• Geoffrey K. Pullum on Jamaican Creole
  [Mi na gweng mek piipl afa dem kament-dem, nat fi nuobadi. Nebba, unu onastan?]
  (tags: dialects language argybargy)

• Maggie K-B on 21 xii 2012
  Nice summary of how mythos arises/is propagated, especially worth reading for skeptical souls… NB the Pizza Effect
  (tags: anthropology syncretism mythos millenarianism)

• The Art of Nomography I: Geometric Design
  oh what fun, and see Parts 2 and 3…
  (tags: visualization mathematics)

• A Thousand Fascinations: Massachusetts 1677
  lovely presentation of a different perspective on what's IMPORTANT in New England
  (tags: geospatial New_england mapping)
• 20 years ago, via Mike Wesch
  "…As a society, we continue trending toward individualism and superficiality even as we value connection, community, and authenticity. We disengage from community, social action, and politics. We amuse ourselves to death. And the most amazing collaboration and creativity machine ever created celebrates its 20th anniversary as a distraction device…"
  (tags: learning anthropology wesch)
• Data Visualization: Journalism's Voyage West
  "…plots over 140,000 newspapers published over three centuries in the United States"
  (tags: visualization newspapers map nacirema)

• Oh, well said, Tomdispatch!
  "It’s as if Washington’s leading political players, aided and abetted by the media’s love of the horserace, had eaten LSD-laced brownies, then gone on stage before an audience of millions to enact a psychotic spectacle of American decline…" But READ THE WHOLE THING
  (tags: argybargy nacirema)
• Viaductal Hubris
  good old Shorpy, always something to ponder (and how would YOU like to take a train across that thread? …but don't miss the link to a 2009 article on its longevity!)
  (tags: engineering)

• Something Frozen
  lovely little essay on imaginary cartography
  (tags: geospatial scifi cartography)
• In which Anything is tried once
  hollow laughter…
  (tags: thanatos musics)

Being a fallen-away Twitterer (I played with it for a short time in the early days, but couldn’t find myself in its truncated format), all I do is follow a few people who seem to have figured out personally-relevant adaptations to the service. One from (or is it retweeted by) Bryan Alexander brought me up short:

The macropocalypse isn’t a tiny, momentary debt (policy) crisis. It’s the unravelling of the global macroeconomy. Just a friendly reminder.

Yup. That’s exactly right. Not that a ‘deal’ between President and Congress could do much more than BandAid the unravelling…

• Varieties of conveyance
  bless Michael Quinion
  (tags: lexicon)

• Möbius Ship at Indianapolis Museum of Art
  file under: shoulda thought of it myself
  (tags: geekery mobius topology)

• Aquarius launched
  I don't usually pay much attention to remote sensing, but this paragraph impresses me as highly significant: "The most important factor governing the dynamics of any fluid is the equation of state that relates its composition to its density. That ultimately determines the pressure gradients and hence the velocity and circulation. In the atmosphere, the important constituents are temperature and water vapour, while in the ocean it is temperature and salinity. Making seawater warmer or making it fresher (by adding rain or river water) both decrease the density and make the water more buoyant. Similarly, cooling and evaporation both make seawater more dense."
  (tags: climate satellites)