On Resurrection

We talk about the atonement a lot and how to overcome spiritual death. Which makes sense, seeing as that sickness unto death is something that affects us now, so wanting to know how to push it aside is important in the present. The resurrection, on the other hand doesn't affect us till we're long dead. It's far in the future and very distant to daily lives. There's an interesting duality here. The spiritual side of things is tangible, the physical is intangible. Not how you'd expect it to be, but such is life.

The resurrection is awesome though. Not just the not being dead part. I mean that's great but our intelligences have existed since time immemorial and will always exist afterwards. Death is only something to be feared in the moment, but not from an eternal perspective. No, the resurrection is awesome because bodies are awesome. That's the point of life, merging the spirit with a body. So that's why even spirits should be anticipating resurrection.

The problem with bodies though is that they are created and exist in a fallen world. So they're subject to fallen world things. Sickness and pain, physical and mental. Aging. Hunger. Not being able to do everything we want. So on and so forth. But the resurrection isn't just a return of the spirit to the body. Lazarus wasn't resurrected. Resurrection is the restoration of the body to its divine potential; its pre-fallen state. The bodies we wanted in the premortal life (to an extent I guess. I don't actually know what went on then. Wish I knew but that gets back to that existential question). That's the real power of physical death that defines resurrection. 

It's not that I don't (mostly) like my body but man is that something to look forward to. My brain with chemicals in balance. Not being tired all the time. Not all the other aches and pains of mortal existence, and yet still having it? What a gift and a gift that everyone gets. That's what makes the resurrection special.

 Anyway, just something I've been thinking a lot about this lentan season. 

Sayings on the Cross: Triumph

Therefore when Jesus had taken the vinegar, he said, It is ended. And when his head was bowed down, he gave up the ghost. -John 19:30, Wycliffe Bible

Sayings on the Cross: Distress

 Later, knowing that everything had now been finished, and so that Scripture would be fulfilled, Jesus said, “I am thirsty.” - John 19:28, NIV

On Birds

One hobby that I didn't mention in "On Hobbies" is birdwatching. I love birds and I love watching them. But why? Well I think that's a story worth telling. 

Like many a child, I really liked dinosaurs. Had lots of dinosaur books, knew those dinosaur facts. Great stuff, dinosaurs are (my current favorite is Therizinosaurus, which I do not remember from my big books but is absolutely S tier). Back in those days, dinosaurs didn't have feathers. It was one of those things that might be talked about, hypothesized even but it surely wasn't a common depiction. I still remember listening to Science Friday (with Ira Flatow) on NPR one day while being picked up from elementary school and the discussion topic was the discovery of evidence that some dinosaurs had feathers. At least I think that's what this was about. I don't actually know if this memory is true, but that's memories for you.

Birds are dinosaurs, so that's pretty cool. Feathered ones too and feathers are pretty. I've liked birds for a long time. They're fun to look at; they're fun to watch. I've been blessed to live in places with some pretty cool birds, something I really didn't appreciate until much later. But even back then, I did like seeing papagaio in our trees. I appreciated the burrowing owls at the church even if they didn't appreciate me. It was never nice to be chased by the mean birds (quero-quero, it was only much later I learned their english name is the Southern Lapwing) but they were a part of my life too. Traveling outside the city, I'd occasionally see toucans and caracara, even rhea. Never going out my way to see birds but certainly enjoying them. I never really knew the birds of Indonesia, unfortunately. I saw some big bats though.

It was Ethiopia were I really got into birdwatching. My time in Ethiopia really sucked. I was isolated and trapped (even setting aside the whole "no leaving the city" rule imposed by the government). My job sucked (when I had a job). Was still getting over being dear john'd. Internet was intermittent at best. Like I said, not a great time in my life. But you know what Ethiopia has? Great birds. I loved seeing bee-eaters and sunbirds and even hawks outside the many many windows of that castle. Vultures waiting at the abattoir on the way to church. Mousebirds at the school (I think at least). So, so so many birds. 

In October, we went on vacation to South Africa, which was great. My brother and I decided we'd try to see (and identify) as many different birds as we could. South Africa was where I discovered the hoopoe (such a great bird), purple crested turacos (I spent so long trying to figure out what the beautiful bird with red wings was...we didn't have internet most of the time while in South Africa) and just a bunch of awesome birds. I was hooked.

