Whither the English language?

An article in the Daily Mail says that the English language as we know it today will change dramatically over the next 100 years or so, influenced by the many people around the world who now speak English as a second language. Most astonishingly, the article claims that by 2010 -- just two years from now -- only 350 million people world-wide will speak English as their first language.

A new global tongue called "Panglish" is expected to take over in the decades ahead, experts say.

Linguists say the language of Shakespeare and Dickens is evolving into a new, simplified form of English which will be spoken by billions of people around the world.

The changes are not being driven by Britons, Americans or Australians, but the growing number of people who speak English as a second language, New Scientist reports.

[ ... ]

By 2010 around two billion people - or a third of the world's population - will speak English as a second language. In contrast, just 350 million people will speak it as a first language.

Sorry, but I have to call bullshit on this one. Consider for a moment that between the world's major English-speaking countries -- Australia, Canada, Great Britain and the United States -- there are roughly 415 million people, the majority of whom speak English as their primary language. The math just doesn't work. And then there's this remark on Singaporean English:

Singaporean English, for instance, combines English with Malay, Tamil and Chinese and is difficult for English-speaking Westerners to understand.

Wrong again. I've been to Singapore, where English is the official language of commerce and government, and had no trouble understanding and being understood.

I think these linguists need to get out more.

Breaking: Hillary vindicated

Whew. Am I ever glad I held off on any Hillary-bashing for her alleged fantasizing about a dangerous trip to Bosnia when she was First Lady. The video above should put to rest that smear job from the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy™.

Al Gore may be looking for new work

Roger over at XDA linked an article from The Australian which drives a giant stake through the heart of the global warming/climate change fear-mongering. It's from an interview with Jennifer Marohasy of Australia's Institute of Public Affairs, and her observations on new data available to climate scientists and the impact on the climate debate.

There's way too much great material to copy here, so here's a little taste...

Duffy asked Marohasy: "Is the Earth still warming?"

She replied: "No, actually, there has been cooling, if you take 1998 as your point of reference. If you take 2002 as your point of reference, then temperatures have plateaued. This is certainly not what you'd expect if carbon dioxide is driving temperature because carbon dioxide levels have been increasing but temperatures have actually been coming down over the last 10 years."

[ ... ]

Duffy: "It's not only that it's not discussed. We never hear it, do we? Whenever there's any sort of weather event that can be linked into the global warming orthodoxy, it's put on the front page. But a fact like that, which is that global warming stopped a decade ago, is virtually never reported, which is extraordinary."

[ ... ]

Duffy: "From what you're saying, it sounds like the implications of this could be considerable ..."

Marohasy: "That's right, very much so. The policy implications are enormous. The meteorological community at the moment is really just coming to terms with the output from this NASA Aqua satellite and (climate scientist) Roy Spencer's interpretation of them. His work is published, his work is accepted, but I think people are still in shock at this point."

My personal favorite comes from the article's writer:

With catastrophe off the agenda, for most people the fog of millennial gloom will lift, at least until attention turns to the prospect of the next ice age. Among the better educated, the sceptical cast of mind that is the basis of empiricism will once again be back in fashion. The delusion that by recycling and catching public transport we can help save the planet will quickly come to be seen for the childish nonsense it was all along.

Read the whole thing.

Happy first Sunday following first full moon following first day of Spring!

Why is it that Easter, considered by Christians to be of greater religious significance than Christmas, the best example of the Roman Catholic Church's compromise with paganism?

Moonbat: Conservatives can't produce art

This New York Post column was linked over at Hot Air headlines today, in which Jonah Goldberg covers playwright David Mamet's move to the ideological right, as Mamet himself disclosed in an essay published in the Village Voice, no less. One paragraph in it jumped out at me:

Michael Billington might have a different response. "I am depressed to read that David Mamet has swung to the right," wrote the Guardian's theater critic of more than three decades. "What worries me is the effect on his talent of locking himself into a rigid ideological position."

No surprise that this comes from a writer at the Guardian, the British fishwrap whose leftist leanings are the stuff of legend. And I guess it shouldn't come as a surprise that a supposedly intelligent person would actually believe that one's shift in political beliefs would negatively affect his artistic work. But it does.

