Wordorigins.org

The Oxford English Dictionary has 6 words with first citations from 2003. In that year, the United States invades and occupies Iraq; Washington Post columnist Robert Novak publishes the name of CIA operative Valerie Plame, leading to an investigation and scandal over who in the Bush administration leaked her name; California governor Gray Davis is recalled and actor Arnold Schwarzenegger is elected in his place; the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrates on re-entry during mission STS-107, killing all seven astronauts aboard; SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, becomes a pandemic, with over eight thousand cases and nine hundred deaths worldwide; Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code is a bestseller, definitively proving that indeed there is no accounting for taste; style guru and businesswoman Martha Stewart is indicted for insider trading and obstructing justice; and the supersonic Concorde makes its last commercial flight.

The Oxford English Dictionary has 6 words with first citations from 2002. In that year, the “Beltway snipers” terrorize Washington, D. C. and suburban Maryland and Virginia, killing ten and injuring three others before the pair were captured; tennis player Serena Williams defeats her sister Venus in straight sets in the finals of the French Open; Peter Paul Rubens’s painting The Massacre of the Innocents sells for US$76.2 million at auction; American Idol debuts on U. S. television, with Kelly Clarkson winning the first season; fourteen-year-old Elizabeth Smart is kidnapped at knifepoint—she would eventually be recovered alive nine months later; and a portion of the Larsen Ice Shelf off Antarctica the size of the U. S. state of Rhode Island breaks off due to global warming.

The Oxford English Dictionary has 8 words with first citations from 2001. In that year, a Chinese fighter jet bumps a U. S. E-3 surveillance aircraft, killing the Chinese pilot and forcing the U. S. plane to land in Hainan, China where the crew was detained for ten days; Islamic terrorists fly two hijacked passenger aircraft into the World Trade Center towers in Manhattan, one into the Pentagon in Washington, D. C., and a fourth crashing into a field in Pennsylvania; the U. S. invades Afghanistan to hunt down the terrorists and depose the Taliban government that supported them; the energy-trading firm Enron files for bankruptcy; Peter Jackson’s film The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring hits the theaters; Wikipedia is launched; and the iPod makes its debut.

The Oxford English Dictionary has 12 words with first citations from 2000. In that year, the outcome of the U. S. presidential election is disputed due to an excruciatingly close vote count in Florida, with the U. S. Supreme Court stopping the recount and effectively awarding the election to George W. Bush; America Online purchases Time-Warner for $162 billion, the largest corporate merger in history; the dotcom bubble bursts; the death of Charles Schulz ends the forty-nine-year run of the Peanuts comic strip; the Human Genome Project releases its “rough draft” of the human genetic code; Sony releases the Playstation 2 game console, the best-selling gaming platform to date; the U. S. government wins its case against Microsoft with a court ruling that the firm engaged in monopolistic and anti-competitive practices; the International Space Station begins to be continuously occupied; and India’s population tops one billion people.

The Oxford English Dictionary has 20 words with first citations from 1999. In that year, the Euro begins to be used as currency; the Dow Jones Industrial Average closes above 10,000 for the first time; the war in Kosovo ends with Serbian capitulation to NATO forces; the U. S. Senate acquits President Clinton in his impeachment trial; the trend of shootings at U. S. schools comes to Columbine High School in Colorado; Lance Armstrong wins his first Tour de France; the television series The Sopranos debuts on HBO; Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace is released to the disappointment of millions of once-eager fans; and world population hits the six billion mark.

The Oxford English Dictionary has 16 words with first citations from 1998. In that year, Suharto resigns the presidency of Indonesia after thirty-two years in office; India and Pakistan conduct a series of nuclear weapons tests; the Second Congo War begins, which will to go on to become the bloodiest since World War II; Hugo Chavez is elected president of Venezuela; U. S. Senator John Glenn returns to space aboard the space shuttle Discovery, at seventy-seven the oldest person to go into orbit; the game show The Price is Right airs its five thousandth episode; and singer Frank Sinatra dies.

The Oxford English Dictionary has 32 words with first citations from 1997. In that year, Tony Blair becomes prime minister of the U. K., ending eighteen years of Conservative Party rule; Madeleine Albright becomes the first woman U. S. secretary of state; with the closest approach to earth of comet Hale-Bopp, thirty-nine members of the Heaven’s Gate cult commits mass suicide in San Diego, California; at age fourteen, Tara Lipinski becomes the youngest world figure skating champion in history; J. K. Rowling publishes the first Harry Potter book; James Cameron’s film Titanic is released, going on to smash all previous box office records and become the first film to gross over one billion dollars; the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer makes its debut; the Mayo Clinic warns that the diet drug fen-phen can cause severe heart and lung damage; Steve Jobs returns to Apple Computer to rescue the failing company; Jeanne Calment, the oldest person on record, dies at age 122 years, 164 days in Arles, France; and Diana, Princess of Wales dies in an automobile accident in Paris.

The Oxford English Dictionary has 48 words with first citations from 1996. In that year, Theodore Kaczynski, the “Unabomber,” is arrested in a Montana cabin; Primary Colors, a scathing fictionalized account of the 1992 Democratic presidential primary by “Anonymous” (later revealed to be journalist Joe Klein) becomes a political sensation; Alanis Morissette redefines irony and wins the Grammy award for album of the year for her Jagged Little Pill; the computer Deep Blue defeats world champion Garry Kasparov at chess for the first time; Dolly, a sheep, is the first mammal successfully cloned from an adult cell; and in Romer v. Evans the U. S. Supreme Court rules that anti-sodomy laws are unconstitutional.

The Oxford English Dictionary has 50 words with first citations from 1995. In that year, the World Trade Organization (WTO) was established; Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols bombed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168; the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed above 5,000 for the first time; securities broker Nick Leeson caused the collapse of Barings Bank through illegal and high-risk speculation; the cult Aum Shinrikyo released Sarin nerve agent in the Tokyo subway, killing 13 and injuring over 5,000; computer hacker Kevin Mitnick was arrested by the FBI; O. J. Simpson was acquitted of murder charges; and Pixar released Toy Story, the first all-CG feature-length film.

This article doesn’t provide any new information, and frustratingly doesn’t link to any actual studies, only journalistic accounts of the studies, but it is a nice summary of the state of our knowledge of animal language and whether or not it exists.

I do note the one claim about dogs being as smart as a two or three-year-old human child. The way they are measuring intelligence s remarkably anthropocentric. It’s like the old saying that the remarkable thing about a dancing bear is not how well he dances, but that he dances at all. Dogs are that smart because they demonstrate equivalent linguistic capabilities. And in fact, dogs that are trained to respond to human voices, like border collies, score higher on the “intelligence” scale. Well, duh. Rough comparisons of “intelligence” between species are meaningless. We can measure narrow aspects of intelligence, and such measurements are interesting and useful, but since we don’t have any consensus on what intelligence is in its entirety, broad comparisons like this are quite silly.

(Tip o’ the Hat to Andrew Sullivan)

[Discuss this post]