Clearly, I'm no good at this blogging thing...

Hmm...So it looks like I've got almost two weeks to catch up on. It's pretty unlikely that I'll be able to do justice to everything that's happened here, but let's see what I can do.

[attention conservation notice: LONG post ahead that is probably too linguistic-y for some people, and certainly not linguistic-y enough for others]

OK, so just to make certain all of my readers know what I'm doing here, I'll recapitulate the classes I'm taking:

• Introduction to Computational Linguistics (aka CompLing) This is being taught by Steven Bird, Ewan Klein (Ash's MA advisor) and Ed Loper. It's a really general introduction to tasks that are the bread and butter of a computational linguist's day: automatically tagging words in a text for their lexical category (e.g. noun/verb), parsing sentences into hierarchically organized representations (a lot like when you used to "diagram sentences" in elementary school), and stuff like that. It all takes place using NLTK, the Natural Language Toolkit, which is a series of modules that the lecturers developed for the Python programming language. Since I find the CompLing stuff interesting, and Python is my favourite programming language, you can well imagine that I'm enjoying this class.


• Poverty of the Stimulus, Machine Learning, and Language Acquisition (aka PovStim) This class is devoted to a careful examination of Chomsky's (in)famous "argument from the poverty of the stimulus", which is pretty much at the core of the claim that children come to the task of language acquisition equipped with at least a bit of innate knowledge about how languages work. The lecturers are Shalom Lappin, a smart (Canadian!) dude who does philosophy and some computational linguistics, and Alex Clark, a (REALLY) smart dude who does machine learning of language. Both of them are great pedagogically, and the class is definitely forcing me to at least revisit some assumptions that I've left unchecked for several years.


• Computational Psycholinguistics (aka CompPsychoLing...I know, these are pretty clever, eh?) Taught by Roger Levy, who looks like he's about four years old (and his hair's way better than that picture would make you think). This class is probably the toughest one for me, given that I'm almost completely unfamiliar with the relevant body of literature, and I'm having to double-check a fair amount of the stuff that the authors assume of their readership. I'm certainly learning a lot in this one, though...the best was a paper that I came across in the bibliography of one of the readings that takes a close look at the relation between theory construction and computational modeling, and whether/when modeling is useful. Fun stuff.


• Introduction to Simulation as a Tool in the Study of Language (aka Simulation Blah Blah Blah...yes, I actually call it that) Taught by Andy Wedel, who got a PhD in Molecular Biology, then decided Linguistics was more fun and went back to do a PhD in that. This is definitely my favourite class. Andy's a great guy...very approachable (he often has lunch with my group and hangs out with us at social events) and a great teacher, who's clearly passionate about his area of research. I'm seeing his name crop up a lot in the bibliographies of papers by people whom I respect, so I think he's (i) on to something, (ii) definitely a strong up-and-comer. The take-home message of this class is that computational simulations of a particular sort can show that a lot of properties that were assumed to be part of our internal grammar in fact emerge independently through successive generations of language transmission between adults and children, given biases in the way we perceive and produce words (e.g. certain kinds of sounds are harder to hear, and certainly articulatory combinations are harder to make). A fair amount of the reading is stuff that I've come across before (when I started getting interested in complex systems theory and the Santa Fe Institute), but this class is forcing me to actually read the literature carefully and with a critical eye, so it's all good.

OK, so that was perhaps unnecessarily long. In any case, I'm definitely loving every minute of my time here, notwithstanding the fact that there's quite a bit of work to do. In fact, I have almost 1000 (!!!) pages of reading this month, and it's not exactly light stuff. But whatever...that's what I'm here for, right? So I spend several hours of every day reading. Anyway, that's the academic side of Life here.

On the social side, there's been some stuff going on, as well:

Saturday, July 7th: The first of two institute "parties" scheduled for this month. It was at The 750, the only pub on campus. The place has a weird vibe to it...acoustic tiling and fluorescent lighting on the ceiling make it look like an office building that gets converted after everyone goes home for the day. Nonetheless, we had a good time...there was a band (of linguists...named Dead Tongues...seriously, that's not even groanworthy) and I got to hang out with some fun people and chat with Ash a bit.

