Are you taking into account Pessimippopotamus' concern that a revised orthography would eliminate much of the information about semantic relatedness and etymology which at present is encoded in (often irregular or non-phonemic) spelling?

One of the other things you'd lose is the rich lode of information about linguistic relationships embedded into the received spelling of words. In a phonetic spelling scheme, cognates which have diverged phonologically would be spelled differently, eliminating clues about their semantic relatedness which play an…

As I wrote earlier, I'll be holding on to my Sniffex stock, thank you.

"Laci Green completely alienated all of her Muslim (and, I suppose Mormon) viewers."

I hardly think this is going to replace the Sniffex in MY security screening process.

"On the contrary, the entire notion that an intelligent program may run on different substrates with indistinguishable behavior relies explicitly on physicalism being true and dualism being false, and it remains the default position without any unnecessary metaphysical assumptions. One may assume that there is…

Perhaps we want a lay public which is more literate, rather than a legislature which is less, aseElected officials are there to serve the interests of the electorate, not to execute their (the electorate's) orders.

Time was, when it wasn't uncommon practice for newspapers of all sizes to supplement their own original content with material lifted or remixed from other sources. Of course, it doesn't follow from "this is how things used to be done" that "this is how things should be done now."

Tyson was actually remembering a much earlier essay, by C. P. Snow, one in which Snow neatly skewers this kind of disciplinary chauvinism.

Not that I'm particularly proud of posting a link to my Pinterest — but this quote from C.P. Snow nicely skewers this disciplinary chauvinism.

On the contrary: the false, ridiculous, or hateful beliefs of others hurt me to a degree proportional to the degree they manifest in behavior. I don't think a reasonable person could deny that beliefs manifest themselves in a person's political, social, and economic (etc.) behavior. Further, that behavior influences…

An insect is *exactly* what it is. Watch for the reciprocating pattern of the wings at the side of the central body. If the bug was moving more quickly, the frequency of the beating wings, against the frame rate of the digital camera, would produce the characteristic sinusoidal/fin pattern of a "skyfish" or "rod".

And the Valiant is ALMOST as cool as the Iron Vulture.

I didn't mean to say that the source material of this film is derivative OF "Dances with Wolves" or "Avatar". Just that this will be a film in the grand, familiar tradition of the colonizing narrative.

I don't know if the marketing was that confusing; I feel like I understood immediately what this movie was going to be about.

This would seem more akin to the protests in Time Square this fall, as theatrical musicians rallied against Broadway producers making a habit of using pre-recorded music to accompany live theater instead of the traditional live performers of the pit.

Not dumb, no. Mistaken about the way the world works, yes. I don't think it is an unkind thing to take any constructive opportunity possible to disabuse people of belief in the supernatural. In fact, it seems a kind thing to challenge that kind of thinking.

This is actually quite like what happens in The War with the Newts.

One of his saddest, and one of his favorites.

Not just a list: how about a week of posts dedicated to women authors?