Obama, "is is", and "was is"

I've been noticing a phenomenon I call the 'double is'. That's where you say "The thing is, is that...". This phenomenon has been noted before, but it's not clear what's happening. The 'double is' resembles (superficially) other grammatical sentences in English, like "How serious the problem is is less important than how serious it feels to them." It's also normal to put other verbs before an is, like "The thing to do is to be honest." Even so, the 'double is' is sort of hard to account for grammatically.

The thing is is that people still use it. I just heard it from US President Barack Obama on his recent Jon Stewart interview.



But then Obama does it again, this time using the past tense:



The point "was is..."? Now that's something I hadn't heard before.

Uchtdorf tells 'em what they want to hear

That was quick.

Mormons may not know until the hereafter what causes same-sex attraction, but “God loves all his children” and expects everyone to do the same, an LDS Church leader said Sunday.

While the message — delivered to more than 200,000 Utah Mormons — may not seem significant, the messenger was.

As second counselor in the governing First Presidency, Dieter F. Uchtdorf is one of the highest-ranking leaders in the hierarchy of the nearly 14 million member Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to address the thorny topic of whether same-sex attraction is inborn.

Ain't that sweet?

But what qualifications does Uchtdorf have to address whether SSA is inborn? None -- he's just a mystic. No, he was sent to 'Save the Sale'. Church doctrine changes when it looks like it's going to affect the bottom line. Hating on homos made good business sense in the past (and thus good doctrine), but it's been playing increasingly poorly as of late. Answer: Downplay Packer, so Uchtdorf gets to be the good guy.

“Many questions in life, however, including some related to same-gender attractions, must await a future answer, even in the next life,” Uchtdorf said. “Until then, the truth is, God loves all his children, and because he loves us, we can trust him and keep his commandments.”

Have you ever noticed how that 'wait until the next life' thing gets played a lot?

Some audience members welcomed Uchtdorf’s approach, which seemed more consistent with the church’s position.

“It seemed fairly close to the line we’ve been getting lately — the idea that the practice is sinful, but homosexual tendencies are acceptable within the church as long as people don’t act on them,” said Jennie Pulsipher, a Mormon who watched the regional conference via satellite at her east-side Salt Lake City stake center. “He also emphasized that [gays] should be treated lovingly as children of God.”

Hear that, gay people? Mormons will treat you like humans, as long as you never have sex for the rest of your fucking life. Sounds like a deal to me.

Joust marathon

John McAllister is challenging a 25-year-old Joust world record. It's going on now, as I write this. I'm following the live video feed sporadically.

I found out about John's attempt yesterday morning, had a look, and I thought, "Wow, he's really good." At that point, he'd been going for 22 hours.

Then I worked all day, came back to check out the game in the evening, and he was still going. Now I've had a night's sleep, and he's still going. He'll need to go for about 60 hours total to beat the 107 million points. When he takes a break, he just walks away from the controls and burns off a few of the hundreds of extra guys that he's built up.

Joust is a fast game at the higher levels, and the gameplay is more or less constant. It requires an almost cyborgian level of endurance, but there he is, working with precision at a frenetic pace. He always knows exactly where to be, whether facing the 'unbeatable?' pterodactyls, or taking on the blue knights at the top of the screen, predicting their unpredictable fluttery arcs.

So all right, yes, it is the same thing over and over again. And yes, it goes for a long time. Even so, I find the marathon to be strangely compelling viewing. Kind of like when I was a kid in Cheney, probably hanging out at Zip's, watching someone who was really good. Video games are time machines.

UPDATE: He's done it. All hail Sir John. His record will live in the annals of history. Ages hence, bards will sing of his jousting exploits, and maidens will swoon.

Or it'll be YouTubed, which is close to immortality.

Not what I expected

Complete this sentence:

If a business is manufacturing products that pose real risks of serious disease, we believe it is all the more important that it...

Stop manufacturing the product?

Get taxed into oblivion?

Be legally disbanded?

None of the above, according to British American Tobacco's website. Their answer:

...we believe it is all the more important that it does so responsibly.

If you make products that kill people when used as intended, how do you do that 'responsibly'? That's quite a different definition of 'responsibility' than the one I'm accustomed to.

AltMed Flowchart

Just had to link to the wonderful AltMed Flowchart.

This will help you to select your preferred healing modality, restoring balance and draining away unwanted funds.

Emoticon test

Here's a survey about emoticons that you can take. I recognised some, but others I had to guess.



I like to see what other linguists are doing, and it's fun to guess what the work is intended for. I'd say this work is part of sentiment analysis: working out automatically how a writer is feeling about what they're writing. Or tweeting.

So help a fellow linguist out and take the test. It's quick, and sort of fun.

