By order of the Principal, all students are forbidden to say the word "meep". That is all.
posted by scalefree on Nov 12, 2009 - 201 comments

How my factual error found its way into Obama's health care speech.
posted by shakespeherian on Sep 18, 2009 - 43 comments

Next Tuesday, Sept. 8, speaking at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Va. President Obama will address the youth of America during a live television broadcast urging them to stay in school. Some school districts, bowing to parent pressure, have decided not to show the speech during school. [more inside]
posted by Secret Life of Gravy on Sep 4, 2009 - 588 comments

Obama speaks in Cairo: "I have come here to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world." Text is here. He quoted the Koran and highlighted a subject he avoided during his campaign - his own family's ties to Islam, his youth in Muslim Indonesia and even Chicago's Nation of Islam. An early roundup of US right wing reaction, and US left wing reaction, and the Middle East.
posted by CunningLinguist on Jun 4, 2009 - 135 comments

At GDC this year, Heather Chaplin to game developers: "You're a bunch of f***ing adolescents." Chaplin, co-author of the book Smartbomb, spoke at the Game Developers Conference during a panel called the Rant Session. [more inside]
posted by shmegegge on Apr 8, 2009 - 249 comments

"Infandous street corner Cromwell" George Galloway MP banned from entering Canada. Justified on 'National Security' grounds, specifically Section 34(1) of the Immigration Act. George Galloway reacts to Canadian Immigraton Spokesman Alykhan Velshi on Channel 4. Velshi suggests this is 'not a freedom of speech issue' but in this day and age of technology is the notion of banning individuals crossing geographical borders due to opinions held absurd. It would seem the Canadian Government think not. Intellectual Protectionism rears its head and the marmite of international politics basks in the publicity. Domestic navel gazing ensues.
posted by numberstation on Mar 23, 2009 - 102 comments

Western musical intervals are derived from speech tendencies, according to Duke scientists. Specifically, "most of the 12 chromatic scale intervals correspond to peaks of relative power in the normalized spectrum of human vocalizations." A somewhat more layperson-friendly summary of the study is here. [more inside]
posted by univac on Mar 15, 2009 - 42 comments

C-SPAN claims ownership of ALL domain names containing its service mark “C-SPAN” or any variation of it. What kind of pull does C-Span have that Walmart doesn't?
posted by augustweed on Feb 19, 2009 - 27 comments

In 1989 Rob Pike, Penn & Teller, and Dennis Ritchie (one of the creators of UNIX), prank Arno Penzias, with a funky speech recognition demo.
posted by oonh on Feb 19, 2009 - 6 comments

A sampling from John Moschitta Jr.'s oeuvre: Minute Rice • Northern Exposure Series Recap • The Theory of Evolution in One Minute • As "Blurr" on Transformers • As Supersonic Seymour on Garfield and Friends • On Sesame Street: 1 2 • As the Micro Machines guy: 1 2 • And the role that catapulted him to fame
posted by not_on_display on Feb 1, 2009 - 10 comments

Obama Annotated. Marc Ambinder's play-by-play of the inauguration speech, courtesy of the Atlantic.
posted by puckish on Jan 22, 2009 - 47 comments

"The government of the United States is in no sense founded on the Christian Religion." ~ George Washington / "I do not find in Christianity one redeeming feature." ~ Thomas Jefferson / "The Bible is not my book, nor Christianity my religion." ~ Abraham Lincoln / "A just government has no need for the clergy or the church." ~ James Madison / "I believe in an America where religious intolerance will someday end... where every man has the same right to attend or not attend the church of his choice." ~ John F. Kennedy / "We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers." ~ Barack Obama
posted by 0bvious on Jan 20, 2009 - 270 comments

The president of a Savings & Loan sent the following email to his family: If you have one hour of your time to invest in learning more about the current economic crisis, I highly recommend you click on one of the two below links and view [Paul Krugman's Friday address to the National Press Club]. His remarks take about 1/2 hour followed by 25 minutes of Q&As. I believe you will find watching it worth your time. P.S. If you decide to view Krugman's speech, I recommend you view it "full screen" for the best effect of viewing his body language. Link 1, Link 2 [more inside]
posted by spock on Dec 21, 2008 - 63 comments

