Countries have used a variety of excuses to go to war. Some cite the need for protection of people who speak their language, like Vladimir Putin is doing in the Ukraine or Adolph Hitler did before annexing the "Low Countries" adjacent to Germany in the... Continue

It's interesting how medical terminology has been applied to the digital realm; after all, computers are just machines, right? Machines don't get sick and that's what we've always loved about them and why they've effectively replaced human beings as a labor force. Tractors don't get... Continue

Back in the hippie-dippy days of the 20th century two things were a Big Deal: Hair and Astrology. Long-haired men faded as an issue when pattern baldness and changing fashion inevitably reduced their impact to statistically ordinary, and astrology - replaced by ecology - quietly... Continue

It was recently reported that the world's oceans now contain three times as much methyl mercury as they did before the industrial revolution. Oceanic mercury becomes highly toxic methyl mercury due to the chemical action of sea water, and methyl mercury causes cognitive impairment, sometimes... Continue

Our society is so permeated by commerce that business metaphors are regularly applied to non-business situations. Thus we "profit by experience," "calculate our losses," and "take stock in the situation." Another common phrase concerns "the business of government," but in addition to being metaphorical, it's... Continue

Being a grandfather provides the opportunity to experience contemporary fairy-tale movies, and suffice to say, the stories have changed. The German fairy tales compiled by the Brothers Grimm were indeed quite grim; Sleeping Beauty, for example, included episodes of potential infanticide and cannibalism alongside the... Continue

All language is metaphor, and for that matter, so is every word in every language. We humans are metaphor-makers, and making metaphor means making meaning. Words create a nominal, or language-based reality which generates internal image-ideas. Through a process of fine-grained description we jointly settle... Continue

America is exceptional in many ways, not all of them so good. One way which falls into this "not so good" category is an inordinate pride in speaking and teaching one language only, namely English. Pride is often a good indicator of self-righteousness in individuals,... Continue

The internet of things had not arrived when NYU professor Neil Postman wrote his 1985 critique of television and its effects on society. I suspect the concerns and predictions he made in "Amusing Ourselves to Death" would have not differed greatly had he seen what... Continue