, and with them the correct side. No wonder the former supporters of the revolution feel cheated and are quick to seek substitute fronts; thanks to religion they can (in their role as atheists struggling against believers) stand again on the correct side and retain their habitual and precious sense of their own superiority.

But to tell the truth, the substitute front was also useful to others, and it will perhaps not be too premature to disclose that Alice was one of them. Just as the directress wanted to be on the correct side, Alice wanted to be on the opposite side. During the revolution they had nationalized her papa's shop, and Alice hated those who had done this to him. But how should she show her hatred? Perhaps by taking a knife and avenging her father? But this sort of thing is not the custom in Bohemia. Alice had a better means for expressing her opposition: she began to believe in God.

Milan Kundera, Eduard and God

2010-12-15T12:43:00.006-05:00

CARLOS: You know what we say in Spanish?

SCOTT: What?

CARLOS: A caballo regalado no se le miran los dientes.

SCOTT: How do they say it in Spanish... slower?

CARLOS (slower): A caballo regalado no se le miran los dientes.

SCOTT: Ah. We have the exact same saying in English.

And as well we should! It comes, my friends, from St. Jerome, famous translator of the Bible into the Latin Vulgate. Jerome gave away his extensive writings free of charge, and thus, to a critic, threw back this pithy rejoinder.* From this beginning, it now occurs in over a dozen languages, suitably calqued.

Although I never thought about what the hell it means until today. For those who don't know, the idea is if the horse is a gift, you shouldn't inspect its teeth (which would give you some idea of the age and health of the animal).

Czech: darovanému koni na zuby nekoukej, darovanému koni na zuby nehleď

Dutch: een gegeven paard niet in de bek kijken, Men moet een gegeven paard niet in de bek kijken

Finnish: lahjahevosen suuhun ei saa katsoa

French: à cheval donné, on ne regarde pas la bouche

German: Einem geschenkten Gaul schaut man nicht ins Maul

Hungarian: ajándék lónak ne nézd a fogát

Icelandic: ekki vera vanþakklátur

Italian: a caval donato non si guarda in bocca

Polish: darowanemu koniowi nie zagląda się w zęby

Portuguese: a cavalo dado não se olha os dentes

Russian: дарёному коню в зубы не смотрят

Slovak: darovanému koňovi sa na zuby nepozeraj

Spanish: a caballo regalado no se le miran los dientes

Swedish: skåda inte en given häst i munnen

*Which is not to say Jerome originated the phrase. It may well have enjoyed wide currency at the time -- or not. It's simply the earliest instance.

2010-12-14T21:04:00.003-05:00

PARTNER: I was telling Scott about this. People in my family have a tendency towards obsessive behavior. A cousin of mine says that every time she buys something, she feels like she's had sex. It's that good.

SCOTT: That's funny. Every time I have sex, I feel like I've bought something. Of course, I usually have.

PARTNER: You should write that down.

SCOTT: All right.

2010-12-13T20:11:00.004-05:00

Although the palace at Gatchina had nine hundred rooms, Nicholas and his brothers and sisters were brought up in spartan simplicity. Every morning, [Tsar] Alexander III arose at seven, washed in cold water, dressed in peasant's clothes, made himself a pot of coffee and sat down at his desk. Later when Marie was up, she joined him for a breakfast of rye bread and boiled eggs. The children slept on simple army cots with hard pillows, took cold baths in the morning and ate porridge for breakfast. At lunch when they joined their parents, there was plenty of food, but as they were served last after all the guests and still had to leave the table when their father rose, they often went hungry. Ravenous, Nicholas once attacked the hollow gold cross filled with beeswax which he had been given at baptism; embedded in the wax was a tiny fragment of the True Cross. "Nicky was so hungry that he opened his cross and ate the contents--relic and all," recalled his sister Olga. "Later he felt ashamed of himself but admitted that it had tasted 'immorally good.'"

Robert K. Massie, Nicholas and Alexandra

2010-12-13T10:31:00.004-05:00

The aforementioned Craig - Dawkins debate has been webbed. The debate actually includes at least 6 people, three theists and three atheists. It's also held, honest injun, in a boxing ring!

The topic was "Whether or Not the Universe Has a Purpose" but this instantaneously becomes a debate on the existence of God, as the theists assert the universe only has a purpose if God exists and the atheists apparently accept the premise. But the questions are distinct -- or at least, there's a colorable argument they are. No one attempts to color it in.

At any rate, it turns into a fairly useless exchange, with Craig inserting the only interesting bit of philosophic rigor in his opening statement. Debaters are given less and less time for rebuttal as the affair proceeds, so it all eventually devolves into one-liners, and not particularly good ones.

Here's an interesting review.

On the religious topic, I continue my push through the New Standard Bible and the Oxford Bible Commentary. It's slow going -- a month and I've just reached Deuteronomy -- but historically fascinating.

