Blog...: 2014

Daniel Mullen Creates Realistic Architecture With Spatial Awareness via

Using paint, paper tape, pencil and blank canvas, artist Daniel Mullen creates images that examines with space and its representation through movement, fragmentation and the use of perspective. The friction created between the image and the painting, between painted and non-painted surfaces, and activation and deactivation of planes is what gives these creations meaning. Through it, Mullen conveys the “subtle illusion of space, as a question of perception.” Constructing the tower, 110x140cm, Oil on canvas My recent works are not a direct representation of existing architecture. The point of departure comes from the deconstruction of thoughts and memories. Meaning is then derived from a common understanding. At the same time that understanding raises new questions of association, searching for a disquieting intimacy. Resurrecting the monumental, 200x200cm, Oil on canvas The Architects Retreat, 80x80cm, Oil on canvas Dive, 70x70cm, Oil on canvas Ejecting space, 65x75cm, Oil on canvas Standby, 170x200cm, Oil on canvas Booth, 40x50cm, Oil on canvas hub, 50x40cm, Oil on raw canvas The architect, 145x185cm, Oil on canvas

Friday, February 14, 2014

Manic Researchers Announce They Are Hours Away From Cure For Depression

Manic Researchers Announce They Are Hours Away From Cure For Depression via

BLOOMINGTON, IN—Speaking loudly and quickly without any notable pauses, a team of manic researchers at Indiana University announced at a press conference Wednesday that they are mere hours away from a permanent cure for depression. The wide-eyed, un...

Thursday, February 13, 2014

GOPHERSET: NSA Exploit of the Day

GOPHERSET: NSA Exploit of the Day via

Today's item from the NSA's Tailored Access Operations (TAO) group implant catalog : GOPHERSET (TS//SI//REL) GOPHERSET is a software implant for GSM (Global System for Mobile communication) subscriber identity module (SIM) cards. This implant pulls Phonebook, SMS, and call log information from a target handset and exfiltrates it to a user-defined phone number via short message service (SMS). (TS//SI//REL) Modern SIM cards (Phase 2+) have an application program interface known as the SIM Toolkit (STK). The STK has a suite of proactive commands that allow the SIM card to issue commands and make requests to the handset. GOPHERSET uses STK commands to retrieve the requested information and to exfiltrate data via SMS. After the GOPHERSET file is compiled, the program is loaded onto the SIM card using either a Universal Serial Bus (USB) smartcard reader or via over-the-air provisioning. In both cases, keys to the card may be required to install the application depending on the service provider's security configuration. Unit Cost: $0 Status: (U//FOUO) Released. Has not been deployed. Page, with graphics, is here . General information about TAO and the catalog is here . In the comments, feel free to discuss how the exploit works, how we might detect it, how it has probably been improved since the catalog entry in 2008, and so on.

Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Star Sand

Star Sand via

Star Sand If you made a beach using grains the proportionate size of the stars in the Milky Way, what would that beach look like? Jeff Wartes Sand is interesting. [ Citation needed ] "Are there more grains of sand than stars in the sky?" is a popular question which has been tackled by many people . The upshot is that there are probably more stars in the visible universe than grains of sand on all of Earth's beaches. When people do those calculations, they often dig up some good data on the number of stars, then do some hand-waving about sand grain size to come up with a number for the sand grains on Earth. [1] From a practical point of view, geology and soil science are more complicated than astrophysics. We're not going to tackle that issue today, but to answer Jeff's question, we do need to figure out what the deal with sand is. [2] "i like sand because i don't really know what it is and there's so many of it" — @darth__mouth Specifically, we need to have some idea of what grain sizes correspond to clay, silt, fine sand, coarse sand, and gravel, so we can understand how our galaxy would look and feel if it were a beach. [3] Instead of just containing a bunch of them. Fortunately, there's a wonderful chart by the US Geologic Survey that answers all these questions and more. For some reason, I find this chart very satisfying—it's like the erosion geology edition of the electromagnetic spectrum chart. According to surveys of sand, [4] There are apparently lots of them . the grains found on beaches tend to run from 0.2mm to 0.5mm (with the finest layers on top). This corresponds to medium-to-coarse sand in the chart. The individual grains are about this big: If we assume the Sun corresponds to a typical sand grain, then multiply by the number of stars in the galaxy, we come up with a large sandbox worth of sand. [5] I mean, you come up with a bunch of numbers, but imagination turns them into a sandbox. However, this is wrong. The reason: Stars aren't all the same size. There are a number of widely-circulated YouTube videos comparing star sizes . They do a good job of getting across just how staggeringly large some stars are. Although it's easy to get lost in the videos and lose track of scale, it's clear that some of the grains in our sandbox universe would be more like boulders. Here's how the main-sequence [6] The stars in the main part of their fuel-burning lifecycle. star-sand grains look: They mostly fall into the "sand" category, though the larger Daft Punk stars cross the line into "granules" or "small pebbles". However, that's just the main sequence stars. Dying stars get much, much bigger. When a star runs out of fuel, it expands into a red giant. Even ordinary stars can produce huge red giants, but when a star that's already massive enters this phase, it can become a true monster. These red supergiants are the largest stars in the universe. These beachball-sized sand stars would be rare, but the grape-sized and baseball-sized red giants are relatively common. While they're not nearly as abundant as Sun-like stars or red dwarfs, their huge volume means that they'd constitute the bulk of our sand. We would have a large sandbox worth of grains ... along with a field of gravel that went on for miles. The little sand patch would contain 99% of the pile's individual grains, but less than 1% of its total volume. Our Sun isn't a grain of sand on a soft galactic beach; instead, the Milky Way is a field of boulders with some sand in between. But, as with the real Earth seashore, it's the rare little stretches of sand between the rocks where all the fun seems to happen.

