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Hoosegow
People’s interactions are what drives the evolution of language, and the things that are common in a society tend to be the things that generate new words. The beginnings are often found as slang in a particular segment of the population, then some of the slang is adopted more widely. Incarceration is a more prominent Continue reading
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Banter
Jonathan Swift was a writer in the 1600s and 1700s who’s still famous for satire. He wrote “Gulliver’s Travels,” which nowadays most people think is a children’s story about a guy who somehow ends up in a land full of little tiny people, the Lilliputians. Really, though, the story about the Lilliputians is just one Continue reading
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Born Today: George Klein
Canada doesn’t get enough credit for all the things that have been invented there. For instance, the electric wheelchair, the surgical stapler, skis for airplanes landing in snow, early all-terrain vehicles (the “Weasel” was his design; it’s also amphibious), the first nuclear reactor built outside the US (and to a new and unique design), and Continue reading
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August 15
August 15 is a popular day for countries to declare or attain independence. Today is Independence Day in Korea, commemorating independence from Japan in 1945. It’s the same day in South and North Korea, but in South Korea it’s called “Independence Day,” while in North Korea it’s “Fatherland Liberation Day.” It’s Independence Day in India, Continue reading
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Having your druthers
Word of the day: druthers There’s an English phrase — primarily an Americanism — that you may not have encountered, at least not recently. If I had my druthers, of course, people would still use it all the time, but its use has always tended to be regional (used more in the southern states), and Continue reading
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Cantrev
If you’re interested in ancient tales set in the British Isles, and you’ve already read Beowulf, you might turn to the Irish Táin Bó Cúailnge or the Welsh Mabinogion. There’s a certain structure pretty common to epic stories from thousands of years ago; they’re a bit like super hero comics. There’s someone extraordinary who performs Continue reading
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Born Today: Charlotte Fowler Wells
The history of science is pretty interesting; all sorts of discoveries — and entire fields of study — have flourished, only to be eventually disproven. This is still going on; just look at the news in the past few weeks about a “room-temperature superconductor,” or think back a few years to “cold fusion.” Charlotte Fowler Continue reading
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August 14
You never know — it might have been a dark and stormy night on August 14, 1975. A young couple, whose names were not Janet or Brad, might have been driving on King’s Road in London when one of their tires went flat. No mobile phones in those days, so they went in search of 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