中秋節快樂! Happy Mid-Autumn Fesitval (中秋節). Happy Peh Goeh Che (八月節). Happy Chuseok (추석). Happy Tsukimi (月見)?

1. In the spirit of the holiday, there’s an LA Times article about mooncakes 月饼 being the fruitcake of China. Frankly we’re big fans of the red bean mooncakes.
2. The Independent has an article about language learning in Pakistan, among other places. A quote:
   

   There’s been some noise this week in the southern Pakistani province of Sindh following the announcement that from 2013, learning standard Chinese will become compulsory for all students

3. Time has an article on why some languages sound so fast, touching once again on the topic of syllable loads.
   

   Mandarin, which topped the density list at .94 [with Vietnamese arbitrarily set as 1], was the spoken slowpoke at 5.18 syllables per second.

4. A proposed Linguistics site is up on StackExchange, a question and answer site that’s an offshoot of StackOverflow, a programming Q&A site. There’s also a proposal for a Chinese Language & Usage site. Both of these need more votes in order to be made official. Have a look.
5. Finally, if you don’t like the Starbucks mooncake, maybe you’d like a green halal mooncake.