Fed up with unwieldy compound nouns, younger Germans are turning increasingly to catchy English words
Wednesday 26 June 2013
Monday 24 June 2013
What’s Europe Got Against Google? France Threatens Fines Over Privacy
With Google already trying to contain the damage to its reputation
from the National Security Agency (NSA) leaks, it now risks another dent
to its image, as European privacy officials threaten to fine the
company for sucking up vast amounts of user information without
explaining the purpose.
On Thursday, French officials gave Google three months to explain how
long it stores the information it gathers through Gmail, YouTube and
other services, and to explain why it is collecting it. If Google fails
to comply, which looks possible, it could face fines in France of up to
about $400,000. “We realized that they are collecting a huge amount of
data on each of us, and most people know nothing about this,” Isabelle
Falque-Pierrotin, president of France’s National Commission on Computing
and Freedom, told TIME on Thursday. “It is time for action.”
Paris is beating London in charm offensive to lure wealthy Chinese shoppers
For one fleeting instant, an expression of intense exasperation
flickered across the face of the immaculately groomed sales assistant in
a chic Parisian department store as the Chinese tourists jostled and
gestured at watches costing several thousand euros apiece.
Then she bit her lip and smiled. The Chinese visitors counting out wads of euros and engaged in what the Paris
authorities call "fervent shopping" neither noticed nor seemed to care.
They had cash, lots of it, burning holes in their pockets and, with
visits to the Louvre and Versailles beckoning, not much time to spend it
on the luxury goods and logos they were seeking.
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The Anglo Invasion: France Debates Teaching Courses in English
When I opted to send my child to an all-French school, rather than one of the expat-heavy ones catering to Americans in Paris
like us, I braced myself for some complications. And indeed, three
years on, much baffles me, like assignments that requires one to
memorize Breton librettos or the work of 19th century poet Paul Verlaine
— all before the age of 7. But now, with first grade winding down, one
baffling aspect of French education has jumped the school wall and into
politics, as President François Hollande’s government takes on a
contentious issue: how to persuade — or even allow — the French to speak
more English, while preserving their own cherished language.
Monday 17 June 2013
Rindfleischetikettierungs-überwachungsaufgaben-übertragungsgesetz
Sad news from Germany: the British Telegraph reported this
week that the Germans are decommissioning what seems to have been the
language’s longest word, the little mouthful that is the title of my
post today.
The term, which the Telegraph translates as “law delegating
beef label monitoring,” apparently arose during the 1990s in response to
bovine spongiform encephalopathy. Spawned by a crisis, the R-word may
now be the first linguistic fatality attributable to mad cow disease.
It is perhaps too easy to giggle at the agglutinative property of
German nouns. It’s one of the ways the German language works, as if word
components came with Velcro tabs. For decades, this feature of the
language was a gold mine to Anglophone comedy writers, for whom German
sounded funny and funny in a particular way (and for historical as well
as linguistic reasons). While that form of humor has largely faded, the
mystery of these giant linguistic fauna endures. They can perplex and
repel, but they are not without interest.
So to their defense: As ours is the world of IMs and tweets, I come to praise long words, not to bury them.
Why Privacy Matters Even if You Have 'Nothing to Hide'
When the government gathers or analyzes personal information, many
people say they're not worried. "I've got nothing to hide," they
declare. "Only if you're doing something wrong should you worry, and
then you don't deserve to keep it private."
The nothing-to-hide argument pervades discussions about privacy. The
data-security expert Bruce Schneier calls it the "most common retort
against privacy advocates." The legal scholar Geoffrey Stone refers to
it as an "all-too-common refrain." In its most compelling form, it is an
argument that the privacy interest is generally minimal, thus making
the contest with security concerns a foreordained victory for security.
Sunday 16 June 2013
eat your words The Etymology of the Word 'Yogurt'
Food words have some seriously gnarly roots, but follow them far
back enough, and you can see culinary history all tangled up in a few
short syllables. Welcome to Eat Your Words
You Can Now Get A 3D Printed Action Figure Of Yourself, And The Detail Is Incredible
3D printing color figures of yourself is threatening to become a trend—in Japan last year designers PARTY opened
a temporary 3D printing photo booth in a Tokyo gallery where people
could turn up, get scanned, and walk away with a mini-figurine of
themselves.
