User:Lavintzin

Hi, visitors,

I guess you've come here because you're somehow interested in me or my work.

I was born and mostly raised in Venezuela, South America, but have lived most of my life in Mexico, with a number of years in the U.S. as well. I'm a linguist by profession, with a particular interest in the Mexican indigenous language of Nahuatl, and in topics having to do with the interface of meaning, grammar and lexicon.

I have a wonderful collection of accidental blends, malapropisms, and other bloopers. For instance, all the phrases included at the bottom of the page, which have to do with beating dead bushes, straw horses, and various and sundried other miscellaneous objects, are from my collection. They are all "real" goofs by native speakers of English, collected by me or someone I know who vouches for having heard or read them: none of them are invented.

I'm also interested in lots of other things.

I find the Wiki concept very attractive. I'm impressed with how well it works. I also see limitations, and think some sort of "fixing" of established articles so that proposed edits are reviewed before being accepted might be good. I am unabashedly elitist when it comes to ideas: some ideas are better than others; truth is better than falsehood, and well-expressed truth is better than ill-expressed truth. Tolerance, insofar as it is a virtue, must not mean trying to pretend that all ideas are of equal value, nor must democracy be taken to mean that the majority is necessarily right. The question for Wikipedia is whether a high-quality resource is best achieved by letting whoever wants to change whatever they want, or not. I think this works well for getting things started and for early rounds of editing, but it is not so good at conserving the good which has already been achieved.




 * I know we don’t want to beat a dead bush
 * Am I just beating a dead horse to death?
 * You’re beating a dead straw horse when it’s down
 * Not to beat a dying bush, but that yard looks ugly.
 * He doesn’t beat any bones about it
 * We were trying to beat down all the doors that we could
 * My dad used to beat me over a stick
 * He sort of beat that thru the bush
 * [re a meeting] They beat stuff like a dead horse in there.
 * I don’t want to beat the bandwagon [= blow my own horn]
 * You don’t go around beating the bush
 * That beats the cake!
 * Another pair of pants beats the dust!
 * [He] beats to a different drum
 * She beats to a different drummer
 * He beats to his own drum
 * He could beat us with both brains tied behind our back
 * They keep beating us around the bush.
 * He keeps beating his head against a dead horse
 * We don’t need to beat ourselves on the back
 * We keep beating heads
 * [He] turned beat red, jugular veins popping out on his neck.
 * I bet you! [after winning a Nintendo game]
 * Don’t beat yourself with a dead stick.
 * He got beaten the snot out of
 * It’s no use beating dead wood
 * That’s where the rubber beats the road.