Pylimitics

Simplicity rearranged

unmonetizable content since 1997

  • Bells, dumb and bar

    Possibly the most famous piece of exercise equipment ever is the dumbbell. It’s the iconic thing used in illustrations and cartoons; two heavy weights on the ends of a bar. Just a glimpse of it evokes weightlifting, exercise, gyms, and the like. Except…it’s nothing at all like a bell, so what’s with the name? The Continue reading

  • Electra Reactivated

    Ronald spent the next two days and nights in the laboratory, first disassembling the automaton’s components even further, looking for jammed gear trains, wobbles in tiny jeweled flywheels, checking intricate glass parts for cracks, and testing India rubber seals for leaks. Finding nothing, he began to reassemble Elektra. When the gleaming figure was complete, Ronald Continue reading

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  • The Automaton

    “Ronald! Ronald, come here immediately!”  “On my way, Professor,” came the reply from the storeroom. Ronald emerged, carrying a jeroboam of the acetic acid Professor Q had sent him to fetch. He set the large bottle down carefully and rushed to the Professor’s side. “Look at this, Ronald, just look!” The professor indicated his shoes. Continue reading

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  • Liable to a jobation

    English tends to have plenty of extra words and phrases for common things. There are loads of synonyms for “money”, for example, and money is certainly something commonplace. Something else you’re likely to encounter repeatedly — sometimes even in the course of a single day — is scolding. Or, if you prefer, rebuking, criticizing, giving Continue reading

  • A prologue to prolegomenon

    “Prolegomenon” was borrowed straight from Latin in the early 1600s, about the time when authors in English got a serious grasp on the sequence “I’ll tell you want I’m gonna tell you, then I’lll tell you, then I’ll tell you what I just told you.” It’s either an introductory chapter, or in more ambitious undertakings, Continue reading

  • Henry Fielding

    Today is the anniversary of Henry Fielding’s birth, in 1707. He was born in England, to a privileged family (his uncle was an Earl), he was raised by his grandmother after his mother died when he was 11. Not too much is known about his early years, but he was probably not a model child Continue reading

  • You could look it up

    The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) contains over 300,000 entries — and that’s just the “main” entries; there are minor entries and subentries galore. There have so far been only two editions of the OED, the first published starting in 1884 (it took until 1928 to finish the whole publication) and the second in 1989. They Continue reading

  • In which there is mud and stuckness

    Rabbit, because he had such big ears, was the first to hear the Strange Sound carried on the breeze through the Hundred Acre Wood. “What was that?” he said suddenly.  Eeyore, who also had very sensitive ears, said “probably mud.” Pooh hadn’t heard anything, so all he said was “What was what, Rabbit?” Piglet had Continue reading

  • Flummox

    It first showed up in The Pickwick Papers, published in 1836. Charles Dickens was the author, but it was his first novel, and originally he used the pseudonym “Boz.” He also used that name on his very first publication, Sketches by Boz. Incidentally, the original title of The Pickwick Papers was the The Posthumous Papers Continue reading

  • Sarah Bagley

    Labor activism, organizing, and battles between owners of machines and the people who operated them have been going on ever since industrial machinery has existed. Sarah George Bagley was born in New Hampshire, in the US, on April 19,1806, and was a labor leader during the 1840s.  Bagley was born in a rural household; the Continue reading

About Me

I’m Pete Harbeson, a writer located near Boston, Massachusetts. In addition to writing my own content, I’ve learned to translate for my loquacious and opinionated pup Chocolate Bossypaws. I shouldn’t be surprised, but she mostly speaks in doggerel. You can find her contributions tagged with Chocolatiana.

Check out my other blog, Techlimitics, where I’m grappling with the nature of simplicity.

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