risk factor = 'medical, psychological, habitual, or other peculiarity'??

Jonathan Lighter wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM
Tue Sep 27 22:17:10 UTC 2011


NNDB is a site that offers outline biographies of celebs:
http://www.nndb.com/people/044/000115696/

Similar treatments in the past would often include "Religious Preference."
Instead, NNDB lists "Sexual Orientation."

But that's neither here nor there.  A very odd category is "Risk Factors."
 Historian John Keegan's "risk factor" is given as "tuberculosis," even
though he was cured of it as a child. Susan Hampshire (in the link above)
has a "risk factor" of "Dyslexia."  Perhaps odder still (as if one could
tell), Joanna Lumley's "Risk Factors" are "Vegetarian" and "Smoking."

The "Risk Factor" concept is probably just sloppy thinking by a lone fool,
but with all the strange "reversals" in the air, it strikes me as
noteworthy.

JL

--
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



More information about the Ads-l mailing list