2010-12-08T18:28:00.001-05:00

David sent me this.

2010-12-01T17:07:00.002-05:00

I now know more Spanish than Spanish speakers. Still can't speak the damn thing.

3:37:59 PM: Sanchez de la Garza/NATL/TAX/EYLLP/US: hey Scott

3:38:08 PM: Scheule/NATL/TAX/EYLLP/US: Hola.

3:38:19 PM: Sanchez de la Garza/NATL/TAX/EYLLP/US: hablas español_

3:38:20 PM: Sanchez de la Garza/NATL/TAX/EYLLP/US: ?

3:38:58 PM: Scheule/NATL/TAX/EYLLP/US: Un poco. Por ejemplo, yo sè que tu apellido significa "heron", un tipo de pàjaro.

3:39:10 PM: Sanchez de la Garza/NATL/TAX/EYLLP/US: ahh "Garza"?

3:39:12 PM: Scheule/NATL/TAX/EYLLP/US: Pienso.

3:39:12 PM: Sanchez de la Garza/NATL/TAX/EYLLP/US: hehe

3:39:13 PM: Sanchez de la Garza/NATL/TAX/EYLLP/US: si

3:39:19 PM: Scheule/NATL/TAX/EYLLP/US: Sì.

3:39:25 PM: Sanchez de la Garza/NATL/TAX/EYLLP/US: I dont think Sanchez has a meaning though

3:40:20 PM: Scheule/NATL/TAX/EYLLP/US: Hmm, no sè. Creo que el "ez" originalmente significò "el hijo de", como "el hijo de Sancho". Pero no estoy seguro.

[PS. Tengo razòn.]

2010-11-25T15:09:00.003-05:00

(Chs. 11-15) [of Leviticus] form an important section on ritual purity and pollution. An explanation now almost universally rejected is that the various laws in this section have hygiene as their basis. Although some of the laws of ritual purity roughly correspond to modern ideas of physical cleanliness, many of them have little to do with hygiene. For example, there is no evidence that the "unclean" animals are intrinsically bad to eat or to be avoided in a Mediterranean climate, as is sometimes asserted.

The Oxford Bible Commentary

2010-11-19T19:18:00.004-05:00

My friend Diana messages me that a friend of hers (who I don't think I've met) was on a plane last week and bizarrely, improbably, began to talk to the person next to her about Ernst and Young, and the stranger, a female violinist, ventured forth my name, saying she went to high school with me in a small town. Pequeño mundo, claro, but the mystery is: I can't think of a violinist I went to high school with -- though I did spend most of high school writing bad poetry and bemoaning the unfairness of life; es decir, I wasn't exactly social.

I did go to school with a violist, but I haven't talked to her in half a decade, long before I joined E&Y.

I think the best way to solve this mystery is taking into account that English isn't Diana's first language, so when she said "my friend met someone who knew you in highschool who plays the violin" what she meant was "my uncle saw someone who went to boarding school with Anne Heche last night on Glee who plays the kettle drums." Now that's a puzzle we all can solve.

Incidentally, I'll be in Jersey for the weekend. Be back Sunday.

2010-11-15T08:55:00.003-05:00

Richard Dawkins, after persistently belittling the accomplished philosopher as unworthy of debate, will finally be appearing with William Lane Craig.

By Craig's report, Dawkins is typically petulant:

I am currently in Mexico to participate in a conference called Ciudad de las Ideas, which is a conference modeled on the TED conference in the US. It features lots of high tech people, sociologists, psychologists, economists, scientists, etc.

As part of the conference they´re having a panel of six of us debate on the question ¨Does the Universe Have a Purpose?¨ Well. to my surprise, I just found out that one of the three persons on the other side is Richard Dawkins! It´s true! I met him the other night. When he came my way, I stuck out my hand and introduced myself and said, Ï´m surprised to see that you´re on the panel.

He replied, Änd why not?

I said, ¨Well, you´ve always refused to debate me.

His tone suddenly became icy cold. Ï don´t consider this to be a debate with you. The Mexicans invited me to participate, and I accepted.¨ At that, he turned away.

¨Well, I hope we have a good discussion,¨ I said.

Ï very much doubt it,¨ he said and walked off.

So it was a pretty chilly reception! The debate is Saturday morning, should you think of us. I´ll give an update after I get back.

The umlauts are original. As Craig is fluent in German, I presume he's using some sort of international keyboard layout.

2010-11-11T11:03:00.003-05:00

This defense by Noam Chomsky of linguistic prescriptivism is actually similar to my view on many fields beyond grammar, such as theology, art, morality, legality. None of the propositions in these fields have any truth value, just as no one linguistic rule is proper, but it is a worthwhile thing, nonetheless, to know the rules. "[T]hey are part of a repository of a very rich cultural heritage."

