I spent the last six weeks in Berkeley studying linguistics. I learned a lot about semantics, but most of all, I learned how linguists think and talk. I'm still trying to understand where philosophy ends and linguistics begins, but I now have a better idea of the landscape of issues. After my last class meeting of the program, my bike was stolen and my computer broke down. I guess I had earned enough karma to postpone these disasters to the last day, though not enough to prevent them from happening outright. I think my karma is all used up now---I got a ticket for making an "illegal right turn" en route to the computer repair place. If only there was such a thing as karma.

I'm not sure why any of this is worth writing about, but here's a list of movies I watched and enjoyed this summer:

District 9***, There Will Be Blood, Casino, Margot at the Wedding, Gran Torino, La Notte, L'eclisse, Vertigo, Amores Perros, Eagle vs. Shark, Deliverance, Irma Vep.

***Yes yes yes yes, this movie wins on all counts. My prediction: Hollywood gets in a tizzy over how a 30 million budget movie outgrosses and generally outshines its competitors (who are running budgets ten times as big), but only realizes that it is incapable of making a movie like this after failing repeatedly. A bad sequel directed by some Hollywood-appointed sycophant is among the trash produced.

I recently made a movie with some friends loosely based off of my own life. Hope you enjoy it!

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Want to participate in a simple game where you tell me your intuitions about whether the following sentences are weird or not?? It's fun! Don't look at the comments until you post, lest you contaminate your intuitions!

Do the following sound funny to your ear (like they are self-contradictory) or are they acceptable? Let me know if you have stronger intuitions about some cases rather than others.

(1) Every student is the tallest in the class
(2) Every student might be the tallest in the class
(3) Each student might be the tallest in the class
(4) All students might be the tallest in the class
(5) All of the students might be the tallest in the class

The next examples contain two sentences per numbered example. Does the second sentence contradict the first? Can you hear the second in such a way that it does not contradict the first? Here's the setup: imagine a group of people who were exposed to an infectious agent. From anonymous test results, we know that half of the exposed people are healthy, but we don't know which ones they are. Thus, for any given person, we don't know whether he or she is infected. Imagine reporting the situation to the group of exposed people:

(6) Half of you are healthy. But everyone might be infected.
(7) Half of you are healthy. But each of you might be infected.
(8) Half of you are healthy. But all of you might be infected.

Thanks! Bonus: if you replace each 'might' with 'may' does anything change?

... but amusing nonetheless:

"In a 2006 gubernatorial debate, the soon-to-be governor of Alaska [Sarah Palin - J.McCain's VP candidate] said of evolution and creation education, "Teach both. You know, don't be afraid of education. Healthy debate is so important, and it's so valuable in our schools. I am a proponent of teaching both." " (http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/08/mccains-vp-want.html)

Should we teach any crackpot theory of the origin of the universe in science class simply to encourage debate? Isn't the purpose of science class learning science not how to debate?

I've changed the name of my academic blog to Upside Down A Backwards E (which is my Myspace name). I've updated the links accordingly as well. Sorry about any inconvenience this may cause!

I started a new blog to jot down philosophical ideas and get (hopefully constructive) feedback: Anaphoric Penguin***. We'll see if it catches on and I actually write there regularly.

***EDIT (7/18/2008): I've changed the blog name to Upside Down A Backwards E. The link is different as well. Sorry if that caused any inconvenience!

I can't help but feel the same as Bethlehem Shoals about last night's victories for the Spurs and Hilary, though I don't know if I buy his analogy tout court. I guess I just feel the same way about both victories - though I saw Hilary's coming (and it probably means less than the Spurs'). It's just... watching the Suns lose these last two games to the Spurs is pretty heartbreaking. If they lose, I guess I'll cheer for the Hornets. Hornets/Lakers in the West would kick ass because no matter how much I try, I can't like the Lakers (maybe there's a Hilary comparison coming on here...) but I just as much can't help but root for Chris Paul (it feels like fate is on his side).

In other news, the term is wrapping up nicely. Papers on Frege, Wittgenstein, and indicative conditionals are polishing up well - much better than my papers last term. I'll be back in CA starting 6/11 until late July. Probably try to make it out to Davis/Sac and SF a bit while I'm around.

