George Carlin Albums on Youtube

In 2008, during my senior year of high-school I skipped out on seeing George Carlin in Northampton Massachusetts even though I had listened to ever one of his albums. Tickets were forty dollars each, and I couldn't find anyone to go with. Two months later he died. I still haven't forgiven myself.

Why I am posting about him now (and have before) on this site is that Carlin often covered the theme of language, and it's role in society, and thought thought. In his Inside The Actors Studio episode, when asked "what turns you on"? He responded "Reading about language".

It seems someone has recently uploaded a wealth of George Carlin albums to YouTube including interviews, and audio books. What made Carlin such a great comedian, and ranked him with others such as Lenny Bruce, Bill Hicks, and Richard Pryor, is that he was a social critic.

There have also been some interviews uploaded that I have never seen before, here is one of them:

Buzzwords

George Orwell, Politics and the English Language:

In certain kinds of writing, particularly in art criticism and literary criticism, it is normal to come across long passages which are almost completely lacking in meaning(2). Words like romantic, plastic, values, human, dead, sentimental, natural, vitality, as used in art criticism, are strictly meaningless, in the sense that they not only do not point to any discoverable object, but are hardly ever expected to do so by the reader. When one critic writes, ‘The outstanding feature of Mr. X's work is its living quality’, while another writes, ‘The immediately striking thing about Mr. X's work is its peculiar deadness’, the reader accepts this as a simple difference opinion. If words like black and white were involved, instead of the jargon words dead and living, he would see at once that language was being used in an improper way. Many political words are similarly abused. The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies ‘something not desirable’. The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using that word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different. Statements like Marshal Petain was a true patriot, The Soviet press is the freest in the world, The Catholic Church is opposed to persecution, are almost always made with intent to deceive. Other words used in variable meanings, in most cases more or less dishonestly, are: class, totalitarian, science, progressive, reactionary, bourgeois, equality.

Buzzwords can be used in order to hide intent. Politicians are notorious for this, and as a result they compose long winded empty speeches. Steven Pinker does a great job at explaining this:

Empty rhetoric also exists in the form of buzzwords. "Clinically-tested", "vitality", "angus beef", "natural", "max", etc are all hollow and empty terms.

This concept reaches farther than just the words that we think of as buzzwords. For example, since most products are exactly the same, they can all legally be referred to as being the best without justification. If you want to go ahead and state that your product is better however, you need to have a reason for saying so. When Papa John's claimed that their "fresher" ingredients made for a "better" pizza than Pizza Hut pizza, Pizza Hut sued them in federal court and won.

Another buzzword that gets thrown around is natural. A concept we associate with healthy foods. Arsenic, mercury, and radium are all one-hundred percent natural. I don't know what makes Wendy's fries any more real, or natural than the ones they had before. Sea salt doesn't change the fact that there is still salt on my fried potato. Although we may think otherwise; natural and healthy are not synonymous. Wendy's fries are still bad for you, even if they still are delicious.

Meersalz - Sea salt, I can't even escape
this bullshit in Germany!

Advertisers are always using silly little fallacies to get at you. The assurance of a clinically-tested trial for a product usually means the research was financed and published by the company itself. Going on to use these results to promote the product, or by saying something like "nine out of ten doctors agree...", or "experts say..." is a fallacious appeal to authority.

Maybe you have read something like this in a newspaper article: "Could help keep you healthy" Could -in this context means may. So it might not work. Help - Wont necessarily work on it's own. Keep - will only maintain a helthy heart, so you already need to be healthy in the first place. Sounds like a sack of bullshit to me, you would be better off exercising with the time it would take to read that article.

Using Visual Accessing Cues For Better Memorization

In 1985 there was a PHD thesis published researching the use of the same visual eye movements that are used in NLP to tell wither or not somebody is lying. Rather than use the eye movements to read the body language of a subject, the researcher had subjects utilize these same strategies in order to help memorization of how to spell words.

This article references information in a previous article I wrote on visual accessing cues. If you are not familiar with this technique, I suggest reading the article in the second link above, or clicking here.

This research falls under cognitive strategies, which as the name suggests; are learning, and thinking strategies we can use to increase mental performance, and memory. Another paper from the University of Utah defines these strategies, which differ somewhat person-to-person, as personal strategies: 

"A strategy is an ordered sequence of cognitive behavioral experiences that is repeated in the same or similar contexts. An experience is personal, so must strategies be. For example, when I tie my shoelaces in the morning, there is a sequence of experiences--mostly of the small muscle sensations and skin pressures in my fingers--that are repeated from past shoe-tying contexts. Even though million of people tie their shoes every day, the exact sequence of my experiences, probably slightly different from anyone else's, must occur for me personally if my shoes are to be tied."

 The reason why these strategies are personal is because not every strategy works for everyone. It is important to provide people (or more specifically, children who don't know how to tie their shoes) with pictures, stories ("make the bunny ears"), and demonstrations of how to tie a knot. As these children learn, they also develop internal representations of what a knot is. Therefore it would make sense that remembering what a knot looks like, visualizing a knot, or saying the steps of tying a knot out loud ("a rabbit comes out of the hole, goes around the tree...") would all help in remembering how to tie your shoe. The example the paper gives is that when experienced spellers try to spell a non-phonetic word, such as "Albuquerque"; they will visualize the word, and then spell it out based off of their mental image of the word.

