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Born Today: Ottó Bláthy
If you enjoy alternating-current electricity in your home or business, and you get the power from “the grid,” paying the utility company for the amount you use, and if you can rely on the power from your electrical outlets being pretty consistent, and if you have any devices that use AC electric motors, you can Continue reading
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August 11
If you do the math (tedious, but straightforward) converting a base 20 numbering system to base 10, then count backwards, interpolating different calendar systems (which have changed regularly over the centuries), you eventually arrive at August 11, 3114 BCE in the Gregorian calendar. Exactly 5,135 years ago today. Technically that’s the “proleptic” Gregorian calendar, because Continue reading
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Beauty in Your Eye
“I would know if I had something in my eye, Magpie,” said Hare. “I didn’t mean that sort of something,” said Magpie, “I mean the kind of thing you have in your eye because you’re the only one who sees it.” “The only time theres a thing that only I can see,” said Hare, “is Continue reading
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Unruly Passions
April 2022 In an article in The Atlantic, “Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid,” Jonathan Haidt mentions James Madison’s recognition that democratic societies can suffer from “the turbulence and weakness of unruly passions.” Haidt points out that to create a “sustainable republic” is to “build in mechanisms to slow things down” Continue reading
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Recherché
A word you find once in a while — it seems to be falling in popularity — is recherché. If you want to point out that something is rare, refined, and sought out with great care, while simultaneously implying that you yourself are refined and elegant (and quite possibly a bit pretentious), you’d describe the Continue reading
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Collyrium
These days it’s a fairly low-level hacker exploit to open and read emails intended for somebody else. That sort of thing used to be a bit more difficult, at least in terms of physical skills. The way you’d protect a document a couple millennia ago was to apply a seal, probably made of molten wax Continue reading
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Born Today: Charles Darrow
Do you enjoy board games? Before you pass Go or pay your rent make a note that Charles Darrow was born August 10 in 1889, and is the person who brought the game Monopoly to the market. Darrow didn’t start out as a game designer. He was born in Philadelphia, in the US, and was Continue reading
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August 10
August 10 provides a good object lesson in how fast the world works now compared to the 1700s. It was July 4, 1776 that the British colonies issued the Declaration of Independence. But the anniversary of the news actually reaching England is today, August 10. The phrase “breaking news” didn’t even exist until about 1840. Continue reading
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Did you see me putting pain in a stone?
April 2022 The title is a quote from the Cate Le Bon song Pompeii. It’s from the album of the same name. Le Bon’s music is spare, simple, and yet far more evocative than it at first appears. It can be pretty difficult, for me, at least, to figure out what some of her work is really Continue reading
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Metadrama
“I’m visiting the farm today,” said Raccoon, “do you want to come?” “Oh I dunno,” said Hare, “what’s going on at the farm?” “Apples,” said Raccoon. “The first apples are ripe.” “Now, how do you know that without going there first?” asked Hare. “Bear told me,” said Raccoon. “Bear is visiting the forest? And he 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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Contact
peterharbeson@me.com