Suboptimist
I’m not quite a pessimist. I’m more of a suboptimist.

I’m somewhere between syntax, typology, and complete, unadulterated senioritis. My head isn’t in the game or my heart isn’t in it. Really my favorite class isn’t a class, it’s the project I am undertaking, with the potential of offering closure to my experiment from last semester. *sigh* I’m too tired to write this.

What New Battlestar Galactica character are you? created with QuizFarm.com

You scored as President Laura RoslinYou may be ill but you have a job to do. Fate has put you in a powerful position by accident, but it turns out you are damn good at it. You are no warrior, but in the political arena you are without peer. President Laura Roslin 69% Capt. Lee Adama (Apollo) 63% CPO Galen Tyrol 56% Lt. Kara Thrace (Starbuck) 56% Tom Zarek 56% Dr Gaius Baltar 50% Commander William Adama 50% Lt. Sharon Valerii (Boomer) 50% Col. Saul Tigh 50% Number 6 38%

And now we play the waiting game. I may go crazy in the interim.

Anyway, at the beginning of each semester I usually give a rundown of the courses I’m taking. I’ll go ahead and do that, you know, to keep in line with tradition.

· Drawing for non-art majors. When I tell people this, the response is usually something like, “Oh, I didn’t know you liked to draw.” I don’t necessarily, but I needed another art credit to graduate. A drawing class sounds kind of fun, and since it’s for non-art majors, it should be pretty low pressure. I won’t be expected to be any good.

· Syntax II. If you’ve followed my internet life long enough, you know how I feel about syntax. Syntax I was the only class that almost made me not major in linguistics. I mean, holy crap, this is hard. I’ve already cracked the textbook open. Within the first couple pages, it seems like a bunch of Chomsky worship. I can explain that later. Also, if I had a dollar everytime a linguistics book started with something along the lines that this book does, “Just about everybody has something to say about language: poets, comedians, philosophers,” I’d have, well, several dollars. What’s shocking is that this book starts with this overused cliche. Chances are good that if a student is tackling the Minimalist Program, he’s taken at least one other syntax course, not to mention various intro courses that have taught him what linguistics is and how it’s different than what poets, comedians, philosophers, and William Safire have to say about language.

· Language and cognition. I’ve wanted to take this for a while. I’m also expecting it be compete with Syntax for the hardest course this semester. The professor, Patricia Hanna, is known for her very anti-generative views. Also, her very, very difficult reading lists.

· Typology and universals. I’m excited for this class. I took my historical linguistics class from the same professor, Lyle Campbell, and it turned out to be one of my favorite classes. There are a couple of downsides, though. For one, it’s in the CAIL building at Fort Douglas. I hate walking up there. If anyone who works at CAIL is reading this, shut up, you are used to the walk. The second thing, it’s three hours long. Those almost always kill me.

· Senior capstone. Honestly, the course description and the descriptions I’ve received from faculty have been really vague, so I’m not totally sure what to expect. I know it’s basically a senior-seminar type thing, but the exact mechanics may be different. If I judge by the textbook, it may be an intermediate or advanced sociolinguistics class…I will report.

EDIT: So, it’s been, what, 2 hours since I just turned in my last application, and I am already losing my mind.

I feel sick.  Really sick.

So, I finally started watching the new Battlestar Galactica series. People have been trying to get me to watch it for a while now. Honestly, I am enjoying it.

I have mixed feelings about the new semester starting this Monday. On the one hand, school is starting again. On the other hand, it’s my last semester of my undergraduate career. Anyway, perhaps I’ll give and update of what’s on my mind.

I’ve been meaning to comment on the results of the Iowa caucuses. I can’t say it was terribly surprising that Huckabee won it, considering that 60-percent of caucus-goers identified as Evangelical. That Obama won would have been a surprise to me, if he didn’t win by such a small margin, that, on any other day, could have been different. So goes statistics.

As the caucus approached, I chose my two preferences and two preferences among the front runners. My two preferences are McCain (R) and Richardson (D). They’re the moderates. They’re the least divisive. Out of the front runners, I chose Romney (R) and Clinton (D). I should clarify why Romney was my preference among the Republicans. The ad that Huckabee aired by not airing criticized Romney’s governorship of Massachusetts for, among other things, not executing anybody. First, for somebody as conflicted about the death penalty as I am, no executions is almost a reason for me to vote for somebody. Second, as far as I know, Massachusetts doesn’t even have the death penalty. Facts are silly.

In other news, I’ve been reading Ray Jackendoff’s (yes, his name is very hilarious) monograph Foundations of Language. Most of the book is Chomskyan to the core. On the other hand, he has some very interesting things to say about the evolution of human language capacity. Chomsky himself has never shown any interest in an evolutionary antecedent to human language. In fact, he has at times rejected the idea, and only recently published on it, and then did it reluctantly. Maybe someday I’ll write about it. We’ll see.