It’s fun when two of my favourite feeds come together in a single item, to whit “Shooting down ‘amateur grammar nazis’” over at Language Log, which riffs on a recent xkcd cartoon.

I remember, as a young cub reporter, being infected with the news editor’s aversion to the sloppy use of “situati...

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How is it possible that only 87 people can churn out 21.7 million lbs of hamburger — that's 9,842 tonnes, 86 million hamburgers, give or take — in a year? Topps Meat Co was forced to close its business on Friday after having to recall all that meat because at least some had been tainted by E. col...

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Start: 95.4 Last week: ??.? This week: 89.5

Thursday 4 October: Pleasantly surprised this morning after getting on the scales for the first time in three weeks. I’ve been eating three meals a day for the past two weeks, and I thought it would show more. But maybe that’s the unfamiliar foods effec...

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It was pure good fortune that I read Victor Mair's guest post over at Language Log a couple of days ago. In it, Mair treats with loving respect the details of a sign seen at Silk Street Market in Beijing. The sign lists the Recommended Words and Forbidden Words for the benefit of the salesgirls at...

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Yesterday was full-on tourist travel day. Summer Palace first thing in the morning. Then the Great Wall. Then lunch in an authentically exotic restaurant hard by the Chinese Ethnic Culture Park. Then the Forbidden City and finally Tiananmen Square. Nothing I could say about any of those places wou...

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