December 2008 Archives

This incredible image is allegedly Sarah Palin's 2008 Christmas card.  I say "allegedly" because I am hoping against all reason Sarah Palin did not put her "son" Trig -- an 8.5 month-old Down Syndrome baby -- in a box eating a bow just to create a "cute" Christmas card.

Why is it some words and phrases out there are pleasant to hear, while others just grate on the nerve like fingernails scratching against chalk? Am I the only person who has such a passion for certain words and a disdain for others? I surely am not. Let's look at some of these words, expressions -- bon mots -- shall we?

Could you do an amputation following instructions sent via text messaging?  Two surgeons did just that --  one was in the Congo -- the other doctor was in London.

Beware of expressing fondness. 

We currently have 6,000 languages in active use across the world; by 2050 we will have lost half of them.  Peter K. Austin, in -- One Thousand Languages -- takes us on a multicultural tour of the most interesting remaining languages.

Go to any used bookstore and peruse the most ragged looking of the books that they have. Books that have been read and reread, full of side notes and pages that are bent in every way conceivable. I often wonder if there really is a "better" way to read a book. As far as I can tell, there are basically two schools of thought: The school of thought that subscribes to carefully reading a book and making sure that the pages remain unbent and clean, and the school of thought that advocates writing notes on the pages and bending over pages to indicate the place of the reader.

In the comments stream for a previous article -- A Semiotic History of Playing with Brains -- I revealed the following:

America is shrinking.  We're officially in a recession -- for the last year without officially knowing it until yesterday -- and the influence of the USA abroad is waning and is in danger of completely failing.  Is there really a bits worth of difference between "recession" and "depression" in the eye of the mind?