February 2012
27 posts
Disruptions: And the Privacy Gaps Just Keep On... →
infoneer-pulse:
The argument that if consumers care about their privacy they shouldn’t use these technologies is a cop-out. This technology is now completely woven into every part of society and business. We didn’t tell people who wanted safer cars simply not to drive. We made safer cars.
Well, safety advocates, consumers and the government dragged the automobile industry toward including seat...
Physicists Create a Working Transistor From a... →
infoneer-pulse:
Australian and American physicists have built a working transistor from a single phosphorus atom embedded in a silicon crystal.
The group of physicists, based at the University of New South Wales and Purdue University, said they had laid the groundwork for a futuristic quantum computer that might one day function in a nanoscale world and would be orders of magnitude smaller and...
Feds urge court to reject laptop encryption appeal →
infoneer-pulse:
The government is urging a federal appeals court not to entertain an appeal from a bank-fraud defendant who has been ordered to decrypt her laptop so its contents can be used in her criminal case.
Colorado federal authorities seized the encrypted Toshiba laptop from defendant Ramona Fricosu in 2010 with valid court warrants while investigating alleged mortgage fraud, and...
the earliest recorded sounds →
Bibliomania →
MatthewHealy.net: Write Rhymes →
rhymes.
As you write, option-click on a word to find a rhyme for it…
“I like beautiful melodies telling me terrible things.”
– Tom Waits. (via onlyafterdark)
Letter to Language
andsoshespins:
Dear Language,
Thank you. You are beautiful.
Sincerely, andsoshespins
Vowels
English Professor: Elementary question to ensure that you learned the things you should have learned in grade school: How many vowels are there in the English language?
Linguistics Student: Oh! I know this! Depends on your accent, but most commonly argued somewhere from 12-15. But I've also heard the argument that we have as many as 20 vowels!
English Professor:
Linguistics Student:
English Professor:
Linguistics Student:
English Professor:
Linguistics Student: ....Oh whoops. English class.
Linguistics Student: a e i o u
Linguistics Student: Five.
A Fallen Tree in the Woods | Here be Claires!: I... →
waitingforturnips:
I find it interesting that while many people on Tumblr are obsessed with correcting spelling and punctuation errors, nobody has any problem with the innovative grammatical structures that become popular through novelty. It’s okay to use non-standard grammar, like turning verbs into nouns (‘all the feels’, ‘all the cries’ etc) and leaving out lexical verbs (‘I can’t even’),...
7th Grader Suspended for Saying I Love You in... →
“We should be happy there are constraints. Limits help us become what we become.”
– Noam Chomsky, tonight at the University of Maryland (via flowdot)
A Terminal Case of the Wantsies: You know you're a... →
thewantsies:
Oh my god. I totally just remembered part of a dream from last night, in which I saved a little girl from being killed merely by being a linguist. Basically she and I were supposed to get into this elevator, which would bring us up to a room that ended up getting blown up, but we didn’t get on the elevator because the little girl used a phrase I’d never heard before, and I had to...
A Parliament of Assholes: I should maybe stop... →
parliamentofassholes:
Due to my nerdy enthusiasm for linguistics, I am constantly analyzing the way other people are speaking. As much as I try to keep it to myself, I often end up going on little rants explaining to people just how interesting their recent utterance was. Much to the chagrin of my fellow asshole MPs.
January 2012
9 posts
A Grammar of Miya (University of California...
vernonpagem:
A Grammar of Miya (University of California Publications in Linguistics) A Grammar of Miya describes a language of the Chadic family spoken in Northern Nigeria. This is the first documentation of Miya aside from word lists. The grammar describes all aspects of the language. Of particular typological interest are the tone system, a “terraced level” system in which tone...
“The Sanskrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure;...”
– Sir William Jones (1746-1794)
Watch
How the US pressured Spain to adopt unpopular Web... →
infoneer-pulse:
Though a deeply divided Congress is currently considering Internet website censorship legislation, the US has no such official policy—not even for child porn, which is voluntarily blocked by some ISPs. Nor does the US have a government-backed “three strikes” or “graduated response” system of escalating warnings to particular users accused of downloading music and movies from...
