A great 2009 to all of you, and many thanks for continuing to support Punks in Science with your interest, your postings, your mails! One New Year’s resolution could be… to post more on PIS! More info, more links, more blogs, more everything. From everyone, for everyone. Stay tuned.

Hello out there,

check out my new punk band at www.myspace.com/rockwohldegowski. For those who know German “DK & ich” offers exclusive insights into the life of a Science Punk.

Best,

René

I am writing my linguistics thesis on therapy methods of teaching indirect speech acts to patients with the autisim spectrum disorder Asperger’s syndrome, based on Searle’s theories of speech acts and illocutionary force.  The paper encompases three broad fields of interest: linguistics, philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience (insofar as the language acquisition process is reflected biologically).  The professors of my department have washed their hands of it saying it is above their heads and outside of their personal academic interests - but only doing so after I had long since committed to it as my topic.  As such, I am left to wander the campus with an orphan project hoping some teacher that has more than two neurons to rub together when it is cold out might actually want to help me.  I am also looking for resources in NIMH, ASHA, LSA, and SON.  If anyone has any ideas of other organizations that might help, or individuals they know doing research in this vein, please let me know.

Until then.. syntax.

My current faves, STALINS WAR from Santa Cruz. Check’em out!

http://www.stalinswar.org
http://www.myspace.com/stalinswarx
http://www.purevolume.com/stalinswar

Wow, what energy! And the hardcore male/melancholic female vocals work so damned well.

That’s right, the complete works of Charles Darwin are now available online, for free like they should be. Check it out: http://darwin-online.org.uk/

They even have a search function, so I looked up one of my favorite quotes: “…doing what little we can to increase the general stock of knowledge is as respectable an object of life as one can in any likelihood pursue.â€�

From: Darwin, Francis ed. 1887. The life and letters of Charles Darwin, including an autobiographical chapter. London: John Murray. Volume 1.

Hey all,
Ok. So this isn’t a big topic, but perhaps worthy of punksinscience in that it deals with extremes, in a way. What do all you linguists out there think of single morpheme cycles/phases/spellout domains/command units? Anyone know anyone if anyone has discussed this?
-H
“Everything gets speeded up in our memories, so it winds up going through some kind of contemporary, like, slightly punk-rock filter.”(Ruyter Suys - Nashville Pussy. Just saw them here in Montreal. It was a great show, with wonderful peoplewatchability. Too lazy to comment in the music section!)

Hello everybody,

the new punksinscience-calendar is online. From now on, you can let everybody know, what’s up - and when/where.
To publish information about an upcoming event, just start a new post. In “Categories”, set the category-type to “Events” (uncheck the remaining categories) and set the start- and end-date in the Schedule Editor at the bottom of the page of your event.

Have fun!

Planned for June 1-3, 2007.

Hello from Cambridge, MA. I’m here to give a couple talks at Harvard and MIT. I’ll post the handout here next week for those interested. As it turns out, this is a funny time to be in the Boston area, where our favorite anarcholinguist Noam Chomsky is buried…in work.

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A new documentary entitled “American Hardcore: The History of American Punk Rock 1980 - 1986” was shown at this year’s Toronto Film Festival, and will have a limited theatrical release this fall. The movie is based on the book “American Hardcore: A Tribal History” by Steven Blush (which I’ve been meaning to read for a long time). Both book and film document U.S. hardcore punk scenes during the 1980s and feature lots of famous bands like Black Flag, Minor Threat, Bad Brains, et al. “American Hardcore” looks like a pretty good flick judging from the trailer. I definitely want to see it as soon as possible. Maybe the eventual DVD will join my punk-rock movie collection. (I’m still waiting for “The Decline of Western Civilization” to finally come out.)

Read the rest of this entry »

Hi,

I haven’t posted before, and I’m half convinced that I’m doing it all wrong or that it’s not appropriately categorized, but bear with me. It’s at least punk-related (due to the punk activist kids that were involved) or tenuously political.
I’m researching an article on an old 90s activism side-issue (I suppose that’s the best way to describe it).

