Wordle me this

Nifty new website (h/t AB) that will arrange popular words from your blog into pretty pictures.



I didn't realize I used the word "racist" that much. Hmm.

Politically-correct Follies, UK-style

The British government has launched an effort to stamp out racism and prejudice at the earliest possible age, including infancy. One heretofore-unnoticed sign of nascent racism? Disliking spicy foreign food:

The National Children's Bureau, which receives £12 million a year, mainly from Government funded organisations, has issued guidance to play leaders and nursery teachers advising them to be alert for racist incidents among youngsters in their care.

This could include a child of as young as three who says "yuk" in response to being served unfamiliar foreign food.

The guidance by the NCB is designed to draw attention to potentially-racist attitudes in youngsters from a young age.

It alerts playgroup leaders that even babies can not be ignored in the drive to root out prejudice as they can "recognise different people in their lives".

The 366-page guide for staff in charge of pre-school children, called Young Children and Racial Justice, warns: "Racist incidents among children in early years settings tend to be around name-calling, casual thoughtless comments and peer group relationships."

It advises nursery teachers to be on the alert for childish abuse such as: "blackie", "Pakis", "those people" or "they smell".

The guide goes on to warn that children might also "react negatively to a culinary tradition other than their own by saying 'yuk'".

Staff are told: "No racist incident should be ignored. When there is a clear racist incident, it is necessary to be specific in condemning the action."

Warning that failing to pick children up on their racist attitudes could instil prejudice, the NCB adds that if children "reveal negative attitudes, the lack of censure may indicate to the child that there is nothing unacceptable about such attitudes".

Nurseries are encouraged to report as many incidents as possible to their local council. The guide added: "Some people think that if a large number of racist incidents are reported, this will reflect badly on the institution. In fact, the opposite is the case."

I have no idea what sort of power these "local councils" have in the UK, but it certainly sounds ominous. I can hardly fault a program to discourage youngsters from using actual racist epithets, but I have to wonder how it could have taken 366 pages to address this issue. Allow me to list my first few reactions:

1. WTF????
2. If school teachers discourage something, don't they run the risk of kids thinking it's cool? Racism may become the new Sex Pistols for young Britons.
3. Compared to standard British fare, nearly all foreign food is spicy, and is likely to be a shock to the palate of anyone raised on fish & chips. Don't fault little Nigel for reeling at a flavor explosion.
4. A lot of foreign food is just plain gross if you didn't grow up with it--e.g. kim chee (fermented cabbage, Korea) and hákarl (rotten shark meat, Iceland).
5. Hopefully they will include "limey" in the list of slurs to be discouraged--mostly just because we need something to ruffle the feathers of ordinary pasty Brits. Oh, and because sensitivity to racism is a mutli-directional street.

At the very least, I'm sure we can all agree that the British government seems to have too much time on its hands.

The end is nigh...???

Two new polls ask the internetting public to evaluate whether the soon-to-go-online Large Hadron Collider is worth the risk of global annihilation that it poses. Actually, as PZ Myers points out, the polls ask the following: "Is the gaint[sic] particle smasher worth the risk?" and "Which do you think is more likely to destroy the world? Human actions or natural disaster?"

I'm hardly any expert on the LHC, but I have watched a lot of SciFi Saturday movies, so I feel that I am more qualified to bloviate on this issue than your average tenured nuclear physicist. And this thing is BIG. Which means it must be powerful in ways we simply cannot understand.

The most powerful atom-smasher ever built could make some bizarre discoveries, such as invisible matter or extra dimensions in space, after it is switched on in August.

But some critics fear the Large Hadron Collider could exceed physicists' wildest conjectures: Will it spawn a black hole that could swallow Earth? Or spit out particles that could turn the planet into a hot dead clump?

Ridiculous, say scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, known by its French initials CERN - some of whom have been working for a generation on the $5.8 billion collider, or LHC.

"Obviously, the world will not end when the LHC switches on," said project leader Lyn Evans.

David Francis, a physicist on the collider's huge ATLAS particle detector, smiled when asked whether he worried about black holes and hypothetical killer particles known as strangelets.

"If I thought that this was going to happen, I would be well away from here," he said.

The collider basically consists of a ring of supercooled magnets 17 miles in circumference attached to huge barrel-shaped detectors. The ring, which straddles the French and Swiss border, is buried 330 feet underground.

