The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost : The Poetry Foundation

This is a well-known Amerian poem about making decisions! (All American students read it as part of their literature courses.)

On the site you can listen to a recording of the poet himself, Robert Frost, reading it just before his death in 1963. Do you know other poems by him or other American poets? Do you know e.e. cummings' work? He's another poet I like.

(Have you heard the expression, "Good fences make good neighbors"? That's from an other Frost poem.)

Have a good long holiday weekend.
james


The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost : The Poetry Foundation:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

CORPORA: 45-425 million words each: free online access

CORPORA: 45-425 million words each: free online access: CORPUS.BYU.EDU
seven online corpora | 45 - 425 million words each

a good way to look at the way that English is being used today!

(also access to Spanish and Portuguese corpora.)

With Linguee, translation will never be a problem anymore...

Linguee.fr

This not an ad for a website - I have no shares in this business - but simply a crush for this tool that is changing my life. Maybe it has actually already changed yours !

Simply enter a expression you want to translate or that you don't understand, and Linguee will search in its bilingual sites database to find occurences of it.

Simple, and very useful to get the right expression that corresponds to the context - do not use "vendor" for "vendeur" if you are in a store for example...

Do you use this tool or other platforms for your translations?

Monkey Business

Another humorous and at the same time fascinating article I stumbled upon a couple of weeks ago and that I would like to share with you guys involves monkeys.

Not any kind of monkeys, but funny-looking playful capuchins that were used in an economics experiment at Yale University. The goal of the experiment was to analyze whether our economic biases and choices (and in general the decision making process which seems to constitue our economic behavior) truly constitute what distinguishes us from other species or whether they are simply natural instincts.

What do you think? Is there only one Homo Economicus, or is there such a thing as Monkey Economicus? The answer begins here.

Bill Gates and Energy innovation

As I was 'wwilf'-ing online the other day, I stumbled upon this very interesting TED talk with Bill Gates about the need for energy innovation, and I wanted to share it with you guys. As I am currently working on energy storage solutions myself and have become a bit acquainted with the existing solutions, I do agree with him in so much as there is a real necessity to further develop these innovative technologies.

Bill Gates also talks about Terranova, a new type of energy generation method which uses depleted uranium and should be able to operate for several decades without fuel reloading. (Of course, what he doesn't say outright is that he is the primary investor in this company). I'm a bit skeptical about this technology myself - it raises a lot of questions in terms of scalability, cost and risk of proliferation, and definitely requires more development before it can be considered an "energy miracle".

But before brushing aside this invention or others like it, for a breath of fresh air, I recommend taking a look at this website - another company where Bill Gates is a shareholder and that similarly has some really innovative (crazy?) ideas to solve the problems of the 21st century.

Magazine�| Wired.com

Magazine -- Wired.com

Wired is an interesting magazine that you can read online.... It talks about how new technology affects our lives.

Steve Jobs in His Own Words: A Video Retrospective | BNET

Steve Jobs in His Own Words: A Video Retrospective | BNET:

Steve Jobs in His Own Words: A Video Retrospective


Some interesting bits of IT history.... Have you already heard of a "blue box" (the first video). The two Steves used it to call the Pope when they were both students!

You can leave a comment if you're so inclined.... (hint hint)

talk to you soon

james

Stanford News Video: Steve Jobs to 2005 graduates: 'Stay hungry, stay foolish'

Stanford News Video: Steve Jobs to 2005 graduates: 'Stay hungry, stay foolish'

Three stories of his life!


The "CC" will show the subtitles (closed captions). (You might have to go back to the Stanford YouTube channel to see the subtitles.)

What do you think? Had you already seen it?



Have a good weekend

james

Jonathan Klein: Photos that changed the world | Video on TED.com

Jonathan Klein: Photos that changed the world | Video on TED.com:

This is a short 6 minute Ted talk!
Maybe you could leave a comment. Which photos impressed you the most? What pictures did you expect to be in it that aren't....
Have a good week! james

"Photographs do more than document history -- they make it. At TED University, Jonathan Klein of Getty Images shows some of the most iconic, and talks about what happens when a generation sees an image so powerful it can't look away -- or back."

Bogdan wonders whether this picture be in it?