Tuesday, February 04, 2014

You Win This Time, Benedict Sherlock!

You Win This Time, Benedict Sherlock! via

Sesame Street has posted a video of Benedict Cumberbatch’s guest appearance on the show and it is super adorable. It also contains immediate spoilers for the end of Sherlock season 3 , so be warned! The cute! It does not come without a price! [Watch Benedict Sherlock, er, Cumberbatch on Sesame Street ] Read the full article

First Single-Molecule LED

First Single-Molecule LED via

Researchers have made the smallest possible organic light-emitting diode

Same-sex couples challenge Wisconsin's gay marriage ban

Same-sex couples challenge Wisconsin's gay marriage ban via

A group of same-sex couples filed a federal lawsuit Monday challenging Wisconsin's ban on gay marriage, arguing the prohibition is unconstitutional and denies them civil rights married couples enjoy.

Monday, February 03, 2014

Escher Lizard Lack Hack

Escher Lizard Lack Hack via

One day, I rested my lizard spiral pattern on my Lack side table and an idea was born. The pattern is laser cut from 3mm plywood and is based on the Escher image “Development II” I stained 3 sheets of laser plywood with wood dye, Mahogany, Jacobean Oak and Antique Pine. I decided a plain/white border around the edge of the table would look best. Three different sets of lizards were cut, one in each colour and then I mixed and matched the appropriate parts while gluing them onto the top of the table. This does mean I now have three Escher side tables kicking round my house. I sanded the top of the Lack table to key the surface of the table and help the glue stick to it. The border was split into four parts, one for each side of the table. The largest lizards interlock nicely with the border and hold it in place while the glue sets. It’s easiest to build up the lizards in rings working towards the centre. Once you’re at the middle you can fit the centre piece with a little bit of wiggling. More images and information can be found on my blog .

IRATEMONK: NSA Exploit of the Day

IRATEMONK: NSA Exploit of the Day via

Today's item from the NSA's Tailored Access Operations (TAO) group implant catalog : IRATEMONK (TS//SI//REL) IRATEMONK provides software application persistence on desktop and laptop computers by implanting in the hard drive firmware to gain execution through Master Boot Record (MBR) substitution. (TS//SI//REL) This technique supports systems without RAID hardware that boot from a variety of Western Digital, Seagate, Maxtor, and Samsung hard drives. The supported file systems are: FAT, NTFS, EXT3 and UFS. (TS//SI//REL) Through remote access or interdiction, UNITEDRAKE, or STRAITBAZZARE are used with SLICKERVICAR to upload the hard drive firmware onto the target machine to implant IRATEMONK and its payload (the implant installer).l Once implanted, IRATEMONK's frequency of execution (dropping the payload) is configurable and will occur when the target machine powers on. Status: Released / Deployed. Ready for Immediate Delivery Unit Cost: $0 Page, with graphics, is here . General information about TAO and the catalog is here . In the comments, feel free to discuss how the exploit works, how we might detect it, how it has probably been improved since the catalog entry in 2008, and so on.

