Is universe infinite ? It sure sounds poetic, but in order to guess we can look at the semantics.

First, infinity is something that doesn’t have an end, in which case if infinity exist it is everywhere, moreover, nothing can exist but that infinite matter.

Second, infinity does not have a beginning nor does it have the end. Therefore nothing that can be altered or collaborate in any way can be infinite. For instance if it’s infinite amount of particles in space, if they collaborate, create new particles or alter/limited in size, weight, consistence, time or affected in any way whatsoever, they can not be infinite.

Now, as infinity can not have a beginning nor an end, it does not start anywhere. If the universe is developing, expanding, moving, changing it should not be infinite.

Lastly, infinity can not be made of limited things. So you can say that universe is, in fact, limited as it made of objects that have limited properties.

Now, the only thing that could be unlimited/infinite is the energy. I mentioned it in my last blog. I have a theory that any object possesses the energy value and in fact made of pure raw energy. That energy is a plane for physical objects to exist. Any physical object, for instance, crashing into another physical object releases energy. In Swiss collider there were number of particles disappearing after collision took place. No one can say why, could be because those particles could not exist on their own. But even if that’s the case then where would they disappear ? It appears like they dissolved back into the pure energy. So if that translation takes place – it’s only logical to assume reverse takes place as well. That’s where, I think, when number of random energy collaborations happen, the flashes of matter appear, and in the right circumstance a simplest physical body may occur. That could explain the existence of the universe to some extent. Now it could be that energy in fact is infinite, but then it does 2 things that contradicts this theory.

One – it collaborates. Nothing infinite can collaborate as anything altering differs with time, and nothing that is affected by time or space is infinite.

Second it alters it’s state.. well. Maybe it doesn’t. When a conversion from energy to particle and particle to energy takes place, does energy really changes it’s state or it simply stays the same in it’s value. Maybe being altered physically does not mean being altered for a constance like energy.
But it just doesn’t seem right that anything unlimited would find time and space to collaborate in order to produce something.

I am not gonna propose that universe is limited nor that it’s unlimited. But I am guessing that it is limited after all.

I’ll be posting some thoughts on the movie “planet 51″, our all or nothing society, a conversation between a friend and I on if the Bible is absolutely everything we need, and some more on word intentionality and of course some good cigar and beer recommendations.  I just need to find some time!

First recommendation: Rocky Patel Renaissance cigar.  I had this over thanksgiving with my brother in law (he enjoyed his first ever Rocky Patel the Edge) and I must say this cigar actually can give the Edge a run for it’s money; although it is a little more expensive $12.50 vs. $8.50. It was a very smooth draw, has a little bit of spice and is just as tasty as the Edge; you could consider the difference between these two cigars as Vino’s Pale Ale to Diamond Bear’s Pale Ale – if you never have had either of those you don’t know what I’m talking about. sorry.   The Renasissance has an Ecuadorian Sumata wrapper and a blend of Ecuadorian and Nicaraguan filler.  I also employed the use of my bullet cutter for the first time and I think I’m now a convert to the bullet cutter.

My recent exchange with Stephan Kinsella (see here, here, and here) got me to thinking about the semantics of thick libertarianism. Specifically, is “libertarianism” the right word for what I am talking about?

I think that political philosophy is broader than just the NAP and homesteading principle and their deductions; to put it into Aristotelian liberal terms, I think that preserving personal and social autonomy are important to political philosophy in addition to political autonomy. Granting that, however, does it make sense to call the whole “libertarianism”? I’m not sure.

Now, I’m not saying that my political philosophy isn’t libertarian; it most certainly is. Nor am I saying that I am not a thick libertarian; I think that various other values/norms are implied and entailed by libertarianism. I am just not sure that it is accurate to call the whole thing “libertarianism”, given that the word has been traditionally been used to refer to a position on the proper use of force. The same thing applies to other concerns as well; I don’t call my whole political philosophy “feminism” or “anti-racism” either, even though it is feminist and anti-racist.

So, what is the proper term? As of now, I am not sure. Geoff Plauche’s term, “Aristotelian liberalism”, is a close fit, but I take a more leftist view of things than he, and I also see my political philosophy as being more of a synthesis of classical liberalism and classical anarchism than purely liberal. No other term really seems to fit, or has already been taken (“autonomism”, for example). Perhaps “eudaimonist anarchist”? It is descriptive, but a little long…

Political correctness is a term used to describe language that we have devised to inflict the least possible offense to any designated group.  Many conservative politicians, activists, and journalists insist that there is an organized liberal political correctness movement designed to promote multiculturalism, feminism, gender neutrality, secularism, and other forms of social engineering.    Most liberals deny the existence of political correctness and see such references as distractions from any substantive debate on changes in our language to more accurately depict our culture.  

Consequently, political correctness is not politically correct and that which was intended to provide a minimum of offense has become offensive to everyone.   The harder we have tried to get our language right the more we have blurred the lines between ambiguity and reality and between inclusion and exclusion.  

When and how did we get it wrong?   In our benign attempt to cleanse our language of intolerance and ridicule we have formed new words to identify any and all who are impaired, challenged, or in any way different from ourselves in learning ability, physical stature and agility, color of skin, hair, or eyes, geographic origin, gender, sexual orientation and other human attributes derived at birth or fortune from a benevolent and indiscriminate God.  

How did we come to designate women as a minority?   Why is a child with six generations of ancestors in Middle Tennessee referred to as African-American, or my children called Anglo or European?   Are we not all now American and all gifted in some way and uniquely special in our individual needs? 

We have also added a language of universality and separation in matters of faith.  We have sent our apostles out at daybreak and the eleventh hour to bring whosoever would come to God.  Saint and sinner, rich and poor, pin-stripes and denim fill the pews of ubiquitous and monolithic assemblies under a banner that reads nondenominational.   With a strong and certain message of tolerance and denial we avow to all that we are neither Baptist nor Methodist, neither Catholic, Protestant, nor Jew.  

We have added the designation progressive to break out of the stigma of being a liberal and added compassionate to escape the image of the self-serving conservative.   We have found it necessary to display our national flag in houses of worship and erect crosses and display ecclesiastical dictates on the halls of government.    In fear of offending with our holiday greetings we deny ourselves our own freedom of expression and, at the same time, treat with contempt the stranger who calls his God by a different name and whose days of worship we do not observe. 

