Do you speak Asian?

Why yes, I probably do!

A CUNY paper presented last week (by a white guy) at Experimental Approaches to Perception and Production of Language Variation (how this conference name collapses neatly into ExAPP2010 is unknown to me) suggests that native English speaking Pacific Asian Americans are racially identifiable by voice, even if the linguistic "differentiation may not rise to the level of a systematic dialect" (Newman).

While other speech communities may have more salient dialectal differences, Asian Americans are not without distinguishing linguistic behaviors. Cues (non-determinative) may include vowel quality, breathiness, syllable cadence, and voice quality. None of these provide strong evidence for AA-ness on its own.

A set of eight (2 Chinese Americans, 2 Korean Americans, 2 white Americans, 1 Latino, and 1 African American) women, and the same distribution in another set of men, were asked to read the same super exciting passage:

A wily coyote led sharpshooters armed with tranquilizer guns on a merry chase through Central Park before being captured on Wednesday. At one point, authorities tried to corner the animal in the southeast corner of the park, by Wollman Rink. The clever creature jumped into the water, ducked under a bridge, then scampered through the rink ground and ran off.

 Men were more successfully identified than women were, and Asians were the least accurately identified.

More from Michael Newman:

• "Native Asian American English: the recognition and acoustic correlates of Asian American speech"
• "Can New Yorkers identify Asian-American speech? A case of perceptual dialectology"

This kinda thing boils my nerd blood. I would love to have been a part of this study. I've long wondered about and suspected the findings. After all, it's usually pretty easy to tell when a singer is Asian.

Sorry Dad, I missed the boat.

While it is true that he can never be the father that he should have been to me, I get to choose now whether I want the father I've got. I decide if his indifference before precludes the sincerity of his gestures as of late. I determine whether he will never make up for his past injuries.

Jonah 4:2 I made haste to flee...

for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful,

slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love,

and relenting from disaster. 

Hamlet waits to exact revenge on Claudius in order to minimize impunity... I too, fear success. How upsetting the confidence that mercy will win the day!

Is it not sweeter, I ask, to refuse the efforts of a father who was absent, to unsmilingly apologize:

Sorry dad, ya missed the boat.

A perfect Father asks back:

Jonah 4:4 Daughter, do you do well to be angry?

In grace he places my eyes in sockets, that they might turn even while the smarting othercheek is yet dead-set.

I see now, Dad, I am the one who's missed the mercy boat.

A week from now I'll be in Naperville, through the following Monday.

Lord make in me a Thankful heart, for all you've done. Share with me the glory of your fair and merciful heart of love toward my family. Turn my eyes, my cheek, always. And quicken my heart, my step, all this way home.

Your best conversationalists.

During the Great Awakening, Edwards took the time to write a lengthy letter--full of intense counsel yet gentle personal concern--to a young Christian woman from a Suffield congregation he had visited.

Always consider your best conversations... to be the ones that produce the following two effects: first, those conversations and experiences that make you least, lowest, and most like a child; and, second, those that do most engage and fix your heart in a full and firm disposition to deny yourself for God and to spend and be spent for him.

It's remarkable how he receives and responds to a young convert's request for pastoral guidance with not less urgency than the other Great Awakening duties he must have been swamped with at the time... like drafting "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" which he would deliver a month later, or corresponding with ministry colleagues, or shepherding someone from his own Northampton congregation. What humble obedience it takes to walk joyfully alongside our people!

Although this story I tell, sifting through the dates and writings like souvenirs that aren't mine and lending significance here and there, may be more the story I've chosen to imagine than the one they actually tell... I can praise the same patient precious discipling in someone else who might have in reading Edwards unwittingly molded his past to her own ends on a sentimental search for the man in shining orthodox armor--I mean, she was reading his biography in the rain under a tree when our paths crossed.

O hai der.

I didn't know then just how dear a gift it was that she would draw up her chair or pick up an oar or a pen to attend to my grief and fear, to refix my sights so "earnestly, affectionately, and thoroughly." She is precious to me. Happy birthday, soul-friend.

Tell Me A Story / Dan Taylor

We are created to be creatures who live in story and understand story.

The Significance of Stoires:

How Stories Shape People:

Transferring Values through Story:

Story in the Bible:

How Stories and Faith Relate:

Onward, forward, upward, homeward.

great is Thy faithfulness, Lord unto me

morning by morning... You help me to see

Your guiding presence tells me that good/better/best are ahead rather than irrecoverably past.

strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow

OMG IM DYING lol

lol

is the new sos

Kevin: is it weird that when I see
  lol
  I think of a man
  drowning
  waving his arms around
  for help
Sent at 1:00 PM on Wednesday
me: hahah
Kevin: I hope that has changed your life
me: it has
  now i will say things like
  OMG IM DYING lol
Kevin: hahaha
  lol is secretly the call of help of a culture which finds it neccessary to shorten the phrase "laugh out loud" into 3 letters

Little Brother

what else can i do?

cuz You cut to the place where i hide away
and You're breaking the stones in my wall.

never thought i'd ever be caught by surprise...
look at me fall.

so lead me on now cuz i don't remember this road

but the place we're going feels a lot like coming Home

we'll be there before long

i was so sure i'd never be here again; i thought i had tasted it all

never thought i'd ever be caught by surprise

but look at me fall, look at me fall

// KG - Fall