Friends

http://majikthise.typepad.com/majikthise_/2010/01/the-institute-for-liberty-institute-isnt-free.html

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1999

Last month I posted a link to a Schott's Vocab Q&A with Claude Hagège on endangered languages. Some commenters immediately picked up on one of Hagège's statements about translation:

However, there exists an important activity which clearly shows that even though the ways languages grasp the world may vary widely from one language to another, they all build, in fact, the same contents, and equivalent conceptions of the world. This activity is translation. Any text in any language can be translated into a text in another language. These two texts express the same meaning. We can therefore conclude that despite the differences between the ways languages grasp the world, all languages are easily convertible into one another, because humans interpret the world along the same, or comparable, semantic lines.

Barbara Partee contributed this comment:

Emmon Bach has put it nicely: The best argument in favor of the universality of natural language expressive power is the possibility of translation. The best argument against universality is the impossibility of translation (i.e. that we often can't really translate exactly). [link added–EB]

Translation ain't easy, even for skilled humans — and (especially) for machines. Google Translate appears to be among the better tools out there, but as the comments section of what (I believe) was Language Log's first reference to Google's translation tool shows, you can have quite a bit of fun breaking it. Moreover, breaking it is easy and can happen completely inadvertently, a lesson that (from what I hear, anyway) is quite often learned too late by desperate students trying to take shortcuts while doing their homeworks for beginning language classes.

Almost exactly a year after that Language Log post, Google Mail added an automatic message translation tool as a Gmail Labs setting. I enabled the tool in my Gmail account and noticed that it easily recognizes every message written in Spanish that I receive from members of my family, suggesting that I translate the message from Spanish to English (and offering drop-down menus with other languages in case it had made the wrong guess, or in case I want to play around). So every once in a while I click on the "Translate message" link and casually examine the results.

Most of the time the translation is imperfect, but the gist of the original appears to be there. A couple of months ago, though, one of my aunts sent a message to several family members on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of my grandmother's (my aunt's mother) death. The most dramatic mistranslation was of the closing line, in which my aunt addresses her mother directly:

tu hija que te quiso tanto, tanto y no supo demostrarlo - PERDONAME.

Which I would translate as:

your daugher who loved you so, so much and didn't know how to show it — FORGIVE ME.

But which Google translated as:

you wanted your daughter so much and failed to prove it - Perdoname.

Some of this mistranslation is probably due to some systematic ambiguities. The verb "querer" in Spanish, represented in the original by the third person perfect form "quiso", does in fact mean both "to want" and "to love". Likewise, "demostrar" means both "to show" and "to prove", just as "to demonstrate" (or even "to show") does in English. Finally, the "tu" at the beginning is ambiguous between "you" and "your" (putting aside the negligible fact that "you" should be spelled "tú", with an acute accent). Throw all those together, shake it up a little, and produce an intelligible English sentence, and the Google translation is at the very least a possible outcome. But I got interested in the fact that the all-caps "PERDONAME", meaning "FORGIVE ME", was left untranslated (though it was changed to the initial-caps-only "Perdoname"). So I changed it to lower case and ran it through again.

tu hija que te quiso tanto, tanto y no supo demostrarlo - perdoname.
you wanted your daughter so much and failed to prove it - pardon me.

Now Google translated the word, but again an ambiguity interfered: "perdonar" does in fact mean "to forgive" as well as "to pardon" in the more mundane sense (much as both of these English verbs are technically also ambiguous in the same way). But then I wondered about how other manipulations of case might affect the translation. First, all-caps for everything:

TU HIJA QUE TE QUISO TANTO, TANTO Y NO SUPO DEMOSTRARLO - PERDONAME.
YOUR DAUGHTER THAT YOU WANTED SO MUCH AND KNEW NO SHOW - Perdoname.

Not sure why that would change the first clause into a noun phrase with a relative clause — nor how "KNEW NO SHOW" popped in there. Next, sentence-initial punctuation only:

Tu hija que te quiso tanto, tanto y no supo demostrarlo - perdoname.
Your daughter who loved you so much and she could not prove it - pardon me.

