fifth column
I always wondered vaguely about the origin of the term "fifth column," but never got around to looking it up 'til now. Turns out (according to the abovelinked Wikipedia article)...
fracking
I turned on the radio during Talk of the Nation's Science Friday yesterday, in the middle of a segment about natural gas in water. At one point (starting at 13:52...
impithany
Best recent line from a spam comment: For that brief moment of today I had a little bit of sanity and than I had to hit the pavement to go...
Rhyme of the day
Watched Once Upon a Mattress last night. There were several good rhymes and other good lines in the songs; I especially liked this one: My time is at a premium...
The mills of the gods
Back in 2002, I posted an entry in my main blog about the Longfellow line “Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small” and its antecedents,...
Complimentary close
Quite a while back, I read a story (perhaps in the New Yorker or some such?) in which one character would write letters to another, and would sign off with...
Lovecraftian Mondegreen
Just heard a clip of Tom Paxton's rendition of "I Remember Loving You" (which is more or less by Utah Phillips), and was a bit startled at the lyrics: And...
Molon labe
Just happened across the Greek phrase "Μολων λαβε" (not sure how to get the accent marks to appear in HTML), often transliterated "molon labe." Apparently it was King Leonidas's response...
Comma, importance of
Back in March, I came across this AP headline: More than math, reading important I read it as saying that reading was more important than math, but the article is...
Exasperated problems
This just in from the AP, by way of AOL: [...] spacewalking repairs may be needed sometime after Discovery leaves this weekend. The problem is exasperated by the fact that...