Skull-Islandese, Delurking Week, Fly Me to the Moon

• I watched the extras on the 1933 King Kong DVD the other night, and they include a great documentary on Merian C. Cooper (referred to by #1 here), and Peter Jackson's elaborately researched and executed Lost Spider Pit Sequence. For an interesting take on the dialogue between the ship captain and the tribal chief, see this Language Log article. Excerpt: ...but I thought the specific references to Sumatra and Nias could mean that their linguistic interaction with Captain Englehorn might carry a shred of verisimilitude. From what I could catch, there was only the tiniest shred. When the chief makes an offer to trade six of his women for Ann Darrow (as a "gift for Kong"), Englehorn declines by saying "Tida, tida!" That seems to be modeled on Malay-Indonesian tidak /tida/, meaning 'no, not.' Also, when Englehorn buys time by telling the chief that they'll come back tomorrow, he says "dulu," which in Malay can mean 'for the time being' (as in tunggu dulu /tuŋgu dulu/ 'wait for now'). Other than that, nothing in the exchange between the chief and Englehorn sounds much like Malay or related languages.

• It's National Delurking Week, so make sure to leave comments wherever in the Blogosphere you might visit. (Via Geeky Mom.)
• Here's former astronaut Harrison Schmidt on our eventual return to the moon. He's given some thought to the economics of it: To achieve the commercial aspects of these efforts, Chapter 11, “Investors: The Best Approach”, is a business plan for attracting investors through the economic rewards of not just the sale of helium-3 but also the countless spinoff technologies and services as a result of lunar settlement. There is even a chapter devoted to past and present laws, both terrestrial and celestial, and a section covering property and mineral rights.