That did it! The right gist is there, even though the redundant "she" makes it somewhat less than perfect.

I was still interested, though, in how the manipulation of something as relatively meaningless as case could affect the translation so much. So I picked another relatively meaningless part of the original: because "tanto, tanto" was simply being translated as "so much" rather than "so, so much", I simplified it to just "tanto". Here are the results:

tu hija que te quiso tanto y no supo demostrarlo - PERDONAME.
your daughter that you loved so much and she could not prove it - Perdoname.

tu hija que te quiso tanto y no supo demostrarlo - perdoname.
your daughter that you loved so much and she could not prove it - pardon me.

TU HIJA QUE TE QUISO TANTO Y NO SUPO DEMOSTRARLO - PERDONAME.
YOUR DAUGHTER THAT YOU WANTED TO SHOW BOTH and did not know - Perdoname.

Tu hija que te quiso tanto y no supo demostrarlo - perdoname.
Your daughter who loved you so much and failed to prove it - pardon me.

In my estimation, that last one is probably the best of all of the Google translations: the redundant "she" is gone, which more than makes up for the harsher sense of "failed" instead of "could not".

I don't pretend to know anything about Google's translation algorithm(s), but I do find it interesting that what seem like very minor manipulations like those shown above can lead to both bizzarely different results as well as to subtle improvements.

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2031

(Tip of the hat to Rubrick for the title.)

OK, I'm in room Key 5 (I guess that's Francis Scott Key) at the Baltimore Hilton, where the LSA symposium "Medialingual: Representing Language in Film and Television", organized by Walt Wolfram, is just getting started.

Here's Walt's Intro, from the meeting handbook:

This symposium considers the role of the media in the public presentation of language issues. As a field, linguistics lags behind other social and natural sciences in the presentation of a public image through the media. Although there are a number of linguistic issues that might be chosen for public media presentation, this symposium focuses on issues of language and society, in particular, on language change, language variation, language endangerment, and language preservation and documentation. How do we present our research for formal and informal public education? How do we balance our technical expertise with an authentic portrayal of the language communities which we have engaged in our research? And how do we present important issues about the social life of language in a way that is appealing to the public interest, factually faithful, and authentically representative? Each of the participants in this symposium has been actively engaged in media productions that have led to local, regional, and national media portrayals receiving considerable attention and positive reception by the general public and/or particular language communities. Media venues presented and discussed range from documentaries produced for film festivals, museum exhibitions, and public television, to curriculum materials used in revitalization, preservation, and formal educational programs. Formats range from real-life filming to simulated models and animation. The unique presentation format of the symposium allows each participant to present a body of illustrative vignettes from their productions as well as to discuss their rationale for the presentation format and production process.

The first segment features David Harrison, who is showing a trailer for The Linguists, and a passage from the film, and will then talk about some related things.  I might have to leave about 5:00, unfortunately, so David's discussion might be the last part of this session that I get to see.

David showed the segments from the film that take place in Siberia and in Arizona.

He's talking about how he started the project five years before the result was released.  For him, the PR aspect of the movie was partly a recruiting tool for undergraduate courses… He cites a bunch of firsts (the first NSF-funded film premiered at Sundance, for example).

The seven most popular questions he's been asked at screenings:

What's the difference between a language and a dialect?

Do different languages imply different world views?

Is it really worthwhile to save an endangered language?

Is it possible to bring an endangered language back?

Are there many people doing this kind of work? How do I get trained to do it?

What's happened to the various characters?

He discusses the motivations and the reactions of the speakers featured in the film.

A criticism: The movie is too fast-paced, it telescopes large-scale and long-term projects and makes them seem like a quick drop-in interaction. David: this is valid, but …

Another: the film recapitulates "discourses of colonialism" by showing two white male linguists in control of interactions with indigenous people.  David: "I look forward to similar efforts from native speakers of endangered languages" — he points to a recent work called When it's gone, it's gone.

