When an ITN libel action sent a small publication to the wall, it wasn't a triumph of free speech, but a case of brutal laws being used in a complex, difficult situation.
We are filling the archive with more materials on the languages of the Americas, and start publishing the articles of the fundamental "The Native Languages of America" volume issued in 1979.
The Skeptic's Dictionary began with fewer than 50 entries in 1994 and has grown to more than 500 entries in 2007. Each month, the site gets about a million visitors and processes about 1.5 million page views. Thousands of readers have e-mailed comments, suggestions, and criticisms. In response, I've added many new entries since the first "printing." Many reader comments have been posted. Thanks to alert readers, numerous errors have been corrected.
Wikipedia is an open-source encyclopedia. It's radically open — anyone can edit it — and increasingly relevant. This unofficial weblog tracks its progress (and lifts quotes).
When I was young, I read popular physics books such as Richard Feynman's QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter. I knew that light was waves, sound was waves, matter was waves. I took pride in my scientific literacy, when I was nine years old.
All signs point to an Obama victory this fall. If the signs are wrong, it will be because of events last month. These events constitute a so-far-unnamed phenomenon in Presidential campaigning -- what we could call "self-Swiftboating." To understand "self-Swiftboating," you've got to first understand "Swiftboating."
The Nostratic languages constitute a proposed language family that, according to its proponents, includes a high proportion of the language families of Europe, Asia, Africa, and North America.
We all know that German and English are relatives, this is evident. English and Russian are also related, this can be traced by simple comparative analysis. But English is also genetically related with Turkish, and this fact can only be shown by means of complicated linguistic research. This is the long-range comparison which allows us to discover distant relationship between languages and prove their descendance from a parent language which existed 15,000 years ago. In 1960s, the existence of the first of such parent languages was discovered and proven, called Nostratic.
(1) Don't get stressed out while editing, (2) Edit while you are your best, not while angry, scared, or intoxicated, (3) be considerate of others in the community, and (4) Defuse stress when possible.
This essay explores development of globally available digital reference works from their first imaginings to contemporary cases. My hope in undertaking such a project is to identify technical and social aspects of digital reference work production that can contribute to an understanding of a prominent contemporary exemplar, the Wikipedia, a free online encyclopedia