(Part 3) Top products from r/answers

I'm currently reading a really excellent collection of articles by Elizabeth Gordon called Living Language: Exploring Kiwitalk. It's (obviously) heavily focused on New Zealand English, but there's a lot of general English stuff there too (For example, one article outlines all the different countries of origin of different food words).

Letter Perfect is an easy read about the history of the written alphabet.

I'm seconding Mother Tongue already mentioned, though be warned he gets a few things wrong.

In that vein (of people being wrong) , Word Myths is a collection of dubunked language myths (such as "Eskimos have 1000 words for snow") that still persevere through culture.

If you're interested in anything about how language works in development/the mind, I urge you to check out any of Steven Pinker's books on the subject. They are among the most accessible linguistic work I've ever read. (I highly recommend starting with The Language Instinct. The Blank Slate is by far my favourite but quite removed from language proper).

Advanced/Reference/Kinda boring:

The Dictionary of Word Origins is an excellent reference, if not actually something you can just sit down and read.

A Short History of Linguistics is pretty dry, but it sheds some light on why we adopt so many Greek and Latin word forms. I'd call it advanced because you need a pretty firm grasp of grammar. This book is also great for dealing with some of the interesting theory oppositions through history. Technically this is a short history of Western/Germanic linguistics, but still very good.

If you're interested in the how along with the actual histories, I really have to recommend Lyle Campbell's Historical Linguistics, especially the chapters on semantic change (skip the whole part on sound change. It's tedious and unnecessary). His examples are numerous, clear and usually entertaining. But be aware there are a lot of errors in special character printing.

Finally, some Links!!

The Language Log

A walk in the woRds

The Eggcorn database (sound change in action!)


I wish this hadn't been posted when I was in the middle of a move. I went to check my (ridiculous) bookshelf for other titles on the subject only to be greeted by a pile of boxes.

TLDR; I love language

I highly recommend this book that may help you answer this question and raise a lot of good new ones https://www.amazon.com/Homo-Deus-Brief-History-Tomorrow/dp/0062464345/

It's a look at what our future may look like and it sounds like you might get a lot of good insight out of it. Cheers!

The Genius of Dogs by Brian Hare is an excellent book that will explain this in detail.

The tl:dr version is dogs have been with man as a domesticated animal used for hunting far longer than any other animal. This refinement of hunting instinct has over time lead to a more intelligent dog. So intelligent in fact that Hare argues dogs are far smarter than any other animal.

I'd recommend two books:

1. Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court; and
   
2. A History of the Supreme Court by Bernard Schwartz.
   
   The Schwartz book is particularly good for a history of the development of the Court and its jurisprudence. It may not cover 100 decisions but you get good in-depth treatment of probably 20 or so of the big ones.

Talmud is a lot less interesting than Kabbalah though. It's mostly laws and the Rabbi's reasoning for how best to carry out those Jewish laws and why that is. Also reading it can get confusing because there are A TON of rants throughout conversations because one thing leads to another before they finally come back full circle to finish what they were talking about. Don't get me wrong, it's interesting but just very different from Kaballah.

The only thing is the Jewish mysticism isn't that accessible. If you could find a good, accessible book on it though then you'd be golden.

Maybe start your research here and see what else comes up through your exploring. Also obviously look into The Zohar - the number one book on Jewish mysticism.

There is actually an entire book written about the word OK. (I always use OK, for whatever reason.)

Here are two interesting articles about the book.

[This book](https://www.amazon.com/Artificial-Intelligence-Elaine-Rich/dp/0070522634
) gives a good introduction. You may laugh that it's from 1990, but AI was not even particularly new back then.

This book was one of the cornerstones of my degree early years, but it takes you from basic concepts so you should be OK understanding the concepts in it.

/r/Thameus is spot on. Way too many people confuse the Internet with the Web.

The Internet essentially consists of mid-level (layer 3 and layer 4) network stack protocols. Those protocols are often referred to as TCP/IP, but there are several more layer 4 protocols than TCP (UDP, SCTP, NORM, etc.).

The web is an application level (layer 7 in the OSI model) protocol. It's main application layer colleague is e-mail, but there are several others.

The Internet is a specific instantiation of what's called packet switching. This is contrasted to the old telephone networks' circuit switching.

The Internet was not always a done deal; the Internet is not the only instantiation of packet switching. This is grossly over simplifying what happened, but there was a huge, huge battle in the '80s/'90s between the Telcoms (who wanted to use another packet switching scheme based on something called X.25), and the DARPAnet guys who wanted to use the TCP/IP open standards.

So the question you probably want to ask is: when was packet switching thought up?

In terms of the Web, there's a computer scientist named David Gelernter who wrote a book in 1993 called, "Mirror Worlds: or the Day Software Puts the Universe in a Shoebox...How It Will Happen and What It Will Mean ", that actually pre-saged the Web (although I haven't seen any indication that Tim Berners-Lee was thinking of this when he created hypertext).

