June 2004 Archives

The term 'meritocracy', like 'nuclear family', is commonly used in a posititve way. However, both were originally meant in a negative sense. 'Nuclear family' was supposed to contrast negatively with the idea of the extended family, yet is nowadays used by many as a negative contrast with the lone parent family.

I recently read that the term 'hot dog' came from the 1904 St Louis World's Fair. Apparently, there was a rumour that some of the performers there ate dog, and that local dogs had disappeared, so the vendors started calling frankfurters in a bun 'hot dogs'.

According to Private Eye, No 1107 Ofsted (the Office for Standards in Education) recently criticised English teaching at a school on the grounds that "subject teachers have not received suffiecient trianing to help them do their job" [sic].

We have added quite a lot of functionality to polls over the last few days. A random poll is now shown on the testing page, which should help produce more accurate and representative results.