Bite the Hand that Bores You

Today is a glorious day. It’s 85 degrees - in the city! - and the Republican plan to close 50 state parks (but save no money doing so) was defeated. Oh, and we’ve peeled back another layer of bigotry: we’re finally allowing that fags are people too.

We therefore conclude that in view of the substance and significance of the fundamental constitutional right to form a family relationship, the California Constitution properly must be interpreted to guarantee this basic civil right to all Californians,whether gay or heterosexual, and to same-sex couples as well as to opposite-sex couples.
. . .

Under these circumstances, we cannot find that retention of the traditional definition of marriage constitutes a compelling state interest. Accordingly, we conclude that to the extent the current California statutory provisions limit marriage to opposite-sex couples, these statutes are unconstitutional.

(California Supreme Court case S147999)

Tomorrow may see me weeping, but today I am granting myself the luxury of believing that my fellow citizens are essentially decent people and that there will be no state-wide effort, encouraged from the national level as a divisive issue in the election, to modify the Constitution via California’s direct plebescite*. No one would actually intentionally add bigotry to the constitution, right? Right?

* Democracy is the belief that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard. - H L Mencken

The problem with trying to channel Björk is that Björk

is

not

dead

yet.

I just used the word ‘grok’ in a sentence to a German colleague. Realising my mistake and preempting the question, I said, “Sorry, ‘grok’ is a word meaning ‘to understand deeply’. It’s not in the dictionary, it was coined by an American science fiction writer in the seventies.”

Then I idly hit apple-space and typed ‘grok’, and

grok |grɑk|
verb ( grokked, grokking)

[ trans. ] informal - understand (something) intuitively or by empathy.

[ intrans. ] empathize or communicate sympathetically; establish a rapport.

ORIGIN mid 20th cent.: a word coined by Robert Heinlein (1907–88), American science fiction writer, in Stranger in a Strange Land.

Neologism in action!

I tried Philz new blend today - “The Ride of the Four Horsemen”. I probably should have taken that as a hint.

I sure am glad that I spilled a third or so of it on the way to the train, because I probably would have been vibrating quickly enough to slip between the molecules of the seat if I’d had an entire cup.

A squib is a short paper that introduces data in a linguistic topic. It may make some sketches toward analysis, but usually demonstrates an unusual or interesting wrinkle and shows how it may be worthwhile or interesting to explain.

Slow Children Playing is one I wrote last semester; it’s on the semantic and syntactic ambiguities of street signs.

The California Academy of Science had a fantastic display on leafcutter ants.

A fallen cacao tree lay on a bed of simulated jungle floor in a 40′ plastic viewing chamber. A ceaseless line of ants curved around fake boulders, climbing over each other in a mindless drive to consume the leaves restored daily by museum workers. Leafless ants stream outward to the tree; flecks of green sail back upstream in a silent green regatta. Each ant takes its turn slicing off a piece of leaf, then returns it to the nest, where they are composted and used to grow food.

But what appears to be an organized dance is more of a drunken mosh pit. Leaves are dropped halfway back to the nest. Ants start slicing a leaf, are bumped by another and, and wheel around, slicing indiscriminantly. Ants resolutely chomp through the last bit holding the segment they themselves are on, and flutter to the ground. From time to time the ant stops slicing, tugs on the cut section, and if it doesn’t come loose, may wander away. Half-cut segments are abandoned, then restarted at an odd angle by another ant. Sometimes a final cut breaks a section free entirely, and it flutters to the ground below while the ant stumbles upside down to the other side of the leaf — or an ant tugs resolutely on the uncut piece of leaf, forgetting the piece that took so much work to cut free.

What does this have to do with my day? Nothing at all. I spent my day at an institute of higher learning.

My brother is an actual freaking race car driver. How cool is that?

Randal’s fantastic photos from my birthday party.

In case you’re wondering, I can save you picking glass fragments out of your walls and wasting a bottle of beer:

The champagne-sabering trick, where with savoir-faire you knock the top off a bottle of champagne with a manly knife, then pour with aplomb?

It doesn’t work with beer bottles.

No, not even the ones with a big annular around the cork.

Not even a little bit.

Well, actually, the flowers haven’t even really stopped blooming on Berkeley campus this year. I spent my birthday at the beach by Fort Funston, lying in the ice plants, running up and down the hill with dogs, and playing in the monumental surf. So it’s hard to say what sort of winter spring is springing out of.

But it’s really spring because the semester is starting. Tomorrow marks the first day of a my second semester. A mind-bruising day: 9:30 to 7:00 pm, Eve Sweetser, John Searle, George Lakoff. Not much of an opportunity to be non-clever even for a minute. Oh, there is half an hour around 3:00 for food, that’ll be nice.

I also have a new office. I am installed in #544 on the fifth floor of the 1947 Center St. building, under the auspices of the clearly naive and optimistic International Computer Science Institute. (This is where the Neural Theory of Language group, FrameNET, the Semantic Web and several other AI projects live, too.) I have a view over Martin Luther King, Jr. park and the Peace Wall, over the bay to the fog on San Bruno, and on sunny days I can hear the bums fighting on the street below. I’m sure I’ll see many sunsets through this window and eat lots of cheap takeout in this office.