Wednesday, July 11th: Impromptu trip to San Francisco with Dave, Bryan and Claire! I had a great time. We took the Caltrain to SF and got there just past lunch time. The first thing we did was head over to Chinatown and grab lunch at a place The Chinese Restaurant (what else?). It was actually not that great, but we were all a bit hungry/grouchy, so we didn't shop around much. After that we went down by the water and took a trolley/cablecar all the way across town to The Castro, which is the gay district. Having Dave & Bryan around made this fun...we went to a bookstore and a couple of shops that might have reduced a lesser man to tears. Heh...good times. After that we wandered around town some more looking for a place to eat, and finally settled on a Columbian/Salvadorean place that Bryan remembered from a previous trip. The food was outstanding and cheap, and we hung out until after closing time. On the way home, we missed the 10pm train and were forced (boohoo) to go to a nearby brew pub to kill some time until the midnight train. I had a pretty decent red.

More to follow...a bunch of us went to Palo Alto for a non-cafeteria-style dinner over the weekend and hung out a bit, and there was a party in the courtyard last night...stay tuned.

Finding joy in linguistics and the resumption of normalcy

Things here are finally hitting their stride. I had my other two classes today -- Simulation As A Tool For The Study Of Language, and Computational Psycholinguistics -- and sat in on a third one (Ash & Ida's Constraint-Based Generative Syntax...I plan to take on the role of Minimalist devil's advocate, if the opportunity presents itself).

I'm definitely stoked about all of my classes. Each and every one of them has something exciting to offer, and moreover, it's looking like my background hope of coming out with a better idea of what I want to do for my thesis might come to fruition as well. Andy Wedel (the Simulation lecturer) has already expressed an interest in collaborating.

Of course, all of this excitement comes at a price. The amount of reading to do is pretty outrageous...I have probably close to 200 pages to read by next week, so I think this weekend is going to be pretty chill. There's supposed to be a social event of some sort on Saturday night, but I'm getting the feeling it's going to be low-key, since everyone else here is also talking about how much reading they have.

Other than academics, I'm trying hard to keep up with the athletic side of my time here. Alan and I played tennis for the second time this morning. We had to rush a bit to make it to Simulation (8:00am), so we've decided to try to get onto the court by 6:00am when we play (which we're hoping will be about three times/week)...who the hell am I, eh??

That's all for now. Life rolls on the way it should, and I need to do some laundry and start reading.

Pax.

Misadventures in LSA-LSA-land

[Attention conservation notice: long, rambly entry featuring nefarious deeds follows.]

Wow. Where to even begin. Last night ranks VERY high on my personal list of surreal nights. Before, I get into it, note that
the album is finally up!

[EDIT: I'm told that the photo captions in the album are full of typos. I did them in a hurry, so sorry about that. I'll get around to fixing them up soon.]


OK, so yesterday (Wednesday, July 4th) was a day off between the presession and the regular session, with a 4pm BBQ for everyone attending the LSA Institute. I think a lot of people had plans to do fun stuff, but the fact that it was July 4th meant that everything was closed, or not running (i.e. public transit). So we hung out here and tried to get ahead on our readings for the regular session coursework...rumour has it that it's the readings that'll kill you, and there are definitely a lot of them!

So Alan and I went to hang out in this gorgeous little courtyard that's right behind our room. Out there we met Mike, Abbie and Dave. Mike's from Philly. He's actually a salesman, but has long been interested in sociolinguistics and variation. He's tired of being an "amateur" and wants to take it to the next level, so he's here checking stuff out before he applies to grad school. Abbie's from New Zealand and is finishing up her MA. She knows Ash & Ida and is angry that we (Canada) stole them. HA! Dave recently moved to Seattle and will be starting his PhD at U of Washington. He's a big gay funny sociophoneticist. No really. He's freaking hilarious, and a really sweet guy. We all hung out, chatted, discussed linguistics and my general suspicion of exemplar-based theories of language and memory. Good times. After that we all headed to lunch where I met more people from this seriously fun crew. Bryan and Dave have only known each since meeting here, but they've already got a habit of spontaneously breaking into song, and doing other funny things. I definitely need more gay people in my life. [EDIT: Just to be clear, Bryan's a gay Jew, who matches his t-shirt and yarmulke everyday. He pretty much rocks.]

