1. Bug resurrected after 120,000 years.
2. Autistics solve problems forty percent faster.
3. The most beautiful words in the English language?
4. The first chapter from Peter Leeson's The Invisible Hook; buy the book here.
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I’m sorry that ‘beautiful’ didn’t make 100 most beautiful words. It’s certainly a better word than ‘waft’.
I believe the list was generated by a Francophile.
bungalow? For real?
I counted only 12 (12%) words of German origin in that list. Most have Latin or Romance (mostly French) origins. A few, Greek.
Although the article about austism is interesting, the sample size is only 33! “Fifteen autistics and 18 non-autistics were recruited for the study.” This isn’t even worthy of being published, let alone get a news article. I would love to see a more rigorous version of the study, as the premise is fascinating. It seems intuitive that austistic people would be better at problem solving, given that they are disproportionately represented among computer scientists and engineers.
“2. Autistics solve problems forty percent faster.”
Simon-Baron Cohen theorizes that Asperger’s may be a form of ‘extremely male’ brains, and it is generally agreed that Asperger’s and autimism (the two may or may not be related somehow) tend to involve extremely narrow interests, asociability and patterning/systematizing behaviour.
Hey, where is “cellar door” in that list? Folklore says that JRR Tolkien said the phrase “cellar door” is the most beautiful phrase in the English language (to the French, anyway). Maybe it’s not technically a word (but two words) so doesn’t make the list, but still, it seems like it should be there.
In addition to “seldom”, I suggest “merriment”, “diversion” and “contrivance”.
Trite replies, courtesy of Silas:
1. Bug resurrected after 120,000 years.
“Hey guys, why do we need to check that the input to this function is the right data type? Just assume it …”
2. Autistics solve problems forty percent faster.
Unless that problem is “getting along with others”.
3. The most beautiful words in the English language?
… are not to be found in that link. Bungalow? Seriously?
3 most beautiful words in English: “**** me NOW!”
Different explanation: autistics have lower scores on the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale than their intelligence justifies.
At first I read that as “blog resurrected after 120,000 years” and thought WTF?
Beautiful word? “Eleemosynary”. Like high-fashion models with striking faces, sometimes there is beauty in oddness.
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