Sunday 17 April 2016

Free, White and 21 & Cabbages - Stories I've posted on Facebook

Recently I post more stories on Facebook than I put in my blog. Since they will inevitably evaporate into the ether (like this blog won't*) here are some recent stories and comments.

My kind of book. Because if pedantically correcting "less" & "fewer" gives people a "false “sense of social and intellectual smugness and superiority”", then imagine what I get correcting pedants for their unfounded pedantry? Now, about the pronounciation of H...
Modern usages that horrify linguistic purists in fact have deep historical roots, argues this Oxford scholar who praises texting, Tesco’s grammar and ‘amazeballs’
THEGUARDIAN.COM|BY FARAMERZ DABHOIWALA

Now here's some cracking data for you. Top Tip, click every blob in the second graph. Yes, THAT many movies with 100% male dialogue!

Lately, Hollywood has been taking so much shit for rampant sexism and racism. The prevailing theme: white men dominate movie roles.
POLYGRAPH.COOL

This is a bit of a shocker. I don't remember even hearing the phrase before, but I must have heard it a hundred times and it passed me by. Good to see it being challenged (mid-clip) by the sixties. But what a mind-set America had, which helps explain how a lot of people still think.


-3:18
1,009,341 Views
Jezebel added a new video: Free, White and 21: The Buried Catchphrase of Classic Hollywood.
“Free, white, and 21” appeared in dozens of movies in the ’30s and ’40s, a proud assertion that positioned white privilege as the ultimate argument-stopper. Th...
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In Hitchin I walked past the Dyspraxia Association. Bumped into the manager.


Full marks to Stuart Jeffries in the Grauniad for a nifty article on maths in movies, ending in an Abbott & Costello clip. http://www.theguardian.com/…/mathematics-movies-the-man-who…
Watch the video «Abbott & Costello - In The Navy - 7 into 28 goes 13 times» uploaded by Dunekoff on Dailymotion.
DAILYMOTION.COM

Some fascinating footage of 1959 Bristol here in this otherwise interminable half-hour long Party Political Broadcast from the olden days
The Labour Party takes a heartfelt look at Bristol council’s social(ist) housing and education agenda, spinning a 'new story from an old city'.
PLAYER.BFI.ORG.UK

Radio 4's brilliant More Or Less just looked at a Brexit story that's quite widely circulated, that the EU Guideline about cabbages runs to 29,000 words. Can you guess what the facts really are?
Investigating the numbers in the news.
BBC.CO.UK


*Sarcastic. I was being sarcastic.

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