2002-11-21
Wondering how languages come about? Some are created. (How?) There is the dang-I-thought-it-was-fer-real crypto-Ute language Tepa, the lighthearted and very original Zoinx, the awesomely detailed Arovën, the 'international toolkit' Earth Minimal, and about a zillion others listed all over.
06:21
Terry's Egyptian Pages contain fascinating information on language, art, ritual games, and more, with references to other online resources. Very cool, and a nicely-done site.
05:54
Ñòw they'll *®éallÿ* wöndér whåt ÿõµ meánt bÿ thàt. This disturbs people's sense that they grok me faster than muttering 'purple monkey dishwasher'!
05:46
Excerpt, redacted, from an email I sent out when a friend asked me how I was doing and what I was up to. A pretty good capsule summary of my life, I'd say.'It is strange and wonderful and a little sad to come back to everything. It's all the way it used to be, and it's all different, all at once.
How do you start conversations with all of these wonderful people whose souls you love but with whom you don't live and eat anymore and whose life experience over the last two years has very little in common with yours? It is a puzzlement wrapped in a perplexity inside a party, and the music playing is always the last couplet of "Lead, Kindly Light":
"And with the morn those angel faces smile
Which I have loved long since and lost awhile."It's also strange and good and complicated to be studying again. I had forgotten pretty much all my Hebrew except the alphabet, but it's coming back. Texts and Temples is a super class, and very enlightening. Linguistics is like getting back in a pool and swimming. Social dance is great, and I will be taking further classes. University Chorale with crazy Dr. Broomhead is grand, both for me as an atrophied singer and for anyone as an artist and a person. Ukrainian Culture is keeping my skills up and getting me connected to all sorts of fun projects like checking the footnotes in the yet-to-be-printed Ukrainian Triple Combination. And my Gospels teacher is a friend of my grandpa's and therefore tends to talk about the things that Rasmussens enjoy.
Were homework not enough to do, I volunteer in the Temple every Saturday and make our ward's Sacrament meeting programs, and I have just joined the editorial staff of the up-and-coming online version of the Slavic languages journal. In slack moments I am working up a web publication of my own so I can inflict my thoughts, remarks, and attention span on anyone fool enough to read it. In short, I'm up to my eyeballs.'
05:40
Trax looks like a fascinating little game! Two kinds of tiles, and all the topology you care for. I may have to get a set . . . with my copious free cash.
05:29
Log Rolling, the most sophisticated of the games featured on the Political Game Theory page, sounds like jolly good fun.
05:11
Italo Calvino was recommended to me some years ago by a rather intelligent fellow. I erad a little, and enjoyed it, and set it aside. But look at this site. The writing is amazing, the vision flowing without strain or jolt from primordial particles to Marco Polo with all manner of fascinating thoughts slipping into you along the way. I could probably make myself a whole new writer with a daily dose of this.
04:54
2002-11-18
Ten guidlelines for Web credibility. If I had my way, this would be on every TV station in the US twice a year. What? Teach people how to make sites that people trust and like?! Yep. (via MF)
23:22
Pyramid Building is a process for helping to get a team focused on work and cooperating as well as possible, devised by the MITHYA Institute. A sample: pyramid model of accomplishment. I'm going to have to look at this institute more closely.
22:48
As BYU moves into the information age, the Germanic and Slavic Languages Department has decided to tank the paper journal and publish online. Advantages include distribution and continuing availability, to say nothing of making it easier to distribute the work so we don't need some big super-editor fluent in both German and Russian. Editing, Slavic studies, and Web publishing all in one -- you'd sign on, wouldn't you?
22:41
