October 2011
27 posts
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Sunday Morning Exercise: Take "The Wug Test"
beingblog:
by Nancy Rosenbaum, producer
Jean Berko Gleason is the mother of the “wug test” whose findings rocked the world of linguistics when they were first published in 1958. The test demonstrated that children as young as three or four can internalize complex grammatical codes no one has necessarily ever tried to teach them — like forming plurals — and apply these rules broadly, even to...
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A message from Occupy Duke →
Sort of in conflict with a very recent post, but hell, who cares? I’m actually pretty enthused by the interesting-ness of this whole deal.
“Some have suggested that, as Duke students, our privilege precludes us from speaking out against social and economic injustice. We recognize our privilege, and neither purport to speak on behalf of those suffering the worst consequences of...
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Somewhat obligatory post about Occupy Duke.
Lat Saturday night I went to a party. Almost half of the sloppily drunk and questionably dressed twentysomethings there were organizers of Occupy Duke, and I spent part of the night backed into a social corner listening to someone’s impassioned speech about privilege and endowment transparency and leaderless movements and — I don’t even remember, and I doubt he does either. Not...
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Senior spring.
S: What are you taking next semester?
A: Here’s my schedule. But I’m also going to work in two labs. So it’s actually three classes and two independent studies.
A: Oh, and one of the classes is a senior capstone, which is really work-intensive.
S: …
S: Wait. Why are you overloading spring semester of senior year?
A: Because I want to! I’m an intellectual!
S:...
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Shock & awe.
S: i bought so much gogurt today
S: i am the most mature grocery shopper ever
E: whats gogurt
S: ...
S: ?!??!!!??
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A moment.
M: This is a very interesting moment!
M: We're in our own apartment. It's almost like we're old.
M: Or not old, just older.
M: This is a very interesting moment.
M: . . . that I'll probably forget about.
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What You Don't Know Can Kill You →
We like to think that humans are supremely logical, making decisions on the basis of hard data and not on whim. For a good part of the 19th and 20th centuries, economists and social scientists assumed this was true too. The public, they believed, would make rational decisions if only it had the right pie chart or statistical table. But in the late 1960s and early 1970s, that vision of homo...
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Sadnesses.
S: Sorry I missed your call. I passed out for the entirety of my life.
P: Again?!
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Sorry, But Your Soul Just Died →
tetw:
by Tom Wolfe
Brain imaging was invented for medical diagnosis. But its far greater importance is that it may very well confirm, in ways too precise to be disputed, certain theories about “the mind,” “the self,” “the soul,” and “free will” that are already devoutly believed in by scholars in what is now the hottest field in the academic world, neuroscience.
Whoa. 1996. Whoa.
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“He never asserted himself. That was the one thing that helped him escape. In an...”
– Sherwood Anderson (Winesburg, Ohio) (via wwnorton)
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Best moment of my life right now.
Random-ass teacher: What's the capital of Ohio?
Brittany: O.
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I am a soul slut.
The things I’ve given to consulting recruitment these past two weeks. Time, energy, my naivete about hiring practices and the look of post-graduation success. I’ve worn so many name tags, shaken so many hands, calculated so many market sizes.
Then tonight — at Cosmic of all places — being approached by a British guy with a popped collar who told me he worked at a...