Thursday, January 30, 2014

Northern Lights

Northern Lights via

Night view of Sunndalsøra, Norway, a town surrounded by spectacular mountains "I love seeing the pulse of life cozily tucked away between the sleeping mountains. Energy and serenity come together here in a pleasing way." —Alexa Keefe, Photo of the Day editor This photo and caption were submitted to Your Shot . Check out the new and improved website, where you can share photos, take part in assignments, lend your voice to stories, and connect with fellow photographers from around the globe. Get tips on photographing the night sky » See the magic of illuminated scenes »

Monday, January 27, 2014

The new face of food stamps: working-age Americans

The new face of food stamps: working-age Americans via

In a first, working-age people now make up the majority in households that rely on food stamps.

Pulaski High receives state grant to teach Oneida language

Pulaski High receives state grant to teach Oneida language via

Next fall, Pulaski High School students can enroll in an Oneida language class, in addition to the more typical Spanish or French.

Friday, January 24, 2014

Cold

Cold via

Income Inequality as a Security Issue

Income Inequality as a Security Issue via

This is an interesting way to characterizing income inequality as a security issue: …growing inequality menaces vigorous societies. It is a proxy for how effectively an elite has constructed institutions that extract value from the rest of society. Professor Sam Bowles, also part of the INET network, goes further. He argues that inequality pulls production away from value creation to protecting and securing the wealthy's assets: one in five of the British workforce, for example, works as "guard labour" -- in security, policing, law, surveillance and forms of IT that control and monitor. The higher inequality, the greater the proportion of a workforce deployed as guard workers, who generate little value and lower overall productivity." This is an expansion of my notion of security as a tax on the honest. From Liars and Outliers : Francis Fukuyama wrote: "Widespread distrust in society…imposes a kind of tax on all forms of economic activity, a tax that high-trust societies do not have to pay." It’s a tax on the honest. It's a tax imposed on ourselves by ourselves, because, human nature being what it is, too many of us would otherwise become hawks and take advantage of the rest of us. And it's an expensive tax. The argument here is that the greater the inequality, the greater the tax. And because much of this security tax protects the wealthy from the poor, it's a regressive tax.

Thursday, January 23, 2014

Report: Most Americans Can’t Even Name Their State’s Shadow Lord

Report: Most Americans Can’t Even Name Their State’s Shadow Lord via

WASHINGTON—In a discouraging indicator of the nation’s diminishing civic awareness, a report released this week by Gallup revealed that the vast majority of Americans are unable to name their state’s current shadow lord.

Morning Roundup: Sea is for Cookie

Morning Roundup: Sea is for Cookie via

Redditor Put_It_All_On_Red created this magnificent homage to “The Great Wave” by Hokusai, titled “Sea is for Cookie.” That is, indeed, good enough for us. Morning Roundup presents some thoughts of darkness from Mr. James T. Kirk, thoughts about the limits of AI from Mr. Joaquin Phoenix, and an Aslan that requires zero moral commitment. [Plus life advice from D D!] Read the full article

Tuesday, January 21, 2014

Automation

Automation via

Friday, January 17, 2014

TED: Frederic Kaplan: How I built an information time machine - Frederic Kaplan (2013)

TED: Frederic Kaplan: How I built an information time machine - Frederic Kaplan (2013) via

Imagine if you could surf Facebook ... from the Middle Ages. Well, it may not be as far off as it sounds. In a fun and interesting talk, researcher and engineer Frederic Kaplan shows off the Venice Time Machine, a project to digitize 80 kilometers of books to create a historical and geographical simulation of Venice across 1000 years. (Filmed at TEDxCaFoscariU.)

Thursday, January 16, 2014

Q A with Betas, Amazon's Show About Startup Life in Silicon Valley

Q A with Betas, Amazon's Show About Startup Life in Silicon Valley via

Popular culture may have turned its gaze westward, toward the mirage of wunderkind coders, open floor plans studded with perks, and suddenly ubiquitous apps that make their makers insta-millionaires. But the competition to get Silicon Valley right has been flaccid. I was burned by Bravo , bored by Bloomberg , and avoided The Internship like a sticker pack . However Betas , Amazon's original series about social awkward 20-somethings building a social app called "brb," gets some details surprisingly right. Read more...

