懐かしい。It’s been so long since I saw the series, I forgot about the juicy Bebop goodness, which seems to scale nicely to feature length. It’s by no means landmark cinema, but had I had the chance, I would have gladly forked over the 2000 yen to see it in the theaters.

A really fascinating summary of Pinker’s work on understanding the machinery of language. He focuses specifically on the case of irregular English verbs, which might not seem at first glance to be a subject deep enough to carry a 300 page book, but turns out to be rich with opportunity for discovery. If you have even an armchair interest in linguistics, I highly recommend this information-packed, easy read.

I wish Mark Twain would have studied Japanese so that I could read his keen insights on how it could be made more scrutable to native English speakers.

I ask myself why it’s not trivially easy for me to share bookmarks between browsers on the same and different machines, why I can’t even share my remembered password database between various incarnations of Mozilla on the same machine, why my addressbook is a scattered mess of overlapping collections in any number of incompatible formats. How have these basic needs been going unmet for now well over a decade?

Is it because the many eyes of open source are focused on esoteric bullshit like platform independent, declarative, XML-based user interface specification languages and the ability to skin everything from my word processor down to the dock applet that displays the network traffic going in and out of my machine? Maybe if I used only Apple products, I could sync everything through .Mac, or if I set up a whole Microsoft Back Office environment I could have these problems handled in some deviously proprietary way. But what happens if I use a Windows PC and a Mac (let alone throwing Linux back into the mix)? I’m right back up shit creek.

Somehow, we passed so quickly from one-computer-many-users, through one-computer-one-user, to one-user-many-computers, that the fundamental problem of sharing data between working environments slipped through the cracks. Unfortunately, one person or company can’t just “solve” this problem and make millions selling the solution. Instead it requires the coordination of myriad adversarial entities that are about as likely to cooperate as the Israeli and the Palestinians.

I guess it’s time to break out the duct tape and baling wire.

So my friend writes in an email: どうしてかって？ A reasonably innocuous statement, except I’m not exactly sure which verb かって is. So I consult my trusty dictionary:

欠く (かく) (v5k) to lack; to break; to crack; to chip; (P);
書く (かく) (v5k) to write; (P);
掻く (かく) (v5k) (1) (uk) to scratch; (2) to perspire; (3) to shovel; to paddle; (P);
描く (かく) (v5k) to draw; to paint; to sketch; to depict; to describe;
且つ (かつ) (adv,conj) yet; and;
勝つ (かつ) (v5t) to win; to gain victory; (P);
刈る (かる) (v5r) to cut (hair); to mow (grass); to harvest; to clip; to shear; to reap; to trim; to prune; (P);
苅る (かる) (v5r) to mow;
駆る (かる) (v5r) to drive (car); to spur on; to impel; (P);
借る (かる) (v5r) to borrow; to have a loan; to hire; to rent; to buy on credit;
狩る (かる) (v5r) to hunt;
支う (かう) (v5u) to support or prop up;
飼う (かう) (v5u) to keep; to raise; to feed; (P);
買う (かう) (v5u) to buy; (P);
勝手 (かって) (adj-na,n) kitchen; one’s own convenience; one’s way; selfishness; (P);
曾て (かって) (adv) (1) once; before; formerly; ever; former; ex-; (2) never (with negative verb);

Keerist! Sure, I should be able to figure out from context which one of the sixteen possibilities is the right one, but I don’t know if I have the energy to even read through the whole damned list to find out. Next time I’m learning Spanish!