ENGLISH AS LINGUA FRANCA?
HAS ENGLISH become the world’s lingua franca? I offer two examples of this—and dispel one folk legend. A nuanced example involves computer science. A recent one definitively pertains to a … Continue reading
NON-DEPRESSING TALES OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
ADVERSITY BREEDS its own humor, and the Great Depression is a perfect example of this. I’ve been enjoying The WPA Guide to America, whence came a lot of delightful tales. … Continue reading
I WISH I SAID THAT (FIRST)
I’VE BEEN collecting thoughtful comments, or in some cases just great one-liners, from a variety of sources. Some come from movies I’ve enjoyed or books I’ve read, others from TV … Continue reading
HAMLET—A GRAPHIC TALE
I WAS rereading Hamlet the other day. Not in The Annotated Shakespeare, but my Classics Illustrated comic book, a version that introduced a lot of us to “Stories by the World’s … Continue reading
COMMUNICATING SCIENCE
TODAY, ENGLISH is the language of science for much of the world. Why is that? Lynn K. Nyhart offers insights on this in “Speaking of science,” in the April 10, … Continue reading
WRITING, METAPHORICALLY
THERE’S A recently published book that threatens to tell me more about metaphors than I really want to know. Its review by Colin Burrow in the London Review of Books, … Continue reading
@simanaitis #IF YOU DIG…
THE TWITTER social network has fostered new ways of communicating, some of which I’m apparently never meant to understand. Fortunately, though, Prof. Jacob Eisenstein of the School of Interactive Computing, … Continue reading
A SELECTION OF PANS
THANKS TO Groucho Marx, I offer a nonsensical rhymed couplet (in iamic heptameter): “I soon dispose of all of those who put me on the pan/Like Shakespeare said to Nathan … Continue reading
POLITICAL NAME-CALLING
THE BBC World Service reported today a British Liberal Party spokesman said that political coalition could “give the Conservative Party a heart and Labour a brain.” Being an outsider to the … Continue reading
THE ANNOTATED MONA LISA
“I MAY not know much about art, but I know what I like.” For a long time, this adage summed up my own art appreciation. But I recently rummaged through … Continue reading
Simanaitis Says 