Sunday morning miscellany

First, if you're a non-linguist, you should check out Ben Zimmer's On Language this morning about 'chunking', or learning language (your mother tongue as a kid or another language later) by mastering phrases rather than just individual words. If you're a linguist, you should appreciate the balanced way that he presents a relatively complex bit about our field in a way that has to be nice and clear to outsiders. THIS is the kind of stuff we need to have in big media outlets about linguistics.

Second, in the NYT sports page this morning, I was surprised to see what I figured for a now-famous term defined (click image to enlarge):

Maybe only 'terrorist fist jab/bump' is famous? (For more extensive commentary on the subject and its political uses, see this post from the Log.) I'm hoping both Chicago and Dallas lose today, of course. Go Packers!

Third, I know we had just an xkcd link, but:

So, historical linguists and philologists, is that true? (And see the rollover for more.)