“At this writing, SARS appears to have killed 49 people out of 1323 afflicted according to the World Health Organization, a death rate of less than four percent. In Hong Kong, that alleged ‘worst medical disaster’ has killed ten people out of 316 known victims. But since this only takes into account those ill enough…
“Every day, tens of thousands of people turn to the Web seeking updates from a mysterious scribe whose detailed accounts of life in besieged Baghdad have made him a cyberspace celebrity. | Little is known for sure about Salam Pax, whose nom de plume means ‘peace’ in Arabic and Latin. But his Web journal —…
“Unfortunately, teaching well doesn’t mean that most kids will enjoy it, certainly not most of the time…. I describe the agony of Valley Forge. I show kids the simple genius of the Constitution. I let them test the principles in the Bill of Rights. I tell them about the Trail of Tears and Dred Scott.…
“I get a perverse pleasure out of being here. CNN dumped me, and I think unfairly. Tailwind was almost a deathblow to my career, no doubt about it. (In 1999 Arnett was fired by CNN after delivering a report that U.S. forces used nerve gas on U.S. defectors during the Vietnam War. The story, dubbed…
“Miss Dahl was one of numerous students in her class who chose to make speeches about abortion, and most took the anti-abortion side. | ‘I was shocked that there were that many students who felt strong enough and confident enough to speak about being pro-life,’ said Nina Verin, a parent of another student in the…
“Language bullying… advances a stuffy and old-fashioned view of language, the rules of which it considers set by supposed experts, such as the authors of grammar books, rather than common usage. It is deeply anti-populist and snobby, not to mention just plain wrong and cranky…. I suspect many of Bush’s critics would want to avoid…
“Perhaps [the] most accurate metaphor for this war occurs whenever the news runs a feed from an Arabic language station. Our crawl runs in one direction; theirs runs in the other. You almost expect the crawls to twine like DNA and start fighting – and in that case, the English language would lose. Arabic is…
“[T]he Civilization series is infused with an American ideology that is comforting insofar as it justifies genocidal practices and the stealing of land by positing an empty virgin continent….Among other ideological effects, Civilization III makes inevitable, natural and universal several Western-centered ideas of technological progress, the use of the land, and the opposition between ‘civilization’…
“In health care, the visual clues about an institution‘score values and the quality of care are particularly difficult to separate from the actual service because people spend significant time in the facility?some stay for days or even weeks. The physical environment is also connected to medical outcomes: The potential of design to promote healing through…
I recently heard that the talk I proposed has been accepted to BlogTalk – A European Conference On Weblogs. Here is the abstract I sent: I plan to examine the language bloggers use to describe their activities, in terms of the “meme” (or some variant, such as the virulent persistence of the “blogging urge”) and…
“Dennis Jerz asked me a question about the length of time it takes for a Google query to be performed. We resolved this with a series of 50 tests to determine an answer.” Elwyn Jenkins —Google Search Speeds: Overpopulation and Underpopulation ComparedMicrodoc News) Thanks, Elwyn.
“The year 2000 marked a turning point, with the population’s ‘momentum’ becoming negative; there will be fewer parents in the next generation than in this one.” —Europe Shrinking as Birthrates DeclineTimes) This is a straightforward summary of an article to be published in Science. It might have been a more interesting article if it interviewed…
A current headline on an Australian news site: “Al-Qaeda fighting with Iraqis, British claim“. —Ambiguous HeadlineLiteracy Weblog) The news here is that Al-Qaeda forces appear to be in Iraq, but the phrase “fighting with” has two contradictory meanings. How about “Al-Qaeda in Iraq, Fighting Coalition, British Claim”.
“THE world’s biggest rubber band ball has been dropped from an aeroplane a mile up… Experts thought the ball would bounce hundreds of feet into the air.|Instead, it created a massive crater…” —This is Very DumbicWales)
“‘With few exceptions, modern scholars see the witch as essentially female,’ write Lara Apps and Andrew Gow. ‘The male witch vanishes quickly from view, as he is made invisible by a combination of rhetorical strategies.’ Male Witches in Early Modern Europe is the first book on the subject, and it is an outstandingly good one.…
“Field Guide to Stains is a lovely little book. It’s beautifully produced and designed. The writing is sharp, the advice is good and the photos are appropriately illustrative. You just have to wonder: Who the hell cares?” Sienna Powers reviews some dumb books. —What Were They Thinking?January Magazine) Via KairosNews.
“In much of the 20th Century, there was a widespread denial of the existence of human nature in Western intellectual life, and I will just present three representative quotations. ‘Man has no nature,’ from the philosopher Jose Ortega y Gassett. ‘Man has no instincts,’ from the anthropologist and public intellectual Ashley Montagu. ‘The human brain…
“A few years ago, Tony Alleyne’s marriage broke down. In search of solace, Tony turned to his love of science fiction. Star Trek was particularly good at helping him cope, so much so that he transformed his flat into a replica of the Starship Enterprise.” —The Final TouchBBC) The apartment’s currently being auctioned on e-bay.…
“If Canada’s security had been threatened, he said the United States would respond immediately. ‘There would be no debate. There would be no hesitation. We would be there for Canada, part of our family.’ | It was that reference to family, hokey though it might sound, that rang most true of all. ‘Canada is not…
“It started as a routine downtown patrol. An officer cruised a sports bar, then went behind the bar to rinse off his hands and looked up as a fight broke out in the crowd. As it grew, tavern employees intervened, trying to muscle the combatants outta the bar. The officer helped, and even in the…