(Note that you can buy a copy of the movie on DVD for $30.)

The second speaker is Ashley Stinnett from Arizona, who is showing some clips from a film in progress called Voyagers on the Ring of Fire, about the colonization of the Pacific. One of the clips shows a sort of video-documented Swadesh word list from speakers in different parts of the islands of Sumba, Flores, and Nias. She shows two different versions of this clip, the second one with much more background video, more explanatory voice-overs, etc., including discussion of combining linguistic and genetic data. The second clip also has more ethnographic and historical material, and some segments showing how the team introduced themselves to the people in a new area.

Based on these short samples, this is going to be a terrific movie. Unfortunately, at this point I need to leave for a scheduled meeting!

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2030

The book Hypothesis A/Hypothesis B: Linguistic Explorations in Honor of David M. Perlmutter, edited by Donna Gerdts, John Moore, and Maria Polinsky, has just been published by MIT Press. According to the book blurb:

Anyone who has studied linguistics in the last half-century has been affected by the work of David Perlmutter. One of the era's most versatile linguists, he is perhaps best known as the founder (with Paul Postal) of Relational Grammar, but he has also made contributions to areas ranging from theoretical morphology to sign language phonology. Hypothesis A/Hypothesis B (the title evokes Perlmutter's characteristic style of linguistic argumentation) offers twenty-three essays by Perlmutter’s colleagues and former students.

Many of the contributions deal with the study of the world's languages (including Indo-European languages, sign language, and languages of the Americas), reflecting the influence of Perlmutter's cross-linguistic research and meticulous analysis of empirical data. Other topics include grammatical relations and their mapping; unaccusatives, impersonals, and the like; complex verbs, complex clauses, and Wh-constructions; and the nature of sign language. Perlmutter, currently Professor Emeritus at the University of California, San Diego, and still actively engaged in the field, opens the volume with the illuminating and entertaining essay, "My Path in Linguistics."

Follow that link at the end — the chapter is available as a free sample. And if you're at the secret cabal, stop by the MIT Press stall at the book exhibit and get yourself a copy.

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2029

I'm in Baltimore for the secret annual cabal of the Linguistic Society of America. The meeting Handbook is not secret, but it's rather large, so don't click unless you want 6.32 MB of crunchy linguistic goodness. You could start with the program instead.

If I can get a wireless connection, I'll liveblog some of the meeting, starting this afternoon with Walt Wolfram's 4:00 "Symposium: Medialingual: Representing Language in Film and Television".

http://aldaily.com

Jack Kerouac's estate went to his mom, instead of his third wife. When mom died, she gave it back to the wife, cutting out his kids. Was mom's will a fake?... more

School lunch programs are remarkable: they mananage to promote obesity, poor nutrition, and hunger all at the same time... more

The demise of dueling, Bertrand Russell felt, had "made it difficult to be insulting without being ungentlemanly." We need ways to be offensive without seeming to be ill-bred... more

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/scienceblogs/pharyngula/~3/DPtP4XrrYSo/theyre_coming_for_us_my_fellow.php

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/01/theyre_coming_for_us_my_fellow.php

They've gone too far. It was bad enough that the creationists treat science with such contempt, but now…the fundy kooks hate science fiction, too!

Science fiction is intimately associated with Darwinian evolution. Sagan and Asimov, for example, were prominent evolutionary scientists. Sci-fi arose in the late 19th and early 20th century as a product of an evolutionary worldview that denies the Almighty Creator. In fact, evolution IS the pre-eminent science fiction. Beware!

Hey! Sagan was a physicist, and Asimov was a chemist; of the other evil science fiction authors listed, Heinlein, Clarke, Vonnegut, and Roddenberry, not one is a biologist! I think I'm offended.

http://majikthise.typepad.com/majikthise_/2010/01/weekly-pulse-dorgan-and-dodd-to-retire.html

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/scienceblogs/pharyngula/~3/RzVbBzhBj0o/no_means_no.php

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/01/no_means_no.php

I told you all to not vote for me in that poll looking for the most influential female atheist of 2009, but you just had to go and disobey me. The photo at that link is photoshopped, I swear; I'm sure I'd be more bosomy.

