Posts

Eurovision meets Digital Humanities: a soundtrack for Hamburg May 27, 2012: Engelbert Rumpelstiltskin Humperdinck will go down in history as the most weirdly named Eurovision singer ever — an honor that every Eastern European artist would have borne with pride. But Sweden? Seriously? How did that happen? The woman didn't even bake anything on stage. Read more – ‘Eurovision meets Digital Humanities: a soundtrack for Hamburg’.
After DuPont bans Teflon from WordNet, the world is their non-sticky oyster February 20, 2012: The fact that corporate muscle-flexing can force harmless drudges into submission and self-censorship is a troubling — if completely farcical — example of the self-perpetuating power of capital. It is also the ultimate proof of how legal minds still can’t comprehend what dictionaries are about. Read more – ‘After DuPont bans Teflon from WordNet, the world is their non-sticky oyster’.
It’s not just about scholarly work: digital infrastructures, transnationalism, and Europe January 9, 2012: Digital research networks à la DARIAH are part of a transnational history of materializing Europe. Which is why it would be naive to think that we can build expensive, transnational digital research infrastructures that will function in some abstract networked space unburdened by politics and ideology. Read more – ‘It’s not just about scholarly work: digital infrastructures, transnationalism, and Europe’.
The 2011 Award for the Craziest Idea about Dictionaries goes to… December 25, 2011: Even though lexicography and madness go extremely well together, insane ideas should be ideally kept out of articles about dictionaries. But, apparently, that's easier said than done. Just look at what happened after the OED announced earlier this year that it was adding OMG, LOL and FYI to its word list. Read more – ‘The 2011 Award for the Craziest Idea about Dictionaries goes to…’.
Electronic lexicography: what a difference a quarter-century makes — or does it? November 7, 2011: The (pre)history of electronic lexicography -- those dark ages before the Internet, Twitter and Justin Bieber shook us to the core -- still have a lot to teach us: not only about how far we have come, but also about how far we still have to go. Read more – ‘Electronic lexicography: what a difference a quarter-century makes — or does it?’.
Communism, bone and polished stone: the poetry of corpus linguistics October 27, 2011: Linguistic corpora can -- in a semi-automatic homage to both Oulipo and Katherine Hayles (whose mother apparently was a computer) -- be used as poetry machines. Read more – ‘Communism, bone and polished stone: the poetry of corpus linguistics’.
Beyond encoding (& chocolates): the specters of TEI 2011 October 21, 2011: At least two topics -- really, two specters -- haunted & taunted me during the TEI Conference in Würzburg while complementing and antagonizing each other: the specter of social editions and the specter of asocial tools. Read more – ‘Beyond encoding (& chocolates): the specters of TEI 2011’.
The Nobel Prize in literature needs more hoaxes outside of Serbia October 6, 2011: The Nobel Prize in Literature is a total jackpot. The sheer vulgarity of the amount involved -- over 1 million euros for established writers who hardly need the money to make their ends meet -- is softened by the presence of the Swedish royal family at the award ceremony. It is one of the few remaining functions of European royal families that make sense to me: to give ridiculous financial transactions a stamp of timeless elegance. But something funny happened on the way to Stockholm this year. Read more – ‘The Nobel Prize in literature needs more hoaxes outside of Serbia’.