Last year, I made a post where I discussed the possibility of using a new LJ community, glossographia, for my language-oriented posts to the Phrontistery, while retaining forthright for other purposes. My concern at that time was that readers of the Phrontistery were using the blog for one reason while all my LJ friends were there for different reasons. Ultimately, no one on my friends list really cared one way or the other so I scrapped that idea.

Now I am in a slightly different situation, namely that I'm about to be employed as a linguistic anthropologist at Wayne State, and my thoughts have been turning to the notion of academic blogging. It's something I've wanted to try for years, but the lack of stability in my employment situation coupled with the various business of life (e.g. Arthur, the job search, etc.) stood in the way. But starting in the fall, I'll be on a reduced teaching load for two years and won't have to spend hundreds of hours putting together job applications, and I'll be re-defining my academic work in any case. I've also seen some of the success junior scholars have had with academic blogging, and I have a big advantage, namely a well-established site in the Phrontistery.

I started the Phrontistery as a Geocities site way back in 1996 (alas, there is no web archive of those early days¹, although the 2001 version here has a similar homepage). At that time I had just started grad school, and envisioned the site as a general resource not only for obscure word lists, but more generally for essays and written material on linguistics, history, archaeology, and social theory. This was of course before there was a word 'blog', and I certainly didn't know what I was doing. Over time, the 'word list' function became more important on the site, although never its exclusive role.

So now, here we are 12 years later, still in the same city (after a brief hiatus), but worlds apart, and am seriously thinking of re-tooling the Phrontistery to be once again (if it ever was) a true thinking-place, by which I now mean an academic blog where I would post on issues close to my research and teaching interests. There are a few interesting linguistic anthropology blogs out there, but the 'market' certainly isn't saturated by any means. In fact some of the issues I'd want to deal with - literacy and writing systems, cognitive anthropology, language and prehistory - are covered poorly if at all.

So I'll be starting a new blog on the Phrontistery (probably using Wordpress) over the next few months. This journal isn't going anywhere - for everyday purposes, LJ will still be my home and the forthright journal will remain active. Beyond that, though, one option would be to maintain two language-related blogs (one for English wordplay and the pronunciation polls, and the other for academic matters) and another would be to simply have a single blog serving all these functions. I'm leaning towards the latter option, but I'm also cognizant that the average Phrontistery visitor may not have a great deal of interest in my ruminations on academic matters. I'll figure that out once we're settled in Windsor.


(1) In its earliest incarnation, the site would automatically play a MIDI version of Handel's 'Harmonious Blacksmith', which would then restart every time you clicked on a link. I kid you not. That only lasted a very short time, thankfully.

Tags: lj, phrontistery

If this article is accurate - my first take on it was that it had to be some sort of horrible hoax - then screw you, Larry Niven, you nutjob. All of us associated in any way with the SF community ought to be outraged. SIGMA is a group of largely libertarian-leaning SF authors who are providing conceptual advice to the US Dept. of Homeland Security. This in itself is moderately troubling, but now we have this, from Ringworld author Larry Niven, at a Homeland Security conference last month:

Niven said a good way to help hospitals stem financial losses is to spread rumors in Spanish within the Latino community that emergency rooms are killing patients in order to harvest their organs for transplants.

“The problem [of hospitals going broke] is hugely exaggerated by illegal aliens who aren’t going to pay for anything anyway,” Niven said.

So, we have a prominent libertarian SF writer advocating the use of federal funds from one government agency to propagandistically spread the lie that another, underfunded public service is intentionally killing citizens, thereby reducing 'waste' while further assuming that most Spanish-speakers in the country are illegal immigrants. Tell you what, you dumb shit, why don't we just cut out the middleman and use Homeland Security's funding to shore up the health care system.