We have added euphemisms and misnomers to temper the excesses of behavior and politics.  We have obscured the finality of death in the arms of a loving God.  We have obscured the violence of war in technological description and pride of ownership of intelligent weaponry.  We feel it necessary to apologize for our successes and our blessings and to rationalize for our failures and our shortcomings.   We have ineptly applied the labels of freedom, patriotism, family or traditional values, liberal, and Christian to include the behavior and voices of those who bring dishonor and deception to the purity of our institutions. 

Political correctness usually seems to apply to the language and philosophy of least resistance, the collective and historical voice of the majority.   It has also come to imply a language of accommodation within which you are forced to give away your inalienable rights to an undeserving, over-sensitive minority.  

Anytime we try to avoid political correctness, our language will surely become politically incorrect.   Depending on where we live and the political majority of the citizenry, we can still find some pleasure and satisfaction in incorrectness of language as long as we watch our spelling and punctuation, and speak or write with a voice that shows no trace of anger or intolerance.

This study examines to what extent English speakers of L2 Dutch reconstruct the meanings of placement verbs when moving from a general L1 verb of caused motion (put) to two specific caused posture verbs (zetten/leggen ’set/lay’) in the L2 and whether the existence of low-frequency cognate forms in the L1 (set/lay) alleviates the reconstruction problem. Evidence from speech and gesture indicates that English speakers have difficulties with the specific verbs in L2 Dutch, initially looking for means to express general caused motion in L1-like fashion through over-generalisation. The gesture data further show that target-like forms are often used to convey L1-like meaning. However, the differentiated use of zetten for vertical placement and dummy verbs (gaan ‘go’ and doen ‘do’) and intransitive posture verbs (zitten/staan/liggen ’sit, stand, lie’) for horizontal placement, and a positive correlation between appropriate verb use and target-like gesturing suggest a beginning sensitivity to the semantic parameters of the L2 verbs and possible reconstruction.

from the Annual Review of Cognitive Linguistics

I received this email from a well meaning Christian sister. At first read, it seemed like a reasonable request, but it soon struck me that something was wrong with this request. My comments are after the letter below.

CHRISTIAN FEDERATION OF MALAYSIA
(PERSEKUTUAN KRISTIAN MALAYSIA)
Address: 10, Jalan 11/9, Section 11, 46200 Petaling Jaya, Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia
Telephone: (03) 7957 1278, (03) 7957 146, Fax: (03) 7957 1457

Email: cfmsia@yahoo.co.uk

30^th November 2009

Dear Bishops and Heads of Churches in Malaysia,

Re:  “Allah” word cases before the KL High Courts – A call to prayer

Warmest Christian greetings to you in this Advent season as we herald the coming of our Lord and Saviour and celebrate Christmas.

May we request that a season of prayer and fasting be called for in your churches as two “Allah” word cases come before the High Courts in Kuala Lumpur this month. Please disseminate to your churches our request for prayer and fasting as we mobilise all Christians for a time of prayer.

The first hearing on 2 Dec (Wed) 2009 at 2.30pm is before Judge Datuk Alizatul Khair Osman Khairuddin at the  Appellate and Special Powers Court 3,  KL High Courts Complex, Level 3, Jalan Duta.  Malaysian Jill Ireland binti Lawrence Bill is challenging the Home Affairs Minister’s order to confiscate her books which has the “Allah” word

The second hearing on 14 Dec (Mon) 2009 hearing is before Judge Datuk Lau Bee Lan at the Appellate and Special Powers Court,  KL High Courts Complex, Level 3, Jalan Duta. The hearing is likely to be held at 2.30pm. This is a challenge to the power of the Home Affairs Minister to stop the weekly Christian publication “Herald” from using the “Allah” word.

Please pray for the following that :

•         The Lord God be sovereign over these hearings;

•         The presiding judges be granted wisdom to uphold the provisions of the Federal Constitution;

•         The lawyers before the judges may have wisdom, strength and courage to speak the truth in grace and love;

•         May evil and its human agents not prevail by disrupting these proceedings;

•         May the Lord God grant us His favour by allowing the word “Allah” to be used in the Alkitab, in all Christian publications, and audio-visual recordings in all media in both Bahasa Malaysia and Bahasa Indonesia.

.

Let us together pray for a good outcome so that all of us, especially our Orang Asli, Sabah and Sarawak brothers and sisters in Christ, may continue to use our Alkitab and all our Christian materials in Bahasa Malaysia and Bahasa Indonesia without fear or hindranceFor your information, in the 14 December hearing, the Archbishop of KL is seeking several declarations of the High Court namely :

1. the applicant has the constitutional right to use the word “Allah” in the Herald in the exercise of his right that other religions other than Islam may be practised in peace

2. Article 3 (1) of the Federal Constitution does not empower the respondents to prohibit the applicant from using the word “Allah” in the Herald

3. the applicant has the constitutional right to use the word “Allah” in the weekly in the exercise of his right to freedom of speech and expression

4. the applicant has the constitutional right to use the word “Allah” in the Herald in the exercise of his freedom of religion which includes the right to manage its own religious affairs

5. the applicant has the constitutional right to use the word “Allah” in the Herald in the exercise of his right in respect of education of the Catholic congregation in the Christian religion

6. the Printing Presses and Publications Act 1984 does not authorise the respondents to prohibit the applicant from using the word “Allah” in the Herald

7. that the word “Allah” is not exclusive to the religion of  Islam
(as reported on 28 May 2009 in  http://www.malaysiakini.com/news/105343 )

May the joy of Christmas who is Jesus Christ truly abound in all our hearts this Advent season!
Together in His service,

(signed)

Rt. Revd. Ng Moon Hing

Chairman and the CFM Executive Committee

[I have not been able to ascertain if this letter really exists or if it really originated from the purported sender]

The problem with this request:

• It  assumes that it is God’s will that Allah be allowed to be used by Christians in Malaysia. I say ‘assume’ because no biblical reference, whether literal or by inference,  is provided to put beyond doubt that what we are praying for is in accordance to God’s will. We are clearly told in scripture that we are to pray in accordance to His will, and His will always agrees with His Word (1 John 5:14 And this is the boldness which we have towards him, that if we ask him anything according to his will he hears us.), but we have no way of knowing what the mind of God is on this matter, or, possible worse still,  no one has stopped to ask God what His take on this issue is…
• It seems to me that notwithstanding what I pointed out above, CFM has concluded that it has to be God’s will to allow the use of Allah – a dangerous conclusion to make when you have no biblical foundation for it.
• It implies that Bahasa Melayu speaking Christians are unable to read the bible or worship God because of this ban. I think this is an exaggeration. What evidence is there to prove that we are in dire straits because 15,000 bibles were confiscated and the word Allah is banned?

