A contributor to one of the series I oversee wrote to me as follows: As always, feel free to edit as you see fit, and to use my name or not, depending on context. ("Mox nix" as the GIs like to say in Germany, showing off their German.) Although I had never seen "mox nix" written […]
From Mark Sundaram and Aven McMaster at The Endless Knot, 50 minutes on "The Scandalous History of the Manhattan Cocktail":
[This is a guest post by Christopher Paris (website).] I just wanted to thank you for your 2009 essay on the misinterpretation of “wēijī” as meaning both opportunity and crisis. This controversy takes on dramatic new importance as the misinterpretation has been used to justify the invention of a school of thought that “risk is […]
You may or may not have heard of Kucha. For those who are interested in Tocharian or Uyghur, you almost certainly would be well aware of this oasis city on the northern rim of the Taklamakan Desert in the Tarim Basin of Eastern Central Asia. Coordinates: 41°42′56″N 82°55′56″E Kucha is the historical seat of so-called […]
Dr. Hu Shih (1891-1962) was arguably the greatest Chinese scholar of the 20th century, for whom I have the utmost respect. He and I thought alike on a number of important subjects: language, literature, and script reform, philosophy (we both were attracted to the utilitarian-pragmatist-logician and defensive strategist Mo Zi [c. 470 -c.391 BC]), recognition of the great influence […]
Yesterday we had a lot of fun exploring the derivation of Italian "Panettone: augmentative of the diminutive" and beyond. Another Yuletide cake I'm eating these days is German stollen, but its etymology is not so exciting: Middle High German stolle < Old High German stollo ("post, support"), documented since the 9th century, from the Indo-European […]
From The Washington Post: The Oxford English Dictionary blew it in The Oxford English Dictionary blew it in anointing “brain rot” as the word of the year. First off, that’s two words. But the real miss was overlooking the rightful winner, “slop,” which was on the dictionary publisher’s short list for word of the year. […]
In this comment to "'Neutrino Evidence Revisited (AI Debates)' | Is Mozart's K297b authentic?" (11/13/24), I questioned whether John Searle's "Chinese room" argument was intelligently designed and encouraged those who encounter it to reflect on what it did — and did not — demonstrate. In the same comment, I also queried the meaning of "understand" […]
Other video angles and edits are available on YouTube.
I just received the following book: P.N. Singer and Ralph M. Rosen, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Galen (New York: Oxford University Press, 2024). The volume has 29 chapters, the last of which is "Galen in Premodern Tibet and China: Impressions and Footprints" (pp. 658-674) by Dror Weil and Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim. Naturally, this chapter is […]
Today's xkcd: Mouseover title: "There's a maximum likelihood that I'm doing phylogenetics wrong."
A serious volcanic eruption on Flores Island has been going on since October 30: The Pusat Vulkanologi dan Mitigasi Bencana Geologi (PVMBG) reported that eruptive activity intensified at Lewotobi Laki-laki during 30 October-5 November, which included a major eruption resulting in fatalities. The large explosive eruption began at 2357 on 3 November, generating pyroclastic flows […]