Ralph Keyes's Blog

Avada advertises an inexpensive hearing aid as one that can be purchased "at a more moderate investment level."

During NPR's "On Point" show, a guest referred to cows in  feed lots so crowded that they must stand in their own "substance."   Host Tom Ashbrook called this substance "product."

Sadly, the euphemism of the week is "second amendment remedies."

The commander of a ship based in San Diego was recently fired by the Navy for being "unduly familiar" with members of his crew.

A recent New Yorker article reported that an outside auditor assessing a school building project in Nepal was called "very healthy" by locals.  This was their euphemism for "massively obese."  According to writer Peter Hessler, while walking from one school to another, the auditor "was overwhelmed by healthiness and had to sit down."

When an engine blew up on a Quantas flight from Singapore to Sydney, its pilot told 440 passengers that the airplane had a "technical issue."

To explain his conviction that global warming is natural, incoming House Speaker John Boehner said "Every cow in the world, you know, when they do what they do you've got more carbon dioxide."

The most discussed euphemism of recent times is junk (as in "Don't touch my junk," during an airport patdown). How we got from "family jewels" to "junk" escapes me. Today's junk is yesterday's stones, marbles, peppercorns and manhood. The euphemisms we use with reflect their times. What does "junk" say about ours?

When determining who to blame for the suicide of Rutgers student Tyler Clementi, don't' forget Sacha Baron Cohen. More than any other single person Cohen has established that it's okay to lure others into humiliating themselves on-camera, then make the results public so the rest of us can enjoy a good laugh. The two classmates who secretly recorded Clementi in the arms of another man then streamed the results may have seen themselves as being in the Borat tradition. Like so many others wielding hidden webcams and camcorders these days, perhaps they simply wanted to be like Sacha.

In a recent photo of the Obamas bicycling on Martha's Vineyard, Michelle and their two girls are wearing helmets, Barack isn't.   Message to the world: women and children need to wear bicycle helmets; real men don't.