Can we ask ourselves an important question when making petitions like this:

1. If we pray, and ask for His will to be done (and it always does), and the courts rule to uphold the ban, will we Christians take it as God’s will being done and stop the complaining, retract all the lawsuits, and keep away from appealing to higher courts? I get the feeling that if the courts rule against the Archbishop (who by the way, has no biblical warrant to represent Christians), more Christians are going to throw their arms in the air and cry injustice.

But what if it IS God’s will – to disallow the use of the word Allah?

Let me suggest a few reasons using some biblical principles that could suggest that it is quite possible that maybe God does want Christians to not use the word ‘Allah’, and that He is in fact allowing this difficulty to happen:

• The strong association of the word Allah to the god of Islam – yes, it may be true that the word Allah predates Islam and was a general word for deity, and that Arab countries have no issue with using it. But that’s certainly not the case in Malaysia. Malaysian Muslims claim that Allah is the name of their God.
  • The bible tells us that God, the true and living God, will not share His glory with another (Isa 42:5,8 Thus saith *God, Jehovah, he that created the heavens and stretched them out, he that spread forth the earth and its productions, he that giveth breath unto the people upon it, and spirit to them that walk therein…I am Jehovah, that is my name; and my glory will I not give to another, neither my praise to graven images.) emphasis mine.
  • I suggest that its possible that God does not want Malaysians to use the word Allah because too often in this country – it has a strong connotation of being the Muslim God, and maybe God does not want any of His children to have any confusion.
  • This is not a bizarre suggestion. Paul wrote to the Corinthians concerning eating food offered to idols. (1 Cor 8). He stated that while we all know that idols are nothing, some people, may have a ‘conscience’ of the idol when the see certain food. For instance, before I became a Christian, some food I used to enjoy as  Hindu, was frequently cooked during Hindu festivals, and as a young Christian, whenever I saw that food, it reminded me of the idols I used to worship. Its not difficult to imagine an ex-Muslim (especially in this country) who converts to CHristianity, being uncomfortable with using the word Allah – because all his life Allah used to refer to the god of Islam. Maybe God does not want that among Christians who were muslims before…
• Its an opportunity to share in the sufferings of Christ -
  • Phil 1:29 For it has been granted to you not only to believe in Christ but also to suffer for him.
  • Phil 3:10That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death.
  • The Lord Jesus, in His condescension, gave up all rights He could claim (“considered it not robbery to be called God” – phil 2), and became the meek and lowly Saviour, He was falsely accused, persecuted – and He received it all for our sakes – ultimately bearing the punishment that should have been borne by us on the cross. In the face of persecution, we Christians should follow the footsteps of the Saviour, and remain meek and lowly – not taking arms against the authorities. In doing so, we share in what the Lord Jesus went through for us.
• It presents a wonderful evangelistic opportunity
  • we all know that Muslims are constitutionally protected from being evangelised directly. What better way to show Christ, by not opposing, but submitting committing ourselves to the “One who judges righteously”.
  • You can read through church history, and find that more souls were drawn to Christ by the meekness and submission of Christians than by fighting and arguing.
  • What a wonderful opportunity to do what only a Christian can do – deny oneself and carry the cross.
  • Action speaks louder than words, and Christians can make use of the media interest to show a wonderful testimony that no one can hide.
  • Our Muslims countrymen may never be able to hear the gospel, but they can surely see Christ though this – but only if we let His light shine through.

We must realize that the “secret things belong to God“, and we will not know the fullness and depths of His counsel. The suggestions I put above are exactly that – suggestions – but they are based on biblical principles and the evidence of church history, which make me believe that is entirely possible for God to have allowed these recent events to happen, and to want things to remain this way for some time to come.

My point: Don’t be too sure that it is God’s will that we be allowed to use the word ‘Allah’.

Having said that, one may ask, “so do you expect our malay speaking christians to abandon the use of the word Allah?”

Why not? Use the word Tuhan instead. Tuhan is accepted by everyone in Malaysia to be a generic term for the Divine person – God. In fact, like the word Allah, Tuhan has two syllables, so we could easily replace Allah with Tuhan in the songs and hymns we sing without having to change the way we sing it. Too easy. My assembly has done this – replacing the word Allah with Tuhan – many years ago, and we have never felt like we are unable to sing or praise God in the national language at all.

or you may ask, “you expect our malay speaking christians go on without bibles?”

Of course not. Lets not be naive. We live in the 21 century, bibles are printed using woodblock printing. I’m quite sure we can speak to the printers or bible suppliers and ask them to update the bibles to replace the word ‘Allah’ with ‘Tuhan’, and get these bibles printed with this word. No fuss required. I don’t see any reason why publishers won’t accommodate our request (if they are well meaning christians interested in getting the Word out without hindrance) and in any case, we all know that we are at least 15,000 short of bibles… a perfectly justifiable reason to change the typeset for the printing press, and going forward, there will surely be more demand for these bibles.

So, YES, I will pray for God’s will to be done but that’s the easy part.

The hard part if accepting God’s will if it is not what we expect.

p/s: Why is CFM so kesian that they have to use a ‘yahoo’ email hosted in uk? Hmm…

Many thanks to Brill for providing me with a copy of Stéphanie J Bakker’s The Noun Phrase in Ancient Greek: A Functional Analysis of the Order and Articulation of NP Constituents in Herodotus (ASCP 15; Leiden: Brill, 2009).

I actually received it a couple weeks ago, but I’ve been too busy to post lately. I’m about half way through the book thus far and have thoroughly enjoyed it. The first half of the book is a discussion of word order within the noun phrase and the second half deals with the function of the Greek article within the noun phrase. Part II is particularly excellent and unmatched in the literature on Ancient Greek. You can expect a full two or three part review probably toward the end of December or early January.

Wow, this is a great book.

