Weekly rescrap 11/26/07—12/02/07

Greetings! Class may be over, but Language Scraps lives on. Time for another look back on this week in scraps.

Monday:
-Scott sparked discussion on obscenity/vulgarity and how class affects the definition of it

Thursday:
-Vegor peered through the microscope at microcelebrity in the age of social networks and internet ubiquity
-Grabloid waxed philosophical about the end of the term with An Ode to our "Language: Our Most Dangerous of Possessions" class

Weekly Rescrap 11/19/07 - 11/25/07

Tuesday:
- Scott explored the linguistic remnants of bipedalism in his post, On Standing

- Brent spooked all of us out with The Face of Altmann

Hopefully, we've all come back from Thanksgiving full of insights and scraps. Share them when you get the chance!

Weekly rescrap 11/12/07—11/18/07

Thursday:
-Scott posted on the language-based work of Lawrence Weiner

Sunday:
-Brent wrote about virtual body language

It's Thanksgiving week in the U.S. Take a moment on a day off (if you have one) to come up with a good scrap to share.

Weekly rescrap 10/29/07—11/11/07

It's a bi-weekly rescrap this time, because the first week was a slow one. On to the scraps:

Tuesday 10/30:
-Grabloid asked, "Was there an ancient language of universal symbols?"

Tuesday:
-Torben broke us out of the funk with Pecha Kucha and emotionally intelligent signage

Wednesday
-Scott shared thoughts and an article on geographical names
-Torben posted the video A Vision of Students Today

Thursday:
-Vegor linked to an article exemplifying integrated studies in action

Friday:
-Rikker asked, "What's in a word?"
-Torben posted the video The Machine is Us/ing Us
-Scott gave notes from class

Weekly rescrap 10/22/07—10/28/07

A busy Thursday in an overall slow week.

Tuesday:
-Torben made us wonder whether Chinese youth really get crazy English tattoos (answer: it's a spoof)

Thursday:
-Torben posted the story of war graves defaced with Nazi symbols
-Torben shared the connection between music and human speech
-Torben pointed the way to Glottopedia, a wiki-based encyclopedia of linguistics
-Torben stumbled across the Endangered Language Fund
-Scott wrote on pledging allegiance to the flag
-Rikker linked to Multibabel, a machine translation game of "telephone"

Weekly rescrap 10/8/07—10/14/07

Monday:
-Torben shared a great George Carlin clip
-Torben gave us food for thought about worn out metaphors
-Torben showed why America is #1! wo0O!1!

Tuesday:
-Grabloid responded to Torben's metaphor post

Friday:
-Torben excerpted an article on tracking language evolution
-Don asked, "What the F*** is goin on?"

Saturday:
-Rikker mused on writing without communicating
-Torben linked us to the Online Etymological Dictionary
-Rikker led the way to Name Voyager

Sunday:
-Rikker wondered about criminal nicknames, Confucius, and Adam & Eve

Weekly rescrap 10/1/07—10/7/07

Monday:
-Grabloid pondered Universality: Irrationality, Absurdity, Perception

Tuesday:
-Scott commented on Jacques Dupin's three essays on Giacometti
-Torben sparked some discussion on Confucius and the rectification of names

Thursday:
-Rikker discussed the Italian maxim "translator, traitor"

Friday
-Scott excerpted a review of a new translation of the psalms

Sunday:
-Torben posted Metacafe's Best Video of the Year!
-Torben put up a clip about language from Richard Linklater's film Waking Life

Remember, take the time to comment on posts. Keep Language Scraps vital!

This week in Language Scraps 9/24/07—9/30/07

Welcome to This week in Language Scraps. I'm not crazy about the name, so feel free to suggest alternatives in the comments. But in what will be a regular weekend post, I'll briefly review the week's postings to Language Scraps, Monday-Sunday. I hope this will encourage more participation, spark more conversation, and generally make Language Scraps a more dynamic place. (I'll refer to my posts in the third person so as not to give the impression that my posts have any sort of primacy.) Anyhow, let's get to it.

Monday was a busy day:
- Rikker dissected the "language gene" and the connection between human speech and bat echolocation
- Rikker homed in on eggcorns, a type of creative language mistake
- Torben shared an English translation of Charles Baudelaire's poem Correspondences
- Torben directed us to William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell on Google Books
- Torben brought Language Scraps to a grinding halt by wondering whether we are too prolific for our own good

Wednesday:
- Rikker broke radio silence with reCAPTCHA, using anti-spam tools to digitize public domain books
- Torben stumbled upon the Phonetics Flash Animation Project
- Scott linked us to his excellent essay about postmodernity and revelation

Thursday:
- Torben excerpted an article on the Semiotics of Smoke
- JGrotegut posted a paper on the eyes of the skin and the language or architecture

Saturday:
- Torben informed us of the Modern Language Association website and its language maps of the U.S.

Remember: comment! question! discuss! disagree! All that good stuff.