Thinking (is Good)

Lately I've been doing a lot of thinking. Not serious, wondering about my life kind of thinking. No, that might be a little too serious for the likes of me. Instead, I've been swamped with weird information from different sources and thus, I've been trying to make sense of this weird information.

Though mostly I just laugh.

First on my list is something called the Higgs boson. For reasons I don't fully understand, it fascinates me. Get this: the HB (as I like to call it, us being really close after a week since we were introduced) is a theoretical particle. And by "particle", I mean the sorts of things the universe is made of. Like in the phrase "subatomic particles." Those kind of particles. So this HB is (if any of you remember Descartes) a tricky demon. For all of time, the HB has been deceiving us about the nature of matter and the universe. Oh, and I should remind you that the HB is theoretical, meaning that it hasn't been proven to exist. In fact, some research says that you can't prove its existence, because it pretty much exists to screw us up.

Neat, eh?

Next on my study of interesting and wacky things involves the secret organization I've now become a part of. It is known as the MAK Pact, and, it being a secret organization, I can't explain much about it. You'll just have to guess who the members are, what the goals of it are, and why on earth I joined it. But let me tell you, it has raised some interesting questions for me, and rather personal ones, too. Like, "Why did I ever have a hedgehog as a pet?" or "What is in the future for the house on Keating Road?" or "Does this relate to Chaos Theory, or is this an element of natural selection?" Another question, that comes from the heart of the MAK Pact, is "What is all of this stuff, anyway?" I have another MAK Pact Adventure planned for this evening.

We shall see what we uncover this time.

Nextly is an interesting question having to do with linguistics. In a class titled "Second Language Learning," we've been discussing the term "interference." This refers to the interference of a learner's native language on the one they are trying to learn. For example, if your native language is English, and you're trying to learn French, you make some mistakes because your knowledge of English is causing you to make incorrect conclusions about French grammar or awful pronunciations in French. Your English interferes in your French. So here's my question: Does your French ever interfere with your English? Personal experience leads me to think that yes, my English certainly deteriorated for the first few months of my French-learning. I was appalled at how I had suddenly dropped in proficiency of my own native tongue. Through anecdotal means, I've learned that I am not alone in this (and for those of you readers who have suffered similar experiences, now you know that you are not alone). However, doesn't this whole thing strike you as completely bizarre? Unfortunately, I don't have the means to test this at the moment, so figuring out whether this is true for most or some and to what degree is something I can't do. However, let us consider the implications of this. IF there is "backwards interference" as I'd like to call it, then doesn't this suggest that learning a second language uses the same (or at least some of the same) language faculty that learning a first language uses? This happens to be one of the more hotly-debated topics in second language learning right now. Whether the same mechanisms are in place for first and second language learning. Maybe someday I will get a grant and work on this project. Or maybe, somehow, I will be able to incorporate this into my Honors Project. We shall wait and see.

And those are just a few of the things that have been pestering me this fall as I've started classes. But wouldn't it be even stranger if the HB were responsible (somehow) for the hiding the similarities in first and second language learning? And that it all could be explained in a situation analogous to the MAK Pact?

What is all this stuff, anyway?