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The New Yorker:The Interpreter Has a remote Amazonian tribe upended our understanding of language? by John Colapinto Apr 16 07

emmineb — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 21:05:09 GMT

The Pirahã, Everett wrote, have no numbers, no fixed color terms, no perfect tense, no deep memory, no tradition of art or drawing, and no words for “all,” “each,” “every,” “most,” or “few”—terms of quantification believed by some linguists to be among the common building blocks of human cognition. Everett’s most explosive claim, however, was that Pirahã displays no evidence of recursion, a linguistic operation that consists of inserting one phrase inside another of the same type, as when a speaker combines discrete thoughts (“the man is walking down the street,” “the man is wearing a top hat”) into a single sentence (“The man who is wearing a top hat is walking down the street”). Noam Chomsky,

The Norman B. Leventhal Map Center at the Boston Public Library

emmineb — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 07:32:38 GMT

The Norman B. Leventhal Map Center at the Boston Public Library is a public private partnership launched in 2004 to preserve and provide free public access to the Boston Public Library's historically significant collection of 200,000 maps and 5,000 atlases. Our goal is to maximize the educational potential of these antique and contemporary maps of the World, United States, and New England. This website will enable visitors to explore, in-depth, the Map Center's cartographic treasures and related educational programs.

The once and future e-book on reading in the digital age - Ars Technica By John Siracusa |

emmineb — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 06:34:12 GMT

A veteran of a former turning of the e-book wheel looks at the past, present, and future of reading books on things that are not books. I was pitched headfirst into the world of e-books in 2002 when I took a job with Palm Digital Media. The company, originally called Peanut Press, was founded in 1998 with a simple plan: publish books in electronic form. As it turns out, that simple plan leads directly into a technological, economic, and political hornet's nest. But thanks to some good initial decisions (more on those later), little Peanut Press did pretty well for itself in those first few years, eventually having a legitimate claim to its self-declared title of "the world's largest e-book store."

The Six-Stroke Engine

emmineb — Fri, 02 Jun 2006 06:57:17 GMT

extra water injection and exhaust cycles

The Strategic Studies Institute: Fourth-Generation War and Other Myths

emmineb — Fri, 25 May 2007 12:46:33 GMT

In brief, the theory holds that warfare has evolved through four generations: 1) the use of massed manpower, 2) firepower, 3) maneuver, and now 4) an evolved form of insurgency that employs all available networks—political, economic, social, military—to convince an opponent's decision makers that their strategic goals are either unachievable or too costly. Further, the theory contends that this last form characterizes the terrorists' way of fighting today. Despite reinventing itself several times, the theory has several fundamental flaws that need to be exposed before it influences U.S. operational and strategic thinking

The Ten Coolest Numbers

emmineb — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 13:50:42 GMT

<> This is an attempt to give a count-down of the top ten coolest numbers. Let's first concede that this is a highly subjective ordering -- one person's 14.38 is another's $ \frac{\pi^2}{6}$ . The astute (or probably simply ``awake'') reader will notice, for example, a definite bias toward numbers interesting to a number theorist in the below list. (On the other hand, who better to gauge the coolness of numbers than a number-theorist...) But who knows? Maybe I can be convinced that I've left something out, or that my ordering should be switched in some cases. But let's first set down some ground rules. What's in the list? What makes a number cool? I think a word that sums up the key characteristic of cool numbers is ``canonicality.''

the Tree of Life Web Project: Movies of Jumping Spider Courtship

emmineb — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 19:58:10 GMT

Jumping spiders have excellent vision, and their intraspecific communication therefore has a heavy visual component. Males dance before females, displaying contrasting or brightly colored ornaments. Presumably this courtship dance is a basis by which females choose mates. One of the most diverse and elaborately-ornamented genera of jumping spiders is the genus Habronattus, occurring primarily in North America. If you want to find our more information about the genus Habronattus, go to its branch page in the Tree of Life. Here are some Quicktime movies of courtship dances of various species. The small squares in the grid on which the spiders are standing are 1 millimeter square. Touch on the picture of the spider to see the movie. If you want to see more pic

The Ultimate Game Quiz

emmineb — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 02:15:04 GMT

The Vela Incident: Nuclear Test or Meteorite?

emmineb — Fri, 02 Jun 2006 08:54:25 GMT

Documents Show Significant Disagreement with Presidential Panel Concerning Cause of Sep. 22, 1979 Vela "Double-Flash" Detection [among the usual suspects: Israel, S. Africa, Dr. No, some rock in space, a mini-black hole, the Gamma and Xray Burst brothers and a gang of exotic mysterious particles]

Ties to GOP Trumped Know-How Among Staff Sent to Rebuild Iraq By Rajiv Chandrasekaran

emmineb — Sun, 17 Sep 2006 15:10:32 GMT

Adapted from "Imperial Life in the Emerald City," by Rajiv Chandrasekaran After the fall of Saddam Hussein's government in April 2003, the opportunity to participate in the U.S.-led effort to reconstruct Iraq attracted all manner of Americans - restless professionals, Arabic-speaking academics, development specialists and war-zone adventurers. But before they could go to Baghdad, they had to [...] To pass muster with O'Beirne, a political [...] What seemed most important was loyalty to the Bush administration. [...] Two people who sought jobs with the U.S. occupation authority said they were even asked their views on Roe v. Wade .