There is nothing meh about the journey of the latest entry in the Collins English Dictionary. Rather, it illustrates how e-mail and the internet are creating language.

“Meh” started out in the US and Canada as an interjection signifying mediocrity or indifference and has evolved, via the internet and an episode of The Simpsons, into a common adjective meaning boring, apathetic or unimpressive in British English.
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"..People are increasingly writing in a register somewhere in between spoken and written English.”

Meh chosen for 30th anniversary of Collins English Dictionary - Times Online

Mitch Mitchell, the British drummer in the seminal 1960s band the Jimi Hendrix Experience, has been found dead in his US hotel room, authorities say.

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Hendrix's drummer Mitchell dies

TODAY is the 90th anniversary of the armistice that ended the First World War, and it will be commemorated very differently on each side of the Atlantic and across the borders of Europe. It’s a reminder that not all “victors” experience wars in the same way, and that their citizens can have almost as much difficulty as those of the vanquished states in coping with the collective trauma of conflict.

For Americans, Veterans Day celebrates the survivors of all the nation’s 20th and 21st century wars. In France and Britain, by contrast, the mood is altogether more somber. In these countries, it is the dead who, since 1919, have been the focus of the ceremonies.

i've been wearing my poppy

Op-Ed Contributor - A Holiday to End All Wars - NYTimes.com

There are three words you will hardly ever hear a person in power use - "I don't know." Why is doubt, which most of us experience every day, virtually unheard of in politics, asks Michael Blastland.
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Doubt seems a dangerous thing in politics. If possible, you don't admit it. Not about your values, nor your analysis, nor the policies that will magically bring about the change that you are certain is needed.

One response to the economic upheaval of the past few months might be to conclude that we know far less than we think we know, and pretending otherwise is rash and damaging. Yet while economic confidence evaporates, another kind of confidence still thrives - confidence in the power of our own analysis, of who is to blame and why, the strident confidence of politicians or business people in their preferred remedies.
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Is this a general, but dangerous habit - that those in public life often drift through events of which no-one is the master, all the while pretending to a false confidence, or even certainty? Are our leaders incapable of saying what all should surely now admit, that often they don't know? Perhaps the wreckage from the past is all the evidence we need, for didn't they speak with certainty then too?

BBC NEWS | Magazine | Three little words so hard to say

I almost lost it Tuesday night when television cameras found the Rev. Jesse Jackson in the crowd at Chicago's Grant Park and I saw the tears streaming down his face. His brio and bluster were gone, replaced by what looked like awestruck humility and unrestrained joy.
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I can't help but experience Obama's election as a gesture of recognition and acceptance -- which is patently absurd, if you think about it. The labor of black people made this great nation possible. Black people planted and tended the tobacco, indigo and cotton on which America's first great fortunes were built. Black people fought and died in every one of the nation's wars. Black people fought and died to secure our fundamental rights under the Constitution. We don't have to ask for anything from anybody.

Yet something changed on Tuesday when Americans -- white, black, Latino, Asian -- entrusted a black man with the power and responsibility of the presidency. I always meant it when I said the Pledge of Allegiance in school. I always meant it when I sang the national anthem at ball games and shot off fireworks on the Fourth of July. But now there's more meaning in my expressions of patriotism, because there's more meaning in the stirring ideals that the pledge and the anthem and the fireworks represent.

a personal reaction -- healing the wounds

Eugene Robinson - Morning in America - washingtonpost.com

xkcd - A Webcomic - Election

When Lewis Hamilton was eight and winning his first karting races he was tipped as a future Formula One champion, a prediction that came to glorious fruition on Sunday in Brazil. So what marks an eight-year-old as a potential champion?

BBC NEWS | Magazine | Ten ways to spot a future F1 champ aged eight

When officials asked for the Welsh translation of a road sign, they thought the reply was what they needed.

Unfortunately, the e-mail response to Swansea council said in Welsh: "I am not in the office at the moment. Please send any work to be translated."

So that was what went up under the English version, barring lorries from a road near a supermarket.

BBC NEWS | Wales | E-mail error ends up on road sign

i love this photo

In pictures: Wildlife photographer of the year | Environment | guardian.co.uk

Bahahaha....not very smart Palin (not that I think many scientists were going to support you anyway, but...)

Palin's comment on science research....