And what would it sound like? Patricia Murphy, "Hillary Campaign Plans to Shush Berniacs During Vote", The Daily Beast 7/26/2016: In an email to Clinton's California Delegation, a Clinton staffer outlined a plan to drown out any sounds of descent from unruly Bernie fans. The error has now been fixed — I'm sympathetic, since I […]
I was recently moved (screaming and struggling, as four strong men held me down by my arms and legs) to a new web-based university email system designed and run by Microsoft: Office 365. Naturally, it's ill-designed slow-loading crap, burdened by misfeatures and pointless pop-ups that I do not want popping up, and it fails to […]
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No matter where I go these days, I hear young people shouting to their friends, "I'm playing Pokémon Go", which they pronounce "pokey-mon go". It would be an understatement to say that, for the past few weeks, Pokémon Go has been a veritable craze. Yet most people who play the game probably do not realize […]
"An earful of that unmistakable Philly accent", CBS This Morning 7/26/2016: View More: U.S. News|Live News|More News Videos Featuring Meredith Tamminga!
Dean Barrett sent in these two photographs of signs from, respectively, the Taiwan Literary Museum and a sex shop in Tainan that is well known for its wide selection of condoms:
Michael Rank sent in this notice banning the picking of mushrooms at Chobham Common, Surrey, said to be the largest nature reserve in the southeast of England:
A rather disturbing (at least to me) article in the South China Morning Post (7/24/16), "How China’s quest to become a football powerhouse is revamping the beautiful game: China has emerged as deep-pocketed investor in what amounts to a global power grab for influence in football", is preceded by this photograph:
Robert Ayers writes: Headline: "Bill's role: To be determined". With a photo of Bill Clinton looking … determined. I wonder if I'm the only one who read the headline wrong the first time.
Or maybe I should say, Tom Wolfe's take on linguistics. I've been an avid reader of Tom Wolfe's works since the 60s: The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers, The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby, The Right Stuff, The Painted Word, Bonfire of the Vanities). What I like most about his […]
Wells Hansen writes: I recently heard some grumbling at the local pub over the new Star Trek's "Scotty" referring to Lt Uhura as "lass" or "lassy". Have the writers of the most recent iteration of the ST franchise created a sexist or dismissive Scotty …or just a Scottish one? I haven't seen the movie, and am […]
From Coby Lubliner: I have lately been watching an Australian TV series, "Serangoon Road," taking place in Singapore in the 1960s. The dialogue is mostly in English, but when it isn't it's in Mandarin, both among the Chinese and between them and the main character, an Australian who speaks it. I have so far heard […]
[This is a guest post by Matthew Robertson] The 'Today' Interview With Oporto Robbery Heroes In the United States, regional accents often carry with them negative stereotypes about class, status, intelligence, and more, making Southern versus Northern accents markers of division. In Australia, it's largely the opposite. Regional vernacular and a broad accent (known as […]
David Frum, "Donald Trump's Bad Bet on Anger", The Atlantic 7/21/2016 [emphasis added]: Donald Trump’s supporters yearn for the country as it was and fear the country as it is. Tonight’s powerfully dystopian Trump nomination acceptance address will touch them at their deepest emotional core. It will ignite a passionate spasm of assent from those […]