Interblag Supertubeway

Ell Oh Ell

fnord — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 01:26:39 GMT

DEC Paste! Gets your disk packs sparkling clean! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKU0ivYxq_I

For Ben

fnord — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 00:13:13 GMT

Idiocy and 3 tesla scanners. http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/005105.html

For nerds

fnord — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 21:10:22 GMT

Vista vinyl edition http://4chanarchive.org/brchive/752404/vista+vinyl+edition/

You need a bun to bite Benny Lava!

fnord — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 01:17:14 GMT

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZA1NoOOoaNw

Homeopathy a good cure for hypochondria, study finds

fnord — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 06:03:06 GMT

http://www.qfever.com/issues/20010117/homeopathy.html

Social science as prostitution

fnord — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 04:38:24 GMT

Apparently the Bush administration and the current War cabinet have managed to find a few scientists in *anthropology* to whore themselves out for the war. Generally anthropologists are very wary of ethical issues, but apparently a select few aren’t. http://www.counterpunch.com/price10302007.html “The military and intelligence community loves McFate and her programs not because her thinking is innovative—but because, beyond information on specific manners and customs of lands they are occupying, the simplistic views of culture she provides tell them what they already know. This has long been a problem faced by anthropologists working in such confined military settings. My research examining the frustrations and contributions of World War II era anthropologists identifies a recurrent pattern in which anthropologists with knowledge flowing against the bureaucratic precepts of military and intelligence agencies faced often impossible institutional barriers. They faced the choice of either coalescing with ingrained institutional views and advancing within these bureaucracies, or enduring increasing frustrations and marginalized status. Such wartime frustrations led Alexander Leighton to conclude in despair that “the administrator uses social science the way a drunk uses a lamppost, for support rather than illumination.” In this sense, Montgomery McFate’s selective use of anthropology—which ignores anthropological critiques of colonialism, power, militarization, hegemony, warfare, cultural domination and globalization—provides the military with just the sort of support, rather than illumination, that they seek. In large part, what the military wants from anthropology is to offer basic courses in local manners so that they can get on with the job of conquest. The fact that military anthropologists appear disengaged from questioning conquest exposes the fundamental problem with military anthropology.” Oh yeah, and that “Counterinsurgency Field Manual” the military is hailing as the best thing since guerilla warfare? It’s heavily plagiarized without citations. Surprise!

Sheep dream

fnord — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 20:58:32 GMT

I had a dream about sheep. In particular, I dreamed that this sheep was lost and lonely, and when I found it, it jumped up into my arms. I took it home and played with it. It was soft and snuggly. Then it pooped on the floor, which was not so fun. I just thought I should share.

Meta-joke

fnord — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 20:54:42 GMT

“How many members of a certain demographic group does it take to perform a specified task?” “A finite number: one to perform the task and an additional number to act in a manner stereotypical of the group in question.”

“Village” English

fnord — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 20:55:00 GMT

I just did a little bit of searching around through journals and other academic publications on the topic of Alaska Native English, better known as “village English”. All of you who live in Alaska know exactly what I’m referring to, that particular dialect of English used by Eskimos and Indians in Interior, North, and Western Alaska. (Southeast has a somewhat different dialect I think, as do Southcentral and the Aleutians.) Well, it turns out that there’s *never* been any serious linguistic research into the topic. And it doesn’t look like linguists are even aware of its existence. In fact, in surveying materials on American English dialects, Alaska basically doesn’t come up at all, or if it does it’s considered to be the same as Pacific Northwest American English (which is true, but only to a point). On the other hand, a review of publications on education turns up lots of hits on “village English”, and one or two short discussions of it back in the 1980s. Education researchers talk about it a lot in the context of bilingual education, remote community teaching, and other stuff. They seem to focus on the problem of “correcting” it, and it’s apparently considered a “hindrance” to education efforts. I find this peculiar, since most Bush people I’ve known are not all that concerned with communicating with people Outside, and seem to get along fairly well in the cities in Alaska where people are familiar with and tolerant of the dialect. But teachers will be teachers, I suppose, and I’m not exactly quaified to criticize them (yet). So what I’m thinking of doing is putting out a call for some data. If you are one of those people who go out into the Bush on a regular basis, or happen to live out there, I’d really appreciate if you could get me some recordings of “village English”. There’s no way I’m going to travel to places like Manokotak or Anuktuvik, but since I know people who do I can perhaps piggyback on your travel. If you’re interested in assisting with this, please let me know. I’d really love if you could contact other people as well. My plan is to ask people who travel out into the Bush to simply record the speech, both narrative and conversational, of a mixed group of people. Particularly I’d like samples from elders, parents, and children. They’ll need to be dated with a location, but I don’t need actual names. I’ll have both a prepared paragraph which is concocted to test the full range of English phonemes, as well as a list of words. Other than that (which should take only five or ten minutes), I’m hoping for some natural speech as well. I’ll look into the Human Studies Committee compliance and draft up a consent form. If I can get a list of contacts together then I can start the ball rolling...

