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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
Sally's LiveJournal:
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| Sunday, August 15th, 2010 | | 3:25 pm |
Rogan Josh
Vegetable oil in pot (corn oil, enough to coat the bottom of the pot) stir-fry 2 onions until they are soft and translucent - better if these are diced add garlic and ginger (5-6 garlic cloves, about 6-8 inches of ginger), stir fry spices - 2 tsp salt - 1 tsp turmeric - 3 tsps Hot Madras Curry (or garam masala) - 2 tsp coriander (powdered okay) - 2 tsp cumin - 1 tsp chili (chipotle chile pepper is good) stir-fry until aromatic ~ 3 minutes add lamb cubes, brown them add one chopped tomato, 3 chopped green chilis, a bunch of cilantro; stir ~ 3 minutes - I think I actually used 2 tomatoes add two big spoons of yogurt, bring to a boil LOW! - simmer ~ 1.5 hours or until reduced to desired thickness - notes on simmer: I cooked this slightly hotter than a simmer - the bubbles were about a half-inch diameter - about 75 minutes and it was perfect Notes: - used texmati rice, soaked for 30 minutes - used about four slices of lamb about the size of my hand - cutting the meat off the bones was a pain - I think the cut was from the leg - pre-measure spices, chop+mash ginger+garlic, tomatoes, etc. So, I made this curry, and it came out AMAZING. Above is the recipe that I followed, pretty much verbatim. The recipe initially came from a website that I can't recall, but I made some substitutions and additions. The recipe is especially nice because it is relatively easy and doesn't require any ingredients that you can't get at a standard supermarket, although of course fresher ingredients (like tomatoes straight from the farm) help a great deal. | | Saturday, July 31st, 2010 | | 7:20 am |
Dessert
Things your love is better than: - Ice Cream - Chocolate - Everything else that I've tried Brought to you by Sarah McLachlan. | | Thursday, February 18th, 2010 | | 12:29 pm |
More DeMorgan's Law
I have beef with the recent LL post about DeMorgan's Law. Specifically, the author claims that English does not always operate consistently with DeMorgan's Law, and that many other languages also do not operate consistently with DeMorgan's Law. I argue that they are wrong, and they're wrong because of a simple inability to diagram a sentence. From a blog like Language Log that is usually so trustworthy and spot-on, this is extremely disappointing. Now, I've had beef before arising from DeMorgan's Law. Once, my ex had a computer science teacher who did not know DeMorgan's Law. I bitched about this for years, before finding out that apparently no one else cares about DeMorgan's Law either, and I'm just carrying a torch for something obscure and minor. Something obscure and minor that happens to be one of the pillars of modern civilization, but hey, you know, to each his own, right? Anyway, here's the problem this time. There's an even bigger deviation from De Morgan's laws in the case of negated conjunction (as opposed to negated disjunction). According to De Morgan’s laws, not (p and q) = (not p) or (not q). But in English, not (p and q) is more often interpreted as (not p) and (not q). So I'm not free this week and next week is generally interpreted as 'I'm not free this week and I'm not free next week.' But again the Morganian interpretation is also possible, especially (only?) if the and is stressed: I'm not free this week AND next week will typically be interpreted to mean 'It is not the case that I'm free both weeks (but I am free one of them).' Wrong wrong wrong. What's wrong with this picture? It's hard to get at. My first two attempts to describe the problem according to my intuition totally failed. Then I hit upon it. The sentence "I'm not free this week and next week" is not a sentence I would ever say. It's awkward. It's ambiguous. But it does resemble a sentence that I would say: "I'm busy this week and next week." "I'm busy this week and next week" is unambiguous and does not contain a negation. I suspect that the reason "I'm not free this week and next week" seems to flout DeMorgan's Law is that the phrase "not free" is being interpreted as a separate unit - that is, the "not" modifies "free" but not "this week and next week." So what's going on here is that we've got a sentence that is only superficially eligible for DeMorgan's Law. The difference can be expressed using parentheses: 1. I'm (not free) this week and next week 2. I'm not (free this week and next week) English speakers have conventions for resolving potential DeMorgan's Law ambiguities. That's why the sentence "I'm not free this week and next week" sounds weird in my mouth. I'd resolve it with "I'm not free this week or next week" or "I'm not free both this week and next week" or "I'm free either this week or next week" or "I'm busy this week and next week." I suspect that for other constructions that supposedly do not follow DeMorgan's Law, a similar sort of thing is going on. If the sentence were diagrammed according to the interpretation that supposedly goes against DeMorgan's Law, you would find that the construction in question does not syntactically match DeMorgan's Law even if it spacially resembles the law. Now, as to Stephen Crain's claims. If it's true that all children innately use DeMorgan's Law to interpret the negation of a disjunction, but that some languages train them to do otherwise, wouldn't that be evidence against the claim that language is innate or universal in some way? I would use this evidence to argue that the rules of logic are universal but that language or grammar is not. | | Tuesday, November 17th, 2009 | | 5:45 pm |
