May 18, 2011 ( Read more... )

January 13, 2011

This morning I was looking up the etymology of "blowing a raspberry" for S., and was delighted to discover that it was an example of Cockney rhyming slang, which brought back memories of Don Cheadle as Basher in Ocean's Eleven. Essentially, rhyming slang uses the first part of a two-part rhyme for something as a substitute or ( Read more... )

January 12, 2011 ( Read more... )

2 May, 2010 ( Read more... )

30 April, 2010

Today, in a conversation with eel_grass on MSN, she described a thesaurus trip which led from "fixation" through "crush" and "desire" and "hankering" finally to a word I barely recognized, "druthers". I consulted Google's define function and learned that it meant "preference". Google also informed me that "to druther" meant "to prefer". ( Read more... )

4 April, 2010 ( Read more... )

Like any good daily-public-entry-poster that writes for an audience, I keep a decent backlog of entries saved up for days when I can't think of anything or don't have time to write. Here is an entry I wrote after a conversation with thisnameexists on Sunday morning.

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What exactly constitutes breakfast? Or lunch? thisnameexists and I were wondering about this recently. ( Read more... )

28 March, 2010

(continued from thisapron aptitude aquamarine aquiline arboreal arcane arduous argyle arid arpeggio arrowhead arsenic artisan ascendant ascot ashen askance asp assault assembly assiduous assimilate assistance astute asymmetry asymptote asynchronous atlas atmospheric atoll atomic atonement atrium atrocious atrophy attack attainable ( Read more... )

10 March, 2010

In talking with yuriko_kun earlier today, I brought up my theory of focussed distraction, and she'd never heard of it, which means I haven't written about it here. It's not my theory originally, of course, but in essence it goes like this: humans are naturally vulnerable to distractions, and one's management of these distractions is directly ( Read more... )

7 March, 2010 ( Read more... )