In Shakespeare’s plays Nobody knows For days and days, Till the very end, His closest friend If he’s changed his clothes. Prospero has But to put on his hat And he’s what he was, A duke, like that! They gladly aver, Who knew him before, “You are what you were When you wear what you [...]
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/FutilityCloset/~3/9-VmAXizOKk/
Every year since 2005, speech synthesis researchers have organized a yearly Blizzard Challenge, “[i]n order to better understand and compare research techniques in building corpus-based speech synthesizers”. Part of the research effort involves the general public, who are invited to perform a series of evaluations of the results.
Participation takes about one hour in total — [...]
In her review of Henry Hitchings’ The Language Wars: A History of Proper English, Joan Acocella expressed some annoyance that Hitchings could dare to suggest “that the ?who?/?whom? distinction may be on its way out”. As evidence that this distinction was already in some difficulty almost 20 years before Ms. Acocella was born, I reprint [...]
With protesters nearby, Corbett sticks to message for Phila. Chamber The Inquirer
Hundreds of people rallied to protest Gov. Corbett’s cuts to education and social services.
See also: Governor in town; activists to protest The Notebook blog
In Philly visit, Corbett says protesters and businesses should agree WHYY/NewsWorks
Gov. Tom Corbett Protests Begin at 4 p.m. PhillyNow blog
Council brings District back for more questions The Notebook blog
District officials clarified points about the transformation plan under consideration.
See also: School plan widely misunderstood, SRC officials say The Inquirer
Penn to team up with KIPP charters The Inquirer
Penn will become KIPP’s 10th higher education partner, and Penn expects to admit 12-15 KIPP graduates a year who meet Penn’s admissions requirements.
Obama to meet with Center City high school’s seniors Daily News
President Obama plans to meet seniors at the Science Leadership Academy when he is in town for a fundraiser.
FUSD hires 2nd member of controversial Philly team The Fresno Bee
Shana Kemp will join Jamilah Fraser on the communications team in Fresno.
Pa. Education Department defends its treatment of Chester Upland The Inquirer
Eight city schools named among best in state The Philadelphia Tribune
William H. Shoemaker Junior High School The Philly History blog
College debt a ticking time bomb — or two, or three Daily News (opinion)
House Democratic Policy Committee Meets in Philly PFT Blog
Communities Raise Red Flags on Schools Overhaul Our City, Our Schools blog
State news roundup Keystone State Education Coalition
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Source: http://thenotebook.org/blog/124823/notes-news-may-16
An LJ post by glo_ku (in a sort of English after the first paragraph) reveals a wonderfully Joycean sense of wordplay, and would make an excellent test of a student’s mastery of Russian idioms, colloquialisms, and slang. The “Russian” part starts off “Глад бонжурствовать юс апресле лунгаминного абсенствия” [Glad bonzhurstvovat' yus apresle lungaminnogo absenstviya], which when looked at through multilingual glasses translates as “Glad to greet you after the long absence,” and proceeds to become too multilingual even for me (I have no idea what “взыл мучень бешафнят” means). The “English” part starts “The events I’d like to tell you about took place in a small town of Derry Vushko right after the old fart Party Zahn have thrown away the hooves”; “Derry Vushko” is the Russian word деревушка [derevushka] ‘small town,’ Party Zahn is партизан [partizan] ‘partisan’ (the partisan fighting behind enemy lines is a familiar figure in Russian/Soviet life and literature), and “thrown away the hooves” is отбросил копыта [otbrosil kopyta (thanks, Valera!)], a slang phrase comparable to “kicked the bucket.” Similarly, later on дифирамб [difiramb, 'dithyramb, eulogy'] becomes “Dee Fee Rumba” and катить бочку [katit' bochku, 'to take action to harm someone else's career'] is literally rendered as “to roll a barrel.” It’s lots of fun if you like that sort of thing. (Via Anatoly.)
Semantics in the John Edwards trial (James Hill and Beth Lloyd, “John Edwards Defense Relies on Definition of ‘The’”, Good Morning America 5/13/2012):
Not since Bill Clinton challenged the definition of “is” has so much hinged on a very short word.
John Edwards appears to basing much of his defense, which begins today in a North Carolina [...]
