Language Log

It is well known within organic chemistry circles that there is a very strong bias toward L rather than D homochirality in the structure of earth's organic compounds. A recent paper offered a speculation about a possible explanation of the bias:

If there was … right circularly polarized light with energy in the uv or higher irradiating the asteroid belt when the amino acids were present on a particle that later came to Earth, this could account for the small excesses of the L anantiomers seen in the &#x03B1-methyl amino acids.

And what did the PR/media machine do to make news out of this finding? The headlines ultimately mutated as far as this:

Claim: Advanced dinosaurs may rule other planets

The late-night shows on Comedy Central both took a linguistic turn last night. First, on "The Daily Show," Jon Stewart managed to give himself a "grammar wedgie" trying to explain how President Obama's now-infamous line "You didn't build that" has been willfully misconstrued by his critics. Then, on "The Colbert Report," Stephen Colbert crafted an Old English riff off of the recent comment by one of Mitt Romney's advisors that Romney is somehow more appreciative than Obama of the "Anglo-Saxon heritage" shared by the US and the UK.

"KOMO headline editor, your phrasing needs work," tweeted CJ Alexander regarding this deeply regrettable crash blossom (KOMO North Seattle News, July 11, 2012):

My column in Sunday's Boston Globe is on a popular topic here at Language Log Plaza: the multitudinous metaphors spun to explain the Higgs boson discovery to a non-scientific audience. Metaphors noted by Mark Liberman in his two posts on the subject (from divine wraiths to smoking ducks) make cameos in the column as well, and I dig a bit deeper into the history of describing the Higgs field as "cosmic molasses."

Mexico Election: Mexican Immigrants Shocked, Weary of PRI Victory

The word weary in this Latino Fox News headline should have been wary, shouldn't it? There hasn't been time yet for anyone to be weary of the PRI this time around.

Read the rest of this entry »

Leon Lederman (with Dick Teresi), The God Particle: If the Universe is the Answer, What is the Question?, 1993:

What, or who, is standing in our way, obstructing our search for the perfect T-shirt? […] Before we can complete the task begun by the ancient Greeks, we must consider the possibility that our quarry is laying false clues to confuse us. Sometimes, like a spy in a John le Carre novel, the experimenter must set a trap. He must force the culprit to expose himself.

Particle physicists are currently setting just such a trap. We're building a tunnel fifty-four miles in circumference that will contain the twin beam tubes of the Superconducting Super Collider, in which we hope to trap our villain.

And what a villain! The biggest of all time! There is, we believe, a wraithlike presence throughout the universe that is keeping us from understanding the true nature of matter. It's as if something, or someone, wants to prevent us from attaining the ultimate knowledge.

U.S. SUPREME COURT SAYS UPHOLDS HEALTH CARE MANDATE

— Reuters Top News (@Reuters) June 28, 2012

That was the tweet sent out this morning by Reuters, which got the news out about the Supreme Court decision at 10:07:43 Eastern Daylight Time, evidently just 12 seconds after Bloomberg beat them to it. (They both trumped CNN and Fox, as those networks initially misreported the ruling.)

I live in Alberta, where the oil and gas industry takes up a good chunk of daily media coverage. Since I sometimes get asked to comment on the persuasive effects of various wording choices by politicians or companies, I was especially interested to come across claims of evidence that public opposition to the method of natural gas extraction known as fracking might be bolstered by its problematic name. (Fracking is short for hydraulic fracturing, and the process involves injecting a highly pressurized fluid underground to create fractures in rock layers to release gas.) The finding originates from a survey conducted by the Public Policy Research Lab at Louisiana State University, which, as stated in the report, was designed to investigate the following:

It was hypothesized by the Public Policy Research Lab that the actual word "Fracking" may have a negative connotation that is separate from the environmental concerns that often accompany discussions of the process. Due to the harsh consonant sounds in the word itself, and an undeniable similarity to a certain other four letter word starting with the letter "F", it seemed plausible that some of the negative public sentiment about "Fracking" may result from how unpleasant the word itself sounds.

Mike Bresnahan, "Thunder's fourth-quarter fly-by beats Heat in NBA Finals opener", LA Times 6/12/2012:

Whatever that was in the first half certainly wasn't the Oklahoma City Thunder, the general awkwardness and sauteed defense looking fully unlike the cadre that zapped Dallas, the Lakers and San Antonio — keepers of 10 of the last 13 NBA championships — in consecutive playoff series.

I need some help here: what's going on with that "sauteed defense"? Sauteeing is not a sports metaphor that I'm familiar with, and it's not clear why being "browned while preserving its texture, moisture and flavor" evokes any particular style of basketball play.

Maybe it's because "Ingredients are usually cut into pieces or thinly sliced to facilitate fast cooking"? But web search for "thinly sliced defense" and "coarsely chopped defense" also come up empty.

And this is apparently a Bad Thing. Tamara Keith, "Sophomoric? Members Of Congress Talk Like 10th-Graders, Analysis Shows", NPR Morning Edition, 5/21/2012:

Every word members of Congress say on the floor of the House or Senate is documented in the Congressional Record. The Sunlight Foundation took the entire Congressional Record dating back to the 1990s and plugged it into a searchable database.

Lee Drutman, a political scientist at Sunlight, took all those speeches and ran them through an algorithm to determine the grade level of congressional discourse.

"We just kind of did it for fun, and I was kind of shocked when I plotted that data and I saw that, oh my God, there's been a real drop-off in the last several years," he says.

In 2005, Congress spoke at an 11.5 grade level on the Flesch-Kincaid scale. Now, it's 10.6. In other words, Congress dropped from talking like juniors to talking like sophomores.

William Deresiewicz, "Capitalists and Other Psychopaths", NYT 5/12/2012:

THERE is an ongoing debate in this country about the rich: who they are, what their social role may be, whether they are good or bad. Well, consider the following. A recent study found that 10 percent of people who work on Wall Street are “clinical psychopaths,” exhibiting a lack of interest in and empathy for others and an “unparalleled capacity for lying, fabrication, and manipulation.” (The proportion at large is 1 percent.) […]

The only thing that puzzles me about these claims is that anyone would find them surprising.

The only thing that puzzles *me* about such claims is that they spread so far in reputable publications, over such a long period of time, despite being complete fabrications.

Earlier today, AFP photographer Alex Ogle posted on Twitter what looked like an outrageous typo in a column by Lisa de Moraes of the Washington Post: the name of Benedict Cumberbatch, star of the BBC/PBS show Sherlock, got transmogrified into "Bandersnatch Cummerbund" on second mention.

A real treat for rare word spotters in the UK press this week: the words claustrophilia and koumpounophobia both actually appeared today in news stories where the thus-named conditions figured centrally. Words ending in the Greek combining form -philia denote weird conditions of extreme delight, and those ending in -phobia concern pathological horror. In this case, the -philia story has a very sad ending and the -phobia story has a happy ending.