I have 100+ blog and search feeds that I keep track of in my online world. A couple of them are general techie feeds that many other people subscribe to as well. Most, however, are very specialised in topic and theme they discuss. I guess I am one of those people that helps to wag the long tail of online distribution model. Among those feeds, TeleRead is a blog that I rate very highly.

When I was studying French, my teacher liked to measure out the knowledge at her own pace. If you asked about something that in her study plan was a couple of weeks later, she would pretty much tell you to learn what you are supposed to know first. Being the kind of person who likes to connect the dots and figure out what’s important and what’s not himself, I was somewhat annoyed at this spoon-fed method.

French and Esperanto are taking a bit of a long break. I am learning Spanish now. I heard that it was easier to start learning than the French (though of course not as easy as Esperanto). I was looking forward to it. So, the first lesson was a bit of a shock. Turns out that when the language book talks about Spanish being phonetically regular and pronounced as written, they meant the regularity within one particular Spanish-speaking group.

Many people say that they become vegetarians because they can not keep thinking that the meat they were eating came from a real animal - cow or sheep. The rest of us can handle this problem by not thinking about the connection in too many details. Fortunately English, Russian and probably other languages help us by disassociating the name of the animal with the name of the meat that comes from it.

A while ago I did an American Sign Language(ASL) course online. While I still cannot sign, it was fun to do and gave me enough basics to understand that sign language is quite complex and interesting. In fact, it seems to have more dimensions simultaneously than a vocal language. If I ever have to work with a deaf person, I will not hesitate to further my knowledge of their sign language.