March 2007 – Page 2 – Denseman on the Rattis

Gizzi’s

2007/03/12 20:41

It seems the refurbishing of the Bistro du Sud is finally coming to a completion. However, it seems to have changed its name in the process, to Gizzi’s.

Update: I’ve found out what the connexion between Bistro du Sud and Gizzi is!

EN · LINGUISTICS

I found an excellent article by John Wells today in which he discusses why an English spelling reform is hard because of the varieties of English. In his terminology, I’m a maximalist: If English spelling is reformed, I think it’s important to keep as many words as possible distinct in writing, even if it means spelling will never be really easy. Keeping only distinctions made by all speakers would make the written language unnecessarily hard to understand. But the consequence of this is of course that it […]

BLOGGING · MI

Wikitooria!

2007/03/01 21:21

I taki a Whirihi i a au. Kiihai ia i mea e taaea kia poroko au me nga reo e tekau kei nga raa e taku. Otiraa! Ka toa au! Ko te tekau te reo Maaori.

EN · POLITICS · SCOTLAND

Liberalism and nationalism

2007/03/07 22:51

Sir Ming said in a recent interview that “there is a sense in which liberalism and nationalism are the antithesis of each other.” I guess he means that liberalism is partly about creating equal opportunities for all people, and that doesn’t mix well with borders and national laws. However, I’m sure Sir Ming doesn’t seriously propose to abolish all countries anytime soon, and if he did, he would be violating another liberal principle that says that decisions should be taken as close to the involved people as […]

EN · SCIENCE

Neanderthal genes

2007/03/07 22:28

Neanderthal woman Originally uploaded by different_views. In the latest issue of New Scientist, there is a long article (“The Neanderthal within”) about the feasibility of early humans having absorbed some Neanderthals into the population. While the evidence still looks somewhat flaky, I realise the possibility cannot be totally ruled out yet (but we’ll see when the Neanderthal genome is finally sequenced). However, one bit of the article troubled me: “Like it or not, we may have to accept that our species is, to some extent, a hybrid. […]