“Government 2.0″ means many things to many people. Here’s a list of a few variants, with some (slightly) tongue in cheek observations. :+)

• social media focus: using social media for government communications/marketing/outreach. This is about the outward face of government, mostly the domain of government communicators and marketers of the digital persuasion. Oh and” social media experts.” Looking into using Twitter, Facebook or blogging to replace , er, complement more traditional forms of government communications activities. Worried about user-generated content and approval processes. Convinced that the press release is dead.
• web 2.0 tools focus: using web 2.0 tools for improving work processes in government. This is the most inward looking “stream” within government 2.0. Concerned with improving efficiency and effectiveness in the daily work of a wide range of public servants. Looking into collaboration tools such as i.e. wikis. Worried about workplace silos and restrictive rules. Convinced that technology is the answer.
• transparency focus: releasing more government data online in usable/re-usable forms. This is a strain that’s perhaps more common from the outside looking in, as various activists and stakeholders want to get their hands on, er, aim to improve public access to  government information. Worried about a healthy democracy. Convinced that there’s a hidden agenda.
• mashup focus: government as a platform that citizens can customize or build from. This is also a common approach outside of government, overlapping with the transparency folks. Looking into new service delivery models where end users benefit from an intermediary layer of tech-savvy entrepreneurs or philanthropists who repackage government services for citizens online. Worried about — actually I’m not sure what these folks are worried about, because they’re … Convinced that they know better.

Official SavingCymbria Iverson Tribute ~We'll miss you!~

The husband and I got into a heated debate last night over Allen Iverson’s retirement. I argued that ’ego’ had to have been a factor in the gifted basketball player’s decision to leave the game. This accusation came across as cruel blasphemy to the diehard fan beside me on the couch.

“He doesn’t have an ego!” My husband was obstinate. “He’s just proud and uncompromising.”

Point. Set. Match.

Update: Way to go Philly for making this post entirely null and void

A couple of days ago the Danish National Organisation for Lesbians and Gays (that’s their old name directly translated) announced that they will be changing their name to LGBT Denmark, to properly reflect that they are also a community for transgendered and bisexual people, and will also fight for their rights.

Considering that being trans is pretty much still major taboo in this otherwise free country, and that being trans is something that most people wrinkle their noses at, I wanna see it before I believe it. I have yet to hear anything amounting to real action taken to benefit trans people from that organisation – before AND after the name change.

It’s cool they’ll change their name to reflect reality. But if that reality ha snot yet come to pass it is little more than empty words. I hope they back it up with action, rather than the astounding silence we have seen on the subject of trans people and their lives so far.

Also, I find it very telling that this announcement comes at a time, when many of the American LGBT communities and organisations are under heavy fire for really being GL …B …………….(t), and not ever mentioning Q(ueer) and A(sexual). Perhaps if the Danish organisation had been as progressive and activist-ish as they claim, they’d have spotted this issue and not chosen to use the American abbreviation when its use has been dubious so far.

And it is the American abbrev they’ve chosen. The letters don’t match in Danish, well three of them do, but gay is with a B in Danish so it should really be LBBT if anything. But apparently it’s more important to use a known (though disputed) American abbrev than to actually be precise in the native language and thus be respectful to those, who are not respected by the abbrev’s common use in America ie. transgendered people.

Anyway, I’m more than a little disturbed that they make a huge announcement out of also being a community for trans people without having anything to show for it. What have they actually done? *crickets* My political party and the biggest labour union in the country has done more for trans people than this community has. Hmmm… way to go, LGBT Denmark. Not.

Last Friday, I quickly re-blogged a news item on the 2009 Osbaldeston Lecture, by Martha Piper, former president of the University of British Columbia. Over on my Posterous miniblog, a reader reacted to my highlighting of an analogy that Ms. Piper made between the wristwatch and a Blackberry device. I’m going to reproduce those comments here, because they raise a good point:

“In a speech at the National Arts Centre, Piper likened today’s public service to the declining popularity of the wristwatch. Everyone over age 50 wears one, but most Canadians under 25 don’t.”

My response:

The wristwatch analogy has been used before, it is nothing new and it is not accurate. Most teenagers wear watch not so they can tell time but as a fashion statement. I would really like to meet a public servant that is isolated in Ottawa, the ones I work with are plugged in, on the move and aware of the world changing around them AND are part of the change or driving it. Perhaps she is talking about her perception of Ottawa, and if so, she has been isolating herself in BC. She is clearly out of touch.

I agree — if you focus on the demographic angle, it’s true that the wristwatch analogy is not accurate. It’s a stereotype, and if you were to leave this out of it, it would be more effective.When it comes to technology, young people are not inherently more “with it” than their elders. Different people use the same tools in a wide variety of ways, regardless of whether we can are “youth” or “middle aged” or whatever. & in terms of adoption rates, I’ll bet there is a wide variation in all demographic groups. I suspect that it is more about individual attitudes rather than generational.

What stuck me with the wristwatch/blackberry analogy was not the demographics however; it was the image of an older mechanical device that does one thing well, vs a newer digital device that does a lot of things, including what the old tech did. Maybe the new BB doesn’t tell time as stylishly as the old wristwatch does, but I’m willing to give that up to be able to also use it to communicate with my friends/family/colleagues, read news, organize my schedule, check weather, etc., regardless if I’m at my desk or not.

I realize that wristwatches are almost all digital these days, but to me they still are artifacts of the mechanical era, when the technological paradigm was a narrowly specialized — each tool should “do one thing, and do it really well.” Compare that to how 21st century digital technology is inherently open-ended and focused on multi-functionality. To me, that is what is effective about this analogy — as a comparison of two technological eras.

Regardless, after having had a chance to read the full text (warning PDF link) of Ms. Piper’s remarks, it turns out that the best stuff was not what I saw last week, it is the material that actually followed it. More on that tomorrow later.

(Oh BTW, I do beg to differ with the idea that public servants do not isolate themselves in Ottawa. I feel that point is highly debatable; I can think of a few bureaucrats that I’ve crossed paths with recently … but anyhow.)

Is study of meaning of word, phrases, and sentences.

In linguistics semantics we are focus on meaning conveyed by used of word and sentences of languages.

Conceptual versus associative meaning, When we are investigated the linguistics of word, we usually interested in chaterizing the conceptual meaning, and less concerned with associative or stylistic meaning word.

Semantics feature

Semantics would be helpful to understand mean of accounting for the oddness.