And now, following on from that, comes Twinkind who are offering a similar service, but these guys are based in Germany.
Lego People Are Angrier Than Ever
Life in Legoland used to be so simple – smiling doctors helped cheerful
patients, contented petrol pump operators filled the tanks of satisfied
drivers and classrooms of ecstatic children were taught by beaming
teachers.
But then life became more complicated. Anger, puzzlement and
confusion started to set in – the beatific existence of the Lego
figurine was over.
British citizenship test 'like bad pub quiz'
The British citizenship
test taken by 150,000 people every year has the intellectual rigour of a
"bad pub quiz", a report suggests.
Thom Brooks of Durham University criticised the inclusion of
"trivial" facts such as the age of Big Ben and the date on which the
country's first curry house was established.
Most people in the UK would struggle with such questions, he added.
But the government said it had "stripped out mundane information".
The Life In The UK test must be passed to qualify for indefinite leave to remain in the country.
But Dr Brooks, a US immigrant who sat and passed the test in
Newcastle upon Tyne in 2009, becoming a British citizen in 2011, said it
was "unfit for purpose".
To tip or not to tip... or should it be banned?
A New York restaurant
has banned tipping to spare customers the bother, while some restaurants
in other US cities have already replaced the gratuity with a fixed
optional service charge. So is the discretionary tip falling out of
favour in the land where it's king?
A young man and woman are sitting in a restaurant in New York, enjoying their second date.
The man pays the waiter the bill and heads to the bathroom while the woman gathers her things.
"How much did he tip?" she asks the waiter. He tells her.
When the man comes back to the table, there is an angry exchange and she says she doesn't want to see him again.
A tip of 8.5% brought that romance to a premature end.
Thursday 13 June 2013
Living in the mountains can change the way you speak
Living at high altitudes can change the way people speak and may help to explain why different languages have evolved around the world.
Scientists have found that languages that use "ejective" consonants – rapid bursts of air exhaled while making a sound – tend to be spoken at higher altitudes.
Ejective consonants are not used in the English language, but may be easier to
produce in thin mountain air, the researchers believe.
It is some of the first evidence for how geography can influence the sounds
produced in a language.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/10117037/Living-in-the-mountains-can-change-the-way-you-speak.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/10117037/Living-in-the-mountains-can-change-the-way-you-speak.html
Monday 10 June 2013
Boundless Informant: the NSA's secret tool to track global surveillance data
The National Security Agency has developed a powerful tool for
recording and analysing where its intelligence comes from, raising
questions about its repeated assurances to Congress that it cannot keep
track of all the surveillance it performs on American communications.
The Guardian has acquired top-secret documents about the NSA datamining tool, called Boundless Informant, that details and even maps by country the voluminous amount of information it collects from computer and telephone networks.
The
focus of the internal NSA tool is on counting and categorizing the
records of communications, known as metadata, rather than the content of
an email or instant message.
Gegen die NSA ist Gegenwehr kaum möglich
Ein Überwachungssystem wie Prism lässt sich zumindest
zum Teil austricksen. Aber wer einmal in Verdacht der Geheimdienste
gerät, ist chancenlos, sagen Experten.
Die NSA interessiert sich brennend für deutsche
Internetnutzer. Das jedenfalls geht aus Daten des Analysewerkzeugs Boundless
Informant des US-Geheimdienstes hervor, die der Guardian veröffentlicht hat. Demnach fragt die NSA in keinem europäischen Land mehr Nutzerdaten ab als in
Deutschland. Warum das so ist, schreibt der Guardian nicht. Für viele dürfte
eine andere Frage eh wichtiger sein: Wie können sie verhindern, ins Raster der
US-Behörde zu geraten?
Es gibt darauf mehrere Antworten. Die erste lautet: Boykott.
Wer Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL,
Skype und YouTube nicht nutzt, wird vom Prism-System nicht direkt erfasst.
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