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(Lack of) Radio Silence
One characteristic of English that makes word games possible is the typical patterns of letter combinations. For instance, there are combinations like “st” and “pr” that you run into all the time. On the other hand, you hardly ever see “kf” or “jp” in combination. When you find a word that includes a rare combination, Continue reading
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A pine how-do-you-do
“Pining away” is something one does when exhausted by emotional suffering. Like when you’re a dog, and your human goes to work without you. Or when you’re the heroine of a romance novel and your prince charming is called away by the king to go into battle against the bad guys. Nowadays it’s considered a Continue reading
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Take me out to the ball game
It’s spring, and in the US that means the Baseball Season is here. Baseball is a sport that’s been around for about 150 years or so, and at one time was the most popular sport in the US — and was called the “national game.” Even so, it’s played in very few other countries (Japan Continue reading
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Audrey Tang
Audrey Tang Feng was born April 18 in 1981. If you’re into Perl programming, you know them as a community leader. If you’re way into Perl programming and aware of the, um, discussion around Perl 5 versus Perl 6, you know them as the leader of the Pugs project to implement a compiler for Raku Continue reading
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A nickel for a knucker
Beowulf, a long poem written sometime around 1000 CE (give or take a century or so), at one point mentions a monster named Nickera, who lives in a lake. In the poem it appears that “Nickera” is the monster’s name, but actually “nicker” (or nicor) was an Old English word for any sort of imaginary Continue reading
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One Swell Foop
Probably because I’m so fell, it fell to me in one fell swoop, as I worked a fell on my loom in my home in the fell, clothed in fells of sheep, to recount the odd history of “fell.” “Fell” is a perfectly common, modern word. And it’s also rare. And it’s also obsolete and Continue reading
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Sferics
One characteristic of English that makes word games possible is the typical patterns of letter combinations. For instance, there are combinations like “st” and “pr” that you run into all the time. On the other hand, you hardly ever see “kf” or “jp” in combination. When you find a word that includes a rare combination, Continue reading
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Charlie Chaplin
April 16 is Charlie Chaplin’s birthday, so there’s a certain argument that this shouldn’t be written down at all, but pantomimed, in monochrome, accompanied by piano or organ music and with a few narrative cards inserted. That’s the way Chaplin himself would have done it during the prime of his career in silent films. But Continue reading
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Robert Edison Fulton, Jr.
April 15 is the day Robert Edison Fulton, Jr. was born in New York City, in 1909. He was pretty well known, at least in the US, during his lifetime, but I bet you never heard of him. He was a rich kid — his father was the president of an early truck manufacturer, Mack, 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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peterharbeson@me.com