What's it going to take?

Boyd K. Packer takes another opportunity to deride gay relationships as 'Satanic', 'wrong', 'wicked', 'impure', 'unnatural', 'not worthy', 'immoral', 'basically wrong', and 'evil'.



In part:

We teach a standard of moral conduct that will protect us from Satan’s many substitutes and counterfeits for marriage. We must understand that any persuasion to enter into any relationship that is not in harmony with the principles of the Gospel must be wrong. In the Book of Mormon we learn that “wickedness never was happiness.” Some suppose that they were “pre-set” and cannot overcome what they feel are inborn tendencies toward the impure and the unnatural. Not so. Why would our Heavenly Father do that to anyone? Remember, He is our Father.

O what an objectionable old man. Too bad he isn't just someone's embarrassing elderly uncle. There are millions of LDS faithful who believe him reflexively, and will help him to legislate for his private prejudices.

This isn't a one-off, by the way. Boyd Packer was saying this stuff back in the 90s.

There are three areas where members of the Church, influenced by social and political unrest, are being caught up and led away. I chose these three because they have made major invasions into the membership of the Church. In each, the temptation is for us to turn about and face the wrong way, and it is hard to resist, for doing it seems so reasonable and right.

The dangers I speak of come from the gay-lesbian movement, the feminist movement (both of which are relatively new), and the ever-present challenge from the so-called scholars or intellectuals.

I knew he was saying these things back then, and I disagreed with it. But I didn't see it for what it was. I thought it was an inspired leader giving his own misguided opinion. I figured that in a few years, this kind of rhetoric would work its way out of the system, and give way to a more enlightened mindset. A more liberal, tolerant mindset. A mindset more like the one held by... wonderful enlightened me! (More than once, I threw out a shoulder patting myself on the back during those times.)

What I didn't realise was that I was a very slim minority in a very conservative church. I felt like I was holding down the liberal fort, but the rest of the church was continually working on goals I didn't like. The leaders were actively working to undermine values I prized. They were fighting against the validity of gay relationships in Hawaii. They'd fought against equal rights for men and women. Before that, they'd fought against equality for people of African descent (but I was rather younger then). Each time, I and the other liberal Mormons I knew were bothered by it, to be sure. But then we all hit the spiritual snooze button and refused to wake up. I stayed in a church that despised members like me. I didn't leave. And this haunts me now.

Why wasn't overt institutional prejudice enough for me to quit? What would it have taken for me to realise that this church was committed at its core to inequality? Well, I believed in the church, had a testimony, and I thought these policy stances, though objectionable, were temporary, and would change in course of time. I think it might be the same dynamic that keeps people in abusive relationships. You keep getting hurt, but you make excuses, tell yourself it's not that bad. And you stay for the next round.

If you're a committed Mormon, and you have no trouble with prejudice, then you'll do fine in the church. Keep it up. I'm not writing this for you.

But if you're a Mormon who's feeling a bit alienated and unsure about this latest Packerism, consider that this is just another piece of evidence for the LDS Church's all-too-human origins. Its policies and practices reflect the thoughts and prejudices of its leadership and its membership at the time. And even if you don't share these prejudices, remember that as long as you're a member, they do what they do in your name. You are donating your time, money, and numbers to an organisation that is actively working to undermine your values.

If you decide to stay in, like I did all those years, I understand. But I can also tell you that it's good to wake up and live a life that's more free of internal conflict. The LDS Church has their issues that they're dealing with. You don't need them to drag you down. Your values are better.

Get off Emma Thompson's lawn!

So I notice this article about actor Emma Thompson:

Emma Thompson says youngsters' poor language drive her 'insane'

And I think: Uh-oh. We may have found the precise moment at which Emma Thompson turned 'old'. Because there's no better marker of advanced age than when you start complaining about the language use of younger people.

"We have to reinvest, I think, in the idea of articulacy as a form of personal human freedom and power. I went to give a talk at my old school and the girls were all doing their 'likes' and 'innits?' and 'it ain'ts', which drives me insane. I told them, just don't do it. Because it makes you sound stupid and you're not stupid," the Telegraph quoted her as telling Radio Times.

Sounds like another prescriptivist rant.

But then, because she's a smart person, she says something smart.

"There is the necessity to have two languages - one that you use with your mates and the other that you need in any official capacity. Or you're going to sound like a knob," she added.

Ah, now that puts things in a different light. We can command different styles of talking, and we can switch depending on who we're talking to. And I myself worry when a young person either doesn't know how to use a higher register or doesn't know when to switch into one. So that's quite on.

But Emma Thompson is still being an old fart because
1) she's annoyed, so everyone else has to change?
2) complaining about language is something old farts do.