No posts today because I spent my blogging-time trying to categorize all the blogs which have piled up in my “More blogs …” section. Eventually, I hope to move some of these to the main page, but I’m waiting for the next version of the software I use to manage my bookmarks, which might take [...]
A huge amount of discussion over at Crooked Timber, and now Calpudit, about the use of Time Travel in fictional narratives. I have to say that I find Brian Weatherson’s approach to be very limiting. He says: Philosophers normally break time-travel stories into two categories: those that do make sense within a ‘one-dimensional’ view of [...]
A lot of democrats seem quite enamored of General Clark. Personally, I am not so sure. While I’m no fan of Dean either, I feel even more uncomfortable with a general as president. Maybe because it reminds me of other presidents who bore that title: General Musharraf, General Pinochet, General Idi Amin Dada … I [...]
I’m a big fan of manifestos, so I was very pleased to see languagehat had translated the Dada Manifesto. Here is a sample: Which is to say: the hospitality of the Swiss is to be valued above all things, and in aesthetics what matters is the norm. For a list of other great manifestos, see [...]
On the one hand … our government is funding the internet service Anonymizer.com to protect Iranians from the prying eyes of their government. On the other hand … our government is seeking the “ability to subpoena consumer data from a business” and other violations of the privacy of US citizens in the VICTORY act.
The BBC reports: A trawler suspected of fishing illegally for the endangered Patagonian Toothfish in the Australian fishing zone off Antarctica is being escorted back to Australia after a three-week chase. Is it just because “Toothfish ‘pirates’ held after chase” makes a better headline that they don’t use the much more commonly known term “Chilean [...]
Pictured here is a typical Taipei street scene, captured wonderfully by a computer science professor at Columbia. (I found the picture using Google.) Here are some more of his pictures from Taiwan. I post these here to make a point. You see, Taipei is one of my favorite cities on this planet! It may look [...]
Amptoons is right, Pedantry’s series of posts about language policy is one of the most interesting things in the blogsphere right now. (Right up there with Ornicus’ series of posts on Fascism, and Nathan Newman’s discussion of the minimum wage.) But Pedantry’s posts are rather long winded for a blog (he calls it “long format [...]
Nathan Newman has a series of excellent posts on the minimum wage: Illinois Raises Minimum Wage Why Minimum Wage Beats EITC Popularity of Raising Min Wage to $8/hr How Minimum Wage Increases Employment Who Pays for the Minimum Wage? Here is the killer factoid: In real dollars, the minimum wage is lower than it’s been [...]
I was reading Daily Kos who reports that Clark is now second only to Dean on Meetup (although Dean is still way ahead). But what is Meetup? Meetup is a free service that organizes local gatherings about anything, anywhere When I saw this, I wondered – what about language practice? Sure enough, there is a [...]