-- I awoke from a dream this morning muttering,
-- "Well, I better to get to work
-- on that data warehouse."
--
-- The dream was one of those SQL coding dreams I used
-- to have a lot, when I was working as an SQL coder.
-- Screens filled with half-written SQL queries written
-- against the infamous ARAMARK datawarehouse (or my
-- surreptitious 2 terabyte copy of it that was running
-- on the "National Accounts Stealth Server" that I'd
-- constructed under my desk), in which I'd denormalized
-- the database to speed up pivot table queries of
-- various kinds. Dreams filled with feelings of anxiety
-- and urgency and frustration. I almost never have
-- those dreams, anymore - I haven't done a single
-- line of programming in almost 5 years, now. I'm a
-- happier and more balanced person, because of
-- it (though not perfect, oh no, I know).
--
-- But sometimes dreams do weird things, and this
-- early dawn, as my cold medicine wore off (I'm combatting
-- an unpleasant flu currently), I was plunged
-- into a vivid relapse of my database-hacking days. And I
-- awoke with a sense that I was behind on some ill-defined
-- but very important project, some report due
-- that day and the queries were running too slow, some
-- effort to find some ineluctable fragment of
-- information or some anomalous, dangerous data point
-- that the sales people insisted shouldn't exist and
-- would embarrass us in front of the customer, but
-- lo and behold, there it was glaring up from the
-- spreadsheet.
--
-- I made some of my Brazilian instant coffee, and
-- ate toast and an apple for breakfast.
--
-- Below is a dummy query from a SQL educational
-- website. Just to give a flavor or my dreaming.
DECLARE @PivotColumnHeaders VARCHAR(MAX)
SELECT @PivotColumnHeaders =
COALESCE(
@PivotColumnHeaders + ',[' + [MonthName] + ']',
'[' + [MonthName] + ']'
)
FROM dummy.dbo.ListMonthNames()
ORDER BY monthid
--
DECLARE @PivotTableSQL NVARCHAR(MAX)
SET @PivotTableSQL = N'
SELECT *
FROM (
SELECT
YEAR(OrderDate) [Year],
DATENAME(MONTH, OrderDate) as [Month],
SubTotal
FROM Sales.SalesOrderHeader
) TableDate
PIVOT (
SUM(SubTotal)
FOR [Month] IN (
' + @PivotColumnHeaders + '
)
) PivotTable
'
EXECUTE(@PivotTableSQL)
-- What I'm listening to, right now.
-- Kray Van Kirk, "You to me." There's no youtube or other
-- online video for this song. So... find your own copy - his
-- music is free from his website (I wonder... I should make my
-- own youtube. I wonder if he would object?
Caveat: Free-Will Inspection
Koreans (like most Asians) often wear T-shirts with incomprehensible English on them. It’s like the clothing companies have hired unemployed Nigerian spamists to write their T-shirt slogans. I wish I took a picture of the phrase I saw today. I was walking to work earlier and saw one of those modern Korean dads – pushing the baby stroller, talking on his cell phone, dressed super-casually in jeans and T-shirt.
But then, in large maroon letters on the back of his shirt, it said, “Free-Will Inspection.” I didn’t get to see the front.
But I wonder what “Free-Will Inspection” is supposed to be. How does it work? If I decided to undergo Free-Will Inspection, would I get a positive result? If I flunk my Free-Will Inspection, does that mean I have a free will or don’t have a free will? Which is the preferable outcome?
Caveat: Holy Crap, Spring.
It's 21 C (that's 70 F, approximately). First time even close to that temperature, since last Fall, I think. Well, time goes on. Spring is my least favorite season in Korea – it's often smoggy around Seoul, and that's when the Yellow Dust (from Mongolia, laden with Chinese characteristics) is worst. But it often has beautiful individual days, and seeing the flowers and trees bloom is often beautiful, too.
Caveat: 개구리 올챙이 적 생각도 못 한다
개구리 올챙이 적 생각도 못 한다
frog tadpole enemy consider-to-be–too cannot
A frog cannot consider a tadpole to be an enemy.
