Fri 11 Apr 2008
Posted by anaglyph under Cats
[6] Comments
Sorry, I had to bump the Bride of Wildenstein further down the page so I wouldn’t have to look at her every time I glanced at my laptop screen. So here instead is a picture of a real cat.
This is the very cute Rusty, Glitch’s nemesis and the most talkative cat I’ve ever encountered.
Fri 11 Apr 2008
Posted by anaglyph under In The News, Scary, Science
[10] Comments
This from the most recent issue of New Scientist:
Matteo Caleo of Italy’s Institute of Neuroscience in Pisa has found that botulinum toxin – which is used as a cosmetic anti-wrinkle treatment – can travel down nerve fibres and into the brain within days.
To which I can only say that explains a lot.
Tue 8 Apr 2008
Posted by anaglyph under Annunciation, Blogs I Like:, Geek, Punctuation, Words
[66] Comments
I’ve been lurking over at Reasons You Will Hate Me for a bit these last couple of weeks. Ms Fits, who is the proprietor, is funny I think, and can spell and use punctuation, which does make for a more readable experience than many.
Unlike myself, Ms Fits is famous in the blogging world. My observations of RYWHM suggest that this has advantages and disadvantages:
Advantage: Lots of people read and comment.
Disadvantage: Lots of stupid people read and comment.
But I digress from the point of this post. Her recent post on bad texting in the face of calamity is amusing. It refers to this story about a ‘school machete rampage*’ in which five youths went on a spree through a Sydney highschool wielding baseball bats, swords, machetes and other sporting equipment.
Ms Fits tells us that she feels that a text message sent to the outside world even under such duress should be spelled correctly (in contrast to the one that the newspaper intercepted), and it will come as no surprise to you, dear Acowlytes, to hear that I agree with her on this matter. She then proposes that the predictive texting on phones should be updated to include abbreviated messages that can be sent quickly in times of peril. She gives an example, viz:
SND HLP GNMN/OMG BMB/TWN TWRS :(
This got me to thinking. In the great moments of our past, what would the shapers of human history have texted, if the technology had been available? I have offered you one such example here on The Cow.
Keep your suggestions short. You get charged more after 160 characters.
(Extra points if you show off yr mad Photoshopping skilz).
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*There’s another one o’ them thar Zombie Words.
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Mon 7 Apr 2008
Posted by anaglyph under In The News, Words
[14] Comments
You may recall that some little while ago I talked about Stupid News Speak – the way in which the news media mangles the English language for their own unfathomable ends.
Well, this recent discussion about wild weather reminded me of another curious phenomenon in the world of news linguistics – the circumstance of The Anachronistic Word.
This is when a word that would otherwise have been relegated to the Old People’s Home of language is artificially kept alive like some kind of etymological zombie to do the bidding of semi-literate journalists. For example, consider the word chiefly. Who uses chiefly except news weathermen?
The West will see some rain, chiefly on the ranges…
And, when does anything wreak havoc except in the news description of a tornado or mob of unhappy student protesters?
In the world of news, a person does not fall to their death. No way José! They plummet. Hands up who’s used the word plummet in conversation in the last decade?
But my favourite must surely be the way that about the only thing that is ever hampered in the modern world is rescue efforts.
There are many more of these. Your favourites?
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