Q. In College English in 1967, you wrote that “a concern for the literary standard language—prescriptivism in its more sensible manifestations—is as legitimate as an interest in colloquial speech.” Do you still believe that a sensible prescriptivism is preferable to linguistic permissiveness? If so, how would you define a sensible prescriptivism?

A. I think sensible prescriptivism ought to be part of any education. I would certainly think that students ought to know the standard literary language with all its conventions, its absurdities, its artificial conventions, and so on because that’s a real cultural system, and an important cultural system. They should certainly know it and be inside it and be able to use it freely. I don’t think people should give them any illusions about what it is. It’s not better, or more sensible. Much of it is a violation of natural law. In fact, a good deal of what’s taught is taught because it’s wrong. You don’t have to teach people their native language because it grows in their minds, but if you want people to say, “He and I were here” and not “Him and me were here,” then you have to teach them because it’s probably wrong. The nature of English probably is the other way, “Him and me were here,” because the so-called nominative form is typically used only as the subject of the tense sentence; grammarians who misunderstood this fact then assumed that it ought to be, “He and I were here,” but they’re wrong. It should be “Him and me were here,” by that rule. So they teach it because it’s not natural. Or if you want to teach the so-called proper use of shall and will—and I think it’s totally wild—you have to teach it because it doesn’t make any sense. On the other hand, if you want to teach people how to make passives you just confuse them because they already know, because they already follow these rules. So a good deal of what’s taught in the standard language is just a history of artificialities, and they have to be taught because they’re artificial. But that doesn’t mean that people shouldn’t know them. They should know them because they’re part of the cultural community in which they play a role and in which they are part of a repository of a very rich cultural heritage. So, of course, you’ve got to know them.

2010-11-10T12:05:00.000-05:00

Hanah: Charlie has learned that really annoying technique where I ask him to take one bite of his food, so he picks up a nearly invisible molecule of food and eats it.

Scott: Time to put him up for adoption.

Hanah: Fortunately, he's being extra-cute at the same time.

Scott: Very clever of him.

Hanah: Yes, it's all part of his plan to take over the world.

Scott: He's the Kwisatz Haderach!

Hanah: the what?

Scott: I can't believe you thought you could bring forth the Kwisatz Haderach before his time!

Hanah: ok...

Scott: Ah. Apropos of nothing, you should read Dune.

Hanah: I did once, but I didn't understand it.

Scott: It's Dune, not Finnegan's Wake.

2010-11-09T07:40:00.004-05:00

This is the one and only passage in the New Testament in which Jesus is called a carpenter. The word used, TEKTŌN, is typically applied in other Greek texts to anyone who makes things with his hands; in later Christian writings, for example, Jesus is said to have made "yokes and gates." ... How could someone with that background be the Son of God?

This was a question that the pagan opponents of Christianity took quite seriously; in fact, they understood the question to be rhetorical. Jesus obviously could not be a son of God if he was a mere TEKTŌN. The pagan critic Celsus particularly mocked Christians on this point, tying the claim that Jesus was a "woodworker" into the fact that he was crucified (on a stake of wood) and the Christian belief in the "tree of life."

And everywhere they speak in their writings of the tree of life... I imagine because their master was nailed to a cross and was a carpenter by trade. So that if he happened to be thrown off a cliff or pushed into a pit or suffocated by strangling, or if he had been a cobbler or stonemason or blacksmith, there would have been a cliff of life above the heavens, or a pit of resurrection, or a rope of immortality, or a blessed stone, or an iron of love, or a holy hide of leather.

Bart Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus

2010-11-07T22:00:00.008-05:00

I happened upon a post arguing against the usefulness of flashcards for language learners. I thought it was wrong, or at least the arguments advanced for the conclusion were wrong: my actual opinion is all this anecdotal evidence is junk.

Nonetheless, you can read the author's original argument here, where he argues flashcards are useless as they 1. create a particularly slow set of associations in the learner's brain inappropriate for actual language use and 2. wrongly reinforce the notion that there is a one to one correspondence between words in different languages. My original comment follows.

Both counts are wrong.

1. The Slowness of the Association

I'm not sure how other people experience it, but when I learn a language it's only at first that my brain goes through the long slog of conjugation charts, etc. For example, let's say a flashcard contains the word "dūcet."

Now when I'm first learning the word, I'll think:

1. dūcere means to lead
2. third conjugation, so the -e infix represents the future tense.
3. -t ending gives third person singular.
4. Now (in my head) I reach the English phrase "he will lead."
5. (then my brain will very quickly decode what is meant by "he will lead" in English. Since I grew up speaking English, this is fast enough to be automatic. I may see a mental picture of a man leading, or just have a wordless sense of what it means.)

