Let's see, at the moment, I have:
Hmm. I really ought to post something. Wonder how I'd go about doing that? Maybe there's a button or something.
A few months ago I switched this blog's RSS feed to FeedBurner, and at the same time, I made a small tweak to the feed, one which I've been wondering if those of you using feed readers find handy or annoying. At the bottom of every post in the feed, there's a line that says "Comments(n)", where n is the number of comments that have been left on the post. The effect is that when comments are left on a post, the text of the post changes, causing it to show up again as unread in some feed readers (notably Bloglines). I thought this might be convenient for people who want to follow comment threads, but it's possible I've out-clevered myself.
What do you think? Helpful or horrible?
Quietly and without any fanfare, an important milestone has been reached. Can you feel it? As of a couple of weeks ago, every one of the linguists on my Ph.D. committee has been mentioned on Language Log.
Can you say the same? No. No, you can't. (Unless you can, in which case feel free to leave a comment and declare your membership in my exclusive club.)
I feel out of touch. In the early history of the linguistiblogosphere, way back around 2004 when dinosaurs ruled the 'net, it used to be easy to keep track of all the different language blogs—mostly because it was just Language Hat, Language Log, and a few others. Now that every man, woman, and child on the face of the Earth has a blog, I have a hell of a time keeping track of everyone who's writing about language and linguistics any more.
Help me out. If you have a language blog, leave a comment with a link and a description of your interests. Feel free to leave one even if you know I already know about your blog—who knows, you might attract a few more readers.
Earlier this month I noted in a comment that this blog had received a visit from author John Crowley. A little Internet sleuthing revealed that he has a LiveJournal: John Crowley Little and Big. It appears he was directed here by a comment on this post in which he asks for examples of the use of novel language(s) in SF. His readers provide several suggestions that should be of interest to people who come here for the "Linguistics in SF" posts, including a few I've written about and a bunch more that I haven't. I guess my inexorably growing to-read list just got a little longer...
Here are a few sites I've found out about recently, some by email, some by noticing links here via Technorati or Google. They all share a common theme: little vignettes made out of found snatches of language. Great minds think alike, they say—it must be something in the water. (There's water in the tubes, right?)
If you're interested in the origins of language, check out Babel's Dawn, a newish blog devoted to the subject—or rather, to "the origins of speech", a distinction the blog's author Edmund Blair Bolles defends in his inaugural post. See also his discussion of the controversy about starlings learning recursive grammars (which I wrote about here). In that post, he mentions an aspect of the debate I hadn't heard about: Chomsky apparently responded to a question about the controversy emailed to him by a blogger on MySpace.
[Babel's Dawn actually began about a month and a half ago, but I'm just now catching up with my blog-related email, very late as usual. Apologies all around.]
Over the last few days I've been noticing a steady stream of visitors to this site who have found it via Google searches for threepio's buddy (for which this page is currently the number one hit). Anybody know what that's about? Is there some new Star Wars parody going around that I haven't heard of? I've gotten a big kick out of the last three, and I wouldn't want to miss out.
Our long linguistiblogosphere nightmare is over. Having recovered from a couple of weeks of technical difficulties, Language Hat is back in business. Go, visit, read!
[A No-Prize to whoever identifies the reference in the title of this post first, BTW.]
Two visitors to this site who share some of my interests have called my attention to new regular Friday features on their respective blogs. The first feature is The Dagger Aleph's Video Deconstruction Fridays, in which DA examines a classic 80's music video in unnecessary (and therefore entertaining) detail. This week it's Pat Benatar's "Love is a Battlefield" that gets the treatment. The second feature is Unused and Probably Unusable's Heinlein Fridays, in which Eh Nonymous writes about issues related to the law and lawyers in Heinlein's fiction. This week's post is full to bursting with interesting bits from Job: A Comedy of Justice, Have Spacesuit, Will Travel, I Will Fear No Evil, and Starship Troopers. (For a future topic, might I suggest the parallel world with the "eye for an eye" legal system that the main characters visit in The Number of the Beast?)
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