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A Very Good Sense of Humor
Otter and Muskrat were laughing uncontrollably when Hare and Raccoon arrived. “What’s funny this time?” asked Hare. “It…it was…” began Otter, but was laughing too hard to continue. “There was this…” said Muskrat, before starting to laugh so hard he got the hiccups. Hare and Raccoon looked at each other, then sat down to wait.… Continue reading
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Privilege
Somebody who enjoys having a privilege has some sort of special right or favor; an advantage in some area, whether they deserve it or not. “Privileges” are generally associated with the society you live in, and the idea goes way, way back to some pretty ancient societies. So does the word — but its history… Continue reading
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What the dickens is this all about?
Christmas is just recently past, and who the dickens do we think of at Christmas? Fast as the dickens, Charles Dickens comes to mind! The various “dickens” phrases, though, have nothing to do with Charles himself; they predate him by quite a lot. Shakespeare used one in “The Merry Wives of Windsor”: “I cannot tell… Continue reading
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Vellicate
You can find the most obscure words in dictionaries. Well, obviously, you can find them because that’s where they are defined — but what I mean this time is that when you’re reading a definition of a perfectly common word, sometimes that’s where you run into some pretty unusual ones. For example, take this definition… Continue reading
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Simon Forman
What we now understand about daily life centuries ago is mostly based on the events that people wrote down in journals, letters, diaries, and the like. The journals of Samuel Pepys address the late 1600s. And decades earlier — but also in England — another diarist provided similar details about his own time. That was… Continue reading
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Ultracrepidarian
Dislike a journalist, website, or publication because of their political commentary? If you write a review, try to beat this: “His Journal, then, is a depository for every species of political sophistry and personal calumny. There is no abuse or corruption that does not there find a Jesuitical palliation or a bare-faced vindication. There we… Continue reading
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Plenilune
The Polychronicon is a book written by Ranulf Higden around 1342 or so. Higden was a monk in a monastery in Chester, England, and thanks to that book, he’s pretty famous as a medieval historian. The Polychronicon isn’t just about history; it also touches on geography (he knew in a very general way where India… Continue reading
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Are left and right universal?
Here’s an interesting thought experiment: using only words, how would you describe turning something “clockwise” to someone who’s never seen an analog clock? You could possibly refer to the movement of the sun in the sky, but you’d have to know whether you’re standing in the northern or southern hemisphere. As a particularly irritating extension… Continue reading
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Bant
Trendy diets tend to have names, like keto or south beach. And some of them, like the Atkins diet, are named after the person who popularized them, usually by writing a book. One of the trendiest recommendations of recent diets is avoidance of carbohydrates. All this — low carbs, fashionable diets promoted by books, diets… 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