We take science for granted in our daily lives, but science also reminds us how dangerous it is to hold beliefs without evidence.
Our nation's electric grid system remains much the same as when it was first invented and installed, 140 years ago. That many soon change.
Editor Gerald Early welcomes readers to The Common Reader, Washington University in St. Louis's new interdisciplinary journal, with a full menu of articles about issues of the day, and special events in the future.
The world's many endangered languages should not be preserved simply because of the simple, and shaky, notion that they preserve cultural world views. They should instead be preserved for their aesthetic and cognitive value.
Even before the Internet, and even before Goerge Orwell, Ambrose Bierce's classic The Devil's Dictionary taught us how to see through the veil of language to words' true meanings, which are always open to interpretation.
Threats and fans have followed Ilan Stavans ever since he announced on Barcelona radio in 2002 his intention to translate Cervantes into Spanglish. This time, it's for real.
In the old days of language usage, speakers took their commands from lexicographers who wrote the rules of what words meant. Thanks to the Internet, that chain of command has been called into deep question.
As global audiences deepened their involvement with hip-hop culture and created local rap scenes of their own, the language of rap came to play an important role as they developed their own hybrid vernaculars.
If the translation is tantalizing enough—and even if it isn't—language can transcend its boundaries beyond signifiers to land straight on the tongue. Novelist Qiu Xiaolong has the experience, and literary character, to prove it.
Sholem Aleichem indisputably contributed to the golden age of modern Yiddish literature in a major way. But what does it mean for a writer to have contributed to a literature no longer flourishing?