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Monthly Archives December 2008

Our collective descent into nonsense

Exhibit A:
At my workplace, the Health and Safety team recently installed bright yellow signs in our bathroom. The signs are placed just above the hot taps at the sinks, and read: “Warning: HOT WATER”.
Exhibit B:
I was checking out the latest in the Australian job market, and may have just found the most bullshit-laden sentence ever […]

Posted 28 December 2008 † John Mansfield § Normal ‡ Comments (0) °

Some useful words

To enrich the vocabulary of my readers, I present here a collection of Yiddish-based words beginning with “sch”. (NB - I think at least one of these is actually not Yiddish.)
These are all taken from the New Oxford American Dictionary.
schlemiel (also shlemiel)
• noun, informal: a stupid, awkward, or unlucky person.
schlepper (also shlepper)
• noun, informal: an […]

Posted 18 December 2008 † John Mansfield § Normal ‡ Comments (2) °

Oh How Doubly Ironic

I almost missed it, but last week there was another article by the Wall Street Journal’s “Numbers Guy” using some input from my language research activities.
Trends in stock prices are tracked by stock indexes. The Census tracks population trends. But how do we track trends in more amorphous quantities, such as the usage rate of […]

Posted 10 December 2008 † John Mansfield § Normal ‡ Comments (3) °

Frozen Wee-Wee

This morning there was a puddle of frozen wee-wee next to our front gate. That brightened up my day.

Posted 08 December 2008 † John Mansfield § Normal ‡ Comments (0) °

Christmas Cheere (or not)

We are back in deepest winter now, and the Christmas period fully upon us. It is two years now since, one glum winter in London, I began to realise how Christmas traditions are connected with the cold, dark, northern winter.
We haven’t had any snow to speak of, but today the world was comprehensively frozen. I […]

Posted 07 December 2008 † John Mansfield § Normal ‡ Comments (1) °