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Sometimes, normal humans take a liking to clinical terms and adopt them.

You go out on a date, and when your friends ask how it went you reply: "Oh, she's psychotic." Or perhaps: "He's delusional."

The justifications for such adjectives being used might be simple.

In the former case, the lady might have asked, just as the main course plates were cleared away, where the gentleman thought the relationship was going. This was after having described the details of her previous 17 relationships.

In the latter case, the gentleman might have talked about himself … Read more

You thought it might be all over?

You thought that Samsung had tired of suggesting Apple was a fading brand for geriatrics?

You may also have thought that the world runs on Cabernet and common sense.

Yes, the Galaxy S4 was launched on a rocket of the beige and the tasteless. But those were just the corporate folks doing their thing.

Now, the American arm of Samsung has returned to its own style. This involves squishing Apple till it's cider.

Here we are at a high school graduation pool party presented by the latest Samsung ad.

The cooler people … Read more

People like to claim that education is in crisis.

But it's surely no more in crisis than humanity itself, as it veers toward an unknown future while leering into screens for its solution.

However, Bartow High School in Florida garlanded itself in a particularly educative spirit this week by expelling a 16-year-old girl for putting a couple of chemicals into an 8-ounce water bottle and watching it go bang.

Should this tale not have exploded before your eyes this week, Kiera Wilmot wasn't merely expelled for this misdeed on school premises, she was also charged with felony possession … Read more

Some stories make you wonder.

Some, however, make your eyeballs cease to move.

This, for example, is the story of a T-Mobile employee who says she was made to clock out to use the bathroom.

Which, to the average objective eye, seems a trifle inhumane.

Kristi Rifkin was employed by T-Mobile in its Nashville, Tenn., call center. It seems that, on the whole, she felt her job was relatively sweet music.

However, things changed when she fell pregnant for the second time.

As ABC News reports, her pregnancy was tough. On the advice of a doctor, she had to drink … Read more

I am sure that Samsung has set various sales targets for the Samsung Galaxy S4.

These might be along the lines of: more than the iPhone, a lot more than the iPhone and so many more than the iPhone that we'll end up buying Apple.

Everyone can dream. … Read more

Keith Richards wearing white headphones would be like Josh Groban wearing a skirt.

Or Steven Tyler wearing men's clothing.

Somehow, it wouldn't seem right.

Fortunately, it is unlikely to happen, because the Rolling Stone who once fell out of a tree has revealed he doesn't own an iPod. … Read more

It wasn't us, it was him.

Yes, that man with the weird ideas we hired from Apple. He made us do all those things that drove our customers away in droves.

So now that he's gone, please come back. We beg you. We'll be the old JC Penney. The one you all loved.

Although maybe you didn't all love it enough to keep shopping there, which is why we hired the man with weird ideas from Apple.

But we were wrong. You were right. Well, many of you. We think.

This seems largely the subtext of a new ad released by JC Penney.… Read more

It's hard to know whether those who can't spell are stressed, oppressed by excess multitasking, or merely uneducated.

The people behind the highly nutritious Snickers bar decided to prove that it might be none of the above.

It is, they posited, merely hunger that drives you to ignorance.

So, as AdAge reports, Snickers got together with Google to see whether they could encourage better spelling of Google search terms, as misspelling was causing Google's servers to seize up and spew smoke and curses.

I made up that last part.

As part of the campaign, the Snickers-sponsored machines … Read more

Occasionally we sprinkle advice around here. It's intended to be both gracious and helpful.

Today's homily is for those who are paid by cell phone manufacturers to use their phones.

The advice is this: Please, please remember to use their phones.

I mention this only because of the latest telephonic faux pas committed by the very fetching Spanish tennis player David Ferrer.

It's the Madrid Open this week, so he thought he'd inform his almost 370,000 Twitter followers that he was so very, very happy with his new Samsung Galaxy S4.

Perhaps his competitive adrenaline … Read more