However, one good thing has come out of it. Jen has compiled a good (but still, as always, incomplete!) list of notable godless women. Please, organizers of atheist/humanist events, take a look at that list when thinking about speakers, because I'm tired.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/scienceblogs/pharyngula/~3/DXkmigt6ruA/california_madness.php

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/01/california_madness.php

Travel season begins again for me. I've already mentioned that I'm off to Winnipeg this weekend; the weekend after that is the Science Online conference. And then the whirlwind begins: I'm invading California, singlehandedly. Here's my schedule:

W, 1/20: UC Santa Barbara
Th, 1/21: UC Davis
F, 1/22: Berkeley
Sa, 1/23: UC Santa Cruz
Su, 1/24: De Anza College (Cupertino)
M: 1/25: CSU Chico
T: 1/26 Sacramento City College
W: 1/27: Stanford
Th: 1/28: Sierra College

That's insane. I may regret this when I stagger away from that grueling series. At least I'm giving the same talk at all of them, on creationism and complexity, so I won't have to struggle to keep the topics straight.

And that's not all! I'm coming home from California to hop on a plane to Ireland! I'm still working out a few details, but I can tell you that I'll be speaking at University College Dublin on 2 February, and Galway on 4 February. I've got pending invitations from Cork and Belfast that I'm still trying to squeeze into the schedule; I may do both if I can work out transportation, but I'll do at least one of them. It would be nice to visit all four so I can say I've done Ireland east, west, north and south.

And then I come home in time for the Darwin Day madness! I'll be going to the University of Northern Iowa and South Carolina. More about those later.

http://aldaily.com

Economists are not skinflints. They are just, uh, thrifty. You've got to love any guy who won't sell his kids because they might be worth more later on... more

Barbara Ehrenreich has a valid point: in a culture of pink ribbons and happy-talk, it may take a village atheist to remind us that we can choose not to believe... more

When Salman Rushdie met trouble, intellectuals of Europe rallied to his side. Now, with the attempt to murder a Danish cartoonist, they are gripped with fear... more

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/scienceblogs/pharyngula/~3/oH7_J0wofVE/tstkts.php

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/01/tstkts.php

Carl Wieland, the creationist clown from Australia, wrote a bitter article denouncing atheists and scientists for refusing to give him a platform to yodel nonsense on, and one of the things he did was link to my my public refusal to debate him. Unfortunately, what that meant is that all of his Too-Stupid-To-Know-They're-Stupid acolytes came charging over to declare that creationism was too scientific, evolutionism is a religion, scientists are afraid to debate their pet idiots, you're all mean poopyheads who call us names, yadda yadda yadda. It's turned into a regular storm of argument that has filled up the thread with over 1100 comments.

I've closed the thread and added an invitation to resume in this one, if they must.

One thing I'd like to see the creationists consider is a simple fact. When scientists make interpreting the totality of the evidence their priority, with even the believers among scientists regarding the natural world around them as part of their god's message to human beings, they come to the conclusion that the book of Genesis is a myth or a non-literal parable of some sorts, because it does not line up at all with the physical evidence. The rocks speak out against the earth being less than ten thousand years old, and the molecules in our bodies all speak for billions of years of descent from a common ancestor. The only 'evidence' for a young earth is a very specific, and rather skewed, interpretation of one book written by a scattered conglomeration of non-scientific priests, accompanied by a lot of unfounded 'revelations' by seers, mystics, and obsessed numerologists (oh, and a related question to you creationists: how many of you are aware that many of the details of the creation myth that you regard as gospel truth have their source in the visions of the Seventh Day Adventist prophetess Ellen White and her agent, George MacReady Price?).

