12 Euphemisms Used to Mislead You

Here is a list of the 12 most misleading sets of words that we could find in use, most of them in the United States, which seems to have a real appetite for calling things by names they have nothing to do with. These are just a few examples.

Binocular Deprivation means no more no less than to sew an animal’s eyes shut during an experiment, for various purposes. The technique is widely used in research labs worldwide, and is meticulously described in each paper featuring the procedure.

Biosolids is just another word for sewage sludge, and is employed in official documents instead of other terms. This word, like many others from the list, is only meant to make a bad thing sound good, and has nothing to do with being politically correct. It’s all about PR and image. Read more

Chrome Looks Shiny

Google’s entry into the web browser market should liven things up; it will certainly give Microsoft and Mozilla something to think about. If you haven’t already tried it then I suggest that you give Google Chrome the once over.. It’s early days yet, and this is the Beta version so take the usual precautions of setting a new Restore Point, but so far it looks quite promising. My favourite feature so far is the integrated address window/search box, naturally it defaults to Google but you can change it to Yahoo, MSN, Ask or the search engine of your choice on the Options menu. It imports all of your bookmarks and quick links so installation is smooth and quick, though I’m not so happy at the way it also seems to know all of my passwords, I would have preferred it to ask before importing those. Read more

Hacked Off USB Memory

It started off as a bit of a joke but now it’s a commercial product. A bright spark at Evilmadsicentist.com came up with a simple mod that turns a flash drive into what looks like a USB cable that’s just been torn apart. Clearly designed for that special someone, the sort of person who enjoys humorous, witty and ironic artefacts, and probably already has a dog’s back end sticking out of their lawn and fake bullet holds on their car. Anyway, a company called Fred & Friends is now making them and it’s called ‘Hacked’ the ‘OH! *#%’ flash drive. It’s available with a 2Gb capacity and that’s just about all that’s known about it at the moment, so if you want one head over to Worldwidefred.com and pester them, not me…