In Veritate Pulchritudo

The Latin motto generator is useful if you need a Latin motto. I don't know why anyone would need one, but should you, I'm there for you.

(And, by the way, not that you asked, sorry, in veritate pulchritudo is not Keats's "beauty is truth, truth beauty"; it's "in truth, beauty." There's a subtle but beautiful difference.)

Words in Their Twitter-light

Ludibrious jollux as I may or may not be, though more likely am I to deliciate in kench and revel in bannigan than freck about in quagswagging busyness, this blog's scriptitation and perrisology aside as they bespeak the yameles widendream indicative of a hoddypeak, an illecebrous bibesy to words, though in truth I rarely drink, I still inform that the Matador Network has corraded and jargogle archaic words, ones apt to misuse and disputes over brabble and the malagrugrous trolling of the sanguinolent.

John Quijada, Ithkuil, and Clarity in Language

At The New Yorker an article by Joshua Foer describes the development of Ithkuil, a language invented by John Quijada that is highly concise while seeking to be precise, explicit, and logical. In doing so Foer's article tells some of the interesting story of Quijada's "outsider" life while describing the invented language community (which is extensive and in which I have an interest), the limitations of "natural" languages, and historical efforts to overcome them. To let the article speak for itself:

Languages are something of a mess. They evolve over centuries through an unplanned, democratic process that leaves them teeming with irregularities, quirks, and words like “knight.” No one who set out to design a form of communication would ever end up with anything like English, Mandarin, or any of the more than six thousand languages spoken today.

“Natural languages are adequate, but that doesn’t mean they’re optimal,” John Quijada, a fifty-four-year-old former employee of the California State Department of Motor Vehicles, told me. In 2004, he published a monograph on the Internet that was titled “Ithkuil: A Philosophical Design for a Hypothetical Language.” Written like a linguistics textbook, the fourteen-page Web site ran to almost a hundred and sixty thousand words. It documented the grammar, syntax, and lexicon of a language that Quijada had spent three decades inventing in his spare time. Ithkuil had never been spoken by anyone other than Quijada, and he assumed that it never would be.

Duolingo

Duolingo is a website that teaches languages (Spanish, French, German, and Portuguese) on the web for free by having its students translate webpages. The concept is simple, involves intuitive learning, uses relevant material, and, if I did not mention it, free. My son has started learning Spanish on the site and says it's awesome.

Tonight's Bedtime Story with Werner Herzog

Tonight Werner Herzog reads from the Dvergatal ("Catalog of the Dwarfs") of the Poetic Edda, one of the two most important sources of Norse literature. It's a book that's inspired many dreams, perhaps most germane -- given that the cinematic premiere is but four short weeks way -- is The Hobbit. Listen closely and you'll hear the names of all of the dwarves from J.R.R. Tolkien's classic, as well as Gandalf. Tolkien, of course, was a world recognized expert on Norse and Anglo-Saxon literature.

I also post it since, other than its somnolent effect (this is, after all, a bedtime story for us), it shows that the person who brilliantly imitated Herzog reading Curious George, Madeline, Mike Mulligan and his Steamshovel, and Where's Waldo wasn't too far from the mark.

Surely Herzog must be aware of Tolkein's work, though he may think it pablum 

Koshi, the Talking Elephant

This would be no big deal except that (a) Koshi the elephant seems to understand the words he is saying, and (b) it is very difficult for most mammals to imitate human speech -- and there is no other example of elephants doing it. Nor is this like dogs sort of sounding like humans; scientists looked at Koshi's speech and discovered he is using the words with some intention (USA Today to the contrary), as well as responding to the few words he knows. 

Is Shakespeare Not Good Enough for You, You Hellish Scum?

The Lutheran Insulter

You pious prancer.

Would Thou Wert Clean Enough to Spit Upon

The Shakespearean Insulter. 

That is all.

