"A source in the Commission said the wedding was stopped because it violated local traditions as the bride was not covering her face and the groom was holding her hand and hugging her sometimes."

Photoshop, or a much more fun way: scissors, paper and tape.

RP 

image by gbence

KernelMuncher writes "Australia's Royal Air Force has been left red-faced after a job ad asked applicants to solve a complex math problem that was revealed to be unsolvable. The service posted the puzzle in a bid to attract the country's best minds to its ranks. 'If you have what it takes to be an engineer in the Air Force call the number below,' it read, above a complicated formula which candidates had to crack. But there was a slight difficulty: The problem had typos and ended up not giving potential operatives the correct contact information."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The number of homicides on record in New York City has plummeted, surprising even police officials who have long been accustomed to trumpeting declining crime rates in the city. Why?

Kohath writes "Eighteen-year-old Justin Carter of Austin, Texas was arguing with a friend on Facebook about League of Legends back in February. After being called 'insane,' he responded with 'Oh yeah, I'm real messed up in the head, I'm going to go shoot up a school full of kids and eat their still, beating hearts.' Below that, he wrote 'lol' and 'jk.' He was arrested March 27, 2013 and has been in jail since that time. A hearing to review his case is scheduled for July 1, 2013. His parents have launched a change.org petition to convince the authorities to release their son."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Everyone knows that language changes. It's easy to pick out words that have only been recently introduced (bromance, YOLO, derp) or sentence constructions that have gone out of style (How do you do? Have you a moment?), but we are constantly in the middle of language change that may not be noticeable for decades or even centuries. Some of the biggest and most lasting changes to language happen slowly and imperceptibly. The Great Vowel Shift, for example, was a series of pronunciation changes occurring over 350 years, and not really noticed for over 100 years after that. It resulted in an intelligibility gap between Modern and Middle English and created the annoying misalignment between English pronunciation and spelling. But it was impossible to see while it was going on.

These days, however, it is possible to spot subtle linguistic changes by analyzing large digital collections of text or transcribed speech, some of which cover long periods of time. Linguists can run the numbers on these large corpora to determine the direction of language use trends and whether they are statistically significant. Here are 4 rather subtle changes happening in English, as determined by looking at the numbers.

1. Shift from "they started to walk" to "they started walking"

There are a number of verbs that can take a complement with another verb in either the "-ing" form or the "to" form: "They liked painting/to paint;" "We tried leaving/to leave;" "He didn't bother calling/to call." Both of these constructions are still used, and they have both been used for a long time. But there has been a steady shift over time from the "to" to the "-ing" complement. "Start" and "begin" saw a big increase in the "-ing" complement until leveling out in the 1940s, while emotion verbs like "like," "love," "hate," and "fear" saw their proportion of "-ing" complements start to rise in the 1950s and 60s. Not all verbs have participated in the shift: "stand," "intend," and "cease" went the "to" way.

2. Getting more progressive

English has been getting more progressive over time—that is, the progressive form of the verb has steadily increased in use. (The progressive form is the –ing form that indicates something is continuous or ongoing: "They are speaking" vs. "They speak.") This change started hundreds of years ago, but in each subsequent era, the form has grown into parts of the grammar it hadn't had much to do with in previous eras. For example, at least in British English, its use in the passive ("It is being held" rather than "It is held") and with modal verbs like "should," "would," and "might" ("I should be going" rather than "I should go") has grown dramatically. There is also an increase of "be" in the progressive form with adjectives ("I'm being serious" vs. "I'm serious").

3. Going to, have to, need to, want to

It's pretty noticeable that words like "shall" and "ought" are on the way out, but "will," "should," and "can" are doing just fine. There are other members of this helping verb club though, and they have been on a steep climb this century. "Going to," "have to," "need to," and "want to" cover some of the same meaning territory as the other modal verbs. They first took hold in casual speech and have enjoyed a big increase in print in recent decades.

4. Rise of the "get-passive"

The passive in English is usually formed with the verb "to be," yielding "they were fired" or "the tourist was robbed." But we also have the "get" passive, giving us "they got fired" and "the tourist got robbed." The get-passive goes back at least 300 years, but it has been on a rapid rise during the past 50 years. It is strongly associated with situations which are bad news for the subject—getting fired, getting robbed—but also situations that give some kind of benefit. (They got promoted. The tourist got paid.) However, the restrictions on its use may be relaxing over time and get-passives could get a whole lot bigger.

This article draws on work by Mark Davies, Geoffrey Leech, and Christian Mair.

Original Source

zone-b:

minusmanhattan:

George Orwell’s Birthday Party.

