The Shape of Water
To Sant Pere, the little town next door, to see the Oscar-winning The Shape of Water by Guillermo del Toro. That such a small town should have a cinema with good films is due to the brave project of a...
Word of the Year
Both the Oxford and Cambridge dictionaries have recently published their Word of the Year choices. Oxford Dictionaries has gone for youthquake – which it defines as “a significant cultural, political,...
Politics in Neverland
Catalonia has been prominent in the news recently – certainly in Europe, but probably also in various other parts of the world as well. All because the Catalan Parlament decided to pass a formal unilateral...
Multi-pluri-inter-ism
. I lay claim to the coinage of the above new word. OED, please take note. OK, it’s not a particular elegant or beautiful word, but I reckon it will prove to be useful. Let me explain... These suffixes...
Somewheres & Anywheres
Is it time to change the IB’s name? The ‘International Baccalaureate’ was an effective title when the IB was dreamed up in the late 1960s, but arguably the IB has evolved and times have changed. To start...
1984 revisited
. According to various news media, sales of George Orwell’s 1984 have soared amazingly (see the Guardian’s report). This coincides with the first week of the Trump Presidency. The connection appears to...
1984 revisited (again)
. Orwell may have been ahead of his time in envisaging the 'telescreen', but the idea of the internet, indeed, of modern communications technology in general, seems to have been outside his wildest imaginings....
Post-truth
The Oxford English Dictionary has just declared 'post-truth' to be the Word of the Year 2016. This responds to the trending concept that we live in a post-truth culture, which especially means post-truth...
Trickledown & horseshit
. Images are fascinating things to play with in the gymnasium of the imagination ... but images are only really worth the effort if they mean something, so we need to assess how images play out in relation...
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Launching the qBank
. I have been working very hard for the past four months or so, writing grammar exercises for the qBank. The what? I hear you say. Right ... the qBank feature is a data-base of question items for exercising...