Damnable Japanese names

fnord — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 11:30:05 GMT

I have come to the conclusion that I am incapable of keeping track of Japanese names. I’m drowning in a sea of Masako, Misato, Mizuho, Hiruko, Hiroko, Harako, Satako, Sadako, Yukiko, Yuko, Kazako, Kizako, Kirako, and Kizuko. I can’t keep track of them anymore, and it’s causing me severe embarassment. WTF do the Japanese have to have all the same damned names for women? I don’t seem to have any problems keeping track of the male Japanese in my life. Perhaps it’s because there’re fewer Japanese men around here and I don’t have to learn any of their monotonous names. I guess it’s not their fault that they don’t have enough phonemes in their language, but seriously, it’s starting to get on my nerves. Oh well, someday the Japanese government will provide them with extra vowels for the ends of their names. But I’m totally not going to hold my breath.

For Krista

fnord — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 03:10:31 GMT

I found a good cat carrier for you. The nice thing is that if your kitty is misbehaving on the airplane, it’s easy to control them by just tightening the crank a little bit.

Sigh.

fnord — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 10:42:02 GMT

It’s midterms already. I feel like I’m on a treadmill to nowhere. I’m not exactly depressed, just ho-hum. I have too much to do, not enough time to do it, and I don’t care about any of it. The topics all sound exciting: adult second language acquisition in endangered language contexts, syntactic comparisons of Tahitian, Marquesan, & Hawaiian, and a review of problems in orthographic development for Tlingit. All these subjects are right up my research alley, but I just don’t feel a shit that I could give. There’s no zing. Part of it I guess is that all the high hopes I had are being rapidly deflated by the truth that there’s nothing to learn that isn’t already fairly obvious, at least until I finally finish this stupid undergrad degree and get into grad school. Hence why I feel like I’m running a treadmill. I wrote yet another edition of my degree proposal which was filled entirely with dull bullshit guaranteed to warm the hearts of faceless bureaucrats. I joked on Friday to a couple of people, including a prof and a few PhD candidates, that I should just say “fuck it” to the undergrad and challenge the university to grant me one from an oral examination. The scary thing was that they all agreed with me and thought that it would be more effective. However conversation ensued which outlined why it was bureaucratically impossible. So instead, I get to sit around for another couple of semesters waiting to finally get done with this nonsense and start working on things that actually matter. I guess that’s why I’ve got the ho-hums. I’ve learned all the really interesting stuff and now all I’ve got left is the usual inane undergraduate requirements. Why don’t they have exemptions for people like me? Blah.

Which Wikipedia article is more useless?

fnord — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 09:07:57 GMT

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-micturition_convulsion_syndrome http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wooden_spoon

FUCK HEWLETT-PACKARD!!!!!1#$@%

fnord — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 05:05:41 GMT

I am so fucking sick and tired of “HP Scan Pro” and all their other shitty scanning crap. I’m trying to scan this huge pile of stuff and the automatic document feeder doesn’t work and if it does it sucks in three or four pages at a time and overlaps them, they won’t provide working drivers from their website (although you can purchase them to be sent via CD for only $10 — what is this, 1995?), the shitty scan software craps itself and dies every five or seven pages, they won’t release a new version that runs natively on x86 Macs, the scanner gets stuck for no reason in the middle of scans and requires a power cycle to unwedge, the stupid scan software makes you reselect and resize the scan area every single time, it randomly adds extra scan areas without request thus netting you an extra “page” or two out of nowhere, and worst of all the scanner isn’t supported natively by any standard drivers out there, open source or closed. The solution for this shit according to one forum was to buy some special $350 scanning software that works better with HP scanners than their own drivers. WTF? If I had any money I would be shopping for my own damned scanner with sheet feeder. This shit is horrible. Some of the worst crap I’ve worked with in a long time. Possibly reaching the failure level of Tandy PC almost-compatibles or anything made by PR1ME minicomputers (http://catb.org/jargon/html/D/dread-high-bit-disease.html).

tl;dr

fnord — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 06:47:43 GMT

tl;dr means tu le ; des reparlait Which is colloquial French for “for you I will reiterate”.