Post-lunch Alan and I played frisbee with Jess, Abbie and Sun Jin (SJ). Dave and Bryan were supposed to join us, but got distracted finding a place to buy booze within walking distance.

After frisbee we all walked across campus to the BBQ. I was a bit disappointed to find that there was no actual grilling going on. They just had those buffet-style hot platters laid out on several tables in the middle of a field. The food itself was quite fine, though...burgers, salad, etc. I purchased 5 drink tickets and used them on a somewhat mediocre red wine. (tsk, I naively expected better, given our proximity to wine country)

After the BBQ, the adventure began. Five of us (me, Alan, Dave, Bryan and Zack) struck out to find booze to bring back to the rez. En route we were accosted by Tony (cue frightening music), a rather sketchy dude who talks in gangster (seriously, he used the word "shorties" in reference to women several times, and non-ironically), and is apparently the kingpin of the little mall where he works. It was pretty clear from the outset that Tony's plagued by a virulent homophobia. He kept wanting to start up with Bryan and Dave, and Bryan, who's not the quietest dude you'll meet (bless his heart), wasn't necessarily helping the situation out.

Anyway, once Tony saw what we were up to, you could hear the gears turning as he realized that he had a rare opportunity to impress someone from out of town with his power. He scored us two cases of Heineken sans frais. No joke. He just walked into the store, waved at a few people, grabbed two cases and walked out. Needless to say, we were all a bit skeeved out by Tony, and anxious to get as far away from him as possible. Sadly, 'twas not to be. Tony didn't want to let us go until we drank ALL of the beer. So we sat there chugging beers and not talking a lot. Major fun, as you can imagine. I was a little concerned that at any moment he'd come out with something like "Here's the rest of my posse, you can handle payment with them", but it never happened.

So we finally start walking back to campus, and Tony decides to follow us. Awesome. As we got to campus, Bryan and Tony got into it pretty good. Nothing really bad was going to happen, since there were five of us and one scrawny one of him. Nonetheless, it was a not fun scene, and we were glad to part company with Anthony The Kingpin. Here is where my memory gets somewhat hazy.

From what I hear we wandered across campus back to the rez, generally being loud and annoying on the way. We got back around midnight (the adventures happen early in this part of the world, apparently) and then sat on a rez [EDIT: apparently "rez" means First Nations' reservation in the States. I should be saying "dorm"] porch and drank two bottles of wine before hitting the sack. Dave, who's awesomely animated and a great storyteller apparently recounted our tale over and over, and it seems that rumour of our escapade had spread to most of the rez within a few minutes of our arrival.

So today, as you can imagine, was even less fun. Bleah. I made it to one of my two classes, but have since read the slides from today's lecture and got summaries of the content, so I'm all good. Computational Linguistics (the one I made it to) looks like it's going to be really good, but it's, like, a 25 minutes walk from the rez, so I have to leave super-early to get there in time.

Anyway, the hangover was inexplicably bad, given that we didn't really drink THAT much. I didn't manage to actually eat anything until dinner time, and even that was touch and go. Nonetheless, here I am now, blogging it and feeling pretty much alright again. I spoke with AM and she seems to be doing quite well. She's got friends to hang out with and is enjoying the Ottawa Bluesfest. Fred is happy.

Tomorrow it's pre-breakfast tennis (who am I, right?) again with Alan, and then two classes before lunchtime. Simulation (which promises to be sweet), and Computational Psycholinguistics, which I'm pretty curious about, as there's been nothing posted about it thus far.

So it's 11:00pm and definitely time for bed now. Peace out, be excellent to each other, and I'll catch you on the flipside.

Stanford by night

So apparently I'm not tired at all, since I just wandered the campus for a good two hours. It's wonderful here at night...there are just enough lights on for a very moody and ambient feel.

