In "Man dies at the evil hands of......a shrimp?"

The guy's name was "Jerry Colaitis." I presume the surname is pronounced the same without the "a".

In "Curious George: What do you love about America?"

I love the fat people who will drive a humongous truck a block to buy Fritos and cigarettes.

In "Photos and MP3"

There's a group of people that will buy anything Apple tells them to. In several colours. That's who this is marketed to, I think. I don't want to have to lean over some hipster's shoulder to look at his 25,000 photos just because he's an aquaintance. Thoughtful consumers want USEFUL features, Apple. A built-in bottle opener would be sweeter than this.

In "MetaFilter's down again."

Umm. Oops. I was kidding? If you find yourself in New Brunswick EB/kmellis, I'll buy you a beer. It's just the internet, after all.

He gets plenty of shit from the Metafilter people. But to his credit he puts his back against the wall and fights tooth and nail, even when its obvious that he's completely wrong. It's probably not proper to badmouth the guy in another forum, but yeah, he's the most irritating person there. And the reaction from the other posters totally shows it.

In "The Spam Gourmet."

I've used this service for two years and it's EXCELLENT.

In "Many of the world's languages are, like endangered plants and animals, becoming extinct. "

It would be neat to see a tree showing which languages are "absorbed" into another (such as Native American tongues becoming English)... that way we can see the mechanics of what is happening. "absorbed" is a bit of a misnomer. If a language is dying, its usually no longer comingling with the major languages replacing it. But I agree with you that it would be interesting to see which languages are taking over endangered tongues. I suspect, however, that it would be pretty obvious in most cases. English would be the biggest usurper because of its importance in global communication. Mandarin chinese would probably be next because of the staggering number of languages spoken in tiny pockets all over China (mostly from the Miao-Yao family), which have been in decline for a few hundred years (or even over millenia if you start with the origins of their isolation). And Spanish and Portugese are steadily replacing aboriginal South American languages. Lastly, this is just a hunch, but I suspect that the end of the Soviet Union has actually been bad for languages under Russian Federation control. The Soviets had a careful policy of preserving many languages that I can't see the "streamlined" Russian government embracing.

"so loos lof language does not equal loss of culture." = "so loss of language does not equal loss of culture."

From the article: Some language loss, like species loss, is natural and predictable. No language exists forever. Yes, technology is endangering languages. But it's only for the sake of nostalgia that we feel a need to replace them. Cultures with a strong sense of identity will continue to use their language as the primary method of communication, so loos lof language does not equal loss of culture. Look at Wales-- 99% of the 500,000 speakers of Welsh also speak fluent English, and it's been this way for several generations. And despite that all its speakers also speak a major language, the number of Welsh speakers is holding steady. This is because the people of North Wales value their history and culture and don't want to abandon their language. In the same vein, a majority of Finns speak English with a degree of fluency, and no Finns are raising their children to speak English exclusively. My point is that cultural imperialism only goes so far. As for the crappy example given about Australian aboriginal medicine, the author is equating language exactly with culture, as though the disappearance of aboriginal language automatically causes the death of aboriginal culture and its knowledge of local remedies. The argument might have been stronger if it hadn't been "some skin disease was causing sores, and some nurse met some native australian and he knew of some plant that would cure it because he still spoke aboriginal."

In "Curious George: Mefi New Member Sign Up?"

I'm gonna sign up as yelruC royaM. Is it requisite here to dislike Mayor C? 'Cause he's had more gems than most. (Less the flip dismissals of this place. But I wasn't reading monkeyfilter then.)

In "Cindy Adams doesn't hate Boston..."

Wow. Doesn't that seem like just a liiiittle bit more trouble than it was worth? No, because the intended audience loved it. This was a big forward for people in the Boston area today. Which is good for an ad revenue site.

In "Ron Reagan speaks:  The Case Against George W. Bush"

Who was Reagan's puppeteer? Bush Sr.? Certainly, he played a role. He's a former head of the CIA, and a very smart man. I always found him especially chilling, because he obviously knew that his lies were just that. When Bush Sr. said that we were going to war to protect democracy in Kuwait, a country where women couldn't even vote, you knew that he was lying. You can argue that Bush II and Reagan were dumb enough for their handlers to convince them that they were working in the public interest. Certainly, Reagan's strings were pulled by Cheney (who was Reagan's Secretary of Defense), Bush Sr., James Baker, Al Haig, and William Bennett.

Deflating George W. Bush is all well and good, but the article makes Reagan out to be a saint. Replace Ron Jr's images of Abu Gharib with Contras burning rural schools and El Salvadoran death squads killing kids and priests. The Bush II and Reagan adminstrations are a lot more alike than Ron Jr. wants us to believe-- both men are/were stupid, stupid puppets of extremely selfish men. And the puppeteers are doing everything they can to grab as much for their pals as they can while they hide behind Jesus and the flag. In fact, it's mostly the same fucking people running both administrations from Cheney on down. The only difference between Reagan and Bush is that Reagan's puppet was more charming. If Reagan were my dad, I'd lie to myself too, I guess.

In "Feel Like Crap? Eat a June Bug."

The dog in the photo (second link)is about to eat a cricket, and the author seems to be actually describing japanese beetles in the article while referring to them as june bugs. Everyone knows that june bugs are red-brown, not green. Or is the author talking about ones that aren't ripe yet?

In "A joint study by the British Council and the Goethe Institute "

They sure do get guilt-tripped plenty for it anyhow, don't they? Well, they made some PR mistakes that are now only going to be erased by time. Or maybe not even, because the north and south United States still hate each other and that's even longer past. Unfortunately for Germany, they took the correct route and apologized profusely for what they did and said "we're going to make sure that we can never do something like this again." While that's admirable to me, it's condemned them in the court of public opinion because they admitted their guilt. If they'd gone the way of Italy and Japan and said "That? Oh, no. That wasn't us. Some bad guys got carried away but we're not like that," then everyone else would have played along with it. Who even remembers who Tojo is anymore?

I know that modern Germans bear no responsibility for the atrocities of the second World War. That said, I would be suspicious of someone whose grandfather tried to burn my house down. Maybe the Goethe Institute's campaign is just lame and that's why it doesn't work. Has anyone seen it? I'll bet they use some mustachioed, beer-bellied Tueton in lederhosen, but with a backwards baseball cap. "Komm to Chermany! Ve are much exciting und hip, nicht?"

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