I’m a sucker, a total sucker, for anything that attempts to explain the often wacky rules of our beautiful language in terms that every man jack can understand. The Language Corner is just such a thing.

Various rules of the language, including rules of thumb, are discussed here (with as little jargon as possible) because we need to know the rules to know when to follow them, when to bend them, even when to break them.

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The poll found that 42 percent of respondents held strict creationist views, agreeing that “living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time.”

In contrast, 48 percent said they believed that humans had evolved over time. But of those, 18 percent said that evolution was “guided by a supreme being,” and 26 percent said that evolution occurred through natural selection. In all, 64 percent said they were open to the idea of teaching creationism in addition to evolution, while 38 percent favored replacing evolution with creationism.

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Most published scientific research papers are wrong, according to a new analysis. Assuming that the new paper is itself correct, problems with experimental and statistical methods mean that there is less than a 50% chance that the results of any randomly chosen scientific paper are true.

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A secondary school is to allow pupils to swear at teachers - as long as they don’t do so more than five times in a lesson. A running tally of how many times the f-word has been used will be kept on the board. If a class goes over the limit, they will be ’spoken’ to at the end of the lesson.
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“Within each lesson the teacher will initially tolerate (although not condone) the use of the f-word (or derivatives) five times and these will be tallied on the board so all students can see the running score,”

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The BBC’s has moved a lot more quickly than most broadcasters to embrace new technologies, partly thanks to its non-advertising-centric business model. Earlier this year, it attracted the ire of record labels by making Beethoven’s symphonies available for download as way to introduce people to classical music, and its also started debuting some TV shows online before they’re shown over the air. Based on the success of the downloadable shows — as well as the massive interest in a leaked episode of Doctor Who — the BBC’s director of television says the company is planning to simulcast its TV networks on the web, as well as put additional video content to accompany shows (bugmenot required) online. This is also in addition to its media player that will let people watch the last week’s worth of programs online.
Too few broadcasters understand that they should be taking steps to make their content more accessible to people in whatever format and on whatever device they want to use, and devote resources to evolving their business model to accomodate that, rather than trying to figure out ways to block it.

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Davenport said his perspective of UFO sightings took on a whole new dimension when he was 6-years-old on a July night in 1954. Davenport said that’s when he, his mom and brother saw a strange object in the sky while at a drive-in theater on the edge of the St. Louis Airport.

“We didn’t know it at the time, but my father, and people in the tower on the north side of the airport, were looking at the same object with their binoculars,” he said.

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“If future experiments indicate that this reprogrammed state is retained after removing the embryonic stem cell DNA — currently a formidable technical hurdle — the hybrid cells could theoretically be used to produce embryonic stem cells lines that are tailored to individual patients without the need to create and destroy human embryos,” said a summary of the research reported on the Science site.

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Steve Pulley

Travel to places where no mind has gone before. It is obvious that Mr. Pulley loves words, and knows how to use them. This book is fun! Many laughs and a lot of thought-provoking content–in just the right bite-sized chunks. Three thumbs up.
–S. Michele Smith

Funny and inventive. Mr. Pulley has an off-the-cuff style which lends itself to the raucous bursts of entertainment contained within the pages of his book. At times, playful, but always fun and downright enjoyable. A great read.
–Leslie Russell

Tucked within the mostly witty, hilarious pages of “Fortune Cookie” are some gems of wisdom- just like in actual fortune cookies. Steve Pulley’s writing style is superb!
–Patrick Murphy

A huge invisible bubble surrounds a well-studied black hole, scientists have just learned. The cavity is carved from space by the activity of the black hole itself and was detected with a radio telescope.

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Do chuggers bother you when you want to rock up to a restaurant with your cockapoo to hoover a supersized ruby murray?

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