language & communication – Page 42 – don't confuse the narrator

digital manipulation

From today’s print edition of the Spanish newspaper Público comes a short piece with the headline Veto a los anuncios de senos exagerados.

I can’t find it in the online version, but a very similar article is carried by the Libertad Digital website.

Both pieces report that the Asociación de Cirujanos Plásticos del Reino Unido have asked for a ban on adverts which show “fotografías de mujeres en bikini, en poses que parecen simular éxtasis, y con los senos manipulados digitalmente” because such ads raise unrealistic expectations in young women who face plastic surgery.

It’s the phrase “senos manipulados digitalmente” which bothers me. And a quick check with the RAE online dictionary confirms my concerns.
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Comprehending compression

Definiciones del
Diccionario de la lengua española de la Real Academia Española:

comprensión.
(De comprehensión).
1. f. Acción de comprender.

compresión.
(Del lat. compressĭo, -ōnis).
1. f. Acción y efecto de comprimir.

Y tú, ¿irías al taller ofrecido por esta gente?

the cps generation

According to Wikipedia – and, yes, I realise just how limited that authority is – the Information Age is a term used to refer to the present era which has come into use due to “the global economy’s shift in focus away from the production of physical goods […] and towards the manipulation of information.”

Information - but do we process it or just pass it on?

I would suggest, though, that although we live in the Information Age, the current generation don’t process the information they have access to, they simply pass it on.

I found a link to a video in my inbox the other day from a writer friend, together with an exasperated exclamation that someone was “using his idea”. He knows as well as I do that there’s no copyright in ideas, but the exasperation was real enough.
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less is more

I tend to avoid the big American food and coffee chains, and don’t think I’ve been in a Starbucks more than three times in my life. However, I was shopping in Bristol with my sister this summer and there came a moment when coffee became a high priority. Preferably coffee in a real cup. Oh, and a comfy seat. Coffee in a real cup, a comfy seat, and perhaps a piece of carrot cake.

And Starbucks seemed to meet the criteria.
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naming names

From Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Ernest:

CECILY […] This is no time for wearing the shallow mask of manners. When I see a spade I call it a spade.

GWENDOLYN [Satirically.] I am glad to say that I have never seen a spade. It is obvious that our social spheres have been widely different.

I wonder how different the average Spaniard’s social sphere is from that of the average angloparlante.
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