I really want to see Funny Games. I enjoyed Haneke's earlier film "Cache" though it was slower than all hell (10 minute stationary shots of a building front.. for reals?). Anyway, the reviews (and Kubrick-esque trailer) make this seem much more promising - perhaps a self-aware violent commentary on media violence (or just a load of crap to 98% of the American audience)? We'll see...

This recent article in the Guardian reports a study published today in the journal PLoS (Public Library of Science) Medicine that Prozac works no better than a placebo in helping patients recover from depression. Excluding the most severely depressed patients, the study found that "when all the data was pulled together, it appeared that patients had improved - but those on placebo improved just as much as those on the drugs".

I find this data fascinating, and it bolsters my unscientific belief that non-chemical forms of therapy are better than drug-therapy (better in the sense of being just as effective without the harmful withdrawal complications). Naturally, this study has the drug companies (those that manufacture Prozac and its kin) worried, especially given the billions of dollars in profits they have made since its inception. I truly hope that this and subsequent studies will triumph over the (likely) needless (and harmful) over-prescribing of such drugs to patients with depression.

I went to the "Winter Ball" tonight - basically a glorified formal dance for grad students. Between the basketball I played earlier this afternoon and the crazy moves I busted on the dance floor all night, my legs are killing me! Seeing a good number of my friends (some of whom I haven't seen since the first few weeks of school) out here made the night really awesome - I'm really happy to have met so many interesting and fun people out here! It's hard to keep track of everyone, though, and I made more than a few mistakes with names - sometimes confusing two people standing right next to each other!

We finished off the night at this local pizza parlor where we were treated with a rash of drunken buffoonery, which seemed to amuse my company but served to terrify me. I'm not really cut out for the crazy party lifestyle! We left before we could find out what happened to the drunk dude who passed out on one of the booth benches - at our time of departure there was quite a big crowd gathered around him trying to wake him up.

My glasses are crooked :P

I can't help it - Vampire Weekend is just too catchy not to love. They feel like the auditory equivalent of a Wes Anderson film (perhaps I'm influenced by the fact that both make excessive use of hipster font Futura) - quirky and at first too off beat to take seriously, yet manifesting an ability to grow on you like an endearing nickname.

I have been recording music from time to time and I decided to make a myspace band page. So feel free to check out Blobtron. The most recent song, a cover of Blackbird, is dedicated to Saltronic whose performance of the original and giant cat were co-inspirations for my cover.

It's been a while since everyone has seemed to have an opinion on a movie before it's released, but thanks to one of the best teasers ever, Cloverfield has piqued the interest of most teen-to-twenty-somethings. Predictably such hype will inevitably be met with a backlash, as people flock to the theater to have their questions from the trailer answered and in doing so totally misunderstand the film (or perhaps play directly into the filmmakers' hands?). No, you're not going to learn anything new about the monster, nor are the filmmakers going to tell you whether the ending is happy or sad. What you get is much more terrifying - there is no objective vantage point from which to make sense of the madness and no resolution to leave you settled when the movie ends. Like my favorite movie of last year ("Children of Men"), Cloverfield puts the audience in the middle of the action, and the perspective never leaves that of the "hand held" camera operated by the aptly named Hud (an acronym for "heads up display"). This cultivates the radical subjective perspective that is the defining feature of the movie and is what ultimately sets it apart from (read: makes it better than) monster films that have come before it.

I liked it, and I liked it because it did exactly what I thought it should do - follow through with what it set out in that awesome teaser that had me hooked from day one.

This article by Jonathan Wolff has a joke near the end that goes like this:

"The example everyone remembers is the popular song lyric "everybody loves my baby, but my baby don't love nobody but me". From this, it logically follows that "I am my baby" ... By the common consensus of logicians and philosophers everywhere, this really is very funny indeed. And the real beauty is that it is also a brilliant illustration of the semantics of the universal quantifier in standard first-order predicate calculus. But perhaps you'll have to take my word for that."

