Tonight while watching “The Simpsons” I kept calling Lisa by Speedbump’s name (I kept screaming at the TV ’cause I was concerned about her future)

The worst thing I’ve ever heard of

Trunk ’n treat

Saw “The Descendents” last night (not about the band). Dreamt about hearing Speed Bump’s husband tell me how it was easier to wine and dine a prostitute than deal with her… Tried to get her, then, to go talk to him when he got home, felt like she’d been so worn down she wasn’t making a real effort. But I pushed her to, but I saw he wasn’t really taking any interest in what she was doing, either. One of us was drawing a picture.

If he’s willing to go to counseling he’s at least willing to try. I wish Speed Bump would see that and genuinely do the same thing. But she’s holding a part of her heart back.

The dream also involved watching a college softball team at a mall in Orange County, being dressed up in Giants gear possibly at a Mariners (?) game, and the family of the Spanish-language announcer.

I just want to scream, “Hello!
My god, it’s been so long
Never dreamed you’d return
But now, here you are
And here I am”

Sage advice

Once it was mentioned to the Prophet (pbuh) about two women who found difficulty in fasting. The Prophet (pbuh) called those women and asked them to vomit in separate bowls, when fresh meat and blood was found in the vomit of those women. The Prophet (pbuh) said that these women did backbiting. One of the adverse effects of sin while fasting is it becomes very difficult to fast. The one who fasts embracing taqwa won’t even feel like he is fasting. The fasting will trouble a person to the extent he dirties his eyes and tongue.
Allahu alam

Who’s “loathe to admit it?” I’m not the only one saying capitalism is fundmentally incompatible with democracy, for years.

It would be nice, I think, once, to imagine that she was taken away from me by some malevolent force in this awful age, but I know the truth of that: she went away, simply, because I wasn’t enough back then, because those were the days before I yearned for anything…

It’s weird that it doesn’t really seem that weird that I haven’t talked to my brother in almost a year.

Another Therria dream. This time it didn’t even start out as one—it was about finding an office/place and then the bridge exploding from a perspective where it’s not really in real life, but then somehow I was trying to show her how much I’d missed her + get us to make up.

Pretentious, but that’s why he’s so good

God is just out my back door, yet I choose not to visit. I would rather sit alone and scheme on how to be remembered, on what more that I can do here to cement the evidence that I once walked these roads with you. It is a futile exercise. I know it is, and yet I persist.

It’s nice to be reminded—even though that was why I made the decision, and was pretty sure it was the right one—of this every now and then.

At a deeper level, Islam lags because it failed to offer a way to institutionalize free inquiry. That, in turn, is attributable to its failure to reconcile faith and reason. In this respect, Islamic societies have fared worse not just than the West but also than many societies of Asia. With a couple of exceptions, every country in the Middle Eastern parts of the Muslim world has been ruled by an autocrat, a radical Islamic sect, or a tribal chieftain. Islam has no tradition of separating politics and religion.

The decline of Islam and the rise of Christianity was a development that was and remains deeply humiliating for Muslims. Since Islam tended to ascribe its political power to its theological superiority over other faiths, its fading as a worldly power raised profound questions about where a wrong turn was made.

It is really an unfortunate coincidence of our monotheistic heritage that we labour under the delusion that “all religions say basically the same thing.”

UGH

Yet another list for me, but for y’all, but for myself

• http://multitonguekids.blogspot.com/
• http://babybilingual.blogspot.com/
• http://wannajugarwithmigo.blogspot.com/

Also:

• Bringing Up Baby Bilingual by Jane Merrill, unfortunately out of print, 1984; too old for an ISBN; currently >$150 on Amazon.
• The Bilingual Family: A Handbook for Parents by Edith Harding and Philip Riley
  

LUCKY BONUS: Multilingual parenting FAQ

Bringing up a bilingual child is ordinary, not unusual. My own experience of child bilinguals has been mainly in Singapore and India. In these countries (and many others, especially in Asia and Africa) speaking more than one language is taken for granted. Most children grow up in families where two or more languages are spoken, in communities where they hear many languages every day.

In Singapore nearly all children come to nursery school at age 3 already able to speak 2 languages. Many can speak 3. A child growing up with only one language is quite rare.

If you live in a place where there is a clear dominant language in the society, which is the language of the children your child will be playing with, or which is the language of education, you can be sure your child will learn that language. YOU don't need to worry about it at all. If you speak a language that is not used much in the community you live in, and especially if you use the dominant community language with your partner, you are going to have to work hard to develop your child's skills in that language, especially if you and your partner speak in the community's dominant language.

Maybe I’ll expand on this later but pretty sure there was a Language Log posting about the English pronunciation of Beijing and specifically the J and maybe it has something to do with the stress being on the final syllable?

M$ b0rked Babel Fish

La lengua Hmong está ahora entre los idiomas traductor de Microsoft compatibles. Gracias a la en todo el mundo comunidad Hmong.

Pruebe Report Contextual y entrada Universal en los laboratorios de idioma de Microsoft Translator.

Microsoft traductor comercial API está disponible a través de Windows Azure Marketplace. Regístrese aquí.

Comunidad herramientas para personalizar las traducciones e invitar a los traductores están disponibles en la página web del widget.

The combination of the conversation with Ariadnæ and the trading of Ichiro (after I was about to send The Baby an (not cheap) Ichiro jersey) have made me kind of down tonight.

Talking with Ariadnæ about raising having kids + now I’m sad ’cause I realize I really don’t want to raise a person with anybody but you and Ariadnæ said, “I don’t know, my sister + her husband set the bar pretty high,” and I’m just thinking, Pssh, amateurs! they suck! we could do better than that

O continuum das normas escritas na Galícia: Do espanhol ao português

Moito, moito, moito interessante.

current obsession: o gal(l)ego

For my own reference, but yours, too

Free e-maily services:

• Yahoo!
• Hotmail
• GMX/Mail.com
• Topmail
  choice of Spanish-language occupational domain names like Mail.com, gives you an MSN account
• Lavabit
  POP3, seems pretty 133t, security/privacy, [review]
• Fastmail
  choice of multiple domain names
• Gawab
  árabe
• Hushmail
• Pobox.com
  Is that still a thing?
• SquirrelMail
• Round Cube

And now I’ve had enough of this for now.