The weapons board

fnord — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 07:26:24 GMT

lolz: /k/ is the weapons board of 4chan. Imagine a place populated exclusively with those who plan to shoot up their own school. This is also the most heavily armed board of any Internet community in existence. A horrific combination of internet anonymity, excessive knowledge of the military and firearms, and raw, unmitigated nerdiness. The Bible of /k/: And Browning said “But God, I was thinking of being a botanist. I mean, I could stop world hung-” and God said “MAKE THE .50 BMG, JOHN.” “But.. well.. I guess you're the Lord, but that sounds quite exce-” “MAKE THE .50 CAL, JOHN. DON’T MAKE ME ASK YOU AGAIN. I WANT TO SEE YOU BLOW A HOLE STRAIGHT THROUGH SOME IMPERIALIST GERMAN FUCKHEAD.” “...yes, Lord.” “I’M WATCHING YOU. EXPORT THE GUN TO EUROPE.” “But.. the War Department doesn’t want the Kaiser getting his hand on i-” “I’M GOD, I THINK I KNOW WHAT THEY SAID. EXPORT THE GUN TO EUROPE.” “Well.. I guess I could pay for shipping and send a few over...” “RENT A BOAT.” “What?” “RENT A BOAT.” “Well, whatever you think is best...” EVERYTHING stems from God. But not a good and wholesome God. A God who likes gunfire and explosions, and cheers at the end of every Steven Seagal flick. A God who would bet on office death pools if He had need of money. YOUR God dropped manna from the sky onto the Jews under Moses. MY God dropped napalm on the gooks under Ho Chi Minh. There is a difference here. “I am the Alpha and the Omega. The hollow point and the depleted uranium slug. When Patton was, I am. For my flesh is K-ration indeed, and my blood is whisky. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him. As a killing machine made of flesh who eats scrap iron and shits bouncing bettys.”

Hippies and Neo-Pagans are irritating

fnord — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 23:34:53 GMT

I just did a search for “animism” on tribe.net. The results were well below my least expectations. “Bioregionalism”? WTF? I’m not saying that there’s something wrong with animism. On the contrary, I myself am an animist, in both a traditional and a practical sense. I say “gunalchéesh” to the elevator when it inexplicably opens up for me before I press the button. I leave token offerings to the local kunigami or ‘aumakua or yéik. But I don’t go around making up bullshit nonsense to make myself seem “connected” to some dominant paradigm subverting ecoshamological awakening process by aligning my chakras with my local transvedic bioregional collective origin reincarnations or other new age bulldada. I mean really, what the fuck is the motivation for these burnt-out acidheads to make up grandiose nonsense that they can set themselves apart with? (Picture is some dumb white overprivileged trustafarian hippie pretending to be an unwashed lower primate at some inane shamanism seminar.)

SAMSUNG MEANS T0 C0ME

fnord — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 05:13:00 GMT

http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/samsung Watch it all the way through. It’s totally fantastic.

Linguistic humor

fnord — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 08:58:21 GMT

Autodescriptives: things that describe themselves. Of great use in learning complicated terminology. And one of the silliest parts of linguistic humor. pyalatyalizyation methatesis / metasethis redup-reduplication frikhathive schwə positionpost teefoicink anology triephthouong superlativissimus diminutivito ancicipation rules of redundancy rules reduced grud: zr grd : e grede : o grod sekont sount shiftz ebleut : ümläut folk-entomology / folk ate-a-mology frönting voized fəˈnɛtʰɪk voized suffix-ed pre-fixed epenethesis rhotarism haspʰiration gemmination apfrication noun noun phrase adjectival adverbially conjunction and/or disjunction This is a complex sentence because it has a subordinate clause. genitive’s gloʔʔalization vowol harmono to back formate dithsimilation anapityxis execrescence agglutinatinglanguages apfricate -pheresis aphas.... diephthoung kpoarticulated stop compēsatory lengthening condamination diäeresis díäçrît’ǐč digræph duplication duplication monophtong nãsąlĩzątĩǫn lharyngeal mprenasalization weagening or lenizhion relick form infuckingfixation sibboleth pro clitic derivationalizationalize

