YOU TALK FUNNY

Two experiments are reported in which subjects viewed films of automobile accidents and then answered questions about events occurring in the films. The question, “About how fast were the cars going when they smashed into each other?” elicited higher estimates
of speed than questions which used the verbs collided, bumped, contucted, or hit in place of smashed. On a retest one week later, those subjects who received the verb smashed were more likely to say “yes” to the question, “Did you see any broken glass?”, even though broken glass was not present in the film. These results are consistent with the view that the questions asked subsequent to an event can cause a reconstruction in one’s memory of that event.

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The Scientific Equivalent of “When did you stop beating your wife?”

The quote is from the original study and not the post linked but you know I would never link you to a long-ass study—much less a PDF of a long-ass study.

Demonstrably: don’t be scared.

Thought for the day: demonstrably is a very angry sounding word. But do not be afraid, it won’t hurt you. It just means “in an obvious and provable manner.” But I guess that would scare a lot of people actually because so many people are full of shit.

I think this post just rendered my whole blog useless. 

New word usage alert! Slash old people are late to the party again!

— ‘A Rare Bird Sighting’: ‘Slash’ As A New Conjunction : The Two-Way : NPR

This guy is mad! I agree though. Email isn’t a formal medium and signoffs are so formal. I like when my dad says “best” though but old people are always funny on the internet because they don’t know the norms. I like xoxo because it’s silly and everyone knows I don’t like hugging. I also like “sincerely” because I’m basically never being sincere so it’s a bonus joke!

Aw, poor cursive. I’ve been saying for years what a waste it was to learn cursive—imagine what I could have learned instead! Like social skills or something.

For some weird reason, I still use cursive for checks. I’ve been trying to transition to print but it’s hard. For some reason I thought you had to write checks in cursive. No idea.

One question: how will kids nail down a signature if they don’t know cursive? Are signatures a thing of the past? I hope not because everyone agrees I have a super awesome signature. 

It’s tough to be a European-American

I was recently reminded that this blog exists. In separate news, I came across this article in Philly Mag: Being White in Philly. OMG it’s the worst! But linguistically, it irks me too. Who even says “whites” and “blacks” anymore? I say “white people” and “black people.” I don’t even say “jews.” I feel like “whites” and “blacks” is A. a holdover from more blatantly racist times and B. commodifying people. It also irritates me how he goes back and forth between “blacks” and “African-Americans.” I’m personally trying to bring “European-American” into our lexicon. To even things up. Because if you say “whites” but then say “African-Americans” it’s like you’re saying black people are less American or something. Like white people are the baseline for American and other people are only half-American.

And more and more, I find it awkward whenever someone says “African-American.” I don’t find the term that terrible (provided we use European-American in conjunction), but it seems like there’s some underlying racism when a white person says it. Or it’s just awkward like their internal racism is causing them to walk on eggshells. 

In conclusion: Oy. 

My new favorite site

Better than English: A site devoted to those words you just can’t translate. I haven’t looked through the whole site yet but I hope ennui is included. That’s my jam.

I think I’m on both sides. If your site has grammatical errors, I totes won’t believe anything you say on there.