polyglot conspiracy

I think the shift to talking about internets rather than The Internet might actually be happening. A couple years after Bush called it the internets, we all laughed, and it became a kind of joke to pluralize: the internets, internets, interwebs. But then just this week, the CFP for AoIR’s 8th conference came:

Let’s Play

The Internet better, internet/s - is at once part of the background hum of the developed world and an exotic realm of fantasy and play. It is an essential, mundane part of daily life, and simultaneously radical, revolutionary, profane, and fun. Internet/s invite us to play. We surf, blog, role play, and chat in the interest of work, learning, and play. Serious technologies and applications invite playing around as a way to learn how to use them.
…
Our conference theme of play invites empirical research and theoretical reflection on how human beings “seriously play” with one another on, via and through internet/s, on local, regional, and global scales.
…
As internet/s become interwoven with ordinary life on multiple levels, in what ways do these alter ordinary life,
and/or how do prevailing community and cultural practices reshape and tame such internet/s and the interactions they facilitate?

Now, I had a disagreement with a friend about this; he thinks they’re using internet/s as textual play to fit in with the conference theme of “play.” I am not so sure. Internets actually has a Wikipedia entry:

Internets was originally used as shorthand for cluelessness about the Internet or about technology in general but is often used today as an homage to when U.S. President George W. Bush referred to “the Internets” in the 2nd Presidential Debate with U.S. Senator John Kerry on October 8, 2004.

But then, under the article’s Criticism section:

While the term is popularily understood to be a Bushism, it is possible Bush’s word choice was accurate, if he meant to refer to the Internet2 as well as the Internet proper, or TCP/IP internets in general.

I think this latter point is being more seriously taken up, and it’s also recognized as seeming more accurate not only in terms of the technical infrastructure of networks (which I know little about), but also in terms of users’ experiences with them: everyone has their own internet. Let me quote myself from 2004, talking about the move toward lowercasing Internet:

Easing up on the capitalization is probably the first step to recognizing that we all have different experiences with the internet, that it facilitates myriad activities. Maybe the plural “internets” is the next step in referring to what it really is: a vast, varied well of experiences that are individually constructed for each user by herself….My internet is not the same as yours: we “visit” different “places” every day, we create our own online routines, extracting different combinations of words, images, sounds, and interaction. So while from the technical side there may still be only one Internet, capital letter definite article, from users’ perspectives there exist multiple internets, lowercase plural.

I’d be interested in hearing whether people notice usage of internets in a not-tongue-in-cheek way, or if this still seems to call attention to itself as an ironic formulation.

Today I asked a question (about dative alternation, e.g. [Give the blogger some money] v [Give some money to the blogger]) in Syntax, and my professor said, “Now you are thinking like Chomsky!”

…a good thing?…?

(to which I replied, “I don’t think anyone will ever say that about me again.”)

[Update: please see this post at full-fledged pidgin.]

I just came across this on the A2 housing inspection bureau’s website, which discusses the A2 Housing Code:

The purpose of the Housing Code is threefold:

1. To protect the health, safety, and welfare of residents;

2. To protect a diverse housing stock from deterioration; and

3. To accomplish all of the above at the lowest cost to owners and renters in order to keep housing costs as low as possible and in a manner consistent with compliance with code.

“In a manner consistent with compliance with code“? What does that even mean?

Excellent xkcd cartoon today:

It’s actually semantically ambiguous though, right? Not grammatically. A reference problem.

So I just made a new blog. It’s basically an images blog, designed for quick and thoughtless posting and amusement. It consists of artifacts from the dark underbelly of graduate students, the work that no one is supposed to see but that is critical to our, um, work: the notes we write ourselves.

I’ve been really amused lately at some of my class notes, or my annotations in the margins of my reading. Sometimes it’s that I make ridiculous write-o’s (or whatever you call writing errors, the handwriting equivalent of “typo”), while others have been the stupid ways I boil down concepts in my notes so I’ll remember them, while others have been silly cartoons about classroom happenings. For a starting sample, try ternary branching and morphological traps.

So, the blog is Marginaling (get it?! get it?!), and I’ll probably post funny-ish items a few times a week. I would LOVE to see other people’s contributions represented there, too. So if you have a funny note you’ve written yourself, or see a funny margin note in a book you have checked out of the library, for instance, send it to me at ( marginaling at gmail dot com ). Include commentary if desired. Stipulations are only that it be in .jpg or .gif (or already hosted somewhere), and that it be marginally (!) related to linguistics. Let the fun begin! And tell all your nerdy friends. Thanks.

Weekend America told me this morning that Seattle has a new tourist slogan: Metronatural.

5: the new gay.

