James Joyner of Outside the Beltway muses on the foreign language skills of Americans. His findings:

The utility of having American children devoting years mastering a language other than English is rather dubious from any utilitarian standard I can think of.

I’m a bit of a polyglot myself but I’ve always believed that the idea that Americans are somehow deficient for not spending more time studying foreign languages is a canard and very Eurocentric. An American living in Omaha can travel a thousand miles in any direction and not end up in a place where English is not the primary or, indeed, the only language spoken. There is nowhere in Europe from the western shore of Ireland to the foothills of the Urals in the east where you can travel a thousand miles and find the same language the primary language. Multiple languages is a survival skill in Europe and the differences in Europeans’ life experiences is reflected in their assumptions about what makes sense for other people to do.
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Antiphony in music is the practice of using two alternating choirs or orchestras. When the choirs are placed in choir lofts or even catwalks facing each other across the nave of the church the effect can be quite remarkable. Antiphony can be incredibly beautiful and sublime as in Gabrieli’s Hodie Christus Natus Est or it can be discordant, cacophonous, and even funny as in P. D. Q. Bach’s Echo Sonata for Two Unfriendly Groups of Instruments.
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Moe Lane of Obsidian Wings proposes a new word—blograzing:

You know: find a site, read it a lot for a time, check it regularly, slow down, not check it so often, look at something else, come back later and catch up… sort of an ebb-and-flow, you know?

There’s actually a perfect word for this especially if you add posting a comment and checking for a response to the process—trolling (from Merriam-Webster):

Troll

Verb, intransitive
1 : to move around : RAMBLE
2 : to fish by trailing a lure or baited hook from a moving boat
3 : to sing or play in a jovial manner
4 : to speak rapidly

Unfortunately, this lovely word has been corrupted by its commonly accepted blog meaning:

1. verb. To troll for hits is to post a provocative article purely in order to generate an angry response (usually followed by sending a mass e-mail shot to the target audience) and commensurate increase in hit rate.

2. noun. A person who trolls.

The old usage of troll takes me back to hot, lazy summer days fishing by trolling on the Meramec River from an old wooden johnboat with my Uncle George (actually my godmother’s husband).

In Marginal Revolution today Alex Tabarrok, has a fun post about words that are difficult to translate. My favorite:

pochemuchka [Russian for a person who asks a lot of questions]

Actually it’s a little cuter than that. It’s derived from the Russian word pochemu (pr. pah-chyi-MOO), “why”. Therefore it means literally somebody who’s constantly asking “why”. Imagine a six-year-old. That pretty much does it. I’d appreciate more information on any of the words in the list.

Towards the end of the post Mr. Tabarrok writes:

It’s rather common to hear that language determines thought and thus if a language has no words for a concept then that concept can’t really be understood by a speaker of that language.

That’s the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. The extreme version of the hypothesis in which thought is actually determined by language has been pretty much discredited but the weak version i.e. that language influences thought is widely accepted. My own notion is that language functions as “hooks” on which you can “hang” concepts. Doesn’t mean you can’t have the concepts. But it suggests that they’re a lot easier to work with.

Tyler Cowen has updated his proposals for an agenda for the Bush second term. I commented on his original post here. Mr. Cowen’s proposal:

I will add one additional proposal:

13. Cut the number of pages in the daily Federal Register by half.

The American economy is drastically overregulated. But do not get me wrong here. I do not wish to gut important environmental regulations, many of which supply valuable public goods.

I agree with him completely and wonder how any reasonable person can disagree. However, as with his other proposals, the question remains how can we get there?

Many years ago my dad, the wisest man I’ve ever known, had a simple suggestion: the Constitution should be amended to prohibit air conditioning in all Congressional offices and meeting places and in all federal offices in Washington, DC. Have you ever been there in the summertime? That would do it.

On August 16, 1777 Colonel John Stark was the hero of the Battle of Bennington fought between the colonials and a force composed of Hessians, loyalists, and British. Before the battle Colonel Stark has been reported as saying:

“My men, yonder are the Hessians. They were bought for seven pounds and ten pence a man. Are you worth more? Prove it. Tonight, the American flag floats from yonder hill or Molly Stark sleeps a widow!”

Actually, he probably didn’t say this. But he should have.

Found in the news of the day:

BRISBANE City Council and the State Government are on a collision course over what might be called the Battle of Water-loos.

At issue is the tax the council charges five Brisbane stadiums for every flush toilet on site.

The tax is known as pedestal charging, and is set at $556 annually for each toilet.

The charges are so steep that even council documents acknowledge that every ticket to Suncorp Stadium includes a hidden $1.35 charge for going to the toilet.

Pedestal charges range from $217 a toilet annually upwards where a premises has at least a dozen of them.

What’s so unusual about a head tax?

Hat tip: Jeff Jarvis

As you may or may not already be aware, members of the Watcher’s Council hold a vote every week on what they consider to be the most link-worthy pieces of writing around… per the Watcher’s instructions, I am submitting one of my own posts for consideration in the upcoming nominations process.
Here is the most recent winning council post, here is the most recent winning non-council post, here is the list of results for the latest vote, and here is the initial posting of all the nominees that were voted on.

Well, I finally repeated my experiment in smoking ribs. I increased the smoking time to six hours, saucing the ribs after the fourth and fifth hours. Bingo! This is definitely the formula. The ribs were not the greatest I’ve ever had—that distinction belongs to the much-lamented Big John’s in Peoria. But they were in the top five and better than several professionally done products I’ve had.

They do need a tiny bit more smoke. Next time I’ll add some more hickory chips after the third hour.