The campus is given over to the raccoons at night. I saw five, including 3 frolicking kits. I stood not 5 feet from them and watched for a good 3 minutes. Very cool.

After that I saw a lovers' tryst. A young couple was standing in silence embracing in the front of the crazy church that's in my Picasa album. I didn't hang around to look at them, needless. The church is even more astonishing by night. I'm definitely getting that picture a few times over.

I feel a bit like an interloper walking around this place.

F.

Too lazy for a witty title

It's late and I've been trying to read some boring-assed psycholinguistic papers for one of my classes tomorrow, and it's not happening. Fortunately, I just remembered that the class in question doesn't start until 1:30, so I've got time to read this things after breakfast when I'm a bit more fresh. So now I'm just writing this in the dark, listening to Stack Shot Billy by The Black Keys (check Wikipedia for the story of Stagger Lee).

No big adventures today, really. The class that was postponed -- Mathematical Refresher for Computational Linguistics -- turned out to be boring and way more basic than what I need. I was hoping for some good ways to remember all those bits of information theory that I keep forgetting (note to self: purchase Cover & Thomas 1991 when I'm back home), but instead the dude was all "this is a vector and this is how you add them". To be fair, it was stated pretty clearly that the class was targetted at linguists who haven't done any math in a while (i.e. not me). Anyway, I lasted about 45 minutes and then bailed. That timeslot for tomorrow will be better spent reading, prepping for the regular session, and figuring out what I'm doing on Wednesday. This in turn involves planning my day around the big BBQ that the Institute is having for all of the summer school attendees, and there's a pile of us. Anyway, I'm thinking that the Transformers premiere will be de rigueur that day. I feel I owe it to my childhood self to go see it.

Oh yeah, I've taken to privately making fun of one of the lecturers. Robert Kluender, who's lecturing on ERPs (event-related potentials, basically reading brain waves), has this habit of unintentionally saying funny stuff. When he does this, I make a note somewhere of what he said and play a little name game. Here's what I've got so far:

• Robert "Like A Broken Zipper on Drugs" Kluender (in re: the propagation of action potential down the axonal fibre...I think he said "on drugs" five times in that lecture)


• Robert "Blood Is Actually a Great Conductor" Kluender (in re: impedance-lowering mishaps in prepping subjects for EEGs)


• Robert "I've Got a Small Inion" Kluender (in re: lining up the electrode cap on particular bones in the head and the variations in size of that little bone at the bottom of the back of your head)


• Robert "I'm Really Good at Staredowns" Kluender (in re: the fact that blinks screw up the EEG and good subjects have to be able to not blink while stimuli are presented...he then kinda bugged his eyes out and actually stared us down for a good 45 seconds while he continued to talk)

Funny shit indeed. In all seriousness, he's a pretty good lecturer, and I'm definitely enjoying the class. It's probably not having its intended effect, since I'm coming more and more to the conclusion that ERPs are pretty useless as a tool for understanding anything about language. (I'm kind of thinking that about fMRI and other imaging techniques, too)

Hmm. I guess that's about it for now. I'm feeling a bit antsy (just had a Rice Krispie square and a Diet Pepsi), so I think it's time for a short walk before I retire for the day. I've got a killer 80s playlist on my iPod so that should keep me feeling good for a bit. I'm plainly getting nostalgic as my twilight years approach.

That's all I've got, folks...Freddy out.

p.s. The photos should now be viewable.

Day 1!

First day of the presession today (a short session of three 3-day courses before the read deal kicks off). Of course, every one of my courses got moved to a different room, so I had to do a bit of running around (on this GIANT CAMPUS), and one of the three got flat-out cancelled for today.

It's all good in the end, though. The courses I did have ("Intro to ERP Studies of Language" and "Logic for Linguists") were both pretty basic today. The ERP class was all neuroscience, which I've been doing more or less nonstop for the past year, and the Logic class was just building up a foundational logic, which I've done in at least 3 other classes. No matter, though, both of them look like they'll get interesting and challenging pretty quickly (read "tomorrow").

I finally managed to get my hands on a calling card and talk to AM (twice!). I also let my folks know that I'm here in one piece.

