Logomacy
Between logomachy and logomancy . . .

I mean to post on this a while back, but I couldn’t find the version of this anecdote that I had seen. Now OxBlog has turned it up, in an obituary in NYT Magazine:

The most widely circulated tale — in many renditions it is even presented as a joke, not the true story that it is — was his encounter with the Oxford philosopher J. L. Austin. During a talk on the philosophy of language at Columbia in the 50’s, Austin noted that while a double negative amounts to a positive, never does a double positive amount to a negative. From the audience, a familiar nasal voice muttered a dismissive, ”Yeah, yeah.”

The Foreigner - Japan: So You Want To Learn Japanese.

Cruel, but funny.

Just to show what a geek I am, the laughing girl spot illo is Yukino Miyazawa from _Kareshi Kanojo no Jijou_ by Tsuda Masami.