This is a slow process. But as the flashcard comes up again and again, the different steps get elided over. Each step becomes as automatic as the last one, the one where an English sentence is decoded. Until, within a short amount of time, when I see dūcet, I simply understand it means (he will lead). Or when I see a -t ending in general I think third person. And really this is all we do when we learn languages--we gather information, learn the patterns from that information and apply them.

Really I don't see how this is any different than any other method of learning vocabulary. When I was a child my parents would point to my ears and ask what they were. At first I would have to think about it, just as I had to think about dūcet, but eventually the association became fast enough to be automatic. And now I just think "ears." If I'm in the middle of a Spanish sentence, I think "orejas." Associations between concepts and words have to be formed--it's simply a question of the best way.

The benefit to flashcards, especially the Anki program, is this process is very quick, not to mention the added benefit of it scheduling easy words rarely and hard words often. I don't need to go find my parents and have them point at my body parts. I just click a button, and it takes half a second.

Moreover, I can create a massive amount of flash cards and learn a massive amount of vocabulary in a single day with Anki--something that would be much slower if I had to learn through some alternative way--looking at pictures, or reading Wikipedia articles on the topic, etc. I can't conceive of a faster way.

II. You'll Believe in Word to Word Associations.

Well, yeah, if you believe the cards represent that, then you'll come to believe that one word is a perfect substitute for another. But why would you believe that in the first place, since it's, as you point out, so patently false?

Let's go back to dūcere. On the back side of the card, it says "to lead." Does that mean that I believe "to lead" and "dūcere" are exact translations? Of course not. I realize that the words mean roughly the same thing, but that of course the overlap is not perfect. Perhaps dūcere means several things (it does)--in which case, I simply add other translations to the back of the card. Or perhaps it means one thing in one context, and one thing in another? In that case one card can be "dūcere [referring to time]" and "dūcere [referring to people]."

Again, the only reason that a belief in a one to one correspondence between the term and its translation would get reinforced is if you already believed that in the first place. If instead you're intelligent enough to realize all translations are necessarily somewhat inaccurate (See Quine), then there's no problem. I know that the answers are just rough translations (though I can make them very specific if I like).

Plus you're somewhat caricaturing the flashcard system with the example of three as "три" or "трёх". That's not a problem: it's easy enough to write "three (gen)."

Now the answer is only трёх. The reverse card would be трёх with the answer "three (gen, acc an, prep)" [genitive, accusative animate, prepositional]. You can make your flashcards as precise as you like. One of my Latin cards, for example, reads "large sea [animal], anything ranging from a shark to a whale". Cēta, ae, f.

It's true that this definition will be missing something. But so will any association [got] through any method! If you only learn your words by, e.g., reading articles about that topic, then you will have learned the meaning of the word in that context--but you don't know every context in which the word will show up, either, and so the association you've formed is partial as well.

Dictionaries, however, are specifically designed to collect the meanings of words (in all their contexts). Thus, paired with flashcards, they serve as very direct ways of learning the usage of words, as opposed to other systems not specifically designed to capture and teach the meaning of word. I could, to the contrary, listen to a word in several sentences and take a guess at what it means--but it's much easier to just open a dictionary or ask an English speaker.

In short, flashcards are a great way to learn. They are not sufficient to master a language--if you want to be better at writing, you'll have to practice writing, if you want to be a better speaker, you'll have to practice speaking--but are a very useful tool.

The author replies in the same post linked to above.

Update: I went back to the original post to respond to the criticism of my original comment, but it appears that comment has been deleted (though it still shows up on a Google search). I don't know why, but I suppose it means I was right about something.

My comments at the site in question are now being altered by the site author. For the record, the other comment I left read, before being edited:

It is, of course, your blog, and you're welcome to enforce whatever policy you like, but I think it's a shame that debate on such an interesting and important language issue was shut down.

I've also preserved my comment (I only made one) on my own blog: http://scheule.blogspot.com/2010/11/on-flashcards.html

Readers are welcome to judge for themselves whether the comment was useful or merely argumentative.

2010-11-07T21:20:00.004-05:00

I have a collection of the complete Dvořák symphonies, which I usually listen to in order from the beginning. They say the early symphonies are rubbish, but I was still excited to listen to them the first time: they say the same thing about Tchaikovsky's, but of these even the first three are fun works. But Dvořák's really aren't--they're dull affairs, completely missing the evident genius of the latter works.

So now, when I listen straight through, I try to pick out the point where the symphonies go from bad to good. With Tchaikovsky, this is ridiculously easy. The leap in quality between the third and fourth symphonies is plain as day*: fun work gives way to masterpiece. It's even easier with Beethoven or Mahler or Brahms, who didn't write bad symphonies. Mozart did, but that's because he wrote his first one two months before being born.

With Antonin, the matter's fuzzier, but I peg the third movement of the fourth as the first showing something engaging and interesting, and by the first movement of the fifth, we've definitely reached quality.

