Saturday, July 26, 2008

discovered: tenser, said the tensor


Fans of Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man will recognize the phrase "Tenser, said the Tensor" immediately.

But you may not know of the irregularly updated but particularly entertaining and often fascinating blog of the same name.

The author describes himself as. . .

. . . a graduate student in Linguistics, having recently completed my MA and currently working towards my Ph.D. My undergraduate degree was in Computer Science, so my focus is computational linguistics, but I'm also interested in syntax, typology, psycholinguistics, and, um, everything else. Clearly, some focus is required.


On the topic of "everything else", the author relates:

Basically, I spend a lot of time yammering at my wife about things that don't interest her—she's been cultivating a very realistic expression of glazed disinterest that she pulls when I go on (and on...) about, for example, the problem of maintaining continuity in long-running multi-author works like comic books and television shows. It's taken several years, but I've finally taken the hint, so I plan to write about that stuff here.

Believe me, I can sympathize.  Whenever I get to prattling on about product management, my wife slips into an attentive fugue state in which she is capable of nodding, smiling and a few keywords like "really", "can you explain that some more" and "you know, I think I smell something burning."

So let's summarize.  Tenser, said the Tensor brings together:

Languages and Linguistics,
Japanese and Japanese Animation,
Science and Science Fiction,
Comedy and Comic Books

and a number of other topics.   What's not to love.  When you visit his blog (Which You Will) pay particular attention to the right-hand sidebar where you will find a lengthy list of links on the topic of Linguistics in Science Fiction.  Wow!

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