Hillary Clinton's "basket of deplorables" is destined to become one of the lasting catchphrases of the campaign season. Clinton's use of the phrase (which she says she now regrets*) appeared in a speech delivered at a fundraiser on Friday night: You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump's supporters into what […]
"In case of volcanic eruption, you will hear mermaids. Do not ignore the mermaids; they are there for your safety." https://t.co/8XKXu1OUk5 — Sarah Churchwell (@sarahchurchwell) September 7, 2016
No. Let me explain why.
I'm in San Francisco for InterSpeech 2016, where I'm involved in four papers over three days, so blogging will probably be a bit light. But I have a few minutes before the morning starts, so let me continue the discussion of Gabriel Roth's feelings ("Paper cut to the heart", 9/8/2016) by quoting from Bill S's comment: Some of […]
When I wrote the following post, I had an intuition that Yīdàlì 一大粒 ("one big grain / granule / particle / tablet / pellet / kernel / bead / seed"), aside from being a pun for "Italy", meant "one big scoop", and I said as much in the last sentence of the post. "Italy is […]
How to be circumspect and explicit at the same time, from the Washington Post, Sept. 5: "Metro Transit Police arrested a man Monday afternoon whom they say exposed himself to a woman on an Orange Line train and tried to force her to perform a sex act." My mind isn't exactly racing: there aren't a […]
Merriam-Webster's twitter account has been offering good usage advice, for example It's fine to use mad to mean "angry"—even if doing so makes some people mad. https://t.co/Z5ClzvAnaZ — Merriam-Webster (@MerriamWebster) September 7, 2016 This particular tweet led to an exchange that went viral.
From Donald Trump's 9/6/2016 Town Hall in Virginia Beach VA: Your browser does not support the audio element. Michael Flynn: and- and to stay- to stay on ISIS a little bit because this is a really- I think this is an important topic and it's certainly at the- it's- it's one of the national security […]
A diplomatic rift between the United States and the Philippines was precipitated by comments that Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte made about President Obama at a Sept. 5 news conference. Duterte's offensive comment was made in Tagalog (though most of his news conference was in English). In English-language press accounts, the Tagalog phrase putang ina has been translated as "son of a […]
This is the back side of a 1901 envelope sent from Hong Kong to Singapore: (Source)
Venya sent in this photograph of an ice-cream parlor's sign taken in December 2014. It was in the Anping district of Tainan, near the old Dutch fort.
I would have suggested they just use a regular volleyball, but I guess the Olympics are special. pic.twitter.com/Tz6Tt6l4jn — Jessie (@NicCageMatch) June 30, 2016
Ray Norris, "Why old theories on Indigenous counting just won’t go away", The Conversation 9/5/2016: Last year researchers Kevin Zhou and Claire Bowern, from Yale University, argued in a paper that Aboriginal number systems vary, and could extend beyond ten, but still didn’t extend past 20, in conflict with the evidence I’ve mentioned above. […]