But, as Goldberg points out, this could be just the reliably left-wing arts community setting up Mamet's inevitable banishment to the gulags on ideological grounds:

Mamet has committed the sin of free-thinking in a world that defines it as "ideological rigidity" while dubbing conformity "diversity." Already, critics are saying his work is slipping. Soon, they will say his work was never that great to begin with (that's what they've been doing to Dennis Miller for his heresy). The more Mamet rejects the divine pieties of the left and thinks for himself, the more the Greek chorus of straitjacketed "free thinkers," their heads shaking in unison, will tsk-tsk Mamet's rigidity.

Absurdities and atrocities

I snagged this from Zombie's photo essay on the latest peace march and troop-bashing festival in San Francisco.

If Voltaire was around today, I'm sure he'd have considered the whole 72 virgins thing an absurdity.

Obama's got the Wright stuff

The spin coming from Barack Obama's supporters on the Rev. Wright affair has been fast and furious. Those who question Obama's sentiments in light of Wright's hate-filled rants are accused of judging Obama guilty by association:

“The fact of the matter is people would like to move on to other things,” said Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut, characterizing remarks by Obama pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright as “outrageous,” but saying they are not relevant to Obama’s candidacy.

“He’s rejected it. He said no– he doesn’t have any association with it. He finds these comments outrageous,” Dodd, an Obama supporter and former presidential candidate, told “FOX News Sunday.” He added that “guilt by association is not typically American.”

I, for one, don't want to "move on to other things". Wright's remarks are very relevant to Obama's candidacy.

It's not like Wright was caught dipping into the church's till and Obama's political opponents are projecting the crime on to Obama. That Obama considered Wright a "spiritual adviser" makes Wright's "spirit" worth examining. When Jeremiah Wright's "spirit" moves him to say the hateful, divisive things he said, what does that say of those he spiritually advises?

The racial healer mask slipped when Michelle Obama said she'd never been proud of America until her husband started winning primaries. Now I think it's safe to say that mask has been pulled completely off.

'Asian youths' involved in 'faith-hate' crime against British priest

It took two writers for the Daily Mail to write this entire article on "Asian youths" who attacked a Christian priest in a "faith hate" crime without once using the word "Islam" or "Muslim", or any variation thereof.

A vicar was in hospital last night after being attacked in his churchyard by two youths in what is being treated as a 'faith hate' crime.

Canon Michael Ainsworth, 57, was kicked and punched in the head as one of the attackers screamed "f***ing priest".

[ ... ]

The incident happened outside St George-in-the-East Church in Wapping, East London.

It has regularly had windows smashed by youths - who on one occasion shouted: "This should not be a church, this should be a mosque."

Naturally, certain "community leaders" say it's just, well, boys being boys.

But some youth leaders and councillors in the community played down the faith hate attacks and said drink and drug problems in the area were often to blame.

Kamil Ahmed, leader at the Ensign Youth Club, based on a council estate close to the church, said: "There are a lot of 14 to 16-year-old Asians, drunk and high on cocaine, wandering round the estate.

"It might be the people responsible for this attack reacted badly to being told off rather than targeting the church in a faith hate way."

Danish banks offering sharia-compliant loans

I've often wondered how one mortgage can be compliant with Islamic law and another not. After all, there's no incentive for a lender to loan money to a borrower without getting more money back than what is loaned. Money, after all, costs money. So I read with some interest this article in Denmark's Jyllands-Posten which gave a rough description of how the loans work.

What makes this loan different from an ordinary loan is that Amanah [the 'lending' company] buys the property that the customer is interested in and then sells it to the customer with a conditional deed, so that the buyer can use the property but will only own it outright after the last mortgage payment is made, typically after 30 years.

This model is based on the Sharia-approved Islamic financing system, which involves 'Musharaka' (partnership), 'Ijara' (rent) and future ownership, 'Tamalluk'. The property buyer does not pay interest on the loan and therefore does not create debt.

So it seems that the problem with conventional lending as we in the west know it is the creation of debt. But how does this sharia-compliant loan not create debt? If the borrower must "rent" the property for a period of 30 years, has he not taken on a debt equal to the yearly rent times 30? I don't believe for a moment that there isn't a clause in the "lease" providing for stiff and substantial penalties if the "renter" terminates the "lease" before 30 years are up.

If the issue is the interest on the loan, then this amounts to nothing more than pulling a fast one on Allah by paying someone else to pay the interest on behalf of the borrower.

