The Lexiophiles annual Top 100 list nominations have come out. I'm once again nominated in the "Language Learning" category. My showing last year was better than I expected. And if I make the cut this year, it'll be more than I deserve.
Posting has been light, but I'm encouraged by readers who write to tell me they anticipate my return to regular programming. I look forward to the same. Cheers, my friends.
The meeting will now come to order. Our agenda for the day is as follows.
1) Provide assurance that I am still here, and this link is not defunct.
2) Make pledge to get back to posting regularly, tho timeline is not yet established.*
3) Share great news about language writing in major media outlets.
is now the regular "On Language" columnist. He will carry on, and add to, the legacy of the late William Safire. This is very exciting. The column has a large readership, and wields great influence over the tenor of common observations about language. Mr Zimmer will certainly be a fair, insightful, incisive, and accurate commentator. The space is in good hands.These good people feel that there is an almost indecent nakedness, a reversion to barbarism, in saying No news is good news instead of The absence of intelligence is an indication of satisfactory developments. Nevertheless, The year's penultimate month is not in truth a good way of saying November.
Lexiophiles Top 100 Language Blogs list for 2009 included me at #27. In about two weeks I'll have the time and energy to get back to putting up the types of posts that somehow earned me this undeserved ranking.
And thanks for checking in.
Wishydig has been nominated for Lexiophiles Top 100 Language Blogs list for 2009. Last year I was ranked #73.
That was a pure judgment ranking. But this year, votes are half the formula. Sure, that means that popular blogs have a huge advantage. So a strong showing from my 7 readers will probably only help me in some theoretical way. But all it takes for evil to triumph is... no that's another plea.
Some things to keep in mind:
Yes, posting has been slow lately. I've been away from the megaphone, but the mouth will rise again!
Voting begins this Wednesday, July 8 and will close the July 27.
I'm in the Language Learning category. I don't know if that matters.
It's an honor to be nominated.
It'd be a much much greater honor to do well in the rankings.
Rather than ranking the quality of the blog, if they ranked by the fragility of the ego, I'd win in a landslide.
No pressure.
I will mention politics here and I will occasionally evaluate the use of language by politicians. But I don't need to share my opinions about policies and people unless those policies and people are focused on language.
I will discuss political tactics here. But I will hold back on saying which tactics I hope to see succeed.
I've shared enough of my political views on this blog. And I will now stop. But I will share them elsewhere. I have a little retreat in the moors where I will feel free to speak with a lot more judgment and a lot less objectivity.
Some of you know how to get there. Anyone else can ask.
[this blog's name] at gmail [period] com
I've been noticing a few visits from a page at Lexiophiles listing the Top 100 Language Blogs. The list is basically the top half of their full list of 250 blogs.
Such a long list can be suspicious. It can look like a link mine. But here I think they've done more careful consideration than a simple wholesale pulling of sidebar html links. Here's a page explaining the list and criteria.
Contributing blogger Christopher writes: We identified three main categories: content, consistency and interactivity. We know that no ranking is 100% accurate and always somewhat subjective. Still, we feel that these three categories give a good overall view of how good a blog really is.
Sounds reasonable. And you can also vote if you wish.
I haven't done a very thorough reading of the other posts on the site. It looks like there have been regular posts over the last few weeks and the content is in several languages from several writers. A multilingual contributor language blog. I kinda like that already.
It's a young blog and the list is likely a lure to get some attention, to get mentions by the listed blogs and to earn several incoming links. Well they've been getting all that. And even if the list has a somewhat solicitous intention I won't fault them for enterprise. It works. And it's not shoddy work. Though I don't agree with all the ordering (I'm especially distraught to be listed above certain blogs) and there are several bad gaps -- missing blogs -- it's a good list to visit for the purpose of populating a feed reader or a list of your own.
Blogger thinks I'm suspicious. Head over to the ridger's post to read the latest accusations aimed at us.
Some might believe that this is just the result of a blogger search-bot/sentinel covering a blog-block and thinking that all the mutual links are suspicious. But I suspect some more nefarious force.
I think someone's been naming names. The grammar police are pounding on our door and they're getting set to bust in with their gramrod.
Are you now or have you ever been a descriptivist or descriptivist sympathizer?
