Just found out that “go fry asparagus” is an invitation to depart and engage in some other activity. Unfortunately it’s not an accurate translation of what Alistair Campbell actually wrote (3rd para).
A linguist is voted the world’s top public intellectual, and Language Log has nothing at all to say about it. Since Liberman, Pullum et al are known for their complete lack of respect for sacred cows, does that mean they regard Chomsky as simply irrelevant?
We‘re doing a short show in Llantiol on Sunday December 18th at 23:00. It’s a cute, *little* theatre, with only about 70 capacity, so book etc etc. OK, it’s Sunday night, but no one does any work on the Monday before Christmas anyway. New repertoire will probably include a satire on language policy, Tom Lehrer…
I think a public intellectual must be rather like a public house, where over-consumption of what seems so attractive at the time shortly and surely leads to idiocy and ruin. All that glitters etc etc (via Barcepundit).
“Chávez … expressed solidarity with ‘president Robert Mugabe and the people of Zimbawe, because both blacks and whites have rights.'” So will Venezuelan land reform also end in famine? (Aside: I fear that those who hope Chávez will do something about the notorious correlation in Venezuela between status and lightness of skin will be grievously…
Re a post by Amando de Miguel in his interesting, if fairly Pleistocene, language column for Libertad Digital, I’ve compiled a little table of hits over time from Mark Davies’ corpus for several Spanish versions of the Great Satan (no hits in there for el Gran Satanás unfortunately). I’ve omitted USA = América because I’m…
Following the news about a Galician politician-trombonist, here’s a Louisianan trumpet-playing coroner: The first time Dr. Minyard ran, in 1969, he lost to the incumbent. But four years later, he and a slate of other candidates viewed as reformers – including Harry Connick Sr., the “Singing D.A.” – were swept into office. Another of those…
I hate the flag-waving and military parades around October 12, particularly when accompanied by the sight of the Spanish prime minister and king embracing a man who clearly regards himself as the next Latin American Mussolini. In it had been left to the church, the ceremony might have been rather different. Here’s part of a…