The LA Times has a story on a new dictionary that is helping to save Samala (the Chumash language) from extinction: “Chumash language brought back from the brink”:

A generation ago, the ancient Chumash tongue of Samala was all but dead, its songs and sagas buried in a university basement beneath mountains of yellowing research notes.

But now Samala is the talk of the reservation.

Thanks largely to a non-American Indian graduate student who was working for pocket money 40 years ago, the tribe has unveiled the first major Samala dictionary, a key moment in the language’s rebirth.

Continue…

Back in the days of NeXT, there was a bundled application called Digital Librarian. And as AppleInsider describes in this article, “Road to Mac OS X Leopard: Dictionary 2.0”,

Included with the system were the complete works of Shakespeare, The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary, and Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Thesaurus.

With the new Dictionary.app, you have the ability to view other dictionaries, as well as all of Wikipedia — I’ve already been using this capability a ton. Combined with using the keyboard shortcuts under the “Search” menu, searching multiple places is very easy and quick.

An item that might go overlooked is in the “Go” menu — “Front/Back Matter.” Choosing that while the Dictionary is selected reveals various meta items like the people associated with making the included New Oxford American Dictionary, prefaces, introductions, etc. But there’s actually a massive amount of additional resources here. Check it out:

• American Voices by William A.Kretzschmar, Jr.
• How to Read an Etymology by Anatoly Liberman
• Key to the Pronunciations
• Key to the Abbreviations

Ready Reference

• Language Guide
  • Rules of English: Understanding Grammar
  • Guide to Spelling
  • Guide to Capitalization and Punctuation
  • Words: Making the Right Choices
  • Clichés
  • Proofreader’s Marks
• The History of English
  • Timeline
• States of the United States of America
• Presidents of the United States of America
• Declaration of Independence
• Constitution of the United States of America
• Countries of the World
• Chemical Elements
• Standard Weights and Measures with Metric Equivalents and Conversions
• Metric Weights and Measures with Standard Equivalents and Conversions
• Alphabets

Of course, in our always-online culture nowadays, all of this stuff is available via your favorite web browser. But if you happen to be offline (horror of horrors), these could be very useful.

When automated iTunes Store censors attack.

Information

Show MythBusters
Episode Sinking Titanic

Yeah, nothing like a sinking ship to t*tillate you as it goes under, s**king its p***engers down to their deaths.

Pet peeve of mine: the phrase “Food Porn.”

First off, let’s take a look at the definition of “pornography” —

por•nog•ra•phy |pôrˈnägrəfē| noun printed or visual material containing the explicit description or display of sexual organs or activity, intended to stimulate erotic rather than aesthetic or emotional feelings.

The irony being that Food Porn is supposed to be aesthetic. But is it really? My theory is that Food Porn’s true essence is the same as real pornography’s — it’s all about the masturbation.

The phrase “Food Porn” is the reduction of food and cooking from their true importance to the equivalent to porn’s sad objectifications.

You always see descriptive phrases like “mouth watering” and “delicious” and “gorgeous looking” attached to Food Porn posts, much like the titillating blurbs on the DVD box or website signup form. Shouldn’t the food stand on its own?

Why is it in Food Porn imagery you never see people actually enjoying the food? You know, eating it?

• Flickr: Food Porn
• Technorati: Food Porn

A Discovery News article today has the story of nuthatches that have apparently learned to interpret the calls of another bird, the chickadee.

It’s not unusual for one animal to react to the alarm call of another, but nuthatches seem to go beyond that — interpreting the type of alarm and what sort of predator poses a threat. When a chickadee sees a predator, it issues warning call — a soft “seet” for a flying hawk, owl or falcon, or a loud “chick-a-dee-dee-dee” for a perched predator.

There is some question about the methodology of the study that reached these conclusions, but whatever the case it looks to warrant further investigation.

One orinthologist commenting on the story mentioned a sneaky tactic by one variety of chickadee:

…black-capped chickadees have been known to produce false alarm calls, causing other birds to fly away, leaving the cheating chickadees to enjoy a food source by itself.

Smart birds. :)