23 October 2008

Miscellany I found in the news today

First an article about crib deaths due to faulty equipment
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/roseanne-colletti/crib-notes_b_137200.html

Next an article about Anthropologist Louise Lamphere's landmark legal case against Brown University and how she now is giving back to Brown... My only question is where did a college professor get that kind of money????

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/10/23/brown

A hilarious website that uses Sarah Palin's voice against her...
http://pa.lindro.me/?w=4468

And just one more about my alma mater, a video for recruiting to Penn
http://www.duelingtampons.com/2008/10/penn-puts-out-great-video-for-prospects.html

15 October 2008

Bottled water has contaminants too, study finds (AP)

Here in Pound Ridge everyone has well water. One of the challenges of living here besides chronically dry skin is the fact that the water is undrinkable. We had it tested and discovered that it contains high levels of calcium and magnesium - a hardness of 11!!!!!! So we always drink bottled water because drinking tap water around here is like drinking milk of magnesia (at least I don't have to worry about my bone density!) Now, with this article, we have to buy the expensive stuff - We had been buying the Acadia because it was a full 50 cents a gallon cheaper but I guess you get what you pay for. Good old NYC water - I miss water that didn't turn my hair to orange frizz, age my skin 30 years with each shower (even my daughters need moisturizing and they are only 17 mos old), and that I could drink without getting disentary!!!!

read more | digg story

06 October 2008

Talking Hands Question Answered

Just to let all of you know that the sign spaceship belongs to the vehicle category - NOT airplane category of signs...
See http://commtechlab.msu.edu/sites/aslweb/browser.htm

SPACESHIP
The 3 handshape with the middle and index fingers pressed together is moved above the head from one side of the body to the other side. The handshape represents a vehicle and in this sign the vehicle is a spacecraft.

Good Read....

Well - I have finally been doing it! I have read four books in the past two months. Now this may sound like a lot or a little depending on who you are and your reading style. Before triplets, I used to "eat" books - a 3/4 books a week kind of person. One of the biggest downsides of motherhood for me has been the "Mommy brain". I don't know if this has to do with hormone levels or sleep deprivation or the need to be ever vigilant and notice details about your babies to keep them alive and safe but for the longest time (well over a year) I couldn't read more than the directions on a baby Tylenol box. I knew this was a serious problem when we got two cars when we moved here (a Honda Oddessey and a used Mercedes ) and I did not read the manuals before driving them. This was one of the things that I used to do - the result was that it took me over 15 minutes to figure out how to turn on the lights the first time I had to pick Steve up at the train station after dark.

Anyway, back to the point of this post - I just read Talking Hands by Margalit Fox. (http://www.talkinghandsbook.com/) It is a wonderful wonderful book. In my pre-Mommie days, I was a linguistic anthropologist but I was never overly interested in sign language. Yes, I knew that a lot of data about human language ability came from such studies but it just never really interested me. I wish I had this book when I was teaching intro to Linguistics. Fox, a journalist with degrees in Linguistics, tells a story of her visit to a Bedouin town in Israel where everyone - both deaf and hearing - signs a local sign language that is 70? years old. She tags along with a team of researchers who are documenting and studying this langauge. The book's chapters alternate between the story of her visit and the context of why what is being studied is significant. It covers all the major points of an introductory linguistics class - not in detail but at a high enough level that the reader can understand why such things are studied. If I ever teach that again, I have to remember to use this book. The main did-you-know-s I got out of this are:
1- There was a local signing community on Martha's Vineyard through the early part of the 20th century
2- Deaf people can get Broca's or Wernicke's aphasia in the same way that hearing people do save it is with their signs
3- I have to research this - in ASL, there are two categories of transportation, one for airplanes and one for everything else. So, is the Space Shuttle a kind of airplane? Or is it something else?

It was a great read. I felt like my brain was working again and all the topics that I used to love came back to me.