June 2005 Archives

The British Potato Council has a campaign to remove the expression couch potato from the Oxford English dictionary on the grounds that does a healthy and nutritious vegetable a disservice. They are also ignoring the fact that the term 'vegetable' is used for a person in a coma. 'Banana' comes in for real disresepect as it means 'mad' and also is used in banana republic. If they want one vegetable to have a positive image, shouldn't they extend their 'campaign' to all fruit and vegetables in the name of consistency?

I saw an article about the arrests in Brazil of people involved in illegal logging and it said that the estimated area of forest they had cleared was the equivalent of 52,000 football (soccer) pitches.

The search engine Exalead offers some very interesting and powerful features for language searches. It's in a beta version at the moment, but the advanced search page offers a number of interesting possibilities.