Every once in a while I check my subscriptions and inbound links to see who's paying attention.
This morning I noticed that my subscriptions through FeedBurner were cut in half. That doesn't happen a lot. I looked at the pie chart and saw that no Google™ subscriptions were listed. Those usually make up about half. Odd. It's some sort of Google™ feed block.
That's better than my first thought: that my readers were growing weary from my tiresome tangents. My wandering paths. My fuzzy focus.
Because some critics are less than impressed. I recently saw a note on a del.icio.us bookmark.
Eeeeehhhhhh, an okay blog full of lofty and seemingly cumbersome discourse, but it links to several interesting language-related blogs.
The Ridger has very kindly nominated this blog for an 'E' rating.
I am asked to accept with this honour the simple task of nominating at least 10 other blogs for the rating. (This is the type of nomination that in itself confers the honor. There's no final vote to grant the award. We're all winners.)
I would really have trouble nominating that many blogs. Not because I can't think of that many good blogs -- I can of course; just look at my sidebar -- but because the more blogs I nominate, the more reasons I need not to keep nominating. So I'll ask your kind permission (whoever you are) to nominate fewer than the ten.
MXRK (A good blog. A troubled man.)
Insignificant Wranglings (This guy actually believes most of what he says)
Literal-Minded (Nominated already--but his posts on syntax are some of my favourites.)
separated by a common language (A simple and clear concept is best. She plumbs the Atlantic chasm scrupulously.)
_
I have just made some minor changes to the list of links on the right sidebar. I visit most of the links regularly and I was noticing that several of them had not been updated in a long time.
Some of them are not only stale -- they're defunct. Many old friends have chosen to move on. So shall we. I hope you fare well Q-majiner and Truth Spelunker. Keep in touch Buppy.
I moved some links to a different list. Some friends have moved away from Purdue but are still blogging. So they are now in a more general links list.
And I've added a few links. On the Purdue list there are some new links a classmates blogs that I've recently uncovered.
And please note the addition of the Grant Barrett's Double-Tongued Dictionary and Mark Peters' Wordlustitude. Slang deserves our attention too no?
There's some unevenness here.
On one end of the scale: I've been posting on here for almost 2 and a half years. I have a handful of kind readers and a pinch of occasional commenters. I get a lot of accidental browsers and few searchers who are asking a questions that I have specifically set out to answer--I've put up more than 200 posts. The highest comment total on a single post: 12.
On the other end of the scale: Stephen Fry has been posting for just under a month. Highest comment total on a single post: 292 (the other post has 278). He has posted twice.
Of course he has earned the attention with his fine contributions to acting and writing. Tho I'm not sure I can appreciate his recent contribution to writing: He calls his lengthy blog essays blessays.
I wonder if he's purposely going for the effect introduced by 'bless' showing up in the portmanteau. And I'm not sure why he doesn't just go with "post" or "entry"--the subject of my recent "postry". (That's probably worse than "blessay" but it's so close to the Spanish word for dessert that I'm keeping it.)
And what about "blisquisitions"? Bliss + inquisitions?
But his writing is good enough to support these slightly (and only possibly) presumptuous connotations.
Appropriately--his second post is all about being famous. At least he's qualified.
(via The Greenbelt)
Strategies for posting regularly:
Three loosely related topics in this post:
A) Nancy Friedman at Away With Words has posted on a recent trend of bubbles popping up everywhere.
2) In a comment I mentioned favicons and she hadn't heard of them. Those are the little icons in the address bar that change on each webpage. They are often used as logos in toolbar button links. I've struggled with the pronunciation of these little visual gewgaws. Does the first syllable rhyme with save or with salve? Does the second syllable preserve the "long" 'I' of icon or does the third syllable get secondary stress so that the "I" is an unstressed schwa? Some possible pronunciations I imagine:
As I mentioned in my comment to Friedman's post I've been looking for a decent 'favicon' to associate with this blog. Just a little image that looks good in the address bar. For some reason one image keeps staring at me. But it has nothing to do with my usual topics and I don't know why I'd pick it.
Some days I step into the cyber office and the flurry of activity is obvious. Footprints from all over the world are leading up to my doorstep.
