Stepping back

An MIT graduate railing against technology? Say it ain't so!

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More news bits

Quite funny: George W. Bush was caught without cash at church when the offering plate was passed around, and had to get help from his dad. I always forget to put cash in my wallet, actually, so I sympathise. (Via Esoterically.net .) Extremely sad: Italy's real-life Romeo and Juliet , this one set in Padua instead of fair Verona. Just plain strange: New Zealand gang steals dead member's body from his own funeral . Elv1s 4ever: Elvis has the 1000th UK number 1 single with "One Night". Quite a remarkable feat for a performer who's been dead forever. Although it's probably more due to a decline in the singles format. Spiralling downwards: Paris Hilton caught on tape shoplifting . Apparently, being a Hilton means you don't have to check out. The idea of catching P-Hilt on video has jumped the shark.
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Verbal agreement

From a Grauniad Guardian article on James Dyson , inventor of the dual-cyclone vacuum cleaner: He still has one major ambition. To become a verb, in the same way that Hoover - or, as he puts it, "the alternative" - has done. I suggest to him that people are already using his product but still saying they are "hoovering". He smiles. "I don't think they'll be doing that for long," he says. That struck me as unusual - it's very rare for a firm's leader to say that he wants his product to become a verb. Lots of other companies like TiVo and Google have tried desperately to avoid their name becoming a verb, for fear of the name becoming so generic that the trademark gets diluted. But then, the Languagehat archives seem to show (see comment near the bottom) that Dyson's big on turning his name into a verb. *** Sadly, due to its distinct lack of vowels, the chances of "sng" becoming a verb seem close to zero, regardless of whate...
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