The
Mark A. Mandel
Identity Test

(Or, Is this the Mark Mandel you're looking for?
You may want to start with who I'm not.)

Professional

Since 2002 I have been working for the Linguistic Data Consortium of the University of Pennsylvania as research administrator for the PennBioIE project, extracting information from biomedical text.

I have also worked on the LDC's Less Commonly Taught Languages project, developing and publishing computational resources for languages such as Panjabi and Tagalog.

These are very good jobs and very good things to be doing. But soft money doesn't last, so I am looking for work in which I can use my abilities productively, preferably doing some good in the world.

Personal

What's New as of October, 2008

Blog Filk Music My Filk Songs

Cracks and Shards: Observations on Dragaera

linguist:

"What is a linguist?"
A linguist is a specialist in linguistics, the science of language. The word is also used to mean someone who is fluent in a specific language. I'm the first kind.
"How many languages do you speak?"
"Asking a linguist (language scientist) how many languages he speaks is like asking a doctor how many diseases she has." (Lynne Murphy) I've studied about eight formally and more informally, but my work is not so much knowing languages as knowing about languages. To some degree or other I've studied ASL (American Sign Language), French, Esperanto, German, Latin, Russian, Spanish, Sanskrit, Classical Greek, Old and Middle English, Hebrew, Arabic, Sherpa, Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, and Klingon and probably others I can't recall offhand.
I subscribe and contribute to
- LINGUIST, the largest email discussion list in the world
- ADS-L, the discussion list of the American Dialect Society
- ANS-L, the discussion list of the American Name Society
- SLLING-L, the Sign Language Linguistics discussion list
and others.
I enjoy wordplay, puns, and such.

resident of:

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where I work; and formerly...
Framingham, Mass.
(graduate school) Berkeley, Calif., and environs
(growing up) New York City

Jew:

I belong to Kol Tzedek, a new Reconstructionist congregation in West Philadelphia.
When I lived in Massachusetts, I was a member of Congregation Beth El of the Sudbury River Valley. I sang in Shir El, our choral group, and took part in the annual Purim Spiel.
Some years ago I wrote this meditation for Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day).

related to:

my wife Rene, who:
- is a librarian, whose work history includes:
  - Assistant Library Director at the Framingham Campus of Mass. Bay Community College.
  - Aquinas College, which was run by the Congregation of the Sisters of Saint Joseph of Boston
  - member of the Metrowest Regional Library System executive board
- was for many years an elected member of Framingham (Mass.) Town Meeting when we lived there
- is a past president of Framingham Townwide PTO (Parent-Teacher Organization)
- collects dolls and sews for them (including Iselle and Betriz from The Curse of Chalion and Paladin of Souls)
- as well as doing many other things too numerous to mention here
- except that I will add to the above list that I love her very much
our daughter Susannah, alumna of Harvard and MIT (Comparative Media Studies)
our son Jeremy
our foster son Andrew Wray, now at Princeton
(all of whom are graduates of Framingham High School)
my sister Wendy Sue, who is an artist among other things
my nephew Roger Morehouse and his wife Renate
my cousin Richard Weissberg and his wife Barbara Kivowitz
my cousin Mark Weissberg, and Jo Lindt
my not-wicked stepmother Jean Rosenthal Mandel, and Philip McIntosh
my late father Howard Mandel, who was VP for Research of the National Association of Broadcasters
my late mother Annette Tarr, who taught art at Music and Art H.S. in Manhattan, and Erasmus Hall H.S. in Brooklyn, N.Y.
my late stepfather Sidney Tarr, who taught speech at Christopher Columbus H.S. in New York City
and others too numerous to mention

sf & fantasy fan:

For other fans of Steven Brust I have compiled some information about the world of Dragaera at Cracks and Shards; and I am honored that Steve thought enough of it to cite it on the Acknowledgments page of his book Paths of the Dead. Real Life™ has interfered with my keeping the site as up to date as I would like.

