I got an email the other day from a blog reader who tells me that there are now more non-native English speakers than native English speakers. That leaves ample opportunities for linguistic subtleties going unnoticed. I suppose it can happen to native English speakers as well. Here is an example: Back in 2006, I wrote a blog post entitled “You . . .
In 1994, Anu Garg, a computer science graduate student in Ohio, decided to pick a daily word, study its origins, and share his findings with his fellow students. The result was Wordsmith.org, which today has more than 650,000 readers in 200 countries. Over the past 13 years, Garg has shared thousands of words with fellow linguaphiles, including illeist (someone who . . .
Some Red Sox fans are doubly happy this week: not only did their team win a World Series, but they also get a rebate on the furniture they bought during a special Red Sox incentive deal last spring. Hopefully none of them got a brown couch whose color is described, on its tag, with the use of the n-word. That’s . . .
New York’s most popular baby names in 2006. (Earlier) The science of four-letter words. Can immigration levels affect gas prices? College pharmacies jack up birth control prices, fewer women fill prescriptions.
In responding to yesterday’s post about the astronaut love triangle (or, more appropriately, “love V,” as one wise commenter put it), you all offered a number of compelling explanations for the story’s explosion. I must say, however, that I was surprised to read that so many people think of astronauts as larger-than-life heroes, only because I thought that image was . . .
It’s one thing to see a flame war break out on a Web site. But it can’t compare to actually hearing the flamer at work. That was the realization of the S.F. Chronicle, which just had the insanely entertaining idea of turning irate readers’ phone messages into podcasts. Here’s the first one. I will give a prize to the first . . .
Pardon this brief interruption of contest fever (see three previous entries) but … Here’s a nice observation written by Nicole Tourtelot, who toils away here in the Freakonomics office (maintaining this Web site, fulfilling bookplate requests, etc.): Dubner posted recently about intentionally misspelled domain names, such as Stockpickr.com, that aim to grab clumsy typists and/or poor spellers. The idea that . . .