A stacked relative clause construction (or, simply, a stacked relative) is a construction in which a relative clause modifies a nominal construction already containing a relative clause. A cleft sentence is a sentence one of whose constituents is introduced by anticipatory IT. A sentence which exhibits simultaneously stackedness and cleavage is the following:Lifted from Charles Fillmore's contribution to Studies Out in Left Field: Defamatory Essays Presented to James D. McCawley on the Occasion of His 33rd or 34th Birthday, via John Lawler.It's my buxom cousin who's wearing a low-cut sweater that's a good example of a cleft stacked relative.
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Linguistics humor
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Lite-Brite phrenology
"If a thought happens in a forest of neural dendrites, and no one is there to measure it, did you really think it?" -from Matt Hutson's blog. (The title is from his blog, too.)
Hutson had an article in the NY Times Magazine on Sunday, in their "Year in Ideas" issue, in which he discussed the term neurorealism (which means, roughly, "swallowing an fMRI scan whole"), which was coined by biomedical ethicist Eric Racine (and his colleagues) in an article in Nature Reviews Neuroscience. Racine et al. defined three terms that could use some more exposure:
neurorealism - how coverage of fMRI investigations can make a phenomenon uncritically real, objective or effective in the eyes of the public
neuroessentialism - how fMRI research can be depicted as equating subjectivity and personal identity to the brain (see also neurobollocks)
neuropolicy - attempts to use fMRI results to promote political and personal agendas
Try to work these into everyday conversation.
(Via Language Log!)
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Especially stupid religious "science"
You cannot make this shit up. (I'm on the grading side of exams, and finding stupidity on the Web seems far more interesting than ever.)
Chuck Missler explains the Peanut Butter Theory of Evolution:
Missler is not kidding. On his website, he explains: "Every time you open a fresh, new jar of some food item, and don't find evidence of "new life," you have conducted an empirical experiment which refutes the common superstition which continues to be promoted by the orthodox witch doctors of biogenesis: that life occurred without the involvement of a master designer." If you don't understand the sophisticated theorizing behind such a view, you are beyond help.
And, although the video below is old, I'd never seen it before. In it, Ray Comfort, alongside the chuckling chucklehead Kirk Cameron, explains his idiocy to us. In particular, he shows us why the existence of a banana is an atheist's nightmare:
How can anyone conceivably take these people seriously? Does anyone?
Bush = lying motherf*cker
George W. Bush on December 4, 2007, responding to a reporter's question about when he knew about the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that Iran had discontinued its nuclear weapons program in 2003: "And it wasn't until last week that I was briefed on the NIE that is now public." (Taken directly from the White House transcript.)
But Bush had been briefed, in August.
Yeah, I know I'm about a week behind on this, but maybe a few more people should know about this.
The accuracy of the NIE report is under dispute (see the Time link above), but this doesn't change the fact that (once again), that Bush is demonstrably a liar.
According to my calendar, we have 405 very long days until we are rid of Bush.
Monday, December 03, 2007
Texas science educator pushed out for advocating science
"Intelligent design" (i.e., creationism; let's call it what it is) is a very bad idea. It's not a scientific theory; it's transparently religion masquerading (very badly) as science.
But, despite the awesomely-bad science that intelligent design represents, this doesn't mean that political pressures can't generate even greater levels of stupidity, and quite probably illegal behavior.
The Texas science curriculum director, Chris Comer, recently was all but forced to resign from her position after she forwarded an e-mail about a talk by the co-author (Barbara Forrest) of a book entitled Inside Creationism's Trojan Horse. According to a November 29 article in the Austin American-Statesman, Comer was put on adminstrative leave in October shortly after she forwarded an e-mail about Forrest's talk to "several individuals and a few online communities." This apparently was a violation of a directive (see the disciplinary memo sent re: Comer; it reeks of weaselly legalese) given to Comer that stated that she was not to "communicate in writing or otherwise with anyone outside the [Texas Education A]gency in any way that might compromise the integrity of the [Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills] development and revision process." The TEKS revision is apparently an overhaul of the Texas school system curriculum that's ongoing. And Comer's mistake was to intentionally or accidentally endorse the idea that creationism in the guise of intelligent design is horseshit; her position within the TEA requires that she, as a representative of the agency, remain neutral about creationism and not provide (back to the memo here) "guidance or opinions about instructional methodology."
