Shakespeare &Sainte

 French and English terms in couture and prêt easily balance other anyway English language aficionados have long railed about the plethora of French words in the lexicon, from cliché and carte Blanche to déjà vu and avant-grade. They may be mollified to know that the French have been equally annoyed by the English words that have crept into their language. But the alternative lexic from the French culture ministry, Federation of Feminine Pret-à-Porter and Federal of Haute Couture and Fashion that attempts to exorcise words from across the Channel in that key segment, will prompt irritation and surprise among English votaries. That the French have never bothered to think up words in their own tongue for such fashion basics as T-shirts and jeans, lazily making do with by prefacing the English word with a gender -defining 'le' or 'La', is certainly a faux pas that should have been remedied long ago. Whether Yves Saint Laurent's famous 'le smoking' tuxedo suit w...

 Last month, we noted that Stan the Tyrannosaurus Rex was befittingly right up there with the most expensive works of art at preview for a Christie's sale of 20th century art. That he predated his fellow items on the catalogue be about 67 million years was irrelevant as the fact that he was a work of genius (albeit not human) was undeniable. However, now that the dinosaur skeleton has fetched almost four times its estimated price of $6-8 million at a gullet-choking $31,847,500 at the sale this week, it is evident the auction house had put Stan in the wrong list. He should have been there with those chunks of carbon and other fossilised remains that are cut, polished, set and sold, otherwise known as gemstones. More so as the T Rex roared in an auction that otherwise saw eight unsold and four works withdrawn out of a total of 59, fetching the second highest price of the sale. Stan has clearly established fossils as a valuable new genre of installation art. As the Royal Opera House i...

 The manifest proclivity of some individuals- not necessary part of the intelligentsia— for prolix explication as a favoured form of expression, notwithstanding the availability and advisability of more intelligible and conventionaly pertinent substitutes, precipitates exasperation only in some circles. Instead, in many cases, a cultivated predilection for logorrhoea elicits such veneration that practitioners increase their volume of periphrasis. Those lexicomanes will, no doubt, prefer to disregard the recent study that links the preference for long words and jagron with feelings of insecurity rather than intellectual prowess. That researchers have found an inverse correlation between the scholarly quality of 64,000 academic dissertations and their use of incomprehensible words and phrases certainly points to the use of jargon to compensate for lack of substance.  Since most quotidian interlocutions are commonplace conversations that do not entail a synchronous evaluation of ...

  Superstition is justifibiably dismissed as regressive and rooted in unproven beliefs. How can walking under a ladder or having a black cat cross your path bode Ill? Hanging lemons and chillies- or those blue and white turkish talismans- to ward off the evil eye are equally swiped from the ruins of Pompeii 15 years ago because of the bad luck that had apparently beset them ever since, indicates that superstitions can sometimes prove beneficial. Unlike the tomb of Tutankhamen- whose opening in 1923 supposedly activated an ancient curse that led to the deaths of many associated with its excavation- or even the malediction attached to the Kohinoor diamond, there has been no long-standing, well-known hex on Pompeii and most other ancient sites. That ciuld be why shards, fossils, artifacts and other remnants have been filched from historical sites with impunity and continue to be stolen. But the bad luck narrative associated with Pompeii resulted in some 100 conscience- stricken visito...

  Clearly rats have got a bad deal both in popular imagination and the English language. While its cutar, relative the mouse, has been elevated to a technoc-rat thanks to the advent of the computer, a rat rarely gets any grattitude; instead it is usually regarded as vermin. Praise, if any, is gratituous. So it I very heartening indeed to note that a colossus if the species, an African giant pouched rat, 6-year-old Magawa, has been awarded a gold medal by the UK veterinary charity PDSA for his four year stint detecting 39 hidden landmines and 28 pieces of unexploded ordnance in Cambodia. While Magawa himself is reportedly happy to be rewarded with just basket of bananas, what makes the gold medal particularly gratifying, of course he is the only rat to be selected by PDSA- all previous 29 winners have been dogs. The award is a significant recognition for rat kind given the bad press that Magawa's smaller cousins attract. Even now studies and irate stories abound about rats taking ov...

 The unfortunate incident last week of the main in France who had a narrow escape when his house burned down because his attempt to swat a fly with an electric racket ignited a leaking gas cylinder underlines a the dangers if complicating simple tasks. If not an old-fashioned swatter, a rolled-up newspaper could have accomplished the deep more efficiently with considering the fate of that fly remains unknown. The efficacy of old-fashioned methods to deal with annoying flies has been immortalised in the Brothers Grimm 1812 tale, The Valiant Little Tailor, who dispatched no less than 'seven at one blow' and leveraged that feat to eventually become a king. An American cartoonist named Rube Goldberg became a by-word for the propensity to invent convoluted contraptions to perform simple tasks because of his sketches bon the subject. His cartoon Professor Butts and the Self-Operating Napkin, published in 1931 has become a meme for complex contrivances; but nearly a century bof techno...

  Have you ever come across a painting, by Picasso, Mondrian, Miro, or any other modern abstract painter of this century, and found yourself engulfed in a brightly coloured canvas, which your senses cannot interpret?  Many people would tend to denounce abstractionism as senseless trash. These people are disoriented by Miro's bright, fanciful creatures and two-dimensional canvases. They click their tongues and shake their heads at Mondrian's grid works, declaring the poor guy played too many scrabble games. They silently shake their heads in sympathy for Picasso, whose gruesome, distorted figures must be a reflection of his mental health. Then, standing in front of a work by Charlie Russell, the famous Western artist; they'll declare it a work of God. People feel more comfortable with something they can relate to and understand immediately without too much thought. This is the case with the work of Charlie Russell. Being able to recognise the element in his paintings— trees,...

In the following  paragraphs, identify the topic and the main idea. Even by the standards of ASEAN, it was a dismal performance. The leaders of the other nine members of the Association of south-east Asian Nations used their summit in Bali this week to ladle praise on Myanmar for its "positive" and "pragmatic" recent policies. These, it appeared, meant the transfer of Myanmar's most famous citizens, the Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, from prison to house arrest, and the publication of a "road map" for democracy. Since a return to democracy  has been promised by Myanmar's current junta ever since it took power in 1998, and since Miss Suu Kyi won an election in 1990 that has never been recognised, the Myanmar map looks as forlorn as the Middle Eastern one. The disgraceful treatment meted out to Miss Suu Kyi is only the most obvious outrage committed by South-East Asia's most repressive and incompetent government. The generals do not just impris...