Fascinating story. On NPR this morning I heard the tail end of On Point, the brilliantly mediated discussion show, where Tom was talking with a linguist/cognitive neuroscientist, Arika Okrent, about invented languages. She brought up Klingon and Esperanto, two of the more well-known invented languages from recent history. And as interesting as it is to try to understand why people would invent languages I haven't been able to stop thinking about how lovely it is that naturally occurring language is so consistently disjointed, obtuse, illogical and contradictory.
It is obvious why it would be advantageous to devise a flawlessly structured, immutable language but the fact that our very humanness hatched the strange and hopelessly complex communication standards and patterns we use without even thinking about it says more about what it means to be human than could ever be explained by the means allowed by any language.
Oh, and speaking of NPR, at my place of business we just got in an NPR shirt bearing a faded pair of headphones, the National Public Radio logo and then the somewhat snarky phrase "Get Smarter" across the bottom. I think my wardrobe is going to get one t-shirt larger very soon.
brandonpiercegeary
Thursday, September 2, 2010
Friday, August 6, 2010
writing exercise
Perhaps not a true writing exercise because, for the life of me, I can't think of what this is teaching me other than getting me to appreciate metaphor a little more.
The first sentence is the original and I merely replaced all the "in's" with "is's." What fun!
1.
the fruit picker who lived all those years in a motel (incomplete sentence and only moderately interesting)
The fruit picker who lived all those years is a motel. (Ahhh, now there is something to ponder and within the trappings of a proper sentence to boot)
2.
The carrot shaving in my salad looks suspicious. (Hmm, I think I am already losing steam)
The carrot shaving is my salad (and) looks suspicious. (Yeah, this is already becoming redundant. Perhaps I should quit while I still care.)
Point is, I recently acquired a second means of some income. I am writing copy for Hayneedle.com. Product descriptions and so on. It is extremely gratifying and taxing because I get to come up with charming and witty paragraphs about things I rarely ever think about let alone write about and I am also responsible for coding a great deal of what I write. HTML. Good grief.
Anyway, so I tried to come up with a writing exercise before I dig into another task. This was the best I could come up with without consulting other people. Sort of failed but the carrot thing was kind of silly so maybe not an entire loss.
brandonpiercegeary
The first sentence is the original and I merely replaced all the "in's" with "is's." What fun!
1.
the fruit picker who lived all those years in a motel (incomplete sentence and only moderately interesting)
The fruit picker who lived all those years is a motel. (Ahhh, now there is something to ponder and within the trappings of a proper sentence to boot)
2.
The carrot shaving in my salad looks suspicious. (Hmm, I think I am already losing steam)
The carrot shaving is my salad (and) looks suspicious. (Yeah, this is already becoming redundant. Perhaps I should quit while I still care.)
Point is, I recently acquired a second means of some income. I am writing copy for Hayneedle.com. Product descriptions and so on. It is extremely gratifying and taxing because I get to come up with charming and witty paragraphs about things I rarely ever think about let alone write about and I am also responsible for coding a great deal of what I write. HTML. Good grief.
Anyway, so I tried to come up with a writing exercise before I dig into another task. This was the best I could come up with without consulting other people. Sort of failed but the carrot thing was kind of silly so maybe not an entire loss.
brandonpiercegeary
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