The Spanish parliament recently decided that stutterers could no longer be turned away by public employers. Dutch commenters at FOK! think that thousands will now die as stutterers take over air traffic control and the police, while Blonchi hopes that the Spanish lisp will finally be abolished.
Just found out that “go fry asparagus” is an invitation to depart and engage in some other activity. Unfortunately it’s not an accurate translation of what Alistair Campbell actually wrote (3rd para).
A linguist is voted the world’s top public intellectual, and Language Log has nothing at all to say about it. Since Liberman, Pullum et al are known for their complete lack of respect for sacred cows, does that mean they regard Chomsky as simply irrelevant?
I think a public intellectual must be rather like a public house, where over-consumption of what seems so attractive at the time shortly and surely leads to idiocy and ruin. All that glitters etc etc (via Barcepundit).
“Chávez … expressed solidarity with ‘president Robert Mugabe and the people of Zimbawe, because both blacks and whites have rights.'” So will Venezuelan land reform also end in famine? (Aside: I fear that those who hope Chávez will do something about the notorious correlation in Venezuela between status and lightness of skin will be grievously…
A life-long pessimist suggests that the news that the Dutch parliament complex, ‘t Binnenhof, has been “hermetically sealed” is the police’s way of saying, “Either they’ll blow you up or we’ll suffocate you.” One of the guys arrested, suspected of trying to collect guns and explosives to attack government figures and buildings, was cleared earlier…
Mad Werner Georg Patel wants to be a politician. Here‘s a classic example of his public utterances, and here and here‘s him accusing me of being Spanish and English and a translator (he claimed somewhere else that I do drugs–chance’d be a fine thing…). For the more conservative among you, here‘s a picture of two…
Via après moi, le déluge, the online collection of the Portuguese National Library, with yet another interface to learn. (Why don’t they just give their money and projects to Google?) I didn’t know that Portugal fought in the Great War, but here’s the German Master Race Spider, a Portuguese soldier, and a poster from 1923…