The Gashlycrumb Tinies

One of the great works of abecedarian literature, The Gashlycrumb Tinies remain a hallmark of our society's attainment and a continued source of hope for our future. I am loathe to reproduce the entire set here, and instead point you to your doom the link in the last sentence. Farewell.

"Christiaan Huygens": Ah Nuts, I've Been Saying It Wrong

Christiaan Huygens was a brilliant dutch physicist who possibly ranks in the class of Galileo, Descartes, Newton, and Leibniz and yet, of those, the one so few people (in the U.S.) seem to know about. For what it's worth, he wrote an early version of what became Newton's second law of motion (no, Newton did not come up with this stuff all by himself), invented the pendulum clock, demonstrated that light has wave properties, independently discovered the balance spring, discovered coupled oscillations (see also!), solved the tautochrone problem (which was critical to the creation of a useful pendulum clock), used an early geometric form of calculus predating Newton, developed the theory and formula for centripetal force, wrote the first lengthy work on probability, designed a large tubeless telescope, was the first to understand that Saturn has a ring around it, discovered Saturn's planet Titan, was the first to draw the Orion Nebula, designed an early internal combustion engine that was intended to work with gunpowder, and designed a pocket watch (an outgrowth of the balance spring), among many other inventions. His father, grandfather, and brother were also very successful (his father, though Dutch, was knighted by both England and France and is historically one of the Netherlands most famous poets as well as a composer and was a friend of John Donne and an acquaintance of Rembrandt and Descartes (who lived in the Netherlands for 20 years)).

So, okay, here's the deal: it turns out pretty much everybody who isn't Dutch has been mispronouncing his name all along.  According to Wikipedia it's pronounced like this; according to the video below it's {Huh}{clear your throat or something}{ens}. Also, while we're on it, Euler is pronounced {oiler}, Leibnitz is pronounced {laip}{nits}, and Newton is pronounced {New}{ton}.  Dr. Lewin, below, is right: I've got no idea how to say it.

BTW, Dr. Lewin's other physics videos are also awesome. Via Neatorama.

A List of Reference and Educational Sites

[Note: An updated list of sources is in the "References Sources" tab, above]

I looked for a list of reference and educational sources on the internet, and I wasn't able to find one I discuss one here and linked it below, so I've made a more updated one.

After going through hundreds of sites, I've winnowed the list to about 150.  If I had to only pick a few they'd be Wikipedia (and its associated sites), Google (also for its associated sites), The New York Times (for its archives), the Internet Archive, WolframAlpha, JSTOR, SSRN, NASA, FindLaw, How Stuff Works, Khan Academy, and Open Culture. (For non-reference/education, but just general interest I'd have to add MetaFilter.)

The full list, below, avoids sites behind a paywall or requiring registration (though sometimes that's necessary for full content). Here's the full list:

I Cannot Understate the Unimportance of this "Momentous" Post

When I first began this blog almost two months ago I descried it as "[a] blog about science, law, language, and the arts." Well, I've had exactly one post so far tagged "language" -- a rant (footnoted, I want to note) about how words do not have meaning but convey meaning. It was deeply insightful.

With this in mind, I wish to note for you, my dear likely well spoken reader, that people -- and by "people" I mean "people who are speakers of English in the United States" -- often use the phrase "cannot understate" to mean "cannot overstate," a loathsome phrase itself for many reasons.¹  My friends at the blog Language Log -- and by "friends" here I mean "intellectual superiors" -- which, by the way, says more insightful things about language in general and English in particular than I will ever muster here -- have carefully analyzed this situation. Here's Language Log's list of relevant posts (yikes):

A Few Words on Words

A friend and colleague of mine -- we're both lawyers and think it's fair to say both often involved in statutory interpretation at fairly high levels -- recently explained his view on a statute as "I just think words have meaning." As cryptic as that statement was in context -- it begs the question what meaning -- it's a common sense view shared by almost everyone. But it's wrong.