Animaniacs - Nations of the world Lyrics. Bill Maher | Calls Out Oprah | Merry Christmas. Bill Maher, host of HBO‘s Real Time, and notorious religious nonbeliever, taped a harsh and hilarious “Christmas message” for his website that served as a damning critique of all Americans and of the one media figure most are too scared to attack: Oprah Winfrey. Calling Oprah’s “Favorite Things” episode “one of the most deeply disturbing things I’ve ever seen on television” was just the beginning of Maher’s memorably “cheerful” message. Maher used Oprah’s audience as the prime example for his thesis that the real religion in America is greed and is “what at the core is so rotten about this country.” Many find Maher’s “humor” offensive, especially towards people of faith, but if you step back and view Maher as a social commentator, merely trying to improve society then maybe you too could appreciate Maher’s willingness to be politically incorrect and go after anyone and everyone to make a point.
Maher concluded: This is why everything in America gets sucked down a hole. L'esprit de l'escalier. L'esprit de l'escalier or l'esprit d'escalier ("staircase wit") is a French term used in English that describes the predicament of thinking of the perfect retort too late. Origin[edit] This name for the phenomenon comes from French encyclopedist and philosopher Denis Diderot's description of such a situation in his Paradoxe sur le comédien.[1] During a dinner at the home of statesman Jacques Necker, a remark was made to Diderot which left him speechless at the time, because, he explains, "l’homme sensible, comme moi, tout entier à ce qu’on lui objecte, perd la tête et ne se retrouve qu’au bas de l’escalier" ("a sensitive man, such as myself, overwhelmed by the argument levelled against him, becomes confused and can only think clearly again [when he reaches] the bottom of the stairs").
In this case, “the bottom of the stairs” refers to the architecture of the kind of hôtel particulier or mansion to which Diderot had been invited. Similar English terms[edit] In other languages[edit] May/June 2010 > Features > Cognitive Scientist Lera Boroditsky. Can language shape how we think? A Stanford researcher says yes, and her work speaks volumes about what makes people tick. By Joan O'C. Hamilton Lera Boroditsky's journey to answer one of psychology's most intriguing and fractious questions has been a curious one. She's spent hours showing Spanish-speakers videos of balloons popping, eggs cracking and paper ripping. She's scoured Stanford and MIT's math and computer science departments for Russian speakers willing to spend an hour sorting shades of blue.
She's even traipsed to a remote aboriginal village in Australia where small children shook their heads at what they considered her pitiable sense of direction and took her hand to show her how to avoid being gobbled by a crocodile. "In English," she says, moving her hand toward the cup, "if I knock this cup off the table, even accidentally, you would likely say, 'She broke the cup.'" If one deliberately knocks the cup, there is a verb form to indicate as much. Consider space. JOAN O’C. If The Earth was A Village!