Today I Briefed Congress on the NSA

Today I Briefed Congress on the NSA via

This morning I spent an hour in a closed room with six Members of Congress: Rep. Logfren, Rep. Sensenbrenner, Rep. Scott, Rep. Goodlate, Rep Thompson, and Rep. Amash. No staffers, no public: just them. Lofgren asked me to brief her and a few Representatives on the NSA. She said that he NSA wasn't forthcoming about their activities, and they wanted me -- as someone with access to the Snowden documents -- to explain to them what the NSA was doing. Of course I'm not going to give details on the meeting, except to say that it was candid and interesting. And that it's extremely freaky that Congress has such a difficult time getting information out of the NSA that they have to ask me. I really want oversight to work better in this country. Surreal part of setting up this meeting: I suggested that we hold this meeting in a SCIF, because they wanted me to talk about top secret documents that had not been made public. The problem is that I, as someone without a clearance, would not be allowed into the SCIF. So we had to have the meeting in a regular room. EDITED TO ADD: This really was an extraordinary thing.

Tuesday, January 14, 2014

Triple Star System May Put Einstein's Theory Of Gravity To The Test

Triple Star System May Put Einstein's Theory Of Gravity To The Test via

In a cosmic coup, astronomers have found a celestial beacon known as a pulsar in orbit with not one, but two other stars. The first-of-its-kind trio could soon be used to put Einstein's theory of gravity, or general relativity, to an unprecedented test. "It's a wonderful laboratory that nature has given us," says Paulo Freire, a radio astronomer at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany, who was not involved in the work. "It's almost made to order." A pulsar consists of a neutron star, the leftover core of a massive star that has blown up in a supernova explosion. The core's own gravity squeezes it so intensely that the atomic nuclei meld into a single sphere of neutrons. The spinning neutron star also shines out a beam of radio waves that sweeps the sky just as the light beam from a lighthouse sweeps the sea. In fact, pulsars flash so regularly that they make natural timepieces whose ticking can be as steady as that of an atomic clock. The incredible regularity makes it possible to determine whether the pulsar is in orbit with another object, as roughly 80% of the more than 300 fast-spinning "millisecond" pulsars are known to be. As the pulsar and its companion orbit each other, the distance between the pulsar and Earth varies slightly, so that it takes more or less time for the pulses of radio waves to reach Earth. As a result, the frequency of pulsing speeds up and slows down in a telltale cycle. But such a simple scenario couldn't explain the peculiar warbles in the frequency of pulsar PSR J0337+1715, which Scott Ransom, an astronomer at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Charlottesville, Virginia, and colleagues discovered in 2007 with the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia. Training other radio telescopes on the object, Ransom and colleagues kept it under near-constant surveillance for a year and a half. Eventually, Anne Archibald, a graduate student at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, figured out exactly what's going on. The pulsar, which has 1.4 times the sun's mass and spins 366 times a second, is in a tight orbit lasting 1.6 days with a white dwarf star only 20% as massive as the sun. A second white dwarf that weigh 41% as much as the sun orbits the inner pair every 327 days, as Ransom and colleagues report online today in Nature . "We think that there are not more than 100 of these [trios] in our galaxy," Ransom says. "They really are one-in-a-billion objects." The distinctive new system opens the way for testing a concept behind general relativity known as the equivalence principle, which relates two different conceptions of mass. An object's inertial mass quantifies how it resists pushing or pulling: It's easier to start a stroller rolling than a car because the stroller has less inertial mass. A thing's gravitational mass determines how much a gravitational field pulls on it: A barbell is heavier than a feather because it has more gravitational mass. The simplest version of the equivalence principle says inertial mass and gravitational mass are equal. It explains why ordinary objects like baseballs and bricks fall to Earth at the same rate regardless of their mass—as legend claims Galileo showed by dropping heavier and lighter balls from the Leaning Tower of Pisa. The strong equivalence principle takes things an important step further. According to Einstein's famous equation, E = mc 2 , energy equals mass. So an object or system's mass can be generated by the energy in the gravitational fields within the system itself. The strong equivalence principle states that even if one includes mass generated through such "self-gravitation," gravitational and inertial mass are still equal. The principle holds in Einstein's theory of general relativity but typically does not hold in alternative theories, says Thibault Damour, a theoretical physicist at the Institute for Advanced Scientific Studies in Bures-sur-Yvette, France. So poking a pin in the principle would prove that general relativity is not the final word on gravity. Researchers have already tried to test the strong equivalence principle. Since the 1970s, some have compared how the moon and Earth orbit in the gravitational field of the sun. More recently, others have analyzed the motion of pulsar–white dwarf pairs in the gravitational field of the galaxy. But those studies have been limited, Damour says. Earth's self-gravitation accounts for just a billionth of its mass. In pulsar studies, the galaxy's gravity is very weak. So the strong equivalence principle has been tested only to a precision of parts per thousand. The new pulsar system opens the way to a much more stringent test by combining the strengths of the two previous methods. The self-gravitation of the pulsar accounts for roughly 10% of its mass, in contrast to less than 0.001% for the inner white dwarf. At the same time, both move in the gravitational field of the outer white dwarf, which is much stronger than the field of the galaxy. By tracking the system's evolution, Ransom and colleagues should be able to tell whether either the inner white dwarf or the pulsar falls faster toward the outer white dwarf and test strong equivalence about 100 times as precisely as before, Damour says. So will strong equivalence principle be found wanting? "I would rather expect to get a better limit" on possible violations, Damour says. "But I'm open-minded. It would be great to get a violation." Freire says a violation would be "a complete revolution." Researchers may not have to wait long, Ransom says. His team should be able to test the principle within a year. This story has been provided by AAAS, the non-profit science society, and its international journal, Science .

