Charleston, South Carolina

Had soooooo much fun visiting my lovely friend Nika in South Carolina. What a well-preserved, quaint, beautiful, friendly town that has really never abandoned its unique qualities but still stays atop the trends in so many ways! Hearty southern cookin', great scenery and fun people really made this town stand out to me! Can't wait to go back :-) Check it out:

subtle yet deep

In the quest to narrow down my speciality in linguistics, I find myself fascinated by the very top and very bottom of this diagram. Is this too ambitious? Unguided? Disconnected from the reality of the field?

No, au contraire, for the arrows that connect these intriguing linguistic disciplines are my guide to all the subtleties and complexities that are language. It's beautiful!

Perspective

"Does the universe have a purpose?"

Some simple & rational perspective on the purpose of the universe from astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson on @minutephysics. These are the simple, blunt & frankly obvious reasons why I don't find religion... worth it. I'd rather hold out for some real empirical answers. I mean, we've come this far, and at the same time, have barely scratched the surface in so many disciplines.


For now, why not just live, love, laugh and learn everyone?

Stern with Tarantino on Django & ... everything

Howard Stern interviews Quentin Tarantino on Dec 5 about, well, everything, but his new movie Django (trailer) in particular. Stern's voice is nostalgic for me and I've never heard an interview with Tarantino, so I was intrigued; but the first thing that caught my attention was when O globo tweeted that Quentin talked about how much hasheesh he smoked with Brad Pitt when filming Inglorious Bastards (and I learned this word in Portuguese via that tweet: haxixe, pronounced 'a-shee-shee'). As a hookah freak, I had to hear him say it, which happens at about 18:20. And they didn't smoke sheesha, they smoked hash... oh well, still funny, and an interesting interview in general.