The Waseda Talker has been turning heads (har har) lately. It's a mechanical simulation of the human vocal tract, from the motion of its synthetic lips down to the hypnotic undulation of its rubbery vocal folds (compare the genuine article here). Think this is new? Well, these days we do most of this stuff electronically — but talking simulacra have a long and weird history, starting back when electronic synthesizers were just a pipe dream. Here's a talking pair of bellows from 1791, and a head you can play like a trumpet as recently as 1937. The granddaddy of 'em all are the Kratzenstein resonators (not Frankenstein, Kratzenstein!) from 1779. Make your own with pipe insulation and a duck call.
posted by nebulawindphone on Nov 28, 2008 - 12 comments

An Introduction to Sine-Wave Speech Play the first sound and you'll probably hear nothing but squeaks and bleeps. Play the second one and then go back to the first. Cool!
posted by TheDonF on Nov 16, 2008 - 63 comments

The previously-mentioned Summums want to place their own monument in a park which contains the Ten Commandments, making the Supreme Court's heads explode in a a hilariously weird oral argument^[pdf]: "Scalia: I don't know what that means. You keep saying it, and I don't know what it means. [...] Breyer: Suppose that there certain messages that private people had like "eat vitamins"—and then somebody comes along with a totally different content, "ride the roller coaster," and they say this part of the park is designed to get healthy children, not put children at risk." [more inside]
posted by Non Prosequitur on Nov 13, 2008 - 116 comments

The U.S. Constitution protects your right to bear arms. And it supposedly protects your right to mock nearly-bare bears. Speech is definitely subject to supply and demand. So why does the FCC feel the need to regulate swearing on the airwaves? Steven Pinker complains. [via ALDaily]
posted by Inspector.Gadget on Oct 21, 2008 - 82 comments

xkcd had an idea to counter YouTube comment stupidity, and apparently someone at YouTube was paying attention. Not everyone is convinced however. (And there's always Comment Snob).
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane on Oct 9, 2008 - 31 comments

AS OF 10/08/2008, THERE WERE OVER 80,100 PAGES ONLINE WITH THE PHRASE "That's so gay."

Hillary Duff is here to elevate teen discourse! And here's a handy printout.
How 'gay' became children's insult of choice.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur on Oct 9, 2008 - 261 comments

"Of great concern to me, during those same four days in Denver, they rarely mentioned the attacks of September 11, 2001."
posted by swift on Sep 5, 2008 - 151 comments

100% is pure Dixie. Someone has taken the Harvard Computer Society Dialect Survey to task in a vital area.
posted by plexi on May 2, 2008 - 190 comments

New Jersey high school student Matthew LaClair has been at the center of controversy before, challenging his U.S. History teacher for proselytizing in class. He's in the news again, bringing attention to conservative bias in his American history textbook. [more inside]
posted by LooseFilter on Apr 27, 2008 - 123 comments

• "Please don't beat me. I'm having my period." ~ Mama Wangari
• "It is being both black and gay [which is problematic]." ~ Zanele Muholi (Nehanda Nyakasikana) [NSFW]
• "Sisters at heart, these women are: from Kibera to Loresho." ~ WM
• "My vagina wants an Uzi" ~ Larissa Klazinga (Amanda Atwood)
• "You are from Kenya? So are you Kikuyu or Luo?" ~ Wangui

"In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it's perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in." Robert F. Kennedy on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., killed 40 years ago today.
posted by XQUZYPHYR on Apr 4, 2008 - 17 comments

Texan judge rules $5 "pole tax" violates First Amendment rights. Further, Judge Scott Jenkins found no evidence to justify the purpose of HB 1751 (PDF), finding the anecdotal link of the patronage of strip clubs with a lack of health insurance and increased sexual assault rates for dancers insufficient, and ordered the state to pay the plaintiffs' legal fees. Activists are already looking to appeal Jenkins' ruling and reenact the tax. (Previously on Metafilter.)
posted by Blazecock Pileon on Apr 3, 2008 - 9 comments

Hitler Speaks

Using advanced speech recognition technology, researchers and voice-over actors have been able to put a soundtrack to long-silent video relics of Adolf Hitler: Eva Braun's infamous home movies filmed at the Berghof, private filmed meetings between Hitler and various Reich cronies, as well as the last known footage of him taped before an awkward bunch of Hitler Youth at the Reichstag in the final days of the war made famous in Downfall. Chilling stuff.