Heroes
I just settled down to watch last night's Heroes. There's a scene with Suresh. SO MUCH IS WRONG WITH THIS SCENE. Dr. Suresh: One, plate tectonics DO NOT MEAN that the earth is "evolving." Two, square pegs DO NOT GO in round holes. You are doing it wrong. | | 5:18 pm |
| | Wednesday, November 11th, 2009 | | 11:58 pm |
| | Saturday, November 7th, 2009 | | 4:38 am |
Wikipedia
I just edited a wikipedia entry. I rarely (okay, never) do this, except that this particular page made a claim about the meaning that a word had in the English language in the year 1100 BC. To be clear: most linguists would agree that in the year 1100 BC, the English language had yet to grace the earth in any form. The ancestors of the people who would one day begin speaking English were probably speaking Proto-Indo-European or Proto-Germanic at the time. As it turns out, the actual date of the specified event is on or before 1500 AD, according to the OED, or "by the fourteenth century" according to the Online Etymology Dictionary. Technically, anything that occurred in 1100 BC happened before 1500 and by the fourteenth century. So, actually, wikipedia was right! | | 1:03 am |
Neal Googles the Alphabet
A is for A. That's an oddly Randian way to start this project. 16.4 billion hits. B is for Physical Review B, an international journal specializing in condensed-matter phenomena, as well as materials physics. But perhaps more notably is that B is for child pornography: "In response to a legal request submitted to Google, we have removed 2 result(s) from this page. If you wish, you may read more about the request at ChillingEffects.org." According to them, "Sometimes, innocent search terms appear on pages that also contain unlawful material." Like, apparently, the letter B. 2.93 billion hits. C is for Citigroup. Also, google helpfully provides us with the speed of light: 299,792,458 m/s. 4.1 billion hits. D is for D Programming Language. It's like C++ but even further advanced from an alphabetical point of view. 5.1 billion hits. E is for E! Online Entertainment News, Celebrity Gossip, Celebrity News. Also, e = 2.71828183. 6.1 billion hits. F is for FORD MOTOR CO. 2.8 billion hits. G is for Gmail. I wonder if that could have anything to do with the search engine I'm using... 2.06 billion hits. H is for Hydrogen. Google also explains that Planck's constant = 6.626068×10^-34 kgm^2/s. 2.01 billion hits. I is for Apple. Hmm. That's the first amusingly counterintuitive one. Download music and more with iTunes. Play it all on iPod. 7.8 billion hits. J is for J. 2.1 billion hits. K is for K. And the Boltzmann constant = 1.3806503 × 10^-23 m^2 kg s^-2 K^-1. 1.95 billion hits. L is for L. 4.2 billion hits. M is for M&M's. Yum! 4.4 billion hits. N is for N, a free action game from AddictingGames! Also, although Google inexplicably missed this, N is for Neal. 4.7 billion hits. O is for "O", Cirque du Soleil's resident show at Bellagio in Las Vegas. 4.3 billion hits. P is for P. 3.6 billion hits. Q is for Q. 1.91 billion hits. R is for The R Project for Statistical Computing. 2.5 billion hits. S is for SPRINT NXTEL CP. 5.8 billion hits. T is for the T. That's the Boston subway. The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority. Charlie Tickets and the Big Dig. Red Sox. Etc. 5.5 billion hits. U is for the HTML u tag. I wonder what that does. 2.2 billion hits.V is for V at ABC.com. 3.4 billion hits. W is for W, directed by Oliver Stone. 2.4 billion hits. X is for X the band. 2.94 billion hits. Y is for Yahoo! 2.9 billion hits. Z is for Z. 1.78 billion hits. Interesting things about the results: A is the most popular letter, with 16.44 billion hits. Z is the least popular letter, with 1.78 billion hits. Coincidence or conspiracy? You decide. B is the only letter that is for child porn. T was the only letter that is for a site that my browser had stored as visited. Five letters also produced Google Finance results from the NYSE: F K Q V X Seven letters' top hits were their own wikipedia page: A J K L P Q Z - their second hits were: HTML a tag, J programming language, Kelvin, Carl Linnaeus, Phosphorous, Q from James Bond, and Z Communications. Four letters produced mathematical constants: C E H K I spent way, way too much time doing this with no discernible purpose. Two letters produced results with exclamation marks: E Y | | Friday, November 6th, 2009 | | 11:29 pm |
Language and spatial tasks