Damn Swiss. My biggest fear? Those pesky "particles that could turn the planet into a hot dead clump." They really do exist, even if Big Science won't admit the genius of my research. I call them torchyons in honor of the Human Torch from the Fantastic Four, who once rescued me from falling through broken ice.

But enough about that. What does it mean, really, to "destroy the world"? Does the whole not-quite-spherical thing have to blow up, as shown by the classic and infallible astrophysics documentary Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope? Is it enough for all sentient life to be eradicated? All life period? What about pikas? They're cute, so I'd rather keep them around. If the LHC has any chance of killing pikas, let's preemptively bomb Switzerland. Anyway, here's a handy guide to destroying the earth (h/t MrQhuest, whoever you are). I have my doubts that it can be accomplished solely through subatomic particles (unless they come from subspace and are enhanced with trilithium, of course.)

I recall a book by David Brin called Earth (it must have been nonfiction, of course) about a black hole being mistakenly unleashed from a lab in New Zealand (damn Kiwis), and there was also something about nuking Switzerland--gosh, it's like reading a newspaper. It was a pretty good book.

I think I've gotten it all out of my system. I shall now invoke a corollary of Poe's Law and reassure my reader(s) that I am generally being sarcastic. I think critics of the LHC are just jealous that they don't have one as big (damn Swiss).

Still, I'd look out for any rogue gaint particles after August.

And even if the earth is destroyed, it will always exist as long as we remember it.

I must be slipping...shit

Omaha Dating

I only pulled an "R" rating, based on the words "dead," "bitch" and "hell."

I will therefore now recite the Lovett Cheer, from my old college days. That ought to raise the bar a bit.

The text is shrunken down, for the kids' sake, you know?

Cock suck, mother fuck, eat a bag of shit.
Cunt hair, douche bag, suck your mother's tit.
We are the best college, all the others suck.
Edgar Odell Lovett, rah rah fuck!

According to the Wikipedia post, this is Rice's "only officially University-banned cheer." What the fuck's up with that?

When insults had class

Copied wholesale from an e-mail forward. I'm not sure that some of these quotes are correctly attributed, but I'm too lazy to do the research right now.

-----------------------

When insults had class.

These insults are mostly from an era when cleverness with words was still valued, before a great portion of the English language got boiled down to 4-letter words!

The exchange between Churchill & Lady Astor: She said, "If you were my husband I'd give you poison," and he said, "If you were my wife, I'd drink it."

A member of Parliament to Disraeli: "Sir, you will either die on the gallows or of some unspeakable disease."
"That depends, Sir," said Disraeli, "on whether I embrace your policies or your mistress."

"He had delusions of adequacy." - Walter Kerr

"He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire." - Winston Churchill

"A modest little person, with much to be modest about." - Winston Churchill

"I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with
great pleasure." - Clarence Darrow

"He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary." - William Faulkner (about Ernest Hemingway).
"Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words?" - Ernest Hemingway (about William Faulkner)

"Thank you for sending me a copy of your book; I'll waste no time reading it." - Moses Hadas

"He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I
know." - Abraham Lincoln

"I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I
approved of it." Mark Twain

"He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends." - Oscar Wilde

"I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend.... if you have one." - George Bernard Shaw to Winston Churchill "Cannot possibly attend first night, will attend second... if there is one."
- Winston Churchill, in response.

"I feel so miserable without you; it's almost like having you here." -
Stephen Bishop

"He is a self-made man and worships his creator." - John Bright

"I've just learned about his illness. Let's hope it's nothing trivial." - Irvin S. Cobb

"He is not only dull himself, he is the cause of dullness in others."
- Samuel Johnson

"He is simply a shiver looking for a spine to run up." - Paul Keating

"There's nothing wrong with you that reincarnation won't cure." Jack E.
Leonard

"He has the attention span of a lightning bolt." - Robert Redford

"They never open their mouths without subtracting from the sum of human knowledge." - Thomas Brackett Reed

"In order to avoid being called a flirt, she always yielded easily." - Charles, Count Talleyrand

"He loves nature in spite of what it did to him." - Forrest Tucker

"Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it?"
- Mark Twain

"His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork." - Mae West

"Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go." - Oscar Wilde

"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts... for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang (1844-1912)

"He has Van Gogh's ear for music." - Billy Wilder

"I've had a perfectly wonderful evening But this wasn't it." - Groucho Marx

Super calloused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis

No idea where this originally came from, but it's worth sharing:

Here are the ten first place winners in the International Pun Contest:

1. A vulture boards an airplane, carrying two dead raccoons. The stewardess looks at him and says, "I'm sorry, sir, only one carrion allowed per passenger."

