Banner
Understanding The Voynich Manuscript #4

Understanding The Voynich Manuscript #4 If not Latin, then what? Please see the links at...

Understanding the Voynich Manuscript #3

Understanding the Voynich Manuscript #3 Plants and the moon. For thousands of years, people...

Understanding the Voynich Manuscript #2

Understanding the Voynich Manuscript #2 An i for an i ? Not nymphs: women! There are...

Understanding The Voynich Manuscript #1

Understanding the Voynich Manuscript #1 Tom, Dick and Harry explain a statistical method. ...

User picture.
picture for Tommaso Dorigopicture for Hank Campbellpicture for Fred Phillipspicture for Hontas Farmerpicture for Robert H Olleypicture for Helen Barratt
Patrick LockerbyRSS Feed of this column.

Retired engineer, 73 years young. Computer builder and programmer. Linguist specialising in language acquisition and computational linguistics. Interested in every human endeavour except the scrooge... Read More »

 Blogroll
Ethics, Expertise and Law

Ethics, Expertise and Law

May 23 2009 | comment(s)

Ethics, Expertise and Law

Dear reader: please excuse the style of this article.  I am dealing here with observations in law.  I have chosen a legalese style so that any student of law stumbling upon this article may more easily perform a web search for authoritative legal sources.   I have studied legalese out of a linguistic interest in its attempted logical use of language.  I have studied the history of British law for its impact on the history of the English language.  But nothing I say here should be relied on as a statement of law.  I am not a lawyer!
 
The Beauty of Justice

The Beauty of Justice

May 22 2009 | comment(s)

The Beauty of Justice


Some celebrities use their status to promote the most idiotic ideas. Fortunately, there are many more, who use that status to help make the world a better place.   In the UK, many TV stars and presenters make an annual contribution to the Children in Need charity.
A Grammar of Questions.

A Grammar of Questions.

May 20 2009 | comment(s)

A Grammar of Questions.

Quistic grammar is based on what I believe to be the biological basis of language in the brain: a set of models of our internal and external environment, specifically including the social environment, with the models being labelled with tokens for purposes of logical manipulation of ideas.

... it is my contention that the development of language is a direct consequence of our brain’s data organization function which gives rise to a data framework, or belief system.
Gerhard Adam

Language and the thirst for knowledge.
Random Noise #9 : De Wiskundige en de Canyon

Random Noise #9 : De Wiskundige en de Canyon

May 20 2009 | comment(s)

I just came across this little gem on the QED blog:

De Wiskundige en de Canyon
Don't worry - it's in English!

Enjoy!  :)
What is Language ?

What is Language ?

May 19 2009 | comment(s)

What is Language ?

We are tool-using social  animals. The most powerful tool known is the one we use to build every other tool: language - spoken or written. But tools can be used with little or no skill to turn out mundane artifacts and garbage. By honing your skills with language you - yes, you - can craft masterpieces. A study of linguistics can help you acquire such skills, but be warned: the pursuit of linguistic knowledge is highly addictive.
Random Noise 8 : Computer Languages

Random Noise 8 : Computer Languages

May 18 2009 | comment(s)

Anybody who wants to learn how to write a computer program is faced with a bewildering variety of programming languages.  The reasons for having so many computer languages are partly logical, partly elitist and partly historical.

Whilst researching the topic of computer languages I stumbled on a 'brief history of computer languages'.  It is so hopelessly and farcically  riddled with errors as to leave me with only one comment to make:

I wish I'd written it.  :)

A recommended read about programming languages by James Iry.