compounding error with literalism
religion is a twitchy topic. it’s easy to judge people who are religious for being stupid but it’s a very dangerous place to go — many religious people are stupid but many non-religious people are stupid and there are vastly-intelligent people on both sides of the equation. but there are two questions that come up (and have this week from students) about what a religion is (as opposed to philosophy)…
shh. the letters are sleeping.
english (like most languages written with the arcane and outdated latin alphabet) has a serious problem. an abundance of letters. that’s not the worst part, though. yes, there are various letters representing the same sound (“to” sounds like “two” and “c” and “k” are realistically interchangeable, for example). but that’s only the tip of the iceberg. the bigger problem for those learning english (and those trying to spell it accurately,…
en français, svp!
as you likely know, i’m a teacher. what you may not know, however, is that i am a native french speaker and this means i am sometimes asked to teach french language. it’s not something i do all that often, though i have created a series of curriculum guides for teaching the language and language teaching in general is my main educational specialty — it’s what my graduate research focused…
the case for simple numbers
modern languages are contingent fucked-up messes of historically-motivated arcane idiocy that must be stripped and upgraded to make them functional in a post-religion, post-uneducated world or we are destined to continue to wallow in the mindless communication quagmires of the past, something most people seem more than happy to do. this is not a question of europe against asia, though, as many things in language are, asian languages tending to…
