"We know that the citizens of East Albany [Georgia] have complained about drugs and prostitution. This is just the tip of the iceberg in what we are going to start doing in that neighborhood. We have heard the citizen's complaints, and they have not fallen on deaf ears."

A young Chinese woman was left partially deaf following a passionate kiss from her boyfriend. "While kissing is normally very safe, doctors advise people to proceed with caution," wrote the China Daily.

Bruce Cohen also urges everyone to "proceed with caution" when it comes to reacting to Prop 8, chiefly when it comes to boycotts and finger-pointing.

We still often hear that same-sex marriage would destroy traditional marriage, but now the claim is not so much that actual marriages would be harmed; rather, it's that the dictionary would have to be changed.

This is just the tip of the iceberg of our private slang, and we're only two people. Multiply our sample by all the groups, large and small, who improvise with the English language for their own convenience and pleasure, and you see the problem.

"Spinach isn't poison," said Daniel Sumner, an agricultural economist. "Yes, there has been a problem. But there are outbreaks in hamburgers that make the news, and we haven't quit eating hamburgers."

Just as surely as the SUV will yield to the hybrid, the half-pound-a-day meat era will end. “Who said people had to eat meat three times a day?” asked Mr. Pollan.

To my mind, the lesson of the Donner party is not so much about what they did or did not consume as it is about our appetite for such dramas.

But minor drama is the lifeblood of suburbs.

It's not so much that these are bad movies -- well, they are -- it's that they are the kind of movies that have helped turn vampires from scary, miserable, creatures of the night into S&M enthusiasts who sit around in their mansions all day long.

I mean, at the end of the day, is this a great language — or what? I mean, it's a language to die for.