There were other dressed-up complaints in the memo about Comer's "insubordination", but these too smell like they came from lawyers who were trying to protect the TEA from a wrongful termination lawsuit. But it's clear what happened here: Comer was fired because she incidentally endorsed the (truthful) equation "creationism = not science" and this is not popular or acceptable in a conservative state like Texas.
Besides the witch-huntery aspect of this, what's most disturbing about this (although hardly surprising) is that some politicos in Texas believe that neutrality in the realm of science means that creationism is to be taken seriously as science. But it is not neutral to have creationism being taught in a science class; it is an positive endorsement of its scientific status, which is woefully lacking, and always will be.
UPDATE: The NY Times published an op-ed piece about this story this morning (Dec. 4). The conclusion: "We can only hope that adherents of a sound science education can save Texas from a retreat into the darker ages."
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Mindreaders redux; Nature slaps the NY Times!
The journal Nature has published an editorial slapping the New York Times for its incredibly stupid decision to run advertising posing as (really shoddy) science on its op-ed page a few Sundays back (see here for more, and here for the original "op-ed" piece). In Nature's editorial is a rebuke for some aspects of cognitive and affective neuroscience research that deserves quoting:
[H]ow do you find out what people are feeling? ... Apparently just asking them was simply not good enough. So how did [the researchers] uncover the innermost thoughts of their 20 subjects? The[y] used functional magnetic resonance imaging to scan the subjects' brains while they viewed images of political candidates ... A group of cognitive neuroscientists was swift to object to its conclusions — which veer close to a modern-day phrenology.
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Hubristic Neuroscience (or, Mindreaders!)
Oh, barf.
On Sunday (Nov. 11), the New York Times published an op-ed piece written by a team of neuroscientists, led by a researcher named Marco Iacoboni from UCLA, and including a couple of folks from a company called FKF Applied Research. In this wildly overstated piece, they described a study in which people viewed pictures of political candidates and watched video clips of speeches made by these candidates. While doing all of this, their brain activity was measured in an fMRI tube. In the article, the authors made a variety of amazing claims about how activity in certain brain regions corresponds in an apparently one-to-one manner with emotional states. I had no idea that brain-reading was such a precise science! An example of this kind of bunkum: "When viewing images of [Hillary Clinton], these voters exhibited significant activity in the anterior cingulate cortex, an emotional center of the brain that is aroused when a person feels compelled to act in two different ways but must choose one. It looked as if they were battling unacknowledged impulses to like Mrs. Clinton." Whoa. I think these folks are trying to doing some more-traditional mind-reading here, along with that of the neuroscientific variety.
Thankfully, many folks have called out the Times and the researchers, including Martha Farah at the University of Pennsylvania, the bloggers at Mind Hacks, and Daniel Engber at Slate, among others. This is not the first time that Iacoboni and his colleagues from FKF have pulled off these kinds of shenanigans, bypassing any kind of peer review to present wild claims to a credulous public about what neuroscientists can do: In early 2006, Iacoboni and friends scanned the brains of subjects who were watching Super Bowl commercials. The results of this study were disseminated widely ("instant science" - that is, not peer-reviewed, nor up to snuff for publication in a scientific journal) on Edge.com and to the press (see here, for example). What a waste.
I've done my part here. I just want to make sure that at least a few more people are aware of the crap being perpetrated by some in the scientific community.
P.S. I discovered that the Times yesterday published a letter to the editor expressing displeasure with the Times and the researchers, signed by a group of top neuroscientists. The heart of the matter: "As cognitive neuroscientists who use the same brain imaging technology, we know that it is not possible to definitively determine whether a person is anxious or feeling connected simply by looking at activity in a particular brain region. This is so because brain regions are typically engaged by many mental states, and thus a one-to-one mapping between a brain region and a mental state is not possible."
