The topic matter of this post is slightly less sci-fi than the title suggests – using the new data API at The Guardian, Tom Hume has constructed a graph of use of swearwords in the paper’s hallowed pages over time. It’s not a raw count of instances, but number of articles using each word. It seems that “shit” has enjoyed a meteoric rise, however “cock” remains steady.
Parents of children at an Anglican school in Cambridge seem to have expressed outrage at an exercise given to the students in which they were to list as many rude words at they could think of and arrange them in columns marked “Harmless, Not Nice, Upsetting, and Really Upsetting”.
“You don’t expect your children to learn this kind of filth at school, particularly one linked to the Church.
”When my 10-year-old showed me an exercise book with those sorts of words rewarded with a tick from the teacher, I was disgusted.”
(Presumably not marked with a red pen, as red ink has been proven to frighten children)
It would appear that the parents of the children would prefer to have their kids learn their rude-word vocab in the less formal playground environment, where there’s less guidance as to why these phrases are offensive or upsetting.
The Telegraph included the quote:
”I don’t want to sound prudish but it is a pity there isn’t more emphasis placed on the three R’s in schools these days.”
A slightly suspicious banner for educational superiority, given
We did this as kids with our Rodney Rude, Kevin “Bloody” Wilson and 12th Man cassettes back in the 80’s, although it meant hair-trigger control of the pause button on my dual-cassette deck… and it wasn’t 27 minutes long like this, either.
http://www.vimeo.com/2998698This is almost hypnotic. And don’t play it out loud at the office, will you?
Sometimes the internet just does all the work for you! Upon hearing the recording of Christian Bale throwing an on-set tantrum at a DP who distracted him, I wondered what musical gem perhaps Microsoft Songsmith would make of it?
The answer, as it turned out, had already been calculated over at Pumprs.
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