Archive for May, 2009
I occasionally see people use "virii" as the plural of "virus," but there's no good reason (that I know of) to do so. See Wikipedia's entry on the plural of...
Just came across two quotes attributed to physicist Murray Gell-Mann: If I have seen farther than others, it is because I am surrounded by dwarves. [On the Feynman Problem-Solving Algorithm]...
An "energumen" turns out to be a person possessed by an evil spirit, or someone who acts like they're possessed, or a fanatic. I'm now surprised that I haven't seen...
According to a variety of sources, the word "TASER" was coined as an acronym for "Thomas A. Swift's Electric Rifle." Apparently the Taser's inventor was a fan of the Tom...
I was recently discussing various words for "mother," and it occurred to me that words/spellings like mama, momma, mom, ma, and mamma have different connotations to me. MW11 lists them...
Every year around this time, a question of the utmost importance occurs to me. I refer, of course, to the question of whether this holiday honors mothers or a mother—that...
Headline from a news story: Gay rights activist makes Clinton stop What did the activist make Clinton stop doing, and was it President Clinton or Secretary Clinton? Answer: Neither: the...
There's been some confusion in mainstream news venues lately about Twitter-related terminology. I imagine that most of y'all who read this blog know more about Twitter than I do, but...
I've previously posted various fortune-cookie fortunes that I find entertaining when you add ". . . in bed" to the end: Column HHH: House Rules Blog entry: House rules Blog entry: Spam, fortunes,...
Occasionally, critics and reviewers can be entertainingly vicious. I generally don't approve of that sort of thing, but sometimes I can't help being amused. Case in point: the first line...