Thursday, January 09, 2014

The Problem With River Song

The Problem With River Song via

With the Eleventh Doctor now passed into Whovian memory, it would seem that the Era of River Song has ended as well. And while it should be bittersweet, it is also honestly something of a relief. Let me be clear—I happen to love River Song. Well, let me be clearer... I love what River Song might have been. And it’s telling that what she became is a symptom of everything that fans are lately bemoaning about Doctor Who . [Hello, Sweetie] Read the full article

Monday, January 06, 2014

Because syntax

Because syntax via

Many people will be somewhat surprised that the American Dialect Society's "Word of the Year" choice was because in its use with an NP complement. It seems to be unprecedented for a word in a minor category like preposition to be chosen rather than some emergent or fashionable word in one of the major lexical categories: recent winners have been 2012's hashtag (noun), 2011's occupy (verb), 2010's app (noun), 2009's tweet (noun and verb), 2008's bailout (noun), 2007's subprime (adjective), 2006's plutoed (past participle of verb), and 2005's truthiness (noun). And it also seems to be unique in representing a new syntactically defined word use within a given category rather than a new (or newly trending) word. The syntax of because calls for a little discussion, I think, given the remarkable fact that every dictionary on the market is wrong in the part-of-speech information it gives about the word (write to me if you can find a dictionary of which this is not true: I'd love to see one). What the American Heritage Dictionary says about because will do as a basis for discussion, since the dictionaries pretty much all agree (they basically just plagiarize each other). It reports that because is a "conjunction", but also that there is a word spelled because of , which is a preposition. Both claims are flamingly and demonstrably wrong. Traditional grammar recognizes two types of "conjunction" (I put the word in scare quotes because, although famililar, it is a most undesirable choice of terminology): there are "subordinating conjunctions" and "coordinating conjunctions". Because isn't like either. The classic "subordinating conjunction" is that , which introduces subordinate clauses as in Ted says that the world is flat . It introduces clauses that are nearly always complements (i.e., they are required or specifically licensed by the foregoing main clause word, in this case believe ). It is meaningless in its own right, and often omissible: Ted says the world is flat is a grammatical alternative. Preposing the constituent that it (i.e., shifting that and the clause it introduces to the beginning of the main clause) often sounds pretty weird: you could only use the odd sentence ?? That the world is flat, Ted says in certain special contexts where different things Ted says are being contrasted with one another. None of this holds for because , as seen in sentences like Ted is ridiculed because he holds ridiculous beliefs . It introduces constituents that are never complements: they are always optional adjuncts (* Ted says because the world is flat is not grammatical at all unless you understand it elliptically with something missing after the verb says , so that the meaning is "Ted says it is because the world is flat"). It is not meaningless, but contributes a crucial logical relation of cause or reason. It can never be omitted without radical change to the meaning and usually the grammatical permissibility of the sentence (* Ted is ridiculed he holds ridiculous beliefs is not grammatical). And shifting it to the front is perfectly normal: Because he holds ridiculous beliefs, Ted is ridiculed is perfectly normal in lots of contexts. The classic "coordinating conjunction" is and , which introduces non-initial parts of coordinate constituents as in Roses are red and violets are blue . Switching the positions of the two clauses separated by the and normally gives a grammatical result with the same truth conditions: Violets are blue and roses are red is true if and only if Roses are red and violets are blue is true. Preposing the and plus what follows it is not permitted: * And violets are blue, roses are red is totally ungrammatical. The opposite of all of this holds for because . The sentence Roses are red because violets are blue may express a strange claim, but it has a completely different meaning from Violets are blue because roses are red (the causal arrow is reversed in direction). And Because violets are blue, roses are red is a grammatical