Fonts In Use →
Queens Libraries Speak the Mother Tongue →
By JOSEPH BERGER
Published: January 2, 2012
The best-selling biography of Steve Jobs is flying off the shelves at libraries in Queens, which is not surprising. But in many of the borough’s 62 branches, the copies being borrowed are in Korean, Chinese or Spanish.
December 2011
2 posts
Hack Your Gadgets and Home to Teach Yourself a New... →
You can’t passively learn a language and expect fluency in it, but you can boost your understanding in creative ways. Which is to say, you’re probably not going to learn complex verb and tense rules with these methods, but you will significantly boost your understanding. The idea here is to make you house and gadgets speak to you in as many ways as possible and to surround...
Oh, for the Good Old Days of Rude Cellphone... →
By NICK WINGFIELD
Published: December 2, 2011
The sound of someone gabbing on a cellphone is part of the soundtrack of daily life, and most of us have learned when to be quiet — there is no talking in “quiet cars” on trains, for example.
But the etiquette of talking to a phone — more precisely, to a “virtual assistant” like Apple’s Siri, in the new iPhone 4S — has not yet evolved. And...
November 2011
11 posts
Every phonology and morphology assignment I've...
unsedentary:
Question #1: done in 5 minutes without having to chart anything.
Question #2: requires some more thinking, takes a little basic charting, about 20 minutes.
Question #3: WHAT THE MOTHER OF ALL FUCK
Though my major is now music, I did a LOT of those problem sets back in the day, and I can vouch for the accuracy of this.
somewordsaboutwords:
so here it is.
i’ve been meaning to start this for a while. just a place to keep all those lovely shiny things that make my brain tingle and have me thanking my lucky stars i will someday (hopefully) be paid to come up with.
i think i shall start this blog off with the best dorky linguistic joke i’ve heard in a while.
i wish i was a schwa so i could never be stressed.
...
The Machine That Makes You Musical →
…
The common aim of Smule’s products is to prod nonmusicians into making music and to interact with others doing the same. There are singing apps like I Am T-Pain and Glee Karaoke, and digital versions of instruments like Magic Piano and Magic Fiddle. What connects these easy-to-use diversions to Wang’s more abstruse gear-tinkering is the exploration of expressive sound via...
Hahahah. Linguistics cartoons.
cherryflavorpez:
The Past, Present, and Future walk into a bar...
lxandlg:
it was tense.
Vanessa.: This just happened →
thisis-vanessa:
Part of an email:
My mother: And stop referring to us as guys. There’s just me and Pa! How hard is that to say! Tsk tsk!
the Linguistics Major Monster© arises …
Me: There is nothing wrong with referring to you guys as ‘you guys’; English unfortunately doesn’t have a 2nd-person…
This is one of those few arenas in which the American South is FULL OF WIN....
The Tweets of War: What’s Past Is Postable →
Hitler spent decades plotting his campaign for world domination. Alwyn Collinson, 24, a recent graduate in Renaissance history from Oxford University, hatched his own plan to invade Poland in a mere five days.
Enlarge This Image
From RealTimeWWII
News from Oct. 7, 1939, from Alwyn Collinson’s RealTimeWWII Twitter feed.
Enlarge This Image
From RealTimeWWII
NOV. 10: A Nazi...
Why does classical music make me cry?
postmodernmarvel:
Not even eine kleine i’m talking stuff like the beginning of the 1812 overture.
Japan Pushes World's Fastest Computer Past 10... →
infoneer-pulse:
The Japanese have broken the 10 petaflop barrier.
On Wednesday, Japanese IT giant Fujitsu and the government-funded RIKEN research lab announced that the supercomputer they’ve built in Kobe can speed through 10.51 quadrillion floating point operations per second.
Known as the “K Computer,” this is the first megamachine to achieve 10 quadrillion operations a second — aka 10...