In both these tests, the results were almost identical. In the Loiselle test All the subjects were given a spelling "pretest". Group A was simply told to "learn the words", and scored same as the pretest. Group B was told to "visualize the words as a method of learning them", and scored 10% better. Group C was told to "look up to the left", which NLP claims helps visual memory, and scored 20-25% better! A further group, Group D, were told to "look down to the right" (kinesthetic, and internal dialogue), but may hinder visualizing. People in this group scored 15% worse than pretest.

In the Malloy test the visualization spelling strategy produced a 25 percent improvement in spelling ability (and 100% retention) compared to no change in a control group but that spellers told to visualize when looking "down to the left" (kinesthetic feeling) scored around 10% worse.

Of course these studies only suggest that these techniques would only help with spelling. Although I seriously doubt that this only applies to spelling. Nevertheless, this research opens the door for all types of other questions. Would looking down and to the left or right (kniestethic) help with typing correctly on a blank keyboard? Or would it not help because even though typing is a physical activity, it is still a memorization task? Does looking down/right affect spelling performance any more or less then looking down/left? IS the eye movement simply a memory cue that helps with memorization, and if so why do people who look down perform worse on the tests?

German Genders

edit - 9/20/2011 added some more.

When I first started studying German I was told that there was no way to inherently know the gender of German nouns. You just have to learn the with the word. A year and a half later I was told that some words have certain genders if they end a certain way. What the fuck? Anyways I compiled a list of words which are easy to remember the gender for, or to know just by looking at the word.

If you're a beginner, all you need to know is that there are three genders (not counting plural, which is den). Masculine (der), feminine (die), and neuter (das). Although for the most part, you will have to memorize the genders for most words. Good luck! Don't worry, with time it comes naturally!

• Words ending with an e are usually feminine, think die. An exception to this is the word Der Käse (The Cheese).
• Words ending with a r are usually masculine, think der.
• As long as they are used as nouns, numbers are always feminine.
• The same is true for letters, although they are neuter.
• Any nouns with these suffixes are feminine: -ei, -ie, -heit, -keit, -schaft, -ung, -et, -ion, -ik.
• Days, months, and the seasons are always masculine.
• Compass directions are always masculine.
• Many towns, and countries are neuter.
• Any nouns with these suffixes are masculine: -ier, -ismus, -ist.
• Nouns that end in -chen are always neuter. This is why the word das Mädchen (the girl) is neuter.
• The words fork (die Gabel) , knife (das Messer) , and spoon (der Löffel) are all different genders.

More on The Eyes: Pupillometrics

I wrote an article on NLP and visual accessing cues that got a lot of positive feedback from readers. I thought I would write another quick article on the eyes. This is about a cool little thing you can try out with anyone.

Simply put; when we see things we like, our pupils dilate in order to take in more light, and so that we can also better see what we are looking at. When our pupils dilate, we are also looking at a person, picture, or object more closely; which causes the pupil-dilation (exactly like a camera lens). A book on dating or attraction my tell you that pupil dilation is a sign of attraction, and it is, but this is not always the case.

The study of pupil size is called pupillometrics. And there have been all sorts of studies done on the subject, you can probably try out a few with your friends! A hungry person's pupils will dilate when they are shown food. A woman's pupils will dilate when shown pictures of a child. A ornithologist's eyes will probably dilate if you show them a picture of a bird.

This is one of the reasons poker players wear sunglasses. See a hand you like, and your eyes are going to give you away without you even knowing what's happening. There are of course false tells. Many types of mushrooms will cause your pupils to dilate, and in the past people would eat certain strains to appear more attractive; as big pupils do not only mean attraction, but also may case somebody to reciprocally feel attracted to somebody whose looking at them with dialed eyes. Whoa, talk about behavior that is hardwired into our brains. Although I wouldn't say that this is an effective strategy for card playing...

Jesus' Body Language

I made it to Freiburg alive. On my first day downtown I saw these handles on the University's church:

This is really interesting because exposed hands are a body-language-sign of openness. Take any image of Jesus you have seen; where are his hands, and what are they doing (other than being nailed to a cross)?

This of course is not true for every picture of Jesus, but he is almost never portrayed as aggressive unless the artwork is depicting specific scenes of The Bible (i.e. the cleansing of the temple).

When you expose your palms, your body language is saying that you are being open, welcoming, honest, etcetera. Compared to other things you could be doing with your hands. For example, crossing your arms, or even displaying the back of your hands in certain ways can be perceived as defensive.

Body language isn't something we think about all the time, but it is an important factor in every social situation we are engaged in. The Freiburg University Church was built between 1683, and 1701. It is fascinating that this symbol of body language was incorporated into religious artwork even then!

The Umlaut

On first sight one of the things that throws off many people when they see the German language is the Germanic umlaut. To them it is a weird symbol reserved for metal bands;

If you're reading this site, you're probably more familiar with something like this.