Don’t make enemies of those coming up the ranks, below you. This is perhaps relevant to the teaching profession (note this is a gross understatement). This sentence is devoid of the typical case-markings of Korean (which are always optional in any event, making it a bit harder to sort out – I also didn’t realize that 생각하다 could be a “ditransitive” verb (as the linguists might call it): I decided it must mean something like “consider X to be Y” in this context, and based on the putative proverbial meaning of the phrase. The word 적 is a problem because it has so many possible meanings, including a number of uses as a particle in derived noun phrases – I only got “enemy” because it was there in the translation.
Caveat: Karma’s a Bitch
No… I don’t mean my place of employment. I’m referring to this funny meme-image I recently ran across.
Er, um. Hahaha. [Dear Icebergs, Sorry to hear about the global warming. Karma’s a bitch. Sincerely, The Titanic]
I don’t really give a damn about the Titanic. But I have some passing concern about global warming, and karma is always worth contemplating.
(Hattip, sullyblog).
Caveat: Atomic Graffiti
Some artist snuck into Chernobyl and painted grafitti. Check out the picture he did:
The Simpsons having a picnic in front of the nuclear power plant.
Ah… shades of Yeonggwang.
Caveat: The Moral Education of Students
On the blackboard in the staffroom, these last few days, was the following reminder from the boss.
I felt particularly proud of the fact that I didn’t really need a translation. I didn’t understand every word, but I got the gist of it easily enough – partly it’s driven by being familiar with the context. A transcription of the boss’s challenging handwriting:
학생정신교육강조
1. 수업시간에 나가지 않기
2. 교실에 쓰레기 처리
3. 핸드폰 전자기기 전원오프
4. 쉬는시간 준수
Using the googletranslate, with some tweaks, we get:
Emphasize the moral education students
1. Do not let [students] out during class time
2. Pick up trash in the classroom
3. Mobile phones and electronic devices powered off
4. Comply with the break schedule
I find it interesting that a bunch of low-key rules are referred to as “moral education” – but that’s how Koreans conceptualize these things – I don’t think it’s an inaccurate translation.
Karma Academy goes through these cycles, about 2 months in length. We crack down on rules, then they gradually relax, and then finally we crack down again. Partly, during the test-prep time, which started just now for the middle-schoolers, Curt tries to run a more “serious” environment, whereas he lets things relax and be more fun during the other parts of the academic schedule. I have no problem with these rules, for the most part, except that I’m actually pretty comfortable with my students having their cellphones in class. All but a few of them, even of the elementary age students, are quite adept, now, at using them appropriately, in my experience, and my feeling is that they’re so ubiquitous that removing them is like asking students to give up book bags or something. Plus, because that’s where the dictionaries live, and I’m not an opponent of dictionary use, I allow them for that reason, too. Some of my younger students do seem to have nasty trash-leaving habits, but this is nearly universal with children, and is best dealt with by nagging.
Caveat: Moonrise
이밤에는 학원에서 시험대비 월간때문에 외롭고 슬픈 느꼈어요. 아마 전 중학생들을 보고 싶을 거예요. 그런데 집까지 걸어 오고 있으면서 밝고 흰 달을 봤고 예뻤어요. 그래서 맛있는 치즈와 토마토 샌드위치 먹었어요.
Caveat: Cretan
This is incredibly funny. I must quote it at length.
Rush Limbaugh, modern Epimenides?
Wikipedia tells me that Limbaugh lives in West Palm Beach, FL. Yet for years now he has been telling listeners something different:
Now, look, folks, as I’ve told you countless times, I live in Literalville. [Transcript, 10.9.2010]
It’s an outright lie, and I know this because Rush doesn’t do metaphor. In fact, that’s what he means by claiming Literalville residency:
If you tell me something, I take it literally. I believe that you mean it. I don’t dance around edges trying to figure out what you really meant. If you say it, I believe it. I live in Literalville […]. [Transcript, 10.9.2010]
There are only two possibilities here:
1. Limbaugh literally lives in Literalville, FL.
2. Limbaugh metaphorically inhabits a place devoid of metaphorical meaning or implication, which he describes figuratively as Literalville.The first possibility is empirically false. There is no Literalville in FL, or in any other state. I checked (and no, Google, I did not mean Littleville, AL).
