Language Log readers are by now well acquainted with the Secret Annual Cabal, but are perhaps not aware that the American Association for the Advancement of Science has a section devoted to Linguistics and the Language Sciences. Indeed, our fellow Language Loggers Lila Gleitman and Arnold Zwicky are Fellows of the AAAS.
I'm in St. Louis at the annual meeting of the AAAS. On Friday there was a symposium entitled In Search of Genes that Influence Language: Phenotypes and Molecules in the morning and one entitled Language Evolution: New Perspectives from Genetics, Neuroscience, and Human Infants in the afternoon.
Of course there are interesting things outside of linguistics. Today I went to the symposium Amazonian Dark Earths: New Discoveries, a session on political interference in science by the Bush administration, and a plenary lecture on The History of Nature: Why Aren't We Teaching It in Our Schools? by Ursula Goodenough. Tomorrow I'm planning on going to a symposium on First Human Entry into the Americas: A Critical Assessment of New Models and New Evidence.
You don't have to be an academic to find it interesting. I just had dinner with a forester from northern British Columbia I met in Vancouver airport on the way down. He comes to the AAAS just out of interest.
Posted by Bill Poser at February 19, 2006 01:36 AM