*We're taught to avoid clichés, but what alternative sounds better than this? "Crystal clear" or "night and day" would be equally bad; "very clear" gives the same meaning, but there's also an admonition against the use of "very" -- and "plain as day" at least has an earthy feel to it that the Latinate "very" lacks, the latter always giving a sense of desperation ("I mean really really clear, here!") -- and "pellucid" would be pretentious, as would working in any foreign language synonym, whereas non-stressed alternatives: "clear," "evident," "obvious" lack the punch needed. "Is as clear as the composer was gay" is rather gangly.

2010-11-07T17:13:00.003-05:00

This kind of continuous writing is called scriptuo continua, and it obviously could make it difficult at times to read, let alone understand a text. ... what would it mean to say lastnightatdinnerisawabundanceonthetable? Was this a normal or a supernormal event?

Bart Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus

2010-11-05T11:03:00.003-04:00

I found this thread delightful. It begins with someone in 2004 asking for the Spanish translation of blogger. The term was fairly new at the time, so it remained to be seem how Spanish would absorb it. As the posts become more recent, you can watch the term "bloguero" arise and begin to prevail over bloguista and bloguer. Presumably the endgame here will be when the RAE accepts the word.

It's charming how words bubble up to the Real Academy and finally acquire official sanction. The rudderless English vocabulary is charming too.

2010-11-04T11:35:00.002-04:00

11:25:23 AM: Denen: I'm writing my fact pattern for my class and I need a name for my fake cosmetics company - any ideas?

11:29:11 AM: Scott: Moulin Rouge.

11:29:20 AM: Denen: nice!

11:29:22 AM: Denen: I like it!

11:29:26 AM: Scott: Run with it!

______________________

Hanah: Is it possible to eat Chipotle too many days in a row?

Scott: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtZzyvuGy8E

2010-11-02T11:11:00.004-04:00

Hanah: You could vote for people who will repeal it.

Scott: Pudiera, pero no importa. ¡Tengo solamente un voto! ¡La diferencia entre el ganador y el perdedor serà mucho màs que un voto!

Hanah: It doesn't matter.

Scott: ¡Exactamente!

Hanah: No, it doesn't matter that your vote is unlikely to make a difference. You should vote anyway.

Scott: ¿Por què?

Hanah: Because you can.

Scott: Tambièn puedo poner frijoles en la nariz.

Hanah: Go for it.

Scott: Ay, no tengo frijoles.

Hanah: I'll mail you some.

Scott: Muchas gracias. El año que viene, pondrè frijoles en la nariz y votar.

2010-10-29T11:28:00.004-04:00

LOREN: Ist Freitag!

SCOTT: Ist Freitag. Danke... erm... Gott ... ist Freitag?

LOREN: Gott sei Dank. Germans say it all the time, for everything.

SCOTT: What is it again?

LOREN: Gott sei Dank.

SCOTT: Is that Mao sei Dank's brother?

LOREN: Hyuck, hyuck. No, it's a form of "sein."

SCOTT: What is it? Subjunctive?

LOREN: No, it's the imperative.

[Ten minutes later]

SCOTT: The Internet says it's the subjunctive.

LOREN: Oh?

SCOTT: But I only looked for websites that would prove me right, so don't put too much store in that.*

_____________

LEIGH ANN: Scott, settle a debate for us.

SCOTT: Christ, what did I walk into?

LEIGH ANN: So, if you finish your meal, and you go up to the buffet to get more, do you call that "a second helping"?

SCOTT: No. I would call that... "seconds". When I visualize helping, it's more like, somebody's giving out mashed potatoes, and they plop a scoop on my plate. If I ask for a second helping, I expect another scoop.

LOREN: So it's limited to one occurrence.

SCOTT: No, it's limited to one food, and not replenishing an entirely empty plate.

LEIGH ANN: Well, what about with casseroles?

SCOTT: As, I'm sure you know... as with most situations involving casseroles, all bets are off.

* Compare the English phrase "God bless the Queen." This is the subjunctive. The phrase is a fossil of a time with a more robust use of the English subjunctive. Today we'd probably render it as "May God bless the Queen". Compare this to the indicative form, which would be "God blesses the Queen". The subjunctive implies a wish or uncertainty, while the indicative gives us fact.

Note that the verb in the subjunctive -- bless -- is identical to the imperative form -- e.g., Steve! Bless that donkey! -- and the bare infinitive -- e.g., He helped Steve bless the donkey. Because of this, and because the subjunctive is less common nowadays, some are tempted to reanalyze phrases with it as imperatives, i.e., "Hey you, God! Bless the Queen!" But now you and I know it's not a command at all, and it's a good thing, because you really should not be giving the Almighty orders.