I don't think that lying about inefficiencies in health care is typical of all or most libertarians - in fact, any real libertarian (including the many on my friends list) should be able to see in a moment that this is the exact opposite of libertarianism and in fact is the worst sort of racist, underhanded, mean-spirited bile one can possibly imagine. Not to mention that what the hell does Homeland Security have to do with eliminating waste in the hospital system? Oh right, I forgot, that's because brown people = illegal immigrants = terrorists.

If you want to understand why many of us on the political left are skeptical of libertarianism, this is it, in a nutshell. In this crowd at least, any intrusion into public life, any violation of common decency, any lie or misdirection, and indeed any government action is justifiable if it is perceived as saving a dollar here or there, because God forbid that anyone should have to pay taxes, or feel obliged to help those in need.

While it would be easy to write this off as just some guy saying something that (one would hope) would never be put into practice, Niven is highly esteemed in many circles and I don't doubt that any number of small-minded bureaucrats and officials will see this hate-filled wankery as sensible practice.

Tags: geekery, growlery, politics

I admit that writing a 'how to find me' post that will only be read by people who have already found me may seem counterproductive, but just to clarify, for those who are uncertain how best to reach me online:

I am available on Livejournal (of course). I can always be reached at my livejournal.com email address, which redirects to my main email, or of course you can comment on posts.

You can find me on Facebook under my real name, Stephen Chrisomalis. I made a decision long ago that I didn't really want to hide my identity, and that trying to maintain a true pseudonym online was ultimately inimical to my privacy. So you can find me there. I use FB mainly to keep in touch with various people who aren't on LJ; all my main blogging goes on here (at least right now). It is to some extent a professional presence insofar as I have some of my better / more interesting students on my friends list over there.

I am always accessible at the Phrontistery and at my phrontistery.info email address, which is currently my main email. It isn't going anywhere.

I use Stumbleupon, where my username is the same as here. I have a huge backlog of interesting sites that I've been meaning to bookmark, blog about, and add to an as-yet-solely-conceptual blogroll.

I do have various other email and internet accounts (gmail, hotmail, Sympatico mail, some blogging accounts, social bookmarking, librarything, etc.) which are dormant, being used as placeholders, or otherwise generally defunct. I don't check them or use them regularly, and they aren't reliable means of reaching me.

I don't give out my phone or home address openly but they aren't hard to find if you know my name. In any case they will be changing shortly due to my upcoming move.

Tags: lj, phrontistery
Current Mood: crappy
Current Music: Metallica - Orion

Pretty crappy day start to today ... We're both feeling pretty cruddy about the move and the dislocation of all our friendships, our social ties, etc., as we go to Detroit-Windsor. Marking ... meh, so-so at best, they just aren't flowing as fast as I would like. Dealing with administrative teaching-related claptrap this afternoon didn't help. Still raining.

Then I get an email about fifteen minutes ago informing me that I have been awarded the McGill Arts Undergraduate Society's annual Excellence in Teaching Award. And apparently there will be some sort of reception ... I guess ... I guess my students must have nominated me, and ... ah shit now I am happy, and melancholy, and overjoyed, and so grateful.

Tags: teaching
Current Mood: indescribable

Please note: The trailer for Season 3 of The Venture Bros. is now out and is completely awesome. If you haven't seen the show, the trailer will give you only 7/16 of the pleasure it gave me (Note: This figure is SCIENTIFIC FACT), but you may also consider yourself on notice that you are missing the best comedic show on television. Season 3 airs starting June 1! Whee!

Tags: geekery

Yesterday we drove 8 hours from Montreal to Windsor (less than the 10 I figured it would be) and basically crashed from exhaustion. This morning we met our broker at 8:30am, started seeing houses at 9 and then worked through a seemingly endless series of houses, mostly in the southern region of Windsor called Devonshire Heights. By 3:00 we were convinced we had seen everything in the city that met our criteria, and after a couple of revisits, were ready to place an offer by 5:00. (Julie will post more on the househunt and the 'loser houses' momentarily). After writing up the contract in a mall food court, our broker took the offer to the seller about an hour ago, and then just met with us at Tim Horton's (one of over 30 in the city!) to present their very reasonable counteroffer, which we signed on the spot and made a deposit.

