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

I am that end of having a cold where you feel okay for the most part. The only remnant of it is the 80 cubic feet of mucus in your head that makes you feel like you’re blowing your brain out when you blow your nose. Also, I hate doing group work.

Anyway, can anybody guess what I am summing up here? I’m too tired and lazy to type it myself, so I cut and pasted this from somewhere else.

· There are patterns in all natural languages (i.e. human languages) that cannot be learned by children using positive evidence alone. Positive evidence is the set of grammatical sentences the language learner has access to, that is, by observing the speech of others. Negative evidence, on the other hand, is the evidence available to the language learner about what is not grammatical. For instance, when a parent corrects a child’s speech, the child acquires negative evidence.

· Children are only ever presented with positive evidence for these particular patterns. For example, they only hear others speaking using sentences that are “right”, not those that are “wrong”.

· Children do learn the correct grammars for their native languages.

That’s right, it’s the age-old epistemological problem linguists face, poverty of the stimulus, claiming that Language is unlearnable for children given the lack of evidence presented to them during the acquisition phase, thus it is evidence for some kind of linguistic nativism.

The validity of the argument isn’t debated. The conclusions of it, however, are contested in some far reaching, dark, undiscovered corners of linguistics and cognitive science. Those who accept poverty of the stimulus as evidence of nativism cite human Language’s recursive nature. That is, a grammar can generate a sentence to infinity, and still be grammatical. Therefore, language is unlearnable. Evidence cited for the second premise is Subject-AUX inversion. Since I don’t feel like explaining what that is, let’s simplify/straw-man it and say that children only hear correct evidence of how to do it (”You can come to my house, Can you come to my house?”). The third piece of evidence cited is that children ultimately learn the correct grammar of their language.

I have problems with all of these. First, I don’t see how we can say language is truly recursive. I can say things like, “The cat is in on the couch, in the house, on the street, …” ad infinitum, but ultimately you wouldn’t be able to handle information. It is thus ungrammatical (or at least irrelevant to grammar). Chomsky would argue that this has to do with limited memory capacity in our brains to handle infinitely generated sentences. If this is the case, and with language being for communicative purposes, it’s still illogical to claim that infinitely recursive sentences are grammatical. Besides, when do children ever hear these? lolchomsky

The subject-AUX inversion claim, that children only ever hear the correct production of it, is also problematic. People makes slips of the tongue all the time. Children hear their parents make performance errors all the time, but they hear more correct forms. Stochastic learning, maybe?

Finally, children all learn a grammar, but we also know that each individual speaker of language X’s grammar is different from another’s. Okay, I’m actually tired of talking about this.

I other news, I’ve decided on my research project for phonetics: attention paid by non-Arabic speakers to vowels preceding pharyngeals. You know, seeing how well they pick up on contrast from transitions into following consonants. Also, I started playing the EVE Online. The world’s prettiest spreadsheet. Someday I will blog on that.

I dug through some of the comments in response to my letter to the editor. I didn’t want to register to respond there, so I figured I would bring up a few points here:

· Point: In the same [1852] speech I referenced, Young stated that the master should treat the slave with kindness. I shouldn’t have been so one-sided. My Response: Brigham Young saying to treat the slave with kindness is an insignificant point. He still openly supported the institution of slavery. Slavery is wrong, regardless of whether you treat your slaves kindly.

· Point: You can’t judge a 19th century man with a 21st century standard. Imagine judging Abraham Lincoln for using the N-word when it was used all the time in his day. My response: That’s not an apt comparison at all. I agree that it is wrong to judge a man by a standard that didn’t exist in his day. That’s not what I am doing. I am judging a man by his claim to prophecy and by the standard of his immediate predecessor Joseph Smith, a man who ultimately ended up supporting Abolitionism and conferred high priesthood offices upon blacks.

· Point: Blacks weren’t ready for the priesthood. We need to work by the Lord’s timetable. My response: No. This is a point I tried to make in my letter. This excuse doesn’t cut it anymore. Blacks were apparently ready under Joseph Smith, so clearly the Lord’s timetable made room for them under Smith’s leadership. As a Mormon and a Christian, I demand a real answer.

Thank you. Come again.

Do you ever have one of those days when you’re like, “I am going to write a letter to the editor”? I had one of those days on Wednesday. In retrospect, I will probably piss some people off who are close to me. That’s the way it goes. I figured it would go unnoticed, but it turns out it is the number two most visited article on the Tribune website as of writing this. I figure I would at least milk my new-found popularity and share with you.

“The cacophony of groans, boos and applause echoing inside the University of Utah’s Kingsbury Hall was as divided as the men and their politics reverberating on stage,” read the opening line of the Salt Lake Tribune’s article covering the recent debate between Sean Hannity and Salt Lake mayor Rocky “America’s mayor” Anderson. Now, I use the word “debate” loosely, since this was a debate in the same way professional wrestling is a sport, in that it wasn’t a debate at all, really. After all, the Trib sent its theater critic to cover the event. A friend of mine (who shouldn’t have attended to debate in the first place) told me she never felt so embarrassed to be from Salt Lake City, and how she assumed everybody there had been raised in a barn. I don’t know if it was really that bad, I don’t really think the debate was as good for the public discourse as some made it out to be. If you attended the event, you were not helping anything, but you were aiding and abetting a fight.

