It’s balm for the soul. I’ve not gotten out to the contra out here until tonight, and it was well-worth it. I don’t know that I have much to say about it, besides altitude is surprising and the people were nice — I got a few chances to chat with folks.
Also, they clap on petronellas here.
I don’t know quite what’s gotten me on this blogging binge, but I’ll keep at it as long as I have things to say.
What I have to say now concerns serendipity, and a positive attitude. I feel that, in my life, very little happens that is bad, very little goes wrong. In fact, there are a number of things I can think of that may have seemed like they were bad, or went wrong, but in fact turned out for the (likely) better. [Read more →]
…which I keep wanting to type as “piranha”.
A mysterious commenter known only as “X” posted a link to this abstract. I didn’t approve the comment, as the poster was too mysterious, but the article looks interesting, though in a somewhat dubious location on the internet.
However, one thing mentioned in the abstract seemed worth noting in particular: Everett makes many claims about how this one thing he sees in their culture (the Immediacy of Experience Principle, or IEP — gotta have your TLAs!) leads to all these grammatical features, or lacunae, really. However, he provides no evidence of a general correlation; the linked-to article purports to show that there are other cultures with the same sort of “IEP” that do not have similarly constrained grammar. That’s just the sort of research I want to see regarding Everett’s claims.
Wow, what a way to wake up. Zero to sixty, as it were. A guaranteed way to have me feel awake on the greyest of days is to have snow, snow and more snow coming down.
So, I am reading Dan Everett’s very interesting book Don’t Sleep, there are Snakes. His data and observations I trust very much, but his analyses are bizarre, as the following indicates: [Read more →]