Hugo Chávez doesn't like Barack Obama's nomination for US Ambassador to Venezuela, Larry Palmer, who suggested that Chávez's administration is basically a drug cartel, so Palmer was rejected. But Chávez has a few suggestions — famous people who like him!

Researchers found that some native English speakers were unable to understand the sentence "The soldier was hit by the sailor," indicating that grammar may not be "universal." FYI: It means the sailor (boats) hit the soldier (tanks). [Science Daily]

Linguist and activist Noam Chomsky was denied entry to Israel and the West Bank on Sunday, seemingly due to his criticism of Israeli policies. But who knows? It could just be that the IDF doesn't believe in generative grammar. [Haaretz]

The Times was sooo thrilled to find a vaguely correct use of a semicolon on a subway ad that they tracked down the copywriter (who has a degree in creative writing, natch) and wrote a whole cutesy piece about how rare it is that civilians punctuate properly. Then they asked various famous linguists and grammarians to comment: