Today’s is the latter; this is related to things I’d like to work further on. In this paper, T. Matlock demonstrates effects consistent with readers simulating actual motion to understand descriptions of fictive motion.

Fictive motion is shown in sentences like ‘A line of trees runs along the driveway’, where nothing is actually running.

Longer paths, or ones that cross more difficult terrain or greater distance, take longer to comprehend, even controlled for the number of words or complexity of description.

This may seem obvious - but it runs counter to the usual assumptions of most of the field, which thinks of your brain as much like a dictionary, where senses of words are ‘looked up’ when you hear them, so it’s a really nice result.

Sentences such as ‘The road runs through the valley’ and ‘The mountain range goes from Canada to Mexico’ include a motion verb but express no explicit motion or state change. It is argued that these sentences involve fictive motion, an implicit type of motion. But do people trying to understand these sentences mentally simulate motion?

This question was addressed in four experiments. In each, participants read a story about travel-for instance, fast versus slow, short versus long distance, and easy versus difficult terrain-and then made a timed decision about a fictive motion sentence. Overall, latencies were shorter after they had read about fast travel, short distances, and easy terrains. Critically, the effect did not arise with nonfictive motion target sentences (e.g., The road is in the valley).

• Matlock, Teenie (2004), ‘Fictive motion as cognitive simulation‘, Memory & Cognition, 32 (8), 1389-400.

Of course it’s no surprise that in a room of a few dozen undergraduates there are those for whom grades are the end all and be all of academic study. It is nevertheless exhausting to watch the cold calculation where there could be bright inquisition. I do my best in my courses to make my excitement clear; not to push it, but simply to share it. It’s important, I think, to try to defend against the culture that eats the menu and doesn’t notice that it’s not nutritious; the ones who think the model is the world. It’s especially important in the sciences, where the tendency to associate with the model is so strong and a connection to the empirical is so important, where curiosity is crucial.

In this case, I don’t think the student is necessarily wrong; the transcription cited is plausible. But I am certain that the student didn’t for a minute risk getting the ‘wrong’ answer by producing the word and listening, but went straight for the dictionary. It’s a matter of ‘efficiency’.

Thanks; I’ll look into this. I appreciate how thoroughly you’ve labeled everything. Before I get back to you with a reply, though, I’d like to share a perspective.

Your grade is already a [redacted], and you’re doing fine in the class. While I too found grades significant, something else came to my mind as significant when we discussed this. Both here and in our discussion after class, the only source you cite is the dictionary - the ‘right answer’ someone else wrote down, which you looked up.

While reference materials are valuable resources, the goal here, in this science course, is to get you to think - to introspect - to look at the world itself, and make your own judgements. When we spoke, not once did how _you_ pronounce this word come up, or any evidence that you know what this diphthong [as the dictionary the student consulted indicated] would sound like instead of the /o/ that some other dictionary has in it. That would have been the best possible evidence to present. I encourage you to take the opportunity in this course to examine the world itself, directly, with what is clearly a truly high quality intellect. The dictionary will always be there later, and they’ll always disagree anyway.

If you’d like to talk about this further, please come on by my office hours (or schedule a time). Bring your paper and we can talk about how to hear these vowels.

JWZ has an excellent weekly mixtape as well, more of the ‘reckless driving’ variety.

The Federal government’s terrorist watch list has hit one million records, per their own admission. This is a million names, not a million people; names like ‘Robert Johnson’ mean that tens of thousands of Americans with that name are marked as suspects. Senator Ted Kennedy has been pulled off flights five times because his name matches the list. 

Where do the names on the list come from? Any name ever used by anyone ‘connected’ to terrorism - which may mean a real criminal used a fake name to rent a car, or may mean you gave to Greenpeace or another citizen’s group. Want to find out if your name is on the list? Well, you could go buy a plane ticket. The TSA is not responding to Information Act requests on the matter — it’s an issue of national security. 

And the procedure for clearing your name from that list? It’s classified, sorry. If you have a few hundred thousand dollars, you can spend a year suing the Feds to get it removed (and rest assured, that doesn’t mark you in any way.) Other than that, well, everything appears in order, citizen, why don’t you just go catch your flight? 

It’s fortunate we have computers to check every flight against this list; otherwise, we’d have to have everyone on the watch list sew little colored symbols into all their clothing or something. 

Okay; references to Nazi Germany are always a sign it’s time to put down the keyboard, per Godwin’s law. But what will it take for this to seem real? Does this scare you?

Have you written a letter to Diane Feinstein telling her her refusal to allow articles of impeachment to be considered for a vote is unpatriotic and dangerous?

Have you joined the ACLU yet? It’s thirty-five bucks, and they work hard. 

 Perhaps tomorrow. 

Probably you know that a European (ISO) A0 sheet of paper is one square meter, and that successive sizes are half the preceding, so that an A1 is an A0 folded in half, down to A7; A4 is the standard ‘letter’ paper. The standard is very consistent, such that the weight of a letter can be calculated by the size of paper used, copying machines all can auto-fill multiple pages, and the like. This is really convenient.

I just found out that German toilet paper is A6 sized. 

ʌmɛrikɐ -> ʌmɛrigɐ

Complex onsets are allowed, complex codas are tolerated if sonorant enough, but discouraged. And the mozzarella is really beyond comprehension.

* 1 1/2 oz absinthe
* 4 oz tonic water (decent tonic water, not too cloying)
* Peychaud’s bitters