Day care and language change

by Doctor Science This is a re-blog of something I submitted to Language Log back in early November, about some historical references to new languages forming in groups of children. I happened to be reading (parts of) Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (Chambers, 1844) and I came across his discussion of language change … Read more

Your Star Wars spoilers thread

by Doctor Science

The idea behind Jews going to the movies and Chinese food on Christmas Day was that these things were both open, yet mostly empty because the Christmas-celebrators were busy elsewhere. This concept has been breaking down in the past few years, and now we find that the movies are packed and we could only get a table at the good Chinese restaurant because we came at 4:00 — every table was booked and overbooked for the evening. mmmmm, Peking duck.

Like a significant subset of Everybody In The World, we’ve now seen Star Wars: The Force Awakens. I had been avoiding social media for the previous week (for fear of spoilers), but I went in knowing that my e-friends were divided into a large group of ¡Yays!, and a smaller group of Nays. The Nays all say the same thing: “The Force Awakens is too derivative in both plot and characterization.”

Spoilers within!

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