Word: italian
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...French peasant girl who rallied her country's dispirited troops against the occupying English forces; the Turkish ruler who conquered Constantinople and enlarged what would become the millennium's most durable empire; the Italian navigator who sailed the ocean blue in 1492. Joan of Arc, Sultan Mehmet II and Christopher Columbus indisputably made lasting history. But it was one of their 15th century contemporaries who created a revolutionary way to spread not only their names and deeds but the sum total of human knowledge around the globe...
...about "two young men with a certain resemblance--not much--one of whom kills the other and assumes his identity." In the novel, Tom Ripley, an orphan in his mid-20s with a gift for larceny and mimicry, is hired by a rich shipbuilder to go to Mongibello, an Italian resort village where the man's son Dickie Greenleaf (played by Law in the new film) has been idling, to try persuading the lad to return home to the family business. Tom agrees, sails to Europe and, on seeing Dickie, is dazzled by his luscious indolence. Dickie paints, indifferently...
...fugue; Dickie's avocation is playing jazz saxophone instead of painting, and he loves the dangerous freedom of Chet Baker and Charlie Parker. As played by Law, Dickie oozes a reckless sensuality, turning the beam on and off at will, indulging Marge's love while he stealthily impregnates an Italian woman. In a movie that ups the sexual octane of the book, Tom's interest in Dickie is explicitly homoerotic, the yearning poignant and desperate. The killing in the boat is less murder than the fatal flailing of a rejected suitor. Tom is crushed by Dickie's dismissal...
...English-speaking brain is going at 33? There may be good reason. New research, to be published in the January issue of the journal Nature Neuroscience, found that the primary language a person is raised with affects the way he or she thinks and processes information. The researchers studied Italian and British college students and found that the Italians read and process information faster, even when reading words from other languages. The findings come as little surprise to linguistics experts, who've long held that our primary language forms our minds and our perceptions. Since, for example, Western languages...
...What's different about the current research, which was performed by a team of Italian and British scientists, is that it offers what's believed to be the first proof that linguistics have an impact upon our brain physiology. Brain scans of the students showed that Italians have more active superior temporal regions, while Brits have more active left frontal and posterior inferior temporal regions. While researchers said the immediate importance of the study lies in the area of teaching language and reading, it's sure to play a role in future anthropological research seeking to explain the differences between...