Language Decay

Someone--I can't remember who--observed that adjectives and adverbs in all languages gradually decay and must be replaced with new ones, because they are gravitationally drawn over the centuries towards meaning simply "good" or "bad".  Consider the original meanings of these words:

Good: From Proto-Indo-European *gʰedʰ- (“to unite, be associated, suit”)
Wonderful: Full of wonder
Awful: Full of awe, so holy or transcendent as to inspire fear

Read More

The other day Google’s image search failed me. I was after the well-known image of Pinkie Pie hunched over a control panel in Twilight’s laboratory while her friend examines her brain activity. I searched for “Pinkie Pie EEG”, “Pinkie Pie electroencephalography” and got nothing relevant. Of course I was easily able to locate the required file by other methods, but I’m very disappointed by the fandom’s failure to properly tag images.

Read More

Anyone connected with the world of High Energy Particle Physics, or anyone who reads lots of popular science articles, may have picked up the news that something interesting has been seen at CERN. Maybe.

Read More