Stopping Language Death

My colleague Keisuke Kasuya generously gave me a copy of his newly published Japanese translation (Hakusuisha, 2004) of Claude Hagège's Halte à la Mort des Langues ("Stopping Language Death"). At first glance there doesn't seem to be an English translation out yet, so I'll have to decide which language to read it in. But the book itself looks excellent.

(Not) discussing the digital divide

I was planning to ask questions about the digital divide in an interview with a prospective PhD candidate this afternoon, but unfortunately he didn't appear. For example, I wanted to hear what he thinks about Carsten Fink and Charles Kenny's paper "W(h)ither the digital divide?" (PDF; also discussed in this Economist article). Anyway I wish him well; and we interviewers had a good discussion for twenty minutes.

Bush TV Ads

George Bush's first reelection TV spots have been released. I'm not very familiar with US TV ads, but I was struck by the way each spot either started or finished with the line

"I'm President / George W. Bush, and I approve /approve of this message"

Are these words a way of meeting a legal requirement to say who is responsible for the ad? It seems to me rather redundant to say that one approves of what one has said in the previous 30 or 60 seconds, but no doubt there is a reason.