IBM computer Watson plays Jeopardy

IBM are in the news again in relation to AI. Their computer (Watson) is playing in the American TV programme Jeopardy.

Review of UK copyright laws

A change in fair use in UK law might help corpus-based language researchers?

BBC News: How do you pronounce 'H'?

The British Library is carrying out a survey of how spoken English is changing: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-11642588

Fred Jelinek RIP

It has been reported elsewhere (Google research blog, New York Times, Language Log, IBM Research) that Fred Jelinek passed away on September 14th, 2010. I heard Fred (at a talk in Prague I think) repeat his famous 'quote' about the accuracy of his MT system going up when the linguists left the room!

The Little Book of Sustainable Living

Produced by the Recycling Forum in the Lancaster area. Lots of interesting tips in this booklet.

David Lodge: Deaf sentence

And the other book I read on the beach (two books in a week!) was David Lodge's Deaf Sentence. Although the UK cover quotes the Guardian "Very funny" and the New Statesman "Seriously funny", I'd probably pick out the following key words: death, suicide and obviously deafness. Okay, so corpus linguistics gets a mention (page 32 in my edition).

Iain M Banks: Feersum Endjinn

While sitting on the beach recently, I read Feersum Endjinn by Iain M. Banks, recommended by Stuart. Okay, it did have something to do with work: one of the main character's thoughts are written in SMS-style shortenings and abbreviations.