In Nanjing, that is close to Shanghai, and I suppose also in other places around here*, you cannot buy salt anymore. Every last grain has been bought up. Why? Apparently, some evil guy started the rumor that table salt, which is sodium chloride (NaCl), can protect you from radioactivity. We are not talking about iodide salt here, nor even sea salt either, which has some iodide in it, but simple salt, which there is already way too much in the Chinese diet.

*(Update: In the whole of China, the first person died already from eating too much salt!)

So I check my blog comments this morning, and guess who the culprit is? IT IS ME! According to the comments to my last article, I am the one to blame! How so?

Language may have an undervalued role in learning the meanings of numbers.   A study based on research using deaf people in Nicaragua who never learned formal sign language showed that people who communicate using self-developed gestures (homesigns) were unable to comprehend the value of numbers greater than three because they had not learned a language containing symbols used for counting.