New York Times columnist and culture scholar David Brooks had some thoughts this week about the difference between hardworking Chinese students and lazy American students. The Chinese, he wrote, see education as a moral enterprise, built around the cultivation of discipline and other internal virtues, while Westerners focus on learning about things and are hung up on "critical inquiry" and "sharing ideas."

Last night, NBC news broke the story of an Obama Justice Department memo on extrajudicial assassination of American citizens that screams off the page with the self-delusion and pity of an abused child writing a fairytale. It is a story of calmly supervised adult violence buried under the story-time adventure of so many princes, swords nominally at their sides, who keep hitting and hitting, because they have to.

Yesterday, former Italian Prime Minister and the world's foremost thrower of "Bunga Bunga" parties Silvio Berlusconi, age 76, "unveiled" (to use the odd and yet somehow entirely appropriate phrasing of MSNBC) his girlfriend, Francesca Pascale, "a 27-year-old political councilor in his People of Freedom Party." He also announced their engagement — or did he? Let's ask Google Translate.

The wages of criticism on the internet is an uphill battle against endless counter-arguments made in bad faith. Bob Costas learned that on Sunday night. He responded to a gun-related murder-suicide with an appeal for gun control. Conservatives howled. You know who else liked gun control? Hitler. Gun control is bad, because anything Hitler favored is bad. Like freeways or crushing communism.

In the face of mounting pressure from activist campaigns like "Drop the I-Word," the Associated Press announced today that it would continue using the term "illegal immigrants" in its immigration coverage if and when the situation calls for it. Drop the I-Word and its proponents—like journalist Jose Antonio Vargas, himself an illegal immigrant—argue that media outlets using the word "illegal" to describe people is a "racially charged" tactic that "confuses the immigration debate and fuels violence." Critics would rather newspapers and wire services use terms like "undocumented immigrant" or "unauthorized immigrant," instead. Despite those protestations, however, the AP appears to be resolute in its decision.

Australian prime minister Julia Gillard has accomplished something previously reserved for Homer Simpson and horny preteens: she has revised the dictionary. Well, the Australian dictionary, which is sort of a real dictionary, except it is written by the descendants of criminals.

When I was a young boy my father's best friend, Art, lived in Alabama, and every now and again my family and I would travel from Arizona to spend a week visiting him at his lake house. On one of those trips, on the way back from an errand to buy ice, my dad and I pulled over for a quick bite at a roadside shack advertising catfish fritters. At that point, most of my life had been spent in Saudi Arabia and Arizona, where I could count the number of black children in my elementary school on one hand, and without using my thumb. Alabama was different. Black people were everywhere, though not in Art's neighborhood, and on that day, on the back patio of that fish shack, I recognized code-switching for the very first time.

"Artisan." Remember the word "artisan?" Perfectly valid word. Described an actual type of thing. Until the ad world got ahold of it, put it on the street, and pimped it out until every last chemical food concoction assembled by robots out of petroleum byproducts was marketed as "artisan." Totally killed the word. "Bespoke?" You're next.

Here is what the word "urban" means: "of, pertaining to, or designating a city or town; living in a city; characteristic of or accustomed to cities; citified." Here is what the word "urban" does not, in fact, mean: "black person." Let's all do our part to keep this straight.

Nobel Prize winner Jules Hoffman was recently selected to become an immortal, beating out eight other fancy French candidates in a secret vote held last week.

When freelance writer Julieanne Smolinski noticed what she thought was an error in Saturday's New York Times crossword puzzle (PDF), she shot off an email to the corrections line. To her surprise, the Times' crossword puzzle editor responded, and the Great New York Times Crossword Puzzle Illin' Debate was born.

Every year Lake Superior State University bans a bunch of words and phrases from the English language for good. They just released their list today and, I must say, it is amazing. Oh wait, we can't say "amazing" anymore.

The Marist College Institute for Public Opinion has done its annual survey and declared "whatever" the "word or phrase considered to be the most annoying in casual conversation" in 2011. Right. Ummm... sure. I mean... whatever.

Flight attendants are always, like, "I'm going to go ahead and check your bag" or "I'm going to need you to put up your tray table" or "We do have FAA rules on alcohol consumption to enforce, Mr. Tate." But why do they talk like that? Well, because it pays. Duh.

The Pakistan's Telecommunications Authority has issued a list of 1,700 words it considers "offensive and obscene," and has demanded that mobile providers begin filtering them from text messages as of Monday. The list, which contains hundreds of familiar swear words as well as some truly puzzling choices, is meant to curb SMS spamming, according the PTA, which it defines as "the transmission of harmful, fraudulent, misleading, illegal or unsolicited messages in bulk to any person without express permission of the recipient."

The Economist ran a fascinating (and popular) poll of British readers, asking which "Americanisms" they use. Many, it turns out, have taken to saying "apartment" instead of "flat" and "sidewalk" instead of "pavement." So let's flip it around: Which dreadful Americanisms would you trade for something from the mother country?

Just when you think that this is America and yew better speak American if you wanna live here because my daddy worked hard to support our family and I don't pay taxes to support a buncha Mescans sneaking over the border to steal my hard-earned dollars and date my daughter, you read something like this: foreigners are making good solid American dollars—millions of 'em!—without even talkin' English like a real human. Is this that "socialism" they're always talking about?

Since late 2007, an obscure Twitter account has been automatically tweeting a single word every half an hour. The ultimate goal: to tweet every word in the English language. We spoke to the guy behind Everyword.

Yo. Sup? Cool. Anyhoo, a rabbinical Ralph Fiennes told a crowd at the BFI London Film Festival that modern language "is being eroded" due to "a world of truncated sentences, soundbites and Twitter." #whatever #shutupvoldemort

This morning on bad idea ball pit Fox & Friends, the melting Crisco sculpture known as Gretchen Carlson got outraged over a new program that requires "translation assistance" for the non-English speaking parents of Cleveland public school students. Boy was she mad!