We are on the verge of a revolution in how cars are built, and here is a first report on the trend that is developing. Good News on Christmas Day.
Credit: Mercedes-Benz Media
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Pioneering spirit has been part of Mercedes-Benz DNA for almost 140 years. Through countless innovations, the inventor of the automobile and technology pioneer has continuously paved the way for the development of individual mobility. The VISION EQXX technology programme has already provided a clear preview of efficiency in the forthcoming electric and digital age. However, the journey into the future continues: Mercedes-Benz is constantly researching new technologies to shape the mobility of tomorrow. The company is providing exclusive insights into ongoing research activities aimed […]
TED Fellow and composer Sahba Aminikia brings the healing power of dance, storytelling, music and performance to some of the most dangerous places on Earth. By celebrating children and their communities with beauty and joy, he shows how to cultivate hope, connection and love — even in conflict zones. “The ultimate power is in unity,” Aminikia says.
A groundbreaking scientific examination of the way our brains understand politics from a New York Times bestselling author
One of the world ‘s best-known linguists and cognitive scientists, George Lakoff has a knack for making science make sense for general readers. In his new book, Lakoff spells out what cognitive science has discovered about reason, and reveals that human reason is far more interesting than we thought it was. Reason is physical, mostly unconscious, metaphorical, emotion-laden, and tied to empathy-and there are biological explanations behind our moral and political thought processes. His call for a New Enlightenment is a bold and striking challenge to the cherished beliefs not only of philosophers, but of pundits, pollsters, and political leaders. The Political Mind is a passionate, erudite, and groundbreaking book that will appeal to anyone interested in how the mind works and how we function socially and politically.
George Lakoff is Richard and Rhoda Goldman Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics at UC Berkeley and is one of the founders of the field of cognitive science.
He is author of The New York Times bestseller Don’t Think of an Elephant!, as well as Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think, Whose Freedom?, and many other books and articles on cognitive science and linguistics.
Most people generally agree that the language quirk originated for one reason
An aerial vew of freeways in Los Angeles.Getty Images
By Tessa McLean,California Editor Dec 26, 2024 (SFGate.com)
We’ve all been there. Sitting in a snarl of California freeway traffic, staring up at the green directional signs in despair, watching brake lights blink on and off. Known for its car culture, California is a place where people spend a lot of time on the road — but they may talk about the experience differently depending on where they live in the state.
If you take the 101 to the 134 to the 5 and get off at Stadium Way, you’ve made it to Dodger Stadium for a baseball game. But you are also obviously in Southern California. Adding “the” before a numbered freeway is one of those linguistic oddities that separates Northern and Southern California. It’s led to endless internet arguments about its origins and even prominence in a beloved recurring “Saturday Night Live” sketch. More than one theory exists on why Southern Californians insert the additional definite article, but most people generally agree that the language quirk originated for one reason.
Southern California built some of America’s first freeways, paving the way quite literally for the culture that would come along with it. Those first freeways didn’t have standardized route numbers, though, and instead had names that told the driver about the route itself. If you took the Hollywood Freeway, you traveled to and from Hollywood. If it was the Arroyo Secco Parkway, often cited as the first LA freeway, the drive was along the river with the same name. Early maps of the city used these names over numbers (though some did have numbers, too, and often more than one set of numbers, making things more confusing). Soon, that regional system became engrained in the local lexicon.
FILE: Traffic on the Hollywood Freeway, 1954.Bettmann Archive
Dating back to the 1930s, these roadways weren’t yet part of the standardized U.S. freeway system, which didn’t come about until President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the Federal-Aid Highway Act in 1956.
“It was not unusual even in the 1930s for people to drive long distances within what was at that time America’s most spread-out metropolis,” wrote linguist Grant Geyer in his article “‘The’ Freeway in Southern California,” which discussed the linguistic habit in the journal American Speech in 2001.
When the roads finally switched over to the standardized numbering system, it was a turning point, finally simplifying a dizzying list of names to systematic numbering. But the “the” simply stuck.
“Locals generally preferred the old, time-honored street or road names instead of numbers in conversation,” Geyer wrote.
It took decades for all the signs to switch over to the new numbering system, so it’s not surprising that it took until the 1970s for Californians to start more commonly adopting the numbers over the names. Traffic reporters continued to include “the” and use both names, further implanting the terminology into local speech, particularly as Southern Californians became increasingly car-dependent.
