Last week I wrote about Daniel Willingham’s book, Why Don’t Students Like School. I’ve been rereading it, and it’s fascinating all over again. It’s also a very odd experience, because he wrote a lot about memory and how it relates to thinking. One of his most important points in the beginning is this. A mind [...]
Category: language
9/11, Morocco, and comets
I got a phone call at about 2 p.m. on September 11, 2001, from Georgetown Hospital. The hospital said that my son needed a blood transfusion, STAT. STAT I learned means right now and it would have been better earlier. I asked the hospital how I was supposed to get there, seeing that I lived [...]
American Sign Language is French
Modern American Sign Language has French origins. Two priests, Abbe Charles Michel de l’Epee and the Abbe Sicard were the proximate cause. Abbe de l’Epee had founded a school for the deaf in Paris in the late 1700’s. Abbe Sicard ran it after he died. When Thomas Gallaudet, an American who was trying to found [...]
Language
Tom Wolfe wrote a book called The Kingdom of Speech in 2016. I recently reread it. Its most basic premise is that what differentiates man from animal is the ability to speak. What differentiates man from animal is the ability to speak Tom Wolfe, The Kingdom of Speech He writes extensively about Daniel Everett, a [...]
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