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Yes, I’m a friend, but
They think I lick ’em’cause I like ’em. Like them I do,But I like salt, too. And I’m not tellin’Which is more true. -Chocolate Continue reading
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Joshua Wurman
Extreme weather events are getting more frequent and more extreme, and atmospheric scientists are studying what’s going on in the air around us, especially in regard to storms. One of the leaders in that effort is Joshua Wurman, who celebrates his 64th birthday today. Wurman was born in Pennsylvania, in the US, to Gloria Nagy, Continue reading
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Lucinda Hinsdale Stone
Lucinda Hinsdale Stone was an American feminist long before the word “feminism” existed. She founded at least fifty women’s literary and study clubs in the midwestern US in the mid-1800s, was the first US woman to lead classes of young female students on international study trips, and after a career as a professor at the Continue reading
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Shhh, Don’t Tell Them
I’m an excellent matchWith my humans;I picked them carefully. I tell them what They should think and should doAnd they go along cheerfully. They often believeThat they have ideas Which really they get from me,But that part’s a secretWhich we won’t tell.I’m glad that you agree. -Chocolate Continue reading
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As you like it
It’s all the same to us now, but more than a thousand years ago, Old English imported the Old Norse word “same.” It’s a word you probably use every day, but I’ll bet you wouldn’t have predicted that its actual definition is pretty long. It starts out “the ordinary adjectival and pronominal designation of identity…” Continue reading
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October 1
In 1861, in spite of the part of the US Constitution requiring separation of government and religion, some religious leaders — including the Reverend Mark Watkinson of Pennsylvania — tried to convince the government that the nation’s official currency ought to include a religious statement. The US Civil War had begun and this was in Continue reading
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By and large
If you stop and think about a common, everyday expression, sometimes what you think is that it makes no sense. For example, by and large means “generally” or “for the most part.” The phrase has been around at least since the early 1700s (“Tho’ he trys every way, both by and large, to keep up with Continue reading
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September 30
September 30 is the day, in 1954, that the USS Nautilus was commissioned. It was not only the world’s first nuclear submarine; it was the first nuclear-powered vessel of any kind. People in 1954 thought nuclear power was going to define the future. There were predictions that electricity was going to be free because nuclear Continue reading
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The Calculation of Desire
It’s very difficult, recently, to escape the flood of news stories about artificial intelligence, many of them created by the latest version of artificial intelligence. “AI” is an initialism now recognized by far too many people. When I say “latest version” of AI, artificial intelligence has been around by that name since the mid-1950s, and Continue reading
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But why would I hate wisdom?
It’s pretty conventional, in mainline western-civilization thinking at least, to have a high regard for the combination of knowledge and judgment we’d call “wisdom.” In fact, if you were to rate English words by their positive connotation for most people, “wisdom” would probably come out somewhere near the top of the list. At least so 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