I hear children now, especially in the cities, talking in an appalling fashion, so devoid of sharp consonants and proper vowel sounds that it might be the mumbling of a village idiot. Down, I say, with any candidate who talks like that. If his speech is so faulty, he probably cannot think.

"Perhaps the clumsier writers do ignore the existing distinctions while the sophisticated use them to play sophisticated tunes; perhaps the scrupulously objective lexicographer cannot establish those distinctions from his quotation slips alone. For all that, distinctions do exist. They exist in good writing, and they exist in the linguistic consciousness of the educated."

...the pointy-haired boss doesn't mind if his company gets their ass kicked, so long as no one can prove it's his fault. The safest plan for him personally is to stick close to the center of the herd.

Within large organizations, the phrase used to describe this approach is "industry best practice."

It's hard to predict what life will be like in a hundred years. There are only a few things we can say with certainty. We know that everyone will drive flying cars, that zoning laws will be relaxed to allow buildings hundreds of stories tall, that it will be dark most of the time, and that women will all be trained in the martial arts.

"It's over, and can't be helped, and that's one consolation, as they
always say in Turkey, when they cut the wrong man's head off"

"I'm not crazy, I've just been in a very bad mood for 40 years."

BTW, this is *Thursday*. One uses *odd* numbered sendmails on Thursday.

"Words have meaning and names have power . . . The universe began with a
word . . . How can you have language without thought, and how can you
conceive a thought without language?"

If your boss gets drunk and offers to photocopy her
posterior, do not helpfully suggest pressing "reduce 75%."