Semantics roles

We can describe the sentences whit the semantics role and indentity the the small number of semantics for theses noun phrases. Agent, Theme and instrument Agent is the entity that perform the action Theme is the entity that is involved in or affected the action Instrument is if the agent uses another entity in performing an action that other entity fills the role of is instrument Experiencer, location, source, goal Experiencer is an agent that has feeling , perception, and state.

Lexical relations

Lexical relations is the procedure has also been used in the semantics description of language, so you are characterizing the meaning of word, not in the term of its component but in the term of relationship to other word. Synonym : two or more form with very closely related meaning

Antonymy : two form opposite meaning

Hyponym : when the meaning of one form is included in the meaning of other

Prototypes : the concept of prototypes is help explan the certain word like, furniture is more quicker we recognize chair as exampler than bench or stool.

Homophones ; two or more word have different form but have the same pronounciation

Homonym : is used when one form (written and spoken) have two or more related meaning

Polysemy : one form of word having multiple meaning which can be defined as one form

Metonymy ; a nother type of similarity that besides of human experiences that close conection can based simply on a container or contents relations.

Collocation : are a pair of some things joined word such as salt and pepper and husband and wife that frequently occurring together.

Pragmatics

The study of intended speaker meaning Invisible meaning How we recognize what is meant even whe it isn’t actually said or written.

Context, The Co-text of word is the set of other word used in the same phrases and sentences. We know what word mean on basis of another type of context bes described as physical context.

Deixis ,  There are some word in languges that cannot be interpreted al all unless the physical context, especially the physical context of speaker is known well as most pronoun like this, yesterday, etc. so people need deictic expressions such as person deixis and time deixis.

References

References is the use of word that refer to people and things was simple matter. Anaphora When we eatablish a referent and subsequently refer to sama object. The first mention is called antecedent Presupposition What the speaker assumes is true or is known by hearer can be described as presupposition Speech acts Indirect speech acts cover actions such as actions, requesting, commanding, questioning, informing.

Politeness

This is the emotional and social sense of self that every person has and expect everyone else to recognize. Politeness is showing awareness of another person’s face.

In §9 of the Begriffsschrift, Frege writes:

`Let us assume that the circumstance that hydrogen is carbon dioxide is expressed in our formal language; we can then replace the sign for hydrogen by the sign for oxygen or that for nitrogen. If we imagine that an expression can thus be altered, it decomposes into a stable component [...] and the sign, regarded as replacable by others. The former component I call a function, the latter its argument.’
To simplify later discussion I translate Frege’s idea into a contemporary framework.
Let L be a first order language of arithmetic with a standard syntax such that the sets of L-expressions, L-formulae and L-sentences are defined inductively. Also, a function can be defined which maps L-sentences to the expressions which occur in them.
Frege’s idea can then be generalized and formalized.
For any L-sentence \psi there are some L-expressions A_0, …, A_n which occur in \psi.

For any such set {A_0, …, A_n} there is an L-expression \Phi which results from the sentence \psi by replacing any A_i by a new free variable.
In this manner, for any L-sentence a set {\Phi,{A_0,…,A_n}} can be determined.
Taking up Frege’s terminology, A_0 to A_n are the arguments for the function \Phi.
Later, `analysis’ and `decomposition’ will be introduced as technical terms.
Therefore, I shall call the set {\Phi{A_0,…,A_n}} for a given sentence \psi the `division’ of \psi.
and \psi `divided’ into the function \Phi and the arguments A_0 to A_n.
Passage 3 now suggests that Frege held that

D. for any sentence there is more than one division.

According to Dummett, D is compatible with the content of sentences having a determinate structure
because only one division reveals the content. Dummett calls this the analysis of the sentence. Other divisions are mere decompositions, of which there are various.
This distinction needs explication.
The set of L-expressions is defined inductively.
There are simple and complex L-expressions. `1′ and `-’, for instance, are simple, `(-1)²’, again, is complex.
When Dummett says that the analysis of a sentence takes place in stages [citation!], he means that it results from an iterated division along the lines of its composition.
Complex sentences are composed of a logical constant and one or more sentences.
Since a given complex sentence can be divided in whichever expressions occur in it, there is one division into this main constant and the sub-sentences.
For example, the sentence `(-1)²=1 \rightarrow (-1)²+1=2′ can be divided into {\rightarrow,{(-1)²=1,(-1)²+1=2}}.
In such a division, the arguments are sentences themselves.
These again can be divided into their main logical constant and their sub-sentences.
This procedure is iterated until one arrives at atomic sentences.
Atomic L-sentences are construed out of a relation symbol and singular terms.
Consequently, for a given atomic sentence, among all of its divisions there is one into the relation symbol and the singular terms of which it is composed.
For most atomic sentences, however, some arguments are complex expressions themselves.
For example, the analysis of `(-1)²=1′ is the division {=,{(-1)²,1}}, where the first argument `(-1)²’ is complex.
In the definition of the set of L-expressions, complex terms are construed inductively from simple expressions.
Therefore, among the many divisions of a complex terms one corresponds to its composition.

For `(-1)²’, this division is {²,{(-1)}}.
Iterated division of a sentence along the line of its composition, into entirely simple expressions, results in what Dummett calls `analysis’.
For example, the analysis of `(-1)²=1 \rightarrow (-1)²+1=2′ is
{\rightarrow,{{=,{²{-,{1}},1},{=,{+{²,{-,{1}},1},2}}}}.

Since any sentence is composed of simple expressions in a unique way, analysis is unique.
This does not contradict D since next to its analysis, there still are various other divisions of a sentence.
These Dummett calls `decompositions’.
For example, the sentence `(-1)²=1′ is decomposed into {(- )²=1,{1}}.

This article caught my eye tonight:

Couple Busted for Refusing to Pay Tip

So a couple was out with their friends and got lousy service at the Lehigh Pub in Bethlehem, PA.  Of course, if service is lousy, you don’t tip.  Why reward bad behaviour?  When these folks didn’t pay the mandatory 18% gratuity ($16 in their case), they were arrested for theft.

Did you notice the wording of that last sentence?  The gratuity was mandatory.  A mandatory gratuity.  Isn’t that an oxymoron?  I know it isn’t the most official dictionary, but dictionary.com defines a gratuity as

1.	a gift of money, over and above payment due for service, as to a waiter or bellhop; tip.

2.	something given without claim or demand.

