From Mediabistro.com

Jack Schafer writes in Slate.com that David Willman's meticulously researched 11,700-word feature in the Sunday, Dec. 7, Los Angeles Times was five years in the making.

Wow! That's inspiration for us all who claim to have “writer's block.”

From Mediabistro.com

Photographers at UC Berkeley's paper, The Daily Californian, were locked out of the paper after refusing to sign over the copyrights to their work. Read Dirk Halstead's editorial.

Shame on you UC Berkeley!

So, we have all heard of the Rosetta Stone. At least I hope you have. But here comes the Rosetta Project.

The Rosetta Project is a global collaboration of language specialists and native speakers working to develop a contemporary counterpart of the historic Rosetta Stone. In this updated iteration, our goal is a meaningful survey and near permanent archive of 1,000 languages.

Thanks to Sarah Grafman and Anu Garg for letting me know of this interesting project.

Notice something different about Tiffinbox today? Under Features, in the right column, you will see a new link to A Word A Day. Come back to Tiffinbox everyday to find a new and interesting word.

A Word A Day is a project conceived by Seattle's Anu Garg. Receiving his daily volley is a thrill. If you love words, as I do, this is the place to get your daily fix. Not only does Garg define the word, he shows you how it can be used in a sentence.

By the way, this week's words have Spanish derivations. Today's word is DUENDE, which means 1) Demon; goblin or 2) Inspiration; fire; spirit; magic; charm; magnetism.

Send AWAD as a gift to those who also love words and their meanings. It's FREE. The premium service, sans advertisements, is only $25 a year.

And, no, I don't get a dime for pitching his site.

Monica Ali's Brick Lane will most likely make it under many Christmas trees this year thanks to the New York Times which just released its short list of “Best Books” for the year. The New York Times' glowing review suggests that the read is somewhat melancholic. More than a mere East versus the West sort of book, this first novel raises questions about fidelity and identity in an alien world.

One of the achievements of this deceptively sophisticated book lies in showing how that destruction could make a group of orthodox Muslims every bit as afraid as the rest of us, albeit for very different reasons.

Support Tiffinbox and buy the book from the list you see in the left column or click on the book's title above.