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Bilingual: You know how it goes: You're trying to talk to your grandchildren, but they're constantly checking their beeping phones. "I'm listening ...," they insist. Except you know only too well they're not. At home, over dinner, you want to catch up with your husband, but he's busy checking his e-mails on his iPad. He says "yes" every so often but, again, his attention is obviously elsewhere. Part of you wonders who is messaging him so often. You feel a pang of mistrust; maybe you won't even kiss him good night.

Buzzword: "Weapon of mass distraction" refers to something that distracts large numbers of people from thinking about important issues. It is a pun on the phrase weapon of mass destruction, which was voted phrase of the year for 2002 by the American Dialect Society.

Entertainment: Hong Kong martial arts film star Jackie Chan, who said last year at the Cannes Film Festival that he was retiring from action films, said that after more than a decade of contemplating quitting, he's going to let his body decide, in an interview promoting his 2012 film Chinese Zodiac, which will be released in US cinemas on Friday.