And I realised, once again, we're living in a perilous new world that says kids, no matter what they do, are always lovely and are always to be encouraged — a new world order where the 'needs' of children rule above all else. So much so, in fact, it now has a name, newly coined in the US: The Kindergarchy. ...

In these misguided days of the Kindergarchy, we 'aunties' and 'uncles' must urgently rise up and take far more seriously our responsibilities as increasingly isolated champions of truth in a world of parental illusion. And just the other week, a pretty good start was made.
—Sylvia Patterson, Let's put some misery back in our children's lives, Sunday Tribune, July 13, 2008

She also wonders whether corporations spend more money marketing the "pink" product than they contribute to the cause, and she accused some corporations, such as some cosmetic companies, of "pinkwashing," which means an item's production or usage may contribute to the development of cancer.
—Chrissie Thompson, "A palette of causes," The Washington Times, December 20, 2006

The produce section, as it turns out, was a good place to illustrate the first rule of "precycling": Don't get any packaging at all. Buy stuff loose.
—Sandy Bauers, GreenSpace: Is it recyclable or trash eternal? An expert tells the best choices, Philadelphia Inquirer, May 5, 2008

The survey also found U.S. employees tend to divide their time off into one full "power week," utilizing the rest of their vacation bank as days sprinkled across the calendar to make long weekends or extend holiday breaks.

As in 2007, the average U.S. worker has 14 vacation days this year. Just across the Canadian border, our counterparts get an average of 17 vacation days annually.

But if you want a real "vacation envy" complex, consider the vacation banks of European workers. France tops the list with an average of 37 days, followed by Italy (33 days), Spain (31), the Netherlands and Austria (28), Germany (27) and Great Britain (26).
—Sharon Linstedt, Don't forget to use your vacation time to recharge, Buffalo News, June 16, 2008

Texas Republicans are wincing over a cultural gaffe that has put their party on notice — a campaign button with a stark message: "If Obama is President ... will we still call it The White House?" ...

The 12-word message created hubbub in both the mainstream media and the blogosphere, sparking a discourse on racism that ran the gamut from rough to ridiculous. Online commentary included admonitions to "lighten up, people," as well as accusations that "Baracknophobia" is alive and well in the Republican Party.
—Jennifer Harper, Anti-Obama pin jabs Texas GOP, The Washington Times, June 19, 2008

Why could there be an Obama blowout? One reason is the Obamacons, conservatives who support Mr. Obama. Some, such as columnist Andrew Sullivan, are attracted by Mr. Obama's message of hope and his potential ability to reshape America's image before the world.
—John Ibbitson, "Four months out, the smart money is on Obama to win," The Globe and Mail, July 2, 2008

You've heard of the French paradox — red wine apparently helps keep the arteries clear despite all those cream sauces and buttery croissants. But how about the Asian paradox?

The term was coined in 2006 by Yale researchers to explain the low rates of heart disease and cancer in countries with high rates of cigarette smoking. One theory: The average 1.2 liters of green tea consumed daily by many people in Asia offers antioxidant protection.
—Gigi Lehman, The Supermarket Sleuth: Green tea, The Miami Herald, June 17, 2008

The main focus of the new anti-plastic bag laws are ultra-thin bags less than 0.025 millimetres thick, which are generally disposed of without a second thought and which litter the highways and byways of the country causing "white pollution".
—Clifford Coonan, "Innovation in brief," The Irish Times, June 9, 2008

David Axe ... is a 30-year-old freelance war correspondent. On Saturday, he'll be getting on a plane and flying to Chad, where refugees from the Darfur genocide in neighbouring Sudan have been streaming across the border. His reporting will wind up in a handful of major news outlets, as well as on his blog. And he'd like you to help pay for his trip.

"As attention gets diverted elsewhere, you have to scream a little bit louder," he tells me from Columbia, S.C. "So I'm just going to go and scream."

To get that scream out, Axe has partnered with an online news outlet called the Guerrilla News Network (guerrillanews.com) to try Web-based fundraising for his online reporting. The word for it these days is "crowdfunding." He's looking for $2,000 (U.S.) in donations to help offset the cost.
—Ivor Tossell, "The Catch 22 of 'crowdfunding' war correspondents," The Globe and Mail, June 13, 2008

Nearly every James Bond film has been requeled at least once, and "Star Treks" 7 and 10 were both requels of "The Wrath of Khan."
—Roger Ebert, "Wake up and smell a secret," Chicago Sun Times, December 7, 2007

A mask seized by police was not, as police alleged, a device to "disguise face with intent to commit an indictable offence", Mr Gibson said.

