FuturePundit. Yeah, sure, it’s all our fault….

Christopher Hitchens on Harry Potter. Does it get any better than that?

NYT. Yeah, who was this Vespucci guy, anyway? And why isn’t the continent named after Columbus?

NYT. The evolution of language, like everything else, causes fights.

NYT. Ah, yes, obsessive-compulsive know-it-alls — my kind of people. (What is an “environmental graphic designer”? Wouldn’t you love to have that job? If it is a job, and not just a political position….)

Safire on language.

LanguageLog.  The “snowclone” phenomenon is discussed here.

NYT. And, most importantly, doesn’t require you to deal with NIMBY homeowner associations and local governments. Second Life may be the best exemplar yet of a quasi-libertarian environment.

Scott Johnson at PowerLine experiences a true Blast from the Past.

Engadget.

Read it. I don’t care who you are, that’s funny.

Engadget. This looks very interesting.

Engadget. How long before  these wind up in women’s purses?

NYT. There’s a lot there to revive. It will be particularly interesting to see what medieval versions of the Koran have to say about the modern text.

NYT. I’ve always been partial to fat.

NYT. No progress yet on Bush Derangement Syndrome.

NYT. I didn’t know they could do that.

NYT. More cool movies bite the dust.

NYT. No mention of potential uses, unfortunately.

FuturePundit. Gotta say, rats seem to be on the cutting edge of medical technology these days.

FuturePundit. I can’t imagine any version of reality in which I’d want to know this, but here you are.

Jeremy Wagstaff is one of those tiresome people who have to answer a ringing phone.

I don’t have that problem.

LanguageLog. Some people have entirely too much time on their hands.

PowerLine. I don’t care who you are, these are funny.

StrangeMaps. This is delightful.

LanguageLog. On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog — but many suspect the truth, even if you look deceptively like a human in person.

NYT. I agree — I don’t think I’ve taken more than a week of “vacation” since I graduated from high school.

William Safire on language. Always worth reading.

Today the manager of the campaign is often merely the person who handles the nuts and bolts and the nuts who bolt.

NYT. This might resolve a few conflicts.

WT. Well, that’s a disappointment.

NYT. Been waitin’ for this one.

Engadget. The problem with this approach, of course, is that it discourages people from doing it your way. If they don’t do it your way, then your way doesn’t become the standard; either everybody develops his own way, in which case there is no standard, or people do it somebody else’s way (somebody else who wasn’t quite as discouraging), and you’re stuck being the odd one out.  One would think that the history of personal computers is sufficiently littered with the corpses of companies and products who tried to keep a stranglehold on their “intellectual property” and as a result got left at the station when the train got underway.

Jerry Pournelle is fond of telling a story about going to a computer convention (COMDEX or something similar) back when Microsoft and IBM were just getting into the graphical user interface business. He first went to the IBM booth and told them he was considering developing products for OS/2, what could they do for him? They demonstrated a set of tools that would cost him somewhere on the close order of a couple thousand dollars. He mentioned that that was quite a bit of money, and they responded that these were very valuable tools. He then went over to the Microsoft booth and made the same pitch with respect to Windows. They gave him a bag and told him to hold it open, and he could barely stagger away with the development tools they loaded him down with.

And we all know who won that fight, right?

Anyway, I think this a very shortsighted move on Apple’s part — assuming, of course, that they don’t do something unexpected, like licensing the patented stuff for free use by anybody who wants to. Steve Jobs often does unexpected things, but when it comes to narrowing his market share, he’s pretty consistent. So I expect this to bite them on the butt at some future time.

NYT. This is another area that will be worth watching for the next few years.

An incredible resource.

LanguageLog. Are women more talkative than men? Let the market decide.

LanguageLog. I had no idea.

LanguageLog. Probably doesn’t have anything to do with Global Warming, but one never knows.

StrangeMaps. Why not just go with hexagons, as with a wargame map? We’ll probably never know.

Techdirt. Disintermediation is biting the realtor business right square on the butt.

LanguageLog. “Now, Bobby, say you’re sorry!” “Okay. I’m sorry that Tom is a butthead.”

Engadget. Sort of like mashups for hardware. Could be very cool, could be a monumental disaster.

LanguageLog. Vegetarianism in New Zealand! Can it get any more exciting than that?

NYT. At last, scientists are including social organization in their understanding of evolution.

WSJ. Not your usual self-help book. People like Dante and Petrarch started the European Renaissance, that turning point in history that has been the root of all progress in the modern world. Would that more people appreciated that.

Engadget. Guess this is turning out to be “Science Monday”. But this is really great stuff.

Engadget. Once again, the Japanese are ahead of the curve.

Engadget. How soon before our car windshields will be just flexible displays?

Engadget. This is pretty cool.

FuturePundit. And that surprises me. Of course, one person’s slacker is another’s “poor baby”, so this may or may not be significant.

Engadget. I’ve been hearing ads on the radio for attachments you can use with your washing machine to wash clothes without detergent. This would appear to be the next step.