I subscribe to the lois-bujold discussion list. I sometimes make horrible jokes there, and elsewhere as well.

I participate or have participated in these conventions:

Arisia. Arisia '04 was Fri.-Sun., Jan. 16-18, 2004, at the Boston Park Plaza. Here's my con report. (In 1995 I took part in the Masquerade, but I don't plan to do it again.)
Boskone. Boskone 41 was Fri.-Sun., February 13-15, 2004, (President's Day weekend), at the Sheraton Boston Hotel. Con report here. At Boskone I don't run a thing (except for throwing some questions into the Trivia Bowl) and I can relax and enjoy myself.
ConCertino, Massachusetts's instantiation of the Floating Northeast Filk Convention.
Consonance 2003 as Interfilk guest: see below.
I attended the Millennium PhilCon, the 2001 WorldCon in Philadelphia. Here's my report.
At Noreascon '04, the 2004 Worldcon, I had the honor of creating the role of Dr. McKoko, Lord High Evil Genius, in the première production of a new space opera, The Filkado, by Gary McGath and Terri Wells.
I have been attending PhilCon, the Philadelphia Science Fiction Convention, since... well, I guess, the Millennium PhilCon

For the most and best-organized information available on the Web about sf, see the .

singer of:

filk music:
- What's that? (And some examples and links.)
- Some of my own filk songs, and a couple by other people
- member of M.A.S.S.F.I.L.C.
- I'm honored and delighted to have been the Interfilk guest at Consonance 2003, the San Francisco Bay Area filk convention, March 7-9, 2003. <great big smile> Here's my report on the con!
- participant in the rec.music.filk newsgroup
other folk music: a 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, and double-0hs folkie.
Jewish choral music
Yale Russian Chorus-type music: with a San Francisco men's Slavic (and plus) chorus called Slavyanka, once upon a time when I lived in Berkeley.

student of Tàijíquán (T'ai Chi Ch'uan):

in Yang style short form; with Dennis Reynolds. Though I no longer go to class, I try to do the form every day.

alumnus of:

U.C. Berkeley (1981: Ph.D., Linguistics)
CCNY, aka City College of the City University of New York (1973: B.A., Linguistics)
St. John's College (class of 1969, Annapolis)
Columbia Grammar School (now Columbia Grammar and Preparatory School) (1965)

friend or acquaintance of:

Kai-Mikael Jää-Aro
and many others, including some filkers

also known as:

Dr. Whom, Consulting Linguist, Grammarian, Orthoëpist, & Philological Busybody. Quite a long while ago the good Doctor started a list of his pet peeves, but he has never gotten very far on it.
marqem la'Hom: Subcommander Markemm, Klingon Sanitation Corps
SilverBlack, in alt.callahans once upon a time
Windwolf, a long time ago on a BBS far, far away

I am not (but I have been confused with):

Alan Mandel. Alan is my middle name, not my first. There is an Alan Mandel who lives in Framingham, as I did for twenty years but no longer do, and is married to a librarian, as I have been for even longer.
a Webmaster, sysop, listserv administrator, or ISP provider of any kind
a writer of program notes for the Boston Symphony Orchestra or an employee of WCRB radio, Waltham* (Massachusetts)
a physician in Brookline, a Cablevision employee in Natick*, or a MediaOne or Channel 13 employee in Needham* (all in Massachusetts)
the media relations director for ABC Sports*
a former member of the Automation Group at United Airlines' Maintenance Operations Center (hi, wotten Wayne!)
"the Mark Mandel who went to P.S. 220 in Forest Hills (alright, alright, Flushing), New York"
an alumnus of the Cherry Lawn School in Darien, Connecticut, or of any grade school in Canada
an ex-Torontonian now living in Las Vegas
"the Mark Mandel who grew up on the south side of Chicago"
the son of a Mystic, Connecticut, coffee shop owner
born or adopted in California
adopted anywhere else, either