Since at least the Middle Ages, philosophers and philologists have dreamed of curing natural languages of their flaws by constructing entirely new idioms according to orderly, logical principles. — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
No one who set out to design a form of communication would ever end up with anything like English, Mandarin, or any of the more than six thousand languages spoken today. — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
Jonah Lehrer is one of the most talented explainers of science that we’ve got. What a pleasure it is to follow his investigation of… — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
“I don’t think I’m an exceptionally bad reader. I suspect that many people, maybe even most, are like me. We read and read and… — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
Life seems to speed up as we get older because life gets less memorable as we get older. — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
With our blogs and tweets, digital cameras, and unlimited-gigabyte e-mail archives, participation in the online culture now means creating a trail of always present,… — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
How much are we willing to lose from our already short lives by losing ourselves in our Blackberries, our iPhones, by not paying attention… — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
“I Came away from the U.S. Memory Championship eager to find out how Ed and Lukas did it. Were these just extraordinary individuals, pridigies… — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
The 'OK Plateau' is that place we all get to where we just stop getting better at something. Take typing, for example. You might… — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
“One book, printed in the Heart’s own wax / Is worth a thousand in the stacks.” — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
Languages are something of a mess. They evolve over centuries through an unplanned, democratic process that leaves them teeming with irregularities, quirks, and words… — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
Invented languages have often been created in tandem with entire invented universes, and most conlangers come to their craft by way of fantasy and… — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
“Perhaps, as Borges concludes in his story, it is forgetting, not remembering, that is the essence of what makes us human.” — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