This is formally correct:

1. (p)(Lpb)
2. (p)(Lbp > p=j)

(where (p) = every person, Lxy = x loves y, j = me, b = my baby)

3. Lbb
4. Lbb > b=j
5. b=j

But something seems wrong. When I first read the article I immediately thought, "that can't be right!" and I think I figured out what was bugging me. When we say "everybody loves my baby" it seems we restrict the universal quantifier "everybody" so that it does not range over "my baby" - that is, when we normally say "everybody loves my baby" we don't imply that my baby loves him/herself.

Here's some more evidence:
A: Let's invite Jeremy to the party.
B: Are you sure?
A: Yeah, everybody loves Jeremy.
B: I don't know, he doesn't seem narcissistic to me.
A: No, I didn't say that he loves himself.

The question then arises: does this quantifier restriction occur at the level of semantics or pragmatics? Something I'll think about and then post again soon. Let me know if you buy any of this.

Nerd alert! Just read this list of ten awesome things about DnD and I figured I'd add a few of my own. But first, my favorite off of that list: "6 - Being a 1st level Halfling mage with 1 hit point and a dart".

- Gelatinous cube! Transparent paralyzing doom awaits all ye who dare enter thy dungeon!
- Combat and Tactics critical hits: there's nothing like brutally graphic instant-kills.
- The Tarrasque: near-impossible to kill insanity! "The tarrasque of legend can be slain only by raising its nonlethal damage total to its full normal hit points +10 (or 1,098 hit points) and using a wish or miracle spell to keep it dead."
- Anti-paladins: I knew there was something fishy about Frank.
- Power word kill: "die muthafucka"

I need to do something interesting but my life is going to be on lockdown for the next few weeks. I'm actually quite excited about this - I have a lot of interesting things to think about.

I want your intuitions! ( obligation )

I just booked my flight home for winter break. What cost $260 two days ago and now cost me $425. I don't want to make that mistake again! Stupid indecisiveness.

I've been a busy bee lately. It's the time of year that you worry about the paper topic you chose four weeks ago rather than write the damn thing. Unfortunately, in most cases it's just too late to turn back. I've invested way too much time reading twenty articles on some topic to ditch the project and try something else out. Luckily I have some fun topics I'm writing on: Spinoza's necessitarianism, modal fictionalism, and hermeneutic content fictionalism about mathematics. I also recently picked up some of the literature on biscuit conditionals, so I will probably be thinking about that stuff over break.

For those who are interested, I'll probably try to make it down to SF at least once over break, though in all honesty I don't know if I'll come down more than that. It'd be great to see anyone who's around - perhaps we can get together for dinner and drinks one night. I think my break is going to be a time to sit around and play video games (Halo 3 on the big screen, Vish?).

The Darjeeling Limited
Wes Anderson's fifth movie continues his tradition of quirky, dryly-humorous-yet-profound filmmaking with this endearing tale of three brothers' quest for spiritual enlightenment and familial bonding. As opposed to "the Royal Tenenbaums," there is not much in the way of character background - rather, we are told just enough about each character to motivate their comically-inappropriate behavior. Despite this lack of background, I found the characters in this movie some of the most believable of those populating Anderson's fictional worlds. For this reason, I see this movie as Anderson's character-driven masterpiece. Gone is the dominating male father figure (Bill Murray twice, Gene Hackman and James Caan once) and in his place are three lost brothers dealing with the death of (who else?) their father (whom we never meet). It is really the interplay between the three brothers that drives most of the movie and it is the conflict and resolution of their coming to terms with one another that provides the story its arc.

Here's a surprise: I loved it. Is it Wes Anderson's best? Probably not, although he's showing signs of maturity as a director. The last third fumbles slightly through some false starts that likely could've been cut but redeems itself with the best shot of the entire film (a horizontally moving camera cuts down all barriers of time and location to show what happens to many characters).

There's a lot more to say, from the beautiful scenic shots, the use of color, the design details of the train, and so on. This movie contains more than its share of pretty images. But if you see it, be sure to watch Hotel Chevalier first or you'll be missing some interesting background on Schwartzman's character.