Archive for April, 2009
Just saw this headine: Supreme Court Rules that Government Can Fine for 'Fleeting Expletives' --Washington Post, April 28, 2009 Wouldn't "The Fleeting Expletives" be a good band name?...
It struck me the other day that "foul play" is an odd sort of euphemism for murder. "Play"? What kind of play? The Phrase Finder says Shakespeare probably coined the...
Someone recently pointed me to A Guy Goes into a Bar, a list of guy-walks-into-bar jokes. I figured they would probably be mostly dumb, but it turns out there are...
Just encountered a comment in an article on Britain's Got Talent that refers to "a dancer who was show[ing] her thrupennie bits to the world." Thruppence, or the threepenny bit,...
I was working on various things while listening to music in the background, and the song "Marathon" came on, from the 1968 cast recording of Jacques Brel Is Alive and...
I've recently read several news articles at time.com, and I keep being struck (and annoyed) by their links to marginally-related sets of pictures. The links appear in parentheses at the...
Thanks to Naomi B for my favorite word of the week. It means to becloud or obscure something. Example: "It is the pity of the world, Dr. McAdam, to see...
Benedict Carey of the New York Times sure does like using metaphors to describe science stuff. At least, that's the conclusion I draw from reading his article Brain Researchers Open...