I don’t think I’ve ever seen a web developer who is a better promoter than this guy… which isn’t at all meant to imply that the work they do is somehow not worthy of the hype; it absolutely is.
Hell, LJWorld.com makes me want to move to Lawrence, Kansas.
There are a few US politicians who speak Spanish fluently, Colorado Democratic Senator Ken Salazar is among them (Mel Martinez is another, I’m sure there are more…). Salazar said something in Spanish which has been translated to English as follows:
Pantagraph.com | News | Durbin, 5 other senators seek dialogue with Bolivia
Sen. Ken Salazar, a Colorado Democrat, said in fluent Spanish to Bolivian reporters that the visit “signals a different direction’’ for U.S.-Bolivian relations, which have been strained under Bolivia’s leftist leader Evo Morales.
“I believe all of us want the same thing, to help lift up the people of Latin America so that they can achieve the human dignity they deserve,’’ Salazar said.
Here’s the original quote in Spanish:
Salazar, demócrata de Colorado, señaló a la prensa antes de la entrevista con Morales, que tanto Estados Unidos como Bolivia, buscan “la misma cosa, que es levantar al pueblo para que la gente pueda realizar la dignidad humana que merecen“.
(Emphases mine.)
I suppose I might be picking at nits, but I wonder if “achieve the dignity they deserve” is an appropriate translation for “realizar la dignidad humana que merecen.”
The distinction seems important to me: “achieve” suggests that the people in question have no human dignity at present, where as Spanish realizar might be equally well translated (in this instance) simply as “realize,” and would suggest that human dignity is (duh) inherent to them, and the goal Salazar is talking about is the expression of that dignity…
Mis dos centavos. Or something.
Bad Astronomy Blog » The Top Ten Astronomy Images of 2006
Man, this post is FULL of cool pictures to get your geek on all over.
And the number 1 is SO number 1…
Long title, huh?
Long post.
I finally got around to ordering Mother of Writing : The Origin and Development of a Hmong Messianic Script from Amazon.
Anyway, I’ve only just begun to dig in, but the book is about a rather mysterious writing system which was invented for the Hmong language, spoken primarily in Laos, but also in France, Canada, Australia, China, Thailand, French Guyana and the United States.
This isn’t to be confused with the various roman-script systems for writing the language, which are rather interesting and worth a post in their own right– no, the book is about a totally distinct script called Pahawh Hmong. You can see images of it at Omniglot under Pahawh Hmong alphabet.
The alphabet is believed by some Hmong to have been the divinely inspired creation of Shong Lue Yang (Soob Lwj Yaj).
(And by the way, eek the Wikipedia article on the Hmong language is abysmal…)
The book was written by a Christian missionary. I found it pretty interesting trying to peel back the layers of who was trying to interpret whom (and what). Yang himself was a (not exactly Christian) missionary, and part of the book was written by one of his followers. But the part which is strictly linguistic can be read without regard to any of that stuff, and the Pahawh Hmong is certainly a fine and interesting piece of orthographic engineering.
The topic of the intersection of religion and linguistics is something which kind of gets my blood boiling. Linguistics is a science, and it should be treated as such. But because missionary “work” overlaps so much with linguistic research, we end up with that the new language codes have a religious organization as their authority… And I mean the authority. As in, the ISO calls these guys up and asks for “the answer” on linguistic nomenclature.
Now, think about that for a second. What if the ISO called up the “Intelligent Design” guys for authoritative answers on biological classification? Maybe they should call up a proper psychic to resolve disputes on whether global warming is real.
I kid, slightly.
So why is the linguistics world okay with being reduced to being the authority on “Ancient, historical, and constructed languages,” while SIL is the authority for… most of the languages on the planet, and most of the languages for which you really need unyielding impartiality?
I ran across some really good webcasts of an astronomy course at Berkeley (go bears!):
Astro C10 / LS C70U Introduction to General Astronomy | Fall 2006
This prof, Alex Filippenko has a real gift for teaching; he’s received a boatload of awards and watching his lectures makes it clear why.
I’ve been through about maybe 7 of them in a few days. It’s an overview course, no complex math or anything, so you can pretty much just cruise along. (I’ve also been watching the chem1a course, which you definitely can’t cruise through).
Accessible as it is, he covers really interesting stuff, which I never happened to study in school. Did you know about the green flash at sunset? I didn’t.
The web rules.
update: dammit … they took it down. ☹
update: undammit! It was just archived:
UC Berkeley Webcasts | Video and Podcasts: Astro C10 / LS C70U
Sometimes you’re programming, and something spooky happens:
>>> os.listdir('.')
You see the face? OMG!
However, I will reveal a secret to you: I like to build universes which do fall apart. I like to see them come unglued, and I like to see how the characters in the novels cope with this problem. I have a secret love of chaos. There should be more of it. Do not believe—and I am dead serious when I say this—do not assume that order and stability are always good, in a society or in a universe. The old, the ossified, must always give way to new life and the birth of new things. Before the new things can be born the old must perish. This is a dangerous realization, because it tells us that we must eventually part with much of what is familiar to us. And that hurts. But that is part of the script of life. Unless we can psychologically accommodate change, we ourselves begin to die, inwardly. What I am saying is that objects, customs, habits, and ways of life must perish so that the authentic human being can live. And it is the authentic human being who matters most, the viable, elastic organism which can bounce back, absorb, and deal with the new.
How to Build a Universe That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later Philip K. Dick
PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE DRUNKEN ROBOT BEHIND THE SCREEN