This 4th of July, although I'm spending part of it working (because I took off Wednesday to hang with D. and show him Rust Belt), I'm celebrating my own American independence and feisty spirit, as well as my country's. Yesterday I blogged under my own name at the rather uneven and wacky faculty blog -- even as my senior colleagues hide behind pseudonyms -- and I agreed to a potential meeting of con...

So. About that blog post that annoyed me...Way back in the ancient time of June 17, Mark Liberman at Language Log wrote a post in which he said the following:In fact, in my (admittedly limited) experience, English departments are among the last places on campus where you're likely to find any indication of interest in any form of linguistic analysis whatever.I'd be very happy to find that I'm wrong...

One of my favorite people in the world is coming through town tomorrow for about 24 hours, so I won't be posting for a few days. And since I haven't been posting for quite a few days already, it'll just be more of the same.In the meantime, I'll try to think of something substantive and academic to write about. So here's a question: if a blog post that annoyed the heck out of me is weeks old by the...

What the frak are they putting in those Costco muffins? Whatever it is, Pippi finds it abso-frakin-lutely irresistible.Now that may not seem all that unusual, but you have to understand that Pippi is probably the best-behaved dog ever when it comes to food impulses and behavior: she doesn't beg and under normal circumstances doesn't counter-surf. I can sit on the couch and eat over my lap something...

When I was in junior high, my best friend Maria and I used to sneak off to a corner of the playground to listen to a cassette tape (on an office tape recorder) of George Carlin's then current HBO special, which her older brother had made with the same the recorder, microphone held up to the TV.We would listen to that show over and over and over again. We loved it. It was the one where he expanded t...