The second possibility can only be true if it is false. You can only live in Literalville in the metaphorical sense if you move away for a time (the time it takes to say, figuratively, that you live in Literalville), during which time you’re not a Literalville resident. It’s a neat version of the Cretan paradox: the Cretan says, ‘all Cretans are liars’. Neat, because it shares the element of local belonging as a logical class, but also because it shifts the dichotomy from Truth-Lie to Literal-Figurative. And because that shift, equating Truth to Literal and Lie to Figurative, is one that only makes sense if you live in Literalville. Note that this isn’t the same as the use of vacuous ‘literally‘ as a sort of intensifier in a metaphorical context (‘I was literally going to explode’) though maybe it’s related. Limbaugh is actually using figurative language to deny that he understands figurative language.
Caveat: 너무 분하다
In my Phonics class (lowest level, 1st or 2nd graders) I have a second-grader named Yedam. Yedam is pretty smart, but she doesn’t deal well with stress – so when we have a spelling test, she loses her cool, and never does very well. And then, almost inevitably, after the quiz is over, and she sees her low score, she cries. I try to just help her to understand it’s not such a big deal – when it’s not a test, she often does just fine.
Yesterday, she didn’t cry at the end of the test. Instead, she wrote, boldly, across the top of her quiz paper, “너무 분하다.” My coworkers all told me it means she’s angry, and seemed alarmed: “Why is she angry?” But the dictionary conveys a more subtle meaning, that I think is closer to what she intended: 분하다 can mean “chagrined” or “vexed.” So what she meant, I think, is “I am very chagrined.”
I took a picture of her test paper.
Ultimately, despite her score of “2,” I viewed it as a sign of huge progress that instead of crying, she expressed her feelings verbally. Note that the word “alligator” is always the last word on a “Jared quiz.” – so everyone knows it despite its multisyllabicity.
Caveat: Sometimes I try to capture the sky
Walking to work earlier, I saw amazing clouds. Taking a photo didn’t really do them justice.
Sometimes I try to capture the sky. I fail.
Caveat: Fragmented. Exiled.
I’ve commented before that I don’t read books “normally.” I do read a great deal, but I have a short attention span, I skip around. I’m almost always non-linear in my approach. Many people complain about this – not about that I’m doing it, but that it seems to be a common affliction, these days. People like to blame the internet, and blogs, and e-readers, and things like that. I don’t think I have such an excuse – I was reading books via what I termed my “random access method” long before the internet even existed. I read non-fiction non-linearly even when I was in high school, in the early 1980’s. I would pick up an interesting history book, and I would read a page here, and a page there. At the next sitting, I would do the same thing. If I recognized a page, I would read some other page. The book was considered “done” at the point in time when I recognized all the pages I tried. More or less.
With novels, I still at least try to read linearly. But since I rarely use book-marks or other current-page-recording methods (e.g. the turned-down page corner, which I view as wanton and profoundly anti-book, from the standpoint of books-as-physical-objects), I often end up re-reading pages or even chapters of novels as well, or, on the other hand, missing chapters, too, as I flail about trying to find where I’d left off.
I do read a great deal online, lately. I can count on one hand the books which I’ve “finished” – such as it is, by my odd methods – in the last year or so.
So I’ve been feeling extremely “retro” in that I’m about 80% finished with a book that I’ve been pursuing in essentially linear, front-to-back fashion. I can’t even say why I’ve managed it. It’s just working out that way. The book is A Review of Korean History, Vol. 1: Ancient / Goryeo Era. It’s badly translated, and there are parts where the nationalist “Korea-can-do-no-wrong” subtext is annoying, but I think that’s part of why I like it, too – the Konglishy syntax and “view-from-inside” perspective means the book reads like a particularly ambitious essay from one of my sincere-yet-naive middle-schoolers.
