Tag: Language

the left-wing moral shortfall.

“Imagine visiting a town,” Dr. Jonathon Haidt writes, “where people wear no clothes, never bathe, have sex in public, and eat raw meat by biting off pieces directly from the carcass.”

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Dr Haidt’s site is yourmorals.org, where i got my fibre tested. I’m the green bars. You can see that I consider Harm and Fairness to be important moral values. I am less convinced on Loyalty, Authority, and Purity, as moral values.

The main point of the graph is not that my low scores reveal me as base, ill-bred and exquisitely suited to a career in politics. Continue reading the left-wing moral shortfall.

iSnack Two Point – Oh dear…

The Kraft company has released a new Vegemite product made of cream cheese and Vegemite.

The product is a high-risk variation on the classic Vegemite recipe – a Vegemite you keep in the fridge. Apparently items kept in the fridge get used more than things in the cupboard, so this creamy new guy should improve sales!

To improve awareness, Kraft ran a competition to name the new product. And the result they chose from thousands of entries?

My lord. Continue reading iSnack Two Point – Oh dear…

Accents eh, bro?

Why are some accents funny?

The Australians find the Irish accent hilarious.  Half of Ireland holds down steady jobs doing comedy here. But I bet the Scots don’t laugh at them. I’m told the Americans cack themselves at the Canadians. ‘Aboot aboot!’ Similarly, I fear the amusement is not mutual.

I just spent a couple of weeks spinning comedy gold out of the most minor differences in pronunciation, in New Zealand.


Continue reading Accents eh, bro?

Verbing weirds language.

Pick someone who rates their grammar skills, and try saying this: “Your rampant pedantry is impacting me negatively.”   

Watch: First their faces grow red. They sputter. Flecks of spit gather like soap scum in the corner of their mouths. Hands shake and reach for their receding hairlines. They suppress the urge to correct. But not for long. “IMPACT is a noun! You can’t ‘impact’ something! It’s WRONG! WRONG!!!”

Then try saying this “Um, chillax dude. Grammar? Like, whatevs.”  Boom.  Splatter.  You have just made a human being explode. 

Continue reading Verbing weirds language.

Garbledy-gook

I was in a meeting the other day when my boss started doing mash-ups. She was mixing with such dexterity I was transported back to Saturday night, back under the mirror ball, with the pills just starting to kick in.

First she dropped ‘definity’. From context, it was clear this was a mangle of definition and certainty. And why not! There’s a bit of space in there for a new word with a new shade of meaning. I welcomed it. Later, she dropped an old school crowd pleaser – irregardless. This is my second favourite mixmash ever. Take two words with the same meaning (irrespective and regardless) and bundle them into a word that glides ever so sweetly off the tongue, and is utterly perfect in the way it delivers meaning, except for the fact that if you look closely, it seems to be a double negative. 

Continue reading Garbledy-gook