Twenty years ago today, on July 1, 1997, control of Hong Kong, formerly crown colony of the British Empire, was handed over to the People's Republic of China. The last few days has seen much celebration of this anniversary on the part of the CCP, with visits by Xi Jinping and China's first aircraft carrier, […]
The big news today has been Donald Trump's morning tweetstorm about "low I.Q. crazy Mika" Brzezinski "bleeding badly from a face-lift" at Mar-A-Lago over New Years. Bill Hemmer, interviewing Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Fox News, asked her "What is the White House saying about why that went out?" Her response: Your browser does not support […]
Sign on a tree in Qingdao, Shandong, sent in by Dean Barrett:
Article by Zeng Yuli in Sixth Tone (6/27/17): "Turn Off, Drop Out: Why Young Chinese Are Abandoning Ambition As the economy slows and social expectations rise, youngsters are rejecting traditional notions of success and embracing a culture known as ‘sang.’" Before reading this article, I was only vaguely familiar with "sang" culture. So that those […]
David Crisp, "Gianforte: Congress’ newest misdemeanor", Last Best News 6/25/2017: In case you were wondering whether Greg Gianforte will ever live down his body slam of a reporter for the Guardian, here’s a clue. The Associated Press reported last week that Gianforte drew boos from the Republican side of the aisle during his brief speech […]
Kai-Fu Lee has an interesting opinion piece in yesterday's NYT: –"The Real Threat of Artificial Intelligence": What worries you about the coming world of artificial intelligence? Too often the answer to this question resembles the plot of a sci-fi thriller. People worry that developments in A.I. will bring about the “singularity” — that point in […]
As I've observed several times over the years, automatic speech recognition is getting better and better, to the point where some experts can plausibly advance claims of "achieving human parity". It's not hard to create material where humans still win, but in a lot of ordinary-life recordings, the machines do an excellent job. Just like […]
Jamil Anderlini in the Financial Times (6/21/17), "The dark side of China’s national renewal", writes: To an English-speaking ear, rejuvenation has positive connotations and all nations have the right to rejuvenate themselves through peaceful efforts. But the official translation of this crucial slogan is deeply misleading. In Chinese it is “Zhonghua minzu weida fuxing” and […]
The Annual Reviews have a tradition of featuring retrospective articles by or about senior figures, and the Annual Review of Linguistics has followed this pattern with pieces featuring Morris Halle in the 2016 volume and Bill Labov in 2017. For 2018, we'll be featuring Lila Gleitman. As background, Barbara Partee, Cynthia McLemore and I spent the last couple […]