I understand his argument (that the world needs more nerds and geeks, and the associations brought up by the labels are turning people away from them), but as a former nerd (socially inept loner) and current geek (an expert in a technical field), I rather like things the way they are. It would be nice [...]
Archive of posts filed under the Language category.
“Apostrophe.me Explains When You Really Need Apostrophes”
Now if we could only get more people to use it… there’s a nail salon near our house that proudly declares itself “Finger’s & Toe’s”. I wince every time I see their sign… unless it’s run by two people with the nicknames of Finger and Toe, they really need to check their punctuation.
“A Language of Smiles”
Musings on how the muscles used to enunciate a language might affect the mood of the culture that speaks it. I find this stuff fascinating. (For what it’s worth, I lean toward the “classical conditioning” hypothesis, though the “intrinsic properties” idea could also have merit.)
“Cold solitude, filthy sins: not so metaphoric”
I’ve thought this for a long time. Interesting connection to psi research at the end though.
Learning Languages
I needed a new side-project, something to keep me occupied when I just couldn’t work on Project X any longer for the day. So on the spur of the moment, I decided to learn Python. (Why Python? I’ve heard good things about it. I can use it as a scripting language, which is something that [...]
There’s No Antonym of Authoritarian
In a conversation a while back, I needed a word to express the opposite of authoritarian. I couldn’t find one in my memory, which struck me as odd, so I later looked it up. It seems that there is no English word that describes the opposite of authoritarian; the closest thing I found, after perusing [...]
First-Party and Third-Party Software
English is a very curious language. When talking about software, for instance, you have first-party programs (programs that are written by the same company that developed the computer or operating system that they’re run on) and third-party programs (programs written by other companies). Where are the second-party programs? For that matter, who would “the second [...]