An umlaut is really a way to let you know that a vowel should be stressed more like following vowel. In German the word umlaut is a compound of the words "um" - "around" , and "laut"- "sound" . I went a little nuts the past couple days trying to find the IPA symbols, and pronunciation for vowels with the umlaut. While not a vowel, the German letter ß ( sharp s) for example is pronounced [s] .

The sharp s is a pretty cool letter in itself.

These pronunciations do exist and Wikipedia does list them on the page for German grammar. However simply knowing the chart is not enough because there are special rules regarding syllable stress, and of course exceptions for certain words.

I don't think I should really be surprised after searching out for something I thought I really wanted, that it's not what I wanted at all. The chart still is important though, because you are going to want to know when someone is using an umlaut. The use of the umlaut can help designate past tense "fallen - fällen" "to fall - to fell" , "Fuß - Füße" "foot - feet" , "lang - Länge" "long - length" . Although rules for written and spoken German can be different.

In my search for videos on pronouncing these letter, I was bombarded with videos of different bands named Umlaut. I wish I was fucking kidding. I did find a cute video that covers the pronunciation of German words with the umlaut in them. It sort of supports the suggestion that has been made to me concerning the pronunciation of them; which is to stress any vowels that have an umlaut above them.


                                  

Part of me now thinks that the pronunciation and inflection of words is impossible to teach through the format of text because there is so many different ways people say, or can say words. There's the classic example of "ghoti" spelling the word "fish" . Hell, I pronounced the word "pint" like "stint" until the junior year of high-school! While I lay awake in bed and contemplate German phonology, check out that video, and leave a comment or e-mail me if you have something interesting to say!

Pinker on Games People Play

RSA animate and cognitive media have been making videos since 2009. The videos have been posted everywhere from Boingboing to Facebook. I have even received a few in emails from friends. They are famous for making intricately drawn Youtube videos on fascinating lectures by smart people.

I have posted before about Pinker, he is a really smart linguist. In this RSA video, which is actually a chapter in one of Pinker's books, he talks about how language is a window into social relations. He then uses the film Fargo to explain what an indirect speech act is and why they are important in every day interactions.

I remember reading a post by a goon on the Something Awful forums saying something along the lines of "If you are a girl at a party and a guy ever wants to show you his guitars up in his room NEVER go." The offer to bring someone up to your room is an indirect speech act. You cannot proposition the other person for sex and one must be coy when doing so. What the white knight goon failed to realize, other than the fact that women have more experience handling propositions for sex then he ever will, is that indirect speech is actually an important part of our language. Anyways I digress, here is the video:

Essentially when speaking to someone who is in a relationship where boundaries are not clearly defined (ex. boss & worker, a date), we must use the imperative (a direct order, "do this") without seeming dominate or breaking the appropriate rules of that relationship.

One of the examples used in the book is a scene in Seinfeld where a woman offers George to come up for a cup of coffee, George explains that he really does not like coffee and goes on his way. Only later does he realize that "coffee" doesn't really mean coffee, and George is left kicking himself.
The reason why we resort to indirectness when there is no uncertainty is because the listener can figure out the speaker's intentions and the whole conversation becomes less awkward than a direct proposition for something. Also there arises the paradox of mutual knowledge vs. shared knowledge. In individual knowledge a group of people know something. In mutual knowledge a group of people know something and they know that other people know it too. As the example in the video suggests, this is how governments are overthrown.

Explicit language creates mutual knowledge. Once again citing the video; the emperor wears no clothes, now that the child has explicitly stated that the emperor is naked, everyone now knows that everyone else knows the emperor is naked, thus changing the state of their knowledge, making the whole situation hilarious. Therefore when indirect speech is used, mutual knowledge is avoided and relationships can (hopefully) still be maintained. This is why we need to be careful when speaking, and at times play games with our language. Fascinating stuff!

The book is The Stuff of Thought, and the chapter is Games People Play.

Visual Accessing Cues

One of the most fascinating things I have learned through NLP is that eye movement is a window into our mind. I once read up on the following technique in a PDF file about body language. I did not take the chapter with too much weight because the idea of being able to have an idea of what people are thinking seemed ridiculous to me.

Basically you can tell whether or not someone is lying to you based off of where they look when they are telling you something. These are called "Visual Accessing Cues". I'll let Samuel L. Jackson briefly explain:

Well... he is kind of right. Here is a more detailed chart:

Click for the full, legible image

People look to the right and left when remembering auditory information, and look down when they are reflecting. Pay attention to this the next time you are having a conversation with someone.

Now this is only useful if you are able to remember that chart up there. Things may get confusing considering the eye position changes if someone is standing next to you as opposed to opposite you. On top of that if they are left handed then everything is switched! Ahhhhh!!!!

Fortunately someone actually made an IPhone app where you can practice this. I actually tried it out and the next time someone I was talking to said "My friend once told me that..." I was keen on the fact that she glanced to my left and wrote with her right hand. Try the program out, it is free for the time being and this is a skill that is bound to help you every time you interact with someone.


If you like this article, you might also be interested in Using Visual Accessing Cues for Better Memorization.