You are currently browsing the daily archive for September 7th, 2007.
NASA is looking for a new slogan and Wired wants one of its readers to be the one who comes up with it. Vote for mine or come up with your own. My proposed slogan is “Earth is not room enough.”
Language Log has an interesting quiz for speakers of American English: choose the correct meaning of the term white goods. No web searches of any kind allowed before answering.
- Goods of any sort that are white in color — flour, paper towels, lilies, emulsion paint, toothpaste, ermine fur, milk, eggs, refined sugar, button mushrooms, etc.
- Goods that carry no duty and can thus be freely imported and carried through customs without officials needing to be in any way concerned with them.
- Garments typically or traditionally made with undyed white cotton, such as plain dress shirts, underwear, tennis shorts, cricket clothes, and so on.
- Goods that are fully legal, in the sense of being properly imported with duties properly paid rather than being part of the so-called “black economy”.
- Office paper, letter envelopes, and similar white paper office supplies.
- Household appliances such as washing machines or refrigerators that are often painted white.
- Linen household goods such as sheets, pillow cases, and towels.
- Goods of a sort determined by market research to be primarily of interest to customers of European rather than African or Asian origins.
- Goods deemed by government regulatory agencies to be (unlike an increasing number of toys and other products from the People’s Republic of China) free of harmful features and fully fit for sale to the general public.
- Milk, buttermilk, yoghurt, and other non-cheese liquid dairy products.
The correct answer will be posted on Language Log in a couple days. I’ll post an update here as well. Answer is under the fold.