We have something similar with the German phrase Gott sei Dank. "sei" is indeed the second person singular (informal) imperative, but (as in English) it is also the third (and first) person singular subjunctive (I). But, even without getting into the cases of the nouns (which I know little about), you can see that the only real option is the third person singular subjunctive, which would translate as "Thanks be to God." The others -- second person imperative: "Hey you! Be thanks to God! Be God to thanks!" and first person singular subjunctive "I be thanks to God! I be God to thanks!" -- just don't work. See also the Spanish que Dios te bendiga, or the Latin sit dīs grātia or dī tē ament, examples of subjunctive all.

By the way, despite Somerset Maugham's famous quip, the subjunctive remains alive and well. I throw it into our publications whenever I can, and so be it forever.

I look forward to Sasha's prompt corrections of this post.

2010-10-28T11:00:00.003-04:00

SCOTT: Carlos! Take off that damn hat, you look like Castro!

2010-10-25T16:04:00.007-04:00

I generally very much enjoy Bart Ehrman. I first encountered him on a few Teaching Company courses on the New Testament, knowing nothing about who he was. Later I learned he was a minor celebrity in the field.

Nonetheless, I don't think he handles himself particularly well in the following debate.

His attempt to logically refute the resurrection of Jesus fails. Yes, miracles, if such exist, are incredibly unlikely. Yes, history deals in probabilities. But the claim a miracle is unlikely is in isolation from any other data. Once we look at other evidence, the likelihood may change dramatically. The chance of, for example, a man being able to walk on water may be amazingly low. But if we introduce other evidence, e.g., there are ten million witness, the ability has been thoroughly tested through the scientific method, whatever you will, the miracle, unlikely in itself, becomes the best answer.

Likewise with the resurrection. If we ask whether a resurrection occurred in isolation, the possibility may be absurdly low. But if other corroborating evidence exists--if--the possibility changes.

The question of what that corroborating evidence is, and what its weight is, is another issue. My only point is that we cannot logically arrive at a conclusion without at least doing the messy job of weighing that evidence. Ehrman is actually famous for being able to do that messy job--so his attempt to rationalize away the task is particularly disappointing.

Craig puts this well, and, in all, Ehrman disappoints.

2010-10-11T12:09:00.004-04:00

[12:08:04 PM] Julia Nickul: there is one bad myth that russians thinks is true. We think that most of the us people are stupid. But that's a stupid opinion

[12:08:17 PM] Scott: No, we're not stupid.

[12:08:20 PM] Scott: We are, however, very fat.

[2:09:36 PM] Julia Nickul: my fried from ohio told me that US men more beautiful than women

[12:10:17 PM] Scott: It's very true. Sometimes I spend entire days staring at the mirror.

2010-10-05T11:17:00.002-04:00

CARLOS: Did anyone else get one of these brownies?

SCOTT: Don't eat that, Carlos. I didn't sleep for three days after eating that.

LOREN: Shut up, nobody told you to eat the whole thing. Well, actually we did.

SCOTT: I'm pretty sure that's verbatim what you said. In fact, I remember saying, "I ate half, do I have to finish it?" and you all said, "Yes, we want to see what happens."

____________________

BOSS: Gum?

SCOTT: Не давайте ей жвачка; она её глотает.

BOSS: Жвачку.

SCOTT: So close.

2010-09-28T10:58:00.002-04:00

Philosopher argues for end of carnivorism:

Here, then, is where matters stand thus far. It would be good to prevent the vast suffering and countless violent deaths caused by predation. There is therefore one reason to think that it would be instrumentally good if predatory animal species were to become extinct and be replaced by new herbivorous species, provided that this could occur without ecological upheaval involving more harm than would be prevented by the end of predation. The claim that existing animal species are sacred or irreplaceable is subverted by the moral irrelevance of the criteria for individuating animal species. I am therefore inclined to embrace the heretical conclusion that we have reason to desire the extinction of all carnivorous species, and I await the usual fate of heretics when this article is opened to comment.

The comments are rather nasty, but also stupid, generally missing the long list of provisos the guy protected himself with.

2010-09-27T22:10:00.008-04:00

I had the most wonderful day. I spent a few hours at a French conversation group this evening at Le Pain Quotidien in old town Alexandria. This proved somewhat challenging, as I don't speak French, but it turns out it's not that hard. You just take your sizeable Spanish vocabulary, knock the stress to the end of the word, squeeze all the vowels so they're more oo-ey, swallow your R's, and fake the past tense by throwing in any random vowel before the infinitive. The only native speaker there complemented my pronunciation. In fact, we were reading some song lyrics, and no knew what the word rafale meant. "Well, I don't know," said I, "but it looks a lot like the Spanish word for machine gun burst."

I was right.

I even won a game of twenty (French) questions, which meant I had to come up with the next topic--which was difficult, but I managed.

