Three Diversions

Over the past week or so, I have encountered the following very different online time wasters. Enjoy!

Choose Your Own Career in Linguistics

First, via email, reader Adrian Hester told me about this very funny interactive story called "Choose Your Own Career in Linguistics" over at The Speculative Grammarian. This an online source for something that, judging by many of the outcomes of this story, many linguists need at the end of a hard day's work at McDonald's: laughs.

Actually, pretty much anyone who has been to grad school will probably get a laugh out of this. My favorite ending by far is this one.

When you regain your senses, you find yourself in Pennsylvania in 1945. All things considered, it could have been worse.

Suddenly, you realize that you've stumbled into the opportunity of a lifetime. You make your way to the University of Pennsylvania and befriend a young man named Avram Chomsky... Avram Noam Chomsky. You encourage his politics, and eventually he drops out of school to become an activist. He is eventually immortalized in a historical footnote as the only American killed in Che Guevara's ill-fated operation in Bolivia.

You, however, do a bit better. You graduate from the University of Pennsylvania in 1949, earn a Ph.D. there in 1955, and join the faculty of M.I.T. later that year. You go on to write more than 80 ground-breaking books, including Syntactic Structuralism (1957); Aspects of Theories of Syntax (1965); Reflections on Languages (1975); Lectures on Government and Bonding (1981); Generating Grammar: Its Basis, Development, and Prospects (1987); The Minimalization Program (1998); and New Horizons in the Study of Mind and Language (2001).

You are the Grand High Poobah of Linguistics. Congratulations!

I leave it as an exercise for the reader to get there!

Which horrible affliction are you?

Via Dr. Helen, I found the link to this quiz.

I am the rabies.

Make a Map

I've seen these before, but this is the nicest-looking one. (HT: Martin Lindeskog.)


I did this differently than most. The dark blue countries I have visited. The grey ones I have only seen.

-- CAV

Updates

5-8-06: Added hypertext anchors.