Brad and I have this method for finding new music. We walk down the aisle, and pick up any CDs that have really cool-looking cover art.
I was at Blockbuster yesterday, and using that method, I picked up Dot the I. The basic plot looks like your standard guy meets girl, they fall in […]
→ Not old enough, by half - Language Log (sorry, twice in one day!) reports on a letter in Dan Savage's love advice column, "Savage Love". "There is some vaguely delimited age at which you stop counting your age in steps smaller than one year, and the age at which it seems reasonable to say that a person is mature enough for the responsibilities of sexual activity seems (forgive me, sexually active junior high-schoolers) to be broadly after that point." :/: No Comments »
→ Language Log on The Guardian on how jokes work - "At this point, I'm beginning to think that 'Stewart Lee' is the invention of a team of writers from the Onion. There are no doubt some cultural differences in deploying sexual allusions in humor, but are saunas really a ubiquitous fixture of modern German family life, or has 'Lee' carelessly displaced this practice a country or two southwards? And aren't there any metaphors for English-German translation that don't involve WWI or WWII?" :/: No Comments »
It took me almost an hour to read three pages of this linguistics paper. Not because it was impossible, mind you, but because I was having a good time. I would see something I didn’t understand, look it up in another book, and then in that book find something interesting - and then […]
I kinda like waking up early (without an alarm, of course) and being the only one awake in the house. There’s something spooky about having to be quiet in a place you’re normally able to be loud.
Or maybe it’s just because I like the grade that got posted this morning…
→ “Ten Things I Hate About Commandments” - "What happened where was a miracle, and I want you to f***ing acknowledge!" - If "Ten Commandments" was a teen movie. (Via BoingBoing) :/: No Comments »
→ Senate votes to make English national language of US - It's not final yet, but the House has an "official English" bill with strong support, and it's not likely that Bush'd veto it. How'd they get it to pass? They made it all about immigration, of course. The Senate also voted on a second bill, making English a "common and unifying language". The differences between the two bills will be worked out in conference, along with the rest of the immigration bill. :/: 1 Comment »
The Tensor (who JonW apparently knows!) talks about recent griping about calling Leonardo da Vinci da Vinci * (”da Vinci” means from Vinci - some ask “would you call Jesus of Nazareth *?”).
In composing this post, I’m also reminded of The Tensor’s thoughts on stupid linguistics tricks - the only way to get the […]
→ Why Apple’s Think Different slogan is *not* grammatically incorrect - The new Apple billboards, spare and stunning, with a simple message of "Think Different," sprang up everywhere, even painted on the sides of buildings, announcing a fresh start for the company. They boosted employee morale. It didn't matter that the phrase was gratingly ungrammatical; maybe that was even part of its charm. :/: No Comments »
→ Government tracking ABC News phone calls - Creepy. :/: No Comments »
I may or may not have watched the entire archives of Ze Frank’s The Show last night…
In Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age, or A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer, he describes a very special book. This book (the Primer) is interactive (in more ways than I need go into right now). If the reader wants the Primer to go more in-depth on a particular subject, or to explain what something […]