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Jane Colden
One of the unfortunately recurring themes of International Women’s Month has been women whose achievements have been relatively ignored and overlooked. Women who want to simply participate in many areas, including engineering and science, have had to overcome barriers to entry that men simply haven’t faced (since the barriers were often created by those men).… Continue reading
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Smells like Teen Petrichor
After a period of warm, dry weather, when it finally rains there’s often a very distinctive smell in the air. It’s a pleasant smell. It’s a smell with its very own word: “petrichor.” The fragrance is a little bit like wet dirt, but it doesn’t occur every time it rains — the preceding dry spell… Continue reading
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Musterdevillers
When a dignitary of great fame but also unpredictable, unstable behavior visits a community unused to hosting such personages, local officials are often frightened and want to put forth the best possible appearance. You can see this sort of thing in North Korea, where you have to dress and act in specific ways when attending… Continue reading
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Robert Frost
Today is the anniversary of the birth of Robert Frost, a 20th Century American poet born March 26, 1874 in San Francisco. Some poets achieve their greatest fame only after they’re gone, but Frost was widely celebrated during his lifetime, and is still the only poet to win four Pulitzer Prizes. Frost’s family moved across… Continue reading
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A Month of Sundaes
In 1897, if you wanted a job in the new industry of dispensing soft drinks at a “soda fountain”, you might study a book. The book was the Modern Guide for Soda Dispensers by W. A. Bonham, and it had all sorts of useful information. One important part of the book was recipes. Here’s an… Continue reading
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Catherine of Siena
Even centuries ago in male-dominated Europe, there were occasionally women who exerted their influence in politics and religious matters openly rather than behind the scenes. Caterina di Jacopo di Beincasa was one of those. She was born March 25, 1347 in Siena, which is now in Italy. Her father owned a cloth dyeing business, and… Continue reading
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Putting the Caret before the Hedera
It’s a somewhat puzzling state of affairs. There are quite a few characters and symbols we routinely use in addition to the regular alphabet; things like “@,” “#,” and even the common “*.” These commonly used symbols don’t have consistent names. But there are also many other characters and symbols that are only in use… Continue reading
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Just be quiet
Latin is probably a more orderly language than English in many ways. But it’s not a model of efficiency, where only one rule applies in any given situation, and for any object or action there’s only one word. Take the act (or lack of act, I suppose), “not talking” or “being quiet.” In Latin there’s… Continue reading
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Hebdomadal
It’s Friday, which as it happens is a hebdomadal occurrence. Hebdomadal means anything that happens once every seven days. It’s a rather rare word, seeing as how most of the time when anyone wants to refer to something like that they simply say“weekly.” But the word did appear in a 2008 article in the Liverpool… 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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peterharbeson@me.com