Let’s start with Definition #1.  In this case, a gratuity is money over and above payment due for service.  The mandatory 18% gratuity was built into the bill, so this cost (I don’t want to call it a gratuity anymore because it isn’t one) is not over and above payment due, it is now part of the payment.  The restaurant should call it a service charge or something.  Gratuities are supposed to be optional; you pay them if service is good, you hold back if service is bad.

This brings us to Definition #2.  A gratuity is something given without claim or demand.  By this definition, a gratuity is optional and a restaurant cannot require it, let alone ask for it.  How can the 18% charge be called a gratuity?

This argument will probably come up in court.  If this charge was called a gratuity on the bill, I would say based on the common definition of the word, the couple has no obligation to pay it.  However, if the 18% charge is referred to as something else, then one would consider it a normal line item on the bill that would have to be paid.  The article says the charges will likely be thrown out, but I’m sure the judges and attorneys involved will look at the terminology used on the bill and interpret the definition of a gratuity.  By the way, I am not an attorney.  As if that wasn’t painfully obvious.

Out of curiosity, I pulled up the Yelp page for this pub in Pennsylvania.  It now has 304 reviews written and a one-star rating overall.  The number or reviews increased even as I wrote this entry.  There were 287 one-star reviews.  Will they go out of business?  Probably not.  But their reputation is definitely shot.  Witness the mob mentality of the internet.

ITCONS e-Solutions is shortlisted for NASSCOM innovation Award 2009 for it’s products called Resume parser and Intelligent Concept Search.

Introduced in 2004 for the first time, the NASSCOM Innovation Awards have grown into a prestigious platform, which recognizes the best innovators in the Indian IT-BPO industry. The awards recognize organizations that have made innovation a part of their DNA and developed extraordinary and pioneering products and services. Over the past years, the awards have been presented to the winners at the prestigious NASSCOM India Leadership summit held in Mumbai, by none other than former President of India, APJ Abdul Kalam and Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh.

The start-up category, introduced in the 2007 edition, seeks specifically to promote the entrepreneurial community and provide them with recognition and visibility, The 2008 edition saw us bring in a Knowledge Partner in the form of BCG, which brought in enhanced robustness to the selection process and also saw the awards go online for the first time.

The 2009 edition, the sixth of the awards series will see a media partner for the first time. ET NOW will telecast editorials featuring the winners, process and jury for the awards.

ITCONS e-Solutions is shortlisted for NASSCOM innovation Award 2009 for it’s products called Resume parser and Intelligent Concept Search.

Introduced in 2004 for the first time, the NASSCOM Innovation Awards have grown into a prestigious platform, which recognizes the best innovators in the Indian IT-BPO industry. The awards recognize organizations that have made innovation a part of their DNA and developed extraordinary and pioneering products and services. Over the past years, the awards have been presented to the winners at the prestigious NASSCOM India Leadership summit held in Mumbai, by none other than former President of India, APJ Abdul Kalam and Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh.

The start-up category, introduced in the 2007 edition, seeks specifically to promote the entrepreneurial community and provide them with recognition and visibility, The 2008 edition saw us bring in a Knowledge Partner in the form of BCG, which brought in enhanced robustness to the selection process and also saw the awards go online for the first time.

The 2009 edition, the sixth of the awards series will see a media partner for the first time. ET NOW will telecast editorials featuring the winners, process and jury for the awards.

There’s a lot going on at this week’s Microsoft Professional Developers Conference (PDC 09); it’s a traditional launchpad for cool new stuff. I thought I’d point out several of the government-relevant announcements and technology roll-outs.

I specifically want to spotlight something called Codename Dallas, and how NASA and others have begun using it. In the keynote this morning Microsoft’s Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie told PDC attendees (and his streaming-video audience) that a landslide of new sensors and observational systems are changing the world by recording “unimaginable volumes of data… But this data does no good unless we turn the potential into the kenetic, unless we unlock it and innovate in the realm of applications and solutions that’s wrapped around that data.”

Here’s how we’re addressing that, with a bit of step-by-step context on the overall cloud-computing platform enabling it.  The steps are: 1. Azure, 2. Pinpoint, and 3. Dallas.

Today is the big public roll-out of the Windows Azure Platform for cloud computing and a full complement of new services for it,  including a Java SDK, REST and open source support and interoperability with MySQL, Tomcat, memcached, and even PHP development with Eclipse. The Windows Azure site is here, or just check out a brief summary of today’s Azure announcement and its array of cloud services. 

As part of the Windows Azure rollout, we’re announcing the new Pinpoint, an online marketplace for Microsoft partners to market and sell their applications.  It includes an “app store,” as well as store-like shopping for experts and professional IT services. Pinpoint is open to everyone, and free to join, and is already at launch the largest directory of qualified IT providers and their software built on Microsoft technologies. The app store alone is cool, as you can try, buy, and download software through direct links to software purchase pages, demos, and trial downloads.

One of the featured sets of services available through Pinpoint is our Codename “Dallas” service, Microsoft’s Information Services business, which developers and information workers can use to find and manage Web services and datasets  – free or paid – to power their apps, on any platform. Dallas is built completely on the Windows Azure cloud platform, which includes a SQL Azure cloud database, so you get the ability to store structured and unstructured data whether from Dallas’s “data-as-a-service” or your own collections, to invoke and examine the data without having to parse it, to use REST services to manipulate and move the data, and to analyze the data using the new PowerPivot high-end analytics for Excel 2010 spreadsheets, for example.

Large-scale datasets already available through Dallas include government, financial, weather, news, corporate, international and reference sets including those from the Associated Press, Citysearch, Data.gov, ESRI, First American Corp., infoUSA.com Inc., NASA, National Geographic TOPO!, NAVTEQ, RiskMetrics Group, the United Nations, WaveMarket Inc. and Weather Central Inc. Starting today, “Dallas” is available as a limited community technology preview (CTP). 

Tech news sites are already reporting the “competitive drive” propelling Dallas, for example The Register puts it this way: 

Microsoft Dallas Muscles Google Data Crusade: Microsoft is hoping to out-Google Google by unlocking the world’s information and slapping a GUI on the front end. Today, the company unveiled Dallas, which chief software architect Ray Ozzie said would deliver “data as a service.” He described it as a “game changing” subsystem of Microsoft’s Windows Azure computing and storage service.

