ajit verghese
02/04/2010
Lunch with my brother Tom in midtown. Like being at my parents house.
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01/27/2010
Untitled
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01/21/2010
Everything is bigger in Texas. Note the 7 pillows on the bed and the Big Lone Star in the headboard. The Star is a tad bit excessive.
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01/20/2010
xkcd - A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language - By Randall Munroe
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01/19/2010
Apparently there is mobile based tickets on AA?
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Apparently there is mobile based tickets on AA?
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01/12/2010
While this is an old article from 2007, it is a fascinating read about the study of language, the focus and adherence to mental models and long standing traditions and our desire to explain away the outlier as opposed to investigate it.
The Interpreter: Has a remote Amazonian tribe upended our understanding of language? by John Colapinto
One morning last July, in the rain forest of northwestern Brazil, Dan Everett, an American linguistics professor, and I stepped from the pontoon of a Cessna floatplane onto the beach bordering the Maici River, a narrow, sharply meandering tributary of the Amazon. On the bank above us were some thirty people—short, dark-skinned men, women, and children—some clutching bows and arrows, others with infants on their hips. The people, members of a hunter-gatherer tribe called the Pirahã, responded to the sight of Everett—a solidly built man of fifty-five with a red beard and the booming voice of a former evangelical minister—with a greeting that sounded like a profusion of exotic songbirds, a melodic chattering scarcely discernible, to the uninitiated, as human speech. Unrelated to any other extant tongue, and based on just eight consonants and three vowels, Pirahã has one of the simplest sound systems known. Yet it possesses such a complex array of tones, stresses, and syllable lengths that its speakers can dispense with their vowels and consonants altogether and sing, hum, or whistle conversations. It is a language so confounding to non-natives that until Everett and his wife, Keren, arrived among the Pirahã, as Christian missionaries, in the nineteen-seventies, no outsider had succeeded in mastering it. Everett eventually abandoned Christianity, but he and Keren have spent the past thirty years, on and off, living with the tribe, and in that time they have learned Pirahã as no other Westerners have
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01/08/2010
Benjamin Zander on music and passion
This is a great Ted talk - they all are - but this one has a special place in my heart. I grew up a classically trained pianist. From the age of 5 till I was 18 I took lessons and performed recitals. Chopin was a mainstay of my teenage years and while I am still intimately involved with writing and performing music, I stopped intense classical performance when I went to college.I spent this past Christmas getting reacquainted with Chopin and old recital pieces from my younger days - specifically Prelude No. 15 in D flat. Zander is a great and energetic speaker - and its worth 20 minutes of your time. Chopin was the Leonard Cohen of his time - perfectly suited for a late night, a scotch and the rain/snow/cold beating down your door.
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12/30/2009
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12/16/2009
Boston Christmas Cavalcade for the Homeless
It is getting cold in Boston and while we may bitch and moan about so much in our lives - we should be thankful for the roof over our head, our friends and family, and the small wins. I know that I am - and there are a lot in this great city that are not as lucky as most of us. There are many that are homeless, cold and destitute. And in these trying times every little bit helps. So if you want to help the homeless and those less fortunate in this big city, AND hear some amazing music from some phenomenal and storied Boston musicians (a veritable pantheon of who’s who here folks), come out to the Cavalcade for the Homeless at Johnny D’s on Thurs, Dec 17th, 2009 at 8pm. Thankfully I don’t think it will get snowed out this year. This is going to be a lot of fun and it is a great cause. Remember: all proceeds go to the Somerville Homeless Coaltition (Any further donations encouraged at www.somervillehomelesscoalition.org or 617 623 6111.) Hope to see you there
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