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"As New York City schoolchildren celebrate their first snow day in five years, it's as good a time as any to ponder the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis."

"When the Viaduct de Millau opened in the south of France in 2004, this tallest bridge in the world won worldwide accolades. German newspapers described how it "floated above the clouds" with "elegance and lightness" and "breathtaking" beauty. In France, papers praised the "immense" "concrete giant." Was it mere coincidence that the Germans saw beauty where the French saw heft and power? Lera Boroditsky thinks not. A psychologist at Stanford University, she has long been intrigued by an age-old question whose modern form dates to 1956, when linguist Benjamin Lee Whorf asked whether the language we speak shapes the way we think and see the world. If so, then language is not merely a means of expressing thought, but a constraint on it, too. Although philosophers, anthropologists, and others have weighed in, with most concluding that language does not shape thought in any significant way, the field has been notable for a distressing lack of empiricism-as in testable hypotheses and actual data."

"But a better understanding of Asian writing systems has not stopped Western experts from making grand claims about their virtues and limitations. The latest scholar to venture into such politically sensitive territory is William C. Hannas, a linguist who speaks 12 languages and works as a senior officer at the Foreign Broadcast Information Service, a federal agency in Washington. In a polemical new book, ''The Writing on the Wall: How Asian Orthography Curbs Creativity'' (University of Pennsylvania Press), Mr. Hannas blames the writing systems of China, Japan and Korea for what he says is East Asia's failure to make significant scientific and technological breakthroughs compared to Western nations. Mr. Hannas's logic goes like this: because East Asian writing systems lack the abstract features of alphabets, they hamper the kind of analytical and abstract thought necessary for scientific creativity. "

The idea that your mother tongue shapes your experience of the world may be true after all.

"Is language first and foremost an artifact of culture? Or is it largely determined by human biology? This issue has been argued back and forth for a couple of centuries with no clear resolution in sight. Guy Deutscher's 2005 book "The Unfolding of Language" placed him firmly in the pro-culture camp. Now, in his new book, "Through the Language Glass," he examines some idiosyncratic aspects of particular languages that, in his opinion, cast further doubt on biologically based theories of language. "

"Does It Matter Why He Did It? January 14, 2011 There's been no evidence to link today's toxic political environment with Jared Loughner's decision to use his gun last weekend. But the question persists: what has the aggressive rhetoric - peddled by mainstream candidates and media outlets and not just militant fringe groups - done to our society? The New Yorker's George Packer says the particular motivations for Loughner's rampage aren't the point."

"Political Rhetoric in the Wake of the Tucson Shooting January 14, 2011 After the shooting in Tucson last weekend, pundits across the political spectrum took a renewed look at the hyperbolic and oftentimes violent rhetoric that marks our modern political discourse. Brooke looks at the way the media responded to this tragedy."