# AdventuresofPeppermintSpartan

lpress writes "The Los Angeles Unified School District will spend $30 million over the next two years on iPads for 30,000 students. Coverage of the announcement has focused on Apple winning over other tablets, but that is not the key point. The top three proposals each included an app to deliver Pearson's K-12 Common Core System of Courses along with other third-party educational apps. The Common Core curriculum is not yet established, but many states are committed to it, starting next year. The new tablets and the new commitment to the Common Core curriculum will arrive around the same time, and busy faculty (and those hired to train them) will adopt the Pearson material. The tablets will be obsolete in a few years and the hardware platform may change, but lock-in to Pearson's default curriculum may last for generations."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

SmartAboutThings writes "Microsoft has just announced the next version of DirectX, 11.2, on its website. But the real 'problem' is that it is going to be exclusive to Windows 8.1 and next generation consoles — Xbox One and Play Station 4. This is not news, as DirectX 11.1 was exclusive to Windows 8. But is this going to help Microsoft convince people to ugprade or will make them angry?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes "Google has added native Microsoft Office file editing to the dev channel for Chrome OS. The addition means Chrome OS users on the latest build of the company's browser-based operating system can now experiment with editing Microsoft Word and Excel files. The dev channel for Chrome OS is updated once or twice weekly. Since the feature has made it in there, it's likely to show up in the beta channel, and then eventually the stable channel. Today's news that Google is already working on editing, and not just viewing, Microsoft Office documents in Chrome OS is very interesting because of the potential. Maybe by the end of year, the functionality will make it into the Chrome browser, too."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes "Internet provider AT&T has patented a new technology that allows the company to accurately track content being shared via BitTorrent and other P2P networks. The company explains that the technology can be utilized to detect pirated downloads and combat congestion on its network. Whether the company is already using the system to track infringing content, or has plans to do so, is unknown."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Earlier today I delivered the first benchmarks of Ubuntu's Unity 7 running over XMir to run the current X11 desktop atop the Mir Display Server via this compatibility layer. These benchmarks documented the performance impact of running OpenGL games when having to deal with XMir rather than just a clean X.Org Server running on the hardware. The extra step in the rendering process did result in a measurable performance impact, especially when the performance of the open-source Linux graphics drivers is already lower than their proprietary brethren. The benchmarks to now show illustrate that the 2D rendering performance also takes a hit when running Unity on XMir.

Politico

NFL Won't Promote Enrollment in Health Insurance Under New Law New York Times The National Football League is not participating in an effort with the Obama administration to help promote enrollment in health insurance plans under the new health care law, a spokesman said. The statement came after two Republican Senate leaders ... GOP Leaders Warn Pro Sports Leagues Not To Promote ObamacareTPM NFL declines to promote ObamacareNBCSports.com NFL's help sought on promoting health-insurance coverageMinnPost.com Roll Call -13WMAZ all 47 news articles »

The day before the concert, Pope Francis said bishops should be 'close to the people' and not have 'the mentality of a prince.' 

The committee is authorized to gather documents, data and information about the bank with the “prompt collaboration” of the bank’s staff and that of other Vatican departments.

gingerhaze:

holavicente:

Dr. Doom is the best.

omg

The state offered up enough evidence – and it may very well be sitting, for now, on more – that can put Hernandez in the company of the victim, Odin Lloyd, on the night of Lloyd's slaying, place Hernandez at the scene of the crime, link Hernandez to shell casings of a .45 gun and even show video, from Hernandez's own security system, of him brandishing a gun minutes after leaving the murder scene.

djempirical

Sensory overload ahead.

no kidding.

thedisreputabledog:

deducecanoe:

catladythings:

tkohl:

War kitties in hammocks

I am so delighted by this. I cannot handle those tiny hammocks!!!

Holy shit that last one’s just a baby. Yes the tiny hammocks are adorbs. Carriers and other vessels got infested with rodents. So cats were not just moral boosters (which they very much were) they were also working members of the crew. Some have even been immortalized for surviving multiple attacks on their ships, etc. Military dogs have been recognized for the important roles they’ve played but I think cats kinda get lost in the shuffle of military animals sometimes.

Also, military working animals and military mascots can be given military rank. Most animals that belong to police departments and the military are considered materiel. Meaning—they’re property of whatever branch they  belong to. They do not get cushy retirements when they are too old to work. They can be abandoned in the field (they may leave no man behind, but animals are considered tools and can be left) and when they are too old or too ill to perform their duties, they can just be put down, instead of being retired out of service and sent to a forever-home. A lot of people who work with these animals will personally adopt them, but if their handler is killed in battle, or is deployed and not in a position to take care of them, they can have a grim fate.

Giving an animal rank as a mascot means they’re given, by the military (not sure how police handle this) a stipend for their care and well-being. It also means they are no longer materiel, but are actual staff members and therefore are treated better at the end of their service. When I worked at Fort Leavenworth, the on-fort veterinary care facility had Major Cinnamon, a ginger cat that outranked everyone that actually worked in the vet center. He “oversaw” the taking care of military horses, horses belonging to military members who stabled them on-post, the pets that belonged to people living on post, and the animals that needed to find new homes (they also ran a shelter out of the clinic).

So there’re your fun facts for the day. A salute to all the working navy cats, and a special thank you to all the working navy cats that provided comfort to the crew and those that went down with their ships.

Tammy you’re amazing.

I salute you, Major Cinnamon. 

Despite “White House Down’s” mediocre performance, Sony should have a strong late summer push with both the “Grown Ups” and “Smurfs” sequels