May 17, 2005

Missing Links

I've been too busy to keep up recently. Here are a few of the many good things I've missed, based on random stabs at our blogroll...

Some ruminations on butterfly by Q. Pheevr at A Roguish Chrestomathy, along with a picture of Freddy Sourcream (who, I suspect, must have been the great-great-grandfather of Suzy Creamcheese).

A new program at NEH on documentation of endangered languages, for which Language Hat has a set of links (and keep clicking for lots more great stuff in recent Hat posts).

An observation about Coleridge's pants by Edward Cook at Ralph the Sacred River, and a biographical sketch of George Psalmanazar at the same site.

I was unable to find any pictures of Coleridge's pants, with or without butterflies. However, at Technologies du Language, Jean Veronis points out that Jean-Noël Jeanneney, while defying the crushing domination of American culture, has simultaneously embraced the history of France in America, if not America itself; and Google image search turned up a photo of M. Jeanneney enduring if not embracing the handgrip of James Hadley Billington, head of the Library of Congress.

A link from Des von Bladet to a BBC News quotation of Luxembourg Prime Minister (and EU president) Jean-Claude Juncker, on the subject of the EU budget: "I'm happy to be able to announce to you an agreement, in the sense that it is clear that we don't agree." As Des says, "Persons often agree with us in just that way or manner!"

And yes, this is the same M. Juncker who said «Je dis ‘oui’ parce que l’Europe ne doit pas se soumettre devant la virulence de l’attaque des autres» ["I say yes because Europe must not submit to the virulence of others' attacks"], explaining his reasons for supporting M. Jeanneney's proposal of a European Digital Library as a way to resist Google's "attacks" on European culture.

[And here's one that came in this morning by email: Geoff Pullum in a guest appearance on Nathan Bierma's new blog Inflections, discussing the typology of Yoda's syntax. ]

Posted by Mark Liberman at May 17, 2005 05:08 AM