Re: Two Articles about What Brits Know (or Don't)...

mike weber <fair****tfan@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:

>Two articles i ran across online lately (the first is actually a
>comment on the original article; the full original Reuters article is
>at http://uk.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUKL0167874620080201)
>
>You don't have to be an English major to know that "Lolita" is a novel
>about a man who has a ***ual relation****p with his 12-year-old
>stepdaughter. But even if you've never read a book in your life, the
>word "Lolita" has entered the lexicon as slang for a ***ually
>precocious young girl. 

That term is rarely used these days in print, even less in everyday
spoken British English. One would be much more likely to hear the term
'jail bait'. 

>Nearly quarter of Brits think Churchill a myth: poll
>
>Britons are losing their grip on reality, according to a poll which
>shows nearly a quarter think Winston Churchill was a myth, while the
>majority reckon Sherlock Holmes was real.

Sheesh. Talk about lies, damned lies and statistics. How many people
were polled? What was the age range of the people they asked? What was
the educational level of the people they asked?

One could ask a dozen school-age fsckwits if Winston Churchill was a
myth and if 3 of them said yes, extrapolate it up and all of a sudden
you have a quarter of the population believing it. It's about as
meaningful as if I polled the members of, oh I dunno, let's say a
baptist church in Westboro, and put the results forward as
representative of the beliefs of the whole of the US. 
-- 
Colette