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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50 Cent's crib

This New York Times article on 50 Cent's life in the sleepy suburb of Farmington, Conn. , is quite wry - But a cook at China Palace said Mr. Jackson could save 10 percent on any order over $30... Ah, the privileges of fame... 10% off Chinese takeout! For the party, Mr. Jackson ordered more than $5,000 worth of liquor, including "a lot of Baccardi," according to the owner of a Farmington liquor store who spoke on the condition of anonymity "to protect his privacy." Sipping Bacardi (ooh, caught a Times misspelling) like it's his birthday. How anonymous could a liquor store owner in a suburban town be? It's not like there're hundreds of liquor stores in the town, I'm guessing. I like how they keep referring to him as Mr. Jackson...
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English words that are borrowed from Malay

I really like studying etymology and the origins of words, and I'm interested in the fairly omnivorous nature of English, which has a huge "borrowed" vocabulary. (Random fact: "bugger" is related to "Bulgaria".) So I thought every now and then I'd put up random lists of words English borrows from various languages - well, besides French, German, and Spanish, or I'll exhaust myself from typing. I thought I'd start with Malay, national language of Singapore. Wikipedia already has a partial list , but I thought I'd come up with a list that also included a few other loan words. The obvious ones are words for things that are indigenous to the region - plants (durian, rambutan, bamboo, sago, camphor ), animals (orang-utan, pangolin, cassowary), and cloth ( gingham , sarong). But there's a whole bunch that're less obvious, even to native English speakers from this region: amok . If you asked me to name one English loan word that...
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