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May I inquire how you spell “enquire”?
In 1616 (or thereabouts), Shakespeare included this in his play Coriolanus: “You must enquire your way.” Then in 1633, Joseph Hall wrote a book (with one of those absurdly long 17th century titles), in which he wrote: “To inquire my interpretation of this dreame.” Ever since, some people have been using “enquire” where others think it ought to be “inquire,”… Continue reading
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Vincenzo Coronelli, August 16
There are different ways to look at globes — that is, three-dimensional representations of the earth. They can be political guides, showing you where the nations and borders are. They can be geographical or oceanographical tools. And they can be works of art. The globes made by Vincenzo Coronelli, who was born August 16, 1650… Continue reading
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Paul Rand, August 15
You may have noticed how often you see sans-serif typefaces like Helvetica in corporate publications? Not to mention photos rather than drawings. Typography as a design element. Asymmetric layouts that use a grid. Those all come from the International Typographic Style, a school of graphic design dating back to the 1930s. If you’ve heard of… Continue reading
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Deliquescent
In 1876 Mortimer Collins referred to “The dusty and deliquescent pedestrian.” In 1845, Charles Darwin noted “Those salts answer best for preserving cheese which contain most of the deliquescent chlorides.” In 1874 Mordecai Cubitt Cooke pointed out that “It is very difficult to observe the structure of the hymenium, on account of its deliquescent nature.” And in 1866, in a textbook… Continue reading
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August 16
August 16, 1896 was a big day in the Klondike. Skookum Jim Mason, George Carmack, and Dawson Charlie discovered gold on Rabbit Creek, a small(ish) stream feeding into the Klondike River. “Skookum Jim Mason” and “Dawson Charlie” were aliases — but not for any nefarious reasons. Skookum Jim’s real name was Keish, and Dawson Charlie… Continue reading
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Stopped in my tracks
When you’re “stumped”, you’re stopped in your metaphorical tracks by a puzzle, a conundrum, something you can’t immediately figure out. And various things can leave a stump when the main part of it is removed, the best example being what’s left in the ground when a tree is cut down. “Stump” came (in the 1300s)… 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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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
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What a mess
Etymologists try to discover the origins of just about every word they come across. Sometimes, though, their efforts come to nothing but a fiasco. In fact you could say that’s about happened in trying to figure out the origin of “fiasco.” “Fiasco” comes from Italian, where it has a perfectly straightforward meaning: a bottle or… Continue reading
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William Wotton
In Europe, back in the 1600s, there was a sort of a culture clash between the medieval values of stability and unchanging devotion to what everybody (who cared) “knowing everything there was to know,” and the new ideas from what we now call Renaissance humanists to recover and understand the culture, knowledge, and arts of… 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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peterharbeson@me.com