HRSFANS.org

To the dismay of linguists everywhere, it is once again National Grammar Day. Yes, you read that right: dismay. As my colleague Gabe explains on his blog Motivated Grammar:

My problem with National Grammar Day (and most popular grammarians in general) is that it suggests that the best part of studying language is the heady rush of telling people that they shouldn’t say something. But if you really study language, you know that there’s so much more to it than that. Each time March 4th comes and goes, we’re missing an opportunity to show people how wonderful the field of linguistics is.

Gabe goes on to describe a couple of papers that got him interested in linguists, and then proceeds to celebrate National Grammar Day by debunking ten common myths about grammar. So rather than giving into the “better than thou” spirit of the day, go read Motivated Grammar and learn something new and inspiring about language.

HRSFANS member Neil S. has just returned from a trip to visit his family in rural India, and has a really interesting blog post with photos from and thoughts about his adventures. I particularly enjoyed hearing Neil’s perspective on life there because he’s simultaneously part of the family, and an observer from modern urban America. Plus it’s full of great photos:

danah boyd is a researcher specializing in social issues surrounding new technology, particularly social networking. In a recent blog post, she discusses differences in the cultures of Facebook and Twitter status updates. She points out that despite their superificial similarities, these two networks have different norms with respect to the directionality of communication:

Facebook’s social graph is undirected. What this means is that if I want to be Friends with you on Facebook, you have to agree that we are indeed Friends. Reciprocity is an essential cultural practice in Facebook… Twitter, on the other hand, is fundamentally set up to support directionality. I can follow you without you following me.

She goes on to discuss how these differences in directionality affect the way we present ourselves and the cultural norms that develop on these two different networking services. (Read the full post.)

I found it really interesting to read boyd’s analysis, as it matches up well with my own experience with the two sites, but in ways that I had never been consciously aware of. More generally, I’m really excited about the fact that people are taking social networking and other new media seriously as a subject for research. There is a tendency among some to dismiss these services as all the same, and as poor substitutes for “real” face-to-face interactions. In highlighting the ways in which social norms can develop around new media, boyd’s research also demonstrates the unique role that social networking can play in our lives–not replacing but rather augmenting our other forms of social interaction.

I was shocked to learn recently how misguided our approach to drug policy is. In a recent article in The Independent, Johann Hari clearly explains how a policy based on prohibition and policing is counterproductive, and how all evidence favors legalizing and regulating the drug trade. For instance, did you know that Portugal decriminalized the possession of all drugs in 2001, and that drug use has since fallen, with hard drug use falling fastest? Or that the rate of new heroin addictions in Switzerland has fallen 82% since the country started providing centers where addicts can inject heroin safely and for free? (That’s because addicts no longer need to recruit new users to finance their addiction.)

But despite the evidence, political forces are lined up against a sane drug policy. As Hari explains:

In 1998, the Office of National Drug Control Policy was ordered by Congress to stop funding any scientific research that might give the impression that we should redirect funding from anti-trafficking busts into medical treatment of addicts, or that there is any argument to legalise, regulate or medicalise drug use. … So, to give a small example, the ONDCP spent $14bn on anti-cannabis adverts aimed at teenagers, and $43m to find out if the ads worked. They discovered that kids who saw the ads were more likely afterwards to get stoned, so the evidence was suppressed, and the ad campaign marched on.

Ouch. And while the US might be doing particularly poorly on this front, we’re not alone: In the UK, the chair of the Advisory Committe on the Misuse of Drugs (ie. the country’s top advisor on drug policy) was just fired for speaking out in favor of evidence-based drug policy. There’s an article about it in this weekend’s Boston Globe Ideas section, which is also worth a read. Among other things, it mentions that the Obama administration is taking baby steps in the direction of a more evidence-based policy. Still no Portuguese-scale decriminalization on the horizon for the US, but we can at least be supportive of any move to shift resources into addiction prevention and treatment.

