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Joshua Slocum
Joshua Slocum was born February 20, 1844 in Nova Scotia, Canada. As far as anybody knows, he was the first person to sail around the world alone. A lot of people do know about Slocum, though, because after he got back in 1900 he wrote a best-selling book, Sailing Alone Around the World. The Slocum 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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February 19
I enjoyed Annie Hall when it debuted back in 1977. I liked The Purple Rose of Cairo, too, and Midnight in Paris. These are Woodie Allen movies. I don’t watch much TV these days, but back in the 80s when The Cosby Show was on, I remember enjoying watching it. For that matter, Pulp Fiction Continue reading
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Assorted Maledicta
Comics and comic art have format and style, both unique. So why, you might wonder, doesn’t it have a vocabulary as well? Wonder no more; the genre does have a vocabulary. The late Mort Walker, who for decades drew the newspaper comic strips Beetle Bailey and Hi and Lois, came up with the vocabulary in Continue reading
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February 18
I didn’t expect to live this long. Nobody my age expected to. I grew up in the 1960s, when we practiced hiding under our school desks in case of a nuclear attack. Even in second grade, all us kids knew perfectly well that a desk wasn’t going to save us. I mean, those 1960s desks Continue reading
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Chauvinism
You don’t hear the word “chauvinism” as much as you did a while back, when “male chauvinist” was a common epithet. As you probably know, “male chauvinism” is the belief that males are inherently superior to females. It was primarily applied to men — that is, human males, although I suppose a true believer might Continue reading
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February 17
Do you like modern art? Just because it’s “modern” doesn’t mean there’s anything new about it, of course. In fact, it’s kind of the opposite; most of the art produced in recent decades isn’t really “modern” — it’s more likely to be postmodern or contemporary. That doesn’t mean you can’t create modern art right now, Continue reading
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A small divigation
In his 1907 book Days off and other Digressions, Henry Van Dyke included this line: “…and the tale of the season’s angling told from the beginning with many embellishments and divagations.” “Divagation” comes from the latin word “divagari”, which means “to wander.” It’s an obscure word, but not quite as rare as you might think. Continue reading
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Range
To find a word with an unusual application, you don’t have to look any further than the kitchen. I”m not talking about “stove,” which is a word that originally meant a hot room like a steambath or sauna. That’s pretty close, though; a kitchen stove is also called (in the US) a “range.” “Range” dates Continue reading
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Ian Clarke
No matter how you communicate over the Internet, what you send can often be intercepted, spied on, used against you, or censored by any number of governmental and non-governmental entities. One alternative is Hyphanet, which until last year had been called Freenet since its inception in 2000. It was originally conceived by Ian Clarke, who 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