Now this is a good idea

Particularly for lazy monoglot types like me.

 

http://www.threadless.com/product/989/International_Translation

 

Sensitive, me?

'Thanks for the question, you little jerk.  You're drafted'

 

- Sen. John McCain, responding jokingly to a high school questioner who commented that at 71, he might be too old to serve as President (quoted in Time, 17 September 2007)

I hope he used 'protection'

'Former US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage likens US relations with New Zealand at present to "dating".

"It's just like dating. I think we are on a date now," he said at the second US-NZ Partnership Forum in Auckland, which finished yesterday'

- NZ Herald, 12 September 2007

A firm basis for policy-making

'I am an engineer, a master of calculation and tabulation.  I write out hypotheses for hours, I reject and I prove them again.  I make plans based on reason and proof'

- President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says his calculations as an engineer as well as his belief in god convince him that Iran will not be attacked by western powers trying to end its nuclear programme [Source: Reuters, quoted in New Scientist, 8 September 2007]

On the semiotics of Ghostbusters

Okay, I know it's a corporate advert, but I still liked it. They play it at the Prince Charles all the time and it still gets a snicker from the audience.

Think before you Facebook

Tom Beech, 20, an employee of UK retailer Argos, was sacked for gross misconduct when his employers discovered he'd set up a Facebook page titled "I Work At Argos And Can't Wait To Leave Because It's Shit". Beech was quoted as saying:

I'm stunned they've fired me for this. I had a really bad day and was feeling overworked and underpaid.

- Guardian, 11 August 2007

Great, as long as you don't like movies

Broadcaster Sky NZ has started up a Sky Movies Greats channel... with a discerning playlist that includes Coyote Ugly, Flashdance  and Scary Movie 2.  So, no Battleship Potempkin, then?

Frogs' legs

I once went out walking in the Languedoc with a retired army general who always wore long trousers, even in the blistering heat. When I asked him why he did not wear shorts he looked at me sadly and said "there's already enough suffering in the world".

 

- John Laurenson, BBC News, 4 August 2007

This man was born in 1917

And he's third in line for the US presidency. Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV) sure does like the word 'barbaric', or maybe repetition was just way more popular back in the days before the talkies came along.



[Courtesy of Ruth]

How to speak Lawyer

'Section 13 abolished the common law offences of champerty and barratry, challenging to fight, eavesdropping or being "a common scold or a common night walker." It also repealed the offence of praemunire, which had survived on the statute books since 1392. It preserves the common law offence of embracery'

 

- Wikipedia, on the (UK) Criminal Law Act 1967