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  That was so much fun! Does anybody know where to find the Klingon lyrics for Total Eclipse of the Heart? I need to see those lyrics! I don't think I can transcribe them from her singing. I wouldn't have expected to enjoy a show about everybody getting drunk, but I did. I like the unpredictable, off-the-wall humor. Poor Pike when they get back! I'm not sure I get why each character subconsciously chose what they wound up with for their "journey," b...

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  I've gotten as far as tIqwIj naptop 'my heart's eclipse'. If anybody figures out some of the lyrics, I would love to hear about it. #StarTrek #StarTrekStrangeNewWorlds #Klingon

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  I'm a university faculty member in Linguistics, and I just got an email from a high school senior who wants to come shadow a linguist for 20 hours before Oct. 15 for a school-required project. We've actually done this before with this school, and I'm delighted by high school students who want to learn about linguistics. However, the students apparently aren't allowed to miss regular class time in order to do their shadowing project. So they're only free...

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  I hardly ever re-watch TOS because I can't stand the gender stuff anymore, but I wanted to go back and review what Sarek was like before the whales movie and before TNG and Discovery. Sarek was one giant, total, irredeemable jerk. Toward both Spock and Amanda. "My wife, attend!" Wow, I'm glad they didn't keep on depicting Vulcan as that patriarchal in later shows. After the surgery, Sarek refuses to thank Spock for saving his life, then puts down Ama...

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  Continuing my project this summer of sewing baby clothes, I finished this set for the baby of a colleague. The colleague and his spouse have interests in music. It might be a little formal for a baby, but I like it. I bought this fabric years ago to make a set for the child of a former student who was a musician. #sewing Tagging Amy in case she's interested. @amyfou

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  Well, that was beautiful! Literally visually beautiful. I still have no idea why Una threw herself right into playing Nevette instead of saying "You've mistaken me for someone else" early in the episode. They're supposed to be keeping a low profile, right? But no matter why she did it, it led to a really fun detective/spy plot. On the ship, I couldn't figure out why Spock was blatantly covering something up and trying (badly) to get La'an of...

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  I enjoyed seeing this happy little piece of rock art today. I think it was made by a friend of mine. #tucson

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  I was wondering, how can there be a velar pinch transition during that fricative? English doesn't have velar fricatives. Well, if the /k/ is a voiceless fricative, then it does. Answer " docket." Gramle 1329 3/5 ⬛🟩⬛🟩🟩 🟩⬛⬛⬛🟨 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 #phonetics #linguistics #gramle

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  OK, I really enjoyed that puppet episode! It's corny, it's funny, it's our characters who we normally take seriously as muppets! And then at the end it's a dream, so that all the breaking the laws of physics stuff doesn't have to be accepted as plausible technobabble. I mean, there are very few scientific limits on what Trek writers can claim could happen, but I think sentient puppets exceeds those limits, so the dream idea was a good one. I loved the...

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  My university, just within this summer, "modernized" our HR procedures, "modernized" our travel and reimbursement system, "modernized" the university's main website, and has now "modernized" the "content experience" of our learning management system. I'm really not sure I can take being modernized on anything else in one summer and still do my job. It's funny how every administrato...

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  My son and his partner came over last night with their two dogs. I got thoroughly licked by one while petting the other. #dogs

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  I just watched the movie 9 to 5, for obvious reasons this week. I was too young when it came out. Wow, that was fun! And silly. My mother was a woman in an administrative position when that movie came out, although happily her bosses weren't like that. Her work clothing looked just like the shirts Judy wears in the movie. I might still have one of them in my closet. For a comedy movie, boy I enjoyed watching those women triumph over the patriarchy one scene at a time! For a movie...

