The May 2020 issue of a scientific journal, Emerging Infectious Diseases, shows a rank badge of Qing Dynasty officialdom. There are five bats in this piece of ornate embroidery (can you spot them?): Artist Unknown. Rank Badge with Leopard, Wave and Sun Motifs, late 18th century. Silk, metallic thread. 10 3/4 in x 11 1/4 in […]
Jessica Hemming, in consultation with Joseph Eska (personal communication), writes: In the debate about whether Sinitic ‘mra’ could be a borrowing from an Indo-European language, given that only Celtic and Germanic have horse words in *marko, it may be of use to know that proto-Celtic is now conventionally dated to no earlier than c.1000 BC […]
On Twitter, @muffkin7 asks readers to "Ruin a film by inserting the word 'moist' into its title". Ruin a film by inserting the word ‘moist’ into its title. — muffkin (@muffkin7) April 27, 2020 Answers include "Gone moist with the wind", "All moist about Eve", "The good, the bad, the moist, and the ugly", "Little […]
In these days of virtual networked life, with plans to automate contact tracing by coordinating registries of everyone's locations and actions over time, a recently-introduced technical term has gained greater relevance. The source is Omer Tene and Jules Polonetsky, "A Theory of Creepy: Technology, Privacy, and Shifting Social Norms", Yale Journal of Law and Technology […]
In Chinese media, we often encounter exhortations to wénmíng xíngwéi 文明行为 ("civilized behavior"), but in this article, they've really gone over the top in promoting it: "Běijīng wénmíng cùjìn tiáolì tōngguò tíchàng zhèxiē wénmíng xíngwéi 北京文明促进条例通过 提倡这些文明行为" ("Beijing passes regulations for the advancement of civilization; for the promotion of these [types of] civilized behavior"), people.com (4/24/20) […]
A couple of years ago ("Hearing interactions", 2/28/2018), I posted some anecdotal evidence that human perception of speaker change is accurate and usually also pretty fast. I noted that the performance of automatic systems at analogous tasks was distinctly underwhelming in comparison. A recent paper measures human performance more systematically, and compares a state-of-the art […]
Following up on Kylie Scott's "Drunk in the club after covid", Sarah Cooper performs "How to medical": How to medical pic.twitter.com/0EDqJcy38p — Sarah Cooper (@sarahcpr) April 24, 2020
Permalink Comments off
Three decades ago, in 1990, I attended a five-week summer institute on Indo-European linguistics and archeology at the University of Texas (Austin). The institute was organized by Edgar Polomé (1920 [b. Molenbeek-Saint-Jean, Brussels, Belgium]-2000) and Winfred Lehmann (1916 [b. Surprise, Nebraska]-2000) and was supported by a generous grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. […]
[This is a guest post by David Moser] This little Stück of piecemeal wordplay has been making the rounds on WeChat. It seems to be an amalgam of several little coronavirus memes that had appeared in isolation. gélí rénquán méile 隔离人权没了 bù gélí rén quán méile 不隔离人全没了 tiānshàng biānfú, dìshàng Chuānpǔ 天上蝙蝠，地上川普 yīgè yǒudú, yīgè […]
Kylie Scott lipsyncs a passage from one of our president's recent press events: Drunk in the club after COVID pic.twitter.com/H5E4nl2RiY — Dave 🏠 (@hellodavsk) April 21, 2020
The whole world is now thoroughly familiar with the name "Wuhan", whereas four months ago, only a small number of people outside of China would have heard of it. Since, two days ago, I posted about Dutch curses, many of which just so happen to be linked to diseases, I am prompted to dust off […]
From Gillian Hochmuth: Thank you for your great explanation of the reasons behind the famous Kennedy "crisis" misquote. When I was in high school, I had a friend who was Chinese and spoke Mandarin fluently, who explained it to my US History class after the teacher quoted Kennedy. That was over 20 years ago and […]