Imagine a Wikipedia constantly patrolled by academics. Can you do it? Well, someone has, and they've made it look like this.

Scholarpedia, a peer-reviewed version of wikipedia (whatever the hell that means... isn't wikipedia, in a sense, peer-reviewed?). Currently, the Linguistics section seems to be written by Mark Arnoff and "peer-reviewed" by his longtime collaborator Wendy Sandler, both of whom I have respect for but hardly what I would call a balanced peer-review process.

Where are all the linguists at? It's not like we have anything better to do...

(I remembered to use the 'linguistics' tag for the first time on this blog... lame)

Things that put a smile on my face

The situation in Nigeria is really complex.

Situation In Nigeria Seems Pretty Complex

Rerun

At this point I would like to reiterate my love for Motion Trio as well as my disappointment that I will miss them live in Chicago by only three weeks. But I have a plan. If I can convince 800 people in SD to buy their CD they may consider stopping by next time they tour the US.

Scientific reporting

Shortly after posting my last poorly-thought-out-stream-of-consciousness post, I randomly stumbled on this article titled "Is scientific Journalism Doomed?" which is a more interesting informal analysis of the problem. (via slashdot)

podcast is a noun which can be verbed, etc.

Having recently become the owner of an iPod through the kindness of a friend I have begun to fall in love with the podcast once again.

I used to listen to these things a lot when I was living abroad but stopped when I came back to the US and had AM/FM in English to listen to. On top of that, my days became busier with a lot of academic reading which precludes the opportunity to simultaneously listen to someone talking (or podcasting if you will).

But the dead time that I often have when commuting or doing household chores can now be filled with talky goodness.

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It is thus that I was reacquainted with the NPR show RadioLab. In a world where science reporting for the general public tends to do greater harm then good, as the diluted versions are often misrepresenting the facts or obscuring the significant bits thereby distorting the results, WNYC's RadioLab does a little bit better. And they tell the stories in such clever ways, managing to explain generally complicated processes via audio more thoroughly than most science shows do it using the medium of TV.

RadioLab isn't perfect; I'm sure it falls pray to many of the pitfalls of simplifying science. I was a bit surprised by some of their oversimplifications of E&M physics in their relativity episode, for example. But I think it's really fun to listen to, and it has familiarized me with topics that I may have otherwise been forever ignorant about. Besides, I'm sure that the majority of pitfalls really come from reporting verbatim the reports on linguistic phenomena provided by a respected neurologist. I'm sure the neurologist knows a lot about the nervous system and a little about neuro-linguistics, but her oversimplification of linguistic phenomena will then be simplified further by RadioLab (assuming, as everyone often does, that the expert knows exactly what she's talking about) leading to poor science reporting.

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I'm still looking for more podcasts to listen to. Right now I've got "this american life", "chinesepod", "car talk", "all songs considered", CNN and MSNBC's hourly news updates, and "Help! a bear is eating me!" Any suggestions?

Being an avid hater of tailgaters and a huge fan of pirates, I found this photo of a license plate amusing on at least two different levels. (You probably can't read the small print on the license plate frame, but you could if you were on the guy's ass. The top line says "too close for cannons" the bottom says "prepare to be boarded!")

Japanese innovation will never cease to impress me

Why can't American corporations invent something as cool as beta gel. This gel is such an amazing shock absorber that you can drop an egg on it from 22m high, heck, you can even throw an egg at it from up close, and the egg will not break. Watch it in action:



So why aren't American corporations inventing these things? Because they're busy funding creation museums and designing the next best war machine (saw this two mornings ago on the local channel 8 morning news show). Who's got the money to R&D these frivolous toys? (That's right, I verbed R&D)

It doesn't sound nearly as ridiculous in text

Arrgh! Matey! This day be a special one to all ye land-lubbers! That's right! It be "International talk like a pirate day". Arrgh! And so on.

Don't let the dream die

There's no question that there are quite a lot of strange practices occurring in the Tokyo area. Of course, there are many strange practices in the San Diego area too, but the remarkable permissiveness within Japanese culture of 'atypical' behavior (just as long as it can be completely hidden from or easily ignored by the general public) combined with the almost total lack of psychiatric medicine is the necessary mix which leads to the establishment of a club/restaurant where you have sex with animals and shortly thereafter proceed to devouring them.

Then again, it could be the case that this is a joke and I've been fooled by the internet yet again. I hope so.

comedian insults geek

I will admit that I would have liked to own an iPhone. If I had grown up with a limitless disposable income (or even an allowance of some kind, any kind, $5 a week would have been nice) then maybe I'd play more fast and loose with my money. As it is now I have a hard time buying anything which costs more than $50 without considering all the options twice and then ruminating for a week.

Needless to say, I thought $500+ was a bit much for a phone which was also an mp3 player which was also a tiny, wireless enabled, internet communications device (snark). Still, it is a very nice toy and I don't have a decent mp3 player, my phone is the cheapest phone made in 2005, AND who couldn't use more internets?

