Time and books

     When I was younger, I read a book about Merlin and King Arthur that suggested the reason Merlin was so wise is that he lived backwards in time. Therefore, to him, everything was clear as day, because it had, in a sense, already happened.

     Now, first of all, to a linguist- even a young, untrained one- this brought about a fascination with the problem of verb tenses he would have to use. If it were true, and his intellect was running backwards through time and into a progressively youth-ing (roll with it) body, then he'd have started off as a doddering old man with no idea how to speak, take care of himself, or reason. Ok, fair enough, that's how a lot of lives end, so makes sense, and he'd be so venerable and respected by then that there probably would have been people to help him.

     But think of the problems with language acquisition! No one's going to babble baby-talk or use simple words to someone they believe to be wise beyond everything. If Neil deGrasse Tyson walked up to you, pointed at a dog, and said "What's that," you'd be confused as all heck, think it's a trick question, and answer with as many details and scientific facts as possible! Ok, maybe that's just me, but you see my point?

FTP 42 - Know your audience

     I am happy to admit I am quite enraptured with my smartphone. For me, it is a combined street map, day planner, weather forecast, on-the-go translator, stopwatch, timer, clock, phone, text and internet connection, and of course, timewaster. I love silly little games that I can play really quickly while waiting for someone to show up, or for an appointment to start, or just to wind down at night. I do have a few requirements for these games, though; the games 1) cannot be timed or done in a way to make me feel rushed (it's a way to relax for heaven's sake!), 2) must be easily interruptible (they are a time filler, and should be put away when anything important happens), and 3) absolutely must require some amount of logic, intelligence, or problem-solving so that I can, in some small way, justify them as brain-training or self-improvement timewasters.

FTP 37 - False motivation?

     Is a lie still a lie if the telling of it makes it true?

Now, I'm not talking about lying to get around things or get out of trouble, I'm talking about those little white lies that you tell people to motivate them to improve themselves. If someone is really struggling with a concept/ move/ routine/ whatever, and you say things such as, "I know you can do it!" or "You're really improving!" (even though they may have hit a plateau), or "I have faith in you!"

     Even if you don't really believe those things, if saying them makes the person more positive and self-motivated, and they do break out of a rut and start getting better, is it still a lie? Is it a white lie, in that it does no one any harm? Is it a justified lie, in that you got done what needed done with no negative consequences? Is it not even remotely a lie, because by saying it, it became true?

     Regardless of the answer, I'm still going to keep doing it, because helping others succeed is a wonderful goal. Every now and then, though, in the small hours of the night, I feel guilty for being not completely truthful...

SciFi lesson and attitude

     When I was younger, I read voraciously. For a variety of reasons, I didn't like hanging out with people too much, so I spent most of my time curled up in any available nook or cranny with a book. My mother encouraged us to read The Classics, to which I attribute a number of British spelling tendencies and odd sayings , but what really caught my attention was scifi and fantasy. I was constantly being warned that I would rot my brain out by reading "useless stuff," and that it was just an escape from the real world, but I feel like I learned a lot from reading such novels.

     One of the most important lessons I learned from books, I feel, was how to treat others. The Classics were very big on honor, nobility and ethics, something that would come in handy when I started working, but was a bit out of touch for modern-day kid/ early teen interactions. One day, as I was reading my way through the Xanth series by Piers Anthony, I came across a version of the Iterated Prisoners' Dilemma, and a simplified answer for it (since the book was aimed at young teens, after all.) Here is a brief summary:

     Two men are arrested, but the police do not have enough information for a conviction. The police separate the two men, and offer both the same deal: if one testifies against his partner (defects/betrays), and the other remains silent (cooperates with/assists his partner), the betrayer goes free and the one that remains silent gets a one-year sentence. If both remain silent, both are sentenced to only one month in jail on a minor charge. If each 'rats out' the other, each receives a three-month sentence. Each prisoner must choose either to betray or remain silent; the decision of each is kept secret from his partner. What should they do?

Progress, perhaps

     Throughout the ages, it seems, people have always railed against the laziness and linguistic corruption of their younger generations, and deplored the horrible misspellings, grammatical errors, and sloppy depths that language had newly fallen to. George Orwell lamented in a 1946 article that the English language in his time had become slovenly and vague. In 1848, a renowned German linguist bemoaned the corruption of English, the "most ground-down" of all Germanic languages, and which was liable to sink into mono-syllabicy within the near future. Going back further, prescriptive linguists, politicians, educators, and philosophers have been off and on lamenting the degradation of English ever since it was officially declared a separate language from Middle English, sometime in the 15th century. If you're really curious, there's a good list here, and several other can be found by searching "decline of English throughout history," but there are far too many to name. Needless to say, it's not a new phenomenon.

     There are, of course, two schools of thought on this. On the one hand, yes, English language needs grammar and spelling rules... mostly to allow "educated" people to feel proud of their education and "proper" usage of the language. On the other hand, descriptive linguists argue- persuasively- that language is a living, evolving thing. All languages, they note, change over time, as new words are needed through technological advances, and old words fall out of common usage. English, with its penchant for borrowing from any other convenient language, tends to change faster than most, but it's certainly not alone.

Update on interviewing

As mentioned in the previous post, I went out yesterday to a job interview for an IT position. "How hard could it be?", I figured, "After all, I've done IT before, it's just getting used to a new system." While I was right about that particular train of thought, I hadn't realized that my recent attempts at bettering myself had taken a toll on my ability to suck up and fit in.

Going by my usual habits, I got in to Boulder and parked about half an hour early for my interview. Unfortunately, it was incredibly hot, and the email sent to me had specified professional dress (something I intentionally own very little of), and I didn't want to hang around and get all sweaty. So I did the super-un-cool thing of arriving for an appointment more than 15 minutes in advance. The books that I'm reading at the moment are "Committed", a book that looks very chick-ish, and is about marriage, and "An Intro to Islam",