Language Log

With respect to to a headline in the Washington Post yesterday (Jason Samenow, "Weather Service forecasting computers to become 10 times more powerful in 2015", Washington Post 1/5/2015), Eugene Volokh writes:

My first thought:  Come now – how would computers generally become 10 times more powerful just in the span of a year?  (In the span of five years, according to Moore’s law, maybe).  

My second thought:  Since when is the Weather Service forecasting trends in computing technology?  

My third thought, shamefully after I clicked on the link:  Ah, it’s the Service’s computers used for forecasting that are going to be upgraded to top-of-the-line models.

In "Wantan soup for überman hubby" (3/15/14), we discussed the miswriting of húntún tāng 餛飩湯 ("wonton soup") as kūnzhūn tāng 䐊肫湯 (which I playfully rendered as "wantan soup"), using the "flesh" radical instead of the "food" radical for both characters. Several of the commenters to that earlier post suggested that "wanton" would have been an appropriate mistranslation to match the miswriting.

Jonathan Falk writes:

I rarely get an email where my first two interpretations of the subject line [in this case, "AYA Burns Supper at Mory's"] are wrong.  The first, obvious interpretation is that the Association of Yale Alumni for some reason was cooking the meal at Mory’s and they weren’t very good at it.  My second interpretation was that they had a charity supper supporting burn victims.  Neither seemed plausible, forcing me to actually read the email, which may have been what they had in mind all along.

Sue Dunum, "Canadians Using 'Harper' as a Swear Word — 'Go Harper Yourself'", The Lapine 7/1/2014:

MONTREAL — The CBC is reporting today on a growing social media trend for Canadians to use Prime Minister Harper’s name as a cuss word.  

“Harper is being used as the new F Bomb,” CBC analyst Claude Perrault told news anchor Peter Mansbridge this morning.  

“‘Harper off’ is a big one we’re seeing used alot on Facebook and Twitter. Often in all caps when someone’s really angry…as in ‘HARPER OFF!’”

“Calling someone a ‘Harpering Harper’ to mean either ‘f****** b****’ or ‘f****** c***sucker’ is also trending big for new slang.”

Eugene Volokh ("What does 'exposes' in '[a]ny person who abuses, exposes, tortures, torments, or cruelly punishes a minor' mean to you?", Washington Post 1/2/2015) considers the case of Douglas James Myers, who was clocked driving at 112 mph, "weaving all over the road and going into the ditch or median with all four tires", with a blood alcohol level of 0.131 and four small children in the car:

Myers pleaded guilty to driving under the influence (his third offense); but he was also charged for violating S.D. Codified Laws 26-10-1, which provides that “[a]ny person who abuses, exposes, tortures, torments, or cruelly punishes a minor” is guilty of a felony. He argued that the term “expose” in the law was unconstitutionally vague, but the trial court rejected the argument and found him guilty, sentencing him to five years in prison on the “expose” charge.  

Myers appealed to the South Dakota Supreme Court, which rejected his argument […]

Tim Leonard sent in this photograph of a sign for a Korean restaurant:

Yesterday's SMBC:

In his novel Inherent Vice, Thomas Pynchon seems to be advocating a small, specific piece of English spelling reform, exemplified in these quotations:

“Center of the cop universe for sure,” Doc nodding sympathetically, “but we can’t all be Bigfoot Bjornsen can we— ups I mean who’d want to be him anyway?” hoping this wasn’t pushing things, given Pat’s mental health, frail on the best of days.

“It’s bound to be a Movie for TV, ain’t it, whatever happens. Bigfoot can end up with script and production credits, even play himself, the asshole, but ups, eleventh-commandment issues, ignore that I said that.”

“What? You forgot to put it in something waterproof again?” “Ups.”

“One that didn’t get him hassled into a fatal heart attack.  .  .  . Ups, but there I go, being bitter again.”

From the last year's Foundational Questions Institute conference, a String Theory supporter (Raphael Bousso) is asked to argue against String Theory on behalf of Loop Quantum Gravity, while one of the founders of Loop Quantum Gravity theory (Carlo Rovelli) takes the String Theory side, in opposition to his own point of view:

This works out well, making me wonder about analogous opposite-day debates in linguistics and allied areas.

The obligatory screenshot:

Today's Zits:

…plus the obligatory link to the Misnegation Archive.

John Elfreth Watkins Jr.'s predictions about the then-upcoming 20th century ("What May Happen in the Next Hundred Years", The Ladies' Home Journal, December 1900) have been widely discussed in recent years on the web. You can read a transcribed version (with the predictions oddly re-ordered) here.

Following up on Andy Bodle's exegesis of headlinese, we should take a look at the Florida Man meme:

Florida Man is a Twitter feed that curates news headline descriptions of bizarre domestic incidents involving a male subject residing in the state of Florida. The tweets are meant to be humorously read as if they were perpetrated by a single individual dubbed “the world’s worst superhero.”

Headlines beginning "Florida man" are indeed often bizarre, though not always domestic. From the current Google News index:

"Florida man causes hospital fire by smoking crack while hooked to oxygen"
"Florida Man Accidentally Kills Self While Threatening Wife’s Dog"
"Florida man leads police on 90-minute chase in stolen front-end loader"
"Florida Man arrested for stealing 6.5 pounds of cow tongue from Wal-Mart"
"Florida man fakes heart attack to steal Barbie car from Wal-Mart"
"Florida man busted for cooking up meth in park restroom"
"Florida Man Plunges Through Bakery Ceiling In Failed Robbery Attempt"
"Florida man dies after falling from ropes course at shopping mall"
"Florida man accused of cutting puppy's ears off"
"Florida man steals chain saw by sticking it in his pants, police say"
"Florida man jailed for forcing his girlfriend and three children to live with dead body while he claimed the deceased woman's social security benefits"
"Florida Man pisses on living room floor during family Thanksgiving dinner"
"Florida Man Takes Saddest Mugshot Ever After Riding His Bike Drunk Through a Taco Bell Drive-Thru"