A Lot Inside

Take the populations of Wyoming, Vermont and North Dakota. Add to them the number of residents in Iceland. Then you have a point of comparison - for this sum equals the prison population of the United States. Last year there were more than two million prisoners behind bars. That's 1.3% of all U.S.males. Some people have recently taken a little longer to learn what is legal and what is not. For the rate of imprisonment remained stable from the 1920 - 1970. Then it increased several times over.

Vintage Growth

The dollar is down against the euro and the Americans are up and against the French. So the volume of transatlantic investment in the fine wines of Burgundy and Bordeaux is likely to be limited this year. So consider the vintages of 2002 when a 20% fall in price has been forecast. This will mean that the fine wines of France, still in the barrel, could be selling at 60 euros per bottle. It may be worth secreting a case of Latour or Lafite ready for sampling, selling or showing off in, say, ten years time.

Well-meaning Words

There is enough confusion about matters regarding health - so at least understanding certain key-words should be a priority. 'Chronic' means lingering or long-lasting and not necessarily 'severe.' That means serious, not slight. The opposite, in medical terms, of 'chronic' is 'acute' - which is defined as coming sharply to a crisis. So an acute condition may be quick to reveal itself, but does not have to be severe.

Pssh ... Fancy a Polish Palace ?

The old order changes; the new orders come on-line. If you would like to upgrade your residence and have an interest in living in the north of Poland, close to its border with that Russian enclave, Kaliningrad, then consider the Palace at Tolko. It has 35 rooms, 19 ensuite bedrooms, halls, chambers, games-rooms, spa baths, gardens and parkland. Check out the links on the right to find the connection for this place that is, undoubtedly, big in Poland. Twenty years ago the notion of this web-site advertisement would have been beyond comprehension - socially, politically and electronically. When will Saddam's former palaces be on sale, on-line and, at least, 'virtually' inhabitable ?

Hack out the Hackneyed

Robert Fulford, writing last year in Canada's National Post, considered the role of the hackeyed phrase in public communications. He referred to William Safire, in his language column for The New York Times, who devised an appropriate name for a specialised and temporary cliche - 'voguism.' He defined it as "a word or phrase in fashion, used by writers who are with-it and then repeated endlessly by politicians and public intellectuals unable to assert their relevance without it." He continued by citing two examples, 'state of the art' (big in the 1980s) and 'at the end of the day' (a favourite in the 1990s). To this could be added 'window of opportunity' (which, perhaps, reached its peak around 1990) and 'thinking outside the box' which lingers on .... in voguism.

Simple Structures

Although the complexities of landscape fascinate, our understanding often depends on simple, memorable mind-sets. Stephen Pyne in his book The Ice: A Natural and Social History of Antarctica takes the vast terrain and divides it into five concentric regions: the Pack, the Shelf, the Glacier, the Sheet, the Source - which when put together form the Ice. The concept, unlike the continent, becomes manageable.

2020 Vision

The new edition (the Fifth) of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary has introduced about 3500 new entries among its half-a-million definitions. That's enough to be getting on with, but the work continues with a larger team of compilers preparing a new edition of the 20-volume, full-version of the OED. It will be ready in 2020, based on computer methods, published electronically, but edited by human beings.