Bloggery

fnord — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 08:30:24 GMT

1. Who was the last person to call you baby? I have no idea. Perhaps Veronica, if she does that. 2. When shopping at the grocery store, do you return your cart? Why not? Should I steal it and carry all my worldly things in it like a crazy bum? 3. If you had to kiss the last person you kissed, would you? Yeah, I suppose. 4. Has someone ever sang a song to you? I’m not sure. Probably not. “Happy Birthday” doesn’t count, of course. 5. Do you play Sudoku? No, I play Lingdoku, HitoriGuistiku, FonoNurikabe, and other linguistic puzzle games. When I’m not busy solving real linguistic problems, that is. http://specgram.com/CLII.3/10.jones.fononurikabe.html 6. If abandoned alone in the wilderness would you survive? Depends on the wilderness. But probably, yeah. 7. If your house was on fire, what would be the first thing you would do? Grab my data, then my laptop. Oh, and then check on Veronica. 8. Who was the last person you shared a bed with? Probably Veronica. 9. Who do you text the most? I don’t text often enough to have a “most”. 10. Who last said they loved you? Why do you care? You don’t love me. 11. What color are your eyes? Brown. Ish. They’ve gotten lighter as I’ve aged. 12. How tall are you? 180 cm. 13. Do you like your parents? They still irritate the hell out of me on a regular basis, but I like them enough. 14. Do you secretly like someone? By “like”, do you mean “wanna do naughty things with”? If so, then yes. Definitely yes. More than one someone, actually. 15. Why did your last relationship end? She left town. 16. Who was the last person you said you loved on the phone? Veronica. 17. Favorite ex-Beatle? Ringo. Simply because of his work in “The Magic Christian”, however, and not because of his singing. 18. Where was the furthest place you traveled? Furthest from where? From home? That would be Черноголовка. 19. Do you like mustard? Only if it’s the good kind, not the American radioactive-yellow stuff. 20. Do you prefer to sleep or eat? Sleep. 21. Do you look like your mom or dad? Halfway in between. 22. How long does it take you in the shower? Depends on how dirty I am... 23. Can you do splits? I used to. 24. What movie do you want to see right now? “Pear ta ma ‘on maf”. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0390179/ It’s in Rotuman! 25. What did you do for New Year's Eve? I don’t recall. 26. Do you think The Grudge was crappy? What grudge? 27. Was your mom a cheerleader? Anything but. *shudder* 28. What's the last letter of your middle name? W 29. How many hours of sleep do you get a night? As many as I can. 30. Do you like care bears? CAREBEARSTARE. http://xkcd.com/146/ 31. What do you buy at the Movies? A ticket. Maybe. 32. Do you know how to play poker? Yes. 33. Do you wear your seatbelt? Yes. 34. What do you wear to sleep? Depends on the heat. Anything from full jammies to nothing. 35. Anything big ever happen in your town? Elvis came to town a while back. And apparently Jimmy Buffett will be here soon. Oh, and there was an earthquake last year. 36. Is your hair straight or curly? Straight. 37. Is your tongue pierced? Used to be. Then I noticed it was wearing down my incisors. 38. Do you like Liver and Onions? Depends on the liver. 39. Do you like funny or serious people better? That depends entirely on what I’m doing. 40. Ever been to L.A.? I don’t wish to recall. 41. Who or what is on your mind right now? Girls. Articulation of ejective fricatives. Girls. Debating against letting communities abandon their languages. Cute girls. Theories of second language acquisition. Making out with cute girls. Beer. Oh, and evaluation of effectiveness and completeness of orthographies. 42. Any plans for tonight? Finish this quiz, browse /b/, brush teeth, read, sleep. 43. What's your favorite song at the moment? I’m loathe to admit it, but “Brandy (You’re a fine girl)” by Looking Glass. 44. Do you hate chocolate? Why would I? That would be like hating cute fuzzy baby animals, cute girls, or free money. 45. Are you in college? Let the answer to question 41 be your guide... 46. Do you need a boyfriend/girlfriend to be happy? No, but it helps. 47. If you could have any job what would it be? A linguist. With a PhD already! 48. Are you easy to get along with? Generally. 49. What is your favorite time of day? At night when it’s quiet and even the noisy sports fan college kids in the building over have passed out drunk. 50. Are you a generally happy person? Generally.

Pathetic Geek Stories

fnord — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 04:30:33 GMT

http://www.patheticgeekstories.com/archives/archives.html Makes me feel better about my lameness.

Oops, forgot.

fnord — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 08:33:46 GMT

Today was apparently an important anniversary or something.

“Rainbow party”

fnord — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 07:19:23 GMT

Where was I when this bit of teenage slang hit the scene? To think of the excitement I’ve been missing out on... http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=rainbow+party “A type of party where several girls wear a different color of lipstick then each proceeds to give one or more guys a blow job. The multiple of colors left on each guy's penis resembles a rainbow. — ‘Phil had 3 colors of the rainbow on his penis before ejaculating into Suzie's mouth at the rainbow party. Pamela and Vicky waited for him to get hard again before completing the rainbow.’” “A ‘rainbow party’ is supposed to be a party where girls wear different shades of lipstick and suck a guy off. In actuality, it is a term invented by Oprah and no teen had heard of it until her show in 2004.” So girls, who wants to have a rainbow party? Don’t tell your parents though! Teehee!

Can’t sleep

fnord — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 12:58:25 GMT

Clowns will eat me.

AIM and stuff

fnord — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 08:17:38 GMT

I have recently reactivated my AIM account, and since I have a new computer I don’t have my old contact list. Feel free to add me if you want. AIM: fnordulicious