Things and Such

I was thinking about writing and I came up with a mildly compelling idea for an essay that's only (tragically) mildly satiric and sarcastic. Does anyone here know anything about the social organization of various species of ants, most specifically the genera Polyergus and Formica? Now there's some interesting stamp-collecting--I mean, biology... (cough), (cough).

I just got home and my room is a mess from all of the things that my sister has desposited in it. Necesito ir. I can barely speak Spanish anymore. Prepare yourself for a very long and interesting entry to come. It will make up for all of my recent speechlessness.

Oh, and one more quick story. Now that I'm sort of working in a semi-academic setting, I ran into the famed "data: plural or singular?" argument. I hope that everyone knows that it's not really an argument. It's more like a matter of convention, but even that is pushing it. I like to think of it as a matter of right and wrong, because in reality that's what it is: the illiterati messing up everyone else's grammar in their ignorance. Anyway, this other high school student with whom I'm working argued vehemently with me for several minutes that the word "data" is actually like "water" or "wheat" in the sense that it can be used in the singular with collective meaning. Eventually I deconstructed his argument so he was arguing purely from some Anglo-centric aesthete perspective. He never broke down completely. Nevertheless, I enjoyed it very much because of stories I've heard from readers who have had papers rejected on account of using the wrong number demonstrative or context with "data" or "datum." It kind of felt like I was holding up some kind of sacred rule: like the grammar of the Latin language perhaps?