http://machinemachine.net/stream/feed en-us http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Sweetcron therourke@gmail.com http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/03/18/2146248/physicists-discover-evolutionary-laws-of-language/physicists-discover-evolutionary-laws-of-language-slashdot Physicists Discover Evolutionary Laws of Language - Slashdot - http://t.co/IzVdNxOz ]]> Tue, 20 Mar 2012 11:20:23 -0700 http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/03/18/2146248/physicists-discover-evolutionary-laws-of-language/physicists-discover-evolutionary-laws-of-language-slashdot http://eis-blog.ucsc.edu/2011/05/depicting-relationships-the-limits-of-language/ The heart of the english sentence (and equivalent sentential forms in other natural languages) lies in connecting ideas together and creating meaning. Like placing two portals from the recent hit sequel by Valve, you are changing the space without necessarily adding or subtracting from it. You’re using what’s already there, but rearranging it; repurposing it. Relying on a complex process of disambiguation to carry through your novel contribution to the whole of spoken or written utterances (as you learn in English grammar classes).

Have you ever considered words to be a bit constraining? I am a self… ]]> Sun, 29 May 2011 15:28:54 -0700 http://eis-blog.ucsc.edu/2011/05/depicting-relationships-the-limits-of-language/ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WiwNekNJGA&feature=youtube_gdata ]]> Sun, 15 May 2011 03:29:37 -0700 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WiwNekNJGA&feature=youtube_gdata http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2011/05/hitchens-201105 Four hundred years ago, just as William Shakespeare was reaching the height of his powers and showing the new scope and variety of the English language, and just as “England” itself was becoming more of a nation-state and less an offshore dependency of Europe, an extraordinary committee of clergymen and scholars completed the task of rendering the Old and New Testaments into English, and claimed that the result was the “Authorized” or “King James” version. This was a fairly conservative attempt to stabilize the Crown and the kingdom, heal the breach between competing English and Scottish Christian sects, and bind… ]]> Tue, 12 Apr 2011 15:57:36 -0700 http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2011/05/hitchens-201105 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anhedonia In psychology and psychiatry, anhedonia (< Greek ἀν- an-, "without" + ἡδονή hēdonē, "pleasure") is an inability to experience pleasurable emotions from normally pleasurable life events such as eating, exercise, social interaction or sexual activities.

Anhedonia is seen in the mood disorders, schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, schizoid personality disorder and other mental disorders. ]]> Mon, 27 Sep 2010 02:47:11 -0700 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anhedonia http://ask.metafilter.com/10490/What-concepts-do-not-exist-in-the-English-language Carl Honoré (In Praise of Slow) says Canada's Baffin Island Inuit "use the same word—'uvatiarru'—to mean both 'in the distant past' and 'in the distant future.' Time, in such cultures, is always coming as well as going."

In an essay by Louise Edrich (Two Languages in Mind, but Just One in the Heart), she writes about learning Ojibwemownin and how "nouns are mainly desginated as alive or dead, animate or inanimate...once I began to think of stones as animate, I started to wonder whether I was picking up a stone or it was putting iteslf in my… ]]> Fri, 10 Sep 2010 04:17:00 -0700 http://ask.metafilter.com/10490/What-concepts-do-not-exist-in-the-English-language http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/apr/17/christopher-hitchens-re-reads-animal-farm Animal Farm, as its author later wrote, "was the first book in which I tried, with full consciousness of what I was doing, to fuse political purpose and artistic purpose into one whole". And indeed, its pages contain a synthesis of many of the themes that we have come to think of as "Orwellian". Among these are a hatred of tyranny, a love for animals and the English countryside, and a deep admiration for the satirical fables of Jonathan Swift. To this one might add Orwell's keen desire to see things from the viewpoint of childhood and innocence: he had… ]]> Mon, 26 Apr 2010 04:49:00 -0700 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/apr/17/christopher-hitchens-re-reads-animal-farm http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/01/books/01lit.html?pagewanted=all This layered process of figuring out what someone else is thinking — of mind reading — is both a common literary device and an essential survival skill. Why human beings are equipped with this capacity and what particular brain functions enable them to do it are questions that have occupied primarily cognitive psychologists.

Now English professors and graduate students are asking them too. They say they’re convinced science not only offers unexpected insights into individual texts, but that it may help to answer fundamental questions about literature’s very existence: Why do we read fiction? Why do we… ]]> Tue, 06 Apr 2010 12:04:00 -0700 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/01/books/01lit.html?pagewanted=all http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profanity The original meaning of the adjective profane (Latin: "in front of", "outside the temple") referred to items not belonging to the church, e.g. "The fort is the oldest profane building in the town, but the local monastery is older, and is the oldest building," or "besides designing churches, he also designed many profane buildings". As a result, "profane" and "profanity" has therefore come to describe a word, expression, gesture, or other social behavior which is socially constructed or interpreted as insulting, rudeness, vulgarism, desecrating, or showing disrespect. Other words commonly used to describe profane language or its use include: cuss,… ]]> Mon, 30 Nov 2009 08:12:00 -0700 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profanity http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/2009%20-%20Fall/full-McWhorter-Fall-2009.html In depicting the emergence of the world’s languages as a curse of gibberish, the biblical tale of the Tower of Babel makes us moderns smile. Yet, considering the headache that 6,000 languages can induce in real life, the story makes a certain sense. Not long ago, 33 of the FBI’s 12,000 employees spoke Arabic, as did 6 of the 1,000 employees at the American Embassy in Iraq. How can we significantly improve that situation is a good question. It’s hard to learn Arabic, and not only because it’s hard to pick up any new language. Iraqi Arabic is actually one… ]]> Sun, 01 Nov 2009 04:32:00 -0700 http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/2009%20-%20Fall/full-McWhorter-Fall-2009.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrichor Petrichor (pronounced /ˈpɛtrɨkər/; from Greek petros "stone" + ichor "the fluid that is supposed to flow in the veins of the gods in Greek mythology") is the name of the scent of rain on dry earth. The term was coined in 1964 by two Australian... ]]> Thu, 15 Oct 2009 15:36:18 -0700 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrichor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrichor Petrichor (pronounced /ˈpɛtrɨkər/; from Greek petros "stone" + ichor "the fluid that is supposed to flow in the veins of the gods in Greek mythology") is the name of the scent of rain on dry earth. The term was coined in 1964 by two Australian researchers, Bear and Thomas, for an article in the journal Nature.[1] In the article, the authors describe how the smell derives from an oil exuded by certain plants during dry periods, whereupon it is adsorbed by clay-based soils and rocks. During rain, the oil is released into the air along with another compound, geosmin, producing… ]]> Thu, 15 Oct 2009 15:36:00 -0700 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrichor http://www.artpool.hu/Fluxus/Higgins/intermedia2.html Art is one of the ways that people communicate. It is difficult for me to imagine a serious person attacking any means of communication per se. Our real enemies are the ones who send us to die in pointless wars or to live lives which are reduced to drudgery, not the people who use other means of communication from those which we find most appropriate to the present situation. When these are attacked, a diversion has been established which only serves the interests of our real enemies. ]]> Fri, 30 Jan 2009 07:03:00 -0700 http://www.artpool.hu/Fluxus/Higgins/intermedia2.html