So, details: It's 8 years old, a 4 bedroom, 2 full baths, with a very big kitchen with an island, cathedral ceilings on the main floor living room/dining room, hardwood floors upstairs and laminate below, a huge family room downstairs, a garage, air conditioning. The neighbourhood is a quiet residential neighbourhood, which will take some adjustment, but is exactly what we were looking for. It is basically the best house we saw all day even though it was middle-to-low in the price range of houses we saw today (some people think *much* too highly of their property). Contingent on financing (which is not a big deal because it is *well* under our maximum price) we take possession May 30 and move early in June.

Woohoo!

Tags: windsor
Current Mood: ecstatic

As you may know, one of Arthur's favourite bath toys (and in fact, one of his first 100 words) is Cthulhu the octopus-like Great Old One:


Today for the first time, Arthur announced unprovoked that 'Cthulhu is an octopus' which is of course what any sane parents would have told him it was two years ago. Ah well, sanity was never one of my strong points ...

Also, he is under the impression that he can type his name into the front of his books where it says "This book belongs to __________________________" or whatever. Do you suppose he spends a bit of time on the computer?

Tags: arthur, language

Ah, my boy ... warped by the media already:

Arthur: "Those three words sound the same."
Julie: "Which three words?"
Arthur: "Nickelodeon, Nick Jr., and the other Nick Jr."

Tags: arthur, language

So I have just spent the past 6 hours in the wonderful town of Hampstead, Quebec, as well as northwestern parts of the neighbouring borough of Cote-de-Neiges/Notre-Dame-de Grace, and a couple of weird little slivers of Cote-Saint-Luc. Why, you may ask? I and three brave students from my Arch Methods class, together comprising Team Valiant, spent the day wandering about documenting and photographing stop signs as part of our ongoing project, Stop: Toutes Directions, in which we are documenting stop signs across a huge swath of Montreal. Needless to say, while the urban planners who modelled Hampstead after the eponymous area of London may have meant well, by the end we were cursing them and their insanely curved streets and bizarre street naming practices and tendency to put stop signs in the middle of streets for no particular reason. On the other hand, 179 stop signs in 6 hours at 71 intersections is not half bad! Fortunately it was a beautiful day (I went around most of the afternoon in just a sweater) and Team Valiant did their work with few complaints.

Tags: teaching
Current Location: not in Hampstead
Current Mood: hot

Arthur is starting to figure out the phonetic basis of writing. Of course he can read all the names of his favourite shows, words like 'Menu' and 'Go' that appear on his favourite web sites, and phrases like 'Bonus Features' from his growing DVD collection. But the other day at game, sorceror wrote 'HI ARTHUR' on the little magnetic writing board we have for him and asked him what H-I spelled, to which he sensibly replied: /hɪ/ (like 'hit' without the t). Then today he was reading the name of one of his favourite shows, Hi-5, and pronounced it /haj fajv/, and then hypercorrected to /hɪ fajv/.

I rue the day I ever taught him the word 'experiment'; he is now insistent on 'experimenting' with soap and water every night in the bath. How is a scientist such as myself supposed to react when his toddler, resisting the end of bathtime, wails "Nononono! More experimenting! More experimenting!"

Although maybe he'll be an architect. He was reading one of my copies of Archaeology magazine (which sit in the bathroom next to his potty-time books) with Julia the other day and she was showing him an article entitled 'How to build a pyramid'. Arthur asked what the words said, and when Julia told him, he replied sensibly, "You put the top on it."

Although space exploration is also popular. He's a big fan of Google Earth, which he calls 'the planet'. But recently he was frustrated with the program for some reason and cried out "I wanna go to a different planet!"

Tags: arthur
Current Mood: melancholy