Meanwhile, the Northern California freeway system wasn’t as extensive and developed later, so the language wasn’t as deep-rooted. Alternative modes of transportation were frequently used, as well — like the Bay Area’s BART system — and so, a Bay Area resident typically just takes 80 east to Oakland, for example.
“Since language is often used to show group belonging, even small quirks can become powerful indicators of social identity,” Daria Bahtina, a linguistics professor at UCLA, told SFGATE in an email. “… Over time, this split [between Northern and Southern California] has become a kind of shibboleth — a linguistic marker that signals which group someone belongs to, in this case, geographically.”
A street sign points to the entrance of the 101 freeway in Los Angeles. Getty Images/Glowimages RF
This habit is both a point of cultural identity for Angelenos and a source of linguistic curiosity for outsiders. Bahtina even supervised a student project in 2021 that analyzed this language divide in California. Examining Reddit posts mentioning US-101, which runs through both LA and the Bay Area, the UCLA students found “members of the Los Angeles subreddit did, in fact, use the determiner ‘the’ more often when referring to U.S. 101. In r/LosAngeles, 16 out of the 23 posts collected referred to U.S. 101 as ‘the 101’, whereas in r/BayArea, only 3 posts did so in the same sample size.”
Author Colleen Dunn Bates grew up in Los Angeles and remembers that when she got her driver’s license in 1974, most people still referred to freeways by names rather than numbers. She said she emulated how her parents, native Californians, spoke about the roadway. They had grown up using the names, not the numbers.
Now, she’s switched over to using the numbers like everyone else, she said, but using “the” before a freeway name is an important identifier to a true Southern Californian. Dunn Bates even included a page dedicated to the phenomenon in her book “Talk Like a Californian: A Hella Fresh Guide to Golden State Speak.”
There are other theories about the origin of this language quirk. One Redditor suggests that adding “the” before freeway numbers helps to alleviate the chaos that can arise from LA’s extensive reliance on numerous freeways. This hypothesis seems plausible, as saying “take the 110 to the 10 to the 2” sounds clearer than naming the numbers alone.
FILE: Holiday traffic clogs the 110 freeway as commuters leave before the Thanksgiving weekend in downtown Los Angeles. Wally Skalij/LAT via Getty Images
Another Redditor suggested that “the” is important because there are so many freeways in LA that they have distinct personalities. I can’t say I disagree, though that’s hardly the likely reason for this linguistic quirk.
Saul Rubin, a journalist and author of several books on the Golden State, including “You Know You’re in California When …”, moved to California in the 1980s and also remembers using the freeway names just as much as the numbers, even through the ’90s. He’s lived in Southern California for 30 years and said now if he tries to say a freeway number without “the,” it “doesn’t sound right. It just doesn’t sound grammatically correct.”
“People might think it’s strange because you usually reserve ‘the’ for something that’s really culturally significant, like the Mona Lisa or the Statue of Liberty,” Rubin continued. “Maybe it sounds pretentious but, for better or for worse, we’re dependent on freeways. And it’s such a key part of our life here that maybe we do have this reverence for the freeway that people from outside of the area don’t have.”
Tessa McLean is the California editor for SFGATE. She joined the team in 2019, spending four years helming the local section. She now writes features with a statewide lens, telling stories about the issues, trends and news that matter in the Golden State. To submit tips, comments or messages about why you love California, please reach out to her at tessa.mclean@sfgate.com.
THIRD EYE DROPS with Michael Phillip • Premiered Dec 18, 2024 • Mind Melds Sarah Janes specializes in the ancient history and culture of dreaming. Sarah has been a practicing lucid dreamer and consciousness explorer for decades and has traced esoteric dreaming techniques back to ancient Greece and Egypt. She’s actively trying to revive said techniques and uncover their lost wisdom. We also muse about mystery initiations, like the Eleusinian mysteries, and much more. Links for Sarah: website: https://themysteries.org/ book: https://a.co/d/0GwWtb1
Translation is a 5-step process of “straight thinking in te abstract” comparing and contrasting what you think is the truth with what you can syllogistically, axiomatically and mathematically (using word equations) prove is the truth.
The claims in a Translation may seem outrageous, but they are always (or should always be) based on self-evident syllogistic reasoning. Here is one Translation from this week.
1) Truth is that which is so. That which is not truth is not so. Therefore Truth is all that is. Truth being all is therefore total, whole, complete, full, unadorned, unadornable. I think therefore I am. Since I am and since Truth is all that is, therefore I, being, am Truth. Since I, being, am Truth, therefore I, being, have all the attributes of truth. Therefore i, being, am total, whole, complete, full, unadorned, unadornable. Since I, being, am Truth and since I am mind (self-evident), therefore Truth is Mind. (Two things equal to a third are equal to each other.)
