Fernando Pereira at Fresh Tracks suggests that "'Waste not, want not' may not be a good policy for getting out of local maxima". He's talking about neurons, in response to an article about the economic value of irrational exuberance, but there's a linguistic application as well: why a rationally (re-)constructed language would be inefficient. John Yunker at Going Global quips that Microsoft's proposed Windows XP Reduced Media Edition should be called the Windows XP Passive Aggressive Edition: the frame wars come to European software branding! Over at In Passing, eve documented a new metapragmatic variable, quoting "a girl to a guy walking down Fulton st" who said "Sure, for values of 'neat' that involve you not getting your security deposit back."
Posted by Mark Liberman at February 6, 2005 08:36 AM