The takeaway from last night's State of the Union address is that Biden's language continued decades-long trends of decreasing positive emotion, use of the term "we," and overall fewer words per sentence. Polarization data comes from V-Dem and the speeches were...
Here are some recent phrases that entered the policy lexicon in the last few years that I absolutely hate – “whole of government” and “game changer.” There is a faddishness to tropes in the policy...
Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard stated last Sunday that every Australian child should learn Mandarin, Hindi, or other regional languages as part of Australia's embrace of the Asian Century....
My partner had a different reaction than I did to Khal Drogo's war speech in "You Win or You Die." (Originally I was going to name this post "Over-Critical Acclaim for the Khal's Speech." Or, "Sex...
Khal Drogo's earlier lines in Game of Thrones consisted mostly of occasional Dothraki grunts and a few mono-syllables of broken English. Then we arrive at the visceral war speech scene in the latest episode... either Geoffrey Rush has been secretly coaching the horse-lord,* or the directors intentionally downplayed Jason Momoa's talents as an actor to build up to this: *Actually, the coaching is probably done by David Peterson. For more on how you too can curse and threaten in Dothraki, click here or here or follow this. For more on invented languages generally, here is a great summer read.
Drew Conway discusses the evils of word clouds. He doesn't go far enough: the meaning of speeches and texts depends on the order and proximity of words, not the frequency of their appearance. Consider the two wordles below of famous addresses. They're both meaningless hash. They tell us virtually nothing of any importance about the two speeches.
I didn't meet many faculty on my recent tour of New England liberal arts colleges (and a few Ivies), but one scholar I dined with provided this great line about foreign language study: "Optimists study English; pessimists study Arabic; realists study Mandarin."After nearly 1400 miles of driving and visits to more than a dozen schools, my daughter and I enjoyed a personal tour of the Naval War College. Then, we walked around Newport and savored the end of the journey and beautiful vistas. Incidentally, this was a real highlight of the trip. Someone needs to export it to Louisville.If anyone...
I finally took the time (and found the courage) to watch Steve McQueen's "Hunger" (2008). It is the story of the events that led to the 1981 Irish hunger strike at Maze Prison in which Bobby Sands and nine other men died. The film is hauntingly beautiful from an aesthetic standpoint and horrifying intellectually. There are very few films which actually merit the adjective "powerful," this is one of them. (I am still processing this film in my mind, but I thought I would share a few thoughts in case others have seen it and thought it through...)Critics will undoubtedly take issue with the...
Football and War have long been metaphors for each other, with players famously (and infamously in some cases) referring to themselves as "warriors" who will "do battle" on the gridiron led by "field generals" at quarterbacks, throwing "long bombs" to score, and Generals "calling an audible" to launch a "blitz" or a "hail-marry pass." Indeed, those seeking to inject greater tolerance into American culture have long counseled that we do away with such metaphors, as they trivialize war on both sides of the equation. George Carlin saw this years ago. (Updated--repaired link to Carlin's baseball...
A couple of weeks back I visited Arlington for the National Science Foundation's Human and Social Dynamics PI conference. The HSD Initiative is one of NSF's "cross-cutting" programs, which means the same pool of money funds political scientists, neurologists, roboticists, physicists, anything under the sun if the proposal is smart enough and vaguely related to the RFP. The point of their annual gatherings is in part to create interdisciplinary "synergy": to provoke conversations among scientists from diverse fields who would otherwise likely never meet.In practice, these gatherings are a bit...
Recently, I criticized Sarah Palin's pronunciation of "nuclear," and suggested that electing her would only make Americans look as if we (still) don't care how dumb our leaders appear on the global stage. At best, I expected a discussion about whether we should take such things into consideration in elections. More accurately, I expected that post to be ignored, and for most readers to latch on to the much more interesting food for thought to come in later posts that day. (Who would have thought English grammar would be more fascinating than the ethics of killer robots?)Imagine my surprise...
A few weeks ago, ABC News (Australia) reported the following from AFP: "Producing biofuels today is a crime against humanity," UN Special Rapporteur for the Right to Food Jean Ziegler told Bayerischer Runfunk radio. Here's the logic: Using biological materials (like corn) for energy production increases global food prices because it increases market demand. Biofuel production also increases competition for arable land and potentially encourages developing states to grow crops for profitable energy production instead of necessary foodstuffs. Some American farmers are apparently switching...