I'm doing some research for a research paper on primate evolution and behavior and I came across a purely linguistic paper about how humans across different cultures use language as the basis of spatial skills. There are three different spatial schemes proposed: intrinsic, which maps the parts of a human to the parts of an object and then describes a scene from the perspective of the object as if it were human; relative, which describes a scene from the perspective of an actual or imagined spectator outside the objects to be described; and absolute, which describes a scene with reference to a spatial system oriented based on some absolute feature of scenery or environment. Some languages make use of all of these schemes, others make use exclusively of one or two, and different languages differ as to the specifics (for instance, there is a language of a group of people who live on mountainous islands that uses east-west absolute directions with reference to the monsoon, and mountain-sea absolute directions that rotate about each island). In any case, there's good evidence that the way that language deals with directions can determine the way that an individual performs spatial cognitive tasks. Speakers of languages with multiple schemes can switch between them for different tasks. This strongly suggests that humans generally use linguistic faculties for dealing with spatial problems. However, lots of non-human animals have what we call a "cognitive map," which is a record of where various things are located in space. There are birds who can stash food in hundreds of different locations and remember each location, even despite environmental changes. Frugivorous primates use a cognitive map to remember where fruit-bearing trees are within their territory and whether they've eaten from a particular tree recently, and in nature can be observed traveling from tree to tree for food, never returning to a particular tree until it has been given ample time for more fruit to ripen. And of course there are maze tests, in which various creatures can learn to navigate a maze. The point is that lots and lots of animals, including non-human primates, can be shown to have a cognitive map and to be able to solve spatial problems with varying degrees of complexity, all without having any apparent facility with language. All this leads to an apparent contradiction: humans use language to perform spatial tasks that animals with far less cognitive capacity can and regularly do perform without using language. Or, humans use an unnecessarily complex and arguably unique method to solve problems that could be solved with much less cost by a much simpler method. Now, this brought to my mind another interesting fact: chimps can memorize the location of numbers on a screen in less than a second and successfully order them. Observe: What this leads me to believe is simple. Humans do "linguistically" lots of stuff that non-human primates did "directly." What we do when we try to remember a scene is embed linguistic cues in our minds that will serve to remind us of things about the scene. Even if it's as non-specific as "okay, the one is over there, the two is over there" we still basically try to find each number in order and remember something about it. If we have longer, we might do better - "the one is all the way on the right, the two is below the nine, the four, six, and seven are grouped together." Basically, we try to invent a mnemonic device, which is simply a linguistic expression used to trigger or produce memory, on the fly. Non-human primates, however, don't do this. Look at the chimp. The chimp is not putting those numbers, individually, into a cognitive map composed of linguistic references. The chimp is simply taking a snapshot of the numbers that is stored and accessed directly without linguistic mediation. My theory, then, is that language has taken over the functioning of various primitive processes. I can offer a few preliminary guesses as to why: - language allows for greater complexity - language allows for generalization and cross-task inference - language allows for greater social cooperation In any case, I then went researching for further studies on primate spatial skills, and got an article titled "Cognitive cladistics and cultural override in Hominid spatial cognition" which finds that there is a particular spatial strategy employed across all of the great apes, but that in humans spatial strategies vary systematically with language and culture, and concludes that language and culture override whatever natural tendencies we might have with respect to solving these problems. This is borne out by the fact that human children are better at the chimp number game than human adults are: human adults have internalized their own linguistic problem-solving devices to a much greater extent than human children and are thus more impaired when it comes to solving spatial problems that are hindered, rather than helped, by linguistic strategies. For some reason, this whole process really drastically improved my mood. Anyway, for those of you who have read this far, I have an interesting question: Let's say a car is facing so that its headlights are pointing north and its taillights are pointing south. The car is being driven in reverse (that is, moving south) and makes a right turn. Is it now moving east, or west? | | Wednesday, October 7th, 2009 | | 1:39 am |
A fun game
