How do you top a president Bush?
Bull Moose: “The Moose offers the words that will send shivers up the spines of the Mooseketeers — President Ralph Reed.”
Dave Winer has a fascinating cutaway diagram of what the new Airbus 380, unveiled in Toulouse in front of Jacques Chirac, Tony Blair and Gerhard Schroder, looks like. I have no doubt it’s an amazing engineering achievement, but it doesn’t look like it would be fun to fly in it. When it comes to enjoying a trip, smaller is definitely better and emptier is better still.
The new-to-me weblog Expatica has a wonderful chart explaining what some common British expressions mean, compared to how a Dutch person would interpret them (via Charles Arthur).
Consider: “I hear what you say.” When an Englishman says that, he means, “l disagree and do not want to discuss it any further.” The Dutch interpretation, unsurprisingly, is, “He accepts my point of view.” Similarly “You’ll get there eventually” really means “You don’t stand a chance in hell.” The unsuspecting foreign listener believes it means “Keep on trying for they agree I’m heading in the right direction.”