I found out today that I got the FLAS award for next year; that's a fellowship designed to let you focus on language studies. This means I won't be teaching next year. This is particularly good because you only get 5 years of TA position for the entire time you're at OSU, and 5 years is probably not enough to finish a PhD so it's helpful to get ( Read more... )

I never have much luck voting; yesterday I had to cast a provisional ballot because my address changed since I last voted. They also had a lot of trouble with the fact that my driver's license says "JOHN CHRISTOPHER KERN", my registration for some reason said "JOHN C KERN", and I sign my name "J CHRIS KERN ( Read more... )

This is a Lost post; I would advise strongly against reading under the LJ-cut if you have not seen the entire series so far (including tonight's episode).

( HUGE LOST SPOILERS )

Language Log has had several posts about a book called The Secret History of the English Language. It attempts to provide a revisionist history of European languages, asserting (among other things) that Modern English is the ancestor of Romance languages, that Latin was an invented written languages that was never spoken, that Middle English does ( Read more... )

My jaw is improving a lot; I can now sing a number of songs in a row without long-term pain. I don't know if it's the mouth guard or just time. But, it's still going to be a while before it's back to normal ( Read more... )

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO go Giants!

So much for the Pats' undefeated season.

I don't know if there's any connection, but somehow since I sang that multi-hour endless set last weekend, my jaw has felt out of alignment and somewhat sore (if I try to sing again it almost immediately hurts). I'm also having some trouble swallowing, and dry mouth ( Read more... )

Yesterday I read through the student evaluations from the Japanese 101 students last quarter. As usual, the majority of the negative comments received were on two topics: the grading system and the teaching method ( Read more... )

Our Rock Band band is now #1 for Roxanne...on the PS3 server (on the 360 network we would only be #3, apparently).

YOU DON'T HAVE TO PUT ON THE RED LIGHT

Now that it's break I can do some reading ( Read more... )