And the woman sitting next to me was stunning.

(I was also amazed at the number of Republicans. Even in Virginia, I did not expect any overlap between tea party activism and desire to learn French.)

2010-09-27T14:57:00.002-04:00

SCOTT: I got to say, it is really cool to be browsing through Lexis and stumble upon an article you helped write.

2010-09-26T19:26:00.001-04:00

Where would the world be if all men had sought security and not taken risks or gambled with their lives on the chance that, if they won, life would be different and richer? It is from the bystanders (who are in the vast majority) that we receive the propaganda that life is not worth living, that life is drudgery, that the ambitions of youth must he laid aside for a life which is but a painful wait for death.

Hunter S. Thompson, "Security"

2010-09-25T23:16:00.002-04:00

Jay was kind enough to point out that I'm a diphthong away from being a gay Buddhist.

Also, all of you should be watching Community.

2010-09-18T11:36:00.001-04:00

MOM: So Scott, what's the difference between goldenrod and ragweed?

SCOTT: They're exactly the same thing.

MOM: Really?

SCOTT: Pretty much.

MOM: And does goldenrod cause allergies?

SCOTT: I don't understand why you keep asking me questions.

MOM: Or is it only ragweed?

SCOTT: Neither causes allergies. The allergies are caused by the animals the ragweed attract. Like beavers.

MOM: That doesn't sound right.

SCOTT: Also, sparrows. And... oysters.

MOM: You're making this up.

SCOTT: I am not. One of the most majestic sights in the animal kingdom is the annual migration of the oysters. They come over the mountains in a wave, clapping their shells, in search of goldenrod.

MOM: Are you making this up?

SCOTT: What the hell do I know about goldenrod?

_____________

DAVID: You know, they call it the Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania, but that's not really appropriate.

SCOTT: Which term do you disapprove of? Grand or canyon?

DAVID: Both. It's more of a... mediocre ditch.

SCOTT: A sub par rut.

DAVID: The ass crack of the world. Making the real Grand Canyon...

SCOTT: The vagina of the world? Deep, wet, full of Indians...

DAVID: You're losing control of the metaphor! Pull up! Pull up!

SCOTT: Aargh!

DAVID: Aargh!

SCOTT: We should really exit the church if we're going to continue this conversation.

_______________

DAVID: So, I just told Mom I have swamp ass, and she said, "Crotch rot?"

SCOTT: Gross. Was she trying to top you or something?

DAVID: Maybe.

SCOTT: Yeast infection! Hemorrhoids!

DAVID: You win!

SCOTT: Colostomy bag!

MOM: Are these terms you picked up from the MCAT?

SCOTT: No, colostomy bag is the nickname of one of our coworkers. I can't remember why.

2010-09-17T14:02:00.002-04:00

CARLOS: Puer probus est. The boy is good.

SCOTT: Right, just like our coworker.

JAY: What?

SCOTT: We have a coworker named Carlos Probus. Carlos the Good.

JAY: So you work with a Carlos Probus and Carlos Mallo?

SCOTT: Right.

JAY: Carlos the Good, and Carlos the Bad? You have a good Carlos and a bad Carlos?

SCOTT: And the only way to tell them apart is the bad Carlos's goatee.

JAY: How has this never come up before?

SCOTT: I honestly never noticed.

2010-09-17T11:07:00.005-04:00

SCOTT: You know, I know we've been talking to each other for months now, but I never actually got your name.

GUY: Yeah, I'm glad you finally brought that up. I'm Alfred.

SCOTT: Good to meet you, Alfred. Scott. Any nickname?

ALF: I've gone by pretty much every iteration of the name at one point or another. During the 80s, when the sitcom was huge, people called me Alf.

SCOTT: There's also a fantastic movie starring Michael Caine called Alfie.

ALFIE: Ah, there was a remake of that.

SCOTT: Which sucked. But the original is top-notch--and the best part is it came with a song over the credits. What's it all about... Alfie? So with that name, you've got a theme song and everything.

ALFRED: Actually, I was named after an English King who killed a lot of vikings.

SCOTT: Sure, Alfred the Great. He was the first King of England--and the only English King to have an epithet. So good King to be named after.

ALFREDO: You pretty much know everything, don't you?

SCOTT: Good to meet you, Alfie. If I run into any vikings, I'll give you a call.

2010-09-10T12:09:00.002-04:00

CARLOS: And then for dessert, Jell-o!

LOREN: Jell-o! Carlos, you can't eat that. Let me see what's in it. There's not even a label, Carlos! You don't know what's in it!

SCOTT: That's because Jell-o just is. It can't be broken into anything smaller.

CARLOS: He's right.

SCOTT: Jell-o has an entry in the periodic table.

2010-09-10T11:14:00.006-04:00

I left this comment in response to an article about an atheist who felt himself compelled to abandon the idea of objective morality.