I think it would have been even better if they had used music from LotR, but I still got a good chuckle out of this:

I wonder where I can get one of these? Using the lanthanoids and actinoids as a bench is quite clever. (Yes, I’ll admit, I did have to look up what those rows are called.)

Today we have a guest post from Matt G. (’07). Matt brings us a list of mashups that are “genuinely clever, cool or generally mind-warping”.

Some of these are nifty enough that I wanted to share, especially since almost all mashups are available for free download. Check them out!

Clever Juxtapositions

“Monty Python’s Killer Queen”
Theme from Monty Python’s Flying Circus
vs.
Queen – “Killer Queen”

“If I Were a Free Fallin’ Boy”
Beyonce – “If I Were a Boy”
vs.
Tom Petty – “Free Fallin’”
I’d never heard the Beyonce song, either. It’s not important to “getting” or enjoying this mashup.

“Don’t Cha Want Me”
Pussycat Dolls – “Don’t Cha”
vs.
Human League – “Don’t You Want Me”

“From the Heart of Glass”
Blondie – “Heart of Glass”
vs.
Philip Glass – “Glassworks” (combination of Opening and Closing)

Wow, That’s Really Cool / How the Hell Does That Work?

“Never Gonna Give Your Teen Spirit Up”
Rick Astley – “Never Gonna Give You Up”
vs.
Nirvana – “Smells Like Teen Spirit”
video available here

“Black Butterfly Busters”
Ram Jam – “Black Betty”
vs.
Smashing Pumpkins – “Bullet With Butterfly Wings”
vs.
Ray Parker Jr. – “Ghostbusters”
The Pumpkins song is the “rat in a cage” one — you probably know it, if not its title.

“Mia Freaky Mamma (On a Leash)”
Korn – “Freak on a Leash”
vs.
Abba – “Mamma Mia”
This one, in particular, is hysterically funny.

Just Plain Awesome

“Hotel California Must Go On”
The Eagles – “Hotel California”
vs.
Queen – “The Show Must Go On”

“Toxic Starlight”
Britney Spears – “Toxic”
vs.
Supermen Lovers – “Starlight”
Give this one a try even — or even especially — if you can’t stand the Britney Spears original. The new background completely harmonically recontextualizes the song.

Pure, Jaw-Dropping Magnificence

“Fixicity”
System of a Down – “Toxicity”
vs.
Coldplay – “Fix You”
SoaD is a scream-into-the-microphone-while-playing-heavily-distorted-chords metal band. “Fix You” is one of Coldplay’s slower, more boring songs, and that’s saying something. The intersection between them is nothing short of epic, in all the senses of that word.

This is the first sentence of this blog post. This is the second sentence. This is a link to the story that inspired this blog post. This is almost the title of this blog post, but not quite. This sentence acknowledges that this story has been circulating around HRSFA for a while. This sentences qualifies the previous sentence by suggesting that some HRSFANS still may not have read it. This sentence exhorts those who have not read it yet to do so now. This is the last sentence of this blog post.

I think quite a few HRSFANS will get a kick out of today’s Irregular Webcomic!

(via Language Log)

I’m not sure what to think about the new shirt from Questionable Content. On the one hand: Cat! Jet pack! Science! Glow in the dark! On the other hand: What does the phrase “Science is a verb now” actually mean? The blurb for the shirt, to its credit, actually does use “science” as a verb:

Pay no attention to the cat sciencing through space. She was sciencing where she wasn’t supposed to science and it is our hope that in the end her sciencing will help further the cause of science.

I’m all for sciencing to further the cause of science, but without that explanatory text (which, unlike the title of a certain story, does not appear on the shirt itself) I find the phrase pretty puzzling. When I first saw it, I thought it was perhaps refering to the idea that “verbs are actions; nouns are things”, which is a huge oversimplication, and which I therefore do not want to encourage. Speaking of which, here is a shirt I know I love.

But anyway, back to the QC shirt: am I overthinking? Does it really mean what it says? Does it mean something else entirely? Am I overthinking because OMG it’s a glow in the dark cat with a jetpack and SCIENCE!?