May 23, 2013
Linguistics of adolescent phonetics
If you don’t get it, then I just have one thing to say and it’s: “A voiced alveolar stop and breathy-voiced low-back unrounded vowel, with advanced tongue root” – duuuuh…
(That latter words is described by James Harbeck in his accompanying article as aiming to sound as stupid as possible. Of course, the stupidity being communicated is not that of the articulator but of you, dear listener, …
May 22, 2013
I discuss the myths about why our fingers go “pruney” in the bath or swimming pool in my book Deceived Wisdom, the truth seems to lie in the work of Mark Changizi. In this cartoon, we see the explanation and get to hear his theory in his own words.
The tabloids were screaming at new parents this week desperately yelling at them not to share a bed with their newborn because it could be lethal, causing sudden infant death syndrome, or cot death. The research said so. SIDS is tragic, of course, but a little composure, please.
As NHS Choices explains: “The researchers estimate that the absolute risk of SIDS for room-sharing infants was 0.00008 (eight per 100,000) when neither parent smoked and the baby …
