Why Do Auctioneers Talk So Fast? (full episode) | A Way with Words on Huffduffer

Why Do Auctioneers Talk So Fast? (full episode) | A Way with Words

Huffduffed by lach on November 17th, 2011

Why do auctioneers talk so fast? Martha and Grant discuss the rapid-fire speech of auctioneers, and how it gets you to bid higher. Also, why so many books have ridiculously long titles, where you’d have sonker for dessert, and an appreciation of that children’s classic, “The Phantom Tollbooth.” Plus, “different from” vs. “different than,” the origin of suss out, words that apparently entered English in 1937, and the many names for those little gray bugs that roll up into a ball.

Public radio’s show about words and language and how we use them, with Martha Barnette and Grant Barrett

http://www.waywordradio.org/auctioneers/

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Bytecode standard in browsers

Sit down and plug in for a 10 minute discussion of bytecode standards and other such stuff in the browser and how it has been attempted (and stalled) in the past. This also goes through several of the new improvements coming in the language that will make ideal for becoming a target language and possibly facilitate preferred language syntax (python, ruby, etc) that works on the JS VM. Finally Brendan drives home the less than obvious point that each new language has its own set of oddities and garbage collections and how that would go against making the web fast.

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Tagged with javascript podcast

—Huffduffed by j4mie 2 years ago

Signing, Singing, Speaking: How Language Evolved : NPR

Humans evolved a brain with an extraordinary knack for language, but just how and when we began using language is still largely a mystery. Early human communication may have been in sign language or song, and scientists are studying other animals to learn how human language evolved.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129155123