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Not Exactly Eli
If you visit Yale University, you might view the portico of Davenport College, or even catch a glimpse of the official banner of the university’s president. If you do, you’ll see a yale. Not, mind you, a Yale — that would be a direct descendant of Elihu Yale, who was a governor of the British… Continue reading
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Tawdry
Around the year 750, the Venerable Bede wrote about a woman named Ethelreda. She had been the daughter of King Anna, who in spite of his name, was a king, not a queen. He was the king of East Anglia, which was pretty small as kingdoms go — it was only the size of what’s… Continue reading
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Joseph Pulitzer
Pulitzer Prizes come and Pulitzer Prizes go, but today is Pulitzer’s Birthday! Joseph Pulitzer was born April 10, 1847 in Hungary, which was a monarchy at the time. As a boy he would have been known as Pulitzer Jozsef, because that’s the customary name order in Hungarian. His father was a successful businessman, and was… Continue reading
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Coyly, now
Pay attention, if you can, without batting an eye. That is, don’t play baseball with your eyelids. No, wait, that’s not right. Don’t flap your eyelids like bat wings…er…but that’s not how bats fly, as far as I know. What I mean is…well never mind that; let’s figure out what’s going on with “batting eyes.”… Continue reading
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Isambard Kingdom Brunel
Some of the features of the infrastructure of the modern world include bridges with very wide spans, tunnels under rivers, standardized railroads, ships driven by propellers, ships that are really big and made of steel…I could go on. An amazing number of these were first designed and built by one man: Isambard Kingdom Brunel, who… Continue reading
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Clanging and tooting
If you have a “kitchen with all the bells and whistles,” you have all the accessories and appliances that most people can think of — but even without them, it’s still a kitchen. “Bells and whistles” can be found in practically any field. Here’s an unusual application from 2010: “One would think that most chief… Continue reading
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The Original Powerful Hollywood Actress
Industries change, and one of the ones that has changed the most is the motion picture industry. In the early days of the US film industry, in 1909, an early star named Mary Pickford appeared in 51 films. In those days a “movie” was a short, monochrome, silent pantomime that only took a few days… Continue reading
About Me
I’m Pete Harbeson, a writer (among other things) located near Boston, Massachusetts. In addition to writing my own content, I’ve learned to translate for my loquacious and opinionated pup Chocolate Bossypaws. No surprise, 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. You can also find some of my minor software projects at GitHub. Nothing very impressive. I mostly write tiny utilities in Python.
I find myself suddenly de-corporatized (their choice, not mine). To help keep the lights on, buy me a coffee!
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Contact
peterharbeson@me.com