Twitter Dump

I use Twitter for twitchy utterances which are not as fully-formed or well-considered as the sort of material I'd put here in the Slog. But not all of you use Twitter (those who do can follow me here), so I'm dumping, below, some recent Tweets possibly of interest:

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Le Freak: one of the most interesting beers ever brewed in America (mailorder here).

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The clip of sleazy plotting Cramer that was unearthed by The Daily Show was actually written up in Slate a year ago

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New allergy treatment (makes sense)

Cheney loves Limbaugh (also makes sense)

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Halfway through the gigantic DVD set of Simon Schama's "History of Britain". Fantastic...Schama's the heir to Bronowski and Kenneth Clark.

Hmm, actually just 6 disks, so not gigantic. But is in a huge collection w/Schama's 2 other landmark series (Slavery and Art), now OOP

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Very good analysis of the whiff of creepiness in Jon Stewart's otherwise applaudable takedown of Cramer

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Colbert destroys Rush Limbaugh
lots more of same:

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Kashi's Autumn Wheat is the only breakfast cereal that can be described as beautiful. Weird, because other Kashi products are so inhuman.

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I've decided finely chopped fresh dates are the best sweetning/flavoring agent for lots of apps, esp. hot cereal (add before boiling)

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Two great anti-anti-stimulus quotes

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new solar tech: transparent plastic film, put over windows, makes electricy to power the building (inc. skyscaper!)

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Crashed US Air survivortards are suing. These are indeed the Final Days.

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Cute new eTrade talking baby commercial from superbowl.

Heh...for that matter, here's just about all the Superbowl commercials. God bless online video!

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If you're a fan of Bill Hicks (as I am), this is very, very big news

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Revealing, if snarky, NY Observer article on NY's new senator

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Dear God how I love Trader Joe's triple ginger cookies.

Which is Faster: Voyager or a Meteorite?

Ok, here's a weird one. Which is faster: the Voyager space probe (our fastest ever), as it zooms out of the solar system with sufficient velocity to escape the sun's gravity, propelled like a slingshot by the gravitational fields of the gas giant planets...or a meteorite as it sails down to earth?

You figured Voyager, right? Nope. It's only going 38,400 mph, while meteorites go 44,736 mph.

60's TV Series Origin Episodes

I grew up in the era of "big premise" television series. For some reason, the networks maddeningly never reran the origin stories - the first episodes. You know, where Major Nelson finds Jeannie's bottle, Jed Clampet strikes oil, and the Minnow is lost.

Well, God bless the Internet. At links below, you can view the elusive, long-lost premiers of:

Gilligan's Island

I Dream of Jeannie (woops, not currently available, but you can try this link)

Beverly Hillbillies

The Evolutionary Role of Cookery

An article in the Economist makes the case that "cooking and other forms of preparing food are humanity’s 'killer app': the evolutionary change that underpins all of the other—and subsequent—changes that have made people such unusual animals."

This research may have all sorts of ramifications, from nutrition to weight loss to debunking the raw food movement.

Language Cops

My dad was a lexicographical reactionary. He fought the good fight against bastardization, and railed indignantly about "wrong" usage (the phrase "very unique" could make him downright apoplectic). And he was hardly alone. We all know language cops, or read their sputterings (that's not a word, by the way, so I've just raised the blood pressure of a certain portion of my readership) in books and in the media.

But the thing is: they're all nuts, if you'll think about it (sorry, dad!). Language simply is. It bastardizes, it has always bastardized, and it's inherently flexible enough to accommodate an ever widening field of expression. And that widening has no sanctioning authority. Language is no more controllable than thought. No one owns language; the ivory tower has no more claim on it than it does on, say, economics. As in that field, the role of academics is not to dictate (i.e. tell everyone how to spend and save) but to observe, hoping to understand the natural process of things. Descriptivism rather than prescriptivism.

Ages have passed since prescriptivism was acknowledged by professional lexicographers to be peeing into the wind at best - and bald-faced snobbery at worst. Yet we still expect dictionary editors to be crusty old fuds who'd sternly point bony fingers at our sloppy, careless, wrong-wrong-wrong use of language. The stereotype stems in large part from the work of uber-prescriptivist H. W. Fowler, who presumed to not only catalog language patterns he disdained, but to impose his predilections as a firm standard for the rest of us (split infinitives strictly intentional!). And generations of readers and writers hewed to his command. Prescriptivees, if you will (though a few of you emphatically won't).

Have a look at how latter day dictionary editors view Fowler and his spawn, via this classic review of "The New Fowler's Modern English Usage" in the Atlantic by Jesse Sheidlower, editor at large of the Oxford English Dictionary. It's akin to a booster shot for staving off artificial constraint of one's self-expression.

Years ago, long before that review was published, I called Jesse (who I knew from beer geek circles) to ask whether a certain formulation I'd come up with was an actual word. He clucked his tongue and shot back "Anything you say or write, which clearly conveys whatever you, a native speaker, intend to express, is a word". I'd never use that liberty to excuse lazy, unclear writing. But if the editor of the OED gives you free reign, that's as liberating as Fowler's injunctions once were hindering!

Obama Lifts Bush’s Strict Limits on Stem Cell Research

I fervidly rejoice in the Obama administration's decision today to lift the limits on stem cell research. But I recognize a fallacious argument when I see one. Obama pledged that his administration will “make scientific decisions based on facts, not ideology." Sounds good. But NY Times reports that:

"In making his announcement, Mr. Obama drew a strict line against human cloning, an issue that over the years has become entangled with the debate over human embryonic stem cell research.

"He said that he would ensure that his administration 'never opens the door' to cloning for human reproduction, adding, 'It is dangerous, profoundly wrong and has no place in our society or any society.'”

Sounds like ideology to me. And I share that ideology - I don't want to see cloning, either. But I'm inclined to be feel sympathetic to those upset by today's announcement. I may not draw the moral line where they do, but I do draw moral lines. As does Obama. So we oughtn't pretend that morality has absolutely no place in any of this..

Learn Like a Kid

If you try to teach adults to wiggle their ears, they'll try once or twice to engage those muscles, fail, shrug, and give up. If it's absolutely critical that they learn the skill, they'll buy a book or hire a coach, and set aside time for diligent, grinding practice.

If you try to teach kids to wiggle their ears, they return to it again and again at odd moments, playfully experimenting until they finally develop the knack.

That's why kids learn easily and adults don't.

The trick to learning is to do it playfully and immersively, like a child (rather than the way schools have taught you to learn).

Flush With Deliciousness

It's the rage sweeping Hong Kong: Toilet restaurants. I hear the food's not too crappy, either!

Thanks (if that's the right word), Barry Strugatz.

The Political Calculations of Obama's Budget

Today's SF Chronicle has an excellent political analysis of Obama's eye-popping budget proposal. Money quotes:

"Historically, a president's first year is almost always his most productive. 'If you can't do it in your first term with your first budget, you almost never get a chance to do it later,' said Stan Collender"

and...

"By reaching so high, Obama's fortunes rest on the economy. 'If the economy recovers and there's prosperity in 2011, he'll beat any Republican,' said Boston University historian Bruce Schulman. 'If not, many, many Republicans could beat him.'"

In other news, former Bush speechwriter David Frum (the fellow who coined the "axis of evil" line) has written an article in Newseek titled "Why Rush is Wrong" about Limbaugh's recently-stated hope that the president of the United States "fails".

Why There's Been No 9/12

Terrific ongoing piece last week in Slate working through the various theories explaining why America hasn't suffered a 9/11 style attack since, uh, 9/11.