yeah, but typing in mittens can be a bit tedious...

Yes, I am totally addicted to audiobooks. Except I'm not rapt by them if I'm keen to know what happens next, so I tend to get audiobooks of long series that I liked (Harry Potter, cos Stephen Fry is a legend, Wizard's First Rule, even though some of the narrators are woeful, the Narnia books, Patrick Stewart is right up there with Stephen Fry, Clan of the Cave Bear series ...), and listen to them when I go to sleep, do the gardening, or go for a run. Yep, somehow between the ages of about 8 and 28 I forgot about the joys of listening to stories, but I seem to be making up for those lost 20 years :) My local library in Australia lends out audiobooks, it's their greatest service I think - free, legal audiobooks! \o/

I think it depends on what kind of semantics you do, although I think I tend to agree with you, since the semantics I know best is Glue, and they seem to be all about meaning construction... <pedant mode>But is there really a substantive difference between the output of a meaning constructor and a 'meaning'? </mode>

Basically the error was a spelling error, and since the two words are homophonous, they'd be distinguished in speech through the plausibility of their lexical semantics.

Or we could diagnose it as a ~Freudian slip, or even that AC knows something we don't... Maybe Google does use Gauls to climb soapboxes and walls, who knows the full extent of their omniscience??

Sorry, forgot to mention I'm actually a syntactician. The grammar I use (Lexical-Functional Grammar) has two syntactic structures, a semantic structure, an information structure and a discourse structure, with some people using other linguistic structures too. Semantics is definitely part of the grammar, technically at least. Unless you're a Chomskyan I guess.

Well, technically speaking, anything to do with how language works is part of the grammar. Semantics, syntax and pragmatics can be considered various aspects of grammar, even phonology (but I think that's stretching it a bit). However in lay terms 'grammar' normally means only 'syntax', although sometimes includes 'morphology' too.

What, on slashdot?

Well, yes, but putting it in a Last Starfighter perspective, those of us who played Asteroids in the 80s have loads of practice at shooting space junk into smaller and smaller pieces... although judging by my attempts just now on http://www.classicgamesarcade.com/game/21612/Asteroids.html I don't think that I personally am the chosen one.

Well said.

I dread the day the rest of the world gets access to reasonably priced tv, cos *bam* there goes my justification for torrenting shows I want to watch!

Wow, my first thought was also 'you watch too much tv', but, iirc, I think the average is actually much higher than this. My God, how do people who watch tv get anything at all done?? Although maybe I'm biased at the moment - living in Iceland with the gorgeous summer we've had, I've been practically living outdoors, to bank up some sunlight before the equinox hits and I start seeing darkness again...

Nope, not at all. Take-away places in Melbourne do corrugated paper cups which are great - never too hot, but you can wrap your icy fingers around them to warm them up. And on campus both in Melbourne and in Reykjavík you can usually use a normal crockery mug. Styrofoam, wow, it's making me think of spandex and fluorescent tights!

Yep, where you're using 'sweet', 'sour', 'hot' and 'cold' as nouns. At least, syntactically speaking they're nouns in English in the way they're used here. Another pretty good indicator that they're nouns is that they are functioning as the subjects of the verb 'move' (and/or the object of 'get', depending on your theoretical leaning)*.

Conditions are easily expressed as nouns in English: 'warmth', 'softness', etc. However, I will grant you that, given that many Sino language don't really make good distinctions between word categories like nouns, verbs and adjectives, 'yin' and 'yang' may actually be used in a variety of ways when borrowed into English and used in the context of Tai Chi. But here, they were nouns.
(* My qualifications for saying this: I am a linguist; current research topic is investigating grammatical functions, in particular the differences between nominal and clausal objects.)

"Styrofoam cups will never go away". Huh? I can't remember the last time I saw a styrofoam cup, like 20 years ago? No, probably more (wow, how old am I again? The number keeps changing!) What was so useful about them?

Sorry, but in your post, you used 'yin' and 'yang' as nouns in the first place: "the yin and yang". As any first year linguistics students will (hopefully) be able to tell you, the best way to find a noun in English is to see whether 'the' works before it... And I could mention lots of things that have an up and a down - try swapping them on your next pot of beer and see what I mean.

Okay, all of these 'I think 0.04% is too low' and 'I think about 0.08%' seems about right are driving me mad. My in-laws did a driving course in Victoria, Australia a few years back. Part of it consisted of learning to drive around a few witches hats and getting timed. Then they started having standard drinks at regular intervals, having their BAC measured, and continuing doing the course. At 0.02%, mother-in-law said she felt 'too drunk to drive', but father-in-law said he felt fine at 0.1% (0.05% is the legal limit). But more importantly, after ONE drink, everyone in the course started driving worse - slower, and hitting more witches hats. And this is before anyone even felt tipsy.

So, I kinda think the Scandinavians have this one right - you can have a light beer if you're driving, and if you want to drink, take a taxi or bring a DD (designated driver) with you. And for everyone who whinges about copping a fine (like linzeal) 'for not hurting anyone', I just say that the rest of us were just lucky to not be near you while you were DUI. Killing and injuring people for the stupid reason of 'I felt okay even though I'd had a drink, and I didn't know you were going to do X' is selfish. And honestly, a fine now might make you reconsider your options next time, and maybe save someone's life - clearly people do need protection from you.