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  24 mm of rain at my house from that storm yesterday (very nearly an inch)! The desert is happy. The buildings at work have any number of leaks, including the one in my hallway that's been leaking every storm for a year now. I think maybe Facilities should just wrap all these old buildings in giant saran wrap. My house had no leaks, though! #Tucson #monsoon #Arizona #rain #cactus #AcademicChatter

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  The University of Arizona continues to add translations in Native American languages of Arizona to building signs. We unveiled four signs today from the CRIT tribes, in Hopi, Diné Bizaad, Mojave, and Chemehuevi. Tribal leadership and language leaders came to Tucson and spoke at the ceremonies, as well as UA students from the tribes and various university officials. It was quite a moving day. I think we're now up to about 20 buildings! #Tucson #Arizona #UniversityofArizona #IndigenousLa...

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  The building I work in at my university dates from 1904. They've been installing new fire sprinklers, which I presume will keep us safer than the old ones. They thought they were done today, and warned me there might be a few drips when they did the test of the new system. I came back from class 1.5 hours later to a flood in the two rooms next to my office that went all the way down the stairway into a room below us even. We are now getting unplanned new carpet in two lab rooms upsta...

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  We're a week behind, so we just watched #LikeChronitonsThroughTheHourglass . I have never liked soap operas. I found the soap opera parts of this one to be a combination of funny, and very hard to watch. But I loved the line about "body cleaning theater." I really liked that Pike found ways to not lie to Uhura and play along, especially once we found out they all remembered afterward. If he had lied and played along, they would both have wound up even more messed u...

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  I got to see some fun animals from a rescue place today. Petted some of them. Petunia the pig has a very amusing, wiggly nose. #tucson #animals

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  I just finished reading _Prairie Fires_, by Caroline Fraser, a biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder. It was fascinating, I learned a lot I didn't know before, and it left me with a lot of thoughts. I really enjoyed the author's thorough research, going through things like Civil War draft records (Pa was a draft dodger, the books left that out somehow), testimony to congress about how non-viable small-scale farming in the Dakotas was going to be, and tons of letters and diary entri...

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  I still wear an N95 mask when I'm indoors at work, at the grocery store, etc. I don't mind being the only one with a mask, and I don't generally get any pushback. The other night I was working at a public outreach event indoors at a museum, wearing my mask. One attendee was holding his baby, and I started talking to the baby, saying "I bet I look funny to you because of my mask." The father responded "You look safe." That was a way more positive reaction than...

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  I was feeling discouraged about going to a protest this morning, but went anyway. I was so glad I did! It's usually like that. Even though I had to walk half the way back because the protest closed down the streetcar for a while. There was a brass band, inflatable dinosaurs, and a 3-person Statue of Liberty puppet! #Mayday #protest #Tucson

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  I'm so proud of my academic department (Linguistics at University of Arizona). We run a table at the Tucson Festival of Books, in the Science City portion, where we get lots and lots of members of the general public of all ages involved in hands-on activities about language. We use ultrasound to show them how their tongues move while they talk, which got reactions like freaky! awesome! weird! cool! We also did an activity about what language family your family's/ancestor&#...

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  This is just a delight! "Stayin' Alive" in Middle English! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNzGE-Bg_UU #Linguistics #Music #AcademicChatter

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  It makes me sad that Hampshire College is closing. My grandfather's house was across the street from it, so when I visited him, we'd go for walks on the campus. He rented out rooms to Hampshire students, who were interestingly weird people. Hampshire is a weird and different kind of education, but there ought to _be_ that kind of education, even though we're decidedly not in the 1960's anymore and it was built for that time period. When they took in students w...

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  Happy First Contact Day! Just 37 years to go until the Vulcans get here! I'm seriously hoping we're not about to start the world war III part of the timeline these days. #StarTrek

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  I've been re-watching Discovery season 1, and just finished e13 "What's Past is Prologue." What I find hardest to believe about this mirror universe is that they have enough population left after all the killing they do to staff even one starship, or build one. I also find it really hard to believe how many mirror versions of known characters they run into, not just because it seems unlikely that the same parents would have had the same kids, but because it se...