These days I'm doing some data munching and I've been introduced by a kind colleague to a couple of simple things which made me think how it is possible that I ever lived without them: screen and xargs. If you do use linux and are not aware of these: know that your life can be better.

(Hoping this is not obvious for everyone. And if you have similarly miraculous tools, please let me know in the comments.)

I am usually amazed by research that goes far within some topic and at the same time is intuitively communicated. Even more if this touches on a daily subject we're all familiar with. Even more if it is about some topic I'm really interested on (that is, a topic I've been discussing with other people around tables, glasses and drinks).

The Edge online magazine has a fascinating piece by Lera Boroditsky about How our language shapes the way we think. Based on psychological experiments, Lera talks about different senses of time and space, how thinking about the moon as a male or female makes a difference and the such. Really nice reading.

If after this you are still curious, there is less scientific piece at the Economist about different and difficult features in languages. The text is a bit of a collection of peculiarities in languages, but has interesting examples.