Now be honest. If you peel the Bible away from the argument, just pretend for a moment that it doesn't exist, do you appreciate the fact that there is no independent evidence to support the story you draw from it? Think like a heathenish pagan who has no respect for biblical authority, and you'll realize why your claims have no weight. What creationists are always trying to do is to cobble up some of that evidentiary support for their beliefs, while refusing to acknowledge that their entire claim rests on a presupposition that the bible is a valid source of prehistoric information.

If you did honestly try to separate your beliefs from your religion, you're probably a bit dizzy and nauseous right now. Go ahead, go back to embracing your clumsy old book…but realize this. Here, you're arguing with a group of people who not only disbelieve your crutch, but actively despise it as a source of lies. You can try to pretend that the source of your doubts about science are polonium halos and the Grand Canyon and missing transitional fossils, but we see right through you: we know the only thing propping up your absurd beliefs is the Bible.

And guess what? It's just another cranky old book written by cranky old men who tried to replace their ignorance with a foolish certainty.

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2027

One of the things that I acquired over the holiday was a Talking Obama Figure ("Hear His Historic and Inspirational Words") from Gemmy Industries Corp. of Coppell, TX, "the worlds largest provider of all your favorite seasonal decor, animation entertainment and lighting products". This is one of a large number of other Gemmy talking toys, from the "Animated Talking Head Skeleton" and the "Gemmy Talking Dancing Hamster 97 Kurt Busch", to the "Dora the Explorer Talking Christmas Doll in Santa Outfit" and the "Animated Talking Bouncing Van of Love", and  Gemmy's monster hit from 2000-2001, "Big Mouth Billy Bass".

As you press of the red button on its pedestal, the Talking Obama Figure cycles through nine passages from president Obama's speeches. What struck me first about this collection of inspirational oratory was that it's performed by somebody else.

I noticed this because the performer, though he imitates the president's characteristic prosody, has a distinct South Midland accent. Thus the first passage is from the 11/4/2008 Grant Park victory speech:

The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even one term, but America - I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. I promise you - we as a people will get there.

Listen to the Gemmy figure's pronounciation of get and I in this excerpt:

And compare Obama's performance of the same words:

This left me with several questions. Why did they use someone else's voice? Was it for obscure technical reasons, or because of IPR issues with voice that are somehow different from text, or what? And once they decided to use another speaker, why did they have him imitate the president's prosody but not his vowels? Was it because they can't hear the difference, or because they thought their customers would prefer a somewhat Texan version of Obama?

And most important of all, what is the connection between NASCAR driver Kurt Busch and a dancing hamster? This seems like a random selection from the cross-product of American memes, a process that might produce future products like the Talking Tiger Woods Lolcat or the Alvin and the Chipmunks Talking Dancing Mitt Romney.

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2028

A Bizarro leap forward in animal abilities:

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2026

In the lull between Christmas and New Year's Day, I read the droll news of a special parking lot for women in the city of Shijiazhuang, Hebei Province, with spaces a meter wider than normal and painted in pink and light purple "to appeal to female tastes."

Today, Nathan Hopson sent me an article from Le Monde that shows pictures of this wondrous parking lot, leaving me even more in awe of the lengths to which the proprietors have gone to satisfy their customers:

The overhead sign reads nü3xing4 ting2che1chang3 女性停車場 ("female / women's parking lot"), rendered in English as "Women Parking."

Beneath that sign is another which attempts to be even more elegant: nü3shi4 ting2che1chang3 女士停車場 ("ladies parking lot"), rendered in English as "Lady Parking."

This Lady Parking area is located in a glitzy shopping center called the "Wonder Mall". It is truly a lavish establishment, with all the right name brands, as can be seen from these descriptions.

The BBC reports that "Official Wang Zheng told AFP news agency the car park was meant to cater to women's 'strong sense of colour and different sense of distance'", where presumably "different sense of distance" is code for the Chinese version of the "woman driver" stereotype.  So it's only fair to counter with an American woman's joke, which asks "Why can't <insert your favorite nationality, region, or university> men parallel park?", and answers, holding up a thumb and forefinger about four inches apart, "because they think that this is eight inches".