I suppose I'm a bit relieved that I didn't buy one. I don't think that it's for me after all: I really don't like talking on the phone that much; I need to spend less time on the internet, not more; they don't make an mp3 player big enough for me to put all the music I want on it (OK, maybe that's not true).

Anyway, for those of you early adopters with a good sense of humor, Bill Maher wants to rip on you. Not that this vindicates my decision in any way. The iPhone isn't for me, but it is for many people.

why I feel sorry for some of you today.

I know several people who have been reading "the wheel of time" series of fantasy novels. I've never been able to get into them because, even though I appreciate detailed story telling and elaborate prose, I believe the author of this particular series (robert jordan n.d.p) takes it way over the top.

Well, the series has been going on way too long already. It's been over 10 books and the poor bastard still couldn't finish telling his story. A few of his fans that I am acquainted with were often worrying that he was going to pass on before finishing. Their fears were appropriate. RIP James Oliver Rigney Jr

So to those of you where were hard-core fans, reading book after 800 page book to get to the end of this very very long series, you will now have no conclusion to your invested hours. That is why I feel sorry for you today.

Apply directly to the forehead

It turns out that the brain is so amazing it learns without you even knowing.

Well, actually, I already knew that. But, if we are to believe this australian news article, there is very explicit evidence of this occurring on our streets. All you really need to do to discover the potential of your subconscious is provide your brain with some blunt trauma.

Step one: get your own financing.

It turns out that it takes just under 6 minutes to learn how to buy a (new/used?) car. This is how it's done.



I haven't ever bought a car from a dealership before but I suspect a time will come when I may have to. I hope I can remember this video.

Death in Linguistics

As it turns out, the African Gray Parrot who "understood" and "spoke" english has died today. His name was Alex and I've been following his career since I first read about him back in 2000 (when I took my first psycholinguistics course).

Farewell Alex. You will be missed (mostly by overeager news hounds with a penchant for misreporting scientific items as well as your owner who will now be looking to train a new member of your species)

Almost settled. Almost.

Typing this out from my old computer on my brand new High-Speed Cable connection. It took me a while to figure out the wireless password stuff. Turns out that my passphrase on the router was creating a hexadecimal passcode which was not the same hexadecimal passcode that the same passphrase typed into my pcs was making. That doesn't seem right to me... but I went ahead and bypassed all of that by just typing out the router hex code by hand.

Now that I'm back on the nets I've got reading to be catching up on. So much news happened...

Scientists and their interesting lives

I remember that there was once talk about having a TV show on the Discovery Channel which was basically a soap opera with famous scientists as the characters. The stories would be entirely NON-fiction. Being a student of science history, thereby being familiar with all sorts of wild and interesting stories about the wild and crazy world of scientists, I was very excited about the chance to see this spectacle.

Can you imagine it?

• Socrates' trial
• Leibniz vs Newton
• Infighting at the manhattan project
• Alan Turing's "shameful" secret (overlooked by the british government until he outlived his use)

Drama is so easy to find whenever you get people together. What makes science drama interesting is that it reminds you how simple and petty people can be regardless of their intellectual prowess.

If you think that maybe the secret lives of scientists isn't as interesting as I claim, take some time to learn about the interesting relationship between T.Edison (history's greatest monster) and N.Tesla.

Cracked magazine's website makes it funnier than it really was:

[Edison] did not invent the light bulb. Edison was not the smartest scientist around—not by a long shot. He did, however, hire a brilliant man named Nikola Tesla, who luckily was.

Tesla is responsible for radio, microwaves, primitive radar systems and the electricity we use today, which Edison gets credit for. The truth is that Edison hired Tesla to redesign his electrical generators. Tesla did, but when he asked for the $50,000 he was promised, Edison replied, and this is a direct quote, “Tesla, you don't understand our American humor," and paid him only in middle fingers.

Tesla quit and tried to strengthen his electrical discoveries in an effort to provide free energy for the entire world, but Edison and his thugs at General Electric devoted time not spent on stealing patents to making sure that the rest of the scientific community thought Tesla was crazy and dangerous. Tesla died alone and in serious amounts of debt. Edison died on a pile of money in a “Suck it, Tesla" T-shirt that he did not design.

Who wouldn't want to see that televised?

IRAQ!

After a long weekend away from my internets I come back to find this article from the San Diego Union Tribune: Mom defends reaction to Iraqi passengers. Turns out that NBC got all up in that too, as did an arabic news program (I don't think it's al jazeera).

I'd comment on how horrible people can be, but I'm too tired for that. I would even say something about how the silly security precautions at airports, established to give the illusion of safety but doing little to prevent real danger from reaching planes, are failing at even that task... but who has the time.

What I will say is that I find it extremely fascinating that, in the arabic language news clip, the english seems to be a translation of the arabic overdubbing which is itself a translation of the original english recorded on the video.