| LSSU issues 33rd Annual List of Banished Words
SAULT STE. MARIE - The wordsmiths at Lake Superior State University are giving back to English speakers everywhere with their 33rd annual List of Words Banished from the Queen's English for Misuse, Overuse and General Uselessness. On Dec. 31, 1975, former LSSU Public Relations Director Bill Rabe and his colleagues cooked up an idea to banish overused words and phrases and issue a list on New Year's Day. Much to the delight of language enthusiasts everywhere, the list has stayed the course into a fourth decade. This year's list derives from more than 2,000 nominations received through the university's website, www.lssu.edu/banished. Word-watchers target pet peeves from everyday speech, as well as from the news, education, technology, advertising, politics, sports and more.
The Sears Wish Book Catalog Inspires its Holiday Marketing Campaign
HOFFMAN ESTATES, Ill., Nov. 6 /PRNewswire/ -- Millions of Americans remember the Sears Wish Book catalog with excitement -- and the hours they spent poring over each page, circling the gifts they wanted both to give and to receive during the holidays. Now, this year's return of the historic catalog has inspired Sears' new holiday marketing campaign, which launched November 4. Led by the tagline "Don't just give a gift, grant a wish," the integrated marketing campaign features an expanded, more diversified, multicultural media mix, including national television and radio spots, magazine insertions for jewelry and tools, and increased online media, plus new sears.com functionality, Wishing Hours sales promotions and sweepstakes, direct mail, circular, public relations and, of course, catalogs.
San Antonio Spurs (28-15) at Seattle SuperSonics (9-35), 10 p.m.
The woeful Seattle SuperSonics attempt to put the brakes on a 14-game losing streak when they host the defending world champion San Antonio Spurs tonight at KeyArena.On Sunday, Kevin Martin scored 26 points, including a jumper at the buzzer, to give Sacramento a thrilling 103-101 victory over Seattle at KeyArena.Rookie phenom Kevin Durant posted 19 points and five assists for the SuperSonics, whose 14-game skid set a franchise record. They had a 13-game slide that began with defeats in the final five games of the 2006-07 campaign and was extended following an 0-8 start to this season. The Sonics still have not won a game in 2008 (0-13).Seattle, which plays the fourth of a seven-game homestand tonight, is 5-16 at home this season. The SuperSonics will host Cleveland, New York and Chicago in the final three contests of the current stand.San Antonio has dropped two in a row and plays the second of a season-long nine-game road trip.
Women’s Center calls Zeta Psi’s behavior ‘inexcusable’
Imagine, if you will, a winter night at Yale. A group of Caucasian students, perhaps intoxicated, perhaps just seeking good times, have gathered in front of a campus cultural house. They are pledges of the Yale chapter of a nationwide, all-white organization. According to plan, one whips out a digital camera. Another proudly clutches a type-written sign. Thrilled, the pledges crowd around the sign and smile lasciviously at the camera. They pose. A picture is taken. The building: the Af-Am house. The sign: “WE LOVE YALE N-GGERS." If this happened, would an apology suffice? This analogy is imperfect. It is only a crude attempt to portray the emotional and psychological violence of hate speech. The gentlemen of Zeta Psi have apologized to “YALE SLUTS" — but only for what they thought they'd been caught for.
Three Offseason Questions for the Mets
A great team cannot be, of all things, aimless, but that is what the Mets have been this winter. While their purportedly hot pursuit of Minnesota Twins pitcher Johan Santana has garnered all the attention, the Mets have done little or nothing to remake a team that last year collapsed in epically improbable fashion. Letting Paul Lo Duca and Tom Glavine slink off as scapegoats and exiling Lastings Milledge wasn't enough to clean the air in Queens of the stench of failure, and nothing other than winning can do so. (Even acquiring Santana would set off an epic round of grousing about the quality of the prospects surrendered.) Three questions, then, about whether the Mets can make things right. 1. Are they going for it or not? The Mets, it's true, missed first place by a game last year and will likely have the third-largest payroll in baseball this year.
Berlusconi wants early Italy elections
Italian president Giorgio Napolitano, foreground, leaves after making a brief statement to the press, following meetings with Italian political representatives, in Rome's Quirinale Presidential palace, Tuesday Jan. 29, 2008. Napolitano said Tuesday he needed more time to decide his next step in Italy's political crisis, as conservative leader Silvio Berlusconi demanded early elections following the resignation of his rival, center-left Premier Romano Prodi, last week. President Giorgio Napolitano said the situations was "complicated and difficult" given a high number of parties and conflicting positions. .
IBM, ExxonMobil to Boost Math, Science
While the federal government (the public sector's education watchdog) has its hands full managing Iraq, Afghanistan, and now the Gulf Coast of the United States; the corporate world is stepping-up its efforts to improve pre-college education. Math and science scores for high school students in the United States is at the bottom of scores for 21 industrialized nations. Students in the United States spend half the amount of time as students in Europe on high school (or equivalent) studies, and students in the states say their priority at the end of their school day includes working a part-time job or spending time with friends on the Internet. The corporate world sees the trend as problematic in an ever increasingly competitive global business environment. On 16 September, International Business Machines (IBM) announced that it developed a program for employees to transition from IBM employee to math or science teacher.
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