My kitchen is relatively large by Parisian standards (which really only means that two people can stand in it (but not really work simultaneously in it)), but it is typical in that it doesn’t have a built-in oven, or much counter space. I don’t even have a microwave. I do think, however, that I would be able to find room for this vital cuisine enhancement:
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I think I just realized another reason why I don’t like Facebook — it doesn’t work so well with my pragmatics module. I can’t tell what my speech acts actually mean there, and I don’t know how failure to “friend” everyone I know, or lack of response to “notes” or “wall” or whatever that shit is comes across. I suppose there must be some academic papers I could read on the topic, although I imagine they would have Derrida or someone equally obscurantist in the bibliography. There’s just too much structure there, too many holders for content with not enough content. Maybe I’m worried about this more these days since I’m going to be moving to another country and I’m counting on the internet to keep me in touch with friends. Also I might just be too old.
Read MoreI’ve moved to a new host, after over ten years of increasingly sucky customer service at the old host. My new hosting company is great, and I’m just getting set up over here. Hopefully I’ll get around to migrating all my old content soon.
Read MoreI’m giving a talk tomorrow (info/abstract below the fold) which required me to find an image of Boris Badenov (don’t ask — it’s to illustrate an example slide). I went to his wikipedia entry, and found, to my delight, that someone has taken the time to create a long list of disguises that Boris has used, along with the episode in which that disguise appeared. Some of my favorites:
- Mayor Avaricious J. Wardheeler (Bumbling Brothers Circus)
- Salesman of Dancer, Prancer, Blitzen, & Fink advertising agency (Moosylvania Saved)
- Hailfellow J. Backslap, Official Washington Greeter (Missouri Mish Mash)
In a meeting today of Linguistics 101 teachers at Rutgers we were discussing plagiarism. A colleague made a hilarious suggestion: give students a homework question about topic x, then go to the wikipedia article on topic x and alter it to be incorrect. Laugh at the results. I expanded on the theme, positing that one could insert a random word, say, donut, into the entry on topic x and expect to see donut on at least one submitted homework. I might actually try this.
Read MoreApparently when a package gets delivered from California to Manhattan, it gets to Newark (close to Manhattan), then goes to Philadelphia (south, further from Manhattan), and then back north toward New York City. This is perhaps because they take “3 Day Select” delivery very seriously — if it were delivered on Tuesday, the morning it got to Newark, then it would have been only two days. So the UPS interpretation of numbers includes an implicit ‘at least’, in addition to ‘no more than’.
It’s a good thing that I have so much work to do and have to stay indoors because my desktop weather widget is looking sort of Harry Potter/scary:
At the Northeast Harbor Library, there’s free wireless access, which is nice considering we can’t get DSL or a cable modem in Somesville at ANY PRICE. The funny thing, though, is that even though the library closes at 5 pm, they leave the wireless on and it’s available outside for about 50 feet around the building. So I’m sitting on a bench under a tree, with a spider hanging in front of my face. It’s rather large.
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