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Jobbernowl
Inexplicably, some quite handy words that can be used to point out someone’s lack of intellectual capacity have become quite obscure. This is in spite of current events, which certainly seem to be particularly characterized by individuals with such shortcomings. One word that’s quite rare but pretty expressive is “jobbernowl.” “Jobbernowl” simply means a stupid Continue reading
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I’m so insulted
The phrase “adding insult to injury” seems, on the face of it, to be a bit silly. Is it supposed to mean that after you do somebody harm, calling them names makes it worse? That’s not what it was intended to mean though — it comes from a time when “insult” didn’t have quite the Continue reading
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Seymour Papert
Today is a leap day, which means there’s a smaller population to choose from in selecting a birthday honoree. Nevertheless, many people have been born on February 29, including Seymour Papert, in 1928 in South Africa. Papert provided a whole generation of kids with a fun and interesting introduction to computing: the Logo language. Papert Continue reading
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Linus Pauling
There’s a new movie out about the scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer. Although he doesn’t appear in the film, which is full of eminent scientists of the time, one of Oppenheimer’s close friends (for a while) was Linus Pauling, who was born February 28, 1901. Pauling has a ton of accomplishments and accolades, and possibly the Continue reading
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February 28
There are two different kinds of discoveries in science. One kind of discovery emerges over years of work, and if the work involves experimentation, there are probably many, many experiments involved. The other sort of discovery happens in a moment, when somebody with the right expertise and instrumentation observes something unexpected or even unprecedented. Of Continue reading
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English is comical
Shakespeare, as most people know, added a great number of words and phrases to English. The same is true of some other esteemed writers, including John Milton and others. By “others”, of course, you’ll probably have guessed that I mean people like Billy De Beck. He was active in the first half of the 20th Continue reading
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February 27
Here’s a little thought experiment. Let’s set the scene. You are a leader in an organization that produces good that are largely handmade. Not completely — the makers in your organization use machinery, but their end product requires a lot of skill as well. It doesn’t matter for our experiment what the product is. It Continue reading
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Nasty Suicide
Today is the birthday of…I’m not making this up…Nasty Suicide. Nasty is a Finnish musician who was one of the cofounders of Hanoi Rocks, in 1979. That band broke up in 1985, and Suicide formed The Suicide Twins with Andy McCoy, and at the same time founded The Cherry Bombz. You may be surprised to Continue reading
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Idiolects, acrolects, and isolects, oh my!
A question that often comes up when discussing unusual words is whether a word is a “real” word. There isn’t a pat answer in English, since there’s nobody in charge to decide which words are and aren’t real. One big hurdle is “being in the dictionary,” but that’s a pretty gray area too. There are 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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