Singular "their" and deep anaphors
On Language Log today, the linguist Geoffrey Pullum posted an interesting question that's worth pondering (my boldfacing below is simply to highlight a separate, interesting observation):
My gut sense is that this is a similar situation to the one highlighted in a paper entitled "Comprehending Conceptual Anaphors" (Gernsbacher, 1991, in the journal Language and Cognitive Processes; large PDF link) by psychologist Morton Gernsbacher about what she called conceptual anaphors, which are illustrated nicely by the sentences, I think I'll order a frozen margarita. I just love them. Gernsbacher argued that a pronoun like this is not, strictly speaking, referring to the word margarita in the first sentence, but is instead referring to the concept of margaritas. In this case, it's a so-called deep anaphor because it finds its referent not in the surface form (that is, the words themselves) of an utterance, but in the meaning of an utterance. I think that the driver example posted by Pullum is nearly analogous to the margarita example. Consider the following variant of the king example that doesn't sound too bad to my ears:Compare the following two sentences:
- Do not speak to the driver or distract their attention without good cause.
- *Do not speak to the king or distract their attention without good cause.
Example 1 is closely modeled on a sign found behind the driver's cab on route 29 Lothian Buses in Edinburgh. It is clearly grammatical and acceptable. (Prescriptivists might object to it, but as you know, singular antecedents for forms of the pronoun they are attested in the finest English authors since Middle English times; the prescriptivists just haven't paid attention to the evidence of literary usage.) Example 2 contrasts in only one word, yet is clearly ungrammatical (or strikingly unacceptable at the very least). Why? What is the difference between driver and king that is responsible for the contrast?
George W. Bush acts like a king, but at least most of them haven't seemed so childish.How does that sound to you? Using king so that it refers to a class rather than an individual seems to make all the difference. I think in Pullum's driver example, the sign is meant to be able to refer to any driver who happens to be present, whereas in the king example the referent of king is a particular person.
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
The Creation Museum = Comedy Gold!
The blogger John Scalzi recently visited The Creation Museum (I refuse to link to this nonsense) and posted on Flickr some of the pictures he took. The captions that have been added since are hilarious. A taste (that's a woman and a young girl engaged in some kind of activity whilst a wave of water, visible through the window in their Flinstones-esque dwelling, rushes toward them, presumably to wash away their sin, or some such bullshit):
One caption: Those girls are obviously playing some early form of Dungeons and Dragons.
What an enormous source of comedy this "museum" is. Check out this awesome saddled dinosaur that can be viewed (and, I assume, sat upon) at the CM:
Almost every day you can read or hear about how U.S. students (and adults) are far behind much of the developed world in math and science. Is it any wonder why?
Tuesday, November 06, 2007
Atheist loses mind, becomes theist
In the New York Times Magazine on Sunday (November 4) there appeared a lengthy article about Antony Flew, a professor of philosophy who taught at a variety of universities in the U.K. I'd heard of Flew a few times, probably because he was a favorite son among atheists (i.e., I can't place precisely where I'd heard of him). As the NYT Magazine article makes clear, he rose to fame in the atheist world initially because of his essay, "Theology and Falsification," in which he makes a clean little argument (1055 words, according to MS Word) about why the existence of some kind of deity can neither be proved nor disproved.
Anyhow, a few years ago, Flew announced that he was more a less a theist, an event which caused quite an uproar among folks who follow these sorts of things. And this fall, a book that Flew is the co-author of, There Is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind, is being released. The article in the NYT Magazine makes it pretty clear that Flew has been subtly (but not apparently maliciously) manipulated by a number of Christian scholars (some in the sciences, some in the humanties). Further, his co-authorship of the book in question is likened to that of a star athlete who has a ghostwriter pen an autobiography. Worse than all of this, it appears that Flew is sinking slowly into dementia, and is being used by these Christians to advance their agenda via a very weird appeal to an authority they would never have considered an ally while his mind was sharp.
Very sad.
(Via Metafilter, like so much else that's good on the Web.)
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