One of the nice things about putting up a blog is the freedom to be responsive to readers. One of the nice thing about good statistics software is the insight it gives us into what readers/visitors are wanting to know. Several months ago I put up a list of the ADS Word of the Year finalists. Web searches for "plutoed" and "Cambodian accessory" had all sorts of strangers standing in my foyer.
Another spike was in response to the mousetrap stunt that still baffles me.
The latest spike has to do with the IPA transcription of the owl diphthong.
Here's an answer: I transcribe owl as either [aʊl] or [awl].
Here's a question: Why is this such a popular search term right now? Are students around the world all cheating on the same final exam? Did the Democratic debate pose this as one of its questions? Did Alex Trebek ask this during Teen Week?
Here's some more information: the one we should ask about diphthongs is John Wells. He has written about them before and even in response to some of my questions. A while back I asked him why he prefers the two vowel transcription rather than /ow/ or /oʷ/. He wrote on his blog
I use the two-vowel-symbol notation for English diphthongs because the diphthongs behave as single indivisible units. A vowel-plus-glide notation would imply the identification of the first part of the diphthong with one of the simple (non-diphthong) vowels. If the nucleus of English goat is taken as /Vw/, what is the /V/? It could be (BrE) /ɜː/, the vowel of bird, or /ɔː/ the vowel of thought, or /ɒ/ the vowel of lot, or /ʌ/ the vowel of strut, or /ə/ a schwa. In this context there is no phonemic contrast between these vowels, and no strong reason to choose one solution over the other. By treating the diphthong as indivisible we avoid facing this false choice. (This concerns its phonological analysis. We still have to choose a notation for it in transcription.)
I changed the title of this blog a few months ago. The old title has left a trace in the form of the RSS feed address. In a few days I will update the address at FeedBurner so that http://feeds.feedburner.com/inaword will be abandoned. The new feed address will be http://feeds.feedburner.com/wishydig.
I think I also have to do a little tinkering with some of the head elements in the template. If any feed readers stop reporting updates for a while just remember that I'm still here.
Before I update the RSS feed I have to figure out a few details regarding autodiscovery and validation of a feed without revealing an e-mail address in the source code.
I'll put an alert in the left sidebar when I make the change.
[Read more about the blogging syllabus here.]
I have been teaching for the last 10 years. In all that time I still haven't learned to value of daily lesson plans and or units or syllabuses. Some students respond well to this and stick around asking questions because they get the impression that I'm willing to answer/guide/research or otherwise accompany them on the path of learning (you can roll your eyes).
This also means that several students are ignored and learn very little.
So we got our evaluations back the other day and they're about what I expected. The online format yielded more honest results than the evaluations of past semesters. What interests me are the comments.
Here are three of them:
In just the last week I've learned of four more blogs being written by the friendly folk of Heavilon Hall. Casey restarted his posting and now Jon, Dave, and Anna have plugged into the current. I've reorganized my links to provide a sanctuary of all blogs Purdue. The foci vary as all well-nourished academic discourses should.
Buffy (PhD Comparative and Renaissance Literature) likes to make fun of herself as an academic (and no-one deserves the ridicule less).
Casey (PhD American Literature) tries to focus on existential truths while lamenting that they have no easily discernible edges that assure us of their place.
Brian (MFA Poetry) looks at poetry and art while making fun of Casey and dreaming of Wallace Stevens.
Marc (PhD Rhetoric and Composition) focuses on technology and rhetoric (or is that rhetoric and technology? Which one "works" better Marc?).
Anna (MFA Poetry) has just started blogging and she promises to write about more than celebrities (should she have to?).
Dave (MFA Poetry) paints the life of a poet who does much more than just talk about and write poetry.
Jon (MFA Fiction) proves that he loves reading contemporary fiction and is able to contribute. Read him to keep up with what's out there now.
Sycamore Review is Purdue's literary journal.
Mark (PhD American Literature? nee MFA Fiction) has his blog set up and will start posting soon. I'm only assuming he'll make it interesting. He can be a jerk.
My name is Michael.
Two more blogs to add to the list.
Monica (PhD Jewish Literature and Philosophy) tackles and considers the philosophies and words and people and actions that seek everything spanning the power and grace between Good and Evil. (look for her contributions over at Jewcy too.)
