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""Has there been a study of this phrase phenomenon, relating different languages on some kind of Directed Graph?â Well apparently there has, even if only perfunctorily, and the result is this cartogram.
When a Hellenophone has trouble understanding something, his or her preferred languages of reference, as far as incomprehension is concerned, are Arabic and Chinese. And while for Arabs the proverbial unintelligible language is Hindi, for Chinese itâs⦠the language of Heaven."
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I can’t obsessively check the Amazon rank for my book, yet, but at least I can practice on the blog…
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"Armed with real data and the Michael Lewis imprimatur, I took the court in my weekly pickup game in a church gym in Arlington, Va., with a new mantra: What Would Shane Battier Do? No longer did my Rec Specs-brand prescription goggles suggest unathletic gooniness ("When I saw those, I thought you might be able to shoot the 3, but I was wrong," a teenager once told me); now they simply meant that I could outthink my opponents, even if I couldn’t outplay them. "
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"[F]orget what Jindal did or did not say, or mean to say, or imply – his big flop is yesterday’s news now. Considering the argument that volcano monitoring does not belong in the stimulus bill on its own merits… I just don’t get it."