Random Acts of Mind by Dones

If you haven’t already heard, Stephen Wolfram (the creator of the uber-graphing calculator software Mathematica) has recently launched a knowledge engine (as opposed to a search engine like the Google) called Wolfram|Alpha. Instead of being sent out to the internet wasteland as we’re used to, once you type in a query in WolframAlpha the site brings the [...]

I know there are others out there who can’t simply tune out infomercials. Anyone else notice this? Instead of the tried and true ‘Shipping & Handling,’ the commercials are now calling it either ‘Shipping & Processing’ or ‘Processing & Handling.’ When and why did they change?

An interesting study published recently demonstrated that when native speakers of languages with various word orders were forced to communicate only with their hands, they all used Subject-Object-Verb syntax. “‘Not surprisingly, speakers of different languages describe events using the word orders prescribed by their language. The surprise is that when the same speakers are asked [...]

Our adoption finalization hearing is set for May 28th. This is a week after we close on our new home, and Josh will be six weeks old on that day, his ‘Gotcha’ day. We signed all of our sellers’ closing documents this morning and found out the handful of work that needs to be done [...]

Barack Obama’s speech today was truly great. Hearing his words, I want to be led by him; I want him to be my boss, my friend, my president. I’m tagging this post under politics only because of the source of the material. What I have to say below has nothing to do with my politics. [...]

Thanks to the Moore’s for turning me on to this one: Your Linguistic Profile: 65% General American English 10% Dixie 10% Yankee 5% Midwestern 5% Upper Midwestern What Kind of American English Do You Speak?