Dear Generativists and Typologists,

I wonder if you would mind terribly to start referring to head-initial languages as head-frontie languages. I believe that this terminological shift could do much to boost morale within the field, as well as increase acceptance of your endeavor by those outside of the field. After all, everyone loves a good frontie*.

Note that by analogy, head-final languages could be referred to as head-backie languages.

Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,
Squires

*singular back-formation from fronties.

*This is not a cartoon. This is an actual, meant-to-be-illustrative diagram from my actual syntax textbook. The book shall not be named here, but it is by a reputable author, with a reputable publisher, in a reputable book series. Still…this looks like a cartoon and is somewhat insulting. Laugh with me?*

I just read Emily Bazelon’s Slate article about whether preschool teachers ought to be required to be college-educated. As for the content of the article, it’s fine; the author goes with a line that’s sort of, “Yes, it’d be great if teachers were more knowledgeable about early childhood development and needs, but salaries are currently far too low to motivate college educations.” She is apparently responding to a recent Atlantic article about college being misviewed as an economic cure-all (article is sub only; I haven’t read it - anyone want to give me their sub info?? I would really like to see this article).

I’ve always felt that “college is good” is one of those superficial commonplaces that US public discourse accepts, yet “college” is actually a very divisive/explosive topic that wraps up lots of sensitive issues of class, equity, race, region, access, public, private, cultural stratification, family tradition, money money money…etc. Despite being in academia (and because of being in academia), I try hard to remain aware and understand that college isn’t for everyone (I had serious doubts about going myself, during my early high school years), isn’t affordable for everyone, isn’t necessary or useful for everyone, doesn’t mean the same thing to everyone, doesn’t produce the same results - academical, vocational, socioemotional - for everyone, and so on. I am very wary of this “college is good” trope, or really the “college is ADJ” trope on whole.

So when I see a statement like the one below (bolded for emphasis), my hackles get all raised, even though I’m pretty sure the author didn’t mean what she implies:

If your child has gone to a preschool where the majority of teachers have gone to college, though, it’s hard to overlook the benefits. My son Eli attended Calvin Hill [in New Haven, CT] for two years and loved it. Almost all his teachers had gone to college; when Christo and Jeanne-Claude did The Gates in Central Park, Eli’s class made their own collective (and smaller) version.

What the…? The implication is that there’s some connection between the teachers having gone to college and their appreciation of an art project in New York City? [ed.: could this just be product placement? The Gates is hyperlinked in the article.] This seriously made me *gasp*, and I’m trying to pick apart my reaction to it. The artistic import of The Gates is of course debatable, but that’s not really the point.

The Gates was accessible to anyone living in New York, not to mention anyone with access to the newspaper or TV or internet news (I was living in VA when it was exhibited; I couldn’t get away from coverage of it). Moreover, it was replicable, on a smaller scale, by anyone with a nearby crafts store. One needn’t have college experience in art, art history, Art for Preschoolers, or even what Preschoolers Can Do with Their Hands, to think that kids might like recreating those big neon orange flags. I doubt that the fact that teachers went to college makes them more likely to a) know that The Gates existed, b) appreciate The Gates as a cultural contribution or merely awesome spectacle, or c) think that The Gates for Preschoolers is a stellar idea. College doesn’t teach “watching the news,” “knowing what’s happening in your neighborhood,” or “being creative.” It could certainly inflect their quality somehow, but let’s not pretend that it creates them.

I’m not taking a position here on the debate on requirements for preschool teachers. I’m merely pointing out that if assumptions like those that underlie the statement above are indeed a part of the debate’s arguments, then the debate rests on problematic assumptions about what college is, does, can or should do.

Sorry. I just had to vent.

I am probably waaaay far behind on noticing this, but you can google in 1337 via GoogleH4×0r. Either regular s34rCh, Im4635 [images], 6r00pZ [groups], or d1r3c70rY [directory]. It’s listed under search language preferences as “Hacker.”

I hoped this might open my search up to a secret haxx0r world of sites that are otherwise not coming up on normal google searches, but the search results are the same - it’s just the interface that’s different. Check out advanced search preferences [PR3F3R3N(3Z]. What is kind of cool is looking at the list of languages that are available for your search results, all of which are written in leet, and are thereby in numerical - rather than alphabetical - order (e.g. English is under 3; Greek is under 6).

One thing? The only word NOT leetified is Google, the brand name in the icon. Which, btw, would be really easy to translate, right? Like, 600613 or 6oo61e or something. Oh - actually I noticed that elsewhere on the site it is leeted into 600613; it’s just the logo that’s consistent.

Does anyone actually prefer to search with a leet interface? If so, this would bring a level of everyday use to the whole 1337 thing that I (as much as I recognize it as a legitimate dialect sort-of-thing) did not know existed.