The headline figure this morning is 20%, but the survey (.doc) asks the question twice and the other answer is different. First there’s question 3:
I’m going to read you a list of apparatus and new technologies that are being used more and more frequently in Spain. Tell me, please, of each one whether you have [...]

This stuff should be subsidised, not banned, although I can’t work out whether the machines used to produce it are translators or generators. Here’s something I received this morning (URL omitted):
Our soft pensil makes sound.
Our noisy round eraser is thinking and our children beautiful spoon arrives.
A golden glasses smells at the place that any round-shaped [...]

As a second-class Anglo-Saxon, I would have immediately and incorrectly assumed that the use of the word shatnes in connection with wool and linen referred to the increase in hygiene and decrease in mortality that resulted from making undergarments from the latter rather than the former (PDF).
Via LanguageHat.

There they go again, blaming the courier (via Prandial). It would never have happened in Roxboro, where peaceful co-existence is the order of the day.
In one of those coincidences that herald intestinal difficulties and a tepid spring, it turns out this week was also the last at work for the man know for inventing [...]

Says Jon Cusack of his new child, Jon Cusack v2.0:
I wrote in the birth announcement e-mail stuff, like there’s a lot of features from version 1.0 with additional features from Jamie [his wife].
Fine, but someone explain to me how you put the release date back three months to enable glitch fixes.
Via Boing Boing.

If CNET are so bloody clever, how come I receive their Morning Dispatch at five in the afternoon? Three concepts for further study: IP mapping, time zones, personalisation.

This is even cooler (or dafter) than SVG: an image constructed (and manipulable) using just CSS (explanation here).

Just a warning that the site may be even more chaotic over the next couple of days. This is because I’ve taken a deep breath and decided to do stuff like kick out virtually all non-data tables in favour of CSS2-based layouts (= quicker site + more display/media options) and switch to UTF-8 (= more [...]

Això és la llista dels llibres que més s’estan venent dins el grup específic de codis postals que constitueix Microsoft. Es diu un purchase circle e hi ha mes aquí. A Anchorage (Alaska) es llegeix sobre escapar, viatjar, sobreviure, els gossos y Microsoft .Net.
Via Scobleizer.

How global government could make some lonely shepherds very happy.

Weg, dus. Vind ik niet erg: Kaleboel bleef altijd belachelijk ondergewardeerd.

I can’t think of a better web project to come out of Germany than the Technical University of Munich’s LEO. Their collaborative online GermanEnglish dictionary is outstanding, it’s free, and it’s getting in the order of three million hits a day. Now these excessively good people have announced a FrenchGerman version, to be launched early [...]

Good post by Mark Liberman on Language Log:
Captain John Dunn, of the Shreveport LA police department, is quoted by CNN as attributing the failure of the speech recognition technology in their new PBX to “Southern drawl and what I call lazy mouth”… Message to Captain Dunn: the fault is in your system’s technology, not in [...]

This is so silly I can’t believe anyone’s taking it seriously.

In LA County mag je de tech terminologie master/slave niet meer gebruiken in contacten met de locale overheid, zegt BoingBoing:
The County of Los Angeles actively promotes and is committed to ensure a work environment that is free from any discriminatory influence be it actual or perceived. As such, it is the County’s expectation that our [...]

Biomedcentral:
Sydney Brenner va dir que va preveure el dia en que – així com la National Academy of Sciences ja no té una secció per a la biologia molecular perquè cada biòleg és essencialment biòleg molecular – [cada biòleg] sigui biòleg computacional. Però es deuen tractar les qüestions culturals abans que això pugui succeir, va [...]

USA Today (2003/11/03):
“Bio[tech] ha arribat a ser el millor amic de tots,” diu Rick Weddle, director del International Economic Development Council. [Però intentar crear ocupació en la biotech] “sembla invertir els estalvis de tota la seva vida en bitllets de loteria,” diu economista Joe Cortright.
Entretant, grangers a Gujarat (Bharat Textile, 2003/11/04) i al Midwest [...]

Transblawg posts re the adaptation of the language used in British novels for the American market and vice versa. This subject also occasionally exercises John of Iberian Notes (2003/10/17, for example), who thinks that it’s time we Brits started caring again about the eccentric pastimes of folk who were so very rude to us only [...]

Ik ga vanmiddag naar het film noir festival te Manresa om Parranda (1977) te zien en dan naar director Gonzalo Suárez te luisteren. Dichter bij wat ik beschouw als de plaatselijke traditie is Pedro Tembourys Kárate a Muerte en Torremolinos (2001), nu uit op DVD. Deze film schijnt nog slechter te zijn dan de mythische [...]

Some of the recent obituaries of super-poet Willem Wilmink (1936-2003) managed to avoid mentioning his writings in Twents, despite the fact that this part of his work – he also translated, wrote and rewrote extensively in Dutch – enjoyed a large following in Twente.
Let’s start by locating the two languages. Linguists classify Dutch and Twents [...]