There’s a lot you  can do with a data platform like that. The federal government’s Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra moments ago addressed PDC 09 live via remote video and announced that the U.S. government has been busy building new capabilities using Dallas and the Azure cloud, and he showed a very neat example: the NASA “Be a Martian” site. From the detailed press release:

Now anyone with a Web browser can become a Martian explorer. That’s because NASA is launching a new citizen-science Web site, called “Be a Martian,” that gives people a chance to view hundreds of thousands of images gathered over decades of exploration on the Red Planet.

The site is also designed as a game with a twofold purpose: NASA and Microsoft hope it will spur interest in science and technology among students in the U.S. and around the world. It also is a “crowdsourcing” tool designed to tap visitors’ brains and help the space agency process volumes of Mars images.

“We really need the next generation of explorers,” says Michelle Viotti, director of Mars Public Outreach at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “And we’re also accomplishing something important for NASA. There’s so much data coming back from Mars. Having a wider crowd look at the data, classify it and help understand its meaning is very important.” [emphasis added]

So NASA and Microsoft are combining crowd-sourcing, cloud-computing, and citizen-science, all toward aligning with a web philosophy that Tim O’Reilly calls “small pieces loosely joined.”

There’s more coming this week that I believe government folks will like, including one of my favorite projects: Thursday’s unveiling of the Microsoft Semantic Engine.  My team back at my old government hangout did a lot of pathbreaking semantic-analysis research and development, and I hope that they will find this very cool stuff indeed. Not allowed to say more yet -  though I see that others in semantic-web circles are eager to hear more. Stay tuned!

Share this post on Twitter

Email this post to a friend

When the Nonprofit Millennial Bloggers Alliance chose our next blogging topic, “What is social impact and how can we measure it?” I felt a little sheepish. I had no idea what the prompt even meant. It sounded like such an activist question, and I’m no activist–or at least I don’t feel like one. I warned the group that my answer might be a little skewed. “But that’s the point,” a fellow Nonprofit Millennial Blogger said. “Our answers should be different.”

And I felt like saying, “No really, I don’t get it.”

Luckily, my communications brain kicked into gear and revealed “social impact” for what it is: jargon. And I know where I stand on jargon. I loathe it. Every grant application I peppered with “collaboration” and “optimized results” made me feel like a drone. Those words mean nothing. They’re polite currency of the philanthropic and nonprofit worlds that we use to mask an inability to describe our value…or sometimes an absence of value.

Google “social impact.” You’ll get 77,000 wildly different results. Yet we throw it around as if it means the same thing to all of us.

So, with apologies to my fellow Nonprofit Millennial Bloggers who actually have definitions for the phrase as is, allow me to present my non-activist, communications-wonk analysis of “social impact.”

“Social impact” is so overused that it means nothing. There must be a more precise term for what it should mean.

From its uses within the nonprofit sector, I gather it’s meant to mean something along these lines: improvement in the lives of people, both as individuals and groups, particularly the underserved. We can rule out environmental causes and animal welfare, since “social” suggests a focus on the common lives of human beings. Yes, animals are “social,” but my best guess is that “social impact” means “societal impact,” ruling out animals that do not share the society of our species. (Animal activists, spare me; I’m an animal welfare advocate myself and I’m just trying to be precise, not speciesist.)

So what improves the lives of people in society? Here are some examples:

• Physical security
• Housing security
• Food security
• Civil rights
• Freedom of religion
• Artistic expression

Not coincidentally, these are all needs nonprofits function to meet.

And we’re not talking about feeding one person or encouraging the expression of one artist. Butterfly effect aside, that’s not social impact; that’s personal impact. So in order to reach a group of people, “social impact” must be elevated from a one-off, case-by-case  approach: it must be systematic. That way it can be applied efficiently and effectively to many people. Certainly the results are personal, as testimonials from clients often show. But they are also social; that is, system-wide.

So what we have is the overused jargon “social impact” that really means three things: systematic social improvement.

And that may well be a more meaningful way to say what we’re trying to say.

That said, if we work in reverse, how can we tell if “social impact”–that is, systematic social improvement–has been achieved?

One takeaway from my graduate degree in conflict resolution is that conflict, like so many other aspects of human life, is never actually about the visible or superficial. In the same way a biologist is trained to focus a microscope on a cell or a physicist is trained to magnify a particle, I was trained to dig below the surface of a conflict and dissect its roots and inner layers. Many of these layers are insecurities, both physical and emotional. So my perspective on measuring systematic social improvement is heavily influenced by this fixation with underlying problems.

For example, can a food bank perform systematic social improvement? No. Food banks  provide food to hungry people, sometimes temporarily, sometimes for prolonged periods of time, and in doing so they reduce or eliminate the physical hunger of their clients. But physical hunger is not the underlying problem. It’s merely a symptom of that problem, which is food insecurity. Yet most food banks exist not to eliminate food insecurity. That’s not a jab at them; it just points to differences in mission.

For strong examples of systematic social improvement, look no further than FareStart and DC Central Kitchen. Both nonprofits share the mission not just of feeding people, but of training them for employment in culinary arts. It’s systematic: both organizations use a consistent approach to training and services. It’s social: it serves a group of people, usually low- or no-income individuals suffering from food insecurity, housing insecurity, and other underlying problems. And it’s improvement: graduates of the training curricula go on to support themselves with culinary employment.

Nonprofits working in public policy are another example: they go to the root of the problem instead of treating symptoms.

Does this establish a hierarchy of nonprofits, with systematic social improvement organizations above all others? Again, no. If, say, food banks didn’t exist, there would be no lifeline to keep hungry people alive while they seek services that will address their food insecurity. If systematic social improvement is like a hospital, then immediate-needs-fulfilling organizations are like ambulances. They reinforce each other. Without systematic social improvement, there would be an endless string of crises–fires to be doused without removing the flammable material. And without stopgap services, many people would not be sustained long enough to find systematic social improvement centers, which are still relatively rare.

So if I actually use the phrase “social impact” (which, granted, does roll off the tongue more easily) this is what I mean: the pursuit or achievement of consistent improvements in the lives of groups of people.

How do you use “social impact?” Can you suggest a better turn of phrase to phase out this jargon?

