Belated Notation.
August 9, 2006 – 6:26 pmI don’t know why I postponed an update comprised entirely of notes. It couldn’t be that hard to have written this at 1:00 AM last night, but whatever.
· I like mid dots.
· I listened to an episode of KUER’s Radio West discussing a book published by a student who played a prominent role in the UVSC Michael Moore controversy. For the unaware: during the 2004 presidential election the student government of Utah Valley State College invited filmmaker and liberal Michael Moore (they were later forced to invite Sean Hannity to balance it) to speak to the student body. Mind you, Utah Valley is damn near the most conservative areas in the United States. Anyway, there was a big hubbub about Michael Moore not representing the values of Utah Valley, etc, etc. I have two things to say here: you don’t go to college to have your values and sensibilities reinforced. You go to have them challenged to the point where you change them, or gain the intellectual capacity to rationally defend them from bombardment. My second point is this: universities inviting pundits, like Moore and Hannity, instead of intellectuals like Chomsky and Horowitz reflects what I see as a decline in intellectual discourse on college campuses. All I have to say.
· I was reading Kees Versteegh’s The Arabic Language today. I have a lot of respect for Versteegh, but he holds to tightly too the idea of ‘High’ and ‘Low’ when explaining diglossia. I don’t think diglossia can be painted as simply as having a high and a low variety of language. I don’t know, it just doesn’t make sense.
· With the last point in mind, I should mention that I have a love-hate relationship with sociolinguistics. To me, sociolinguists are overwhelmingly linguists pretending to be physicists by devising concrete laws to explain linguistic behavior within certain communities. For example, it’s clear that code switching exists, but I don’t think any one theory can explain why we do it 100%. Anyway, all of this being said, I’ve found an area within sociolinguistics that interests me immensely: linguistic behavior in online (especially MMO) communities. I think one thing that enticed me into this was the stigma attached to non Enlish-speaking communities within World of Warcraft.
· One more thing about WoW: I had my ass handed to me last night. I went to liberate a new guildmate from being corpse-camped by three Horde players. My character is level 44, these characters were each level 35: one mage, one warlock, one shaman (the most overpowered class in the game). I ran into the middle of them (heroically) and started firing Arcane Explosion repeatedly. The mage and warlock fell dead after four casts, and the shaman’s health was depleted to 10%. To bury some of the details, he threw down his healing stream totem and casted FROSTSHOCK. He proceeded to destroy me and I logged off to go lick my wounds.
4 Responses to “Belated Notation.”
Shamans aren’t the most overpowered class. Yes, they’re strong, but they have very low MP and hardly gain any over the levels. They’re pretty good for PVP, but they’re hard as hell to play PVE. Because of this, Shamans usually don’t have the best equipment.
Warlocks, however, are most certainly overpowered. Death Coil alone is enough to wipe out anyone; It hurts the enemy, puts the enemy in a state of fear, and heals the caster. That, coupled with a few other spells, is enough to get a Warlock out of any situation.
By Michael on Aug 9, 2006
I should mention that I think the character may have been a twink.
By Rob on Aug 9, 2006
Rob, I don’t know what your political inclination is, although from what you say it seems you lean more liberal than conservative. It is interesting for me now living in one of the “reddest” states in the country, being from traditionally liberal CA, to see differences in attitudes. Lawrence, of course being a college town, is decidedly more liberal than anywhere else in KS, and I’m often laughing to myself as I drive around town to see the bumper-sticker “war” between liberals and conservatives. There’s an interesting mixture of SUVs bearing “Support Our Troops” and the small-to-midsize cars bearing things like “Don’t Blame Me, I Voted for Kerry.” I saw a woman wearing an interesting T-Shirt yesterday: “Gay? Fine By Me.” There is some of this in CA too, of course, but somehow it seemed more subtle and less in-your-face blatant. Not sure where I was going with this, but your post made me want to say it. Heh.
By Dave on Aug 10, 2006
I would actually consider myself libertarian more than liberal or conservative (though I clearly sound liberal on some issues), though in Utah the picture is painted in more black and white terms: if you aren’t conservative, you are probably liberal.
Salt Lake City is a bit different from the rest of the state. It’s liberal, it has a [secular] college campus, is chock-full of hippies, and has one of the most liberal mayors in the country.
In fact, Salt Lake City was listed as one of the most outed cities in the US.
…the rest of the state is clearly another story.
By Rob on Aug 10, 2006