There's nothing logically impossible about holding the two beliefs:

1. Moral truths exist.
2. God does not.

One can believe right and wrong are brute facts of the universe (as many assert God is), that is, things that simply are, and are not explained by other deeper facts. They are like laws of physics--brunt, irreducible, simply there--and not like biological laws, which are really just generalizations from deeper chemical (and then physical) facts. To ask who created morality is as fallacious as asking who created God. It is that is.

Nonetheless, many of the reasons for rejecting the existence of God are similar to the reasons for rejecting the existence of morality: you can't see morality, people believe in different moralities, etc. So though one can hold those two beliefs simultaneously, they have to deal with the tension.

For my part, the tension eventually became too much, and I went from soft atheist to hard atheist. The reason was, however, parenthetical to theology. It actually came from reading David Chalmers's the Conscious Mind, in which he argues that everything reduces to physical facts, except consciousness. Moral truth, aesthetic truth, and other sorts of truth are abandoned. I found the argument compelling.

Nonetheless, I still act in a way most people would consider moral. I turn the other cheek. But I do this, in my view, not to follow any objective notion of right or wrong, but simply to follow my own preferences, which--fortunately--line up with most peoples'. Indeed, becoming a moral skeptic hasn't changed my behavior at all. I just swapped an objective grounding with a subjective one.

This is part of a deeper ontological indifference of mine. I am generally uninterested in whether something has a subjective or objective grounding--we can, for example, argue about the quality of a movie and in so doing be appealing to either 1. an objective ideal of cinematic truth, or 2. our personal preferences as to what's a good movie. But the standard--objective or subjective--we base the argument on is far less interesting to me than the actual argument.

2010-09-09T20:01:00.004-04:00

So I was waiting in Barnes and Nobel for a new member of the Latin group to show up. Now, I've just seen one, not terribly good picture, on his profile, where his face isn't all that visible. All I can really tell is that he's a man with somewhat dark skin. So this is my evening. I was sitting in the cafe reading a book, waiting for anyone to show up, and after a while, a black man gets up and heads down the escalator. I thought: "Oh my god! I hope that wasn't him, I'll feel so rude!"

So I run after him, wave to the security guard, exit the store, and go running down 12th St. after a black man, now halfway down the block. Finally, I catch up, and say, "Excuse me, excuse me... *pant* you weren't waiting for the Latin class, were you?"

To which he answers: "What? Latin class? Uh no, dude. Not me."

"Oh," said I, "Sorry about that. Carry on."

So I reenter the bookstore, wave to the security guard, sit down, read my book, drink my coffee. And then another black man gets up from a table and goes downstairs... and wait for it, wait for it--there I go, running after him.

Never did find the guy. Did meet a lot of African Americans with no interest in learning Latin, so, I guess the day wasn't a complete waste.

2010-09-09T16:49:00.002-04:00

Woman imprisoned eight years in Viennese basement by Austrian lunatic. Upon escape, given job as talk show host.

King James Version of 1611

Future English Bible

10 And it came to pass, as Jesus sat at meat in the house, behold, many publicans and sinners came and sat down with him and his disciples.

10 Latron, Jesus was sittin ta eat n’t’house, wen lookit! holelotta blingblingers n other huài guys came n hobnobbed with’m n his posse.

11 And when the Pharisees saw it, they said unto his disciples, Why eateth your Master with publicans and sinners?

11 Wen t’faruppities saw all round this, they asked his posse: Aya! Wy your main man eat with blingblingers n huài guys?

12 But when Jesus heard that, he said unto them, They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick.

12 Wen Jesus heard all that, he told’m: t’users that got no virisses on t’seepeeyou donno need ta call t’cusstomber service lines, but those pobrecitos with fragged hard drives need it sumtimes.

13 But go ye and learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice: for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.

13 You faruppities drive off now and figgerout wat that is bout. I want merced and not malitos. Cause I didn’ come here ta organize t’goodytwoshoeses. I come here ta tell t’blingblingers ta makenice.

2010-09-09T16:30:00.002-04:00

SCOTT: With a "U" Carlos, with a "U"! A "branch" es una rama--nobody's going to want to come to that.

2010-09-09T14:07:00.002-04:00

During my lunch break, I like to walk around town talking to random people, about whatever. I do this because 1. I'm afraid of doing it, and I like doing things I'm afraid of and 2. it makes me feel good to connect with people, most of whom are quite friendly and eager to chat. But approach enough people with a smile and you're bound to get asked for money by someone, as I did today. A homeless man and I bartered, I eventually got him down to agreeing to a cup of coffee. So I took him to this little local place owned by a Korean family I know, and bought us a couple of coffees. I was grumpy at first, but he turned out to be quite a sweet person all in all, and it was nice talking to him.