Via.
posted by auralcoral on Mar 22, 2008 - 177 comments

I think its time that we joined a serious debate about how to reconcile faith with our modern pluralistic society. Obama on religion and politics. (SLnonYTP)
posted by allkindsoftime on Feb 10, 2008 - 142 comments

How The Edwardians Spoke :: BBC documentary via Google Video, about an hour [more inside]
posted by anastasiav on Oct 19, 2007 - 23 comments

The on-stage rantings of various famous musicians.
posted by KevinSkomsvold on Aug 17, 2007 - 68 comments

Avatar Shakespeare Lady Macbeth Interpreted by Dame Microsoft Mary
posted by janetplanet on Jul 22, 2007 - 7 comments

A very big day for the Supreme Court. In Morse v. Fredrick, the Court ruled that a school could suspend a child for holding up a "Bong HiTs for Jesus" banner. (Previous post here). In Hein v. Freedom from Religion, the Court held that taxpayers lacked standing to challenged Faith Based Initiatives (previous discussions). In Wilke v. Robbins, the Court held that land owners do not have Bivens claims if the federal government harasses landowners for easements. In FEC v. Wisconsin Right to Life, the Court held that the portion of the campaign finance law which had blackout periods before elections on issue advocacy advertising was an unconstitutional restriction of speech (other). This Thursday, the Justices will deliver their last opinions of the term, including a death penalty case and the school assignment cases. (Opinions are .pdfs)
posted by dios on Jun 25, 2007 - 224 comments

Pakistani play parodying burkas is banned A play called Burkavaganza, a satire on the burka, staged this month by the Ajoka Theatre Group in the city of Lahore has been banned by Musharraf's regime. The director of the Ajoka is vowing to challenge the ban on constitutional grounds.
posted by Azaadistani on Apr 28, 2007 - 11 comments

Bruce Sterling's talk at SXSW is described on the landing page as a 'rant'. It isn't. What it is is a survey from 10,000 feet at what's happening in culture and technology and on the web, and I reckon it's worth spending the hour of your life it'll take to listen to it. I hope you agree. [mp3, 59 minutes]
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken on Mar 19, 2007 - 52 comments

We Are Not Freaks --from Silber's Power of Narrative--and applicable to all who fall outside the norms.
posted by amberglow on Feb 17, 2007 - 31 comments

Speak n Spell your way into remote control of a Vista box.
posted by Blazecock Pileon on Feb 1, 2007 - 24 comments

Oddcast's Text To Speech Demos let you type in words in 14 different languages. Hear thick accents if you enter English or learn how to pronounce that word you always say wrong in Spanish.
posted by daninnj on Jan 25, 2007 - 23 comments

An Impartial Interrogation
One of the things I miss about my eighteen years in the US Senate are the stories of the old Southern Democrats. I didn't always vote with them, but I loved their technique of responding to an opponent's questions with a humorous story. Once when Senator Sam Ervin of North Carolina had to handle a tough question from Mike Mansfield, he said, "You know, Mr. Leader, that question reminds me of the old Baptist preacher who was telling a class of Sunday school boys the creation story. 'God created Adam and Eve and from this union came two sons, Cain and Abel and thus the human race developed.' A boy in the class then asked, 'Reverend, where did Cain and Abel get their wives?' After frowning for a moment, the preacher replied, 'Young man--it's impertinent questions like that that's hurtin' religion.'"
posted by nofundy on Jan 19, 2007 - 17 comments

What American accent do you have?
posted by Methylviolet on Jan 18, 2007 - 203 comments

