Assorted Afflatuses

Fear not! The second installment of Woe, Waiters and Water, which will contain my account of horror and woe aboard America's worst airline, will arrive in due course. In the meantime, I have this quick trio of tidbits.

I recently discovered a wonderful blog called the Language Log, compiled by a number of esteemed linguists from around the world. The writing is very dense and the authors generally explore extremely esoteric aspects of semantics and other linguistic principles, but it is enjoyable all the same. I especially liked their recent post on the president's use of "like totally" in recent speeches.

Switching gears, my best photos from the recent Paris escapade are now organized and neatly arranged in a flickr Set for all to enjoy. My percentage of selects as they relate to total photos was exceptionally low, at just 5.07%, or about half my average. But some of the blame must be attributed to the rather capricious Parisian weather. Nearly all of my Louvre photos have a very sombre gray look that does not appeal to my artistic eye thanks to the dark August cumulonimbi that so frequently hovered over my lens.

Also of note on the photography front, my trusty Nikon D50 has now taken over 14,000 photos. To me that seems a staggering number, however, it may well be typical. Nikon has given its newest camera, the D300, a projected life span of 300,000 shots, which makes my number look rather sad.