In the New York Times, Guy Deutscher has a lengthy article about the speculations of some linguists that the language that we first learn strongly shapes and limits how we think. One interesting example that he cites is an Australian aboriginal language that has no personal spatial descriptors, such as the English phrases "to my right" or "behind me". Instead, it uses cardinal directions in everyday conversation:

But then a remote Australian aboriginal tongue, Guugu Yimithirr, from north Queensland, turned up, and with it came the astounding realization that not all languages conform to what we have always taken as simply “natural.” In fact, Guugu Yimithirr doesn’t make any use of egocentric coordinates at all. The anthropologist John Haviland and later the linguist Stephen Levinson have shown that Guugu Yimithirr does not use words like “left” or “right,” “in front of” or “behind,” to describe the position of objects. Whenever we would use the egocentric system, the Guugu Yimithirr rely on cardinal directions. If they want you to move over on the car seat to make room, they’ll say “move a bit to the east.” To tell you where exactly they left something in your house, they’ll say, “I left it on the southern edge of the western table.” Or they would warn you to “look out for that big ant just north of your foot.” Even when shown a film on television, they gave descriptions of it based on the orientation of the screen. If the television was facing north, and a man on the screen was approaching, they said that he was “coming northward.”

Link via Popehat | Photo by Flickr user psd used under Creative Commons license

A man at the Shady Canyon Golf Club in Irvine, California hit a rock with his club, sparking a fire that required the labors of 150 firefighters to extinguish. Orange County Fire Authority Captain Greg McKeown said:

"Usually, we're able to close out the fire season in the winters here," McKeown added, "but we haven't been able to do that since 2006. That's just how dry it is out there."

McKeown said no charges have been filed against the golfer, whose name has been withheld. Apparently, he was trying to hit his ball out of the rough when he struck the rock, which sparked the blaze at 12:07 p.m. Saturday, officials said.

Link via Geekosystem | Photo (unrelated) via Flickr user chispita_666 used under Creative Commons license

The Madara Rider is an 23-meter tall relief sculpture carved into a vertical face of a rocky plateau in Bulgaria. It shows a mounted knight, probably representing a Bulgarian Emperor, attacking a lion. The origin of the sculpture is uncertain, but it's thought to date back to the 8th Century AD, when the power of the First Bulgarian Empire was increasing:

Including the inscription in Medieval Greek, the rider covers close to 1400 square feet on a vertical 328 foot cliff face. The horseman is depicted in a hunting scene, spearing a lion. The lion is being trampled by the horse and a dog is trailing behind the rider. The Greek inscriptions tell the history of the Bulgarian state and the three Khans including Tervel, Krum and Omurtag.

Link via The Presurfer | Photo: Amos Chapple

Jersey Circus is a parody of the reality TV show Jersey Shore and the cartoon The Family Circus. It places quotations from the show's actors into the mouths of the cartoon's characters. In the above cartoon, Snooki speaks for the young boy Jeffy.

Link via Urlesque

Previously:
Scott Meets Family Circus
The Nietzsche Family Circus

(Video Link)

YouTube user Frensleven took an old iMac G4 and turned it into a helmet resembling a Cylon head. Presumably the implication is that Steve Jobs wishes to exterminate the human race.

via technabob | Previously: Cylon Birthday Cake with Functional Eye

Photographer Alexander Augusteijn captured several images of bullets hitting falling drops of water. Here's how he does it:

These kind of images require a lot of experimentation, dedication, patience and willingness to endlessly clean spill of liquids and debris from objects shot to pieces. Several hundreds of trial shots may be needed to get timing correct. After that, the process is pretty well controlled, and often half of the shots will be usable, with 1 out of 10 really interesting.

You can view several more examples at the link.

Link via Make | Artist's Website

Ozrem, Serbia hosted an international culinary competition in which chefs prepared the testicles of many different animals in creative ways:

The food — politely called "white kidneys" in Serbian — is believed to be rich in testosterone. In the Balkans, it is considered to help men's libido.

"The bulls' testicles are the best, goulash style," said last year's winner Zoltan Levai, stirring a metal pot heated by a wood fire and filled with vegetables and large testicles that he said were provided from a state-run slaughter house.

The festival — which includes dishes like testicle pizza and testicles in bechamel sauce flavored with a variety of herbs found in the region.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gP3SCc0zMq1BD6No9L44_H13zNUwD9HTAKPO0 via Jammie Wearing Fool | Photo (unrelated) of Texas calf fries by Flickr user austrini used under Creative Commons license

Previously: Cooking with Balls

Taylor Lautner, the actor who plays the werewolf Jacob in the Twilight movies, has sued a RV dealership that failed to deliver a rented RV to Lautner. The dealer responded by challenging the buff actor to a push-up contest:

On Monday the 30th, Brent McMahon, owner of McMahon's RV, proposed that the matter be settled by means of a push-up contest. McMahon said that if the werewolf won, he would pay the $40,000 allegedly being demanded to settle the case; but if McMahon won, he would donate the money to Children's Hospital of Orange County.