I've done better since my Ethiopia days. I've done worse since my Ethiopia days. No matter how I am feeling, birdwatching has been an excuse to spend my time clearing my mind and forgetting myself. To be in nature. To appreciate what's around me, for as little or as long as it will be. Sometimes I go for the challenge of seeing something new. Recording what I see but usually...

I'm a bird appreciator. Many of my favorite bird moments haven't come from trying to find birds but simply being at the right place at the right time. Seeing my first loon on one of the lakes here. Coming across a snowy owl while riding home from the climbing gym. Seeing a kingfisher diving on my way home from work. Coming across a flock of eagles on the Provo river. Watching cranes dance. Getting divebombed by a hummingbird. Hearing the redwing blackbirds, a sign that winter is coming to an end and spring is nigh.

To me, birds are freedom. The fly where they want. The birds don't care about my problems; they got tons of their own. They're a reminder that as much as the world may be weighing me down, there's just so much more out there. Birds are the interplay of constancy and change. The birds are ouroboros. They may fly away for months at a time, but they'll be back. Maybe different birds, but they'll be back all the same. Things change, life grinds on but there will always be birds.  

Birds are inspiration. Their colors, their songs, their dances, their feathers. The birds aren't for us and yet they can drive us to do more. One Halloween (this year? I might have time) I'll start...and finish my superb bird-of-paradise + plague doctor costume. One day I'll get mix my synths right to be like a redwing black bird. Birds make me want to not just consume, but to create. To be more than I am right now.  

I love birds.

On ephemerality

I woke up around 6:45 today and after waiting for my 7:00 alarm, I got up and looked outside. My street was a mess and there was like 7 inches of snow on the ground, a lot more than I was expecting. The snow was wet but not too slushy or icy, unlike the last few storms. Meant I didn't go climbing this morning but do plan on skiing this afternoon/tonight.

If there's one thing that living here (which is easy to find out but I won't say it) has taught me, it's to take advantage of the snow. We have cold winters, but not necessarily snowy ones (growing up in Cleveland basically every winter was 60+ at the airport, often getting close to 100" in my area because I lived on the snowy side of the city. Here the winters generally average around 50"). When we do get snow it comes down a lot at once and often doesn't stick around for long, especially for XC skiing. So if I want to ski (and 95% of the time I do), I need to be willing to drop the things I am doing and seize the moment. If I put it off because I am too busy or too tired or too lazy then I'll miss out on one of the things which makes me happy, with no idea when snow will return.

In general, snow is the quintessential ephemeral phenomenon (that's a pretentious phrase right there). Merely touching it causes it to vanish. In fact, light itself will melt snow away, leaving only mud in its wake. I saw it today even, newly fallen snow dripping off sunny roofs as the the temperature crept above the melting point. I just hope there's still enough by this afternoon let alone tomorrow morning (when I plan on skiing again). That's why I grasp at every chance I get.

Life is ephemeral. This isn't something the average person thinks as much about, since from our mortal perspective our life is the exact opposite of transitory and fleeting. It's all we experience after all. Yet it is just a glimpse of the span which is eternity. Our one chance to experience life and that's not something to be wasted. The other way of looking at the ephemerality of life uses insight from game theory. A game with a finite number of periods can be solved backwards. An infinite game can't. Life isn't infinite, and yet we can treat it as such since we don't know what the number of periods will be and thus don't know what point we are working backwards from. In that sense, no matter how long a life is, it is always fleeting because it could disappear. Just like the snow.

 So take time to do the things you want to do because you don't know when you can again. Visit those dumb tourist attractions. Eat good food.      

PS- tagged this as a diary post since it is actually about my day even if it got philosophical. Plus, it's not really a diary post hiding masking a sad post. I want to do more of this in general, to keep a record of myself on the cloud.

A piercing question

I was asked a question yesterday which can basically be paraphrased as "Is everything you say a troll?" Conversation was moving too fast to actually answer said question but I have been thinking about it a lot since then. The answer is no, but if the question was "Is everything you say a shitpost?" then it might be yes. But it is easily possible that 85-90% of what I say isn't really a true reflection of my beliefs, but my just saying shit. I'd also so that my level of shitposting is directly proportional with the size of my audience. Catch me one-on-one and I'm a lot more likely to be sincere, honest or forthright (though not entirely of course). Which is probably why I shitpost less on my blog, seeing as I have an audience of none.*

Another, more important dimension of this question is why. Why am I like this? Well, I'm contrarian by nature and so like taking the opposite views as everyone else.** It also factors into my love for a healthy (or toxic) debate. Sophistry is fun. So it's just something I enjoy. However, there's a lot more to it. I think that a decent sized part of it is that I use it as a defense mechanism. Defense against what? Good question.