I'm taking a course in philology called "Greek and Latin Roots of English." One of the exercises in the textbook that recurs in every chapter is that we are given some greek or latin roots and asked to come up with English derivatives. Sometimes this is almost unbearably easy - given the stem "fals-" which means "deceive" and producing "false" would be a fair example. Other roots challenge me. For instance, in Latin we have "venire" which means "to come." It generates the stems "veni-" and "vent." I'm also familiar with the Spanish cognate "venir." And yet when we think of English words that have to do with coming, "ven" does not come readily to mind. It took me an entire class period to come up with "provenance" and "provenience" - both of which have to do with origins, or where something comes from. Later I realized that "souvenir" might fit, and it does, through French, where it means memory, which is something that comes to mind. Then convention, from convene, which means to come together. And for some strange reason, I find this process fun. I honestly enjoy devoting an hour or two to brainstorming English derivatives of Greek or Latin stems - especially without consulting a dictionary. | | Tuesday, October 6th, 2009 | | 9:35 pm |
Oh my god
"Poems are rafts clutched at by men drowning in inadequate minds." - Julian Jaynes, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral MindI'm still enjoying this book - I'm a little over halfway through - but this line in particular just jumped out at me. The idea that language evolves as a series of metaphors, always increasing in complexity, by which new things are understood in terms of old things, is one that I find very appealing - especially in contrast to some kind of universality, in which language is understood as accessing structures in the brain that were somehow already there instinctually. (I've got Lakoff's Metaphors We Live By on deck, by the way). Here Jaynes proposes the idea that language and metaphor were intimately involved not only in the creation of understanding, but in the creation of the underlying structures and mentality on which our understanding is built. At some fundamental level, it is the poetic - the metaphorical, rather than the literal; the subjective diachronic narrative rather than the objective syncronic instance - that allowed, and continues to allow, humans to expand our minds. At the outer limits of our comprehension there will always be poetry. | | Sunday, October 4th, 2009 | | 1:29 pm |
"...the placement by Price Waterhouse of "sex stereotyping" in quotation marks throughout its brief seems to us an insinuation either that such stereotyping was not present in this case or that it lacks legal relevance. We reject both possibilities." - Justice Brennan, Price Waterhouse v. HopkinsI kind of love this. Brennan is calling Price Waterhouse on their highly obnoxious use of scare quotes in a legal brief. I have this picture in my head of Brennan just stamping "DENIED" in red ink on the pages where Price Waterhouse claimed not to have "stereotyped" based on "sex." | | Saturday, September 26th, 2009 | | 11:50 am |
My one beef with Glee: Beyonce
My one beef with Glee, as fantastic as it is, is that now I have that ridiculous, inane, insipid, Kanye-approved, monogamonormative yet upsettingly catchy song stuck in my head. I was going to write a post about how bad this song is, and I got about three paragraphs in before I decided to look up the lyrics to get further evidence to support my case. What I found is that the song's actual lyrics are completely different than what I thought they were. All the lyrics that I could understand were these: "all the single ladies" and "if you liked it then you should have put a ring on it." Now, taken in conjunction, you might expect that Beyonce was trying to tell all the single ladies that if they liked a man they should have married him before he ran off or cheated or whatever. As it turns out, though, the "if you liked it then you shoulda put a ring on it" was addressed to *a dude.* The whole song, in fact, appears to be addressed to a dude. So, good readers, what the fuck is "all the single ladies" supposed to indicate? She's not talking *to* all the single ladies. She's not talking *about* all the single ladies. So what the shit is she talking about? As best I can tell, she is singing *for* all the single ladies. As best I can tell, that line simply means "hey all you single ladies, gather round and listen to this song that I am going to sing to this man who foolishly failed to marry me." Ultimately, it is that sentiment that really annoys me. The song seems to be saying that the narrator was dating a man three years ago, but this man did not propose marriage, which led her to the inevitable conclusion that he was not actually interested in her at all, so she tearfully left him. This sort of "move up or move out" mentality is something that I cannot condone in relationships. All the more troubling since Beyonce acknowledges the true nature of marriage, at least, the kind of marriage she wants: "pull me into your arms, say I'm the one you own, if you don't you'll be alone." Yes, that's right, men. Pay close attention. If you don't take possession of a woman, and soon, you will die a lonely bachelor. So, Beyonce, what you seem to be saying is that the single ladies should pay attention, because since marriage (and probably the attendant reproduction) - and by marriage we mean subordination to a man - is the ultimate goal of their lives, they shouldn't waste their time with men who aren't interested in owning them. And men - Beyonce wants you to make sure that the woman that you are with understands fully that she is your property. Otherwise, she might choose to exercise her rights as an individual, and then you'll really be screwed. Well, thank you for that information, Beyonce. The insight into the deformed mind of the average American was quite useful. You haven't been good since Destiny's Child and your latest video was unabashedly terrible, its biggest fans being Kanye "the Jackass" West and a dancing infant. | | Friday, September 25th, 2009 | | 1:05 am |
