Dead Programmer's Cafe

Tag: Sociolinguistics

  • Me, in portrait form

    My friend Chris Andreotti painted a super awesome picture of me:

    I think he got pretty much everything right: the absent gaze, the crumpled blue shirt, the hipster glasses. Chris rocks!

  • What Up?


    Urban Dictionary is an awesome slang recourse. Thanks, , you non-blogging bastard. Before I used to go to Everything2 for all slang related research. But Urban Dictionary is so much better.

    For instance there I learned that usage of “word” as affirmation probably originates from “the word of God.”

  • Mmmm, nucular ..

    The spirit of adventure is alive and well in me. Today instead of just eating my Atkins bar, I decided to nuke it in a microwave for 15 seconds. Well, it became much more edible!
    Guess I was not the first one to figure this out.

    Speaking about nucular. One of my favorite magazines, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, had a very funny article about mispronunciation of “nuclear”. Homer Simpson is not the only offender in this matter. Eisenhower , Reagan, Bush-I usually said something like “NOO-kyoo-lur”, “NU-kyuh-ler” or “NU-cu-lar”. Carter, in a class of his own, liked to reminisce about being a “nu-KEE-ar engineer” (I wonder, was he the only engineer among American presidents?)

    One of my favorite FIDO origin lines from was “I put instant coffee in the microwave oven and almost went back in time.” I don’t advise it, even for time traveling :)