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July, approximately π
As everybody knows, March 14 is Pi Day, because in month/day format the third month and fourteenth day make 3.14, the first three digits of pi. What not everybody knows is that today, July 22, is Pi Approximation Day, because in day/month format (which is used everywhere but the US) it’s 22/7, and that’s the Continue reading
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Oh nonsense
Dictionaries are biased toward words they can find in print. When a word is in use, but mostly spoken rather than printed, it can fly under the dictionary radar. One such word is blatherskite, an “informal” word (in dictionary-speak that means it’s mostly spoken) that’s a regional Americanism. “Blatherskite” means both nonsense and a person Continue reading
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July 21
I’ll make this fast — because it’s July 21, after all, the day Louis Rigolly became the first person to drive a car faster than 100 mph. He did it in 1904, on a beach in Belgium (a good choice; today is Belgium National Day there). He drove a French Gobron-Brillié racing car. Gobron-Brillié made Continue reading
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Getting organized…not
Amid the chaos of everyday life, it’s common to mistake one word for another, or to think that two words might be related even though they aren’t. And the way English works, if enough people make the same mistake, it’s not really a mistake any more and ends up memorialized in the dictionary. “Chaos” is Continue reading
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July 20
The Ford Model T was famous for being the car the general public could afford, for being pretty reliable for its day, and for being available in “any color you wanted, as long as it was black.” On July 20, 1903, when the very first Ford was offered for sale, things were slightly different. The Continue reading
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Brian May (actually he probably will)
Remember yesterday’s mention of Les Horribles Cernettes, the spoof rock band made up of physicists? Well today we have the real deal — an actual rock star in a real band, and he’s also a physicist. I’m talking about Brian May, the guitarist for Queen, whose 77th birthday is today. He was born in Middlesex, Continue reading
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Eat Your Veggies
Whether we realize it or not, we live in an era of pedantic vegetable names. A mere hundred years ago, H.G. Wells could write this: “…Mr. Moses Gluckstein, a city gent and very pleasant and fond of sparrowgrass and chokes.” But nowadays, you’d just have to go with the more formal “asparagus and artichokes.” Wells Continue reading
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Have a seat in my cathedral
There are churches, and there are cathedrals. In fact, a “cathedral” is just a specific type of church, and was originally called a “cathedral church”. The distinction — and in fact the word — only exists in particular Christian sects. Those sects would be the ones with an elaborate organizational hierarchy. And although the typical Continue reading
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Is it international Weird day?
Happy 32nd anniversary! Of what? It’s the 32nd anniversary of the first photo posted to the World Wide Web, of course! It was a photo of Les Horribles Cernettes (The Horrible Cernettes), a spoof rock band (“the one and only High Energy Rock Band”) made up of employees at CERN when Tim Berners-Lee was developing Continue reading
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Domesday
Around 1085 in England, William the Conqueror got interested in what, exactly, he had conquered. To find out, he dispatched people all around England to find out “how many hundreds of hides were in the shire, what land the king himself had, and what stock upon the land; or, what dues he ought to have 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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