Part of it is that I'm an extremely private person (he says on a public blog) and by always taking absurd positions, it's harder for others to know my true beliefs, my true feelings, my true opinions. So it acts as a smokescreen of doubt on everyone else. Hopefully so they don't pry but at the very least so they don't know without caring enough to ask. And maybe it's to protect my feelings from people who disagree. After all, they don't know if they are disagreeing with me personally or some absurd position I've taken for the lols. 

And maybe part of it is to hide my true feelings from myself. Is constantly joking about leaving a joke or am I treating it like a joke so that I don't quit my program? No one knows, not even me.

So yeah, I'm a proud shitposter. I'm a long time troll. And that's all fine in moderation.

*It's hilarious how hard it is to find this blog (minus looking at my facebook profile of course...though I just fixed a link I didn't realize was broken. oops, we'll see if I regret this). I can google my name + blogspot and it's easier to find a reference to the time I introduced a band at a random concert in Jakarta than it is to find this blog. I really am yelling into the void. For some SEO I might regret Jacob Bills blog blogspot conlangs Kikxo blogging (I've never done SEO before). 

**Some of my greatest hits include basically all of Šyþed Pyklez (especially "The Donkey Wants to Run" and "Eat Shamu"), the time I argued in a political science class at BYU that all laws about clothing are government oppression (including anti-nudity laws), writing to city council as a kid (for cub scouts?) to complain about us being a nuclear free zone, the time I wrote to a congressman (for scouts) to advocate for not banning/legalizing horse meat, and being Vatican City at MUN and giving a speech about how if this resolution was passed God would set the world on fire. There's a lot more of course and I have mellowed out since high school (apparently) though I still argue for sweatshops when around my leftier friends and against marriage as a government institution with rightier ones.

TbKt conjunctions

So I was reading about syntax and figured I could do a mini post on TbKt conjunctions. We'll look at about 4 or 5 today (all particles...except they can inflect so whatever).

The first is ī. This is "and" and links together multiple nouns within a phrase to a single subject/head. The key thing to remember here is that it works on a phrasal level instead of a clausal one and keeps both the noun and the verb the same. For example, the sentence Yān oxdīc rōxub ī zhōluq "I hit the dog and the cat". This also implies some sort of unity of coherence in the verb. Ī can link nouns separated by relative clauses. For example, Yān oxdīc rōxub vit anmōs-anmōs ī zhōluq "I hit the dog, which ran away, and the cat".

The second is jasā "and/or". It isn't commonly used and more or less replaces ī. Yān oxdīc rōxub jasā zhōluq "I hit the dog and/or the cat"

Then there is ocāk "and". Unlike ī, ocāk operates on a clausal level. More specifically, it links two (otherwise unrelated) clauses together, and draws attention to the fact that the subject changed. Indeed, in common usage it almost acts as a DS switch reference marker. This is very useful when the object cannot be promoted to subject position (perhaps because of indefiniteness) yet there is some sort of continuity between the clauses. Use of ocāk followed by a verb but no arguments indicates that the subject has changed, probably to the former object (though arguments can of course be added, especially for clarity of emphasis). For example Yān oxdīc rōxub ocāk anmōs-anmōs  "I hit a dog and the dog ran (away)". If the dog had already been previously referenced, then Rōxub oxaxdic yān ūmpa anmōs-anmōs "I hit the dog and it ran away" would be more appropriate.

Which brings us to ūmpa "and". This also works on a clausal level, but specifically marks the subject as staying the same between the clauses, like a SS SR marker. Sometimes it translates to something very similar to ī (despite working on different levels) but implies disunity of the verb, or some sort of sequence. This is especially true when the new "clause" is only an arugment, meaning that the subject and verb have been carried over. For example Yān oxdīc rōxub ūmpa zhōluq is literally "I hit (the) dog and (the) cat" but would be understood as "I hit the dog and then the cat" or "I hit the dog and (I hit) the cat (but with something to make the acts of hitting be considered separate)".

Agis means "but" and works as a replacement for ocāk. It simply marks surprise or unexpectedness of the next clause and can be emphasized with the suffix -(a)x. This suffix can also be added to the other conjunctions, with the same sort of meaning. Some examples. Rōxub oxaxdīc ūmpax mōnak anmōs-anmōs "I hit the dog but it didn't run away". Yān oxdīc rōxub īx zhōluq "I hit a dog AND a cat".