The company he keeps

It may be a bit unfair to cast guilt by association on someone, but when those associates are your pastor and your wife, well, it's hard not to. In Barack Obama's repudiation of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's more fiery and controversial statements -- posted appropriately enough at the Huffington Post left-wing hate site -- Obama claims to have never heard any of Wright's more inflammatory hate speech.

Since Obama has been a member of that church for 20 years, he must take a Homer Simpson-esque approach to church attendance, slumbering in the pews with drool dangling from his lip during the sermon. With the sheer volume of Jeremiah Wright videos now coming forth, there's no other explanation. As for his wife Michelle's similar America-bashing and Afro-centric utterances, one can further extend the Homer Simpson analogy ("Homer! Are you even listening to me?").

D'oh.

Weather Channel founder: Sue Al Gore

The founder of the Weather Channel thinks Al Gore should be sued for fraud in order to bring the debate on global warming into court. He's pretty sure the global warming argument would lose.

John Coleman, who founded the cable network in 1982, suggests suing for fraud proponents of global warming, including Al Gore, and companies that sell carbon credits.

"Is he committing financial fraud? That is the question," Coleman said.

"Since we can't get a debate, I thought perhaps if we had a legal challenge and went into a court of law, where it was our scientists and their scientists, and all the legal proceedings with the discovery and all their documents from both sides and scientific testimony from both sides, we could finally get a good solid debate on the issue," Coleman said. "I'm confident that the advocates of 'no significant effect from carbon dioxide' would win the case."

I hadn't thought about it before, but maybe such a challenge in court will make the global warming industrial machine put up or shut up.

Spitzer? I never touched her!

One of my least favorite Democrat politicians, Gov. Eliot Spitzer (D-NY), has been brought low in a prostitution scandal. The righty blogosphere is redolent with the sweet, sweet fragrance of schadenfreude.

Charles Johnson at LGF has been particularly merciless in blasting the media's failure to identify Spitzer's party affiliation (compared to similar MSM coverage of Republican faux pas), but the best post there is on the verbal and mental gymnastics of a Daily Kos diarist who suggests that Spitzer should get a pass for being a Democrat. As a Democrat, you see, Spitzer should be held to lower standards:

Kevin Drums suggests that the usual charges of hypocrisy in prostitution/infidelity scandals come into play here, but I don't think that accusation is quite as fair this time. As a prosecutor, it was expected of Spitzer to bust prostitution rings and it's not as if he (like the Republicans) touts his commitment to sexual morality-- over that of his political opponents-- in order to get elected. He may be a hypocrite if (as is presumable) he tells his wife he's faithful to her, and he tells people that they should stay faithful to their spouses, etc. But politically, he's not a hypocrite, and it doesn't have it anything to do with his politics the way it does for some others who got caught.

Holy shit. If this is the modern voice of the Democratic Party, they're well and truly fucked.

Update: Thanks for the link, Theo!

Unlikely coincidence watch

The FBI says that the bombing of the military recruiting station in Times Square and the letters received by Democrats in Congress with pictures of the station and the phrase "We did it" are unrelated.

The FBI said yesterday that a man who mailed rambling letters to Congress this week featuring a photo of a Manhattan military recruiting station was not linked to Thursday's bombing outside that station.

Scores of congressional Democrats received identical antiwar letters in recent days that declared "We did it" and included photos of a man standing in front of the iconic Times Square recruiting station, officials said.

But the FBI interviewed the Los Angeles man who sent the letters and concluded he was not the person captured on cameras riding a bicycle before and after a crude bomb exploded at the station, officials said. The FBI also searched the man's house.

"The letters had no connection to the bombing," said Laura Eimiller, a spokeswoman for the FBI field office in Los Angeles. "It appears to have been a matter of coincidental details and unfortunate timing on his part."

[ ... ]

Officials said the "we did it" language referred to the Democratic takeover of Congress in 2006. "This was a citizen exercising his right to make a political comment to his representatives," Eimiller said.

Judging by comments left by readers on some righty blogs there's plenty of skepticism about the FBI's conclusion, but I'm inclined to agree that someone who just bombed a recruiting station wouldn't provide his name and return address on the envelopes.

But I still can't help but think that the denizens of Daily Kos and Democratic Underground would have been much happier if the guy had ended up in Gitmo. This story just proves that we don't live in the Bushitler fascist totalitarian state they all claim we do.