Interesting phrasing

[victor steinbok]

The reports along the strip stretching from North Carolina to Maine are
likely accurate--it was certainly felt in Boston (as long as you were not on
the ground floor). Reports from Wisconsin are not likely to be related to
this particular event, but there were 9 or 10 separate shocks recorded in
Colorado yesterday that got ignored because of the one in Virginia--some
were just echoes of small ones in California, but those that had the
epicenter in Colorado could have been felt in Wisconsin. But none of those
were over 5.0.

VS-)

On Wed, Aug 24, 2011 at 9:54 AM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>wrote:

>
> You're too tolerant.
>
> "In the middle of an earthquake," when the quake is over, implies that
> there's so much act-of-God chaos at Verizon HQ that *of course* they
> haven't
> fixed it.
>
> BTW, the news claims (truthfully, I suppose) that the quake was "felt" in
> 22
> states and Canada.
>
> Felt by what super-sensitive devices?  I'm in an adjoining state and
> neither
> I nor anybody I've asked felt or noticed anything at all.
>
> JL
>
> On Tue, Aug 23, 2011 at 9:29 PM, Victor Steinbok <aardvark66 at gmail.com
> >wrote:
>
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> > -----------------------
> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster:       Victor Steinbok <aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM>
> > Subject:      Interesting phrasing
> >
> >
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > A comment on the cell phone outage in parts of the country today:
> >
> > > When asked why the phone lines weren't working Tuesday afternoon,
> > > Richard Young, a Verizon spokesman simply responded: "We're in the
> > > middle of an earthquake right now, so it's not surprising."
> >
> > Well, that's fine, except that "we"--including Verizon--were not "in the
> > middle of an earthquake" when the comment was made. The earthquake had
> > long passed by then. I am not suggesting that there is anything wrong
> > with the comment--in fact, it seems to be fairly typical shorthand for
> > the "extended event".
> >
> > Take it or leave it...
> >
> > VS-)
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >
>
>
>
> --
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
>
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>

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