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It’s all nonsense
There was a sort of dictionary in the late 1500s, the Worlde of Wordes, that included this definition: “Balchi, a..roguish, gibbrish word, vsed for money.” Whatever kind of money “balchi” was has been lost to history, as has the word “balchi”, but the entry did, at least, include one of the first appearances of “gibbrish”. Clearly the… Continue reading
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“The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter.”
A US-based story or Hollywood film about crime or criminals set in the first two-thirds of the 20th century is pretty likely to include somebody talking about “going on the lam.” What they mean is going on the run from the law; evading arrest. They might also say something like “beat it, the cops are… Continue reading
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Clement Ader
As everybody knows, airplanes didn’t arrive until appropriate power plants, gasoline engines, were invented. The older steam engines were much too heavy. As is the case with a daunting number of things that “everybody knows,” this is not true. Clement Ader, who was born April 2, 1841 in France, invented a working airplane in 1886,… Continue reading
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An April 1 word
If something is fine, valid, or acceptable, there are plenty of English words available to communicate that judgement. One of them is “cromulent,” as in “…it’s a perfectly cromulent word.” You don’t hear “cromulent” as much as some of its synonyms, but you might run across it here and there. David X. Cohen, a scholar… Continue reading
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An April Fool’s Birthday. Or two.
On April 1, 1959, Donald Kaufman was born in New York City. The family moved to the town of Massapequa, NY when Donald was a boy, then to Connecticut, where he and his brother Charles graduated from high school. After graduating he followed his brother to Boston University. Then they both transferred to New York… Continue reading
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A rose by any other nym
Most people know that an “acronym” is a word created from the first letters of a group of different words, like “NASA” (National Aeronautics and Space Administration). The “-nym” part of “acronym” is from the Greek word “onoma,” which means name. The “acro-“ part is also from Greek: “akros” means the top of something. You… Continue reading
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It’s intense
Keeping your nose to the grindstone means continuing to work; paying attention. It actually comes from old grist mills, which had big turning stones for grinding grain into flour. The stones, which were several feet across and weighed tons, had to be adjusted precisely so they ground the grain, but didn’t grind against each other.… Continue reading
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Milling Around
Keeping your nose to the grindstone means continuing to work; paying attention. It actually comes from old grist mills, which had big turning stones for grinding grain into flour. The stones, which were several feet across and weighed tons, had to be adjusted precisely so they ground the grain, but didn’t grind against each other.… Continue reading
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Pathological science?
Remember cold fusion? Back in 1989, two scientists specializing in electrochemistry announced — not in a scientific journal, but in a press conference — that they’d created a “sustained nuclear fusion reaction” at room temperature without the vast technical apparatus traditional “hot” fusion experiments required. The leading scientist on the team was Martin Fleischmann, who… 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 newsletter, Artisanal Scribbles, where I’m grappling with writing, authentic human authorship, integrity, and the craft of beauty in the AI age. You can also find some of my old software projects at GitHub. Nothing very impressive. I mostly wrote tiny utilities in Python and shell scripts. I’m mostly retired from coding nowadays.
I find myself suddenly de-corporatized (their choice, not mine). To help keep the lights on, buy me a coffee!
Recent Posts
- The Cycles within the Arc
- I’d rather have a taco
- 20-something Hubris
- You can’t be a leader without followers
- Candy Trees and Handkerchiefs
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