Language Log

Frazz 9/10/2025 — Caulfield and Mrs. Olson discuss Melville's novel:

Continued in Frazz 9/11/2025:

Today's xkcd:

Yesterday's SMBC:

Today's xkcd:

Mouseover title: "Achilles was a mighty warrior, but his Achilles' heel was his heel."

Today's Tank McNamara:

Today's xkcd:

Mouseover title: "Maybe encouraging the publication of null results isn't enough–maybe we need a journal devoted to publishing results the study authors find personally annoying."

Today's SMBC:

Today's xkcd:

The mouseover title: "'This HAZMAT container contains radioactive material with activity of one becquerel.' 'So, like, a single banana slice?'"

Tuesday's Non Sequitur:

Modern security measures are definitely siege-like. But in my recent experience, gmail classifies returned security codes as spam about half the time — I'm not sure how to work that into the joke.

Today's xkcd:

Mouseover title: "Numbers can be tricky. On the day of my 110th birthday, I'll be one day younger than John Tukey was on his."

The first two panels from SMBC a few days ago:

The first two panels of today's xkcd:

For at least the past few thousand years, people have been thinking and debating about what "education" should be like, what its goals should be, and who should get (what kinds of) it.

Among many other issues, there's the question of whether educational content is preparation for actual use in later life, or part of incorporation into a shared culture, or just an exercise to demonstrate adequate intelligence and discipline and attentiveness. Yesterday's Frazz: