Sandi Toksvig, moderator of the News Quiz, commenting on the selection of Johanna Sigurdardottir to be Iceland’s new Prime Minister:
What can I say? More Scandinavian lesbians in charge — it’s what the world wants.
Have I said how much I love having access to BBC radio on my computer?
Archive for January, 2009
From the BBC News Quiz
Posted in tactless observations, tagged bbc news quiz, lesbians with power, radio, Sandi Toksvig on 30 January, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Adventures in grading, foretold
Posted in Musing about Teaching, tactless observations, tagged "Dare Me", big 80s, drag, fedoras, grading, graphjam, plagiarism, Pointer Sisters on 30 January, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
I don’t have any student papers in yet, but this pie chart from GraphJam is seems mighty plausible [I am not responsible for the graph originator's inability to spell "choice" properly!]:
more music charts
Of course, the creators of this graph completely forgot the soundtrack references, which should include “Dare Me”, by the Pointer Sisters. [I just [...]
Locusts on Prozac
Posted in Filking, tactless observations, tagged BBC science news, Filking, locusts, prozac, serotonin, swarming on 30 January, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Locusts on Prozac
Are a no-no
Spiked serotonin
Tweaks their mojo
So they’re swarming
Swarming!
Oh, they’re swarming!
Ahhhh…..
[cue the sound of whirring wings and relentless chewing]
Yes, researchers have found that high serotonin levels in locusts seem to trigger the change from the green Solitary form to the darker, ravenous Gregarious form.
Strangely, I feel no reason to apologize to the Moody Blues [...]
Take bad marketing schtick. Beat to death in review.
Posted in Uncategorized on 28 January, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Sorry Brooke; the NY Times aren’t enamoured of that minivan you’ve been hawking…. [And honestly, you are able to be so much funnier with better material!]
Your grass is glass
Posted in Uncategorized on 28 January, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
So, we’ve had a touch of sleet overnight, and I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that people didn’t know have a clue about the inverse relationship between speed and maneuverability…
We’ll see whether the school decides to close before or after things freeze up again for the night.
Attack of the Killer Snowflakes
Posted in Musing about Teaching, tactless observations, tagged enter the clue fairy, precious snowflakes, things not to do, weather report on 27 January, 2009 | 3 Comments »
Well, we are actually supposed to be getting some real snow soon, but that’s not my immediate point. I just got email from a student with the subject line of “Hi!”. Almost sent it right to the Junk folder, since short messages with trite titles from people I don’t know look a lot like [...]
How often does anyone get to say…
Posted in Language failure, tactless observations, tagged blenders, collocations, craigslist, forensic ornithology, mockingbird, those damn chincillas, tiger oak on 26 January, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
I remember back in graduate school reading rec.arts.comics and seeing bizzare tag lines [attributed to the adventures of someone named Marc Lynx, or somesuch] like:
“Wait a minute — those aren’t blender wounds!”
In more official graduate school reading there was the concept of ‘collocation’: words that tended to appear in the company of other words, [...]
Student self-diagnosis FAIL
Posted in Musing about Teaching, tactless observations, tagged FAIL, fellow faculty, self-diagnosis, Dr. Google, not, trials and errors, the ass burgers on 17 January, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
See Cranky’s blog for “The Curious Case of the Ass Burgers“
Dr. Google is not qualified to diagnose a learning disability or neural wiring disorder. Really.
[sigh]
I don’t get to meet my students for another week or so. And until the middle of next week, I may not even know what I’m teaching, since enrollments aren’t final [...]
Mystery, history, and loss
Posted in Backstory, Language failure, Rennovations, tagged adoption, attic finds, Glamor chopsaw, letters, loss on 17 January, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
“The Mens”, as we often call them, have been in the attic again. Having got the AC installed, the electric upgraded, and the insulation foamed in, the next steps are to get the walls and the floor into shape. That involves getting all the loose boards an old insulation out of the way, and in [...]
Odd sort of Narnia
Posted in Backstory, Elsinore on 15 January, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Word and I have agreed that we are trapped in an odd sort of Narnia, where it seems to always be winter, but it never snows.
Granted, there was a dusting of the stuff this morning, but nothing in comparison to the gorgeous [and yes, sometimes inconvenient] swaths of deep white sparkle we are used to. [...]
