Monday

Italian: The Most Beautiful Language

Italy did not become a nation until about the mid nineteenth century. When that happened, instead of using the language of the largest city, or the dialect used by the most people as their national language, they decided to find the most beautiful dialect. The dialect the picked was the dialect used in Florence in the fourteenth century (which no one really spoke anymore). And not only that, they didn't exactly use the dialect spoken by everyday people on the street, but the language used by Dante Alighieri in his Divine Comedy. He used the vernacular, but shaped it as he wrote his masterpiece. As Elizabeth Gilbert writes in her memoir, Eat, Pray, Love, (which is great, by the way) it was as if "a group of Oxford dons had sat down one day in the early nineteenth century and decided that from this point forward-everybody in England was going to speak pure Shakespeare. And it actually worked."

Cool. Not that I'm going to learn Italian.

Thursday

Where to Find Some Good Music

For those of us who don't have the time or the will power to spend hours browsing myspace for a great new band and who can't understand most of the reviews on Pitchfork, NPR music is the best way to find good music (especially if you're into indie stuff). They just updated their music site, and it's packed with concerst, stories, songs, and this cool features like a web music player that allows you to create playlists of stuff you find on the site. And of course, All Songs Considered is still perhaps the easiest and most enjoyable way to find great music (I know that a new show is one of the highlights of my week - I know, a little pathetic).

Also, there's this video:

Friday

Lethal Injection

Currently, there’s a de-facto moratorium on the death penalty until the Supreme Court decides whether the drug cocktail used for lethal injections is constitutional. Only one person has been executed in Texas since the Supreme court decided to hear the case, and that's because the court refused to stay open past five so that a motion could be filed, even after lawyers called and asked the court for more time becuase their computers had crashed (this was the same day the Supreme Court announced it would hear the case). Now the Harris County District Attorney has decided not to set any more execution dates until the Supreme Court makes a decision (he really doesn't have much of a choice, now). The method of lethal injection now in use has been discontinued by veterinarians, because it is considered unnecessarily cruel, so this is definitely a positive development. The Onion points out, however, that the news isn’t all good.