More Silly Reporting

On space, this time. Thomas James points out a dumb article about the DaVinci Project, including an obligatory bonus quote from John Pike.

To be fair, of course, the folks up in Saskatchewan probably don’t get many opportunities to do first-hand space reporting.

One,Two,Many…

Via comments on a post at Crooked Timber, an article in the Globe and Mail about a tribe in the Amazon that not only doesn’t have a numbering system, they also don’t have clearly defined words for colors. Adding weirdness to weirdness, they also change their names on a regular basis. The thrust of the article is that the lack of number names interferes with their ability to count. There’s a whole literature in linguistics about this and the larger issue of how language influences thinking, though the subject has fallen into disfavor. I suspect that the truth of the matter is that language severely constrains thought, in that it’s easier to conceptualize things for which you have a word, but does not completely limit it (or where would new words come from? – the concept has to precede the word).

Incidentally, if you’re interested in this question, check out the logical langauge group. They are developing and promoting a language based on formal logic with the explicit intention of exploring the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.

A True Purple Heart Weighs In

Bob Dole says that Bob Dole is skeptical about his friend Senator Kerry’s Purple Hearts. He’s not very kind to his friend Senator Kerry in general:

…what I will always quarrel about are the Purple Hearts. I mean, the first one, whether he ought to have a Purple Heart — he got two in one day, I think. And he was out of there in less than four months, because three Purple Hearts and you’re out.

[Update a couple minutes later]

This Boston Globe editorial is simply mind boggling:

Kerry, on the other hand, may have done more than Dole to qualify as a genuine war hero. Although his tour in Vietnam was short, on at least two occasions he acted decisively and with great daring in combat, saving at least one man’s life and earning both a Silver Star and a Bronze Star. That’s not our account or Kerry’s; it is drawn from eyewitnesses and the military citations themselves.

Ignoring, of course, the much greater number of eyewitnesses who dispute it, and the possibility that the citations are based on false testimony.

And this bit is amazing as well:

Rather than seeking debate, however, this group, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, is attempting political assassination, claiming in ads and a best-selling book that Kerry is “Unfit for Command.” In many cases the charges conflict with statements the same men made in the past. Sometimes the allegations contradict documentary evidence.

“Rather than seeking debate”? They’re eager to join in a debate, but the media refuses to interview them for the most part. It’s John Kerry who is resisting debate. He won’t even address the charges, instead slandering them and accusing them of being Republican attack dogs.

Anyway, on to the relevant part of the Dole interview with Wolf Blitzer:

Continue reading A True Purple Heart Weighs In

Fending Off The Seventies

Lileks has some appropriately cruel and hilarious commentary on the latest fashions.

For young men, true high style: $30 John Deere shirts or T-shirts with typefaces from the “Mork & Mindy” era, worn with a brown knit cap I’d wear only if I were missing part of my skull and wanted to keep my brain warm en route to the hospital. The shirts remind you of that glorious era of grunge. Plaid. Ratty plaid. You remember grunge! That’s when Dame Fashion required healthy, happy people to look like they had inherited the contents of a Salvation Army dumpster filled with the clothes of heroin-addicted lumberjacks.

Enjoy the whole thing.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!