w a s t e . t i m e . n o w

Here’s something nifty — an American Sign Language Browser from Michigan State University, using Quicktime videos to demonstrate hundreds of English words. Now you know where to go next time you need to sign algorithm.

Terminal City est mort. Another independent paper bites the dust, and ours is fast becoming a city of rags. We all agree new kids on the block like Dose and 24-Hours are rubbish — but the Courier, West Ender and Georgia Strait are pretty irrelevant these days too. Would you miss any of them if they disappeared tomorrow?

Only Magazine stands out in this sea of mediocrity — if you’re not already a regular reader, you should be. I’m told it’s hard to get your hands on a copy in some neighbourhoods, but you can always find them online.

Nathan Allen, former communications director for COPE, now has a weekly column with Terminal City — and a new project online called Us On Them.

Corinna Liscumb, formerly of Smithers, has had GusGreeper boiling for a while now — but I’d like to plug it anyway.

Next time you can waste five minutes, take the Political Compass test. My own results were pretty underwhelming, placing me more left than Nelson Mandela economically and more socially progressive than Gandhi (go figure). My final results, in case you care, were -7.88 on the economic scale, and -6.36 on the social scale. At the end of the day, I guess I do agree “it’s fine for society to be open about sex, but these days it’s going too far”.

After you’ve completed the Political Compass, try your luck with Iconochasms — a test of “how well you really know the famous figures that you love or love to hate”. It’s pretty nifty, even if the smugness of some of the questions is unbearable. I’m not too proud to admit I only got 27 of 46 correct. Whatever — these are tricky, yo.

It is sweet to be a kid these days. My friend’s daughter rolls her eyes whenever I start down this road, but it must to be so easy to write essays in the age of the internet. Remember the encyclopedia? Puh-leeze…

When I was a lad, my most reliable second source was John Carey’s Eyewitness To History, a collection of first-hand accounts detailing dozens of historical events. In case your library doesn’t have a copy, the internet brings you “History Through The Eyes Of Those Who Lived It” at eyewitnesstohistory.com.

You can search or browse their database of historical events for articles, photographs, original recordings and other material. I particularly enjoy the It Happened This Month section.

Thanks to the friend who introduced me to the legend of The Lions, those striking mountains on Vancouver’s horizon. Here is the story of The Two Sisters as written by Pauline Johnson — the link at the bottom of the page takes you to the story of Siwash Rock and other legends of Vancouver. You won’t regret the time you waste reading this. I promise.

By the way, while searching for the story online, I came across the University of Pennsylvania’s digital library — a heaping serving of electronic texts from a lavish spread of authors. Pauline Johnson’s work is included in the Celebration of Women Authors.

Maybe I *was* trying to be a bit show-offy in the previous post — because I know how to use a semi-colon, I do. I’d like to thank a friend for chastising me so swiftly, though. You keep me humble (p.s. you’re a dick).

Speaking of keeping humble, why not try the Eats, Shoots & Leaves punctuation game? It only takes a couple of minutes.

I did awesome on apostrophes, but I think the comma is far more subjective.

Tagalog is one of the most pleasing languages to the ear I’ve heard.

The Center for Southeast Asian Studies at Northern Illinois University hosts SEAsite — a very neat project to “provide language instruction and other cultural, political, and social information about Southeast Asia”. Spend some time on their Tagalog page, which has a wide variety of information about the language, history and culture of the Philippines.

Ready to give it a go? I found these lessons available for download as MP3 files (and don’t have the ambition myself just yet, so let me know how it works out).

Prefer to keep looking? This is Baybayin, the characters used in written Tagalog before the Spanish invasion.

I’m very impressed with the Royal BC Museum’s Living Landscapes project, which focusses research and data collection on specific regions of the province for two-year periods.

Finally, a visual representation of how concentrated media concentrates coverage.

Buzztracker is a nifty project that analyzes Google News entries by frequency and location, then maps the top 10 geographic locations for each day. You can sign up for an RSS feed, and there’s even a Buzztracker widget for OSX.

The Modern Language Association’s language map of the United States displays detailed information about more than thirty languages spoken in the US — including the number of speakers, and distribution by county or zip code.