Brandishing photos of his client wearing it, he explained that Sanders was into "urban caving", that he and his mates went exploring under the city in sewers and tunnels.
—Neil McMahon, "Light at the end of the tunnel for a man up to his neck in it," The Age, December 21, 2005

My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.
—Nicholas Carr, American writer and editor, Atlantic Monthly, July 1, 2008

In days of yore, a ruralpolitan might have been called a "gentleman farmer" — think of Eddie Albert's character Oliver Wendell Douglas on the 1960s show Green Acres. But in modern parlance, a ruralpolitan is a professional who has abandoned the urban dwelling for a rural lifestyle and lives on three acres or more, typically within 40 miles of a city.

Be he — or she — a corporate lawyer, hedge-fund honcho, or other well-paid business type, a ruralpolitan might commute to work by rail or car or, if he embraces technology, telecommute from the comforts of a lavishly appointed home office. A ruralpolitan doesn't typically work the land he owns but does profit from it emotionally through the pleasures of gardening, small-scale livestock raising, or just watching his kids gambol through a field of wildflowers.
—Daniel DiClerico, "Buzzword: Ruralpolitan," Consumer Reports, December 13, 2007

Certainly, 'hyperwhite' seems a good word for the sartorial choices of paradigmatic nerds. While a stereotypical black youth, from the zoot-suit era through the bling years, wears flashy clothes, chosen for their aesthetic value, nerdy clothing is purely practical: pocket protectors, belt sheaths for gadgets, short shorts for excessive heat, etc. Indeed, 'hyperwhite' works as a description for nearly everything we intuitively associate with nerds, which is why Hollywood has long traded in jokes that try to capitalize on the emotional dissonance of nerds acting black (Eugene Levy saying, 'You got me straight trippin', boo') and black people being nerds (the characters Urkel and Carlton in the sitcoms 'Family Matters' and 'The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air').
—Benjamin Nugent, "Who's a Nerd, Anyway?," The New York Times, July 29, 2007

Arjun N. Murti remembers the pain of the oil shocks of the 1970s. But he is bracing for something far worse now: He foresees a 'super spike' — a price surge that will soon drive crude oil to $200 a barrel.
—Louise Story, "An Oracle of Oil," The New York Times, May 21, 2008

Senior moments are not just for seniors. Did Hillary have a middle-aged moment about the sniper attack in Bosnia that never was? Did Barack have a junior moment when he wrote about reading a Life magazine article on a man who tried to lighten his black skin? An article that never ran.
—Ellen Goodman, "McCain's 'senior moment' opens up a new -ism," Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, March 28, 2008

Aides to Bill Clinton last week vehemently denied speculation that the former president's intemperate remarks on the campaign trail were due to mild cognitive damage from his quadruple-bypass surgery in 2004.

"This theory is false and is flatly rejected by President Clinton's doctors, who say he is in excellent shape. . . ." the statement said.

But the condition dubbed "pump head" or "bypass brain" has long been recognized by doctors, even if they seldom warn patients about it.

Symptoms include short-term memory loss, slowed responses, trouble concentrating and emotional instability. In a landmark study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2001, researchers at Duke University Medical Center tested 261 patients before and after bypass surgery and found that 53% of them had significant cognitive decline when they were discharged — and 42% still suffered from it five years later.
—Melinda Beck, "'Bypass Brain': How Surgery May Affect Mental Acuity," The Wall Street Journal, June 10, 2008

Pluto is finally getting its day in the sun, after being stripped of planetary status by astronomers two years ago.

From now on all similar distant bodies in the solar system will be called "plutoids." That's the decision by the International Astronomical Union, which met last week in Oslo, Norway, and announced the decision Wednesday.
—Seth Borenstein, "Pluto's namesakes: Similar bodies are 'plutoids'," The Associated Press, June 11, 2008

Twitter has been taken up so exuberantly by the connected community that it's now used by the MTV Music Video Awards, presidential candidate John Edwards, and even some news organizations and fire departments to communicate their urgent messages. Its own vocabulary has even emerged: As mentioned earlier, a Twitter post is called a "tweet," and "tweetups" have taken place where "tweeps" have met up in the real world for social gatherings. You can find a glossary of Twitter terminology at the Twitter Fan Wiki.
—Michael Muchmore, "Twitter," PC Magazine, October 15, 2007

Amid growing concerns about large-scale meat production fuelled by such recent books as The Omnivore's Dilemma and The 100-Mile Diet, some consumers are bypassing supermarket meat aisles and even the local butcher shop in favour of cowpooling — clubbing together to buy half or whole carcasses directly from local farms.
—Wency Leung, "You take the ribs, I'll take the rump," The Globe and Mail, May 21, 2008

In his book, Reynolds describes a group of London anarchists who engaged in 'guerrilla benching,' installing their own wooden benches on sidewalks when a local government began removing benches from public space. In France, guerrilla repairmen built a clandestine workshop under the dome of the Pantheon and, over the next year, refurbished its clock. Recently, guerrilla knitters in New York and elsewhere have been wrapping traffic light poles in colorful, leg-warmer-like cozies.
—Jon Mooallem, "Guerrilla Gardening," The New York Times, June 8, 2008