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Hello from Copernicus

Copernicus

Copernicus

Member
Joined
Oct 4, 2018
Messages
91
Reaction score
34
Location
Bellevue, WA
Gender
Male
Political Leaning
Liberal
Hi, everyone. Some of you may know me from Secular Cafe and Talk Freethought. I like to debate politics, so I thought I would try out this forum.

My background is in linguistic theory and AI research. That is, I taught linguistics courses in academia for a couple of decades before shifting over to work on AI research projects for a major aerospace company. Retired in 2012 so that I could devote the rest of my life to pointless pontification in internet discussion forums. It doesn't cause much other harm to others, except for occasionally annoying people.

I have been a lifelong liberal Democrat, and even more so these days. Totally unbiased and objective, however. ;) I am also very interested in philosophy, science, and religion. My opinions on religion are even more annoying than my opinions on politics, but that's really for others to judge.
 
Copernicus said:
Hi, everyone. Some of you may know me from Secular Cafe and Talk Freethought. I like to debate politics, so I thought I would try out this forum.

My background is in linguistic theory and AI research. That is, I taught linguistics courses in academia for a couple of decades before shifting over to work on AI research projects for a major aerospace company. Retired in 2012 so that I could devote the rest of my life to pointless pontification in internet discussion forums. It doesn't cause much other harm to others, except for occasionally annoying people.

I have been a lifelong liberal Democrat, and even more so these days. Totally unbiased and objective, however. ;) I am also very interested in philosophy, science, and religion. My opinions on religion are even more annoying than my opinions on politics, but that's really for others to judge.
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Greeting. Have fun.
 
Copernicus said:
Hi, everyone. Some of you may know me from Secular Cafe and Talk Freethought. I like to debate politics, so I thought I would try out this forum.

My background is in linguistic theory and AI research. That is, I taught linguistics courses in academia for a couple of decades before shifting over to work on AI research projects for a major aerospace company. Retired in 2012 so that I could devote the rest of my life to pointless pontification in internet discussion forums. It doesn't cause much other harm to others, except for occasionally annoying people.

I have been a lifelong liberal Democrat, and even more so these days. Totally unbiased and objective, however. ;) I am also very interested in philosophy, science, and religion. My opinions on religion are even more annoying than my opinions on politics, but that's really for others to judge.
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Oh, and they will. ;)

I worked briefly in '92 as the tech editor of a small company that specialized in IDEF applications and AI stuff and was astonished to be working with both a prof whose doctorate was in philosophy but whose Master's had been in linguistics. I had more than one argument with him over how code "imitates" speech (pauses and other punctuation issues), but I'd never even thought about the connections.
 
nota bene said:
Oh, and they will. ;)

I worked briefly in '92 as the tech editor of a small company that specialized in IDEF applications and AI stuff and was astonished to be working with both a prof whose doctorate was in philosophy but whose Master's had been in linguistics. I had more than one argument with him over how code "imitates" speech (pauses and other punctuation issues), but I'd never even thought about the connections.
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Well, punctuation did evolve as a means of expressing intonation and other aspects of spoken language.

When I worked in aerospace, one of my specializations was language policy governing the simplification of English technical documentation--ASD Simplified Technical English. I worked on that standard for a couple of decades and developed a grammar checking tool to support it.
 
Copernicus said:
Well, punctuation did evolve as a means of expressing intonation and other aspects of spoken language.

When I worked in aerospace, one of my specializations was language policy governing the simplification of English technical documentation--ASD Simplified Technical English. I worked on that standard for a couple of decades and developed a grammar checking tool to support it.
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I hope you managed to make a little money on that, and thank you. As you can imagine, I am a fan of the "plain style."

For others: https://www.thoughtco.com/plain-style-prose-1691632
 
The only money I made was the salary I drew from my employer unfortunately. :) I have made a little consulting money by offering training courses since retirement.
 
Copernicus said:
The only money I made was the salary I drew from my employer unfortunately.
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That's exactly what I figured. Been there.

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Copernicus said:
:) I have made a little consulting money by offering training courses since retirement.
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When I was doing that ('79-'81), the money was great, $200 a day for a few hours of work. I did commute 100 miles each way, but it was worth it, and not just for the money. All my seminar participants held at least a Master's, and I learned so much about polymers and industrial safety. Loved it.
 
Superfly said:
Welcome, Copernicus. You've come at a rather wild time, so gird your loins.

Hope this place doesn't scare you off.
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I've been participating in discussion boards since Usenet and am no stranger to flame baths. Also have experience as a moderator and admin of a few boards, including a virtual reality world populated by wild and crazy Russians. This board appears to be reasonably moderated, so I'm hoping for more interesting discussions than people focusing on each other's personality flaws.
 
OK, now that I've been here a while, I see that conservatives and Republicans are more dominant in political threads than liberals and progressives. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, although it means that I'm more likely to get dogpiled for expressing my point of view. That's actually useful to me in the sense that I like to try to understand how the other side processes things. I don't have a lot of time to fight long drawn-out battles that, as Barney Frank put it, is like trying to debate the kitchen table. Nevertheless, not everyone on the right is like that. There are some that it is possible to have a conversation with.
 
Copernicus said:
Hi, everyone. Some of you may know me from Secular Cafe and Talk Freethought. I like to debate politics, so I thought I would try out this forum.

My background is in linguistic theory and AI research. That is, I taught linguistics courses in academia for a couple of decades before shifting over to work on AI research projects for a major aerospace company. Retired in 2012 so that I could devote the rest of my life to pointless pontification in internet discussion forums. It doesn't cause much other harm to others, except for occasionally annoying people.

I have been a lifelong liberal Democrat, and even more so these days. Totally unbiased and objective, however. ;) I am also very interested in philosophy, science, and religion. My opinions on religion are even more annoying than my opinions on politics, but that's really for others to judge.
Click to expand...

Welcome aboard Copernicus :peace
 
Copernicus said:
Hi, everyone. Some of you may know me from Secular Cafe and Talk Freethought. I like to debate politics, so I thought I would try out this forum.

My background is in linguistic theory and AI research. That is, I taught linguistics courses in academia for a couple of decades before shifting over to work on AI research projects for a major aerospace company. Retired in 2012 so that I could devote the rest of my life to pointless pontification in internet discussion forums. It doesn't cause much other harm to others, except for occasionally annoying people.

I have been a lifelong liberal Democrat, and even more so these days. Totally unbiased and objective, however. ;) I am also very interested in philosophy, science, and religion. My opinions on religion are even more annoying than my opinions on politics, but that's really for others to judge.
Click to expand...

You must be a big fan of Chomsky.
 
Anarchon said:
You must be a big fan of Chomsky.
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Actually, I used to be more of a fan than now. I have some rather sharp differences on a wide range of issues. For one thing, I'm a functionalist rather than a formalist. So, not really a generative linguist.

Sent from my Moto G (5) Plus using Tapatalk
 
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