| Study on decline of French in Montreal hidden, PQ says
If it doesn't, no amount of band aid solutions, legal compulsion or other ringfencing mechanisms will save it. One of the great strengths of English has been its ability to incorporate other languages, rather than trying to keep its pure wool nature. Is the English I speak the same as the English spoken 800 years ago? Not at all. Do I feel demeaned or cheated by this fact? Again, not at all. Evolution is all about accepting and incorporating change, not fearing and trying to hide from it. The joke of the matter that while Quebec is insistent on freezing its language and culture, the citizens of France think that the patois spoken in Quebec is an abomination of the French language. But then, who's worse? Crybaby Quebecois or the ridiculously archaic and artificial Acadamie Francaise? Speak whatever language you want, in whatever way you want.
Paul Domowitch: He looks like a new Manning lately
The Giants are the ninth wild-card team to reach the Super Bowl since the 1970 merger. Wild-card teams are 4-4 in the Super Bowl, but have won three of the last four times they've gotten there. DID YOU KNOW?: Mike Carey, who will be the referee for Super Bowl XLII, also was the referee for the Giants-Patriots game in Week 17. .
Developers see bright future for ringtone apps
The iTunes 7.4 update might have heralded Apple's entry into the ringtones business. But third-party developers who offer ringtone creation tools of their own think there's enough room for more than one application—even one that comes directly from Apple. Introduced by Steve Jobs earlier this month, iTunes 7.4 adds a customized ringtone maker to Apple's music jukebox software. With the new feature, users can turn selected purchased from the iTunes Store into ringtones; creating a ringtone costs 99 cents on top of the cost of the original download. While the iTunes 7.4 feature works with some songs bought through iTunes, it doesn't work with all the music in your library. And that's where third-party developers see an opportunity to compete alongside Apple. “Apple is limited in terms of what they are offering," said Andrew Welch, whose company, Ambrosia Software, makes the iToner ringtone creator.
Five ways to enjoy winter
Not long afterward, images remembering lost relatives became just as fashionable, resulting in a social and visual tidal wave of works incorporating often intimate expressions of bereavement. This show features 60 examples of this powerful 19th-century trend, including numerous pieces of schoolgirl needlework, as well as professionally produced ceramics, textiles and other objects. It also explores the symbols of mourning, many of which were based on the late 18th-century taste for urns, temples and other neoclassical forms.
Bare Witness: Photographs of Gordon Parks
Friday-March 30. Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk. Few photographers created such an indelible and varied record of late 20th-century America as the late Gordon Parks. Born in Kansas in 1912, Life magazine's first African-American photographer captured crime, poverty and the civil rights struggle as well as Hollywood celebrities and fashion trends — all with a straightforward yet sympathetic eye capable of creating genuinely revealing pictures.
A.M. Costa Rica/José Pablo Ramírez Vindas
Michael Rivera Guillen had his head stuck out the window and was moving it back and forth, back and forth, like the pendulum on a grandfather clock. This was the 5-year-old's first time on a train.
"I wanted to share the experience with my grandchildren," said Rivera's grandmother, Xinia Durán Meza, who said it was her first time on the train as well. "It's enchanting," she said, "everything is so beautiful."
The Tren a la Tica is one of the oldest in Central America, opening to the public in 1903. It ran for the first time as an electric train in 1930 and is the second oldest of its kind in Latin America, according to train officials. At the height of the era, the train institute employed over 3,000 people. The train was shut down in 1995 under President Jose María Figures Olsen but finally reopened in 2001 with the help of a tourist organization called American Travel.
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