Internal Monologue

Regular Internal Monologue commenter Mad Latinist (aka Justin Mansfield) gets a mention in this Wall Street Journal article about the Latin Wikipedia, Vicipaedia Latina : Most of the work among the editors is collegial, though now and then debates break out. One involved the proper neologism for "computer." Vicipaedia calls it a computatrum , despite the vehement opposition of editor Justin Mansfield, who says the word is just bad Latin. "You can't use ' trum ' at will to make new words," insists Mr. Mansfield, also a classics grad student. " 'Trum' actually fell out of use around the time of the Punic Wars. It's like 'th' in English. You can say 'warmth,' but you can't say 'coolth.' " Mr. Mansfield lobbied for computatorium but was outvoted. He prevailed, though, with "particle accelerators," the atom smashers used by physicists, which, per his suggestion, are known on Vicipaedia as part

This is pretty funny. As readers of this blog know, the Unitarian Universalists in the Bay Area have recently launched an ad campaignm. Some of the ads f eature me and my family . (I just saw one of the posters with me on it in the El Cerrito Plaza BART station.) But of course, it's not just BART stations: there are TV commercials , NPR sponsorships, and, this being 2007, blog ads. Including this one I just saw: Congratulations to whoever wrote the Google Adsense placement algorithm. (Though you have to balance this against all the times AdSense thought my readers would be interested in Ann Coulter books.) Unfortunately for the UU campaign, I think my readers have already heard quite a bit about Unitarian Universalism. So although this blog's readership is probably a good target demographically, I bet this ad would do better in front of people who've not yet heard of UUism. Any potentially interested IM reader has probably heard me jabber about it enough anyway.

This Douglas Hofstadter-esque little video demonstrates how to write a fugue using a theme from "Oops, I did it again".

(Apologies to those for whom a lot of this is redundant, but many of my readers aren't regulars at the major blogs, and rely on IM to keep them posted.) Bill O'Reilly makes some shockingly daffy comments about how eating at a predominantly black restaurant in Harlem is surprisingly like eating in any other restaurant. This is yet another instance of making Jon Stewart's job too easy . Those Republicans trying to trick California into splitting its electoral votes by congressional district (absent equivalent action by red states) have apparently given up . Kudos to all those who fought this. Rush Limbaugh calls a bunch of American troops in Iraq " phony soldiers ". We're waiting for Senate resolutions condemning his behavior. UPDATE: Well, there's a House resolution . Now that I think about it, I don't think the House should be criticizing Limbaugh either, annoying as he is. Why don't they actually end the war, or at least give our troops sufficient

Bill Clinton calls Republicans on their bullshit hypocritical outrage over MoveOn.org's ad.

(It's also a much slicker implementation of Flash than the pitiful exercises I've done so far.)

OK, I can now create a primitive animation . And even embed it in my blog: