It's No Soap - Laundry Saves Lives


On January 7th 2007, at Sizewell A power station on England's Suffolk coast, an environmental disaster was narrowly averted when a worker visiting the laundry spotted a coolant leak.

A chance decision to wash some clothes narrowly averted a nuclear disaster, a safety report has found.

While using the laundry room at Sizewell A power station, a contract worker spotted a leak from a cooling tank.

Meganonsense Alert!

There is no consensus amongst linguists as to exactly what constitutes a word.  How do you count words?  What counts as a word?  Do 'run', 'running', 'ran' count as three words or one? Is 'dotwatcher' a word? What about 'haptualize'?


Philosophers of the world: trouble yourselves no more.  The problem is solved. 
A word is whatever The Global Language Monitor says it is.

Web 2.0 ?  Yup! That's a word.  They say.  The English language's 1,000,000th word, to boot!

Hype, or erudition?  You decide:

Obsessive-Compulsive Language Disorder


If you have never heard of Obsessive-Compulsive Language Disorder, don't worry.  I just invented the expression to get your attention.


In my article We Have Ways of Making You Conform,  I state: "The natural laws of conformity give rise to the patterns in language that we call grammar." and "In opposition to the natural drift of language is the set of communal rules of conformity." 

Word Salad And Rules Of Conformity


The conversation-capable computer has often been said to be just around the corner.  All too often, what is found around the corner is  an impenetrable wall.



Word salad

Word salad is a string of words which gives the impression of having been formed by selecting words mostly or entirely at random.  The psychological terms for this include 'verbigeration' and  'schizophasia'. The linguistic term is  'modern poetry'.


Rules of conformity

The Brightest Candles #1

The brightest candles are the people whose light remains long after they are gone.

For books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them.

John Milton, Areopagitica.

The Buzzword Blog #5 : Subversion


Subversion:

The word 'subverted' has itself been subverted by agendists and has become just another buzzword.

It now tends to mean:
1 -  'them' telling people things that 'we' don't want them to know.
2 - 'them' using technology in a way that 'we' don't want them to.

Some examples:

When you try to go against someone who was elected democratically with false accusations, this is a subversive act.

This wonderfully ambiguous wording was reported to have been spoke by Silvio Berlusconi.