In the above map, the size of each country represents its linguistic diversity, as recorded in Ethnologue. It is taken from this NY Times article about Ethnologue. I first learned of SIL when I was looking online to enroll in the Summer Linguistics Institute (SLI) run by the Linguistic Society of America. I nearly enrolled [...]
The New York Times today has an editorial about Saudi Arabia’s new ambassador to the United States. They give him feint praise, while noting that As head of Saudi intelligence from 1977 until Aug. 31, 2001, he personally managed Riyadh’s relations with Osama bin Laden and Mullah Muhammad Omar of the Taliban. Anyone else who [...]
There was a lot of discussion on the web, a while back, about Rick Perlstein’s excellent book on the history of the 1964 Goldwater campaign: Before the Storm. While the book well deserves all the attention it’s gotten, it is guilty of gross negligence in one important way: it completely ignores Marvin Kitman’s run against [...]
Could someone please explain to me how, when we can see all the way to other galaxies, we somehow missed a planet in our own solar system? Is it that our telescopes are all farsighted? {astronomy}
The server for my web site crashed, and had to be restored from backup. Some comments may have been lost, since the backup was from the 19th. Sorry about that! Fortunately, I had some of my blog posts saved on my hard drive in ecto. Everything should be back to normal now!
I wrote a longish post about the roots of global jihad over at Savage Minds. Here is an excerpt: The argument isn’t simply that they are responding to attacks on those countries, but that a policy of promoting globalized political Islam as opposed to secular anti-imperialism, together with the building of an institutional apparatus of [...]
After spending some time worrying about the exploitation of Oompa-Loompa labor, I was happy to learn about efforts on their behalf. These incldue: PETOL (People for the Ethical Treatment of Oompa Loompas), and the Chocolate Manifesto. It is from the latter that I learned to appreciate the counter-hegemonic nature of the Oompa-Loompa songs. Q. But [...]
I don’t quite know what to make of the fact that nearly every obituary out there is misquoting James Kirk, who never actually said “Beam me up, Scotty.” It seems besides the point. What really matters is that Scotty pushed his beloved ship beyond its limits week after week. Even though we knew the ship [...]
I’m glad to have discovered this wonderful gallery of Taiwanese food by Taiwan Tiger. It is a project I have always thought of doing myself, so there is now one less thing I have to do. There are even more pictures of Taiwanese dishes in the taiwanfood flickr tag, but Taiwan Tiger has more commentary. [...]
Via Language Hat, a New York Times article by Howard French on the complex linguistic situation in China. For China, the consequences of this linguistic fragmentation are immense. Although no one in government says that local languages should be eliminated, there is a growing awareness that the country’s national construction cannot be considered complete until [...]