Word: spelling
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...Word nerds aren't the only ones with a stake in the proposal. People who have trouble with spelling are punished when it comes to applying for jobs or even filling out forms, even though their mistakes are far from unusual, says Jack Bovill, chairman of the British-based Spelling Society, an international organization that has advocated simplified spellings since 1908. A 2007 Spelling Society survey of 1,000 British adults found that more than half could not spell embarrassed or millennium correctly and more than a quarter struggled with definitely, accidentally and separate...
...Smith and Bovill are part of a long and illustrious line of spelling malcontents. Benjamin Franklin, Andrew Carnegie, Teddy Roosevelt and even Noah Webster, father of American lexicography, all lobbied for spelling reform, their reasons ranging from traumatic childhood spelling experiences to the hope that easier communication would promote peace. In 1906, Mark Twain lobbied the Associated Press to use phonetic spelling. "The heart of our trouble is with our foolish alphabet," he once wrote. "It doesn't know how to spell, and can't be taught...
...warming melt the Greenland ice sheet? The massive ice sheet that covers all but the rocky coasts of Greenland is a relic of the last Ice Age. If it were to melt, it would release enough water to raise global sea levels by some 7 m - and that would spell the end for major coastal cities like New York City and Shanghai. No one expects that to happen anytime soon (or even anytime not soon), but the scary truth is that we don't really know how Greenland will react to rapid warming. The most recent assessment by the Intergovernmental...
...like flipping from cable soft-core straight to Masterpiece Theatre. Siddhartha, "under the spell of liquor and love," is petting concubines one day; the next, disgusted with it all, he's galloping on his noble steed Kánthaka far away from his father's opulent digs ("with his yearning aroused/ for the dharma that's imperishable") and making for the woods, where he turns away from material delusions...
...Juneau goes 40 miles and stops. Take a plane. Take a ferry; in Alaska, the ferries are part of the highway system. Taylor Highway, a gravel track passable in summer, heads north from the Alaska Highway through Chicken (so named, according to local lore, because its founders could not spell ptarmigan) and eventually reaches Eagle, where it stops. The most self-indulgent and leisurely way to reach Alaska is to head for Seattle or Vancouver, board a cruise ship and eat your way north. For its 625 passengers on a recent seven-day voyage from Vancouver to Whittier, a seaport...