I like how subtle the shift in meaning is in words sometimes. For example, when people say to wear warm clothes, they seldom mean pre-heated clothes, but clothes that will insulate well.

Here's a fun one:

I know you like the back of my hand. Or, in third person: I know he likes the back of my hand.

Last night I scared myself awake when I discovered the Octo-Con. I was, with others, exploring small, rounded rectangular rooms at the end of long hallways that gave the impression (I don't think they were actually) of being carved out at wide intervals of a huge, deep building of solid stone. The significance of both the exploration, which was ( Read more... )

When I was a little boy we lived in a house by a grocery store and for a time my window overlooked it, a flat building with a small parking lot laid out before it. It was the parking lot where I eventually learned to ride my bicycle, and with that came its own set of adventures and intricacies; but when my parents put us to bed while it was still ( Read more... )

Okay, here we go ( Read more... )

"Well, science is the theology of our time, and like the old theology it's a muddle of conflicting assertions. What gripes my gut is that it has such a miserable vocabulary and such a pallid pack of images to offer to us--to the humble laity--for our edification and our faith. The old priest in his black robe gave us things that seemed to have ( Read more... )

Earlier this summer, my younger brother halfheartedly ran for senator. That is, he didn't so much run as get thrust to the forefront of a campaign that my sister and I thought would be a good idea. He himself never really warmed to the idea, and in fact was quite outrightly opposed to the whole thing, so we lost a bit of momentum. Despite having a ( Read more... )

Farce, my good fellow, he was to say time and again whenever Rabelais was the topic, the ridiculous, the hyperbolic, the ludicrous, the downright outrageous, without which there is no need for mathematical actuality and hence no engineering. Look to your pathetic repeat pathetic categories, my good man. Tragedy represents an engineering failure; ( Read more... )

I was up all last night reading the the dictionary.

There's amazing things in it. ( Some highlights: )

Q: What are you doing when you graduate?

A: (fist in the air) Back to the womb!

Have you heard of Richard B. Wright? Not Richard Wright, of course, the famous African American novelist and haikuist, but the man with a B. in the middle?

Of course you haven't.

And neither did I, until I came across an uncorrected proof of his ( Read more... )