Anyway, that's an intro to conjunctions in TbKt. To think that I was accidentally doing pivot and pseudo-switch reference long before I ever knew them.

All Star: Best song of the 90s?

I interrupt my being busy with the semester to bring you this essay on the beauty of All Star.

"As a scholar of Smash Mouth, I think there's a disagreement over what mugged means here, and we might actually have the same base idea. It's getting jumped, beat up, etc. It might not necessarily mean being targeted because he has something of value. The wise person says "Hey you, the way you're going, the world (that is life) is gonna catch you up and knock you down" to which the speaker replies "You know, I know that I'm dumb and that people think I'm dumb. But this doesn't bother me" What he knows is that he has to "hit the ground running," he needs to stay ahead of both the world and be prepared for one it does catch up (since the years don't stop coming). He may get knocked down by the world, but that shouldn't stop him from being who he is. That's why he explores the backstreets, and tries new things. Because he isn't afraid of the world. He's a rock star, an all star.

The second verse calls back to this imagery. The world getting cold is the same idea as the world rolling him. It's an unfeeling place. Yet as he says "the meteor man begs to differ, judging by the hole in the satellite picture" In the same way that he isn't afraid of the world rolling him, he is doesn't believe that life gets harder the longer it goes on. In fact, if the ice is going to break, might as well take it into your own hands and jump in the water on your own terms. It's a song celebrating individual freedom. It's an existentialist love song.

Consider the verse "Somebody once asked...all use a little change". Here the speaker encounters someone who has been rolled by the world. Yet they rather than taking the chance to swim, they try to run away from their problem. The singer is sympathetic, yet also realizes the foolishness in this action. A little fuel could do him some good, but it won't fix the problem. The change in sense of the word "change" highlights this. We could all do a little better with some "change" be it a change in scenery or the personality, but it will do us only as much good as we make of it. In the end, the years start coming and they don't stop coming, so we should adapt ourselves to it, rather than live in fear. And so in the end, this is why the singer is dismissive of the wise person at the beginning. He realizes that being smart does you no good if you don't use it. Why fear the future when you can instead prepare yourself for it and have fun while doing so?

Such must we all be."

Isolating polylang?

I've already complained about polysynthesis before. I still think it's a stupid term. Anyway, here's one (very strict) definition I've seen for it:

1) polypersonal agreement
2) noun incorporation
3) extensive derivational synthesis
4) pervasive head-marking
5) verb-marking more than noun-marking

There's nothing about the phonological coherence in this one. Which, if I understand correctly, allows for the mythical "isolating polysynthetic language". Now this is a concept I've heard about before, in the back corners of internet forums and the like. I never understood how it was possible.

Then I met Abui. The author describes it as polysynthetic. Yet it sure doesn't look it. I think the most morphemes I've in a (phonological?) word is 5 and most of 2-3. Yet it's serial verbs allow for very complex verb phrases. While it's not isolating by any means (it's squarely in the agglutinating camp), it does show the diversity of "polysynthetic" languages and how the term really doesn't do justice. I'm sure if the average amateur (con)-linguist looked at it (even with glosses) they'd probably not label it as polysynthetic. Yet the author of this grammar was confident in doing so and I haven't seen anything disputing this. (Another fun one that I keep seeing brought up as polysynthetic (including by experts in the field like Michael Fortescue) with no discussion as to why it is classified as such. From my skimmings of the grammar, it sure doesn't look it).

In other news, I'm looking forward to the release of the Oxford Handbook of Polysynthesis which comes out in a few months.

Praat

I'm never going to get the hang of praat. Good thing I'm not going into phonetics. Acoustics (and transcriptions in general) is just too hard.  Here's the chart I came out with for english though:

Musing as I get things started

As I establish this, there's a couple things on my mind.

1) Do I scrub this of all PII? Obviously right now a stumble uponer could get my name and uni real easy. They can also know a smattering of the places I've lived and people who know me. Does this really matter? No, since there will be few stumble uponers, but I'm paranoid nonetheless.

2) I have lots of ling stuff, in a variety of nbs and word docs. What gets on here and what not? Probs, I'll just straight jump in the conworld blogging, and over time make fuller profile for each lang. Confusing, but this is mostly a catharticize so whatevs. Of course, I also need to decide if I upload the raw prof-doc ref-grams I use on my comp or keep them inwraps.

3) Do I keep playing the Englang as I do these or are is the angle too large on these abbvs and new words? It funs me though