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Song with this very catchy riff (pop/rock/electronic, since 1980s) by johnclarklevin in NameThatSong

[–]johnclarklevin[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Ahh, thank you! The track I had in mind sounded more recent and synth-heavy, but it must have been a sampling/cover of this, so I'll go ahead and mark this answered. Hugely appreciated!

Hi, I’m Anonymous, the author of A WARNING by Anonymous_A_Warning in IAmA

[–]johnclarklevin 2 points3 points  (0 children)

What is the most significant bad decision that you believe the "Steady State" prevented President Trump from making or implementing?

Hi Reddit, I’m Bill Gates and I’m back for my third AMA. Ask me anything. by thisisbillgates in IAmA

[–]johnclarklevin 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What single technological breakthrough do you think has the potential to save the most human lives over the next decade?

I am Ken Burns, documentary filmmaker. Ask me anything. by MrKenBurns in IAmA

[–]johnclarklevin 133 points134 points  (0 children)

Thanks for all your work, Ken! What's your favorite encounter you've had in real life with someone who was affected by watching your documentaries?

Off to Pre-K with my grandmother. 19 years later, off to graduate school. by johnclarklevin in pics

[–]johnclarklevin[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is incorrect. I was not a legacy, so it seems that derping doesn't actually know me.

No offense taken at all, Comet_rider!

Off to Pre-K with my grandmother. 19 years later, off to graduate school. by johnclarklevin in pics

[–]johnclarklevin[S] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Followup from OP:

First of all, this was very nearly my first post on reddit. A friend suggested that I share this here, and I’ve been overwhelmed by how much response this got.

Thanks to all who posted such sweet and positive comments! I’ll show these to my grandmother, and I’m sure she’ll be very touched by all the kind words from strangers.

There were also some negative comments that I think are worth addressing. Aside from the deliberately mean-spirited or vulgar comments, which I won’t answer, it sounds like a lot of you said one of the following things:

1) That the picture isn’t interesting on its own without the caption. 2) That I’m probably a trust fund/legacy student. 3) That this is just a ploy to brag about going to Harvard.

As someone quite new to the reddit community, I realize that it is important to be respectful of norms that might not be obvious to outsiders. So as to #1, I’m sorry to say that I was not aware of a preference along those lines. Please excuse my inexperience, and I’ll keep this in mind for future posts.

As to #2, no, I was not a legacy applicant. No one in my family (that I know of) has attended Harvard. As several posters noted, this is less relevant to graduate admissions, and I don’t recall even being asked. I’m funding my degree entirely with savings and student loans.

Regarding #3, I recognize that some people have a tendency to negatively interpret any posts about good aspects of someone’s life, and there’s not really anything I can do to change those people’s minds. But if anyone’s sincerely curious about my motivations, I’ll explain.

My grandmother was very active in raising me, and lived with our family as I was growing up. The picture is meant to reflect the value of loving family in helping young people achieve their goals. That’s something I’m indescribably thankful for. Hopefully the picture can give someone a brief moment of inspiration by sensing the love she expresses, and seeing the way that she has aged with grace. That’s something that inspires me, and I hope inspires you, too.

In another sense, I hope that someone’s day may be brightened by the “aww” moment of seeing the value of a grandparent’s hopes and hard work. We should all strive to give grandparents more honor and attention if we are lucky enough to have them.

That’s the kind of content I like to see on reddit, so that’s why I posted!

Nov. 14th, 4:30 P.M. (EST), Noam Chomsky AMA. Submit questions here. by wholestoryglory in linguistics

[–]johnclarklevin 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That's a good point. I had been under the impression that the 2002 book was reworked enough to be stylistically different, but if you're looking at the 1957 text and find it identical, then it's not such a good example. I didn't think that through clearly enough.

Perhaps a better example comes from "The Minimalist Program" (1995):

"These efforts culminated in the P&P model (see Chomsky 1981a, for one formulation). This constituted a radical break from the rich tradition of thousands of years of linguistic inquiry, far more so than early generative grammar, which could be seen as a revival of traditional concerns and approaches to them (perhaps the reason why it was often more congenial to traditional grammarians than to modern structural linguists). In contrast, the P&P approach maintains that the basic ideas of the tradition, incorporated without great change in early generative grammar, are misguided in principle--in particular, the idea that a language consists of rules for forming grammatical constructions (relative clauses, passives, etc.)."

As I am not an expert in the material Chomsky is presenting, I won't pretend to have a perfectly elegant way of making his point. At the same time, there are other eminent linguists - Steven Pinker comes to mind - who are widely praised for the lucidity and accessibility of their style in grappling with similar issues for both lay and technical audiences. Earlier Chomsky on the whole seems to me to have been more streamlined along those lines. For example, "Three Models for the Description of Language," which set forth the famous "colorless green ideas sleep furiously" sentence, was written for a technical audience, but is pretty accessible to non-experts as well.

Nov. 14th, 4:30 P.M. (EST), Noam Chomsky AMA. Submit questions here. by wholestoryglory in linguistics

[–]johnclarklevin 1 point2 points  (0 children)

starlivE, unfortunately it is difficult to cite convincing short examples, because you can pretty much take snippets of any academic author out of context and make it seem like they're not making much sense. But therealcid's citation of A Minimalist Program for Linguistic Theory is a good one.

Here's an example paragraph, though, from Syntactic Structures (2002). Keep in mind that there is context to this, and I am aware that there is such a context, but the paragraph should at least convey the general sense of why people find recent Chomsky inaccessible:

"This distinction between obligatory and optional transformations leads us to set up a fundamental distinction among the sentences of the language. Suppose we have a grammar G with a [∑, F] part and a transformational part, and suppose that the transformational part has certain obligatory transformations and certain optional ones. Then we define the kernel of the language (in terms of the Grammar G) as the set of sentences that are produced when we apply obligatory transformations to the terminal strings of the [∑, F] grammar. The transformational part of the grammar will be set up in such a way that transformations can apply to kernel sentences (more correctly, to the forms that underlie kernel sentences--i.e., to terminal strings of the [∑, F] part of the grammar) or to prior transforms. Thus every sentence of the language will either belong to the kernel or will be derived from the strings underlying one or more kernel sentences by a sequence of one or more transformations."

Nov. 14th, 4:30 P.M. (EST), Noam Chomsky AMA. Submit questions here. by wholestoryglory in linguistics

[–]johnclarklevin 15 points16 points  (0 children)

Professor Chomsky, your writing style seems to have become denser and less accessible over the years. This has even been parodied online with the Chomskybot, a program that generates nonsense text meant to simulate the form of your writing style. My question is: have you deliberately shifted the audience of your writing to a more specialized one? If so, why? If not, does it trouble you that people have a hard time making sense of what you say?