The Plantation Mentality
The veteran broadcast journalist Bill Moyers spoke on Friday before 3,500 at the opening of the National Conference on Media Reform in Memphis. He announced his return to the airwaves and outlined his vision of media reform. "As ownership gets more and more concentrated, fewer and fewer independent sources of information have survived in the marketplace; and those few significant alternatives that do survive, such as PBS and NPR, are under growing financial and political pressure to reduce critical news content and to shift their focus in a mainstream direction, which means being more attentive to establishment views than to the bleak realities of powerlessness that shape the lives of ordinary people."
posted by nofundy on Jan 18, 2007 - 48 comments

Podzinger now lets you search through spoken words on YouTube. Podzinger has long done speech recognition-based searches of podcasts, including neat features like excerpting relevant bits of the podcast, but the YouTube search is new, and still in its infancy. Podzinger comes from BBN, one of the creators of the internet and email, and which was the setting for one of the more humorous incidents in AI history [scroll down to "an accidental conversation"].
posted by blahblahblah on Jan 4, 2007 - 7 comments

BubblePLY lets you easily overlay subtitles and speech balloons over videos hosted on other sites.
posted by Partial Law on Dec 27, 2006 - 9 comments

Oh, Henry! Soft spoken Henry Rollins says a few words about internet freedom. (NSFW)
posted by birdhaus on Dec 14, 2006 - 223 comments

US Presidential Speeches Tag Cloud View the most popular words in presidential speeches, from 1776 to 2006. Simply sliding the bar from year to year makes it easy to see trends over time. (via Crooked Timber)
posted by afu on Nov 4, 2006 - 28 comments

In Soviet Russia, Flag Flies You! [Google Cache] Just as in election years past, the American flag has once again become a political football. Apparently, flying the flag upside down, a traditional indication of "distress" - (Section 8a. "The flag should never be displayed with the union down, except as a signal of dire distress in instances of extreme danger to life or property") - has displeased some patriots as well. Fortunately, the Marines are there [Google cache]... [via digg][Original digg-effected link here].
posted by rzklkng on Aug 23, 2006 - 146 comments

The Human Speechome Project - "A baby is to be monitored by a network of microphones and video cameras for 14 hours a day, 365 days a year, in an effort to unravel the seemingly miraculous process by which children acquire language.". Selected video clips. Paper (PDF, 750KB). To test hypotheses of how children learn, Prof Deb Roy's team at MIT will develop machine learning systems that “step into the shoes” of his son by processing the sights and sounds of three years of life at home. Total storage required: 1.4 petabytes.
posted by Gyan on Jul 23, 2006 - 21 comments

Seth MacFarlane's Harvard Speech (as himself, Peter, Stewie and Quagmire).
posted by zenzizi on Jun 10, 2006 - 29 comments

"The water, it came to your school. The gasoline, chemicals, sewage and blood came to your doorstep. It settled into the ground of this courtyard where we now gather." Chris Rose's commencement speech at Ursuline Academy in New Orleans.
posted by ColdChef on May 15, 2006 - 13 comments

Wenyi Wang is being charged with threatening Chineese President Hu Jintao .... Apparently telling a world leader that their time is running out and that everything they do in this life will come back to them is a crime. She was arrested while disrupting Jintao's meeting with Bush at the White House.
posted by rdr on Apr 21, 2006 - 55 comments

We look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms. In his State of the Union address on January 6, 1941 [mp3 of whole speech; Real audio links], President Franklin D. Roosevelt identified four essential human freedoms: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear (essays from the Carnegie Council's September 2005 Study Guide to the Four Freedoms). Roosevelt's speech inspired a series of paintings by Norman Rockwell. [more inside]
posted by kirkaracha on Apr 8, 2006 - 23 comments

“Judges are humans,” he said. “They’re not going to have any sympathy for this guy.” Some talk about free speech recently got me to thinking about what’s-his-name and some brothers who are doing something about it. (I always thought God was a biker. I mean, check out the beard.)
posted by Smedleyman on Feb 23, 2006 - 30 comments