English
Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!
[ kʰɹɐʲst ɪz ˈɹɪzn̩ hi ɪz ˈɹɪzn̩ ɪn.ˈdiːd ]
Kraist ihz RIH-zen! Hee ihz RIH-zen ihn-DEED!

French
Christ est ressuscité! Il est vraiment ressuscité!
[ kʀist ɛ ʀe.ˌsy.si.ˈte il ɛ ˈvʀɛ.mã ʀe.ˌsy.si.ˈte ]
Kreest ay ray-SÜÜ-see-TAY! Eel ay VREH-mahn ray-SÜÜ-see-TAY!

Cantonese
基督復活了! 他確實復活了!
[ kei˦˥ tɔk̚ ˥ fɔk̚ ˨ wʊt̚ ˨ liuː˩˨ taː˦ kɔk̚˦ sʌt̚˦ fɔk̚ ˨ wʊt̚ ˨ liuː˩˨ ]
GAY DOLK folk wuht leew! TAA KOLK SUT folk wuht leew!

Spanish
¡Cristo ha resucitado! ¡En verdad ha resucitado!
[ ˈkɾis.to a ɾe.ˌsu.si.ˈtaː.ðo ɛɱ βɛɾ.ˈɗaːð a ɾe.ˌsu.si.ˈtaː.ðo ]
KREES-to ah ray-SU-si-TA-dho! En ver-DADH ah ray-SU-si-TA-dho!

Mandarin
基督復活了! (Jīdū fùhuóle) 他確實復活了! (Tā quèshí fùhuóle)
[ tɕiː˥.tu˦ fu˥˩.xu̯ɔ˩˥.lɯ̯ʌ˧ tʰaː˦ tɕʰy̯œ˥˩.ʂi˩˥ fu˥˩.xu̯ɔ˩˥.lɯ̯ʌ˧ ]
CHEE-DOO FOo-khwO-luh! TAA CHwö-shI FOo-khwO-luh!

German
Christus ist auferstanden! Er ist wahrhaftig auferstanden!
[ krist.us ɪst ˌau̯f.eɐ̯ˤ.ˈʃtan.dɨn eɐ̯ˤ ɪst vaˤ.ˈhaf.tiç ˌau̯f.eɐ̯ˤ.ˈʃtan.dɨn ]
KREES-toos ihst AWF-eya-SHTAHN-den! Eya ihst vaa-HAHF-teekh AWF-eya-SHTAHN-den!

Korean
예수 부활 하셨네! 참으로 부활 하셨네!
[ ˈje.su ˈpu.ɸʷɐl ˈhaɕːjɔnːɛ ˈtɕɐm.u.ɾo ˈpu.ɸʷɐl ˈhaɕːjɔnːɛ ]
YAY-soo BOO-hwal HASS-yon-ne! CHAM-oo-ro BOO-hwal HASS-yon-ne!

Arabic
!المسيح قام! حقاً قام
[ ɜl mɜ.ˈsiːʲħ qɑːm ˈħɐqː.ɐn qɑːm ]
El-ma-SEE-ehh QAHM! HHAQ-qan qahm!

Greek
Χριστός ἀνέστη! Ἀληθῶς ἀνέστη!
[ xɾi.ˈstɔs aˈnɛs.ti a.li.ˈθɔːs aˈnɛs.ti ]
Hree-STOESS a-NESS-tee! A-lee-THOESS a-NESS-tee!

When I first came here, this was all a swamp of structural linguistics. Everyone said I was daft to build a Universal Grammar on a swamp, but I built it all the same, just to show them.

First I built a Transformational Grammar. That sank into the swamp.

Then I built a Government and Binding. That fell over and sank into the swamp.

So I built a Minimalist Program. That burned down, fell over, and sank into the swamp.

But Recursion stayed up!

Until that pesky Dan Everett came up out of the Amazonian swamp…

Apologies to Monty Python.

