Archive for February 7th, 2009
I Think This Counts as a Missed Business Opportunity
An Angela™ doll. Come on Mattel: Surely every girl in Germany would want one. (HT: Bjarne Tveskov’s twitter)
Okay. So, the doll is younger-looking and slimmer than the real Merkel1, but remember: None of the Israeli political leaders are one day older than 27. At least if the posters are to be believed.
- Actually, it reminds me more of Ursula von der Leyen [↩]
Quote of the Week
Apologies for not offering very many original insights right now, but I’m desperately fighting a couple of nasty deadlines, so there is little excess energy for blogging.
Still, Geoffrey K. Pullum at LanguageLog saved my week completely in an observation about the British putting their feet in their mouths:
You see, in the USA, where religion is strictly excluded from government, there is government approval of faith-based health and social services; but in the UK, where religion is firmly established as a part of the governmental structure and the Queen is the head of the Church of England as well as the Head of State, you are not allowed to bring your theistic mumblings into a state-funded hospital workplace. I know it’s confusing, but I don’t make the rules; I just try to report the linguistic news of the week.
I’d say that is a pretty precise way of putting it, and it would work in Denmark as well.