Books to Get (Someday)

I hope, in this blog, to post occasional notes on topics in linguistics. I will have to put my thoughts together coherently, first. In the meantime I will at least point to books I want on my shelf. Such as this one --

Bard High School Early College Rocks!

In his recent speech to NAACP, President Obama lauded the innovations of two New York City public schools, Bard High School Early College and Medgar Evers College Preparatory School, for "challenging students to complete high school and earn a free associate's degree or college credit in just four years."

Both of my kids went to BHSEC and both loved it. They HAD to love it to make the daily commute from our home at the very top of Manhattan by subway all the way down the West Side to 14th street, then down and across to Houston and Avenue D (on the East Side) by bus...about 90 minutes each way.

The school, it was clear to us from the very start, is very special. It is a true intellectual community -- a rarity among high schools, in my experience. Students are treated with respect, as responsible and intelligent adults. For the most part they respond by acting responsibly and by exercising a great deal of intelligence. Those who are not up to the challenge tend to realize this early and elect, often in their freshman year, to attend a different school.

Now, Kesi Augustine, a graduate of BHSEC has published a column about her experiences at the school over on the Huffington Post website. It is worth reading.

I Want A Job As A Court Jester

I think I've decided what job I'm going to look for next. I want to be a corporate court jester.

I wish I'd thought of this sooner.

I wish it had been my job to walk around the halls of, say, Enron proclaiming things like "Gordon Gekko was a fictional character; he was the villain. GREED IS NOT GOOD!"

I want to be the executive at Google whose sole job is to walk into people's offices and say "Do you smell evil? Are we getting, maybe, just a little evil? I think I've spotted some evil, here and there."

I want to wander around Motorola, saying "Six Sigma? Six Sigma? It just sounds, I don't know, so SILLY. Couldn't we call it Ways of Making Sure We Do Things Better?"

I gotta go work on my resume.

I'm Back

This blog was initiated in the year 2000 -- nine years ago. It does not, however, have nine years' worth of postings, as a glance at the archive index will quickly reveal. I have been, at best, a piss-poor blogger. Even my feeble attempts at reviving this blog, from time to time, have proven embarrassing.

So now, things are going to change. Because I have to change.

It has been a month since I was let go from my job. I emerge into the world of employment-seeking (and sometimes, it seems, into the world at large) like a kind of Rip Van Winkle, asleep for the last twenty or so years. I failed to do the things necessary that would prepare me for a job search at this time of my life and now I must catch up.

Like certain other undertakings (I'm thinking about losing weight, in particular) this one necessitates not just a few tweaks -- I will not be searching for any magical solutions -- but rather a wholesale revision of myself.

I'm pretty sure it will be difficult, painful, and stressful. I'm just about as sure it is the only way I can make any progress in my life.

I'll try to be much more specific about what I think I have to do (and what I think this blog will be like) in subsequent posts.

American Accent Redux

It has been a few years, now, and I encountered an updated version of the quiz whose results I posted in a previous entry. The results are pretty much the same, only reported a little differently.

What American accent do you really have? Your Result: Mid-Atlantic You have the accent of Philadelphia, south Jersey, and Baltimore. Everyone around there knows what a Philly accent is but not enough outsiders can ever recognize it.
Northern
Northeastern
Midland
Southern
Northeast New England
Western
North Central
What American accent do you really have? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz