Which paw do you use?
“Scientists have discovered that most pets – including cats, dogs, parrots and even fish – are right- or left-‘handed,’” Steven Swinford writes for The Sunday Times of London. “They prefer using one paw, foot or eye over the other. Researchers previously assumed that the trait of being left- or right-handed – known as lateralization – was confined to humans, and that animals were ambidextrous. They have now found that nearly every creature has evolved to specialize in using one side over the other. In cats, scientists have concluded that females tend to favour their right paw when trying to extract a treat from a jar, while toms favour their left. The same gender divide applies in dogs. Fish tend to have a dominant eye when looking at potential predators. Right-eyed fish circle threats clockwise and left-eyed fish move anti-clockwise. Lateralization seems to help animals to react faster, increasing their chances of survival.”
Doing time in Norway
“By the time the trumpets sound, the candles have been lit and the salmon platters garnished,” William Lee Adams writes for Time magazine. “Harald V, King of Norway, enters the room, and 200 guests stand to greet him. Then a chorus of 30 men and women, each wearing a blue police uniform, launches into a spirited rendition of We Are the World. This isn’t cabaret night at Oslo’s Royal Palace. It’s a gala to inaugurate Halden Fengsel, Norway’s newest prison.” Spread over 75 acres, the institution boasts jogging trails and a two-bedroom house where prisoners can host their families during overnight visits. “In the Norwegian prison system, there’s a focus on human rights and respect,” says Are Hoidal, the prison’s governor. “We don’t see any of this as unusual.”
It’s all family TV?
“It may seem dated,” The Economist reports, “but the image of the family clustered around the living-room set is an accurate depiction of how most people watch television in most countries. … Efforts to improve the TV-watching experience have often gone wrong because they took people at their word. The past 10 years have seen a parade of websites and set-top boxes – Apple TV, Boxee, Joost, Roku – offering a huge range of content and interactive features. All promised to deliver TV the way people (that is, individuals) really want it. Because they failed to take account of the social nature of television, not one has caught on. Efforts to turn TVs into personal e-mail devices and home-shopping outlets have fared no better. ‘The killer application on television turns out to be television,’ says Richard Lindsay-Davies, CEO of the Digital TV Group.”
Chinglish
“For English speakers with subpar Chinese skills, daily life in China offers a confounding array of choices,” Andrew Jacobs of The New York Times reports from Shanghai. “At banks, there are machines for ‘cash withdrawing’ and ‘cash recycling.’ The menus of local restaurants might present such delectables as ‘fried enema,’ ‘monolithic tree mushroom stem squid,’ and a mysterious thirst-quencher known as ‘The Jew’s Ear Juice.’ Those who have had a bit too much monolithic tree mushroom stem squid could find themselves requiring roomier attire: extra-large sizes sometimes come in ‘fatso’ or ‘lard bucket’ categories. These and other fashions can be had at the clothing chain known as Scat.”
Haig-speak
The death in February of U.S. general Alexander Haig brought many tributes to his distinguished military and political career, Rob Kyff writes for The Hartford (Conn.) Courant, but the man’s contributions to the English language were largely overlooked. For instance:
– He loved to use nouns as verbs: “I’ll have to caveat my response, Senator,” and “Not in the way you contexted it, Senator.”
– The general invented several words: “nuance-al” (“There are nuance-al differences between Henry Kissinger and me”); “augmentees” (newly hired employees); and “snake-check” (to closely examine a plan).
– As for his metaphors, at the 1988 Republican convention, Mr. Haig told delegates that the Democratic Party was “blind as a bat … hanging upside down in dark, damp caves up to its navel in guano.”
We’ll always have pants
“A law banning women from wearing trousers in Paris may finally be lifted more than two centuries after first being enforced,” The Daily Telegraph reports. “The curious rule was first introduced in late 1799 by Paris’s police chief, and stipulated that any Parisienne wishing to ‘dress like a man’ must seek special permission from the city’s main police station. This makes the laissez-faire French capital theoretically more hard-line than Islamic states like Sudan in the fashion stakes. But a group of 10 French MPs has now submitted a draft bill to parliament to remove the law, which has survived repeated attempts to repeal it.” In 1892, the ban was relaxed to allow trousers “as long as the woman is holding the reins of a horse.” In 1909, it was further amended to allow women in trousers provided they were “on a bicycle or holding it by the handlebars.”
Thought du jour
“Poverty and slavery are … only two forms of – one might almost say two words for – the same thing, the essence of which is that a man’s energies are expended for the most part not on his own behalf but on that of others; the outcome being partly that he is overloaded with work, partly that his needs are very inadequately met.”
– Arthur Schopenhauer