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2025

The little bird..Tweets to its mate a tiny loving note (George Meredith, Pastorals, 1851, as cited in OED2)

In my last posting, I reported on Lake Superior State University's 2010 "List of Words Banished from the Queen's English for Mis-use, Over-use and General Uselessness" (for the year 2009), but reserving tweet (verb or noun) for separate treatment.

Objections to tweet are all over the place. Some people dislike the word because they think it sounds irretrievably silly (with its echo of "When my sugar walks down the street / All the little birdies go tweet, tweet, tweet"). I don't use Twitter myself, but I think that tweet is an inspired coinage, suggesting bright, brief, bursts of expression (like birdsong) and connecting both phonologically and semantically to twitter; I might have suggested chirp, but it lacks those connections.

There are, of course, people who object to Twitter as a name for this service, on the grounds that it is itself silly — infantile and trivializing. Well, the people who created the service in 2006 (Jack Dorsey and his associates; see the Wikipedia page) got to choose the name for it; the rest of us don't get to revise the label.

(Compare Wii, which tons of people despised as the name for a game console when it came out, but the console has flourished despite this griping about the name, which for many people has now become "just the name for" the console, without any strong association to we or any of the senses of wee. People cope easily with homophony, even monstrous amounts of it; context and background knowledge make all the difference. In fact, I think Twitter and tweet have pretty much gone this route, largely unmoored from the avian metaphors that lie behind them; they're "just names" now.)

Then there are people who object to Twitter-the-service (as opposed to Twitter-the name). Their objection seems to be to abbreviation in itself — though it's frankly comical to see people who in other contexts trumpet the virtues of brevity objecting to a form of communication that enforces brevity. (The objectors' error is in taking advice meant, whether reasonably or not, to regulate formal written standard English in certain special contexts to apply to all writng, or even speaking, in the language.)

Which brings me back to the LSSU list, where one commenter on tweet pronounces, "tweeting is ridiculous". You can't tell whether the objection is to the act of tweeting — associated in some people's minds with frivolous young people and vainly self-promoting celebrities, as if these were the only groups to use Twitter, so that using Twitter is viewed contemptuously, since these groups are viewed contemptuously — or to the word (verb or noun) tweet. I can't even tell whether the commenter distinguished the two; words and things are so closely linked, after all.

There are serious defenders of Twitter as a positive good (as opposed to those who merely defend other people's right to conduct their own affairs in their own way, in private or in public, so long as they aren't harming others — taking offense is not the same as being harmed, by the way). See, for example, the lead article in the January 3 NYT Week in Review: "Why Twitter Will Endure", by David Carr.

Carr deprecates the name Twitter and the verb tweet:

In the pantheon of digital nomenclature — brands within a sector of the economy that grew so fast that all the sensible names were quickly taken — it would be hard to come up with a noun more trite [an odd choice of adjective; how is the name Twitter overused or lacking in originality?] than Twitter. It impugns itself, promising something slight and inconsequential, yet another way to make hours disappear and have nothing to show for it. And just in case the noun is not sufficiently indicting, the verb, "to tweet", is even more embarrassing.

But, despite his unhappiness over the vocabulary, Carr goes on to argue for the utility of Twitter, especially when you use various features it provides for managing the flow of tweets.

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2024

It's the beginning of a new year, so Lake Superior State University has come out with its annual list of words (well, expressions) to be banished from English. (We've had brief Language Log postings on earlier LSSU lists — at least, here, here, and here.) Yes, it's a publicity stunt, and yes, it's a steaming pile of intemperate peeving (on the evidence of the comments selected for the entries on the site), and yes, the hyperbolic conceit of the site is that not only are the compilers declaring that they despise these expressions but they are proposing that everyone should be prohibited from ever using them (not that such opinions could have any real effect on what people do; the site is all show and no consequence.)

