-
About that history you were taught…
This is a photo of a model reconstruction of Bologna, Italy, somewhere around 1300 or so. What the heck are all those towers?!? We know they were there because the foundations are still there today in Bologna. They were built by wealthy families to protect themselves and all their stuff when the 99% got angry… Continue reading
-
Hop in
Heard of jargon? Here’s some cargon In addition to interesting words for parts of automobiles (and wagons), there’s a larger collection of words than you might expect for types of automobiles and wagons. Wagons are included because most of the words for cars originally came from wagons. Most people know that a “coupe” is a… Continue reading
-
Want some mustard with those wünderbrats?
One side effect of money, at least when there’s a lot of it, seems to be that the recipient often comes to believe they are special in some way other than being fortunate and (often) having superior ability in a particular area. Many, many people have superior ability in a particular area, of course, but… Continue reading
-
No laughing matter
The famous novelist Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton — he’s famous these days for being a bad novelist — wrote, in 1842, this line in his most famous novel, Paul Clifford: “If Paul’s comrade laughed at first, he now laughed ten times more merrily than ever. He threw his full length of limb upon a neighbouring sofa,… Continue reading
-
You can’t say we weren’t warned
Thirty-one years ago, in 1994, the Internet existed but not everybody knew that yet. Even those of us who did know about it didn’t always have an convenient connection; computers had only barely begun to be portable, and you certainly weren’t going to access much on that telephone in your home that had a handset… Continue reading
-
Yahoo! (not the web one)
A sort of old-fashioned cheer — it sounds very British, probably because it is —goes like this: “Hip, hip, hooray!” It’s older than you might think. It was first recorded in an 1803 poem with the title (big surprise here) Hip, hip, hurrah. The poem illustrates one thing, at least – while today we generally… Continue reading
-
Embrace the shallow
Evidently long-time windbag and vainglorious waste of space David Brooks got another piece published in The NY Times. You can’t read it without paying, and it’s almost certainly not worth it. But it does have a good title (which Brooks almost certainly didn’t come up with): We Deserve Pete Hegseth. Mitch Wagner expanded on it… Continue reading
-
Doing the wave
A “soliton” is a special kind of wave. While it appears here and there in publications devoted to quantum physics — because it has to do with quantum or quasiparticle propagation — the word also has to do with other kinds of waves, even the traditional kind you see at the beach. “Soliton” is derived… Continue reading
-
The Air War
Those noisy birdswould you believe?They fly awayuntil I leave. They seem to thinkthat it’s okayto just ignorethe things I say. What I tell themisn’t hard:“Go land insomeone else’s yard!” It almost makes meblow my stack:every timeI turn my back, There they areignoring me’cause I can’t fly(which they can see.) So now it’s warand I will… Continue reading
-
Another Amazon delivery?
Everybody knows what a “box” is, right? Yup, it’s a type of small evergreen shrub used ornamentally. The word goes back to Old English, where its first known use is from the early 900s in Codex Diplomaticus Aevi Saxonici. The citation is “Of ðere gemear~codan æfsan to ðon readan slo..of ðam treowe to ðere wican… 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!
Privacy policy
No trackers, no ads, no data collected or saved.
Contact
peterharbeson@me.com