its all good

kushandwizdom: EVERYTHING POSITIVE you only get what you give...

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 18:49:56 -0500

kushandwizdom:

EVERYTHING POSITIVE

you only get what you give by new radicals

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Thu, 13 Jun 2013 01:29:37 -0500

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Sun, 09 Jun 2013 20:49:12 -0500

thelovenotebook: EVERYTHING LOVE, LIFE & PERSONAL

Sun, 09 Jun 2013 20:14:56 -0500

thelovenotebook:

EVERYTHING LOVE, LIFE & PERSONAL

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Sun, 09 Jun 2013 20:14:09 -0500

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Sun, 09 Jun 2013 20:13:54 -0500

wildcat2030: New 311mph maglev train in Japan passes initial...

Sun, 09 Jun 2013 20:12:57 -0500

wildcat2030:

New 311mph maglev train in Japan passes initial tests

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(Phys.org) —Engineers with Central Japan Railway Co. have put their newest maglev L0 train through initial testing and report the new high-speed train is on course for commercial deployment by 2027. The train will eventually carry up to 1000 passengers at a time in 16 carriages (traveling at speeds up to 311mph / 500kmph) between Tokyo and Nagoya, cutting current travel time from 90 to 40 minutes.

The initial test of the train was a simple trial to ensure soundness—the lead car and four other carriages were pulled along a track using a maintenance vehicle. An official test of the train is expected to be carried out in September. The maglev train, like others of its kind, is held in the air by magnets as it’s traveling cutting down on friction between wheels and rails.

Japan was the first country to introduce maglev trains. They built and used one to transport spectators at speeds up to 130mph to and from venues at the 1964 Olympics held in that country. Since that time, virtually all other technically advanced countries have built so-called bullet trains and have put them into service. The title of worlds fastest is currently held by China’s Shanghai maglev train—it’s capable of running at speeds of up to 268mph, though it generally operates at closer to 150mph due to track length restrictions. A train running at 311mph would set a new bar, likely prompting others to see if that speed can be topped. (via New 311mph maglev train in Japan passes initial tests)

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Sun, 09 Jun 2013 20:12:30 -0500

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Sun, 09 Jun 2013 20:12:17 -0500

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Sun, 09 Jun 2013 20:09:17 -0500

Unbelievable Rooms around the World:

Sun, 09 Jun 2013 20:06:09 -0500

Unbelievable Rooms around the World:

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Sun, 09 Jun 2013 20:05:02 -0500

Dad spends school year waving at bus, embarrassing son

Sun, 09 Jun 2013 15:04:35 -0500

vvntheshort:

iswearimnotadumbblonde:

urethrafranklin:

I can’t decide if this is the best or the worst dad ever

If a man wakes up every day to put on a costume SOLELY to wave his child off to school, he is a dedicated father and truly one of the best out there, even tho this probably embarrassed the shit out of his kid

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Sun, 09 Jun 2013 15:02:33 -0500

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Wed, 05 Jun 2013 17:15:03 -0500

mlb: Might as well jump.

Wed, 05 Jun 2013 17:13:11 -0500

mlb:

Might as well jump.

science: This is linguistics by way of statistics. Statistics...

Wed, 05 Jun 2013 17:12:02 -0500

science:

This is linguistics by way of statistics. Statistics graduate student Joshua Katz made heatmaps based on dialectal differences in American English found in a survey conducted by Bert Vaux, a linguist at the University of Cambridge. I wanted to highlight this slide because it so clearly demonstrates the cyclical nature of language change.

This image shows the second person plural pronoun as used in contemporary US English. As you can see—and probably already know from personal experience—very few actually use “you”, the same word used for the second person singular. This is a useful grammatical distinction that English used to have, then lost, and has now developed again.

In Old English and early Middle English, the 2nd person singular was thou, oblique form thee. This form was originally neither formal nor informal, used to address people of any rank. The 2nd person plural was ye, oblique form you. So how did all these four forms collapse into just one, and the one that used to be the objective plural? After the Norman conquest of England, French started exerting a strong influence on English. Before this, the dominant influence had been Old Norse—the pronoun they is of Norse origin, supplanting original English forms that were too easily confused with singular forms.

French had the T-V distinction, a cross-linguistically common distinction between formal and informal pronouns of address. Under this influence, the singular forms thou/thee came to be regarded as informal, although they, too, have come full circle and are now regarded as extremely/comically formal because they sound so archaic. The polite way to address a singular person now became the plural form, ye/you. These changes also coincide with a general collapse of the complex morphology of English, including its case system. Eventually, thou/thee fell out of favor, and the distinction between ye and you disappeared, leaving only you.

The T-V distinction is common across many languages. Seeing as I just had a Russian exam today, I can tell you that the polite way to address a solitary stranger in Russia is вы (vy, 2nd person plural), which is also how you would address a group of strangers even if you wanted to insult them. But the distinction between singular and plural is also very common, because of its usefulness. And so we’re seeing this distinction creep back into English again, with terms like you guys or y’all. But unlike in the olden days, this time around it’s actually the plural form (you guys, y’all, youse) and not the singular (you) that’s regarded as informal.

This theme of useful distinctions collapsing and then being reinvented is a common one throughout the history of human language. It’s especially silly to talk about linguistic purity or the degradation of language when you have this in mind. Language changes all the time, everyone agrees, but some—often smart, educated people who lack linguistic training—are especially vehement about its being a bad thing, that change is almost always bad or degrading, that language is devolving. But as it turns out, linguistic change is more like a circle, spinning round and round, losing complexity here, gaining it there, then reversing.

Proto-Indo-European, the unrecorded language spoken more than five thousand years ago that spawned modern-day languages as different as Farsi, Russian and English, had a highly complex morphology with lots of cases, three numbers (singular, dual and plural) and so on. Old English had already lost some of this complexity, and Early Modern English had an even simpler morphology. But now modern American English has reintroduced at least some of that complexity to the pronoun system.

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Wed, 05 Jun 2013 17:09:57 -0500

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Wed, 05 Jun 2013 15:06:10 -0500

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Wed, 05 Jun 2013 15:05:56 -0500