Midweek Update: Devil in the White City

Hey all.  I just got back from a quick trip to see the folks, and accordingly I owe you all a few posts.  Actually, I have a really good "Thing to check out" that I just heard about, but I'll save it for Sunday.  :)

However, I just started reading Devil in the White City (on my 7 hour bus ride from Ohio) and I really like it.  It alternates between narrating the story of the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 and the murderer who was active during it.

What is particularly interesting about this book is that its writer is not a novelist but a historian.  All the events are facts rather than speculation, but they are written in a fluid way that make you wonder what will happen next.  There are elements of foreshadowing and irony built in because, let's face it, life is ironic.

So, what I would like to be doing at the moment is eating my lovely lunch of hot and sour soup and working on this book, but alas, it is a work-day for me.  Instead I am faced with my chronic conundrum of feeling guilty whenever I read for fun.  Thus, I am working my way through an article: Lopez 2009, "Ranking the Linear Correspondence Axiom," which as it turns out is not only very readable but quite clever.  We're working on it as part of our lab meeting discussion group because we have Luis (Lopez) on hand to pester with questions.  The basic idea is that Kayne's (1994) Linear Correspondence Axiom (LCA) is simply ranked with other prosodic rules in an Optimality Theory sort of approach.  Importantly, linearization is either a product of C-command or the mapping into PF, which allows clitic right and/or left dislocation to occur.

But, I haven't finished it yet.  The soup certainly helps, though.

'Tis July, or What it's like to be 25

Hey all.  The summer's been shaping up pretty nicely except a trip to Mexico that I had to bail on at the last minute.  (sadness)

In May I saw my cousin graduate with a Masters in Divinity.  In June I helped my parents start repainting their house (they're still working on it) and went to a workshop in Indiana.  Oh, and watched part of the World Cup for the first time in my life.

Now, in July I have been suffering the slings and arrows of Chicago's heat and humidity while braving the elements to partake in some of the city's local fun.  Like everyone and their mother I stopped by Taste of Chicago.  I saw a concert in Millennium Park and played in the spitting fountain with the other tourists.  I've gone to Chinatown and Wicker Park and the Magnificent Mile, and I've seen the 4th of July fireworks in Oak Park (since the Loop is a zoo on the 4th).  Chi town, as they say, is something to see in the summer.

And yet, all at the same time I've got to be a grad student?  Yeesh.  C'est la vie.