2) Traumatic events can cause inflammation.
Word-tracking: trauma: a wound, a mental shock, to pierce wound: lasting psychological or emotional injury injury: injustice, conjure, exorcise, not just, not right, not true cause: to make happen event: a happening, result Inflammation: to excite excite: to arouse, to call forth repeatedly, to summon summon: to remind secretly warn: to be cautious caution: to take heed heed: to guard, wary, aware
3) Truth being mind/consciousness, cannot at the same time be unconscious or forgetful or need to be summoned or excited, therefore Truth is Self-exciting. Since Truth is all that is, therefore Truth is all that happens. all that results. Therefore Truth is the only result. Since Truth is the only result, therefore wholeness is the only result. Since truth is the only result and since injustice (a wound) is not just, not right, not true, Therefore Truth cannot be wounded. Since truth is mind and since turth is all, therefore unlimited, therefore infinite, how can there be a mental shock or surprise or trauma to infinite mind? Therefore Truth does not dissociate; truth is always grounded.
4) Truth is Self-exciting. Truth is the only result. Wholeness is the only result. Truth cannot be wounded. Truth does not dissociate; truth is always grounded.
THIRD EYE DROPS with Michael Phillip • Premiered 5 hours ago • Mind Melds Erick Godsey ( @themythsthatmakeus ) returns to the mind meld! In this one, Erick and I riff on the drone situation and the ufo phenomenon. In particular, we reflect on the importance of Carl Jung’s prescient book, Flying Saucers, a Modern Myth of Things Seen In the Skies. Erick also shares lessons from an exceptionally deep medicine experience. Other topics touched upon include reincarnation, NDEs, my experiences at Monroe Institute, and more.
ARIES (March 21-April 19): In 2025, I would love for you to specialize in making new connections and deepening your existing connections. I hope you will summon extra creativity and panache as you regularly blend your beautiful energies with others’ beautiful energies. I predict you will thrive on linking elements that should be linked but have never been before. What do you think, Aries? Does it sound fun to become a playful master of mixing and combining? Would you enjoy generating splashy unifications that serve your dreams?
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): “Confidence is ten percent hard work and ninety percent delusion,” declared Taurus comedian Tina Fey. But I believe you will disprove that assessment in the coming months. The work you do will be unusually replete with grace and dynamism. It will be focused and diligent work, yes, but more importantly, it will be smart work that’s largely free of delusion. That’s why I’m inclined to revise Fey’s formula for your sake. In 2025, your brimming levels of confidence will be primarily due to your fine, conscientious, effective work.
GEMINI (May 21-June 20): In the 1960s, a Swedish journalist tried an experiment. He wanted to see if art critics could distinguish between abstract paintings made by skilled artists and those created by a four-year-old chimpanzee whose pseudonym was Pierre Brassau. Surprise! Many of the critics treated all the paintings with equal respect. One even gave special praise to Pierre Brassau, describing his strokes of color as having “the delicacy of a ballet dancer.” I’m authorizing you to unleash your inner Pierre Brassau in the coming months, Gemini. Be an innocent rookie, a newcomer with great instincts, an exuberant amateur who specializes in fun experiments. Do you know what beginner’s mind is? You approach every experience with zero assumptions or expectations, as if you were seeing everything for the first time. For more, read this: wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoshin
CANCER (June 21-July 22): Ohio’s Cuyahoga River used to catch on fire regularly. The cause was pollution. For a hundred years, industries had poured their wastes into the waterway. The surface was often dotted with oil slicks. But after a notorious river fire in 1969, the locals decided to remedy the situation, aided by the newly established Environmental Protection Agency. Today, the Cuyahoga still isn’t one hundred percent clean, but it’s far better. It hosts kayaking, fishing and paddle boarding. I propose we use its rehabilitation as a symbol for you in 2025. You will have welcome opportunities to clean up messes that have lingered for far too long. Please take full advantage of these cosmic invitations to sweep karmic debris out of your life.
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Steve Jobs, founder of Apple computers, said, “The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.” I propose that you make this one of your mottoes in 2025. More than ever before, you will have exceptional power to transform the environments you share with others. You will have an enhanced ability to revise and reinvigorate the systems and the rules you use. Don’t underestimate your influence during the coming months, Leo. Assume that people will be listening especially closely to your ideas and extra receptive to be affected by you.
