If it's a bad story that breaks canon, adherence to canon won't fix it. If it's a good story that breaks canon in a minor way, it's irrelevant; it's just nitpicking. If it's a good story that breaks canon in a major way, it's probably a good story *because* it breaks canon.
Talk about an exciting topic! But how a language encodes the connections between clauses can have far-reaching ramifications. As I explain here, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and English have very different assortments of complementizers. How scribes translated them gave rise to a huge variety of interpretations of the New Testament. But I'm sorry to say that I… Continue reading Subordinate Clauses in Gnin El and Sasrâl
At this point it's getting a bit embarrassing to admit that I've been working on this book since 2013. It still remains my pet project and the one I'm most anxious to have see the light of day, since it reflects many of my own experiences and hopes and fears -- about my profession (artificial… Continue reading Axon, Inc. Revisions: NaNoWriMo 2021
I received a fantastic book for Solstice 2018: The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots. It's a collection of words and suffixes from Proto-Indo European, the language from which English (and many other languages) descended thousands of years ago. I literally read the whole thing on the flight home, sounding the words out to myself,… Continue reading Lost English: PIEbot
I always have a lot of irons in the fire when it comes to creative projects. I tend to get a lot of ideas, usually more than I know what to do with; and of course I get very excited about them and I want to work on them immediately. While that’s undoubtedly a great… Continue reading A Year’s Plan: 2021
Thanks go to Fury's Reign, who created this ask game on Tumblr. 1: Summarize your WIP in 10 words or less. Tech startup creates telepathic computing; social and personal tragedy ensues. 2: Post a line from your WIP with no context. "Artificial intelligence is a tool for solving problems — problems of any sort. But… Continue reading Work In Progress Ask Game
In an interview on the Joe Rogan podcast this month, Elon Musk claimed, among other things, that the technology his company, Neuralink, is working on could render human language obsolete in as few as five years. As a linguist, an one who has a particular interest in language and the brain, I was curious to… Continue reading Neuralink and Elon Musk
It wasn’t at all intentional, but it appears that I wrote a fanfic last year (2019). I was just sitting there, minding my own business, not writing any of the other projects I was supposed to be working on, and I thought, you know what this crazy planet of ours needs? MORE HARRY POTTER FANFIC.… Continue reading Harry Potter and the Hourwick of Oz
It has been long indeed since the last update, mostly because, after finishing Axon, Inc., I tried finding an agent for it (throughout the spring of 2018), and... failed. Among the agents who gave me feedback on their rejection, the most common complaint was that the beginning was not compelling enough. This was somewhat discouraging.… Continue reading Axon, Inc. Update Feb 2020
About a year ago, as I was working through the revisions of Axon, Inc., I got into an intense discussion with my brilliant and beautiful wife Ali about the Chronicles of Narnia. It's a series I adored when I was younger, but when I read it again to my kids when they were very young, I… Continue reading Side Project: Narnia Fanfic
Axon Firings 