Things I’ve Seen

via Amberli

The Washington Post’s Style Invitational once again asked readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition. Here are this year’s winners…

My personal favourite:

Giraffiti (n): Vandalism spray-painted very, very high.

The previous competition was for alternative meanings…

Coffee (n.), a person who is coughed upon.

Go. Enjoy.

I’m copying this out from an advert which I noticed in the Delta in-flight magazine…

The Business Roundtable Reports that Corporate America Is In Crisis Because of the Inability of Executives to Write Well

Yes, it’s an advert for the “Buckley School of Written Expression”, whose grasp of their own subject matter apparently Does not Extend to Where to Use Or Not use Capital Letters.

Republican Senator Trent Lott knows what to do…

Honestly, it’s a little tougher than I thought it was going to be … If we have to, we just mow the whole place down, see what happens. You’re dealing with insane suicide bombers who are killing our people, and we need to be very aggressive in taking them out.

Perhaps this is what Senator Lott has in mind (read the photographer’s story):

Channel surfing in my hotel room I saw an advert that just had to be a joke. But no, the website confirms it… H&R Block - Double Your Refund Instant Win Game

Go to any participating H&R Block office, get your 2004 federal tax return prepared by an H&R Block tax associate and we will give you a Double Your Refund Instant Win Game Card. Scratch and match two of the same prize and win that prize. It’s that easy!

From The Register - Beer fights cancer

Scientists at Okayama University in Japan have rather agreeably discovered that unidentified compounds in lager and stout may help to prevent DNA damage leading to cancer.

CNN report, without even a hint of irony, that the USA is split on Bush as uniter or divider:

On the eve of President Bush’s inauguration, a poll shows the nation is split over whether he has united or divided the nation

Through the groggy daze of just having woken up this morning I hear, on the radio, that the temperature was 12 degrees. “That’s a nice change,” I think to myself, “it’s been really cold up until now.”. Then the rest of my brain wakes up and reminds me that in America they use Fahrenheit.

“With the windchill it’s just below zero,” continued the cheerful radio presenter, before going on to say that school wouldn’t until ten this morning this morning (apparently they are concerned that kids would freeze to death while waiting for the bus…). And to think that just the other day one of the guys I’m visiting here asked me - with the utmost seriousness - whether the climate was better in Sydney…

From the footnotes on Yahoo! Driving Directions

When using any driving directions or map, it’s a good idea to do a reality check and make sure the road still exists

Actually, when I first got a Neverlost in a car hire, in Denver a few years ago, it did try to take me up the on-ramp and onto a freeway which was part way through being built. You know those movies where they do a jump off the end of an unfinished bridge….?

Since I’m in Reston for work for the next few days, I took the chance to walk the streets of Washington. At least, as much as that is possible with the security surrounding this week’s inauguration.

Washington has much of what is best about America; top of the list, of course, being the Smithsonian (although I didn’t realise until today that the eponymous Smithson was actually British - and never even visited the USA. In fact, he was a Pembroke College academic from Oxford). A whole suite of completely free museums, complete with helpful and friendly volunteer guides, all dedicated to the pursuit and dissemination of knowledge. The Natural History museum was predictably good, especially the plate tectonics displays and the wildlife photography (where I was suprised to note just how many of the top pictures were taken on digital equipment), but my great accidental find was the deceptively big Asian art building (almost entirely hidden underground), where an Islamic art exhibition had just opened.

But there was no escaping the realities of the current day, either. The Washington Post headline jumped out from ever newstand… Bush Says Election Ratified Iraq Policy

President Bush said the public’s decision to reelect him was a ratification of his approach toward Iraq and that there was no reason to hold any administration officials accountable for mistakes or misjudgments in prewar planning or managing the violent aftermath.

I finished the day (with the exception of an extended battle with my ‘Neverlost’ as I tried to get out of the city) at the Jefferson Memorial. I wonder what Thomas Jefferson would have made of the Bush administration’s total disregard for fact in developing and - more - presenting policy?

I have sworn upon the alter of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.

On the bottom of the “in-room dining” menu at the hotel I’ve just arrived at in Reston…

For your convenience, a 19% gratuity, a $2.50 delivery charge and a 4.5% sales tax will be added automatically.

Now that’s what I call service.