Monday, April 07, 2008

Cliche morgue

Please inter "...wait for it..."

As in "Geoffrey Dean has reviewed two hundred different studies into whether graphology can tell us anything about personality (Dean, 1992). Adding up the effect of each of these studies showed that graphology has a combined power of about...wait for it...zero." (from PsyBlog)

Thursday, April 03, 2008

Words I need to start using

gallimaufry

"Obviously this is completely pernicious and unacceptable. Which may be one reason why a chaotic ad hoc gallimaufry of completing choice frames, which add up to nothing in particular and tilts at no one set of values may be precisely what leaves us best off in the end." (from Will Wilkinson)

folderol

"If it wasn't obvious at the time, Hope Now turns out to have been largely a way for politicians and lenders to say that they were doing something, rather than a real attempt to provide a partial solution to the mortgage problem. At the margin, it's probably done more good than harm. But nothing worthy of Presidential announcements and all the other folderol which accompanied its launch." (from Felix Salmon)