Recent research on children’s inferencing has found that although adults typically adopt the pragmatic interpretation of some (implying not all), 5- to 9-year-olds often prefer the semantic interpretation of the quantifier (meaning possibly all). Do these failures reflect a breakdown of pragmatic competence or the metalinguistic demands of prior tasks? In 3 experiments, the authors used the visual-world eye-tracking paradigm to elicit an implicit measure of adults’ and children’s abilities to generate scalar implicatures. Although adults’ eye-movements indicated that adults had interpreted some with the pragmatic inference, children’s looks suggested that children persistently interpreted some as compatible with all (Experiment 1). Nevertheless, both adults and children were able to quickly reject competitors that were inconsistent with the semantics of some; this confirmed the sensitivity of the paradigm (Experiment 2). Finally, adults, but not children, successfully distinguished between situations that violated the scalar implicature and those that did not (Experiment 3). These data demonstrate that children interpret quantifiers on the basis of their semantic content and fail to generate scalar implicatures during online language comprehension. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)

from Developmental Psychology

I am going to end my little logic thing rather short, I’ll address further fallacies as they come up. This topic does still tie in a little bit.

Many times, arguments come down to definitions and semantics.  Often we try to work around that, avoid arguing semantics, but it is a significant enough issue that I think it needs to be addressed. I will discuss the problems I see with definitions in three issues that have come up in my own life recently, spanning the categories of sex, politics, and religion.  In the realm of sex, there’s the semantics of the “rape fantasy.” In the realm of politics, the use of the terms “life” and “murder” in the abortion debate, and on the religion front, the very definition of the words “atheism” and “agnosticism.”  In each of these situations, I will refrain from stating my opinion on the actual issue, as that is not the purpose of this post.

Starting with the issue of the rape fantasy. Some will consider this normal, while others are opposed to even the thought. Of all the arguments I have seen with regards to this issue, all problems revolve around the word “rape.”

Let me take a moment to say that rape is something I am vehemently opposed to. It is not something to be taken lightly.

That being said, in terms of the rape fantasy, in most situations I have encountered, the term “rape” could easily be replaced with the term “control” or “power.” When in the head, it exists entirely in the realm of fantasy, and in my opinion is not really worth addressing here. Where the issue comes up is in the physical. When it is a role-played or simulated rape. In this case, the act is a consensual power-play act,  generally discussed and planned out beforehand, wherein the dominated has the power to continue with or end the scenario as they see fit. It fits rather nicely into the realm of dominance and submission, a series of acts wherein the phrase “Safe, Sane, Consensual” takes precedence over all aspects.

As stated before, the actual act of rape is not something to be taken lightly. Non-consensual sex harms people both physically and mentally. To many, the act is on par with, perhaps even worse than murder.

Considering the vile nature of actual rape, it is not difficult to see why such opposition to “rape fantasies” exists. The rape fantasy could be viewed as desiring, even glamorizing the act of rape. However, very few would be opposed to a simple consensual “control fantasy.” The definitions and connotations of the word “rape” complicate what would otherwise be a simple, consensual act.

Moving on, abortion. Anyone who has ever been in an abortion debate can attest that the arguments boil down to “when does life begin.” Life. There is quite a bit of conflict to that word. What’s it mean?

The pro-life crowd will say that “life” starts at conception. Common arguments revolve around the religious concept of the soul and the potential for the fetus to become a full grown person. To them, the soul and the potential, the simple fact that the cells are “alive” means it has “life,” and to end that is indeed “murder.”

On the other end of the spectrum, “life” doesn’t start the instant the sperm penetrates the egg. To the pro-choice crowd, “life” doesn’t begin until much later. Definitions on this side vary, from the development of nerves, to the brain, even as far as brain wave activity, which doesn’t start until 26 weeks. Further arguments on this side ask why it is ok to kill an insect or small animal, which have brains, central nervous systems, perhaps even self awareness, while it is “murder” to kill the homogeneous clump of cells that exists shortly after conception? Apparently killing what is “alive” isn’t always “murder,” so what defines having “life” as opposed to merely being “alive,” and what defines “murder.”

Until these terms can be agreed upon, no real productive argument can be had between the two sides.

Lastly, there’s the atheists and the agnostics. Unlike the previous, this pertains more so to perception of the groups rather than any arguments between the two.

In my experience, the definitions of “atheism” and “agnosticism” differ between the self-proclaimed atheists and agnostics and society. Within the community, there is a differentiation between the gnostic and agnostic atheist; the gnostic atheist believes there is no god, while the agnostic atheist lacks belief in god. The overwhelming majority of atheists I have met, myself included, fall into the agnostic atheist category. Furthermore, within the community, agnostics are considered those who either unwilling to commit to to a specific belief or lack thereof.

Amongst society, however, the definition of the agnostic atheist is applied to the agnostic, while the definition of the gnostic atheist is applied to all atheists.

The problems caused by this tend to manifest in discussion and perception of atheists and agnostics both inside and outside the atheist community. The self-identified agnostic is often viewed as a lazy thinker or one still grasping onto their faith by atheists, while society in general vies the agnostic as being more logical or “safer” than the atheist, and easier to relate to. The self-identified atheist is generally more readily welcomed into the atheist community, but society in general tends to view the atheist as being a “god-hater,” someone to keep your children away from.

Until the two groups can reconcile these differences, there will continue to be problems between the theist and atheist communities, and furthermore problems within the atheist community itself.

The Fort Hood shooting involves so many facets, it is frustrating for all parties to try to dissect and understand.

It is also polarizing and extremely charged which adds to its complexity.

One of the frustrating aspects to me is the use of the term “terrorist.” There had been so much semantic ping-pong on the news that it had almost lost meaning and importance. However, when I investigated the issue briefly, it does seem to be somewhat important.

Merriam-Webster defines a terrorist as someone employing terror which is “violent or destructive acts (as bombing) committed by groups in order to intimidate a population or government into granting their demands.”

In this article, it dicusses the fact that Hasan had argued with some that Muslims in the army should be granted conscientious objector status as it is against their religion to kill other Muslims. This is a valid point, but it’s still unclear as to whether or not this was his objective. If it was, then I think it would be clear that he would be using violent means to influence government.

Obviously his motive will be a key point of the investigation so determining whether or not he is a terrorist or a criminal just seems premature. Focusing on this element because it is a buzz word just feeds the divisiveness and intolerance that has arisen in our nation post 9/11.

This article actually attempted to clarify Hasan’s background without making definitive judgments. It told of his education, his family and his social life. It provided clues, but no real answers.

The headline says it all: “Tangle of Clues…Suspect Seen as Misfit, or Radical, or Both.” We’re just not sure yet.