Google finally wakes up. Mind you, mere censorship and repression really didn’t bother them. It wasn’t until China literally attacked Google’s service that they decided to change the relationship. Still, better late than never. [Thanks, Baron, for the link]
It's a New Decade!
I’m suddenly responsible for a bi-monthly newsletter that shall go nameless in these pages (at least until I’m no longer responsible for it). I wasn’t responsible for it when it mentioned that 2010 was the beginning of a new decade, but I do have to suffer the slings and arrows of outraged pedants. They want […]
Sanitizing History
My most recent post reminded me of reading old books that are hostile to Jews. Though I’m Jewish, I never for a second thought that the book should be banned or sanitized the way that SOME people want to ban or sanitize the books I mentioned. (I could see a modern publisher correcting some of […]
Conrad and the N-Word
A few years ago, I quoted from an article about a woman who wanted to ban “To Kill a Mockingbird”: “She acknowledged she hadn’t read the entire book, but strongly felt if it had the word “nigger†in it, it shouldn’t be used in schools.†Obviously, the woman didn’t read enough to know that the […]
I'm Reading: The Cretan Runner
Not Cretin. Cretan. From Crete. It’s a first-hand account of the resistance in Crete against the Germans in WWII. The author (George Psychoundakis) was a “runner,” delivering information and people to and from pockets of resistance in the hills and mountains. Sometimes he’d guide people down to the shore where English submarines were waiting to […]
Names
What do the following names have in common? Ashley Carol Courtney Lauren Lindsay Marion Robin And more recently… Addison Madison Sydney Taylor Tyler Answer: They were all names for men which are now names for women. And there are more. Now here’s a list of names for women that have become names for men: —— […]
Nutrition Education
Some language you might not want to play at work: [Found at Free the Animal]
Changing Words
I’ve posted before the idea that as words go from being considered unacceptable (like “irregardless”) to being completely acceptable (like “finalize”), there are at least two phases. I talked about the phases in the earlier post, so I won’t bother now. Tomorrow, my copy of the third edition of Garner’s Modern American Usage will arrive […]
Follow-up from Matthew Campbell
The whole child empathy thing. I wrote to the scientist who gave the lecture and he replied: There is a study that looked at contagious yawning in children of different ages. They found that children younger than 5 did not show it, so your observation fits in with this. I’m a little surprised by this […]
Speaking of Empathy
I just posted about chimps, yawning, and empathy. Now I’m thinking about human kids. Toddlers don’t have empathy. And certainly infants don’t. Sometimes toddlers play empathic roles, pretending to really care, but when it doesn’t amuse them any more, they stop. There have been all kinds of studies about when kids really start to develop […]