Language
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Chief Justice John Roberts indirectly alludes to Ambrose Bierce, lexicographer
John Roberts wrote today's Supreme Court opinion in which a 6-member majority struck down the Biden administration's forgiveness of most of the student loan debt in the country. Whatever the merits of the court's decision, the Chief Justice included this allusive gem in his opinion: From a few narrowly delineated situations specified by Congress, the…
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Maybe Google doesn’t think that anyone reads click-sign licensing agreements
Wanting to download Google Earth to my computer, I used Google to find the website. Picking one on the first page, I clicked to obtain the download. As all good sites do, this one asked me to read and click-sign a licensing agreement. Here's a portion of the licensing agreement that Google offered me, obscurantist…
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Isaac translates Jack into Plannerese — fo’ shizzle
Much as I enjoy what Gizoogle does with my language, its words are not those of the languages that I usually speak. One tongue that I do speak fairly fluently is Plannerese, and it occurred to me that, had I the time, I might build an engine that could translate ordinary text into Plannerese, and…
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Isaac gets Gizoogled
Concerned that my stilted 19th-century language might leave the Laquedemitasse unable to communicate with his peers, Mrs. Laquedem recently pointed me to www.gizoogle.net, a service which translates Google pages, and anything found by Google, into dialect. I had it translate the front page of this blog. Most complete sentences aren't quotable — actually, they are…
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“And they brought us whole binders full of women.” — Mitt Romney
And here I was, thinking that Mr. Romney was trying to put the polygamy issue to bed.
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Only really, really thin senior citizens can have pets
Venerable Mom Laquedem inhabits, not too happily, a nearby senior center which is in the process of changing owners. The new owner wants all of the residents to sign new residence contracts, printed in type small enough to be difficult or impossible for the average octogenarian or nonagenarian to read. Many things about VM are…