Cartoon : Romantic Moments with H1N1

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to waft	-	if a smell or a noise wafts, it floats through the air in a gentle way “The aroma of freshly made pancakes wafted through the air.”
to mess with someone's head/mind	-	(very informal) to seriously upset someone or make them confused “Don’t mess with my head; are you kidding or not?”
to be swept away/to get swept away	-	to become completely involved in a story, situation, your emotions, etc. “The full moon, the live piano music and the candlelight dinner caused the two lovers to be swept away in the spirit of romance.”

Vocabulary In the News : 21 September 2009 – The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

For a larger image, click on the front page. To visit The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, go to: http://www.ajc.com.

- Hospital emergency rooms in Atlanta are bracing for an onslaught of patients with flu-like symptoms. If you brace for something, you are getting yourself ready physically or mentally for something unpleasant. It’s what you would do with your body while driving if your car was about to hit or be hit. Here, emergency rooms are preparing for an onslaught, or a large number of people that all come at the same time. Another way of saying this is they are preparing for a surge of people. Because of fears concerning the H1N1 flu, more people are flooding emergency rooms. Most of these cases are simply due to the seasonal flu.

http://www.ajc.com/news/atlanta/atlanta-ers-brace-for-142731.html

- City employees for the city of Atlanta wanting to lose weight are part of an intensive fitness boot camp being led by an Atlanta city detective and former US Marine. The term boot camp is a military term for the initial intensive training all soldiers must do when they join the military. Here the term is used because it is an intensive program three times a week. During the workout (l’entraînement physique), the workers are feeling the burn! This is common expression used during a workout to describe that feeling in your muscles as they are being challenged and becoming fatigued! As we also say, “No pain, no gain!”

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- Due to an overpopulation of dogs across the state of Georgia and the rest of the South, thousands of animal shelters are being forced to euthanize thousands of dogs not claimed by their owners. So many of these “Dixie” dogs are being adopted by yearning Northerners where strict and obligatory neutering laws have created a demand for pets. Dixie, as most you might know, is an old nickname for the Southern United States. Volunteer pilots, with the goal of saving 5,000 dogs by Sunday, are flying these dogs north where people yearn for them. The term is a bit strong here in this headline but if you yearn for something, you want it a lot but risk not getting it. Some couples yearn to have a baby but have difficulties conceiving one. Some people yearn for the love of another who doesn’t love them.

http://www.ajc.com/news/georgia-dogs-adopted-by-142702.html

Vocabulary In the News : 16 September 2009 – Arizona Daily Star (Tuscon)

Click on the front page image to view a larger size. To visit the homepage of the Arizona Daily Star, go to : http://www.azstarnet.com/

- Health authorities in Arizona are telling citizens not to jump to the conclusion (conclure prématurément) that they have the HIN1 influenza virus just because they feel yucky. The new virus is respiratory and not intestinal. The informal word yucky is used to describe something that is dirty, ugly or unpleasant. When it’s cold and rainy outside, you can say, “What yucky weather!” So if you have a yucky feeling or you feel yucky, you feel sick.

- When they say that the feeling is 'widespread,’ this means that flu activity is at peak level; several counties across the state are reporting flu cases. Widespread is an adjective that means something is happening in many places and affecting a lot of people. Example sentences :

At the end of the last presidential campaign in the US, Obama had widespread support among Democrats.

Authorities are concerned about the widespread use of cannabis among teenagers.

Flooding has been widespread in the state due to heavy rains.

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Cartoons: Swine Flu Hype

Cartoon by Dave Granlund of Massachusetts published 01 May 2009.

This cartoon criticizes the news coverage (la couverture médiatique) of the swine flu. The cartoonist wants to say that the media is hyping the story. In other words, they are creating interest and intensifying the situation by being overly dramatic. To hype also means the lots of use of advertising and other publicity to influence or interest people. The verb can also be followed by the preposition up. For example:

The movie has been so hyped up that it was a bit of a disappointment when I eventually saw it.

This word is also used as an adjective:

the much-hyped swine flu

As a noun, hype means the use of excessive publicity:

the hype surrounding the murder trial

In this cartoon by Drew Sheneman of The Newark Star Ledger in New Jersey published on 28 April 2009, the cartoonist is criticizing the hype as being deliberate or misleading in order to distract from the economic crisis.

To be scared senseless is a common expression to describe someone who is so afraid that they no longer know what to do.