So I finished the Hobbit today! Have you guys ever stopped to marvel that a book like that - a fairy tale for children and High Fantasy at its best - includes both Geopolitical Consequences and the Common Cold? When do you ever see disease in fiction that isn't plague? Give me an example of "and then this character was a bit under the weather ( Read more... )

...is a surprisingly fun game. Joel-Henry got it for christmas from both of his siblings (we returned one) and we've been playing it with John Hoyt. It's basically a rhythm game - although there's a mini-game which teaches ear-training. One criticism we had heard was that the music in it sucks - because it's all public domain stuff so they don't ( Read more... )

...put things like this on their homework:

"This sound is articulated on the lingual side of the gingiva."

What the heck.

I was very proud of myself for successfully making an cayn for the first time yesterday.

But I'm so stupid! Walking back from arabic today (practicing the cayn) I realized that pharyngialization is simply the difference between Homer and Marge (saying "mmm").

The reason this makes me stupid is I already knew that. It just took my independent ( Read more... )

Watching All Creatures Great and Small last night, I noticed that one of the people involved was named "Peter Moffatt." 'That's odd' I thought to myself - 'Moffatt can't be all that common a name ( Read more... )

From News of the Weird:

Failure to Communicate: The man who tried to rob the Cafe Treo in Salt Lake City in April likely told the employee to "fill" the bag, but when the employee reached over and earnestly started to "feel" the bag (according to police), the robber said, "You've gotta be kidding me" and ran out of the store. [KSL-TV (Salt Lake ( Read more... )

Enough of deep thoughts - time to go pick mulberries! Who knows, maybe I'll make a pie! That'll go well with stracc*, right?

Also, number one best thing about living in the midwest: fireflies. The end ( Read more... )

Batman

Somebody needs to make chocolate in the shape of IPA characters, to be used as prizes for good linguistics students.

Also - alphabet soup.

So... if allophones are alternative manifestations of a single phoneme, and allomorphs are alternative manifestations of a single morpheme, are allosaurs alternative manifestations of a single Sauron?

Please don't hurt me...