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Grammar For the Birds

As a child I would listen with joy to the calls of the different birds that lived in my Princeton Junction, New Jersey neighborhood. Sometimes when I was walking home from school or the pool I would hear a bird singing to another bird and try to imitate the call, hoping to get some kind of response from another bird. I suppose I must have been doing it wrong because I never got any sort of answer from other birds. Now it looks like studies are showing the reason for my lack of answer may have just been poor grammar on my part. Grammar — in a bird call? Absolutely, according to a seemingly unnecessary study by Kentaro Abe of Kyoto University in Japan.

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Big Brother 13 Live on iOS

One of my Summer rituals is watching Big Brother online and this year’s iteration started last night.  I enjoy studying the live interaction of the houseguests.  This year, Big Brother 13, is unique because the Real SuperPass is finally now viewable on iOS devices — for an extra $10.00USD fee, of course — but that extra money to watch the feeds on your iPhone and iPad is worth every cent.  One of the twists this year is the return of “power couples” including Brendan and Rachel, Jeff and Jordan and Evel Dick and his Daughter Danielle.

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Suing for Google Apps for Education Access

I am a massive fan of Google Apps.  I wrote the first Google Apps Administrator book to market and, to this day, I still use Google Apps via Boles University to run my empire of polymathic projects.

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Joining the National Writers Union

If you are a writer — with or without an agent — and if you need help in negotiating a contract, then you should consider the benefits of becoming a member of the National Writers Union.  The NWU won’t act as your agent, but they will read your contract and offer you advice and counsel on what should be changed in the boilerplate.  Book publishers always want authors to sign a standard contract.  That puts all the advantages on the side of the publisher.  With the NWU at your side and in your ear, you stand a better chance of getting a fairer contract negotiated to suit your rights and needs as a writer.

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The Folly of Strict Constitutional Constructionism

English language experts wrote the United States Constitution.  When those authors wrote — “in order to form a more perfect Union” — they were making a hard and specific point that is lost on many of us today.

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