That’s one small misspeak for a man… “The `a’ was intended,” Armstrong said. “I thought I said it. I can’t hear it when I listen on the radio reception here on Earth, so I’ll be happy if you just put it in parentheses.” Although no one in the world heard the “`a,” some research backs…
Are we moving toward an era where Americans will speak discernibly red versus blue accents? It’s hard to say. Social identities are complex, and can be defined along a number of different dimensions like class, race, or ethnicity. Not everyone feels that politics are a part of their core identity. But I suspect that political…
Matthew Gordon, a linguist at the University of Missouri, says that with the advent of the Internet “a new wrinkle has been added to the complaint tradition.” In the pre-digital era, he says, “most texts we read came from published works — books, newspapers, journals, et cetera. This means they represented the variety of English…
Grammar signifies more than just a person’s ability to remember high school English. I’ve found that people who make fewer mistakes on a grammar test also make fewer mistakes when they are doing something completely unrelated to writing — like stocking shelves or labeling parts. In the same vein, programmers who pay attention to how…
Yes, I got a chuckle over this, but if we present this as evidence of a link between grammar and class / morality / character, that requires a bit of circular thinking. First of all, the substitution of “u” for “you” has nothing to do with grammar, it’s just a shortcut often made by people…
There are two varieties of fairy tales. One is the literary fairy tale, the kind written, most famously, by Charles Perrault, E. T. A. Hoffmann, and Hans Christian Andersen. Such tales, which came into being at the end of the seventeenth century, are original literary works—short stories, really—except that they have fanciful subject matter: unhappy…
Today, I managed to get in a couple of hours of web development and PR/social media work that is stretching my skills a bit. The new pack of iPad styluses I ordered from Amazon has shipped. I’m caught up in the online faculty development class I’m taking. My inbox is brimming with opportunities to collaborate and connect…
A few years ago, in Niagara Falls for an Irish Dance competition, we stopped at a hydraulic power museum. My son spotted what was wrong with this sign. Similar:Brought my in-progress #blender3d project into the #unity3d gaming engine. Plenty of frust… AestheticsSorry, not sorry. I don't want such friends. Back in 2003, shortly after I moved…
Apparently, her defense of the classics and German was among the reasons UVa recently ousted the presudent. As a grad student needing to beef up my foreign kanguage credentuals, I took the summer German course Herr McDonald comments on here. William C. McDonald, director of undergraduate studies in German at the university, stressing that he…
“What’s a meme?” I took my daughter to the birthday party of a 12-year-old friend yesterday, and hung around with the adults as the kids splashed in the pool. After a round of Chuck Norris jokes with his dad (“When Chuck Norris goes into the water, he doesn’t get wet, the water gets Chuck Norrissed”),…
And there was much rejoicing. The journals of the Modern Language Association, including PMLA, Profession, and the ADE and ADFL bulletins, have adopted new open-access-friendly author agreements, which will go into use with their next full issues. The revised agreements leave copyright with the authors and explicitly permit authors to deposit in open-access repositories and…
“Overall, it was just boring. Really boring! Really boring!” —The Washington Post. Similar:The Nth Degree (ST:TNG Rewatch, Season 4, Episode 19) Barclay Evolves Rewatching ST:TNG Engineering schlub …MediaWhy Study Humanities? What I Tell Engineering FreshmenWisdom from science writer John Horgan.[…AcademiaI assume the police report didn't specify what kind of underwear, because this headline is… As…
Great headlines from winner David Bowman. National Headline Contest 2011. Similar:Short-range #neovictorian excursion craft, now with glowing power orbs! Over the past year…https://youtu.be/-cJp-kelrL8 AestheticsGoogle Books ruled legal in massive win for fair use (updated)Update in a legal battle that’s been goi…BooksWriting School Papers: Does Your First Version Say It All?My colleague Mike Arnzen talked about…
I don’t really want to assign a grade to this draft… I just want to sit down with the student and have a conversation about why the words “cannot” and “because” mean completely different things according to context. “The ice cannot be melted because the temperature is below freezing” uses “cannot” as a physical impossibility…
His real name was Geisel, Theodor (with no “e”). An incredibly generous Author was he. An alum from the class of nineteen twenty-five, They say he gave more than any alive. And for that they’ll remember him and his wife (the woman with whom he spent most of his life). The medical school will carry…
I attended a read-through of this play a few months ago, and was impressed. Looking forward to seeing the production. “Running in Traffic” focuses on Bolton, a nonverbal young man with autism who runs from home to attempt independence and becomes lost. He finds refuge on a traffic island when Stevie, a girl in a…
Hayles is an established authority on a humanities-centered approach to human-computer interactions, and My Mother Was a Computer (2005) is her third book on the topic. At times she writes with the expectation that her readers already know some foundational topics that she may have spent more time introducing in her previous books. In the…
War On Words: NYC Dept. Of Education Wants 50 'Forbidden' Words Banned From Standardized Tests « CBS New York. The article presents a list of what the headline described as “banned words,” and we see whole concepts and topics, including “Children dealing with serious issues” and “Computers in the home (acceptable in a school or…
Space seems like a fitting locale for the casual gaming franchise Angry Birds, considering its meteoric rise in popularity since launching 2009. —Review: Angry Birds Space out of this world. Excuse me, but do meteors actually rise? Similar:No, this photo of people wearing coats standing in front of bare trees was not a fake news…It’s…
We’re horrified to have let something like this onto public radio. Many dedicated reporters and editors – our friends and colleagues – have worked for years to build the reputation for accuracy and integrity that the journalism on public radio enjoys. It’s trusted by so many people for good reason. Our program adheres to the…