Books
I finally broke down and ordered some of the books that have been on my Amazon wish list for a long, long time. See, I have the wish list so that my family stops asking me what I want for holidays and also stops getting me stuff that I have no desire/use for, and my family has largely responded by sending me more money, which is cool. But anyhow, I tend to use this money not for presents per se, but for day to day stuff; and then once in a while I just buy myself presents when I feel like it. Anyhow, I just started reading one - The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, by Julian Jaynes. I've wanted this book ever since I heard about his thesis in it, and so far I'm about 40 pages in, and it's really quite awesome. The thing about it is that he brings up so many scientific studies that I hadn't known about, so many interesting facts about humans that I can easily verify (and thought experiments and activities that I can perform myself) that the book is unfailingly interesting and engaging and informative, and it makes you learn the content through practice. It's really quite phenomenal. I also ordered Wegner's The Illusion of Conscious Will, Lakoff's Metaphors We Live By, an Butler's Gender Trouble. I figure I needed some really good books to keep my mind occupied through what is shaping up to be an otherwise extremely boring semester. As it stands, I would recommend any of these four books to anyone at all. I'll probably post more on specific theories or statements or themes in them as I work through them. | | Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009 | | 2:15 am |
Back in Black
"Oh no! A scourge of anger has struck America's seventh most popular sport and thirty-eighth most prestigious awards show! We're all doomed! This is almost as bad as Y2K." - Lewis Black | | Sunday, September 20th, 2009 | | 12:12 pm |
| | Saturday, September 19th, 2009 | | 9:31 pm |
I am an old old man
I just typed "handle" to refer to a username in a conversation with ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.1) kinfae. In the early days of networked computing - I'm talking BBS here, although it persisted into the late 90s, I think - we used to say "handle" pretty much without thinking. We borrowed it from truckers on CBs. At some point it switched to username, and I haven't seen "handle" in years and years, so I don't know why I produced it... but isn't it better? I mean, why did we get rid of that term? User name, user id, screenname - those are all lame words for handle. Lame, lame, lame. Kids these days. | | Friday, September 18th, 2009 | | 10:56 pm |
| | Tuesday, September 15th, 2009 | | 9:56 pm |
| | 9:05 pm |
Holy shit. This song totally just snuck up on me.
Sitting with a number eight platter at the restaurant Four twenty nine for almost anything I want Add it up it's cheaper than the stuff I make myself I get by, I never needed anybody's help And I tore out an ad and they told me that I Would press the buzzer Would press the buzzer At the graduate lab they were doing some tests I pressed the buzzer I pressed the buzzer Ride a circle off of the highway Spiral into the driveway In the maze of old prefabs They'll be waiting at the lab I don't know how everybody makes it through the daily drill Paint the nails, walk the dog, pay every bill I'm feeling sorry for this guy that I pressed to shock He gets the answers wrong I have to up the watts And he begged me to stop but they told me to go I pressed the buzzer I pressed the buzzer So get out of my head just give me my line I pressed the buzzer I pressed the buzzer Ride a circle off of the highway Spiral into the driveway In the maze of old prefabs They'll be waiting at the lab They called me back to the lab to discuss the test I put my earrings on found my heels wore a dress Right away I knew it was like I failed a quiz The man said do you know what a fascist is I said yeah it's when you do the things you're not proud of but you're scraping by taking orders from above I get it now I'm the face I'm the cause of war We don't have to blame white coated men anymore When I knew it was wrong I played it just like a game I pressed the buzzer I pressed the buzzer here's your seventy bucks now everything's changed I pressed the buzzer I pressed the buzzer But tell me where are your stocks would you do this again? I pressed the buzzer And tell me who made your clothes was it children or men? I pressed the buzzer Ride a circle off the highway Spiral into the driveway In the maze of old prefabs They'll be waiting at the lab... - Dar Williams As soon as I actually listened to the lyrics of this song, I realized that it was about this. The song is also quite catchy. Well done, Dar Williams. She has a song like this on every album - one that really hits me in this way, with a social message and an emotional impact. I think "When I Was A Boy" and "Empire" are two of the most notable of these. |
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