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): I will give you four related terms to describe your key motif in 2025: 1. Your Soul’s Code. 2. Your Master Plan. 3. Your Destiny’s Blueprint. 4. Your Mission Statement. All four are rooted in this epic question: What is your overarching purpose here on earth, and how are you fulfilling it? The coming months will be a time when you can make dramatic progress in formulating vivid, detailed visions of the life you want to live. You can also undertake robust action steps to make those visions more of a practical reality. I encourage you to write your big-picture, long-range dreams in a special notebook or a file on your tech device. Keep adding to the text throughout the coming months.
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): People in India were the first to discover diamonds buried in the earth. Most historians believe it happened in the fourth century BCE. For the next two millennia, India remained the only source of diamonds. Finally, new stashes were found in Brazil in 1725 and in South Africa in the 1870s. Let’s use this 2,000-year gap as a metaphor for your life. I suspect that far too many months have passed since you have located a fresh source of a certain treasure or bounty you crave. That will change in 2025. Here come long-delayed blessings!
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): In my vision of your life in 2025, you will dramatically enhance how togetherness works for you. Below are four questions to help guide your explorations and breakthroughs. 1. Is it feasible to change yourself in ways that enable you to have a more satisfying relationship with romantic love? 2. Will you include your intimate relationships as an essential part of your spiritual path—and vice versa? 3. What work on yourself can you do to heal your old wounds and thereby make yourself a better partner and collaborator? 4. Can you help your best allies to heal their wounds and thereby become better partners and collaborators?
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): In Japanese, the word for “frog” sounds similar to the word meaning “to return.” That’s one reason frogs have been lucky in some circles of Japanese culture. They symbolize the blessing that occurs when travelers return home safely, or when health is restored, or when spent money is replenished. I bring this to your attention, Sagittarius, because I suspect 2025 will be a time when satisfying and enjoyable returns will be a key theme. Consider keeping the likeness of a lovable frog in your living space.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Since 1985, musician David Gilmour has led Pink Floyd. The band has sold over 250 million records. He’s in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in both the UK and the United States. But my favorite thing about Gilmour is that he’s a passionate activist who has crusaded for animal rights, environmentalism, poverty and human rights. A few years ago, he auctioned off 120 of his guitars, raising over $21 million for an environmentalist charity. In accordance with astrological omens, I propose we make him one of your inspirational role models in 2025, Capricorn. May he mobilize you to use your stature and clout to perform an array of good works that are of service to your world.
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): Aquarian author Virginia Woolf extolled the virtues of cultivating a supple soul that thrives on change. She pledged to be relentless in her commitment to be authentically herself and not succumb to groupthink. I recommend you make these two of your featured themes in 2025. To inspire your efforts, I will quote her radical perspective at length: “Movement and change are the essence of our being; rigidity is death; conformity is death: let us say what comes into our heads, repeat ourselves, contradict ourselves, fling out the wildest nonsense, and follow the most fantastic fancies without caring what the world does or thinks or says.”
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): In 1992, two friends promised each other that if either of them ever won the lottery, they would share it with the other. Twenty-eight years later, that’s exactly what happened. In 2020, Thomas Cook bought a ticket that turned out to be the winner of the Powerhouse jackpot in Wisconsin. He called Joseph Feeney with the good news. After paying taxes, both men were $5.7 million richer. I am not predicting the exact same sequence for your future, Pisces. But like Cook and Feeney, I expect you will glean pleasing rewards generated from seeds planted in the past.
ST. PAUL, MN—Counting down the days until the end of his work year, local Christmas tree lot guy Alan Martin told reporters Wednesday he was “so ready” for his annual 46-week vacation. “By the time late December rolls around, I’m usually pretty burnt out and just waiting for Christmas Day to get here so I can take that much-needed 10-and-a-half-month break,” said a visibly exhausted Martin, leaning against his pickup truck in the St. Paul parking lot where he has worked day in and day out since mid-November. “At this point in the year, selling Christmas trees starts to feel like a real slog, and sometimes it gets to where I don’t think I can stand another minute of it. I mean, I’ve barely had a day off since Thanksgiving, unless you count Mondays and Tuesdays, when I’m closed. It’s my job, though, so I’ve learned to just put my head down, grab another cup of hot cocoa, and power through.” Martin went on to stress the importance of mental health on the job, advising anyone in his line of work to make sure they take all of their 300-plus days off each year.
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