Dreamer Easy

From Something Awful, useful phrases translated into Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, such as "There are crocodiles in my pants". (I can still read bits of this. Hee hee hee hee hee.)

From TV Tropes, Never Live It Down explains so much about fandom (Owen, Gwen, Spike, etc etc etc).

Christian beliefs still strong, says survey: "More than four in 10 Australians who do not consider themselves "born again"' still believe Jesus rose from the dead, while one in 10 does not believe he existed."

Sadly, the God Spot appears not to exist after all - rather, religious thoughts are distributed through the brain. Sez a researcher: "That suggests that religion is not a special case of a belief system, but evolved along with other belief and social cognitive abilities." I'm very interested by the mention of Theory of Mind. It makes sense that, if survival depends on working out what other people are thinking, you'd end up trying to work out what everything is thinking - much as you can't help seeing human faces everywhere.

Sleep problems linked to suicide

Chaffinch Map of Scotland

The conventions of journalism create some odd effects at times:

"Teacher's boyfriend 'kills' student after catching him in bed with her"

'Kills' is of course in 'quotation marks' because at this stage it's an allegation and they don't want to get sued, but the headline makes it sound like slightly bizarre, as though the victim is not actually dead but only 'dead'.

"An incident like this is a highly complex and technical matter and it takes time to complete a thorough... investigation."

The ellipsis is of course only meant to indicate that a few words have been omitted, but it lends this sentence a rather... sinister tone.

The plural of octopus

Navajo Code Talkers' Dictionary

Math Student Slang

Laughter Among Deaf Signers

It's no laughing matter

Kitchen Table Lingo (You could find our "half moon table" easily, but it'd be harder to locate the "ausgang" - and what would you use to make a "Frankie hankie"?)

Antarctic Slang

Inuit Snow Terms: How Many and What does it Mean?

"Christina Hoff Sommers criticizes feminist professors for using the made-up word 'ovulars' - but in the last quarter-century, practically the only person who’s used the word is... Christina Hoff Sommers."

Scholars Perform Autopsy on Ancient Writing Systems - why do they die out?

Getting over the trip - had a really good day out, running a million errands, even doing a little bit of writing work (from which I have decided to give myself a week off) - the whole plot of a short story set in the Neolithic, featuring one of the many heroes of my childhood imaginings, basically came to me in a waiting room. (Tsuchi, outcast rabbit-woman paladin, my alter ego around age 11. Tell me about yours.)

Plus I randomly decided to have Korean for lunch. Despite my embarrassing lack of the language, I managed to convey that I'd like the tofu seafood hotpot without seafood. Of course you get all these side dishes as well - the famous kimchi, which I actually liked this time (might have been the less spicy version for wimpy weigugin), pickled cucumbers, scrambled eggs in broth, and potato to which something completely delicious had been done. It was COMPLETELY BRILLIANT. I've brought home a "teach yourself Korean" kit so I can at least learn to say "thank you".

delegitimize

or

delegitimise

If you must use this neologism, kindly make a note of its spelling, wot I have checked in both the online OED and online Merriam-Webster.

And while I have your attention: hypocrisy, blatant, atheist, privilege. lol.

Found on YouTube a beautiful version of Ecoutez le Guitariste - a song I learned in French class in high school and never forgot - sung acapella by two young women with angelic voices.

( Here's my rough translation )

As I work in the kitchen today I'm listening to an entertaining lecture about West Semitic goddess by the Rev. William J. Fulco, who turns out to be the scholar who reconstructed Aramaic for Passion of the Christ, and also worked on Constantine. Small world.

OK, so let's see what the 1995 book Women, Men, and Politeness by NZ feminist and linguist Janet Holmes has to say about differences in the way men and women talk, and especially how they handle conflict.

First lemme quote you these two bits from chapter 1:

"Most women enjoy talk and regard talking as an important means of keeping in touch, especially with friends and intimates. They use language to establish, nurture and develop personal relationships. Men tend to see language more as a tool for obtaining and conveying information. They see talk as a means to an end, and the end can often be very precisely defined - a decision reached, for instance, some information gained, or a problem resolved. These different perceptions of the main purpose of talk account for a wide variety of differences in the way women and men use language." (p 2 - all emphases in this posting are mine)

"Men's reasons for talking often focus on the content of the talk or its outcome, rather than on how it affects the feelings of others. It is women who rather emphasises this aspect of talk. Women compliment others more often than men do, and they apologise more often than men do too." (p 2)

Or, as someone (ahem) remarked to me the other day: "If you care about interacting instead of lecturing you might consider what I said." Holmes explains that these are the "referential" and "affective" functions of language - one carries information ("It's seven a.m.") and the other expresses feelings ("Sorry to wake you up so early.").

She goes on to say that everyone has "face needs" - the need not to be imposed on, the need to be "liked and admired". When you - when I challenge someone with a bald disagreement, that's a "face-threatening act". (It was this loss of face that used to send me into a terrible panic in online disputes, as recently as racewank '07. "Oh shit, I've fucked this up, everyone laughs at/hates me forever!!!") Defensiveness arises out of the need to "save face" - for example, an older fangirl "pulling rank" on me when I bluntly pointed out she was wrong. (People of lower status are generally more polite to people of higher status.)

Linguists have put forward a variety of explanations for these differences, from the biological (of which I'm personally very sceptical) to socialisation to inequality. Of the latter, Holmes says: "Men's greater social power allows them to define and control situations, and male norms predominate in interaction." (p 8) Add that to the Internet's original male majority, and we have an explanation of why so much Internet discussion was (and is) "masculine" in nature: confrontational, brusque, concerned with winning the argument rather than group bonding or soothing ruffled feathers. Well, that and the urge to save bandwidth.

(Lemme see if I can dig up some examples from Usenet. ETA: here's a thread from talk.rape in which I use a blunt style. It's actually a pretty civil discussion, but there's no mucking about reassuring each other. And ETA again: a discussion in which I made an effort to defuse things a bit with compliments and humour.)

Rock & Roll H******e Koo
Rockafeller S****k

... OK, you can see where those are coming from, but...

The Bee G*es?!

They're just taking the piss.

Why the fuck is the title of Blackfella/Whitefella asterisked out in the Australian iTunes store?!