Words R Us

A state-of-the-art medical scanner will help scientists unveil the secrets of how the brain processes languages. The magneto-encephalography machine, which was unveiled yesterday at the inauguration of New York University Abu Dhabi's Neuroscience of Language Laboratory, will be able to analyse language processes in the brain faster and more efficiently than current neuroscience technology.

I'm reminded of my favorite line from Jonathan Franzen's _The Corrections_: "the schizophrenic eyes of the cellularly-occupied".

Marion Underwood is drowning in teenage texting data. For the last four years, the University of Texas at Dallas professor has been collecting texts sent by and to 175 adolescent students at a large suburban Texas high school as part of a study dubbed the BlackBerry Project.

This NYT article reports findings of a recently released study, which concluded that computers are capable of scoring essays on standardized tests as well, or possibly better, than humans. However, Les Perelman, a director of writing at MIT and a tester of the Educational Testing Services E-Rater program disagrees, arguing that the system can be easily "gamed".

A lady contemplates the exponential usage of exclamation points in writing and the effects of such over usage (happy a lot, but over nothing)

Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP)