Archive for January, 2008

Sunday, January 27th, 2008

The “Family of Four” puzzle

Alice, Bob, Carol and David are two parents and their son and daughter. The problem is to work out which is which. You are told that: * Bob and Alice are blood relatives. * David is older than Bob. * Carol is younger than David. * Carol is older than Alice. However, two of these […]

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Thursday, January 24th, 2008

The Bible is not about Christ

Just ran across this amazing cross reference of the James II bible: http://www.chrisharrison.net/projects/bibleviz/index.html The strikingly obvious thing from this visual representation is that the Christian Bible is about Israel, Judah, Jerusalem, David, Egypt and other Jewish and pre-Jewish stuff, and almost anything except Jesus/Christ. Nothing like a picture to put it in context.

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Thursday, January 17th, 2008

We own the world

Noam Chomsky is both a god in the linguistics field and a thought-provoking commentator on American politics. http://chomsky.info/articles/20080101.htm A quick romp through US military history, Vietnam, Cuba, Russia, China, Iran; some speculation on how the US would behave if it were a democracy, a bit of Orwell. Classic Chomsky stuff. But the key observation: we […]

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Monday, January 14th, 2008

Geek joke

And that reminds me of the old geek joke… She: So, what do you do? He: I teach Unix. She: Oh. [pauses] She: What do you teach them? Hmmm.

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Thursday, January 10th, 2008

Chinglish can be so Crude

Ever wondered why English translations of Chinese signs and notices are so bad? And in particular, why they may contain words that are simply not used in polite circles? Here is an article that explains why, with some detailed analysis and absolutely classic examples. In a word: people relying on bad software. http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/%7Emyl/languagelog/archives/005195.html

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