Humboldt traveled to the cave where hundreds of the Atures were buried, weighed down his mules with some of their skeletons, then headed to a nearby village. There, the local people showed the foreigner a talking parrot that no one understood: It was the last living thing to speak the language of the Atures, the…
A Picture is Worth… Two photos… one is the mugshot of a monster who e-mailed detailed and graphic threats against his high school. The other is a snapshot of every mama’s dream child whose short story was discovered on a school computer and tragically misunderstood. “Save Brian” is a slick and impressive website designed to…
The increasing rate of litigation means that there is a far higher chance that doctors will be asked in court to explain the exact meaning of NFN (Normal for Norfolk), FLK (Funny looking kid) or GROLIES (Guardian Reader Of Low Intelligence in Ethnic Skirt). —Doctor Slang is a Dying Art (BBC) Here’s an amusing couplet, taken…
“The Berenstain Bears taught me about not being greedy. I used to have the ‘galloping greedy gimmies,’ but not anymore.” … Delighted by the positive influence of [The Berenstain Bears] Get The Gimmies, Johnson’s parents purchased their daughter 14 more books from the series. —Precocious 6-Year-Old Claims Berenstain Bears Book Changed Her Life (The Onion) Ouch……
Inspired by an article in The New York Times Magazine, the Gender Genie uses an algorithm developed by Moshe Koppel, Bar-Ilan University in Israel, and Shlomo Argamon, Illinois Institute of Technology, to predict the gender of an author. Read more about the algorithm at nature.com. —The Gender Genie (Bookblog) Textually speaking, are you male or female?…
As the hobbyhorse of a few crackpots, Holocaust Denial seems harmless. But retum to CODOR on the web and you may reach a different conclusion. The benign image of Brad Smith (who includes a Christmas letter each year in his newsletter) asks only that we come to the topic with open minds, and with just…
You might be surprised to learn that the outskirts of the solar system are loaded with Plutinos, Centaurs, cubewanos and EKOs. Astronomers didn’t even know this a decade ago. In fact until 1992 they hadn’t even invented three of the terms. | Now it seems they don’t have enough of these crazy names. — Robert…
Cyberslackers, egosurfing, data smog? All three terms have entered the English language, according to the compilers of the Oxford Dictionary of English, who have added 3,000 more words to the 350,000 words and phrases in modern usage. —Charles Arthur —Internet terms make entry in dictionary (The Independent) Contemporary English still contains a host of idioms that…
Blair Hornstine, whose court battle to be her high school’s sole valedictorian ended up throwing her life in turmoil, settled her differences with the Moorestown School District yesterday to the tune of $60,000 – all but $15,000 to pay her lawyers. — Toni Callas and Joseph A. Gambardello —Valedictorian settles suit against district (Philadelphia Inquirer) I’ve…
The bomber was a father of two. A man who has children who walks down the aisle of the bus, looking at the children whose small short cheerful lives he is about to destroy, contenting himself with the knowledge that they are mere Jews – such a man has abdicated his humanity. The fact that…
How might science engender democracy? I’d like to suggest two mechanisms: first, by changing the way people think; second, by altering the interaction among those who make up the community. The more scientifically literate people become, the more they will expect, even demand to participate in the political process, and the more effective they will…
“With the help of Miss Sunshine they discover that he is allergic to the feathers in his pillow. | However, Mr Sneeze then receives a visit from Mr Silly and his pet chicken Rover which causes him to start sneezing again…. The story is followed by four pages of information on allergies from Allergy UK…
While we might take the phrase “bright lights, big city” for granted, the fact is that for most of recorded history, nocturnal urban darkness was the norm, not the exception. —Jeet Heer —Cultural history of the night (National Post) By the way… the oft-repeated story about “blackout babies” born nine months after a major power outage…
“In the old days, there used to be a term, ‘buying your gross’,” said Rick Sands, chief operating officer at Miramax. “You could buy your gross for the weekend and overcome bad word of mouth because it took time to filter out into the general audience.” But those days are over, because the technology of…
If we find what we’re looking for, we will suddenly know life on another planet is highly probable and that we may not be alone. The discovery would arguably be the most profound one in human history. But what then? —William Speed Weed —starTREK: NASA thinks we can find another Earth in another nearby star… (Discover)…
This is Dan Rather’s profile. Expanded to the nth degree. Taken to infinity. Overlayed on the back of Patrick Stewart’s head. It’s recombinant phrenology. The elements of phrenology recombined in ways that follow the rules of irrational logic, a rigorous methodology that follows nonrational rules. It is a structure for following your intuition and your…
“Art and technology mean essentially the same thing,? says Montfort,” explaining that, contrary to his interviewer’s suggestion, poetry and computer science do go together. “Go back to the Latin ars and the Greek tekhne — both refer to ways of doing things that aren’t in nature already. In new media, the computer is being employed…
Baby books have gotten way weird. Today’s bookstore shelves spill over with tot-oriented “toybooks” shaped like cats, dogs, hens, horses, lions, elephants, insects and other things… —Linton Weeks —Touchable and Teachable, Toybooks are Big Business (Washington Post (registration; will expire)) Can’t be a toy… can’t be a book. Must be… a toybook! (Thanks for the suggestion,…
He was that rarity among physicists, one who could write in a clear, persuasive and entertaining way. His “Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems,” in which three noblemen, Salviati, Sagredo and Simplicio, meet in Venice to argue over the relative merits of Ptolemy’s ancient Earth-centered cosmos and the newer Sun-centered Copernicanism, may be the…
I have stage-fright. Teaching starts today, you see. I have stage-fright far worse than when I present a paper in front of a few hundred people at a conference, even though I taught all last semester, and loved it, and the stuff I’m planning on doing today is based on a recipe I’ve used three…