XKCD is one of my favourite webcomics. I’m always particularly pleased when I understand the jokes. Luckily, there’s a site that explains the ones I don’t understand (80-90% of them).

Not long ago, there was a comic about the Up-Goer Five, the space car. It was a graphic that explained/described the shuttle using the thousand most common words in the English language and it was brilliant. Then, someone made a text editor that would only allow you to compose text using those thousand (whoops, ten hundred) words. FUN.

The Chronicle of Higher Education has a nice article about the Up-Goer Five text editor . It also mentions the Up-Goer Six text editor , which I find to be even more fun, as it colour-codes your words by how common they are.

There’s also a hilarious Tumblr of film descriptions using Up-Goer Five.

Every Tuesday, the author of XKCD, Randall Munroe uses physics to answer hypothetical questions . Questions like: “If you carry a penny in your coin tray, how long would it take for that penny to cost you more than a cent in extra gas?” and “If every person on Earth aimed a laser pointer at the Moon at the same time, would it change color?”

Somewhat related to this is Slate’s Explainer , where they give actual answers to questions inspired by current events. Warning, that page is addictive to trivia-buffs. It’s like freakin’ TV Tropes in that you go in for a second and find yourself there right hours later, being interested in everything. Sometimes it’s a topic you’ve wondered about, while, other times, the topic makes you say, ‘You know… that’s an excellent question… How do courts handle the innocent half of a Siamese twin, if the other half has committed a crime?’

I am a book snob. More so than other types of media, as reading a book is a commitment in time and requires more mental effort than listening to music or watching a film/TV. It’s possible to turn off the higher cognitive function of your brain and look at the pretty explosions on the screen for two hours, or ignore the insipid lyrics and dance to the beat for the length of a song.

But reading requires time, comprehension and, at its best, elevates your mind and makes you see the world in a new way.

So when I see someone reading effin Twilight or, God help me, Fifty Shades of Crap , it makes my blood boil.

You’re spending all of that time and energy on something that’s badly written. Reading poorly written prose makes can only damage your own command of the language. The importance of the ability to communicate effectively cannot be stressed enough. It’s the way we find others who share our philosophies and the way we avoid wars.

However, people tend to find faults in others that they possess themselves so when I find something unattractive about another person, I see if that criticism applies to myself.

In this case I must admit that I do things that consume massive quantities of time I’ll never recover, require very little cognitive effort and doesn’t offer improvement as a person. My things are apps on my mobile device. (Hello GetGlue and Curiosity ).

So, read your crap. I promise I won’t roll my eyes in your presence (too much). I even promise I won’t say, ‘Yeah, I waste lots of time doing pointless things, as well.’

And at least when they’re done with wasting their time they have toilet paper. I just have an awesome piece of technology I don’t use to its highest potential.

Nigger.

There. I typed it. I’ve never said it out loud and I don’t believe I’ve ever typed the word before. Then, when I did type it, I felt compelled to give it it’s own paragraph because I didn’t want other words touching it because I so detest the word–it has nothing but negative connotations to me.

Well, New York City has banned the use of the word in an effort to get people to stop using it–simply to think about what they’re going to say prior to saying it. [You’ll pardon me if I put aside for a moment the fact that Noo fuckin’ Yawk is trying to get people to talk nicer and focus on my main point.]

Making the word more taboo, I think, is a horrible idea. As much as I despise the word, I feel that never allowing ‘nice’ people to say it gives all the power to the not nice people. Only ever hearing complete jackholes say the word is going to make me want to hit them that much harder when it comes flying out of their mostly toothless mouths.

Queer, dyke, fag and bitch have all been reclaimed, to some degree, by the people they describe. They can still be used as insults, but they don’t sting nearly as much because they’ve been empowered. If someone calls me a bitch (which of course never happens) I say, “No kidding.” There isn’t the same amount of pride with ‘nigger’. [While I’m messing up my clean language rating I may as well go all out.] I can’t imagine a person laughing and saying, “That’s me!” upon being called that.

The word is used jocularly in other countries–in the popular (and quite hysterical) British film Shaun of the Dead Nick Frost (who is of the white persuasion) squeals up in a car and jumps out shouting, “What up, my niggas?!” I’ve seen the film several times and I always think, “They’d never allow that in an American film.” But in that British comedy it’s no big deal. It’s not used to show the stupidity of a cracker-ass sheriff in the backwoods of the US of Racism–it’s not even directed at a black person. Hell, there aren’t any non-white people with speaking roles in the film (but the flamingly inadequate representation of minorities in British film is another rant for another day.)

The point is, the word *can* be de-powered or re-powered. No one gets bent out of shape when someone says, “The rule of thumb is…” because the original connotation was that it used to be legal for a man to beat his wife as long as he used a rod thinner than his thumb. Give words enough time–and stop making a big deal out of them–and they lose their power.

That said, if this ‘ban’–not really a law because breaking it carries no penalties–is truly about getting people to think before they speak I’m all for it. I’d be happier if most people thought at all.

What do you call a person who fluently speaks two dialects of the same language? Bi-dialectician? Whatever it is, I am. I speak both American and British English like a native.

That said, American spelling looks to be missing something, some phrases (in both dialects) make no sense and some pronunciations sound better to my ear-the beginning ‘e’ of ‘economics’ and ‘evolution’ should be long and the second syllables of ‘research’ and ‘frustrated’ should be stressed, and words beginning with ‘sch’ should be pronounced like ‘sk’, for example. But I do not besmirch the names of those that pronounce those words in other, accepted, ways.

Due to the popularity of American television shows Americanisms have been infiltrating British English for several decades now.

On 13 July there was an article in the magazine on the BBC News site entitled Why Do Some Americanisms Irritate People?

The quote that best sums up my feelings on the matter: “Britain is a very distinct country from the US. Not better, not worse, different. And long live that difference. That means maintaining the integrity of our own gloriously nuanced, subtle and supple version - the original version - of the English language. ”

A follow up piece was posted 19 July. Americanisms: Your 50 Most Noted Examples

I wasn’t surprised by some of the vitriol in that article, because it seems unfair that one language is being devoured by the other, and all of the flow is in one direction.

Many Americans believe that the English speak the language the way it was meant to be spoken, but if an American uses English phraseology, their fellow Americans think them up themselves. Because Americans consider the English to be superior to the Yanks, any American using British English must be trying to give themselves airs.

Whereas, English people over-using American phrases appear-to the Brits-to be trying too hard to be hip. There is no graver insult to an English person than being seen to be trying too hard.

English people using American also come across as being sloppy. Because Americans are a sloppy, blunt people. Yanks aren’t known for nuanced language.

The one group that highly prizes Americanisms are hip hop artists and chavs. Because Americans are seen as excelling rather spectacularly at violence and intimidation.

The inspiration for this post came from an article on the twelfth of this month, England Riots: What’s the Meaning of the Words Behind the Chaos? , which was about the American-grown words used before, during and after the riots: ‘po po’, ‘feds’, ‘5-0’.

You can tell a lot about a people by the language they use, as well as the language used about them. Choose your words wisely.

This week’s funny come from always fantastic The Oatmeal .

It’s about irony and how people misuse it.