Anyway, I’m mentioning it because of a passage that, unexpectedly, made me laugh. I’ll quote: “Cheok Jungyeong abruptly changed sides and banded with other subjects such as Kim Hyang, Yi Gongsu, and Jeong Jisang to arrest Yi Jagyeom and send him off to exile in Yeonggwang in 1127. This proved to be the end of the Inju Yi clan that had been at the center of power for some seven generations.”
I laughed, of course, because of the phrase I put in bold, above. I had a year of exile in Yeonggwang, myself. It seems that even 1000 years ago, Yeonggwang was a backwater, exile kind of place. That seemed funny, to me. I could just imagine poor Yi Jagyeom, former prime minister to the Goryeo king, coping with a dumpy Yeonggwang apartment and being forced to eat Gulbi every day and growing tired of it. I mean, I’m sure it wasn’t like that – but that’s what I visualized. And it makes me think it might make for a funny episode in my never-to-be-completed (erm, always-in-fact-barely-started) novelization of my year in Yeonggwang.
Caveat: Your Tension… Has Been… Exterminated!
The Daleks from Dr Who have gone New Age. Check it out.
Now don’t you feel relaxed?
Caveat: 공자 앞에서 문자 쓴다
공자 앞에서 문자 쓴다
Confucius front-LOC letter[character] write
[…Like] writing in front of Confucius.
This is a proverb that expresses the ridiculousness of trying to teach a master. “…Trying to teach your grandmother to suck eggs” is the equivalent classic English language proverb, but that’s an English-language one that is so far out of date as to be incomprehensible to modern speakers.
Caveat: un submarino particular en la playa
Fidel Castro escribió un ensayo entitulado "El mundo maravilloso del capitalismo" que parece ser un chiste estilo "primer día de abril." Se presta de el conjunto de imágenes del movimiento "Occupy…" pero con la retórica hiperbólica típica del líder cubano. Lo chistoso: "¡Verdad compatriotas que el capitalismo es cosa maravillosa! Quizás nosotros seamos culpables de que cada ciudadano no tenga un submarino particular en la playa."
Caveat: Thoughts
A Japanese company is making cute cat ears controlled by your thoughts. Really.
And they say Japan is in permanent recession… if this is what a society in permanent recession comes up with, well, then… bring it on. I seem to vaguely recall reading about something like this in William Gibson's novel, Count Zero, way back in the late 1980's.
Meanwhile, this blogging at Scientific American reveals the gaps in current neuroscience, despite achievements like the nekomimi above: "Neuroscientists: We don't really know what we are talking about, either." Ehrm… for the gullible, please note the April 1st dateline on the posting.
Caveat: 잘가친구
Everyone knows my plastic alligators. I had Kevin the large plastic alligator and a recent acquisition, Baby Kevin 2.0, in my EP2 classroom earlier today. I was letting the students “hold” Kevin, during class (portrait of Kevin at left). But unfortunately, one boy was having trouble not playing with Kevin as we were trying to listen to a CD of some listening dialogues. So finally, I had to take Kevin back.
“Hojae-ya,” I said. “Give me Kevin.” The boy made a sad face. “He can sit over here,” I explained, sympathetically. I placed him on the podium at the front of the class.
Hojae gazed at the plastic alligator longingly. “잘가 친구 [chal-ga chin-gu],” he said, mournfully. That means “farewell, friend.”
It was like the tragic ending of a sad movie.
What I’m listening to right now.
Punch Brothers, “This is the Song.” The rain was falling steadily as I walked home, but the air was chilly. It reminded me of the winter I spent in Valdivia, Chile (August-October, 1994). It rained for 4 months. Without stopping.
Caveat: I’m just ordinary student
My debate class students have been writing speeches for an imaginary chance to address the UN (see also earlier post). Here is another student of mine, on the topic of South Korea’s high incidence of student suicides. It’s not super well-written and it was a little short for the assignment, but I think she actually demonstrates some excellent rhetorical instincts – note her effective use of repetition and the exhortation at the end. My guess is that she is a stunningly good writer in her own language. As usual, I reproduce without corrections, with typos and all mistakes intact.