alternative way of expressing the same thing as Roses are red because violets are blue . Why do all dictionaries make the self-evidently false claim that because is a "conjunction" and thus either like that or like and ? In short, they are all lazy followers of a stupid tradition that has needed rethinking for 200 years (some would say it's more like 2,000 years, because it originates in classical times). They are locked into system of respecting ancient an analysis that doesn't work. It is based on the vague notion of joining: a "conjunction" is supposed to be a word that "joins" two elements together. Very little thought is required to see that if using C to "join" A together with B means simply forming the sequence "A C B" then almost anything can be called a "conjunction"; and no stricter and more tightly framed definition has been given. That brings us to the similarly brainless claim that there is a preposition spelled because of . I'm not going to say that the dictionary should never recognize something as a word if it has a space in it; I think Santa Cruz is best thought of as a word, and there may be space-containing words that are not proper nouns. But because of isn't one of them. I don't need to go into any elaborate arguments to convince you of this. I simply searched the Wall Street Journal corpus (44 million words from the late 1980s that has served as a convenient testbed for all sorts of computational linguistic experiments over the past twenty years), looking for cases of because and of with some stuff in between. Within half a second my laptop provided these results: If among the intellectual beliefs of Latin America the idea of democracy itself is so denigrated, it is because, in great part, of our public universities. Higher-priced goods were the best sellers in lines ranging from toys to apparel, partly because, some retailers thought, of the new tax law, which will eliminate deductions for sales taxes beginning next year. Chavez was more restrained this time because, he later revealed, of a rib injury suffered sparring at promoter Don King's famous, $1,000-a-day Cleveland training lair six weeks ago. "I want to avoid saying Europe is a role model for North America," says Robert C. Stempel, who won the president's job at GM last May because, it is widely believed, of the company's improvement overseas. These don't just have words and spaces in between because and of ; they actually have commas in there. Do you want to posit words in the dictionary that have commas and spaces and sequences of three or four words inside them? Do you want to propose that the dictionary should include not just the one word because of but several million others like because, some retailers thought, of and because, it is widely believed, of ? If you do, you're a fruitcake, and I'm not addressing you. If you are a Language Log reader you will see what I mean. There is no preposition because of ; these are two separate words, with their own functions, capable of being widely separated by other words. Of , naturally, is a preposition. It is the commonest and most stereotypical of all prepositions in English. It heads preposition phrases (PPs) like of our public universities . So what should we say about because ? Contrary to all the dictionaries, it is a preposition . As its complement (the phrase that follows it to complete the PP) it may take either a clause (as in the PP because he holds ridiculous beliefs ) or a PP with of as its head (as in the PP because of our public universities ). Some prepositions can occur with no complement (as in We went in ), some require an NP (as of does) some require a clause (as although does), and some require a PP (like out in those uses that do not involve exiting from delimited regions of space: notice that They did it out of ignorance is grammatical but * They did it out ignorance is not). The change that has caught the eye of the American Dialect Society is simply that it has picked up the extra privilege already possessed by prepositions like of : it now allows a noun phrase (NP) as complement. So in the following table of prepositions (in red) and their complement categories (in blue), a single entry has been changed (✓ means `grammatically permitted', * means `grammatically forbidden'): nothing NP of -PP Clause in ✓ ✓ * * out ✓ % % * since ✓ ✓ * ✓ of * ✓ * * because * * ✓ ✓ The language has simply added to its stock of grammatical possibilities (as it can, because syntax) a single check mark, replacing the second asterisk in the last row. It's the American Dialect Society's grammatical check mark of the year.