On wholly unrelated note, this has been bothering me for some time: graffiti on bathroom walls, pee on the seats, and purposeful clogging of public toilets. I see this a lot in the restrooms at the University of Utah. This amazes me. Did high-school freshman start attending the university? I would assume that we had outgrown the stage in our lives when we found stuffing a toilet with the fecal mass of five human bowel movements and an entire roll of toilet paper humorous, an act many of us probably never found amusing in the first place. Let’s restore civility to the campus. While we’re at it, let’s bring back tweed, hats, canes, umbrellas, and smoking pipes. That’s my ideal campus.

So, I was in the hospital the last couple of days. Long story. The most interesting part was that I got so dehydrated as a result of what put me there (probably gastroenteritis) that I needed 5 bags of IV fluids to get me to pee at all, and what I did pee was minuscule. They admitted me after I visited the ER because the problem was likely exacerbated by Crohn’s disease. I also had really low blood pressure. I already have pretty low blood pressure (in the 90/50 area), but apparently I was down to something in the neighborhood of 75/34. Despite all of that, I don’t think it was entirely necessary to keep me there for two days. It was embarrassing to have nurses coming in to check on me, when they probably had people who really needed it. I missed three classes, all of which were important, along with Model Arab League.

I still have a headache and some minor gut pains, but otherwise I am recovering alright.

I’ve always had loner tendencies, which come to think of it is simply a politically correct way of saying I am a loner. In fact, I have always been a loner and as a general rule have preferred spending time alone than with groups of people. I used to think I was a real loner during high school. I amazed myself that I was capable of becoming more so after I graduated and spent every night of the summer of 2004 at the Reverend’s house. I surprised myself even further once that stopped and I started seeing him only on the weekends, which can also be hit and miss.

There are two possible explanations for my loner tendencies: pathological shyness or pathological laziness. It may well be the former, but the latter seems more accurate in my highly subjective opinion. I am the kind of guy who would rather be called than call somebody; and if I hang out with someone once during the week, why hang out with him again? The sole exception is that one summer.

I have never been thoroughly into dating either. I tend to have bad date experiences, most of which are my own doing. The bright spots tend to fizzle after a while. I remember swearing that my dad thought I was gay since I wasn’t taking a new girl out every weekend. That being the case, he constantly recommended girls for me date, and while his intentions were good, it was undeniably irritating. A brief digression: the girls recommended ran the gamut from girls three years younger than me (I was 18 at the time) to girls three years my elder. Also included in the group were girls whom I had deemed to be insane, obnoxious, and one girl who I had known forever, but is the Bishop’s daughter. Nor have I ever had intense desire for close personal relationships with women, which may have something to do with me being picky.

As a general rule, when I do find a girl in whom I am interested — one who is intellectual, mildly cynical, and of course pretty — the circumstances are all wrong. In the same vein, I have never been desirous of getting laid, something I find remarkably shallow. I don’t know; call me asexual, but there are things I would rather do, methinks.

Apparently I wear my anti-social persuasion on my shirtsleeves, because it has become an identifying marker of my personality among my friends and associates. Example: while gathering with my brethren after a lodge meeting, one of my closest brothers gave me strictly in charge to date someone. At another similar event, he encouraged me to put down the books, turn off WoW, and start being social. This is irritating, but it is irritating for one reason and one reason only: he has a point. Anyone who knows me will tell you that I hate when the other guy is right. So, I don’t know where this is going anymore, but I reckon I should start circumscribing my passions a little less and date some.

On a different note: Egyptian’s 1^st person singular pronoun is /anok/. In classical Hebrew, the same word pronoun, generally /ɛni/, appears are /anoxi/. Why I am telling you this, I am not sure. Stupid ewoks.

You really haven’t lived until you have wandered the forest-moon of Endor shooting ewoks. Seriously.

About ewoks, I remember growing up my friends talking about how ewoks were related to wookies. I wonder if it ever occurred to them how stupid that sounded. Wookies are from Kashyyyk while ewoks inhabit the forest-moon of Endor — different parts of the bloody galaxy. Judas Priest, people…

Anyway, a lot of things are really bugging me right now. I will begin to describe them shortly, but first I must tell you about a magnificent dream I had last night: I was walking down the street and saw a retailer of cellular telephones. I entered the store, bought a phone, and purchased a new line of service from a company other than Cingular. Behold, I had a signal. How does this relate to the things bothering me? I hate Cingular with a passion. Nine months of the year, I am primarily at one of two locations: my home or the University of Utah campus. Guess where I don’t get service: my home and the University of Utah campus. I saw an advertisement for Cingular the other day pitching the fact that they have the fewest dropped calls of any network. The statement holds water, since nobody can make a f*cking call for it to drop.

Next, I really, really hate springtime. Many of you are aware that I enjoy taking my dog out for long walks in Memory Grove near City Creek Canyon. Sometime between March and early June the grove is transformed from a dog-walker’s haven to the tunnel of love. Nary a day passes when I see no less than four couples getting wedding pictures and two brides having bridal photos taken. Also, when I try to walk past the cretins, I am scolded for bringing my canine and myself too close to their pictures. Do they expect me to walk in the bushes or up the creek? Where in the park is there a sign reading, “Between March and June, Memory Grove is reserved for happy couples getting wedding pictures”? Oh, how I hate those happy couples.

In conclusion, I want to let everybody know that I don’t understand blondes. Every time I see a blonde bride or bride-to-be in Memory Grove, they always have the biggest hair, the biggest lips, and the biggest dresses I have ever seen. Do blondes always have such an unnatural affinity for all things big? For example, the other day I saw a blonde girl I knew from junior high. She is now married and you should see the size of the diamond on her finger. Imagine if that money were used to pay for college tuition.

I am sorry for the incoherent update. I am really messed up right now…

I am also working on this months title image…