Jean Berko Gleason

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From Elizabeth Daingerfield Zwicky, a link to a Nova "The Secret Life of Scientists and Engineers" piece on Jean Berko Gleason (shown with an enormous wug), here. Very charming.

My grand-daughter (now 6) is a fan of these "Secret Life" pieces (and also some short Discovery Channel programs, especially one on leeches); JBG is one of her favorites. And she learned about the wug test, though at first she thought wug was an error for bug. But then she got into the game, and behaved like a pretty typical kid her age, including imperfect control of the syllabic allomorph of the plural; kids are inclined to give a nonsense word like tass a zero plural (two tass instead of two tasses).

[Update October 21: EDZ provides a factual correction: "The leeches are also NOVA; Neal deGrasse Tyson. The black mambas are Discovery Channel." Ah yes, the black mambas. A kid with interesting tastes.]

[Update October 23: And at breakfast today Opal showed me the Nova program on black widow spider sex-and-death. Gripping.]



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