For a few years when I was in high school, I kept lists of the books I read every year. Back then, I kept them on the computer, and I categorized them as I went along. I ended up not liking that strategy, because I can't find the files anymore, and because I think it's kind of interesting to see what order I read books in (though seeing how many historical mysteries I read vs. how many volumes of poetry had its charms too).

Anyway, in college, I stopped.  But now, thanks to ronsonbeck  , and to kung_fu_monkey7 , and probably even thanks to the Estimat, I've started again.  So, here are all the (non-required) books I read in calendar year 2008.

( my informal goal was 150 )

Arrived at poll ~7:15, voted ~8:30. Lots of sweet stories, but for now, just photographic evidence:
( in reverse chronological order, 'cause that's how my cell phone rolls )

LSA abstract submitted. Now on to the next insanity! ;c)

Wow.  Just ... no.  Do they actually think this will convince anyone?



Yeeeeeaaaaahhhh ... I think I'll wait on responding to this one. Something tells me my email address won't be rendered deactivated any time soon.

... or, Attack of the Footnotes and Odd Analogies:

To discuss the thoughts and motivations of “the real Rush Limbaugh” would require expertise in
both the psychological sciences and the psychic arts, neither of which are within the disciplinary
purview of this paper. The truth is that “the real Rush Limbaugh” – the flesh-and-blood human
who opens and closes the studio door and has mental processes which are not translated into speech
for the radio-listening public – is entirely unavailable for analysis.

Instead, this paper deals with the character named “Rush Limbaugh,” the primary on-air
embodiment of the message-persona created by the off-air human Limbaugh. Much as the novelist
Philip Roth created a character named Philip Roth to serve as the protagonist of The Plot Against
America (2004)4 , the political entertainer Rush Limbaugh has created an eponymous character to
serve as the protagonist of his eponymous show. Although the name will not appear in quotes
throughout the paper, it is important to remember that, unless explicitly stated otherwise, “Rush Limbaugh” in this paper refers to the character, and not to the entertainer who portrays him.5









4 (and created two different “Philip Roths” for a previous novel)

5 Of course, just as Roth’s “Roths” are semi-autobiographical figures, Limbaugh’s “Limbaugh” no doubt bears
some resemblance to the man himself. It is, after all, difficult to imagine a die-hard liberal who would be willing to
carry on such a seamless and influential charade for so long. Still, any attempt to determine the extent or nature of
that resemblance is nothing more than unproductive speculation.

A-yup. I've well and truly lost it. The "previous novel" to which I allude, by the way, is Operation Shylock (1993), but I'm damned if I'm going to have two Philip Roth novels in the bibliography of a paper that's really not at all about Roth. Like, at all.

Also, if this feels kind of like staring into the looking glass for too long ... well, all I can say is, be grateful I didn't paste my next paragraph about how the Rush character creates other characters.

Hey, smart people!  I've recently had an idea that I can't actually flesh out without knowing something about blackface - its construction in modern media, its meaning/effects, that sort of thing.  And I don't, really.

My question to you-all is this: what should I be reading about (modern) blackface?  Classics, new cutting-edge stuff, anything that I'll look stupid talking about blackface without having read.

My darling checks my 6-minute-and-change transcript of Rush Limbaugh for accuracy against the sound clip - despite being utterly uninterested in How People We Disagree With Do Fascinating Things With Language.

In return, I take out the bathroom trash.  And the kitchen trash.  And the not-very-sorted recycling.  In the snow.


Sounds about right to me.  ;c)

To the few people on my friends list who:

a) use ASL as their primary language,

and

b) haven't seen this yet, even though it's been cross-posted shamefully ...


I'm looking for people to participate in a study I'm running, which looks at newly-created signs.*  As part of this study, you will watch video clips of signs and rate them on a scale of 1 to 7 based on how well they would work as signs of ASL.

There are 30 signs, and the study shouldn't take longer than 20 minutes.  (Some of the video clips may take a little long to load, depending on how much traffic YouTube is experiencing, but the clips themselves are very short.)

If you finish the survey, you can enter a drawing for a $20 gift certificate to any online store you choose.  I only need about 20 people to take the survey, and I'll be giving out two gift certificates, so your chances are actually pretty good.  :c)

Click here to take the survey.



*Details:  This study is being conducted for classroom purposes, which means it is not governed by the Institutional Review Board for research on human subjects.  However, you should know that there are no known risks in this project (except maybe boredom).  If you have concerns about the way the survey is being run, please feel free to contact me at nnicola@uchicago.edu.  Or, you know, leave me a comment.

"By the law of the excluded middle, either 'A is B' or 'A is not B' must be true. Hence either 'the present King of France is bald' or 'the present King of France is not bald' must be true. Yet if we enumerated the things that are bald, and then the things that are not bald, we should not find the present King of France in either list. Hegelians, who love a synthesis, will probably conclude that he wears a wig."




In entirely related news, I am a big nerd.

I hardly know whether to use my "language" icon or my "crazy dog lady" icon for this one, since my great love of Get Fuzzy stems from my great love of very silly dogs.  The strip in question here (from two days ago - hat tip to Barbara for pointing it out), though, only features Bucky Katt (and not Satchel Pooch), so "language" icon it is.

(original here)

I'm way too tired to write a really good analysis at the moment, but I wanted to scoop LanguageLog with an interesting linguisticky cartoon.  ;c)

Non-linguists, note that the reason this is funny is the following:

- Rob (the human) is asking Bucky to envision a world in which Bucky [did not think about killing things] and [did not think about eating things]. 

Under this reading, thoughts are ok if they involve neither killing nor eating.*

- Bucky is perplexed by what he interprets as Rob's suggestion that he not think about [killing-and-eating things]. 

Under this reading, thoughts are ok if they do not involve both killing and eating things.  So, thoughts that involve on or the other (in this case, killing without eating) should be fine.


This, my friends, is what linguists do with our free time.


*Also note that I'm simplifying a lot.  I don't get the sense that Rob objects to Bucky eating things other than the carcasses of his latest prey.  Which means that, in addition to combining "killing" and "eating," the word "and" also implies a temporal relationship, maybe even a causative one.  Homework for non-linguists: why are (1) and (2) a not like (1) and (2) b?

(1) a.  Two and three make five.
      b.  Three and two make five.

(2) a.  She got married and had a baby.
      b.  She had a baby and got married.