Lift Up Your Hearts!

Ha!  Engish is cool, too.  German has its Eszett (ß) and Spanish its eñe (ñ); the world is full of accents and umlauts and other characters that make life interesting and typing difficult.  By contrast, English is plain and boring.

But it wasn't always so.  We had - ta da! - The Thorn.

From Michael Leclerc of the New England Historic Genealogical Society:

One of the most abused of all letters (and former letters) in the English language is the Thorn. In Latin, the letter was written as Þ (capital) or þ (lowercase). In English, however, the thorn looks like the modern letter “y.” The thorn is no longer used in everyday English. The Thorn was pronounced the same way as the digraph “th” in modern English. In proper usage it is NEVER pronounced as the letter “y.”

It is often found on old gravestones, usually in its y-shape followed by a superscript letter ("Here lies y^e body of"), and in the names of stores attempting to appear quaint (Ye Olde Coffee Shop).

Lest you think this is all ancient history, the thorn can also be found in Unicode, on Icelandic keyboards, and in html (þ = þ).

I think that's cool.

With an enthusiastic tip of the hat to PD, I present Hillsborough, New Hampshire's own Bible Hill Boys in this awesome Christmas video, (I Do All My) Christmas Shopping at the Dump.

 

This is in tribute to our very own UJ, who is the undefeated champion of dump shopping in Connecticut.  In Florida, as in many places, dumps are dirty, smelly, nasty, dangerous things.  But in thrifty New England residents can separate out potentially reusable trash and "dump" it in special locations (at the transfer stations), where others can find treasure.  Sometimes literally:  our UJ once found a diamond ring!  Unable to find the original owner, he presented it to his wife.  Needless to say, she does not consider her husband a chump.  He's a champ!  "UJ's Store" is a great place for shopping, whatever the season.

Enjoy the song!

So, this headline popped up in my news feed today:

US, Israel, PA fail to reach agreement on settlement freeze

and my immediate thought was, "Why is Pennsylvania negotiating directly with Israel?"

In case you haven't seen it, check out the 12 Composers of Christmas.  (H/T musician friend Sarah D.)

From a BBC News story of the latest Nissan recall (H/T Porter):

Nissan said there had been no accidents reported due to the fault, which can cause the engine to stall while running.

Just what I needed, something more to worry about.  The nighmare scenario had never occurred to me:  We're peacefully asleep in our beds, our car resting in the garage, apparently quite comfortable—but unbeknownst to us suffering an episode of stalling while the engine was not running.

Non Campus Mentis:  World History According to College Students, compiled by Anders Henriksson (Workman Publishing, New York, 2001) (Later retitled Ignorance Is Blitz)

This compilation of major historical events was pieced together from the essays and exams of students at a variety of colleges in the United States and Canada.  If you know a reasonable amount of world history and geography, you will find it hysterical, at least till you get to the quiz in the back of the book.

It would be a good book to read aloud at a party, although you would miss some pretty funny misspellings.  Reading it aloud in the car, however, as we did, would be unwise:  If you think texting puts the driver at a disadvantage, you should see what happens when he's doubled over with hysterical laughter.  (More)

For friends and family who prefer to ignore Facebook:

Jonathan:  Dad, the spaceship book gave me an idea, and I'm going to be working on a project. It requires liquid oxygen....

Anyone have some spare LOX for an ambitious six-year-old?

For reasons obscure (who needs a reason, anyway?) I was looking up mathematician/musician Tom Lehrer and came upon this.  Enjoy!

Meet Feudal Effort, the latest addition to the comics list on my Sursum Corda page:

 I find it fun.  Sometimes there's a bit of mildly objectionable language, but nothing the nephews can't handle, and I don't think the grandkids are reading my comic list yet.  :)

You can get to know the characters here.

Is there a word, in any language, for "my daughter's husband's cousin's husband"?  That's what Kevin Michael Johnson is, and I'm proud to claim the family relationship, however distant and awkwardly-phrased.  Kevin is an actor, living in New York City with his lovely singer-songwriter wife, Steph Shaw.  One of his recent triumphs was in the show Wild Black Yonder, which a number of members of our family (but, alas, not I) were privileged to see at "The Kate" in Old Saybrook, Connecticut.

Kevin's latest venture is The Raid, a documentary about the tremendously popular online game, World of Warcraft.  Everything I know about WOW I learned form the Foxtrot comic strip...at least until I watched Kevin's promotional video.  The embedded video below is from YouTube, but the link will take you to a video on the official, more informative site, where you can also get involved in the project if it excites you.  You can also check them out on Facebook.

Forget whatever witty and informative post I was going to provide tonight.  Go over to The Occasional CEO and read about the latest and greatest economic forecasting tool:  Just Follow the Bones.

Nanosurf—the company that put an atomic force microscope on Mars and good Swiss bread on Janet's table—has a cool promotional video.

Today's Stone Soup says it all.  Far from being boring, the people I know who are not active on Facebook are choosing instead to live their First Lives.  :)

Thirty years ago we entered the world of adventure gaming.  We had graduated by that point, so I believe it was my brother who first hooked us up to the University of Rochester's computer system, on which was installed ADVENT, the one, the true, the original computer adventure game—running on a DEC-10, I'm pretty sure, though my memory is misty on the details.  After ADVENT we moved on to the original Zork, which was just as much fun.  No devotee of today's high-action, graphic-heavy, semi-realistic games will ever understand the delight of those simple, text-based games.  (The links will take you to Wikipedia's description of the games, but I'd avoid them if you ever think you might play them yourself.  The ADVENT—Adventure—entry especially gives too much away.  And if you're wondering why the name was ADVENT rather than Adventure in those days...believe it or not, it's because "Adventure" has too many letters.

What was truly wonderful about the games was the social interaction.  One of my favorite memories is of the houseful of relatives who had come to share Thanksgiving with us.  We had a borrowed terminal and the old-fashioned type of modem—new technology then—into which one fitted the telephone handset after dialing in and hearing the carrier tone.  We took turns typing commands into the computer, and everyone participated in solving the puzzles, each person contributing his own special knowledge and way of thinking.  The idea of "cooperative games" leaves a bad taste in my mouth, being associated with the misguided self-esteem movement in public schools some years ago, but these, truly, were cooperative games, in which we all won and to which everyone had something to contribute. (More)

My favorite section of the newsletter we get from Wycliffe Bible Translators is where they give some interesting example of the challenges of accurate translation.  The "back translation"—translating back into English something that had been translated from Engilsh to the new language—often reveals subtleties and misunderstandings that can be quite funny.

As it turns out, one doesn't need to be documenting a rare, unwritten language to find translation humor.  Our new printer came with the following warning:

This product is supplied with a plug that has a protective earth pin.  This plug will fit only into an earthed electrical outlet. This is a safety feature.  To avoid risk of electric shock, contact your electrician to replace the electrical outlet if you are unable to insert the plug into it. Never use an earthed adapter plug to connect the product to an electrical outlet that lacks an earth connection terminal.