I hear some strange things in this medical transcription gig:
Due to her birth weight less than 1500 grams, she will require a rule out retinopathy of prematurity eye exam . . . .
Let’s take an against un-Englishly compound adjectives stand!
Arel Lucas writes: DELETED. Arel’s initial report, written in the heat of emotion, was relayed without her permission or knowledge and she later repented of writing it.
Some background: Wikipedia; Scientology vs Keith Henson; Keith Henson News (mirror)
You may have seen a movie of a purported Bigfoot walking in the woods. Here is a stabilized version of that film. (Cited by Incoming Signals.)
hypercorrection implies correction
Most of us English-speakers were told as children that it’s wrong to say me and him went to the park, and we should instead say he and I. And many of us grow up extending the lesson to where it does not belong: the letter was addressed to she and I. Purists like me expostulate in vain: one wouldn’t say or to she or to I, or indeed to we, so why to she and I?
It now hits me that, in all these years of wincing at between he and I, I’ve never asked why children make the opposite error. Children rarely if ever say me went or him went, so why was it so much more natural to say me and him went?
Perhaps in all of these phenomena the partnership is considered a new entity, distinct from its components. So now I’m inspired to ask: In languages that still have a strong case system, e.g. Russian, what is the genitive of a company name like Sears & Roebuck? Do both elements become genitive, or only the last, or is the whole thing indeclinable, or what?
This morning someone came to my door and invited my comment on a line of the New Testament, something about keeping an eye out “for none knoweth the hour.” After he had gone I thought: but then what?
“Sorry to wake you but I thought you’d like to know, Jesus is back.”
“Yeah? Say hi for me, then, and invite Him to the party next week. Did He happen to mention when we throw off the Roman yoke?”
One cannot grow up in this culture without absorbing the broad outlines, as I said to my visitor, but here’s a point on which I’m hazy.
My latest finding of “dictionary translation”, at a pet store:
ONE-STORY CAT CAVE
UNE CAVERNE À CHATS D’HISTOIRE
I’d make it caverne à chats à une étage.
Funny that I missed this three years ago — Joseph Hertzlinger has a provocative idea about drugs:
I don’t think a suggestibility drug such as marijuana should be encouraged. . . . I suspect that marijuana might be particularly dangerous from the point of view of inducing groupthink. I have not had any direct personal experience but I have noticed that it is defended as reinforcing the approved habits in the social group of the user. [examples elided] If we put that together we can see that marijuana is a conformist drug – probably because of its ability to make people suggestible. (That might explain the thoroughness of the collapse of trendy drug use in the ’80s. Once its use declined, the remaining users would start conforming to the new trend and stop.) . . . Declare that any drug whose use declines will be legalized. That will encourage drug users to keep their friends off the drug and will eliminate the “everybody does it” defense.
Cited in a comment at Strange Maps, appropriately, is this map of micronations. Its purpose is not obvious to me, but it has a goofy charm.
What happens when all the virtual land is claimed?