I love this stuff: research about how and why certain words change while others do not. 

Partha Niyogi, author of the book The Computational Nature of Language Learning and Evolution and a professor of computer science and statistics at the University of Chicago, says these empirical findings are consistent with theoretical models on the lexical evolution. “Languages are constantly changing,” he notes. “In biological evolution that fact has been given a lot of attention, but the fact is that in languages this is happening all the time, [as well]. Darwin in [The Descent of Man] commented that languages were evolving over time, and it was just like speciation.”

A good point borrowed from Andrew Sullivan.  Does blogging create too many critics and not enough readers?

It’s tricky, because it becomes a question of the process of democritazation–on one hand, it’s wonderful to have so many various “leaders,” yet it just becomes much more difficult to find where the good writing is.

And then a larger question: is there really ever any good criticism?  Or is it all arbitrary, contingent only on social position and convicing enough people you’re smart?  This is the modern art problem writ large.

I’ve honestly never read any of her stuff, but, apparently, she writes a lot of science fiction too.  Yet more to read…

from Marcus Borg, a very smart guy:

I am a committed Christian and a complete agnostic about the afterlife. I use “agnostic” in its precise sense: one who does not know. Moreover, I know that I cannot resolve “not knowing” by “believing” – whatever we believe about an afterlife has nothing to do with whether there is one or what it is like.

There is more to say. I think that conventional Christianity’s emphasis on the afterlife for many centuries is one of its negative features. I have often said that if I were to make a list of Christianity’s ten worst contributions to religion, it would be its emphasis on an afterlife, for more than one reason.

When the afterlife is emphasized, it almost inevitable that Christianity becomes a religion of requirements and rewards. If there is a blessed afterlife, it seems unfair to most people that everyone gets one, regardless of how they have lived. So there must be something that differentiates those who get to go to heaven from those who don’t – and that something must be something we do, either believing or behaving or some combination of both. And this counters the central Christian claim that salvation is by grace, not by meeting requirements.

Another problem: the division between those who “measure up” and those who don’t leads to further distinctions: between the righteous and the unrighteous, the saved and the unsaved.

Another problem: an emphasis on the afterlife focuses our attention on the next world rather than on this world. Most of the Bible, on the other hand, focuses our attention on our lives in this world and the transformation of this world. At the heart of the Lord’s Prayer is the petition for the coming of God’s kingdom on earth: your kingdom come on earth, as it already is in heaven. There is nothing in the Lord’s Prayer asking that God take us to heaven when we die.

As yet another reason for my agnosticism about an afterlife: does it involve the survival of personal identity and reunion with those we have known in this life? Are family reunions part of the afterlife? For some people, this is much to be desired, for family has been the primary source of love and joy in this life. But for perhaps an equally large number of people, family has been the primary source of pain and unhappiness. So, are we going to be with those people forever?

What I do affirm about what happens after death is very simple: when we die, we do not die into nothingness, but we die into God. In the words of the apostle Paul, we live unto the Lord and we die unto the Lord. So whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s.

For me, that is enough. My not knowing anything more does not bother me at all.

And I am very wary when the Christian gospel becomes a message about the afterlife. I am convinced that it invariably leads to distortion. This is not the Christian gospel.

Heroes is back, and it’s good.

LOST won’t be back for some time, but this website and EW keep your mouth from getting too dry…

Sure, the Democrats probably should not have made the kid an example either, but for the sake of all that’s still at least somewhat kind in the world…

Andrew Sullivan is spot on:

The man was a perjurer and an abuser of women; she was deeply complicit in all of it, and ultimately used it for her own political advantage. This is who they were. I don’t think they’ve changed - and God knows what psychodramas the right-wing press has in store for us next spring if she wins. That the Clinton presidency was immeasurably preferable to the last six years I do not dispute. As I wrote continually at the time, their co-presidency was in many respects a substantively admirable one, although I doubt it would have been half as admirable if the Congress hadn’t reined them in. But it came at a severe cost - to the polarized country and to the integrity we have a right to expect in public figures. She has re-earned her credit as a national leader in the Senate, and she deserves respect for that. I think she’d make a great Supreme Court justice for the left. But she is still part of that co-presidency aiming for another eight years; and she is still part of that ruthless machine. She may be preferable to many Republicans (who isn’t, at this point?); but it amazes me she is given such a pass on her past, especially since she has already wielded national power through her husband for two terms. We still have alternatives. If this blog can help remind people of that, and of what we already know about her and her co-president-in-waiting, so much the better.

Multiculturalism is indeed tricky, but I think we can work out a strategy–and what’s the worst that could happen?  People would realize they’re not the only religion in the world?

Many non-Muslim parents at the meeting suggested that the problem was Muslims trying to change American traditions. But that was never the idea according to Elizabeth Zahdan, a Muslim mother of three, who had asked that her children be separated from others at lunch during the Ramadan fast. “We should educate our children about all the holidays, equally,” she said. “And not to favor one holiday over another.”

That’s the way India deals with its religious plurality — not by denying it, but by officially embracing what can sometimes seem like every religious holiday known to humanity. Almost every other week, some national or state holiday shuts down at least part of the country: There are the big Hindu holy days (Diwali, Dussehra) and those in Islam’s calendar (Eid-ul-Fitr, Muharram); you get a day off for Buddha’s birthday and also for the biggest Christian holy days. If you’re Sikh or Jain or Parsi, there’s a holiday for you. And if the holy day you want to mark isn’t on the main list, there’s also a secondary list of so-called “restricted holidays” from which each person can choose a limited number every year. Throw in secular days like this week’s national holiday marking the birth of Mahatma Gandhi, and India has some 17 official holidays a year plus dozens of others that people can choose to observe. (The U.S. has 10.) The World Economic Forum says that India, an emerging economic powerhouse, actually has one of the world’s shortest average working years.

He’s got a website, and he’s a darn fine rock and roller.

I hope so.  I love that guy–and he just wrote a new novel, which means he’s written, oh, 8 billion.  American Pastoral is truly gorgeous.