The villains are familiar: expressions that are, or are believed to be, recent innovations; especially those associated, rightly or wrongly, with young people (on chillaxin': "a made-up word used by annoying Gen-Yers") or journalistic writing or business talk; currently popular expressions, or expressions believed to be currently popular, labeled as "overused" or "buzzwords" (as if popularity was a curse in itself); portmanteaus (sexting, bromance, chillaxin', variations on Obama); and abbreviated expressions (app).

The substitutions commenters propose are often tin-eared or semantically deficient:

for the verb friend in social media: send a friend request or befriend;

for teachable moment: opportunity to make a point or lesson;

for czar: leader, coordinator, or director;

for toxic assets: bad stocks, debts, or loans;

for app: program.

I usually try to steer clear of sinks of peeving, because they are mostly just ill-informed recitations of contempt, but once a year I check in on the LSSU folks and their (fortunately brief) parade of bile (in part because their list comes out just before the American Dialect Society votes, in a light-hearted way, on the Words of the Year in various categories).

I'll post separately on objections to tweet (verb or noun), which made the LSSU Final Fifteen this year.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/scienceblogs/pharyngula/~3/pIkaVad4BmY/google_is_being_sensitive.php

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/01/google_is_being_sensitive.php

This is weird: if you go to the Google page and start typing in search phrases, it helpfully tries to offer suggests…sometimes. There are some odd restrictions going on behind the scenes.

In the search field type "Christianity is" and you will see recommendations of "bullsh*t, not a religion, a lie, false, a cult, wrong, fake, dying, Jewish, and not a religion t-shirt."

In the search field type "Hinduism is" and you will see recommendations of "monotheistic, false, polytheistic, the majority religion of, the oldest religion, not a religion, fake, most commonly found, characterized by, and wrong."

In the search field type "Buddhism is" and you will see recommendations of "not a religion, wrong, not what you think, bullsh*t, polytheistic, a religion, false, based on what concepts, the best religion, and atheism."

In the search field type "Judaism is" and you will see recommendations of "false, not a race, not a religion, a race, a religion of the book, not Jewish, a gutter religion, monotheistic, a cult, and a religion."

Try typing "Atheism is" and you will see recommendations of "a religion, dead, not a religion, wrong, the new fundamentalism, growing, a non-prophet organization, so senseless, illogical, a religion supreme court." Clearly they are not holding back on the Atheists.

Now, let's try Islam. Type in "Islam is" and you will see...

Absolutely nothing. That's correct. Google makes no recommendations based on searches of "Islam Is."

Why is Google blocking search recommendations for "Islam is?"

Good question.

http://aldaily.com

An extinct race of humans found in Africa had big eyes, child-like faces, and a high IQ - genius ancestors... more Maybe, but not everyone is buying it.

Facebook, we rather easily forget, needs to build a profit with our "friendships." Jaron Lanier, barefoot guru of the web, is on the case... more

Just-so stories: unscientific yarn-spinning, mere guessing? Or a part of imaginative hypothesis building in science? David Barash explores a question too-long ignored... more

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/scienceblogs/pharyngula/~3/lcntboGiCGU/youtube_needs_fixin.php

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/01/youtube_needs_fixin.php

One of the big problems with YouTube is that science channels that criticize creationists are often shut down — they are targeted by votebots that lower their ratings, and there are plenty of people who file frivolous notifications of DMCA violations that lead to whole channels being shut down until the case is fought out. This is not good — the system is hair-trigger sensitive to complaints, but does nothing to filter out the noise of unwarranted claims made solely to silence people.

A science regular on YouTube, Andromeda's Wake, has put up a short video requesting more confrontation with Google/YouTube on the issue of DMCA abuse. The problem has been brought to the attention of Google developers, and there is a petition demanding censorship reform. You should sign it!

(Hmmm…I wonder if this approach would work to get Seed to fix the broken comment registration system here…)