When someone speaks of grounded coffee (to mean coffee brewed from ground coffee beans), should that someone be grounded ? Well, English verbs are so irregular, they can cause a person to go wrong unwittingly.

Do you not get a faint thrill of nostalgia when, in some musty old tome, you chance across those quaint asterisks between the first and final letters of the once-forbidden four-letter words? Those were the days when we lived under the enchantment of a...

LAS CRUCES, N.M., Sept. 18, 2008 -- Mechanics of Spanish, an informative book co-authored by Robert Kapernick and Thelma Witt Gonzalez, has been released through Xlibris to the anticipation of readers seeking to understand Spanish in its literary and spoken forms.

Despite Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi saying recently that journalists must write the truth, events of the past few days proved that for most people, including my friend Isa, truth is really over-rated in this country.

Good writers have an ear for language that tells them when a word or expression they're using is a tad off key. Don Orr's ear served him well when he took exception to this sentence in an article telling how to fix a pastry cream custard: "The starch . . . imparts the cream with structure."

yukster writes "As Ruby on Rails rocketed into the development community's hearts and minds a few years ago, the number of books on the subject climbed with it. However, a lot of these books were introductory in nature (Agile Web Development with Rails, Beginning Rails, Build Your Own Rails Applications, etc.). What's a budding Rails-head to do once they've gotten the basics down? Books like Advanced Rails, which was released late last year by O'Reilly, aim to fill this void." Keep reading below for the rest of Ben's review.

An anonymous reader writes "Animals use pheromones to attract each other for sex, and warn each other of danger. Now, Wired reports, military researchers are working to harness the 'human fear' pheromone to create a scent of terror. The pheromone could lead to smell-based terrorist sensors, and new weapons that rely on 'contagious' stress."

TaeKwonDood writes "We all know language has evolved but mathematicians are trying to take how it has changed in the past to predict what it will be like in the future." From the article: "Mathematical analysis of this linguistic evolution reveals that irregular verb conjugations behave in an extremely regular way -- one that can yield predictions and insights into the future stages of a verb's evolutionary trajectory," says Lieberman, a graduate student in applied mathematics in Harvard's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and in the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, and an affiliate of Harvard's Program for Evolutionary Dynamics. "We measured something no one really thought could be measured, and got a striking and beautiful result.""

streepje writes "Here [to be] the latest egregious patent application. Microsoft [to be] [to apply] for a patent for [to conjugate] verbs. Future postings [to look] like this."

Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "Google is bringing some of the biggest media companies into its camp and sharing revenue with them, after drawing their ire last year with moves to search video and books, the Wall Street Journal reports. From the article: 'Google's improved relationships with media and entertainment companies reflects the confidence those companies have gained in online distribution in the past year, amid rapid growth in Americans' consumption of Web video and other Internet content. But just as importantly, it illustrates a coming of age in Google's approach to the owners of content it wants to search.' Google has hired executives from the media world to conduct the negotiations. One of them, David Eun, formerly of Time Warner and NBC, said, 'The biggest challenge is explaining to them we're friend and not foe.'" Just don't use google as a verb. Pretty please?

rm69990 writes "Google, becoming more and more concerned about the growing use of the word google as a verb, has fired off warning letters to numerous media organizations warning them against using its name as a verb. This follows google (with a lowercase g) being added to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary in June. According to a Google spokesperson: "We think it's important to make the distinction between using the word Google to describe using Google to search the internet, and using the word Google to describe searching the internet. It has some serious trademark issues.""

conq writes "BusinessWeek just came out with its best global brands list. The list is quite similar to last year's with Coke topping it. The brand with the highest growth year over year: Google. The comment: 'Its recent inclusion as a verb in the Oxford English Dictionary confirms what competitors feared: Google means search to an army of Web users.'" I thought this tied in nicely to tappytibbins' story. They write "eWEEK.com has posted a feature with their picks of the 25 most innovative PC products of the last 25 years. Their #1 pick is a bit uninspired: The IBM PC. Down at #8 is the Mac. And is Apache really more of an innovation than Linux?" From that article: "15 - Palm Pilot: With an almost Zen-like minimalism of both software and hardware complexity, the Palm Pilot was no more than users needed?and exactly what many wanted."

Mark Owen writes "With technology buzzwords becoming so commonly used in daily life, Webster and Oxford have both begun to include some new terms in their latest editions. Some of their newest additions include: adware, biodiesel, codec, digicam, google (as a verb), geocaching, hacktivism, mash-up, rewriteable, ringtone, spyware, and texting."

My Azgalor Paladin is running through Stormwind when I get a message from a GM proclaiming that my account is in violation of Blizzard policy and I must change my nickname. I try to find out more information, but I am kicked from the game. I have been CmdrTaco since April, but when I log in, I choose the new name: Violated. This experience has brought up a host of feelings on matters of virtual identity and virtual worlds.

Simon P. Chappell writes "There is a school of thought that if you cannot explain what you've done, then what you did was worthless. Perhaps that attitude is a little extreme, but in this highly networked world of emails, instant messages, wikis, blogs and webpages, the art of explaining oneself well is important. While there are many books that teach written skills, there have been few ostensibly aimed at technical folks. Enter Spring into Technical Writing for Engineers and Scientists by Barry J. Rosenberg, a technical writer and the author of a number of technical articles and books including the KornShell Programming Tutorial." Read on for the rest of Chappell's review.