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Science is a popularity contest where facts are allowed to intervene often enough.

From a Reuters story: Gasoline may look expensive these days, but it's cheaper than bottled water, [Exxon Mobil Vice President Stuart McGill] said ( Read more... )

Tonight I got addressed as mi negro by a Mexican waiter in a Chinese restaurant whose bar room was full of Chinese guys watching the Superbowl, and cheering loudly in Chinese...

Irrelevant is worse than wrong.

From Baaba Maal's song "Agouyadji," in the translation as supplied by the booklet in the album Baayo (my emphasis):
If you address the Senegalese, the Mandinkas will reply
Or the Bassaris, or the Halpoulars
The Kassounkes, the Manjacks or the Gnominkes

Baaba actually pronounces this word gnominke as [ɲo'miŋka ( Read more... )

Text in both Japanese and English

Because, almost without exception, it is written for people who believe that the world is a small place. I'm sorry, but I don't listen to bullshit about how the Earth is a small speck in the universe when it comes from people who don't understand how large the world is.

Farris Hassan’s not-so-excellent adventure

Beavers, John and Koontz-Garboden, Andrew. In press. A Universal Pronoun in English? To appear in Linguistic Inquiry.

This is a paper about your ass.