TED.com for TEFLers and linguists Part One
Here goes with another blog post of the type I like to call ”Google with an opinion”, which I highly recommend as a method of improving your own internet use and getting a free blog post out of it. Basically, I have justified spending even more time on the internet when I should be writing a 3 month late review for Modern English Teacher (not entirely my fault!) by the fact I’m wasting that time on the best site ever and because I have the vague hope that I might send a few more people there. That’s my lapsed protestant work ethic sorted out then! And this is how it works:
- I watch some videos
- I pick the bits I like
- I put them up on here
Bet you can’t believe I’m getting paid for this!*
Here goes, in approximate order of how interesting I found them:
Susan Savage Rumbaugh on apes that write
A computer that works like the brain
Inlcuding the 1946 Alan Turing quote “In 30 years, it would be as easy to ask a computer a question as to ask a person”.
Steven Pinker on the Blank Slate
Including the pre-publication review for that book “Get a security camera for your house”(!) and my new favourite English expression- “the parenting-industrial complex”.
A 3 minute poem entirely in emoticons
Steven Pinker on Language and Thought
I lost interest a bit towards the end (I also haven’t finished any of his book since The Language Instinct, but they always start well), but there were some interesting bits:
The uniform of the head of the Academie Francaise is worth 68,000 dollars, apparently, which explains a lot about its continuing existence…
“[The Academie Francaise] are now working on their 9th edition [of their dictionary], which they began in 1931, and they’ve reached the letter P”- which also figures
A more thought provoking one was:
“it is very hard to find an example of abstract language that is not based on some concrete metaphor”
but I soon got back to giggling about the idea of verbs that “go both ways” and getting distracted by the /ch/ sound in his pronunciation of “chassis”
*I’m not
Tags: Youtube
