I’m a little (well, a lot) appalled that challenging the assumption that "language … allows you to do other high order intellectual functions" is considered so shocking. I frequently feel like language gets in the way of my high order thoughts, in an analogous way to how sounding the words in my head slows down my reading. It’s like making the thoughts into words is this bad habit that I can’t figure out how to break.
I’m inclined to believe there’s a spectrum of verbal thought: I can at least imagine thought without words, which I think puts me somewhere in the middle. At one end, there’s Temple Grandin, who helped design the cow-calming slaughter trail and does not think verbally at all (cf. autism); and at the other, someone I know expressed unwillingness to believe that non-verbal thought exists. The punch line? The latter person is a graphic designer.

Apparently we won’t have to worry about smoke visibility in the near term, as the Pope’s laryngo-tracheitis has been fixed. That was quick. Mine seems to be getting hardly any better at all. Of course, it sounds like his doc(s) gave him treatment instead of a blank stare.

Plumbers beware! In Virginia, it may soon be illegal to have one’s pants droop. Though I haven’t read the text of the bill, the focus seems to be on underwear, so maybe skipping the thong entirely will allow the miscreant to escape prosecution. Or maybe a crack show is covered under other legislation.

They Might Be Giants have a new project out, on CD and DVD, called Here Come the ABCs. Since some recent Flash ads caused me to disable Flash again, I haven’t looked at the site.

As noted previously, these kids today are not very bright. In further developments in that field of study, USA Today (that bastion of journalistic excellence) cites a study that found more than a third of high school students think newspapers should get government approval before publishing stories (though the wording I see doesn’t say they believe such approval should be mandatory). On the bright side, more than half believed such approval should not be sought.

Take this piece about the Pope’s flu, for example. It makes me wonder at least a couple things not addressed: Is the Vatican flu as bad as the Kremlin flu (or was that the Kremlin cold, and that’s why the Vatican emphasized that this is the flu and not a cold)? Why wouldn’t an 84-year-old guy get a flu shot (and related questions about whether flu shots work, or if JP2 is a closet Christian Scientist)? What up with that?
Update: now he’s been hospitalized. Not to get too far ahead of myself, but I wonder if they’ll go with the smoke grenades like last time, or if there will be some new white smoke/black smoke technology developed in the last 25 years.

Based solely on the name, I want to hate Lifehacker, but, dammit, it might be fairly cool. I’ll leave the jury out for now.

But since I’m already coughing my lungs out a couple times a day, it’s hard to be all that sanguine about human-to-human avian flu transmission.
When I’m not actually coughing my lungs out, I feel okay, but those couple times a day are not pretty.

Good news: Nicky Brendon has a movie in production. Bad news: It’s starring Adrienne Barbeau. Where’s Love Boat when you need it?

Just another "Good Baptist couple gets porno labelled as The Pajama Game" story? Maybe. My favorite part, though, is "’My wife and I were very shocked but we watched it until the end because we couldn’t believe what we were seeing.’" So, what, they were expecting maybe the topless Italian woman was the accompanying short? Or maybe they couldn’t be sure exactly how shocked they were? After all, "’The film became progressively more graphic,’" so I guess they really did have to watch to the end to find their true level of shockedness.
I guess this demonstrates that there really are some people out there who can’t figure out how to turn off the tv when it presents them with something they (feel obligated to claim they) don’t want to watch. Pathetic, really.