Daniel Soar on the militarisation of metaphor: Spies aren’t known for their cultural sensitivity. So it was a surprise when news broke last month that IARPA, a US government agency that funds ‘high-risk/high-payoff research’ into areas of interest to the ‘intelligence community’, had put out a call for contributions to its Metaphor Program, a five-year project to discover what a foreign culture’s metaphors can reveal about its beliefs.
posted by jack_mo on Jun 27, 2011 - 41 comments

This f*cking election. A babble tower.
posted by digaman on Nov 2, 2008 - 100 comments

Capitol Words allows you to see what the most often used word was on any given day in the U.S Congress. [via mefi projects]
posted by Effigy2000 on Jun 21, 2008 - 23 comments

This is precisely the sort of inane mumbojumbo that will -- perhaps literally -- get us all killed. ...The importance of words is a conceit of wordsmiths, certainly. But they are important -- especially when they bleed through into thought and action, which happens more often than you'd think.,

TPM is becoming almost too widely-read to be postworthy, but Josh really puts things into perspective with this post. For an example of what all this jingoistic gibberish can result in, see the post below it.
posted by jpoulos on Apr 15, 2004 - 63 comments

The Wingnut Debate Dictionary - spice up your political screeds with some colorful new terms like Colmestrato (n.) - an emasculated, harmless "liberal" stand-in included for purposes of fairness and balance and Condiment - a statement that needs to be taken with a heavy pinch of salt. I am so adding Deus ex rectum and Stepford Democrat to my vocabulary. And how is it that fucksimilie hasn't found it's way here long before now?
This is a game that MeFi wags of all political persuasions can play...anyone have any terms to add to the lexicon? (compiled by Ethel the Blog)
posted by madamjujujive on Nov 7, 2003 - 25 comments