wordplay

Those of you who have been following the whole bit about UK cows having regional accents will no doubt appreciate the newest chapter in the saga, as described over at The Language Log. I've spent much of the last 10 years frustrated by the life of a linguist - it is rather an enormous pain in the ass to have hard-won, specialized knowledge about something that every layperson on the street thinks they already know a lot about simply by virtue of being a human being - if you care at all about your field, you get very good at rolling your eyes and biting your tongue at all the people willing to claim casual expertise on a topic you've spent hundreds of hours analyzing. When I'm feeling generous it's really gratifying to see so much public interest; when I'm not I can be extremely snarky on this topic. How much worse for poor John Lewis, then, to be so broadly misrepresented. Also, though, hee. :))

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In other news, I ran HideJournal to lock my journal down - it was very easy and quick to use and I can recommend it. I'll be going to the rotating schedule of public entries that works for so many of you, leaving things public for about a month or so before locking them up.

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I just bought gorgeous sterling silver buttons to spruce up one of my favorite linen jackets and in fact, every fall I develop a serious cash leak. I adore fall colors (jewel tones and rich chocolate browns, figs and pomegranates), fall fabrics (suedes, velvets, grosgrains), jackets and cardigans and layers and boots. This autumn is no different, and the most fun part is that I get to shop for all four of us! On that note, a product rec: Some Kind-a Gorgeous by Benefit is a great, lightweight everyday makeup, and I've long been a fan of makeup/powder formulations in a compact.

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Also, for the record, if anybody cares about what I thought about the Casey/Santorum PA Sen. debate on MTP this morning, I thought that Casey stood back just enough to let Santorum embarrass the hell out of himself by continuing to insist that there were WMD in Iraq (serious reality negotiation problems there, whoa) but that he didn't have interesting or decisive answers re. domestic policy and fiscal responsibility and that is seriously not cool in a 21st century Democrat. Step it up, Bob! The rest of the country is counting on you to get him out of office!

"lay charges" v. "file charges"

USAmericans file or press charges against someone for wrongdoing; Canadians seem to lay them. Also Aussies, Kiwis and South Africans. (They lay charges too, that is. I do not mean to imply that Canadians lay Aussies, Kiwis & South Africans, although you know those randy Canadians!) Brits? A quick and dirty Beeb search turns up a lot more hits for "file charges", and most of those returned from a search on "lay charges" have to do with Enron.

Any interesting things to report on this front?