Try entering www.bundeskanzler.de in the browser and see what happens.

(From PapaScott)

Lawfinder, about which I know not enough, is now largely open to free browsing.

More information on the Infolaw Weblog.

This blog is semi-closed for flu, but I must mention this. The term murder board is apparently entrenched in the USA. From Encarta:

bq. 1. communication rehearsal for press conference: a rehearsal to prepare a public figure for a press conference during which staff members put difficult questions to him or her in a rapid-fire manner

bq. 2. military military selection board: a military selection, examination, or promotion board

It’s been used particularly for the grilling of Supreme Court nominees.

But it seems unlikely to have come from the German term Mordkommission (murder squad), apparently, according to William Safire, once so translated:

bq. The phrase has a literal base in German criminology: In 1916, The Fitchburg Daily Sentinel in Massachusetts reported, “Germany’s Police: How the ‘Murder Board’ Works to Solve a Mystery.” The current Justice Ministry in Berlin confirms that the term used was Mordkommission.

(Thanks to Derek)

Hours of harmless fun with Merriam-Webster’s online Open Dictionary:

Welcome to Merriam-Webster’s Open Dictionary where you can 1) submit and share entries that aren’t already in our Online Dictionary, and 2) browse entries submitted by other members of the Merriam-Webster Online community.

Most recent additions at the time of posting this are Sith, Jedi, snipid, deambigulate and fencil. Deambigulate is curiously similar to disambiguate. Snipid (‘the smell of the autumn air – My it sure is snipid outside’) and fencil seem based on one unattributed quote each. This, I believe, is really true (readers, don’t try this at home, as they say):

stiffy (noun) : A 3.5″ floppy computer disk. Term used primarily & widely in South Africa, where the term ‘floppy’ refers mainly to the older, larger 5.25″ disks (as they where floppy, while the smaller, current ones are stiff).
Please insert the stiffy into the A: drive of the PC.

At least that illustration helps. Some illustrative sentences could refer to almost anything: ‘Have you scrubbed the Dunny yet Tim?’ (Sure enough, the big MW has two dunny entries, but not for this meaning).

We used to collect effle – English that no-one would ever use except in a book teaching foreign languages or English as a foreign language. Now I wonder if one could collect iffle – illustrative material that doesn’t.

(Posted by Mike on pt at Yahoo groups)

The Guardian reports on this year’s winners for excruciatingly written scenes of intimacy in fiction. This is run by the Literary Review.

bq. The purpose of the prize, as originally set out, is ‘to draw attention to the crude, tasteless, often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in the modern novel, and to discourage it. The prize is not intended to cover pornographic or expressly erotic literature, and is limited to the literary novel.’

Here is the longlist.

Here is an EU website where you can read and listen to the 20 EU languages.

Auf dieser Site kann man die 20 EU-Sprachen lesen und hören.

(Via Handakte WebLAWg)

I see Yahoo have a list of languages and linguistics blogs (some dead). They seem to think my blog has English and German versions, but I suppose they are entitled to their opinion.

They also have me listed as a merchant und product search. As always, it’s hard to see how to get removed. Apparently you can only remove it if you submitted it yourself.