There are also transcripts of Bujold reading the first and second chapters on the interweb.

This biological fact leads a lot of people to declare that we don’t have free will and are therefore “actually” mindless automatons, whatever that is supposed to mean. I’m a little bemused by this — I don’t think the fact has any bearing whatsoever on the question of “free will”, whatever that is (I have no idea).

The brain obviously makes a decision somehow, and the fact that we only percieve our brain’s having made the decision after the fact has little bearing on how exactly the brain makes it. Someone will have to define “free will” for me before I can opine on whether or not the brain has it. As to whether or not it’s “me” making the decision, why should I think of the parts of myself whose functioning I am not aware of as not being a part of me? I’m quite comfortable with the idea that my conscious experience of myself is really a summary, a newsreel, of the vaster collection of structures and activities that are me.

I think the real reason people have sensationalized this result is that the sophomore bullshitter in many of us would like to be able to say “since I actually have no free will at all, it doesn’t matter what I do” to get a reaction out of other people.

Me without self-doubt was a revelation. There was suddenly this incredible silence in my head; I’ve experienced something close to it during 2-hour Iyengar yoga classes, but the fragile peace in my head would be shattered almost the second I set foot outside the calm of the studio. I had certainly never experienced instant zen in the frustrating middle of something I was terrible at.

…

If you told me tDCS will allow to someone to study twice as fast for the bar exam, I might be a little leery because now I have visions of rich daddies paying for Junior’s thinking cap. Neuroscientists like Roy Hamilton have termed this kind of application “cosmetic neuroscience,” which implies a kind of “first world problem” frivolity.

But now think of a different application–could school-age girls use the zappy cap while studying math to drown out the voices that tell them they can’t do math because they’re girls? How many studies have found a link between invasive stereotypes and poor test performance?

As someone who experiences a great deal of the so-called “imposter syndrome”, all I can say is: where do I sign up?

NeuroLab version 1.2.3 is a maintenance release containing numerous fixes:

• Fixed grid generation after resize.
• Fixed grid viewer not always reflecting latest grid status.
• Fixed grid saving and loading losing grid network.
• Fixed activation gradient rendering for links of length greater than 1.
• Fixed inhibition for links of length greater than 1.
• Source code fixes and refactoring.

IronMeta version 2.3 contains the following:

• Made generated code more general so it is now possible to combine parsers by inheritance or encapsulation.
• Added the ability to use anonymous object literals in rules. They match by comparing their public properties with the input object’s properties.
• Fixed a bug where string and char literals were not correctly handled in parsers whose input was not of type char.
• Fixed an off-by-one error in input enumerables.
• Generated code now compiles with Mono.

The fact is that CO2 is not a pollutant. CO2 is a colorless and odorless gas, exhaled at high concentrations by each of us, and a key component of the biosphere’s life cycle. Plants do so much better with more CO2 that greenhouse operators often increase the CO2 concentrations by factors of three or four to get better growth. This is no surprise since plants and animals evolved when CO2 concentrations were about 10 times larger than they are today [emphasis added]. Better plant varieties, chemical fertilizers and agricultural management contributed to the great increase in agricultural yields of the past century, but part of the increase almost certainly came from additional CO2 in the atmosphere.

…

A recent study of a wide variety of policy options by Yale economist William Nordhaus showed that nearly the highest benefit-to-cost ratio is achieved for a policy that allows 50 more years of economic growth unimpeded by greenhouse gas controls. This would be especially beneficial to the less-developed parts of the world that would like to share some of the same advantages of material well-being, health and life expectancy that the fully developed parts of the world enjoy now. Many other policy responses would have a negative return on investment. And it is likely that more CO2 and the modest warming that may come with it will be an overall benefit to the planet.

Sometimes the questions people ask or judgments they imply can make us chuckle, don’t they, my darling?

– Well, who is in charge here?

We are.

– Yes, but if push comes to shove, who is the leader?

We are.

– But then who is the spiritual head of your home?

