23 Jun 2006
The word “derivative” sprung up on Delancey Place last week. Delancey Place is a brief daily email with an interesting excerpt or quote from a book or magazine article. Reading it is a favorite daily ritual. I am constantly impressed with the quality and diversity of the excerpts. I strongly recommend subscribing. It is free [...]
18 Jun 2006
Today I would like to honor fathers and especially my father, Keith, with a quote from Mark Twain: When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had [...]
24 Apr 2006
I cannot apologize enough for the dearth of recent posts. Today I came across an interesting word in an editorial by Cory Doctorow at the New York Times. Cory’s editorial draws our attention to cheap programmable microchips that allow nearly anybody with an idea for a simple electronic device, say a whimsical watch or a [...]
5 Apr 2006
Play Over at Boing Boing, I came across a link to some great poems on the idiosyncracies of spelling and pronounciation in the English language. They don’t make for a great podcast. The joy is in reading them. Here is my favorite: WHY ENGLISH IS SO HARD TO LEARN We must polish the Polish furniture. [...]
15 Mar 2006
PlayI came across today’s word in David Pogue’s New York Times Circuits email newsletter. The word is inanity. When I first read it I suspected it was a typo; that Pogue meant insanity. As the author of many typos I was quite excited to find a typo in a New York Times article. Alas, inanity [...]
3 Mar 2006
Oubliette, this word popped up on two sites in one day so I had to include it in a podcast. Oubliette, as you can probably tell from the sound of oubliette is a French noun. An oubliette is a dungeon or cave with only an opening at the top. A hole in the ground could [...]