A fabulously talented artist named JK Keller from New York created this series of American Sign Language hands out of matchbooks he found on the street.

View the complete set.

ASL Matchbooks by artist JK Keller

by Sharon Begley
from a Newsweek article published Jul 9, 2009 & magazine issue dated Jul 20, 2009

When the Viaduct de Millau opened in the south of France in 2004, this tallest bridge in the world won worldwide accolades. German newspapers described how it “floated above the clouds” with “elegance and lightness” and “breathtaking” beauty. In France, papers praised the “immense” “concrete giant.” Was it mere coincidence that the Germans saw beauty where the French saw heft and power? Lera Boroditsky thinks not.

A psychologist at Stanford University, she has long been intrigued by an age-old question whose modern form dates to 1956, when linguist Benjamin Lee Whorf asked whether the language we speak shapes the way we think and see the world. If so, then language is not merely a means of expressing thought, but a constraint on it, too. Although philosophers, anthropologists, and others have weighed in, with most concluding that language does not shape thought in any significant way, the field has been notable for a distressing lack of empiricism—as in testable hypotheses and actual data.

That’s where Boroditsky comes in. Continue reading What’s in a Word? Language may shape our thoughts.

This site was created by a collective of polar bears working thoughtfully and carefully in the far northern regions of Antarctica. Toiling under the moonlight, and often tired from fishing all day, these polar bears have put together a resource for parents and family members of deaf children — and children with all forms of hearing loss (they just couldn’t figure out a domain name that included all that, sorry!).

Occasionally, friends would bring them chicken patties with barbecue sauce, and on those nights, they would get a lot done. Still, large paws are cumbersome, and it took quite some time for this site to become a reality.