Category: Uncategorized

I was just thinking of what fascinating areas the sociology and psychology of linguistics are.  This came to mind when thinking about idiomatic expressions and not just the implications but implicit assumptions that are made on the part of speakers regarding who is being communicated with. For example, when a native speaker of a tongue…

Windows 7 has a new feature called “libraries” which is basically a location in the file system where you can link different files and folders from different locations together into one place.  So for example if you have photos stored in different locations and on different drives, you can list these all together under one…

According to an article(1) that just appeared today on Alternet.org: Over 200 studies since the early 1980s have now documented that people living in societies where wealth has concentrated at the top of the economic ladder live significantly shorter, less healthy lives than people who live in societies that spread their wealth more evenly. The…

The last major freakout of the Earth environment, I have just read, was in 1816, which was called the “Year Without a Summer”. What happens during a period of unusually low solar output and then a string of massive volcanoes spewing hundreds of tons of dust into the atmosphere?  Read this article at Wikipedia. A…

An article in ScienceDaily.com discusses a new technology that involves using low-temperature plasma to disinfect decayed teeth instead of the current process of drilling.  This new process does not require mechanical/physical contact with the tooth! Article: Painless Plasma Jets Could Replace Dentist’s Drill

I was recently reading through the forums at the excellent Windows 7 forum site sevenforums.com and one of the posts mentioned an amazing, open-source app called Classic Shell which “fixes” several changes in Windows 7.  From the project’s main page: Classic Shell is a collection of features that were available in older versions of Windows but…

Pirahã [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHv3-U9VPAs] What I try to imagine as this man speaks this rare language is his mother speaking it to him as a child, singing it to him, and this language being like a song of the Amazon forest, being resonant with the life of the forest itself. And here is a video in which…

A couple of days ago I noticed that my samba server running under Linux was listening on all interfaces, including the wireless interface for the public network that I share where I am, which is something I don’t want.  Why?  Because this server contains file shares for a large amount of my data.  This is…

I have discovered this program called Atmosphere Deluxe that is so incredibly awesome I really want to tell everyone about it.  While there may be ambient sound and relaxing sound effects CDs, this program takes the concept of ambiance to a completely new level.  Unlike the CDs where you basically get whatever is on the…

90% of the omega-3 fatty acid in the human brain is docosahexaenoic acid (DHA).  It is essential (similar to all vitamins), because the human body cannot produce it itself.  More and more research is being done which reveals how vital this compound is for humans.  For example, it is known that during pregnancy a disproportionate…