This is true: I watched Babel last night and liked it a lot, but I did not learn until this evening that the film’s non-English parts are meant to be subtitled. Before I get to the explanation, though, here’s a section of Genesis 11, which, like most of the Bible, I had never read, and [...]
The LA Times editorializes today about the silliness of recent efforts to force dictionaries to remove entries that corporations deem offensive — most recently by McDonald’s, which bristled at the Oxford English Dictionary‘s definition of McJob: The dictionary currently defines the popular term as “an unstimulating, low-paid job with few prospects, especially one created by [...]
I’m observing St. Patrick’s Day in the traditional way this afternoon — drinking a few cases of Guinness with the roommates while the college basketballers do their thing on TV — and something about the situation reminded me that the latest Oxford English Dictionary quarterly additions were due out. Some of the more entertaining rookies: [...]
This is how the home screen for ESPN’s 2007 Men’s [NCAA Basketball] Tournament Challenge game looked yesterday afternoon (I saved it because I had a feeling I’d be writing about it today). Read it carefully: There are more than 3 million active brackets in the game, and players are allowed up to five entries, which [...]
Big news today is Khalid Sheik Mohammad’s claim of responsibility for 31 acts of terrorism, including the 9/11 attacks, which he claims to have masterminded “from A to Z,” and the decapitation of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl; the New York Times has a list: The 1993 World Trade Center bombing. The 9/11 attacks, [...]