I picked up this Prospect blogpost, via the magazine’s twitter feed, where it carried a headline that falls into the Kamm/Rentoul category of “Great Historical Questions To Which The Answer Is ‘No’.”:
“Is Afghanistan Obama’s Vietnam?”
The article itself doesn’t bother with the question mark, but is a classic of the “another Vietnam” genre, once so popular in commentary […]
The resignation of Hazel Blears reminded me again that this nation’s government now has a “Department for Communities”. Letting that phrase pass my lips without implied quotation marks would be like vomiting into my mouth without washing it out.
Thanks to Kevin Harris’s “neighbourhoods” blog, I can sample a little of that department’s output, a review document […]
Tom Freeman doesn’t see the sense in The Times capitalizing the words “Left”, “Right”, and “Centre” when its writers use them to describe political leanings. I think the newspaper is right to do so.
Language is a communication channel, and shouldn’t be a fashion accessory or status symbol; however, in this country, more than many others, it […]
Harry Windsor is a “thug” for referring to another soldier by the nickname “Paki”, according to Mohammed Shafiq of the Ramadhan Foundation, quoted by the BBC. The BBC page links to the Website of that organisation, where Shafiq also claims that the government of Israel is like that of the Nazis.
The organization’s Chairman and Patron, Muhammad […]
Millions of Britons are refreshing PooterGeek every other minute in the hope of reading my views on the issue of the moment. I am pleased to bring your wait to an end: it’s “Damian” with an ‘A’, not “Damien” with an ‘E’. Get it right.
Last year, Newsbiscuit ran a spoof “NEWSPAPERS RUN OUT OF ‘LORD LEVY IS JEWISH’ EUPHEMISMS” story [requires free registration] I was reminded of it when I read this from the latest statement by “the neo-Nazi North German Action Office”, as reported in the Wall Street Journal:
Inasmuch as it is a determined opponent of the western-plutocratic one-world […]
Al-Qaeda in Iraq have reacted to the US presidential election by issuing a statement on Friday directed at President-elect Barack Obama and his incoming administration.
…
[H]ardliners have greeted Barack Obama’s election victory with a stream of racist and other insults.
Because, previously, when Al-Qaeda in Iraq referred to Kurdish-speaking bomb victims as “Kuffir to be slaughtered”, they […]
Perhaps you remember my posting about my little sister’s small claims case against Sky. I wasn’t surprised to receive an email from her on Friday informing me that, after months of time-wasting and attempts at legal intimidation by them—don’t get lawyerly with woman who teaches law—she has finally and comprehensively whupped their sorry asses.
My favourite of […]
Further to my last post about this, Russell Brand makes a proper apology to camera here. I can think of several politicians (amongst others) who could learn from it. He doesn’t mess about with words like “inappropriate”, which these days is used to describe everything from ironically referencing a passage in the Koran to trying […]
When you can’t look up something in a dictionary because you don’t know what you’re looking for, even the wordy vastness of the Web is of limited use. This happens to me often (and that’s one of the reasons why I am not a linguistic determinist). Tip Of My Tongue might help though.
[via Lifehacker]
Wongablog has pictures and text from The Super Dictionary, a pedagogical masterpiece stranger than wearing your underpants on the outside of your clothes.
Some might question my claim to geekhood on the grounds that I have never read Tolkein or Herbert. Frank Herbert’s Dune is frequently described as the best science fiction novel ever. Over the past few weeks I have been reading a little bit more of it every evening before going to sleep. Whatever else it […]
Another “shocking state of our universities today” story has appeared on the BBC news Website. A report from the Quality Assurance Agency says the degree classification system is broken. I smiled when I read this bit:
The reports from the QAA raise some worries about the effectiveness of the external examiner system, in which examiners from other […]
If you type “Gaullism” into Google correctly then this what you see:
If you omit an ‘L’, you get this:
Burger King’s slogan “HAVE IT YOUR WAY™” really is a Registered Trade Mark. Luckily for those looking for a similar marketing gem to promote their products or services, “IT’S YOUR FUNERAL” and “SUIT YOURSELF” are still available.
You probably didn’t know that the miniature-mace-shaped implement used by a priest in the Roman Catholic church to sprinkle holy water is called an “aspergill” or “aspergillum”. Despite our respective Catholic upbringings and useless fact collecting, neither did I or my dad.
But my dad (Jesuit schooling, degree in classics) could quote me the relevant introductory part […]
Here are some sensible tips on how to send an email message.
Sorry about the silence. I’ve been working hard in Portugal and working hard here.
Stevie Wonder says I look just like him in these shades
My exact ethnic background isn’t immediately obvious from my appearance. Most Sierra Leoneans would call me “white”; most Brits wouldn’t. To a large fraction of the people on this planet I just look […]
I’ve just been on the phone with The Tax Man and we had a discussion in which we used the phrase “the bottom line” to mean “the bottom line”. Self-employment is weird.
R C Metcalf, PhD, knows the erotic power of a polysyllabic adverb and harnesses it to denounce the “diversionary tactics” of public unbelievers, and to, er, divert their attentions to those damned Muslims:
The new atheists are a tumescent bunch, unquestionably articulate, yet consummately misguided. Their incendiary rhetoric can’t help but stir the emotions of the majority […]
Yesterday morning, I walked out of the building that my flat is in to find that the telephone box immediately outside it had been marked with words along the lines of:
HEY NIGGAZ
KKK 4 ME
in six-inch high black letters. Today I was going to write a post about it—not an “end of civilization as we know it” kind […]
Damian:
[T]he impression I get is that Norm is more forgiving of Eagleton’s errors of reasoning than he should be
Norm:
Damian leaves an impression about my viewpoints that I feel I have a right to comment on.
Damian:
I’d happily place a bet with Norm on which of the two of them will be considered worth reading in two hundred years’ time.
But […]
I write short posts. Much goes unsaid. I often write ironically. Some subjects are better approached that way; or it’s just more fun for me to tackle them sideways. What I do say, I say in plain English in the hope that my words at least are clear to everyone who reads them.
Reading Norm today I […]
Last Friday I found myself stuck in a room in a Cambridge college waiting to do a photo job so I took Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations down from a shelf and, as an intellectual dwarf perched on Hindsight the Giant, sneered at it. Certain things he said appear absurd in the light of certain experimental […]
British Spin fisks Dave’s “comeback” speech:
First up, He keeps on with some horribly mixed metaphor.
“then, brick by brick, you build your house. That is the plan I laid out when I became leader of this Party and that is exactly the plan we’ve been following.
We started by preparing the ground. We stopped fooling ourselves that we’d get […]
Over at Samizdata, California is becoming a “totalitarian” state because an overwhelming majority of the residents of the city of Berkeley voted for comprehensive regulations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and because San Francisco can fine pet owners who don’t feed their pets properly and fortune-tellers who don’t have a licence to practise. Britain is […]
To my immense amusement, I am quoted in a national Dutch free daily newspaper today, saying (of the Euston Manifesto): “We had no idea it would get so big”.
Please tell me this article is a parody, aimed at luring bloggers into making mocking fools of themselves. The suspiciously named “Sebastian Cresswell-Turner” complains at length that his middle-class peers aren’t as rich as members of their parents’ generation and have to do shocking things like live in Battersea or send their children to state schools.
When I […]
