(no subject)

I watch a group called Russia Abandoned, which posts pictures of spectacular architecture in the former Societ Union that has fallen into ruins. This link:


http://community.livejournal.com/ru_abandoned/398697.html

documents a palace in Kishinev (no idea it was a government or private building since I can't read Russian) that was especially beautiful. But what is truly outrageous is that one grafitto on it proclaims '50 Cent.' I can hardly articulate the ira at seeing modernity destroying beauty--the indignity of even having to know what that means.

Lingusitics

From an article in  Scientific American :


Researchers scoured grammatical texts dating back to the days of Old English, cataloguing all the irregular verbs they came across. Among them: the still irregular "sing" / "sang," "go" / "went" as well as the since-regularized "smite" which once was "smote" in Old English but since has become "smited," and "slink," which is now "slinked" but 1,200 years ago was "slunk." They located 177 verbs that were irregular in Old English and 145 that were still irregular in Middle English; today, only 98 of the 177 verbs have not been "regularized.'"


Does anyone say 'smited' or 'slinked'?