Today's Tree: 32 and Going

Today's tree is here in the Plantation part of the city, between Fremont and Alberta. I found that trees around here very smart, way too smart for me to ever want to interview again. My head still smarts from this one.

ME: Good afternoon. So what's it like, being a tree?

TREE: This is a difficult question for me to answer, being as my default state is that of 'treeness'. I couldn't very well ask you what's it like to be a human, not if I expected some sort of cognizant response.

ME: Cogniz-wha?

TREE: And another thing. What is with the way humans speak? I realize language is a fundamental topic of interest in cognitive neuroscience, and modern brain imaging techniques have contributed greatly to a growing understanding of the anatomical organization of linguistic functions. Unfortunately, the techniques do not allow for high temporal resolution of brain activity as the comprehension or production of sentences unfolds. As temporal resolution is of utmost importance in these questions, researchers also employ the gross electrophysiological techniques. Consequently, EEG and MEG are used primarily to inform theories of the cognitive/computational architecture of language, without regard to their precise neurobiological implementation. For example, one might suspect that out of three categories of words that could end a sentence, two are actually tapping into the same mechanism, but the third is represented differently. Showing that these two categories elicit an identical electrophysiological response different from that of the third would support such a hypothesis.

ME: Nerd!

TREE: Your blatant attempts at stereotyping are quite frankly insipid and I find your vocabulary appalling. Have you ever even looked at a dictionary?

ME: Heh, you said "dick."

TREE: You're an idiot.

ME: Yeah, well your needles are ugly.

TREE: Leave now.

ME: Okay.