Think Progress » Bush Now Says What He Wouldn’t Say Before War: Iraq Had ‘Nothing’ To Do With 9/11

Think Progress » Bush Now Says What He Wouldn’t Say Before War: Iraq Had ‘Nothing’ To Do With 9/11

BUSH: The terrorists attacked us and killed 3,000 of our citizens before we started the freedom agenda in the Middle East.QUESTION: What did Iraq have to do with it?

BUSH: What did Iraq have to do with what?

QUESTION: The attack on the World Trade Center.

BUSH: Nothing.

Bush goes on to aruge with a starwman — to deny that anyone in his administration had said that “Saddam gave the orders” for 9/11.

Pathetic.

John Hodgman

John Hodgman, who has appeared on the Daily Show as a resident expert, and who has catalogued 700 hobo names (several of which, by sheer coincidence, are also the titles of the Skeksis from The Dark Crystal, the best fantasy movie ever made entirely with puppets) — wait, what was the subject of this sentence?  Oh yeah, John Hodgman — is a great comedian, one I didn’t know about before last night.  Thanks, Jason!

Linguistics

A while back I bought at the local B&N’s used book area the book Introduction to the ‘Laryngeal’ Theory by Frederick Otto Lindeman.  I’ve been reading it a little lately, just for fun.  It is not a topic I’m totally unfamiliar with; much younger, I took a class on IE linguistics, but I don’t think I was in a good place at the time to really learn it.  I may not be now either, but now I’m reading it for fun.  It’s probably the most abstruse thing I’ve read for fun in a long time.  (I’m only 1/4 or 1/3 of the way through it; may or may not finish).

Anyway, it mentioned the process by which a CVC syllable in a parent language turns into a CV syllable, with the vowel long.  The process is very common and is known as “compensatory lengthening.”

And all I could think was “Compensatory Lengthening?  That’s what all those spam messages are trying to sell me.”

Thank you, I’ll be here all week.

Wikipedia’s “Laryngeal Theory” page rocks, btw, if you’re curious what it’s all about.

Boy killed in sand tunnel collapse

Boy killed in sand tunnel collapse – U.S. Life – MSNBC.com

GRAND MARAIS, Mich. – An 11-year-old boy died at Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore after a makeshift sand tunnel collapsed on him, officials said.The boy and other children were digging Tuesday into the face of the Grand Sable Dunes when tunnel gave way, covering the boy in 1 to 2 feet of sand, Pictured Rocks Superintendent Jim Northup said.

Man, that is awful.  When I was a kid I bet I came close to this kind of death a dozen times.  My friends and I would dig these deep holes in a sandpit out a ways back in the woods and fields behind our house.  We’d dig them about 3 feet or so wide and deep enough for a kid to stand in.  I think back on it and am amazed I survived my childhood.