That sounds like a great idea to me, but the werewolf's camp rejected the idea immediately. "McMahon RV's response to our client's legitimate claim," an attorney declared in an all-too-attorney-like statement, "demonstrates the lack of professionalism that Mr. McMahon, his company and his employees have exhibited from the outset, and that compelled the filing of this lawsuit in the first place." The push-up contest was simply a "facetious suggestion," he said, and maybe it was, but it is also an awesome suggestion and seems to me like a perfectly good way to settle a lawsuit.

Link | Photo: AP

The architecture firm Minarc designed and built a kitchen sink that's made from old rubber tires. It's called RUBBiSH and is made in the following manner:

The rubber from the tires is melted down and cleansed of debris, and the tiny inherent metal fibers that give a tire its road resistance are then formed into a sheet. This sheet is stretched over a base frame—made of wood, metal, or any other material out of which bathroom furniture can be fashioned—and anchored down by the drain collar. This creates a shallow-sloped surface for water to be siphoned away, but not a clunky profile; in fact, the material used is so minimal that, the manufacturer claims, the sinks use less than one pound of rubber.

Link via Make | Photo: Minarc

Cathy of Olds Nighty-Eight made a Star Wars-themed blueberry pie for her young son using cookie cutters as molds:

Danny's most recent request was to bake some doodleberry pie. Obviously, we didn't have any doodleberries handy. We went to Costco and bought blueberries instead. He said that would be fine. I knew pie would be ok to bake because I don't really like pie. It wouldn't be much of a temptation to eat the whole thing. Plus, I've never baked a pie from scratch. We both win. He gets pie. I get to stop saying I've never baked a pie from scratch before

I don't know what a doodleberry is but I'm afraid to Google it and find out.

Link via Great White Snark

(Video Link)

Nerdcore has a roundup of three signs of changing times in East Asia: an interview with the last traditional swordmaker in Taiwan, the decline of the geisha tradition, and the diminished demand in Japan for actors skilled in the martial arts of the samurai.

The last swordsmith in Taiwan is 65 years old and makes his blades using human bones with the permission of the deceased's relatives. He says that according to tradition, the bones infuse a spirit into the completed sword.

Link

Troy Polamalu plays for the Pittsburgh Steelers. He wears long hair to honor his Samoan heritage. It's gotten Polamalu in trouble before -- he was once tackled from behind by his someone who grabbed his locks, as you can see from the video at the link. To make sure that nothing unfortunate happens to his hair, Polamalu has insured it for a million dollars:

Lloyds of London has written a policy on the Pittsburgh Steelers safety's locks, in the kind of publicity stunt that rises to the top of search engines on the week before real sports resume after Labor Day. There's a serious reason for Polamalu's 'do: he has not cut it since 2000 and wears it as a tribute to his Samoan ancestors. But there's a product tie-in on the insurance: Polamalu endorses Head & Shoulders shampoo, whose parent company sought the policy.

Link via Geekosystem | Photo: Gene J. Puskar/Associated Press

Etsy seller sewtara made a coffee cup cozy that keeps you updated on how quickly it's caffeinating you. It's made of embroidered muslin with a cotton lining.

Link via DVICE

(Video Link)

YouTube user errrick recorded his kitten, Claire, playing the classic Nintendo game Duck Hunt. She's a poor shot.

via Nerd Bastards

Previously:
Nintendo Duck Hunt/Predator
Behind the Scenes in Duck Hunt

Carroll J. Boylan patented this gadget in 1995. Supposedly, you can load your dishes into a dishwasher without leaving the table:

A space-saving dishwasher has a washing basin having side and bottom walls and an open top, and a vertically shiftable rack assembly for carrying dishes. A shifting mechanism is coupled with the rack assembly for selectively shifting the latter between a lower cleaning position, wherein the rack assembly is disposed within the basin below the open top, and an upper loading position, wherein the rack assembly is disposed above the open top of the basin. The dishwasher further includes a lid member for covering the open top of the basin when the rack assembly is in the cleaning position. Structure is also provided for cleaning the dishes carried in the rack assembly, when the assembly is in the cleaning position. The dishwasher is particularly designed for installment within an opening of a substantially horizontally extending table-top or kitchen counter top.

Would you find this invention useful?

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect2=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&d=PALL&RefSrch=yes&Query=PN%2F5687752 via Anticipate This!