HotForWords

Here is a fun video I made.. my first music video!!! I hope you like it

Also featuring my favorite drink Neuro.

Please show some comment love over at YouTube as well.

Image: Rachael Voorhees/Flickr

Scientists have created a system whereby a computer can finally identify double entendre… especially of the “That’s what she said” (TWSS) variety!

You know the joke:

Aaron referring to his late-evening basketball practice – “I was trying all night, but I just could not get it in!”

Betty – “That’s what she said”

Their system is called Double Entendre via Nouns Transfer or DEviaNT. You remember we learned about Double Entendre in an earlier lesson.

After much programming, the system was able to even identify this phrase as having TWSS potential… and they specifically used this example:

“Don’t you think these buns are a little too big for this meat?”

These results along with the Double Entendre examples will be presented at the Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics in June.

You can read more about DEviaNT here.

Below is Alfred Hitchcock uttering a very early version of the “That’s what she said” joke from 1929:

First off.. here is a funny pic from 2005… I look like a ditz*!

*ditz n. [as a back-formation] a person who is ‘ditzy’, scatterbrained, or cute.

Here are two pics from camping 2 years earlier in Russia:

And finally, some pics my brother took of some churches near my hometown in Russia:

Let’s look at what Spring Fever used to be and what it is today.

Also, my Anastasia Date profile can be found at: http://bit.ly/feshIT search for 1603000

UGO released their 100 Hot Girls to Follow on Twitter.. and look at who is #9!  (Out of 100 that’s pretty good, eh?)

Check out the article by clicking here.

Thanks UGO!

Hey guys, meet Colleen!  She has some awesome advice on meeting that girl of your dreams (for those of you who haven’t met her yet!). She’s a part of my “Intelligence is Sexy” network! (I’ll explain what that is later.) I hope you enjoy the video. I will be back in a few days with one of my new videos, so be patient!

A couple interesting studies were published this past week. One study showed the location on Earth where language originated and the other looked to prove or disprove the existence of a “language organ” in humans.. is language instinctual for us?

The first study by Dr. Quentin Atkinson used phonemes to show where language originated. Phonemes are the smallest sounds which differentiate meaning, for example, the “th” in thin; replace it with an “f” sound or “s” sound and the result is a different word.  It’s been known that the less widely spoken a language is, the fewer phonemes it has. Thus, the farther a group ventured from the source of language, the fewer phonemes that group would have in their language. Dr. Atkinson charted these phonemes and showed that language truly did originate in central/southern Africa.

The next study looks at Noam Chomsky’s theory that the human brain comes hard-wired with a universal grammar – a language instinct.  I WISH my brain was hard-wired for grammar.. perhaps those tests would have been easier for me!  Dr. Dunn looked at the four large language families: Indo-European, Bantu, Austronesian (from South-East Asia and the Pacific) and Uto-Aztecan (the native vernaculars of the Americas) that account for >1/3 of  the 7000 languages spoken in the world today and found NO correlations between them, thus disproving Chomsky’s theory of instinctual grammar.

Perhaps these talking babies hold the clue to the origin of language?

Interesting statistics:

1/3 of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives.
42 percent of college graduates never read another book after college.
80 percent of U.S. families did not buy or read a book last year.

(Source: Jenkins Group) more stats here.

I find these statistics horrible.

“But high-school and college ruined the enjoyment of reading books for me!” is a phrase I’ve often heard.

Perhaps there is some truth to this as a lot of my friends do view reading as a chore, and they end up buying books that they think they *should* read… self help books, relationship books, career advancement books, etc. The end result is a pile of half-read books that they never finish, further supporting their view that “reading is a chore.”

Actually, reading is one of the most enjoyable past-times there is. After I’ve read a book, I oftentimes think that I have seen the movie due to the vivid imagination that I have. But those vivid images only come about if the book I just read was truly engrossing.

What makes a truly enjoyable and engrossing book for me? A mystery? A love story? Science fiction? A spy novel? All of them do! Any book that allows me to escape from my world and immerse myself into a another world, very different from my own, is an enjoyable book for me! Sometimes a book is so good, I end up reading it in every spare minute I have over 2 or 3 days. Then, when the book is done, I am bummed that it’s over! When’s the last time you read a book like that?

Other times I’ll pick up a book and immediately I have trouble getting through the first chapter. Do you know what I do then? I put the book away in my bookshelf and find myself another book that is more fun to read. I may go through 3 or 4 books at a time to find that enjoyable book, but it’s worth it. Because reading is so much fun for me, I will not allow it to become a chore… and if a book starts feeling like a chore for me to get through… it’s “bye-bye” to that book.

You should do the same. Get rid of all of those half read books and go curl up with a fun book! Let’s reverse these horrible statistics at the beginning of this post and let’s reverse this horrible feeling that reading is a chore. Some of the greatest discoveries in history happened due to an active imagination, and I feel that an active imagination is developed through reading, so do your part to further advance mankind – READ A (FUN) BOOK!

When’s the last time you’ve read a whole book just for fun and enjoyed it? What was it about?

Oh, one other thing. For those of you who think reading is not sexy, here are some fun pics I found of a familiar face who also loved to read

Don’t you just hate those hoons? What? You don’t know what a hoon is? Well, watch and find out!

Retweet those hoons by clicking here.

Kimberly takes a look at Katy Perry’s new song, ET.. OK.. not much to analyze.. but hey!. I’m in NY right now on business, but will have a new video up by next week! In the mean time, enjoy a little Kim and some ETs!

Show her a little love over at YouTube.

Have you ever noticed that European book spines have the titles going one way and American book spines have the titles going the other? It’s kind of annoying as it makes my bookshelf not look consistent!

Also.. when you think about it, the American way makes more sense than the European way, because when you lay the book down on a table facing up, you can read the title on the American book spine, but the title is upside down on the European book. Hmmm…

I wonder why they are different? Any ideas? Let me know in the comments below.

Sorry, I’m 4 days late on this! I’ve been out of Los Angeles, for the past couple days trying to avoid this, which was supposed to be brought on by this. Instead, I am being chased by these while braving the weather here.

Anyway.. I should be back home shortly.. but in the meantime, today’s nerd word marks the death of another word.

The Associated Press announced on the 18th of March the death of “e-mail” with a hyphen.. it’s now known as “email”.

Last year the AP did away with the hyphen in web-site website as well! Poor hyphen, getting no respect!

Hey guys! Check out my new iPhone app! It allows you to keep up with the lessons while on the go, as well as keep up with any news, tweets, posts, etc. And it’s free! Just pop over to the App Store, grab it and you’ll always have me in your pocket!

Das App ist komplett kostenlos:

Hier gehts zum App Store