inkbluesky

Woman aquires new accent after stroke

A woman in southern Ontario is one of the first cases in Canada of a rare neurological syndrome in which a person starts speaking with a different accent, McMaster University researchers report in the July issue of the Canadian Journal of Neurological Sciences.

The puzzling medical phenomenon known as foreign-accent syndrome (FAS) arises from neurological damage, and results in vocal distortions that typically sound like the speaker has a new, “foreign” accent.

This particular case, however, is even more unusual because the English-speaking woman did not acquire an accent that sounds foreign but one that instead sounds like Maritime Canadian English.

They say that she has never visited the the Maritime area or had contact with anyone from there. I wonder if she didn’t here at least a few minutes of someone with that accent from radio or TV. I’ve had dreams where I’ve spoken in the accent of a character in a movie or TV show that I’d watched recently, that’s why I bring up the possibility.

walking the line

Pizza Loses Favor as Italians Turn to Pasta

The ongoing crisis in food prices has made a luxury of one of the world’s most iconic foods even in its affluent homeland.

Italians are shirking pizza due to skyrocketing bills and turning increasingly to pasta, which remains comparatively cheap despite also seeing large increases in cost.

The rising costs of pizza is maninly due to fluctuations in oil prices, but some plain old marketing ploys were also at work. Sure the locals ate pizza, but so did the tourists with the thick wallets. Why not, the thinking went push up pizza prices to take advantage of the tourists.

Until there is a new president this issue is probably all sound and fury, but this court decision might be the basis for reviving the debate over FISA in 2009, What The New NSA Spying Decision Means for the Immunity Debate

As we reported yesterday, Chief Judge Vaughn Walker of the Northern District of California has just issued a key ruling in Al Haramain v. Bush, one of the cases challenging the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping program. Judge Walker is also overseeing the consolidated litigation against the telecoms. With the Senate poised to vote on the FISA Amendments Act and immunity this Tuesday, this decision is particularly timely, as it demolishes key arguments made by proponents of telecom immunity:

Myth: It’s not fair to punish the telecoms for relying in good faith on the president’s authorization to conduct the surveillance, even though it violated FISA.
Fact: In an extended discussion, the Al Haramain decision makes clear — or rather, shows how clear it already was — that the President’s commander-in-chief powers do not give him the authority to ignore FISA. See Opinion at pp. 10-14, 23 (”[With FISA,] Congress appears clearly to have intended to — and did — establish the exclusive means for foreign intelligence surveillance activities to be conducted. Whatever power the executive may otherwise have had in this regard, FISA limits the power of the executive branch to conduct such activities….”)

Myth: Getting new language in the FAA asserting that FISA is the exclusive means by which the President can conduct domestic surveillance is a fair trade for gutting FISA’s long-standing protections and giving the telecoms immunity.
Fact: Again, the Al Haramain decision makes clear that FISA was already the exclusive means by which the President may authorize electronic surveillance. See Opinion at p. 13 (”[FISA's language] and its legislative history left no doubt that Congress intended to displace entirely the various warrantless wiretapping and surveillance programs undertaken by the executive branch and to leave no room for the president to undertake warrantless surveillance in the domestic sphere in the future.”)