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Was that bali…high?
The incredible two-headed heffalump It’s not unusual for an English word to have quite a few unrelated meanings, or even turn out to be more than one word with the same sound. As you might think, this happens more often with words that have been around for centuries. It’s also more common with simpler one-… Continue reading
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August 31
Since August 31st is National Trail Mix Day, and also National Language Day (in Moldova), we should all practice saying “mix de trasee,” which is “Trail Mix” in Romanian. Why Romanian? Well, Moldova has its own language (Moldovan, obviously), but on a closer look, it turns out that Moldovan and Romanian are identical — the… Continue reading
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Families
Families are funnyAnd mine is — a lot.It’s my sister and meAnd the humans we’ve got. When you see us togetheryour jaw might be dropted(Don’t tell thembut they were adopted.) -Chocolate Continue reading
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Ernest Rutherford
We all learned, at least at a basic level, about atoms, radioactivity, atomic numbers of elements, and the like. For all of it we can thank Ernest Rutherford, who was born August 30, 1871 in New Zealand. At the time he was born, New Zealand was still a colony, not an independent country. In 1887,… Continue reading
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Who’s in charge here?
Don’t bother asking who’s the bossI’ll tell you right now: it’s me. When everybody does what I say to doThings will be great. You’ll see! -Chocolate Continue reading
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A net gain
What we know as “tennis” is not the original game of tennis. The original tennis is probably derived from the French word “tenez,” which means “look out!” — probably because it’s a game in which somebody uses a racquet to hit a ball at you as hard as they can. Tennis was played as early… Continue reading
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All Wet
Humans never shake themselves!They never even try. What I can’t figure out is this:How do they get dry? -Chocolate Continue reading
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August 30
Now that the pandemic is over and world travel is again a reasonable activity, you might decide to visit as exotic a location as you could find. Even one that might be pretty hard to find, like, for example, East Timor. Timor is an island at the southern end of the island chains in southeast… Continue reading
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Non-fawning fawns
It’s not a good look to be fawning over somebody. Fawning is “courting favor by an abject demeanor.” It can also mean to cringe, as if you’re sure you’re about to be beaten, or insulted, or otherwise ill-used by somebody that you can’t or won’t fight back against. In fiction, it’s usually the bad guy’s… Continue reading
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Charles Kettering
We often hear about the “big name” inventors who are credited with this or that major innovation, but not about the many others whose work refines “big ideas” into things that are actually usable. One of the people you may not have heard of is Charles Kettering, who was born August 29, 1876 in Ohio… 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