Language Log

At the end of a series of fascinating Bad Science columns and weblog posts about the £2,000 Dore “miracle cure” for dyslexia, Ben Goldacre wrote ("Blogs vs mainstream media", The Guardian, 5/31/2008):

I make no sweeping claims about blogs and mainstream media – both have their roles – but in this case it seems the bloggers win on timeliness, accuracy, relevance, effort, ethics, and stupid names. Gimpyblog broke the news … Podblack … Brainduck …  Holfordwatch …

The lede of Stephen Colbert's "Smokin' Pole: The Fight for Arctic Riches", 6/10/2008, suggested to Language Log reader Matrixmonkey36 that Mr. Colbert also reads Language Log:

Nation, there are seven Eskimo words for melting snow, and all of them also mean "opportunity". [audio]

Let's say at least that some Language Log themes are working their way into public discourse. Background: here and here.

Scotland's most popular soft drink is a local one, called Irn-Bru (pronounced "iron brew"). It rivals or outstrips even Coca Cola in sales. Many much-loved humorous TV commercials for Irn Bru have run over the years, some of them offering wonderful parodic introductions to Scottish life and culture (watch this one, for example). Print ads echoing them were also published. Some of the ideas the ad agency came up with were judged funny but a bit too raunchy, tasteless, or controversial for public release. Recently, though, the company (A. G. Barr) released on its website a gallery of suppressed ads. Several involve silly-naughty double entendres of a typically British sort (a crustacean saying "I'm into Irn-Bru and hard-core prawn sites"; a gorilla saying, "Gimme Irn-Bru or I'll shuffle my nuts in front of your mother"; an old man pointing to his guffawing donkey and saying "If it ain't Irn-Bru you can kiss my ass"). Some seem a bit bleak (a ragged and unshaven man with a desperate down-and-out look saying: "Irn-Bru's never let me down. Not like mum, dad, Terry, and the wife"). And at least one of them provides (for yes, this is Language Log, not Scottish Soft-drink Industry Advertising Log) a lovely illustration of an important and linguistically interesting syntactico-semantic point:

Going through the latest batch of Chinglish offerings that friends sent to me last week, my eye was caught by this striking bilingual sign:

Normally, I do little more than marvel at the mistranslations and ungrammatical constructions that are characteristic of Chinglish. Seldom do I undertake deeper research into how they came about, since the causes of the bloopers and blunders are usually painfully obvious. It is only when Chinglish expressions — whether humorous or not — are hard to explain that I make a special effort to analyze them and figure out how they occurred.

But this one was different.

It gets better and better. The folks who invited me to come over and get my proteins expressed ("Just send us your gene", 5/21/2008) are now peddling videos. At least, someone using the same biospam mailing list has sent me the table of contents for the current on-line issue of the Journal of Visualized Experiments, "an online research journal employing visualization to increase reproducibility and transparency in biological sciences".

My favorite video in the current issue is Georgia Woods and Karen Zito, "Preparation of Gene Gun Bullets and Biolistic Transfection of Neurons in Slice Culture". I warn you, though, that "gene gun bullets", "biolistic transfection" and "slice culture" are all somewhat less interesting than the spam email context might make you think. (Or maybe, depending on your tastes, more interesting…)

My fellow phonologist Geoff Nathan recently contributed a post to phonoloblog on the pronunciation of "Myanmar" by news readers. Another fellow phonologist, Darin Flynn, added a comment with a link to this post on TidBITS ("Your source for indispensable Apple and Macintosh news, reviews, tips, and commentary since 1990"), pointing out that Mac OS X's Dictionary program (featuring the New Oxford American Dictionary) lists the pronunciation of "Myanmar" as "Burma":

Incidentally: all images in this post are from my own copy of Dictionary, version 1.02 (© 2005), running on Mac OS X "Tiger" (version 10.4.11). The TidBITS sources are from a newer version of Mac OS X ("Leopard", version 10.5.2), which appears to include a newer version of Dictionary (but possibly with the same New Oxford American content).

The most interesting spam email that I've gotten recently:

Need your protein expressed in E.coli? Not getting good results?

Just send us your gene.

Gen Script’s Guaranteed Package includes subcloning your gene into an expression vector, protein expression in E.coli, purification and refolding using our proprietary BacPowerTM technology – all for as low as $2,200.

http://www.biologyproject.net/custom_protein_bacterial_expression.html

You will receive:

· At least 3 mg of purified soluble protein
· Expression construct(s) and strain(s)
· QC materials (protocols, SDS-PAGE images, sequencing reports, etc.)

The link was sent in by Andy Hollandbeck with the comment "I sometimes get the idea that at least one of the SNL writers is a regular Language Log reader".

From Leah Garchik's May 12 column in the SF Chronicle:

American poet Robert Bly, who will be at a Marin Poetry Festival reading at Dominican University in San Rafael on Sunday, told Sedge Thomson on "West Coast Live" last week that there's a reason Irish poetry is particularly melodic. "The Irish have time for long vowel sounds – unlike the English, who have too much to do. All those colonies are a lot of trouble."

[Tip of the hat to John V. Burke]

According to the default settings of Google Maps for a user in Philadelphia PA, if you're IN HEAVEN, you're just outside of Cincinnati OH, whereas if you're IN HELL, you're a few hundred miles north, a little bit northwest of Ann Arbor MI. IN PURGATORY, it seems, is between Lewiston and Augusta ME.

(Click on thumbnails for larger images.)

According to the Wikipedia,

Abstract nonsense, or general abstract nonsense, is a popular term used by mathematicians to describe certain kinds of arguments and concepts in category theory or applications. The term goes back a long way, and even predates the foundation of category theory as a subject itself. Referring to a joint paper with Samuel Eilenberg that introduced the notion of a "category" in 1942, Saunders Mac Lane wrote the subject was 'then called "general abstract nonsense"'.

The term is believed to have been coined by the mathematician Norman Steenrod, himself one of the developers of the categorical point of view. This term is used by practitioners as an indication of mathematical sophistication or coolness rather than as a derogatory designation.

And it's true!