And in other news:

1,000-year-old onion and garlic eye remedy kills MRSA

Who will win?

There's only one way to find out. FIGHT!

Just to clarify, I don't really believe that linguistic controversies are best resolved by fisticuffs.

Very crudely, Through the Language Glass: why the world looks different in other languages by Guy Deutscher 📚 is defending the (probably misnamed) Sapir-Whorf hypothesis; The Language Hoax: why the world looks the same in any language by John H. McWhorter 📚 is attacking it. Personally I'm rooting for McWhorter; I've always suspected Sapir-Whorf is a crock.

I've started with Deutscher. I was kind of hoping this would make me really angry, but so far it's very reasonable; the only infuriating thing has been the quote from the Observer on the cover Guy Deutscher is that rare beast, an academic who talks good sense about linguistics. Admittedly, I'm 150 pages in and he's still reviewing the literature.

A friend asked, are there any books about the way we become different people in different languages? It's an interesting point. These guys are, I think, arguing about the effect (or not) of language on speech communities, rather than individuals, and so far they assume those communities are monoglot. There must be something out there that looks at multilingualism; it seems like the obvious next step.

Well I was going to go out and do some gardening today, and the weather's been perfect, but hearing Marit Fält's absolutely rock-solid playing last night with the Tom Kitching band has compelled me to spend most of the afternoon indoors practising the mandola. Damn.

Also for International Women's Day: Annie Jean Easley, who worked at NASA at the same time, but perhaps had a slightly different experience.

On Heroes

For International Women's Day: Margaret Hamilton, lead Apollo flight software designer, credited with inventing systems engineering. I love the photo of her standing next to a pile of documentation that's nearly as tall as she is.

Margaret Hamilton (scientist)

Might be of interest:

Power to Fly

I'd never heard of Pine Nut Syndrome before, but I think I'm experiencing it. Icky!

The Great Pine Nut Mystery