Showing posts with label homophones. Show all posts
Showing posts with label homophones. Show all posts

Crowdsourced Law School Rankings v. U.S. News Peer Rankings.

Paul Caron identifies the law schools that most over-perform in the crowdsourced ranking: Michigan State, Baylor, Syracuse, South Carolina, Duquesne, Gonzaga...

Who knows why? I think people are just reacting to names. "Gonzaga"... that sounds cool. I'll pick Gonzaga.

Speaking of law school names, all the law schools have "School of Law" or "Law School" as part of their name. (Well, there's also "College of Law.") I've long thought "Law School" was better. It's spiffier. Omit needless words. I was a student at one of the "of law" law schools (NYU), and I teach at one of the "law school" law schools (Wisconsin), and I don't think my preference is any sort of home-team loyalty. It's all about style. For a long time, I thought my style preference was just picking the less verbose format — to be more sleek and modern. The "of law" business sounded a little pretentious and faux lofty.

Then yesterday, after all these years, I noticed the homophones. School of Law sounds like School o' Flaw. And Law School sounds like Law's Cool. It's funny. Why don't people hear what they are saying. When you're branding a product (or an institution), you need to listen to yourself. Look and listen.

By the way, Gonzaga's law school is officially called Gonzago University School of Law. See? They tried to go all fancy. It should just be Gonzaga Law School. On the other hand, does crowdsourcing lie? Yes, of course, but probably not with respect to the psychological impact of the name.

"That last post wrecked my blog theme. I was working on a theme."

Meade: "What theme?"

Me: "My piss theme. I had a piss theme going. That's how I got to the dog that pissed off the Nazis. I Googled 'piss,' because I saw I had a theme going."

Meade: "What?"

Me: "There was the 'pee-o-meter' and... "

Meade: "Where was the piss in the first post, the Johnny Weir..."

Me (suddenly realizing I didn't use Johnny Weir's "pissed me off" and "heard worse in bathrooms" until the the second post): "Oh, yeah."

Meade: "Johnny Wee-er."

Me: "You're good with the homophones. The homophobe homophones."

Meade: "I'm afraid of homophones."

Homophone phone message.

I got a phone message from someone who identified himself as someone I had talked about on an episode of Bloggingheads. What I heard: "You disgust me." What I figured out, on relistening: "You discussed me."
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