… Boeing and Deities, Dying Languages, Unfunny Videos and MUCH MORE.

Now that The New York Times has discontinued its digital Times Select subscription program and made much more of its 150+ years’ of content available for anyone to read, Kottke.org dug around to highlight some particularly notable items that the non-paying subscriber has been missing, including:

• An article about the confirmation of Einstein’s theory of gravity (1919);
• The first mention of television as a concept (1907);
• A report on General Custer’s “last stand” soon after it took place (1876);
• An early report on President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination (1865); and
• From the first year of publication, a listing of the principle events of 1851.

Excellent finds. Check out Kottke.org for more cool listings and links to the original NYT articles … for the first time FREE of charge to EVERYONE.

Ideas for Out-of-Office Replies
This list of “funny out-of-office replies” has made the rounds in myriad variations via e-mail and bloggage over the past few years, but some of them still give me a bit of a chuckle:

1) I am currently out at a job interview and will reply to you if I fail to get the position. Be prepared for my mood.

2) You are receiving this automatic notification because I am out of the office. If I were in, chances are you wouldn’t have received anything at all.

3) Sorry to have missed you, but I am at the doctor having my brain removed so that I may be promoted to management.

4) I will be unable to delete all the unread, worthless e-mail messages you send me until I return from vacation on [insert date]. Please be patient and your e-mail will be deleted in the order it was received.

5) Thank you for your e-mail. Your credit card has been charged $5.99 for the first 10 words and $1.99 for each additional word in your message.

6) Your message has been added to a queuing system. You are currently in 352nd place and can expect to receive a reply in approximately 19 weeks.

7) I’m thinking about what you’ve just sent me. Please wait by your computer for my response.

8) I’ve run away to join a different circus.

9) I will be out of the office for the next two weeks for medical reasons. When I return, please refer to me as “Danielle” rather than “Daniel.”

Alternatively, if you are in the office and receive an e-mail message from a sender you don’t want to deal with, immediately type “out-of-office automated reply” in the subject line and tailor the message. I never do this.

One Way to Correct Aircraft Technical Snags
Nepal Airlines, one of whose craft has been plagued with technical problems in recent weeks, recently sacrificed two goats to appease a sky god, the carrier said earlier this month.

The goats were slaughtered in front of one of the state-run airline’s two Boeing 757s at Kathmandu airport, after which the plane successfully lifted off on its way to Hong Kong, an airline official said.

(Thanks for the keen eye on aviation trends, Fred.)

‘Cause Tuition Doesn’t Cost Enough?
Harvard University’s campus bookstore is kicking people out for taking too many notes about pricing. When confronted about this, the Coop’s president actually claimed that book prices were the store’s “intellectual property” (IP), according to Techdirt, which cites Boing Boing.

“Unfortunately, for the bookstore, the law is pretty clear that you can’t copyright facts — and whether the bookstore likes it or not, prices are facts,” Techdirt notes. International standard book number (ISBN) data, which every book title has, is similar to phone book listings, which are not protected by IP law.

The store certainly has the right to refuse service to anyone, but that doesn’t mean that it’s smart for business or that copying down prices infringes on any kind of IP.

Unfunny Vid #1
The first version of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, nicknamed Galloping Gertie, was designed by Clark Eldridge and altered by Leon Moisseiff. In 1940, it became famous for a dramatic wind-induced structural collapse.

Parrot Teaches Boy to Talk
A four-year-old boy with severe learning difficulties and who had never uttered a single word, has learned his first words with the help of his family’s pet — a parrot.

After listening to macaw Barney, the autistic boy can now say “Night, night,” “Dad,” “Mum,” “Ta,” “Hello” and “Bye,” reports Independent Online (via Fark).

Before Barney arrived, the boy would try to speak but the sound came out as a noise, according to the boy’s mother. “Then we got Barney and, a few months later, Dylan began to talk. It was only the odd word, but I could clearly understand what he said.

“Every time I gave the bird something to say, Dylan started trying to say the same thing. I think it’s because the bird says things slower than me, which helps Dylan understand.”

Remembering Alex
Alex, the African Grey Parrot who knew more than 100 words, could count to six, and recognized shapes and colors, has died. The bird was 31 and appeared to have died of natural causes, according to the NYT.

Alex’s feats, which Irene Pepperberg, the animal psychologist who trained and studied him for three decades documented in dozens of scientific journals, challenged the notion that only apes and dolphins were smart enough to understand human language.

According to the Alex Foundation, “thousands of emails” have been received from people expressing their condolences.

Lle naa curucuar**
While there are an estimated 7,000 languages spoken around the world today, one of them dies out about every two weeks, according to linguistic experts struggling to save at least some of them, reports The Associated Press.

Five “hotspots” where languages are most endangered were listed Tuesday in a briefing by the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages and the National Geographic Society.

The last known speaker of Amurdag, far right, with two researchers who are making a record of dying languages. Click image for larger view.
Credit: Chris Rainier/National Geographic

Many native languages are endangered in northern Australia, eastern Siberia, Oklahoma and the U.S. Southwest, as well as in South America — Ecuador, Colombia, Peru, Brazil and Bolivia — and the area including British Columbia, and the states of Washington and Oregon. All of the areas are occupied by aboriginal people speaking diverse languages, but in decreasing numbers.

According to the International Herald Tribune:

Some endangered languages vanish in an instant, at the death of the sole surviving speaker. Others are lost gradually in bilingual cultures, as indigenous tongues are overwhelmed by the dominant language at school, in the marketplace and on television.

Hopefully, thanks to the recent Tolkien-inspired blockbusters, we can exclude the Languages of Arda from this list.

The findings are described in the October issue of National Geographic magazine and at www.languagehotspots.org. Check out the VIDEO.

*Elven translation: “You are a skillful bowman.”

Arguments for the 4-Day Workweek
Land planner Aaron Newton of Groovy Green and Powering Down wrote a guest post over at The Oil Drum recently, offering his reasons why the four-day workweek’s time has come.

A few of ‘em:

1) The impact a four-day workweek could have on crude oil imports
2 ) Reduce greenhouse gas emissions and other air pollutants
3) Less traffic congestion and fewer automobile accidents each year
4) Reduce money spent on new road construction and existing road maintenance
5) Decrease a) absenteeism, b) labor costs, and c) operational costs
6) Increase productivity (Yup, read the explanation for this one.)
7) Reduction in personal expenses
8) More time for family and, related, reduction in cost of childcare
9) ‘Cause it would be awesome**

Check out The Four Day Work Week: Sixteen Reasons Why This Might Be an Idea Whose Time Has Come for the complete list and explanations for each.

**Paraphrased liberally

Nonstick Chewing Gum to Become a Reality
Revolymer, a “spin-out” chemical company from the University of Bristol, has completed development of its new Clean Gum that can be easily removed from shoes, clothes, pavements and hair, according to ScienceDaily:

The company has completed initial street trials on pavements in local high streets as part of a collaborative agreement with local councils. In the two trials, leading commercial gums remained stuck to the pavements three out of four times. In all tests the Revolymer gum was removed within 24 hours by natural events.

Preliminary results also indicate that the gum will degrade naturally in water.

“Unfunny” Vid #2
An oldie-but-goody: Managing to make Office Space, perhaps the funniest movie about cubicle dwellers EVER, kinda … depressing.

Cheers.