"a unit of time equal to six months in the future" (from Thomas Friedman's infinite "The next six months in iraq will..." series of inanity)

what if the english language was derived without latin roots:  "today we have a beholding of stuff and work that watching bears out, both in the workstead and in daily life" via someone

always tryin "to express wishes, commands, emotion, possibility, judgment, opinion, necessity, or statements that are contrary to fact at present"

"working out how to hide malware within English-language sentences" ... "In machine code – the raw code that microprocessor chips understand – combinations of characters not seen in plain text, such as strings of mostly capital letters, are required."

THE ACTUAL, THE POSSIBLE, AND THE UNIMAGINABLE indirectly via jww

"in the US, Bronx cheer is sometimes used"

notes on his upcoming "computational knowledge engine" from "A New Kind of Science" mathematician stephen wolfram (see also: http://www.wolframalpha.com/)

"a phatic expression is one whose only function is to perform a social task, as opposed to conveying information", "the question 'how are you?' is usually an automatic component of a social encounter. Although there are times when "how are you?" is asked in a sincere, concerned manner and does in fact anticipate a detailed response regarding the respondent's present state, this needs to be pragmatically inferred from context and intonation."

programming language infighting (and a lil bit on linguistic similarities)

new yorker piece on the Piraha, a tribe who don't seem to exhibit recursion (an essential part of the minimalist program)