Chris Plummer claimed he was put in prison in the 90s due to his part in vandalizing a neo-Nazi organizing house in Houston, but stuff I’ve uncovered on the web and the TX Dept. of Correx folks say he was in there for far more mundane crimes. If that’s true, then he successfully hoodwinked a lot of well-meaning activist kids in the 90s and early 00s, which I suppose should be no huge surprise — but it might make for an interesting article.

Please, if you have any familiarity with Chris Plummer, his case, or even just the lore around it, I’d love to hear from you!

Chris (no relation to Plummer)

PS How’s it going Jeff?

Legendary Portland, Oregon punk band Poison Idea had just finished recording a new album when guitarist Tom “Pig Champion” Roberts died of apparent kidney failure in January 2006.

Entitled “Latest Will and Testament” at Pig’s suggestion, the album is probably their last. Poison Idea has performed live without Pig before, and may continue, but it seems doubtful that the band will write any more original material. LWT is a solid late-period recording with great mid-tempo punk-rock songs, and is certainly required listening for PI fans. LWT was released by the German label Farewell Records and can be had in the Amerikan Homeland through Profane Existence.

Beginners should start at the beginning with PI’s incredible 1983 (!!) “Pick Your King” 7 inch and then work through their entire catalog. PI is one of those rare bands who’ve never put out a bad record.

This thread will deal with science. I’m a linguist, so I’ll probably start with something related to human language and the scientific study of it. But my interests go beyond linguistics. This said, I’m about to start a new journal on BIOLINGUISTICS with my colleague and friend Cedric Boeckx from Harvard. More on this project soon, too.

Let us know! Or discuss any other music-related business.

…your thoughts on current events in global and local politics. Or fill this thread with completely different political discussion. Since I am physically way too close to Lebanon and Israel, I’d rather talk about other things, to be honest. Besides, the web is full of insightful discussions, criticism, facts, and so on about this war and many others past, present, and future.

We could do with some additional links. If you know of good ones, post them on the PUNKS IN SCIENCE site. I will do so too.

In my neck of the woods, punk-related events aren’t really happening. Besides, most people would find it quite hard to jet to Cyprus to see a good show. But there’s more to PUNKS IN SCIENCE than gigs. I’ll post what I can find when I find it.

(This said, if you or band friends of yours want to come to Cyprus for a vacation and play some punk, let me know — we should be able to organize something.)

In the meantime, feel free to advertize local events or talk about events you attended, organized, or were otherwise involved in, even if only by proxy. For example, this announcement just appeared on Punk77:

=================================================
WHAT: Antonino D’Ambrosio: Celebrating the Life of Joe Strummer / PUNK ROPE
WHEN: Mon 8.21 (Punk Rope: 6 PM; Reading/Signing: 7 PM)
WHERE: 14th St. Y (344 E 14th St.) NYC
PRICE: $FREE (reading)/$12 (punk rope)
=================================================

Since Commandante Joe was one of my favourite music-related human beings, I’m a bit sad I can’t go there. If it’s any good. If you know anything about the event, let us know.

Another musician I would like to promote more is the wonderful Attila the Stockbroker. Tour dates and more info can be found at his website www.attilathestockbroker.com or the new one on MySpace, www.myspace.com/attilastockbroker. He’s on tour at the moment with the last gig of his Scandinavian brokerage taking place in Stockholm tonight. On Tuesday he’ll be back playing in England for a week, and more dates as well as other details are posted on his website.

OK, everyone PUNKS IN SCIENCE is back, and we hope to overcome our sleepy mode of postings. Jan did a fantastic job redesigning the website, I think, so now it’s time we all contribute.

I know, you probably think “Didn’t they say that before?”… Well, the idea of PUNKS IN SCIENCE was that everyone write stuff, post links, open discussions, and so on. To top it all off, we now have a blog as well.

On our first forum a few years ago we had some good discussions going. The hope is that we can recreate that one day. Let the postings begin!

Cheers, K