annundriel (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
annundriel) wrote2008-07-01 01:22 pm
annundriel) wrote2008-07-01 01:22 pm
Entry tags:
Robots and Language
I'm so glad I'm in Seattle and not at home. Mom called it "sweltering" yesterday, so I'm pretty happy to be missing that. Ick.
Sunday I saw WALL-E with Kasey and Kit. I really loved it. The way it was put together was interesting, with the first half being somewhat reminiscent of silent movies. The inclusion of Hello Dolly! just tickled me. At the very beginning I had a moment of, "omg that's Michael Crawford!" and then just couldn't stop grinning.
I also thought that the future that was represented was scarily possible, specifically how streamlined things had become so that people were completely dependent on computers and robots. The screens the people living on the Axiom had attached to their hoverchairs weren't that different from iPhones.
There were moments throughout where I could've died over how adorable WALL-E was. And WALL-E with Eve. They really did make me think of John and Aeryn several times.
This morning I finished David Crystal's The Fight for English: How Language Pundits Ate, Shot, and Left. It was something I found while I was shelving at the library and it was really hard for me not to write in the margins of this one. It was really interesting, attempting to cover key points of the history of English language usage in about 230 pages, but it left me feeling dissatisfied. Not with the content, really, but the way in which it was presented.
I was able to go along with what the author was saying until chapter sixteen, "Appropriateness," at which point he used hyperbole to a point that I left me rolling my eyes and wanting to smack him. Basically, he said that it was appropriate for a child who had just lost a football match to say, "We was robbed" and that if they didn't - if they used the grammatically correct "We were robbed" - they'd deserve their "peers' equivalent of the red pencil." Because "there the non-standard form is the appropriate one." I get the point that he's making, but I think his example is ridiculous.
Then the rest of the book had a bunch of little things that caused more eye-rolling. Most of it had to do with the generalizations the author would make.
I did, however, enjoy the first part of the book and seeing that, much like my experience with religion and the Bible, the rules of language are only such because we've agreed on them.
Also, I thought this was interesting: "Who knows who first used the high rising intonation at the end of a sentence? Historical linguists have traced it back to somewhere in New Zealand in the 1970s, but it may have appeared more or less simultaneously in other countries." It was the date that surprised me, since it just seems like something that must have always been around. But I guess that's a lot like the rules only being constructs and not necessarily natural ones.
Apparently Don S. Davis passed away. This makes me incredibly sad. I'll miss seeing him randomly on TV, but I will always enjoy him as General Hammond.
Sunday I saw WALL-E with Kasey and Kit. I really loved it. The way it was put together was interesting, with the first half being somewhat reminiscent of silent movies. The inclusion of Hello Dolly! just tickled me. At the very beginning I had a moment of, "omg that's Michael Crawford!" and then just couldn't stop grinning.
I also thought that the future that was represented was scarily possible, specifically how streamlined things had become so that people were completely dependent on computers and robots. The screens the people living on the Axiom had attached to their hoverchairs weren't that different from iPhones.
There were moments throughout where I could've died over how adorable WALL-E was. And WALL-E with Eve. They really did make me think of John and Aeryn several times.
This morning I finished David Crystal's The Fight for English: How Language Pundits Ate, Shot, and Left. It was something I found while I was shelving at the library and it was really hard for me not to write in the margins of this one. It was really interesting, attempting to cover key points of the history of English language usage in about 230 pages, but it left me feeling dissatisfied. Not with the content, really, but the way in which it was presented.
I was able to go along with what the author was saying until chapter sixteen, "Appropriateness," at which point he used hyperbole to a point that I left me rolling my eyes and wanting to smack him. Basically, he said that it was appropriate for a child who had just lost a football match to say, "We was robbed" and that if they didn't - if they used the grammatically correct "We were robbed" - they'd deserve their "peers' equivalent of the red pencil." Because "there the non-standard form is the appropriate one." I get the point that he's making, but I think his example is ridiculous.
Then the rest of the book had a bunch of little things that caused more eye-rolling. Most of it had to do with the generalizations the author would make.
I did, however, enjoy the first part of the book and seeing that, much like my experience with religion and the Bible, the rules of language are only such because we've agreed on them.
Also, I thought this was interesting: "Who knows who first used the high rising intonation at the end of a sentence? Historical linguists have traced it back to somewhere in New Zealand in the 1970s, but it may have appeared more or less simultaneously in other countries." It was the date that surprised me, since it just seems like something that must have always been around. But I guess that's a lot like the rules only being constructs and not necessarily natural ones.
Apparently Don S. Davis passed away. This makes me incredibly sad. I'll miss seeing him randomly on TV, but I will always enjoy him as General Hammond.