I'm hoping to catch a show in San Francisco sometime this month...I took a quick peak at Pollstar and have found a couple of potential candidates: Tegan & Sara, Neville Staples (ex-vocalist from The Specials), The Squirrel Nut Zippers...I'm checking some other nearby cities now (San Jose, Santa Cruz).

On a different note, it turns out that my secret (from my wife) plan to start a semi-rigorous program of exercise will come to fruition (although it's plainly no longer a secret). I had been hoping to start running and just run a little bit every day for the duration of the institute, but let's face it; anyone who really knows me knows pretty well what the likelihood of that is. HOWEVER...it turns out that Alan (you remember my roommate, right?) has brought along not one, but two tennis racquets, and is looking for a partner. Now I'm the furthest thing from a tennis player, but I do love to watch it (remember that scene from Days of Thunder when Bobby Duvall asks Tom Cruise what his NASCAR experience is, and he says something like "ESPN has excellent coverage"?), and I've done alright with other racquet sports in the past. So...exercise it is, starting tomorrow afternoon, if all goes according to plan.

That's it for now, reader(s). It's getting late and I still have some stuff to read for tomorrow's ERP class.

Be excellent to each other.

From the holy-hell-i'm-a-blogger files...

Points of note:

1. I am writing this from Stanford, California (attending the LSA2007 Summer Institute).
2. California actually looks just like it does in the movies---palm trees, hacienda-style homes, the whole bit. There's something vaguely reassuring about that.
3. It feels like I'm visiting a past that I never had. As a youth, I harboured fantasies of becoming a great professional skateboarder (OK, I still harbour those fantasies---see my profile). I was an avid reader of skateboarding magazines and used to read about these mystical places with names like "Embarcadero" and "Escondido", and I saw both of those names on the way here from the airport. Trippy.
4. There are no places to buy long-distance telephone cards on campus during the weekend, ostensibly leaving me without means of informing my wife AM that I have arrived in one piece, even though I promised her that I would call ASAP. Tsk. As it happens, I managed to connect with a buddy who made the call for me. Nice how friends do stuff like that.

OK, enough with the points, and on with the story.

I flew here from Montreal, by way of Toronto and Calgary, i.e. it's been a freaking long day. I can't even imagine what it's like for the people who are coming here from Europe, or Asia. (yeah yeah, "poor me" suffering in California) The flights went well and the connections were smooth. And oh yeah, I'll never again fly anything other than Executive class (thank God for other people's air miles!)...

Seriously. More leg room, free food and (non-boozy) beverages (reminder: this is Air Canada, the company that "doesn't feed you"), and really attentive flight attendants (ha). The food really caught me off-gaurd. Breakfast was a swiss cheese omelet with herbed grilled potatoes and coffee that was actually pretty tasty. Then for lunch, slices of beef with delicious, properly cooked (still somewhat crispy) vegetables on the side. Oh, and an obscenely delicious Lindt caramel-cruncy-chocolatey thing.

So now I find myself in room 208 of the Branner dormitory. The setup's not bad. A room with three beds, and a room with three desks. It's clean and functional. I'm all set. I also know where I'm supposed to go when my courses start tomorrow, since I walked all over campus with Alan looking for the phone cards mentioned earlier.

Alan? Yeah, he's one of my roommates. Once I've got a Flickr account set up, you'll get to meet him. Had dinner with him and chatted a bunch. Seems like a really nice guy, so that'll definitely make the month go by more smoothly. Of course, Other Roommate hasn't shown up, yet, and for all I know his name is Hugh Jass. Time will reveal all.

Anyway...I'm tired and have managed to pack a remarkably small amount of content into a somewhat lengthy (read "blathering") post. I'll keep things shorter once things are up to speed. Think "end of a Doogie Howser episode"...

I'm out.

post scriptum: This blog's title question is what nearly all laypeople ask you when they find out that you're a linguist. Giving an honest, and informative non-dismissive answer to this is more effort than I'm generally willing to put out. I used it here because it's what the customs agent asked me when he saw where I was going.