french pronunciation is a mystery to those outside the language. it looks a little like english, a lot like spanish, more like italian and sounds like — well, it sounds like nothing else. french might be the most distinct of linguistic sound groups of the modern languages. you can identify… Read More »say it in french

i have had many questions from students and friends about grad school. there’s a massive amount of writing about student experiences in doctoral programs (almost all horrendous and that’s definitely what i could add to the mix, though i’m not sure there’s much point as i think it’s mostly already… Read More »in search of mastery

religion is a twitchy topic. it’s easy to judge people who are religious for being stupid but it’s a very dangerous place to go — many religious people are stupid but many non-religious people are stupid and there are vastly-intelligent people on both sides of the equation. but there are… Read More »compounding error with literalism

english (like most languages written with the arcane and outdated latin alphabet) has a serious problem. an abundance of letters. that’s not the worst part, though. yes, there are various letters representing the same sound (“to” sounds like “two” and “c” and “k” are realistically interchangeable, for example). but that’s… Read More »shh. the letters are sleeping.

as you likely know, i’m a teacher. what you may not know, however, is that i am a native french speaker and this means i am sometimes asked to teach french language. it’s not something i do all that often, though i have created a series of curriculum guides for… Read More »en français, svp!

modern languages are contingent fucked-up messes of historically-motivated arcane idiocy that must be stripped and upgraded to make them functional in a post-religion, post-uneducated world or we are destined to continue to wallow in the mindless communication quagmires of the past, something most people seem more than happy to do.… Read More »the case for simple numbers