http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/bestoftv/2012/03/29/piers-morgan-only-in-america-banned-words.cnn

Piers Morgan examines 50 words that are banned on New York school tests.  Here’s the full list:

Abuse (physical, sexual, emotional, or psychological)
Alcohol (beer and liquor), tobacco, or drugs
Birthday celebrations (and birthdays)
Bodily functions
Cancer (and other diseases)
Catastrophes/disasters (tsunamis and hurricanes)
Celebrities
Children dealing with serious issues
Cigarettes (and other smoking paraphernalia)
Computers in the home (acceptable in a school or [...]

While I am generally averse to reading articles that begin by telling us about how we are all living in “an increasingly globalized world,” I thought this article I caught in the Sunday New York Times might be of interest to members of the FIT community:

…there is ample evidence that in a bilingual’s brain [...]

As I began to write last time, waiting for my connecting flight back to California from the February 22-24 4th International Workshop on Linguistic Landscape, I had departed for this gathering in Addis Ababa with two conceptual questions and one applied question in mind. First, for the linguistic landscape workshop participants–a [...]

My mind is awash with thoughts from last week’s linguistic landscape workshop in Ethiopia’s capital city—thoughts from the last two days of informal visits to the campus of Addis Ababa University, from a group excursion 300km through the countryside to the Debre Libanos Monastery and the Blue Nile Gorge, [...]