Hello. I am Kim Chae Yeon from South Korea. I’m just ordinary student you can meet anywhere. I think you wonder why I came here. I’m just ordinary student, but I think I have to say this in UN. Do you think all of the world students are happy? If you think all of the world students are happy, your thinking is wrong.
Especially, South Korea students life is all the same. School and Academy, School and Academy, Again and again and again…. Do you know how many students killed themselves in a day because of the education system? Only in South Korea, almost 42 students killed themselves in a day because of the education system. Do you think this education system is really correct? This education system takes the student’s happiness and life. I am not speaking only of student’s prospect. This is the biggest problem now.
The most serious problem is in front of your eye, buy why you only see the far from away like war or weapon?
Caveat: 개천에서 용 난다
개천에서 용 난다
creek-from dragon comes-out
The dragon rises up from the stream.
This is the idea that a great person can emerge from poor circumstances.
Caveat: I’m alive, how about you?
I'm really bad about staying in touch with people, sometimes. Lately, I've been in a very hermetic phase. Lately? Well, for the last few years, I guess. Haha.
My mother sent me an email, this morning, that underscored this fact. She wrote:
"I'm alive, how about you?"
I answered.
Caveat: Oh, Teacher, Don’t Say That!
My student said, "오오… 단어 좆같에" [ohh, dan-eo joj-kat-e]. This is bad Korean cussing – literally, it means "oh, vocabulary, like a dick," but the pragmatics (the elocutionary weight of it, so to speak) might be something like "oh, vocabulary is a motherfucker."
I often understand when my students are cussing in Korean. Most of the time, unless they're insulting me or one of their peers directly, I ignore it. This is in line with the way most Korean teachers seem to handle such things, in my experience. But he'd said it right in front of me. Rather than try to call him on it, or scold him, I tried a different strategy, this time. I repeated it, exactly, right back at him.
He laughed, and one of the girls in the class put her hand to mouth, scandalized. Then he said, "Oh, Teacher, Don't Say That!"
I laughed. "But you said it."
"Oh, I know. I'm sorry, teacher."
It actually resolved really well, in my opinion. I'll have to remember this in the future.
Caveat: she knows that it’d be tragic if those evil robots win
This is a song that’s so weirdly bad it’s good. I love it. Apparently the song is about battling cancer. [UPDATE: premonition….]
Flaming Lips, “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots.”
Awesome.
The lyrics:
Her name is Yoshimi
she’s a black belt in karate
working for the city
she has to discipline her body‘Cause she knows that
it’s demanding
to defeat those evil machines
I know she can beat themOh Yoshimi, they don’t believe me
but you won’t let those robots eat me
Yoshimi, they don’t believe me
but you won’t let those robots defeat meThose evil-natured robots
they’re programmed to destroy us
she’s gotta be strong to fight them
so she’s taking lots of vitamins‘Cause she knows that
it’d be tragic
if those evil robots win
I know she can beat themOh Yoshimi, they don’t believe me
but you won’t let those robots defeat me
Yoshimi, they don’t believe me
but you won’t let those robots eat meYoshimi
‘Cause she knows that
it’d be tragic
if those evil robots win
I know she can beat themOh Yoshimi, they don’t believe me
but you won’t let those robots defeat me
Yoshimi, they don’t believe me
but you won’t let those robots defeat meOh Yoshimi, they don’t believe me
but you won’t let those robots eat me
Yoshimi, they don’t believe me
but you won’t let those robots eat meYoshimi
Caveat: Preternatural Student Skills
We were giving a month-end test today. I was giving a listening test to a group of 7th graders, and one student, who I know has moderately high ability but who is stunningly lazy about studying or doing homework, stared at me during the entire time of the test.
