April 10, 2006
Boy's Hat
An e-mail chain on a Park Slope, Brooklyn list-serv about a lost hat was recently written up in New York magazine. As described by Ben Mathis-Lilley:
A few weeks ago, a member of the Park Slope Parents e-mail forum who’d encountered a stray piece of winterwear in the neighborhood posted a notice to the group titled “Found: boy’s hat.” … [S]ubscriber “Lisa” went public with her problems regarding the gender-specifying description of the hat. Wondering how such a categorization would feel to a spiky-hat-wearing girl, Lisa wrote, “It’s innocent little comments like this that I find the most hurtful.” A third member responded soon after, saying such political correctness drove her “up the wall,” and a heated discussion ensued. Lisa’s supporters questioned their opponents’ commitment to “the free interchange of ideas and questions” … while an opposing faction expressed facetious dismay that the original poster, who had described the hat as likely belonging to “an older child,” was not more considerate toward “younger children who happen to have large heads.” … [O]ne poster questioned the use of “hat,” asking if the object might be more sensitively labeled a “soft, porous bowl."
This description doesn't do justice to the intensity and comedy of the full list-serv exchange, however, which is on-line at Gawker here. The funniest post is the last one.
Posted by Lonne at 11:45 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (1)
April 05, 2006
Virginia has gotten rid of the common law!
This is a bad sign!
Posted by Morgan at 10:12 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
April 03, 2006
Yiddish in Australian?
While Googling to read about Yiddish, I found this article in The Australian about Yiddish in Australia, which includes this fact:
Yiddish has left its mark on colloquial Australian, too, with words such as cobber, motser and shickered.
Huh? Yiddish words that are obscure in the USA have entered the very day vocabulary of Australia? Funny how, when the same languages (English+Yiddish) mix in different locations, the result is different!
So what do these words mean? A quick Google search reveals that cobber means pal/buddy; shickered means drunk; and the most interesting is, motser (also spelled, "motza"), which means, "Motza is an Aussie slang term meaning a large amount of money or more specifically a large gambling win .. it can also refer to a 'certainty' that would ensure such a win" (according to this). Note the etymology: it is from matzoh, so it is literally "bread money" - note the connection between bread and money.
Posted by Morgan at 12:39 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