2. Two fish swim into a concrete wall. The one turns to the other and says "Dam!"

3. Two Eskimos sitting in a kayak were chilly, so they lit a fire in the craft.
Unsurprisingly it sank, proving once again that you can't have your kayak and heat it too.

4. Two hydrogen atoms meet. One says "I've lost my electron." The other says "Are you sure?" The first replies "Yes, I'm positive."

5. Did you hear about the Buddhist who refused Novocain during a root canal? His goal:
transcend dental medication.

6. A group of chess enthusiasts checked into a hotel and were standing in the lobby discussing their recent tournament victories. After about an hour, the manager came out of the office and asked them to disperse.

"But why?", they asked, as they moved off.

"Because," he said," I can't stand chess-nuts boasting in an open foyer."

7. A woman has twins and gives them up for adoption.

One of them goes to a family in Egypt and is named "Ahmal." The other goes to a family in Spain; they name him "Juan. " Years later, Juan sends a picture of himself to his birth mother. Upon receiving the picture, she tells her husband that she wishes she also had a picture of Ahmal. Her husband responds, "They're twins! If you've seen Juan, you've seen Ahmal."

8. A group of friars were behind on their belfry payments, so they opened up a small florist shop to raise funds. Since everyone liked to buy flowers from the men of God, a rival florist across town thought the competition was unfair. He asked the good fathers to close down, but they would not. He went back and begged the friars to close. They ignored him. So, the rival florist hired Hugh MacTaggart, the roughest and most vicious thug in town to "persuade" them to close.

Hugh beat up the friars and trashed their store, saying he'd be back if they didn't close up shop.

Terrified, they did so, thereby proving that only Hugh can prevent florist friars.

9. Mahatma Gandhi, as you know, walked barefoot most of the time, which produced an impressive set of calluses on his feet. He also ate very little, which made him rather frail and, with his odd diet, he suffered from bad breath. This made him (Oh, man, this is so bad, it's good) a super calloused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis.

10. And finally, there was the person who sent ten different puns to friends, with the hope that at least one of the puns would make them laugh. No pun in ten did.

Please tip your waitress.

"Unnecessary 'quotation' marks"

I find the "blog" of "unnecessary" quotation marks to be a fund diversion (h/t Orin Kerr).

A somewhat moronic pastime for my friends and me during periods of drunkenness in college was to put unnecessary "finger quotes" around literal phrases (e.g. After your date, do you plan on having "sexual intercourse?")

Yes, we were dorks. Still, it's "nice" to see the tradition "continued."

The federal government gives us a lesson in advanced grammar

Hey remember when there was supposed to be no question over the meaning of "is" in public discourse? Now we have lectures on the "hortatory subjunctive tense" in a Congressional hearing. Gripping, truly gripping.

Pardon me while I mock someone's grammar

I'm not sure if this is a grammatical problem or a semantic one, but who really cares anyway? A post from yesterday about the President's totally unsurprising veto had this passage:

Today's Washington Post contains the headline, "April Toll is Highest of '07 for U.S. Troops". More than 100 Americans have been killed in the past month. This brings the death toll, the ultimate cost for this "War of Failed Leadership" closer to the 3500 mark then ever before.

Now here's the question: the death toll is closer to the 3500 mark "than ever before" (I'll skip over the spelling error and go for the jugular)--how could we have been closer to 3500 at some point before now? How does a death toll go back down after it goes up? I've studied quite a bit of history and followed the news most of my life, and I am quite confident that death tolls only go in one direction. I guess you could question the methodology by which the death toll is calculated (i.e. initial estimates overshot the mark), but I don't think that's it. Most likely, it was a poorly chosen cliche in a hastily written post, but it still messed with my head when I read it.

Also, how sad is it that I am turning to semantic (or grammatical) mockery to avoid thinking abouit what a complete clusterfuck this whole thing is?