I’m busy catching up with all of the Google Reader entries I accumulated while I was traveling. Here are a few highlights.
UK libel laws are so infamous that people with something to hide come here from all over the world to make money from suppressing free speech. Now at last there is a campaign to get something done about this.
Scientists in Sweden claim to be able to “fingerprint” authors based on their pattern of use of words.
The flood that filled the Mediterranean must have been truly awesome to behold. Current estimates suggest the water flowed in at around 300 kph, filling the basin at 10 meters a day, and taking less than two years to complete the job. More detail here. Sadly no mention of Felice Landry’s role on the event.
Felice wuz robbed!
Re the fingerprinting of authors: isn’t that what good readers and lit critics have always done?
A few years ago I heard a story about a software product to detect student plagiarism using a similar “fingerprinting” technique. Basically you input your student’s paper and it compared it with other sources on the same topic. I think there was also a way you could use it to compare works of one writer and decide if they were consistent.
It was interesting but maybe not so practical. For one thing, it was relatively expensive. And one of the interviewees said that a good teacher should be able to tell when a student was writing outside his or her voice or ability.