Quote of the day

Learning is more discovering how to align with the world than extracting knowledge from it.

--Tim Ingold, The Perception of the Environment

Reading notes

interactional linguistics

exogenous theory

ontogenesis

"doing being friends"

professional strangers

discursive psychology

(From "A conversation-analytic approach to second language acquisition," by Kasper and Wagner).

extraneural operations

the whole caboodle

007 Principle

linear salience

grounded cognitivism

literariness

fundamental extendedness of human existence

(From "Extended, embodied cognition and second language acquisition," by Atkinson).

Dr. Seuss Quotation

"Adults are obsolete children and the Hell with them."

Poem moment

And aren't we all so soft and whole

When, as dark plums on a damp night

We fold into our fallen bodies?

Believe it or not, I have, ever so occasionally, written poetry. I wrote this back in high school. A visiting friend actually remembered it. Thanks, John.

Xenophilia

We hear about its conservative, angry twin so often.

Awesomely untranslatable words

Jayus (Indonesian) -- "A joke told so poorly and so unfunny that one cannot help but laugh"

Mamihlapinatapei (Yagan/Tierra del Fuego) -- "the wordless, yet meaningful look shared by two people who both desire to initiate something but are both reluctant to start"

Wabi-Sabi (Japanese) -- "a way of living that focuses on finding beauty within the imperfections of life and accepting peacefully the natural cycle of growth and decay."

Read more at 20 Awesomely Untranslatable Words from Around the World.

Words which, together, make me laugh

underwater blow job

urban war child

legends of the dhal

"compulsory visibility"

The anti-veiling laws and sentiments in Europe interest me. They came to mind when I read this:

"Disciplinary power [...] is exercised through its invisibility; at the same time it imposes on those whom it subjects a principle of compulsory visibility."

-Foucault, from Discipline and Punish