Recent Posts - page 47

  • What gender is Covid-19?

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    The French Academy has been shocked — shocked, I tell you — that some people have actually been saying “le Covid 19” instead of “la Covid 19”. The underlying issue is that maladie (“illness”) is feminine, but virus is masculine. So the French, in… Read More ›

  • Languages change. Don’t be a peever!

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    Do you still speak Shakespearean English? Or, to go further back, Chaucerian English? No, of course you don’t. So why do so many people think that in 2020 we should speak the way people spoke in 1950, that 2020 speech… Read More ›

  • How many languages are missing from the internet?

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    One day in the early ’80s, when very few people had even heard of the internet, I was reading an online discussion about computer programming projects in Logo. A certain angry participant got very upset at a contributor from Montreal… Read More ›

  • The Misadventures of Nero Wolfe

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    Let’s see a show of hands: how many of you know who Nero Wolfe was? OK, fellow boomers, you can put your hands down now. We are the generation that knows Rex Stout. For the rest of you, I’ll tell… Read More ›

  • Why writing?

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    I wish I had created this. “This” is a series of a dozen extremely short animated videos describing the entire worldwide history of writing and writing systems — in under an hour total time for all the bite-size videos combined…. Read More ›

  • The cats know what to do!

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    William, Flicka, and Vincent — as you can see — were observing proper social distancing as they lined up six feet apart, waiting patiently for their dinner last night. (BTW, William isn’t quite as large as the perspective makes him… Read More ›

  • Masks

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    Barbara and I have new masks, hand-made with love by our niece Aviva. (Unfortunately the cats think that they’re cat toys because of the dangly straps.)      

  • In praise of English teachers

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    Some English teachers, anyway. Actually, one English teacher in particular: Dudley Fitts. I just read this short essay in Andover Magazine in which an Andover alumnus (who is slightly older than I), Tod Howard Hawks, recalled his first 9th-grade English assignment… Read More ›

  • Apart-ment

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    You will want to read a longish poem just published by my favorite Canadian linguist, James Harbeck. Before then, note what he has to say about words: Words are delicious and intoxicating. They do much more than just denote; they have appearance,… Read More ›

  • How does a New Yawker tawk?

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    How do you combine linguistics, the movies, New York, and politics? Just check out this fascinating article from the New York Times! The article includes several great clips with audio and video from a wide range of New Yorkers. I… Read More ›

  • William thinks he’s on TV.

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    He thinks he’s on TV. He doesn’t realize he’s just sitting in a box from BJs.

  • What an indulgence!

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    What an indulgence: two Dorchester restaurants two days in a row! It’s important to support your local small businesses during the stay-at-home orders, so Barbara and I decided to get takeout from Tavolo last night even though we had gotten… Read More ›

  • The Blarney Stone without any blarney

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    Last night Barbara and I enjoyed another quarantine dinner that couldn’t be beat: takeout from the Blarney Stone, delivered efficiently and promptly by Caviar. Mostly quoting from the menu now, we had “grilled BBQ marinated steak tips, creamy mashed potatoes,… Read More ›

  • High-school graduation photo

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    Everyone seems to be posting their high-school graduation picture on Facebook these days. So, I guess I have to join ’em. Here we are. P.A. 1965:      

  • DJ’s European Market and Deli

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    Polish take-out yesterday afternoon from DJ’s European Market and Deli: lunch and partial dinner for Barbara, partial dinner for me. DJ’s is in the Polish Triangle, right on the Dorchester-Southie border. Courtesy of prompt delivery by GrubHub, we ordered stuffed cabbage… Read More ›

  • Maxine Unleashes Doomsday

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    How could I resist a novel with a title like Maxine Unleashes Doomsday? The genre of this story, as you expect, is near-future post-apocalyptic science fiction — more or less. Apparently it was inspired by The Road Warrior, but I’ve never seen… Read More ›

  • Math and cats

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    (This is a follow-up to yesterday’s post. I suggest reading it first, if you haven’t done so already.) A quote from John Horton Conway in today’s MathBlab: You know, people think mathematics is complicated. Mathematics is the simple bit. It’s… Read More ›

  • RIP, John Horton Conway

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    Very sad news. John Horton Conway, one of the greatest math educators of our generation, has died of COVID-19: John Conway leaves a legacy of the most awe-inspiring mathematical and magical mind-twisters—the Monster group and monstrous moonshine, surreal numbers, Sprouts,… Read More ›

  • Wiggins is self-isolating.

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    This is Wiggins. She peers through the bars because she thinks that quarantine is like jail. No, she’s not one of ours; her human is our friend Meredith.    

  • Leonard Cohen; The Doors; Emerson, Lake, and Palmer; Jimi Hendrix; The Who; and so forth

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    It seems that everyone in my generation was at Woodstock in 1969. Or so they claim. Except me. I wasn’t there. Apparently 400,000 attendees really were there, although well over a million people say they were there. But that’s not what I’m writing… Read More ›