Only Jesus.

When I sing in a choir, I hold my music folder almost horizontal just about at neck level, much like a waiter holding a tray. This has several advantages over holding it lower or at a greater angle. First, the sound of my voice can move freely past my folder and out into the hall, as opposed to bouncing off my folder back to my body. The audience can see my face better and if I am trying to emote in some way they’ll catch it better than if I’m looking down. But most important, I can focus on the notes in my music while at the same time keeping the conductor in the upper part of my peripheral vision. I can also glance very quickly between the conductor and my music. This lets me follow the conductor’s beat and direction while still reading my music.

Something strange happened at our first concert last weekend. As I was singing, a twinkling light began to appear and disappear in the blur of my peripheral vision just over the conductor’s left shoulder. I managed to keep singing and during some long held notes tried to figure out what was going on.

There was a gentleman in the audience who happened to appear just to the left of the conductor from where I was standing who was dressed for the season. He was wearing a bright red beret, an impressive set of sideburns and mustachios, and a red-and-black shirt with a bright red tie. He was evidently a nervous sort, because he kept picking up his program, reading it, and putting it down. Whenever he put it down, he revealed the flashing red and blue LED lights on his tie pin.

Just a tiny bit distracting when you’re trying to focus on an inherently multitasking effort — reading your music, watching the conductor, listening to your section, listening to the other sections. Oh, and singing too.

Mr. LED caused a triggered a lot of hilarity in the choir room afterwards, but as I was thinking about what would possess someone to wear such an ornament at all, let alone at a choir concert, it ocurred to me that this situation has some bearing on my future — a future that’s a decade or so away, but something I’ve thought about a bit.

You see, I have a two-year-old daughter.

Let’s set up the beginning of an analogy here. It is certainly within Mr. LED’s rights to wear all the (literally) flashy bling he wants, and no one would dispute it. It would have been impolite and uncharitable to ask him to leave, and obviously immoral and illegal to do violence to his person in response to his insensitivity to the distraction he was causing. But he was still causing a distraction, significantly degrading my and the other choir members’ powers of concentration, and causing not a little annoyance and frustration.

You see where I’m going here. Before my daughter is a teenager, I’m going to have to talk to her about the fact that although she has (or will have, once she’s no longer a minor) the right to wear anything she wants, it might actually be insensitive of her to do so.

It is obviously impolite to stare at or comment about a scantily-dressed female, and the pathetic loser who would make wardrobe an excuse for assault should feel the full force of the law.

However, she will need to be aware that her style of dress will have an immediate effect on any present male’s powers of concentration, and, for the well-socialized at least, cause not a little annoyance and frustration.

I read a fascinating article just this morning that talks about a recent study that found that when people (of either sex) see a scantily-dressed person, there is a reduction of activity in the region of the brain that is dedicated to modeling other peoples’ agency as independent thinking beings.

So it’s not a bad upbringing or choices that cause men to objectify women who show skin (and vice versa!). It’s a basic biological fact.

That is not to say that this fact is desirable! My poor eyesight is a basic biological fact too, but that didn’t stop me from wearing clumsy technological prostheses to compensate for it, and finally getting a doctor to cut the front part of each eyeball off and used a high-powered laser to burn layers of corneal tissue away.

This basic biological fact is actually detrimental, because it causes us to undervalue others’ abilities. If you are interviewing a prospective employee, for example, you need to evaluate them in a realistic fashion, not with half your brain shut down!

In fact, I can now report that I have discovered a hidden text in the manuscripts of the Synoptic Gospels that will surely shake contemporary politics to its foundations. What follows is my translation of the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 6 3/4, Verse 2.18:

And Jesus answered, saying, “Sell all you have and give your money to a government bureaucrat who claims he will use it wisely to help the poor and needy, and not waste it giving massive loans to corrupt businesses who will fritter it away, nor buy lots and lots of guns and give them away to Mexican drug cartels, no sirree.”

That is all.