#hashtag or Pound Evolutionary English. Octothorpe, to you.

The #greatandpowerful Ashley Parker has written an #interestingarticle entitled “Twitter’s Secret Handshake” in the, yes, Fashion & Style section of The New York Times, looking at the creation, evolution, and use of the hashtag, or “#” or “pound sign” (pity those who really do use the pound sign, that is to say, “£”).  Secret handshake, indeed.

Of course, as you no doubt have, we have always called the “#” an octothorpe, or, more precisely, an #octothorpe.

Wikipedia on hashtags, here.

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Does Your Language Shape Your Thinking? Another Look at Whorf

Image: Horacio Salinas for The New York Times

Guy Deutscher has written a very interesting, long article entitled “Does Your Language Shape How You Think?” in The New York Times looking at the various ways that language may, or may not, shape the way that we think.  Though not a new idea, we are now offered a, perhaps, more contemporary, less literal-minded and more open-minded look at some of the elements of, what, for some of us who’ve “been around the block”, may be called “The Whorfian Hypothesis”, and which, despite la barbe never meant, at least to us, that a beard was particularly feminine.

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The Ocean Blue as Art Abstract

Andreas Gursky/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn/The New York Times

“Ocean I” (2010), an image by Andreas Gursky

Carol Vogel has written an article, part of which is entitled “The Ocean Blue as Art Abstract” in the Art & Design section of The New York Times, discussing a series of works by the German photographer Andreas Gursky shown at the Gagosian Gallery in Los Angeles, four of which have been purchased for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.  A wonderful testimony to how beautifully blue our world is, and a painful reminder of the still growing disaster of the British Petroleum oil platform explosion and the rapidly spreading oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Also included in Vogel’s article are short pieces on Moma/P.S.1 and archaic bronzes at Christie’s
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Doomsayers Beware, a Bright Future Beckons

Viktor Koen/The New York Times

John Tierney has written a rather upbeat article entitled “Doomsayers Beware, a Bright Future Beckons” in the Science section of The New York Times reviewing  “The Rational Optimist,” by Matt Ridley which, Tierney says, “does much more than debunk the doomsaying. Dr. Ridley provides a grand unified theory of history from the Stone Age to the better age awaiting us in 2100.”  It seems that we owe all our success, not to our “big brain” or bipedalism, or such, but rather, to, well, commerce.  Business, in a nutshell.
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Your Existence Explained!

Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory

Dennis Overbye has written an interesting article entitled “A New Clue to Explain Existence” in the Space & Cosmos section (yes, there is a Space & Cosmos section, luckily enough) of The New York Times (online) which looks at new scientific data which explains, well, our existence.  Happily enough.
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