A life in words

  • Amigote vuelve a levantarse la cabeza fea

    Ahhhhrrhrhrhrhhaarrrrhhhhhh! That’s the sound of a thousand joints popping and creaking as I stretch out my blogging muscles. Faithful reader (how can you be a faithful reader of a blog that never posts!?), surely you have observed that a burning VW van no longer graces the top of our beloved peasant kingdom. I did love…

  • TA and Publishing

    Guess what! I just got hired on as a teaching assistant for Dr. Alan Manning’€™s Linguistics 430 “Theoretical Syntax”€ starting this fall. The fact that I got the high score on the final was probably a big help. I’m really excited because it’€™ll give me some great experience, and help me to keep everything I…

  • The World According To Me

    Okay, I just took the “Are you a neoconservative?” quiz at the Christian Science Monitor website and it tells me that I’m a liberal. Okay, so I disagree with President Bush on a lot of things, but I don’t think that’s quite right. I want to explain my position, just to help myself be more…

Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech … Without freedom of thought there can be no such thing as wisdom, and no such thing as public liberty without freedom of speech, which is the right of every man, as far as by it, he does not hurt or control the right of another: and this is the only check it ought to suffer, and the only bounds it ought to know. … A free People will be shewing that they are so, by their freedom of speech. … Freedom of speech is ever the symptom, as well as the effect of a good government. … Guilt only dreads liberty of speech, which drags it out of its lurking holes, and exposes its deformity and horror to daylight.Benjamin Franklin, Silence Dogood no. 8, 1722 (orthography and spelling modernized)