A study of 4000 public employees in the UK found that the symptoms usually ascribed to “sick building syndrome” are actually more strongly correlated to “job stress and lack of support in the workplace” than to physically measurable triggers (i.e. “poor air circulation and unacceptably high levels of CO2, noise, fungus and airborne chemicals”).
On the other hand, if you work in a place that makes you feel awful, it doesn’t much matter why you feel that way, or what the cause is . . .
From the always-interesting New York Observer, Jason Horowitz has written an article about “the Affect.”
From the San Fernando Valley, where some think the accent has its origins in the infamous Valley Girl, to the soap stores of Soho, young women are communicating differently. But unlike their Cockney counterpart, they don’t peddle wilted flowers in the London markets. They have college diplomas from Georgetown and Penn, and respectable addresses in Kips Bay and wherever else laundry machines in doorman buildings spin Theory pants and Michael Stars shirts in a black and pastel blur. They sell advertising space and plan events in New York City. They practice law (uhhhhm, ob-juhk-tion?), trade stocks (baiiiigh? seh-uhhhl?), and eat at swanky restaurants (sew guuuuuhhhd.) This Affect, however, is not inherited from parents, though it’s an effective tool for extracting money and presents from them. It’s not even picked up in the playground — except in its more posh precincts. It’s caught from other proudly upper-middle-class girls who love nothing more than to linger on a vowel.
The article includes some observations by John V. Singler, a sociolinguistics professor at New York University, who listened to recordings of the Affect.
There was more pitch range than usual. Usually the extremes of pitch change for emphasis, and this wasn’t the case. In terms of the amount of pitch variation, in ordinary sentences and not in places of emphasis. I hadn’t noticed that before.
Other signature characteristics of the Affect are glottal stops in place of “t’s” and that “high, rising intonation contour, more commonly referred to as “uptalk” — the seemingly contagious practice of lifting the end of every phrase to create the effect of a question.”
On the one hand, Horowitz notes, professional women are paying voice coaches to help them unlearn this accent. (I guess it’s an accent? lol)
On the other hand, it may represent the latest in the ongoing drift of spoken English, or, as Horowitz slyly notes, “The time may not be far off when mothers will be reprimanding their children for not inserting a ‘like’ before an adjective.”
This guy’s got one steady hand. His name is Jin Yin Hua and he’s painted a panda on a human hair.
His paintbrush was a single rabbit hair.
The New York Times has published an article about him (registration required).
I predict the man will be understood, one day, as having importance far beyond the world of wine; as somehow epitomizing the late 20th century boomer generation American.
Champion Bohem C’est La, aka Vivi, the whippet that escaped from her crate at the JFK airport right after the Westminster dog show, has been spotted in Flushing. More than once.
There’s now a Newsday blog dedicated to all things Vivi. It’s got some interesting information, including why they can’t use a tranquilizer gun to catch her (low stores of body fat on this breed make her potentially too sensitive to barbiturates — unlike coyotes!) and why a sight hound on the run may be harder to catch than a dog of another breed.
After a two-day chase, police caught a coyote who’d been running around Central Park.
I blogged about a study on Chicago’s urban coyote population here. They’re actually all over the place, and doing quite well in our cities. Sightings in Central Park will doubtless increase.
UPDATE: sadly, the central park coyote died after being captured :(
I just learned about this but from what I have seen in my first scan through, the info looks pretty good.
For a Friday catblogging photo?
Here’s another book review. The subject, this time, is Seinfeld, Master of Its Domain: Revisiting Television’s Greatest Sitcom, edited by David Lavery and Sara Lewis Dunne of Middle Tennessee State University.
The review appears in the National Post, and was written by Robert Fulford.
Here’s an excerpt of the column to set the tone:
But this latest book notably differs in tone from standard university products. Appreciation and enjoyment, combined with wonder at the cleverness of the program’s writers, set the tone. The platoon of scholars writing the essays understand Seinfeld as brilliant popular art, not merely a specimen demanding intellectual dissection. This means we can admire their insights without giving up our love for the best television farce we’ll ever see.
Enjoy ;-)
There’s only one person known to have it.
Her symptoms? A preternatural memory.
Give her any date, and she can
recall the day of the week, usually what the weather was like on that day, personal details of her life at that time, and major news events that occurred . . .
[She] remembers trivial details as clearly as major events. Asked what happened on Aug 16, 1977, she knew that Elvis Presley had died, but she also knew that a California tax initiative passed on June 6 of the following year, and a plane crashed in Chicago on May 25 of the next year, and so forth. Some may have had a personal meaning for her, but some did not.
She’s not an idiot savant. She’s a “fully functioning person.”
Now–isn’t this typical!–she’s been kidnapped by scientists and is being held in a lab where they’re preparing to run a series of MRIs . . . ha ha ha, just kidding about the kidnapping part. She’s volunteered to be studied. We guess.
(I wonder if her mother ate a lot of eggs.)
Hyperthymestic syndrome