Here's what's weird. He got the high score – by a great deal: 97%. And I had this weird feeling that he was somehow watching me, as we listened to the listening test, and was somehow reading my facial expressions or gestures to determine the answers. I think of myself as keeping a "straight" face during these tests, because I know that sometimes it is possible for a teacher to "give away" answers during a listening test in how they react to the possible answers given. But really… am I giving away the answers in some transparent way? Some tic or something?
Well, who knows? Should I ask him? Is it cheating? It's unconventional… to be certain. I should sit in the back of the class, maybe, next time, and see how he does.
Caveat: 걱정도 팔자다
걱정도 팔자다
worry-even destiny-is
Even worry is destiny.
Yep.
I worry a lot. Such is my destiny.
Caveat: Alphabet Book
This is Jinho’s Alphabet Book (he’s a first grade elementary student).
Caveat: Childhood of a Circle
A very cute story.
Childhood of a Circle from Kadavre Exquis on Vimeo.
Archibald, a creature to whom nothing ever happens sees his routine changed by the arrival of a mysterious circle.
-contact: fgsohn@gmail.com
-Directed and Animated by Kadavre Exquis
https://kadavrexquis.com/
-More to discover on facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/Kadavrexquis
-Sound design by John Kassab
https://www.johnkassab.com/
-Voice over by Julian Smith
https://julianaubreysmith.com/
-Foley sounds by Adrian Medhurst
Music by Kadavre Exquis & guests
Get the Full soundtrack of 11 tracks, the poster, the full film, and other goodies here: https://kadavrexquis.bandcamp.com/album/childhood-of-the-circle-ost
Making Of :
https://kadavrexquis.com/Childhood-of-a-Circle-Landscapes
https://kadavrexquis.com/Childhood-of-a-Circle-Landscapes-II
Caveat: My ZeroG Dumbphone
I hate my cellphone. I got it because when my old cellphone died two years ago, I just took the cheapest phone on offer (that could go with my particular contract) at the cellphone store in Yeonggwang. But now that ALL of my students have iPhones and Samsung Galaxies, I'm beginning to feel like a luddite. Some of my students asked me, earlier, when I was going to get a new 3G or 4G phone. I lied, and said I was happy with my "zero G dumbphone." Which made them laugh. But I'm not happy with it. Then, I saw an article at Atlantic Wire about "Dumbphone Pride." It's interesting, as some of the reasons in that article for avoiding the smartphone bandwagon resonate with me. Most notably, I, too, worry about "addiction," and, also, the cost of my current phone's usage plan is quite unbeatable – for 11 bucks a month I get more text and calling capacity than I'm capable of using. Most smartphone plans in Korea are going to run upwards of 50 or 80 bucks or more a month, and I'd probably find myself finding out I was capable of using more data than allowed under those plans, too.
In fact, I have not been much of an "early adopter" of cellphones – I was late to the cellphone bandwagon, having gotten my first in 2004. But in some other technologies, I have been a proud early adopter: I was using word processing in the late 1970's (Apple ][) email in the late 1980's (before the world wide web existed). I taught myself HTML and designed and posted my first webpage in 1995. It was even useful – it was a means of communicating with my students at UPenn, where I was a grad student.
I think if everything goes smoothly with my renewal at Karma (about which I'm feeling anxiety at the moment), I'll end up shopping for and getting a new smartphone. I really want a phone with a dictionary, for one thing. And having the internet in your pocket is clearly useful – I see my students using it all the time, both recreationally but even in educational ways, looking up words, finding pictures or information that pertain to classroom discussions, etc.
Caveat: Cool Black Bike
This is pretty cool. Some guy in Melbourne. I couldn't ever dream of doing such a thing, but it's fun to watch.
I'm feeling stressed lately.
Caveat: Slaves of Democracy
I’m having my debate class students write speeches “for the UN” – i.e. what would you say if you could address the United Nations?
One of my students offers some harsh, harsh words. It’s not perfect, but it’s pretty intense from a seventh-grader. I’m not entirely comfortable with his implicit embrace of authoritarian solutions, but in other ways he’s very perceptive. As usual, I reproduce without corrections – I’ve changed his name, however (“Hong Gil Dong” is Korean for “John Doe”).
