A truly Freudian slip in a story in the UK conservative newspaper the Daily Telegraph, speaking volumes about what goes wrong with so many rape and sexual assault prosecutions: Camille Cosby, wife of the entertainer, issued a statement, read out by an associate on the court steps in a dramatically-delivered speech. She attacked the judge […]
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From an anonymous correspondent: I had wanted to ask you about niǎoyǔ 鸟语 ("bird language") after listening to an interview with Garry Kasparov. During the interview, he and the interviewer, the economist Tyler Cowen, get into a fairly abtruse discussion of chess. I'll paste the most relevant part of the transcript: KASPAROV: Now you move back […]
An anonymous correspondent reaches out (cf. "May I ask you a question?" [6/12/17]): So, from one jargonista to another: here’s a frustrating set of related neologisms, again from my increasingly confused and pathetic campus administration: We’ve gone from “interdisiplinary” and “crossdisciplinary” to “multidisciplinary”, but the new buzzword on our campus is “transdisciplinary” (not sure if […]
On July 1, the government is sponsoring a spectacular fireworks display that will light up the sky over Victoria Harbor to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the handover of Hong Kong from British colonial control to the People's Republic of China. Trouble is, the show will begin with the words "China" and "Hong Kong", but […]
J.P. Mangalindan, "LEAKED AUDIO: Uber's all-hands meeting had some uncomfortable moments", 6/13/2017: Uber held an all-hands meeting on Tuesday, during which the board announced that CEO Travis Kalanick would take a leave of absence. Furthermore, management shared recommendations from the law firm Covington & Burling on how the embattled ride-hailing startup can fix its culture after complaints […]
How swift we forget echoes in my head as a familiar cliché, a precomposed adaptable drop-in phrase rather like a snowclone but without customizable parts. I thought it might even be a quotation from some famous source. When I happened to Google-search it today, I was expecting to see millions of hits. Instead there was […]
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In response to "May I ask you a question?" (6/12/17), we've been having an energetic discussion about the origins and meaning of the expression "reach out", culminating (as of this moment) in Nick Kaldis' good question: This topic causes an interesting related neologism to come to mind: when did “outreach” come into currency? Our campus […]
Tom Recht sent in a link to a story in N.Y. Magazine with the headline "Trump is not too crazy to fire the special prosecutor". His accompanying note suggested that …the intended but not quite computable meaning is "it isn't the case that Trump isn't crazy enough to fire the special prosecutor".
Below is a guest post by Elisabeth Camp. Mark posted part of a particularly linguistically juicy exchange from James Comey’s recent Senate testimony, in which Senator Risch “drilled down” on the “exact words” attributed by Comey to Trump, noting that Trump merely expressed his “hope” that Comey could “can see [his] way clear to letting […]
Lately my more formal, stiff students (mostly undergrads) have been using the expression "reach out to you" when they want to ask me a question. I also notice that I'm receiving random inquiries from people I don't know who approach me with this opening. There's definitely a surge of "reaching out". Two or three years […]
Towards the end of April, I gave a short presentation at the Penn Science Café in a session on "The past, present, and future of AI". I mentioned this in a comment on an xkcd cartoon in "Machine Learning", 5/17/2017, where I also reproduced my opening Science Café slide: Over the weekend, Fernando Pereira posted a wonderful […]
A Quinnipiac Poll released on May 10 asked respondents "What is the first word that comes to mind when you think of Donald Trump?" 46 words were used by 5 or more respondents. The full list, with the number of responses for each word, is here — the top 15 words were: idiot 39 incompetent […]