It's all very interesting stuff, but the key is to distinguish between the various layers and components.

Ah, I was just reading the very broad overview American Popular Music, nothing in-depth.

Wikipdeda, as so often is the case, can be a good starting point. Start with sound recording and follow up with all the links and sources there.

It may seem unrelated, but this book may give you some insight. It explains how Sherlock Holmes levels of awareness are not as hard to achieve as most think. My thought in recommending it is that you do not need to think so quick on your feet if you can more effectively anticipate what will happen.

I tried Clorezepam for sleeping. That stuff was horrible, as I felt like I was stones for a 24 hours after taking it. It did allow me to sleep, but just wasn't worth it.

Note: Clorezepam is a Benzodiazepine, when I asked doc about taking Benzo's long term he was polite but said sleeping three hours a night for years had already messed me up, so try what ever I could to get a nights sleep. I can not tolerate any opioid medication as it leaves me even more constipated (I already have enough issues with that!)

Highly Recommend Book

The New Parkinson's Disease Treatment Book: Partnering with Your Doctor To Get the Most from Your Medications 2nd Edition

My strongest drug these days in my morning espresso.

I can also recommend this one

Show Me How: 500 Things You Should Know Instructions for Life From the Everyday to the Exotic

Mercer Mayer books? There's A Nightmare in My Closet

https://www.amazon.com/Theres-Nightmare-Closet-Mercer-Mayer/dp/0140547126

High testosterone is common in women who are LGBT, bipolar, have polycystic ovary syndrome, or congenital adrenal hyperplasia.

Source: this book.

That's a really good question. In the case of subduction, the temperature and pressure would most likely obliterate any plastic compounds in the molten rock as the subducted plate passed into the upper mantle. Some material may be preserved in the accretionary wedge of materials that get scraped off and caught on the edge of the overriding plate.

The one place where plastics for sure will be find-able will be in sedimentary rocks where there aren't as many forces working upon them, mostly just pressure and a smaller amount of heat.

If you are really curious about what civilization might leave behind I'd suggest this book written by a British Geologist in the perspective of aliens exploring the earth to look for geological signs of life ~100Ma after humans.

Indoor bug zappers work great on fruit flies. They don't make an audible "zap" like the outdoor traps.

I have had luck with mangling a soda bottle into a crude trap and baiting it with cider vinegar, but I can't recommend it. It's really more of a mess than it is worth.

I found this.

> Aesop probably lived in the middle part of the sixth century BC. A statement in Herodotus gives ground for thinking that he was a slave belonging to a citizen of Samos called Iadmon. Legend says that he was ugly and misshapen. There are many references to Aesop found in the Athenian writers: Aristophanes, Xenophon, Plato, Aristotle and others. It is not known whether he wrote down his Fables himself, nor indeed how many of them are correctly attributed to his invention.

Yes, definitely. Americans are deeply divided ethnically (just look at this map) but we aren't aware of it because we've been taught that all white English-speaking Americans are basically the same.

The early history of the US took place during a time of strife. The earlier colonists were fleeing civil war in England. The extremists from both sides fled to the US, plus other groups left England and other countries. The result is that the early settlements had a very different character and the resulting cultural spread from there created very different regional cultures, despite the fact that we all speak the same language. A historian wrote a book along these lines.

Imagine if France and Germany were one country and they all spoke the same language. There is a certain Frenchness and certain Germanish to each group, and they would not really get along. The French have one idea, the Germans another.

So what would happen? They would find a way to express this, but in this alternate world there isn't a word for "France" or "Germany" and they all speak the same language. So they need to find a way to tell each other apart. Most likely they would settle on Religion. France would become super Catholic, and Germany would become super Lutheran.

That's what happened in the US. Before the Civil War the North was far more religious than the South. After the war the South was a conquered people and so they wanted to express their persecuted identity. Consider the Poles, how they are so Catholic. It was their protest against the USSR. Consider the Irish, how they are so Catholic, it is their protest against the UK. So after the war the South had something to prove, so they became super religious. Religion is being used as a signally method, a way of asserting identity.

So over time the US has become more religious but it seems to have really stepped up in the last few decades. Enter the 60s and the cultural revolution. The US is a big place. In some places the 60s were embraced, in others it was unwelcome. So again people felt oppressed and religion intensified. A sudden realignment politically (the South moving into the Republican party) meant that there have to be a rationalization. The South had been with the Democrats because they have always been with the Democrats, but they needed a justification to be with the Republicans. The justification was an alliance between the evangelicals and the liberty-minded (what you might call liberals in Europe, but we use the terms differently here). From that alliance the modern American conservative coalition was born. Thus religion became more influential in politics.