Good evening! All members of United Nation. I am Hong Gil Dong. I am from Republic of Korea. Just call me John. Today, I am going to show some opinions what all members have to listen and practice. I`m going to tell the problems of ethics, environment, and economy.
First, don`t think democracy is always ideal and make fair democracy. I think members of UN are slaves of democracy. Do you know why? Because if there is a good policy but it damages your country, you always say sophistry. Then, you don`t choose any policies. So is the democracy ideal? In addition, if there is a good policy which was made from weak country, you just ignore the policy. And it`s not fair.
Second, it`s both economy and environment problems. I think Un makes people, the slaves of money. Why? Because, your policies are good for economy but these are just protection for big companies, and big countries which like to destroy environment and take lots of money. Such as Republic of Korea, Japan, China, some countries of Europe, and USA. These countries are rich countries, and the top of mammonism. So if you keep making these policies, these countries will kill environment continuously, and make innocent people to slave of money.
Last, this is most environment problem. You say human must develop with good environment but you force to join all environment treaties what countries don`t kill environment. But you don`t force to join these treaties what countries kill environment. So I think you stop talking symbiosis development.
I said some criticism to you. I wanted to criticize more but other people, Earth, and me will give you some chances. So please, practice good policies and carve my criticism in your heart. Thank you.
I will conclude with a random picture, which I took in Xalapa, Veracruz, Mexico in 2007.
Caveat: cualquier otra fuckin cosa
I’m a near-daily reader of the Language Log blog. I’ve never felt the urge to place a comment, before, but a coincidence today has induced me to want to do so. Geoffrey K Pullum posted about a hapless Indiana teenager who was expelled from school for tweeting about the amazingly productive nature (in the syntactic sense of productive) of the English word “fuck.” I felt sad, but the student’s observation is hardly news to one with some background in linguistics.
Shortly after reading that Language Log article, however, I happened to see, on facebook, the posting of an acquaintance of mine. She’s a native Spanish speaker, who I believe I should allow to remain anonymous – I don’t know her very well, as she’s one of those encounters-in-passing who becomes a “facebook-only friend.”
Her post was fascinating seen so shortly after reading the Language Log post, because it shows that the amazing syntactic productivity of the word “fuck” is crossing linguistic boundaries pretty successfully. Here’s the relevant facebook text:
[transcribed: No voy a explicar más que ir a recitales me hace más feliz que cualquier otra fuckin cosa. FIN.]
Caveat: More Minimalism, or, Van Gogh Pie
I ran across this amazing diagram of pie charts of Van Gogh’s use of color, by Arthur Buxton. [UPDATE: website died, link is dead. Yay internet!]
Caveat: sin remordimientos
Una cita encontrada en la facebook de una amiga:
Un sabio se paró ante un público y contó un chiste y todos se reiron. Al cabo de un rato, contó el mismo chiste y casi nadie reía; contó el chiste una y otra vez hasta que nadie se reía. Y dijo: si no puedes reírte varías veces de una sola cosa, ¿por qué lloras por lo mismo una y otra vez?
Translated:
A wise man got up in front of a group of people and told a joke, and everyone laughed. After a little while, he told the same joke and almost nobody laughed; he told the joke over and over, until nobody laughed. And then he said: if you can't laugh more than once or twice at the same thing, why do you cry over the same things over and over?
It has a zen-koan-like quality to it.
Caveat: Culinary Misadventures
I’ve posted before about my habit of sometimes pursuing rather random culinary undertakings. Today I attempted to make a vegan curry from scratch (even making my own curry powder). I attempted to use some tofu I had… I breaded it and fried it up in a style similar to abura age (as in kitsune udon). When the tofu was fried it was quite tasty (see picture below), but when I added it to my curry, it got rubbery.
And the balance of spices in my curry was off, too. So it was a rather atrociously mediocre creation.
Maybe next time.