The blind activist

Fantastic post about why the media is still referring to Chen Guangchen as the "blind activist", even though some bristle that it is irrelevant. Fantastic because it is so simple and logical (in hindsight)

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3936

Alan Greenblatt of NPR wonders why news outlets insist on continuing to draw attention to the blindness of Chen Guangchen, the Chinese activist who recently escaped house arrest and who has been at the center of international attention this past week.

Greenblatt writes[1] (NPR online;5/4/2012):

Chen has been repeatedly referred to as "the blind activist" or "the blind activist lawyer" by news outlets such as The New York Times, The Associated Press and The Washington Post. The Economist's current cover story is headlined "Blind Justice."

On Wednesday, NPR decided not to label Chen a "blind activist"….

Descriptions of Chen as blind may have stuck in part because of the way he burst into broad Western consciousness last week—not through his longstanding campaign against China's one-child policy, but by escaping house arrest and trekking 300 miles to Beijing. The fact that he is blind made the story that much more dramatic.

"We're sticking with 'blind' because Chen's name might not be familiar to readers, but they may be aware that there's a 'blind activist' in trouble," says Blake Hounshell, the managing editor of Foreign Policy.

But it doesn't seem like a useful shorthand to Geoffrey Nunberg, a linguist at the University of California, Berkeley, and regular contributor to NPR's Fresh Air.

"It was relevant, obviously, in reference to his escape," Nunberg says, "but the continued use implies a relevance that just isn't there. I don't think it's a 'PC' thing - the point would be the same if he were, for example, 6′7″."

I disagree with Geoff Nunberg's claim that referring to Chen as "the blind activist" necessarily "implies a relevance that just isn't there". I think that Blake Hounshell is spot on in thinking of the phrase as a useful and efficient way of identifying Chen to readers. Hounshell is on to a phenomenon that is known to psychologists as a "conceptual pact" in which conversational partners tend to persist in using referring expressions that were originally introduced, even after they've long outlived their initial contextual relevance.

The process was first studied experimentally[2] by Susan Brennan and Herb Clark. They noted that in a given context, speakers do usually craft their referring expressions to contain as much information as is needed or relevant—for instance, in a context where the speaker is trying to get
the hearer to be able to pick out one particular fish from among several others, he might refer to "the striped fish", but in a context with a single fish, he would simply say "the fish".

What if a speaker has previously specified "the striped fish" as a way of disambiguating reference, but then later refers to that same fish, now in a context that only has the one fish? He tends to re-use the more explicit "the striped fish", even though this information is no longer relevant or necessary in the immediate context. The existence of a conceptual pact trumps contextual relevance.

Hearers, it seems, have expectations that are line with this. When a referring expression is recycled, the usual inferences of relevance become suspended. For example, normally hearers assume that an adjective is more than a mere grace note accompanying a noun, that it's earning its keep by
serving some useful purpose. I've measured this myself by looking at people's eye movements as they follow instructions to move various objects around. Suppose they see in front of them a tall pitcher, a tall glass, and a second shorter glass, and they hear the beginning of an instruction
that begins with "Hand me the tall…" At this point in time, they tend to look at the glass, not the pitcher. They assume that the speaker has gone to the trouble of specifying "tall" because it's needed to distinguish between the glasses—otherwise, the speaker could have just said "Hand me the pitcher." This shows that hearers normally do imbue words with maximal relvance. But, all bets are off if the speaker has previously referred to the pitcher as "the tall pitcher". Now, the mere fact of having used the same expression some time ago seems to be reason enough to include the word "tall".

I can appreciate that continuing to refer to Chen's disability might rankle, much as one might bristle at a continued description of someone as "the black candidate". For that reason alone, writers might be justified in jettisoning a previous "conceptual pact". But there is perfectly reasonable psychological motivation behind the lingering impulse to use the offending phrase, which is why writers face a quandary in the first place, and why NPR had to make a decision about this as a matter of policy.

Links:
[1]: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/05/04/152037877/a-factor-in-a-much-larger-life-debating-chen
-guangchengs-blindness (link)
[2]: http://psych.stanford.edu/~herb/1990s/Brennan.Clark.96.pdf (link)

William Gibson - "Spook Country"

Looking forward to a new W. Gibson, but kind of disappointed.

It's set in today's time; I love his cyberpunk stories and the strangeness of them, the familiarity with which he throws around the weirdest stuff, everything so familiar to him yet as a reader you grapple to understand it all.

And that's what bothered me most here; he mentions a dozen times she "grabbed her Powerbook". Ok, we got it, a laptop, fine. And a big boss, someone who presumably can create a darknet at will, "hasn't set his WEP". First of all, that guy should know to set his WPA2, not WEP, second, and more importantly, it's a password. Doesn't matter what or how!

The repeating of (fake) brandnames or styles in cyberpunk works well, nay, is necessary because the reader is utterly unfamiliar with them. You need the repetition to slowly form a full image of something in your mind. With day-to-day objects like laptops and the such.. we don't need that.

Also, the characters, the story; it all gets only mildly interesting. The clou, I couldn't really care much about it.

The style, short chapters of 3 - 6 pages, cycling through the three storylines gives a nice impression of everything happening at once, without getting lost.

Yet, at most a 6.

Antichrist

Finally saw the (in)famous Lars von Trier. Not at the best moment, I must admit.

It's intense and brutal, but gripping nonetheless. I understand people looking away, but I couldn't, and both actors do an amazing job.

The three beggers felt a little bit like a sudden cheat, but only in hindsight; so it probably doesn't mean that much.

Tool - "The Pot" (10.000)

Who are you to wave your finger?
Ya' must have been out your head.
Eye hole deep in muddy waters.
You practically raised the dead.

Rob the grave, to snow the cradle.
Then burn the evidence down.
Soapbox, house of cards, and glass,
So don't go tossin' your stones around.

You must have been high.
You must have been high.
You must have been.

Foot in mouth, and head up asshole.
Whatcha talkin' 'bout?
Difficult to dance 'round this one
'til you pull it out, boy!

You must have been, so high.
You must have been, so high.

Steal, borrow, refer, save your shady inference.
kangaroo done hung the juror with the innocent.

Now you're weeping shades of cozened indigo
Got lemon juice up in your...EYE!

When you pissed all over my black kettle
You must have been HIGH, HIGH
You must have been HIGH, HIGH

Who are you to wave your finger?
So full of it.
Eyeballs deep in muddy waters
Fuckin' hypocrite.

Liar, lawyer, mirror, show me.
What's the difference?

kangaroo done hung the guilty with the innocent.

NOW!!
You'll weep or, change the cozened indigo.
Got lemon juice up in your high eye.
When you pissed all over my black kettle
You musta been!

So who are you to wave your finger?
Who are you to wave your fatty fingers at me?
You must, have been, out your, mind!

Weepin' shades of indigo
Shed without a reason
Weepin' shades of indigo

Liar, lawyer,
Mirror for ya,
What's the difference?
kangaroo be stoned
He's guilty as the government

NOW!!
Will you weep or, change the cozened indigo
Got lemon juice up in your, EYE!!
EYE!!

Now when you pissed all over my black kettle.
You musta been HIGH, HIGH, HIGH, HIGH.
Eyeballs deep in muddy waters
Your balls deep in muddy waters.
Ganja, please, you must have been out your MIND!!!!

["Kangaroo" refers to "kangaroo courts", which were mock courts established to prove people guilty without a fair trial or any real evidence - most of the court cases dealt with marijuana users]

Tool - "Wings for Marie (pt 1)" (10.000 days"

Amazing intro... haunting. Think Linkin' Park's crazy song "Session".