Recent ABC highlights

As well as continuing its comprehensive coverage of the Victorian bushfires and their aftermath the ABC has broadcast some very interesting programs lately.

The first Four Corners of the year "The Perfect Storm" was a succinct survey of the global financial crisis financial with particular reference to Far North Queensland. The program can, at least for the time being, be viewed online while the program transcript and a lot of other material is on the website.

Radio National continues to broadcast many gems. The latest Counterpoint featured a long interview with Dennis Dutton, philosophy professor and editor of the estimable Arts & Letters Daily discussing, among other things, evolutionary aesthetics. The transcript is available and worth reading.

A quirkily interesting Lingua Franca discussed the outcomes of the Collins Dictionary "Save the last word" campaign (transcript also available).

The endangered words are/were:

abstergent: cleansing or scouring
agrestic: rural, rustic, unpolished, uncouth
apodeictic: unquestionably true by virtue of demonstration
caducity: perishableness, senility
caliginosity: dimness, darkness
compossible: possible in coesistence with something else
embrangle: to confuse or entangle
exuviate: to shed (a skin or similar outer covering)
fatidical: prophetic
fubsy: short and stout, squat
griseous: streaked or mixed with grey, somewhat grey
malison: a curse
mansuetude: gentleness or mildness
muliebrity: the condition of being a woman
niddering: cowardly
nitid: bright, glistening
olid: foul-smelling
oppugnant: combative, antagonistic, or contrary
periapt: a charm or amulet
recrement: waste matter, refuse, dross
roborant: tending to fortify or increase strength
skirr: a whirring or grating sound, as of the wings of birds in flight
vaticinate: to foretell, prophesy
vilipend: to treat or regard with contempt

You'll need to look for yourself to find out which ones were reprieved.

Poetica featured John Clarke. Listen if you can, but if you can't read the transcript!

Finally, on a lighter (to some minds), note By Design broadcast a segment about the history of mail order catalogues. There's no transcript of this one so you'll have to listen or download the audio while it's available.