24 MAR 2012 by ideonexus

 The Beginnings of the Theory of Evolution

From thus meditating on the great similarity of the structure of the warm-blooded animals, and at the same time of the great changes they undergo both before and after their nativity; and by considering in how minute a portion of time many of the changes of animals above described have been produced; would it be too bold to imagine that, in the great length of time since the earth began to exist, perhaps millions of ages before the commencement of the history of mankind would it be too bold t...
  1  notes

Erasmus Darwin sees evolution, demonstrating the idea of evolution was prevalent at the time; Darwin simply figured out an algorithm for what made it happen.

01 JAN 2010 by ideonexus

 How do We Fix Spelling?

...it can be argued, perhaps, if they wish, that it's a question of style and beauty in the language, and that to make new words and new parts of speech might destroy that. But they cannot argue that respelling the words would have anything to do with the style. There's no form of art form or literary form, with the sole exception of crossword puzzles, in which the spelling makes a bit of difference to the style. And even crossword puzzles can be made with a different spelling. And if it's no...
Folksonomies: phonetics
Folksonomies: phonetics
  1  notes

If we can write words with letters from the English alphabet to phonetically reproduce words in other languages, like Mandarin or ARabic, then why can we not rearrange the letters in our own words to phonetically match the way they sound when we speak them?