Rebekah (MFA Poetry) gathers all sorts of materials and constructs all sorts of things. She kindly provides lots of pictures (when you're talking about a poet "images" can mean too many things) to document her work.
[Update2:
We're like a flock of Hitchockian birds. We just keep comin' atcha.
Monica (MA Comparative Literature) provides an alternative to Garp's world view. West Lafayette will soon be in her rearview mirror.
Dave (MA English Language and Linguistics) and his fellow contributors offer stories and theories on grilling fuel, audiology experiments, graduate school, movie wizards, political conservatism and marathon walks. And sometimes they branch out.
Eric (MFA Poetry) is using a new blog to take us along as he uses Markov chains to create poetry. His old blog is still going along, becoming a "more of a personal type blog."
Theresa/Tess (MFA Poetry) provides her own introduction. Of one blog she says "[it] is extremely poetry-ish (I post a fabulous, my-choice-but-not-my-work poem a day on it, plus extras)." She picks good poems so go read them. Of the other she says "[it] will only interest you if you happen to know and like me." Hers are young blogs. Give them some nurturing attention.
[Update3:
Everytime I think I'm out...
Chad (MFA Poetry) plans to post a new poem regularly and he invites all "to read along."
]
]
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On C-SPAN yesterday a panel of political bloggers discussed the effect of blogging on political races. They addressed not only the conversations being run by the pundits; they also talked about the blogs and websites being run by the candidates. All the major candidates run websites, most of them run blogs and a few of them have decent blogs.
When asked which candidate has the best understanding of blogging and its network John Edwards got the general nod. The panel also mentioned the ambitious website just recently launched by Barack Obama. Most noteworthy about Obama's site is its design as a social network similar to MySpace.com or Facebook. Responding to Obama's site format one member of the audience asked the panel to comment on Obama's "jumping the blogging shark" and going directly into his form online networking.
I remember that episode of Happy Days very well.1 and I've visited the website and gotten into good natured shouting matches with friends who disagree about when various shows "jumped the shark." Now the meaning of the phrase is become the subject of some debate.
The way the audience member above uses it sounds like a sense of to jump over or avoid part of a common process. According to her use, Obama avoided the usual convention of blogging in favour of web networking. One of the obvious connotations of a shark is the danger it presents. The blogging panel did mention blogging techniques and habits that might harm a candidacy, and perhaps this question intended to highlight the risks of blogging. If so, she might see jump the shark as similar to the phrase dodge a bullet.
A web search for "jump the shark" and its various forms (-ed/-ing/-s) finds all sorts of uses, and even a few discussions specifically on the meaning of the phrase. Quite a few of the uses are in headlines that use the phrase to get attention and don't define revisit or defend the intended usage. One web log that used the phrase in a title elicited an extended discussion, some of which dealt specifically with the phrase and its meaning. Some examples:
I demand the immediate return of the sage, sane, wise Joel Spolsky of years past. But maybe it's like wishing for a long-running television show to return to its previous glories.
I wouldn't really say he's jumped the shark or gone insane - he's entitled to his opinions.
Jeff...I love your stuff, but man...lay off the wasabi. =^)) I don't agree with everything Joel says either (the conspiracy theory on VMware almost made me laugh out loud) but I think that you may have jumped the shark on this one!
(ps. Umm...being an uncultured pac nwesterner...I haven't a clue what "jumping the shark" means...)
I think the phrase "jumped the shark" has jumped the shark.
1. I even remember doing some water skiing in Puerto Rico. When my father was done with his turn he let go of the rope and coasted along for a while before sinking into the water. I thought "Wow. If he had just coasted onto the shore that would have been just like Fonzie in that awesome episode of Happy Days!"
The new blogger accounts make it easy to label and organize posts. So instead of thinking of my next post topic I've been looking at old posts and assigning them tags. I'm one of those types that tries to account for everything mentioned in the post--even if it's not a main topic. It's the cross-referencing instinct.
There are some features I would like to use on this new account, but that would require that I lose most of the changes that I made to formatting. For instance: I don't want to lose the drop-down comments that require a java-script. I'm not even sure if the "peek-a-boo" comments will be possible with the new format.
So this web log might undergo some drastic design changes. I think I'll keep the runes in the background no matter what.
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