ETYMOLOGY: FILIBUSTER
HOW CAN A representative democracy obstruct a majority view? In one word: filibuster. And an example comes to immediate mind: gun control. Here are tidbits on etymology of the word … Continue reading
OGDEN NASH’S ANIMAL PALS
RECENT RECITATION HERE OF “Feminine Rhymes” got me thinking about that master of light poetry, Ogden Nash. Which, in turn, encouraged me to reprise a collection of his works. Linell … Continue reading
TIDBITS OF MEDIEVAL PAPER PART 2
YESTERDAY, WE GLEANED TIDBITS from Tom Johnson’s review of Orietta Da Rold’s Paper in Medieval England: From Pulp to Fiction. Paper arrived big-time in England in the late 14th-century. Fifty … Continue reading
TIDBITS OF MEDIEVAL PAPER PART 1
TOM JOHNSON BEGINS his London Review of Books article with quite an amazing tidbit: “In 1391, 2.3 million sheets of paper arrived at the port of London: a page for … Continue reading
BEOWOLF—A DIGITALLY UNRULY TYPEFACE (FOR A WHILE, THAT IS)
AS DESCRIBED BY John L. Walters in his fascinating Fifty Typefaces That Changed the World, “Few recent typefaces can claim to be as radical—anarchistic, even— as Beowolf….” Imagine a typeface … Continue reading
VINTAGE BOND
I REALIZE THIS TITLE might be about whisky, but in fact I’m thinking of Bond, James Bond. I confess I haven’t kept up with the Bond franchise, thus my inclusion … Continue reading
MALAPROPING THROUGH THE AGES
WHICH CAME FIRST: the malaprop, a humorous misuse of similar sounding words, or Mrs. Malaprop, a character in Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s 1775 play The Rivals? The French language gives a … Continue reading
SKOOL IS BACK
NOW THAT KIDS ARE returning, sorta, to traditional schooling, maybe it’s time to bring some humor, er… humour to the educational process. I do this in vintage fashion, by examining … Continue reading
BUT HE WENT, LIKE, WHATEVER….
OLIVER GOLDSMITH, ANGLO-IRISH playwright, went, like, “The true use of speech is not to express our wants as to conceal them.” Whatever. How facile this evasive English rolls off the … Continue reading
ONLINE LEARNING PART 2
YESTERDAY, PROFESSOR WILLIAM DAVIES discussed plagiarism, identifying such literary treachery with TurnItIn software, and obscuring it by means of Artificial Intelligence. Today, his article in London Review of Books continues … Continue reading
Simanaitis Says 