24 March 2010
Here’s a little quiz for my readers to test their knowledge: When was the Declaration of Independence signed? (Give the year, month and day.) What is the colour of pure water? Which weighs more—a pound of feathers or a pound of gold? What does Ich bin ein Berliner really mean? How many scholars in Columbus’ [...]
15 March 2010
Where I live, we adjust our clocks for daylight-saving time—although personally I think the government has no place nannying everyone into getting up an hour earlier. (In my case, I guess it works out fine, since it just makes all my appointments an hour earlier, and I don’t have any so very early in the morning.) […]
11 March 2010
Many people seem to use Mac or Linux because those operating systems are ‘more secure’ or ‘don’t get viruses’. And I have nothing against that—I want my next computer to be a Mac. But that’s not the problem. […]
22 February 2010
I’m just reading the paper by the American Dialect Society (PDF) about the word of the year (2009) and the word of the decade (2000–2009).
The word of the decade was google. The word of the year was tweet. But there are some other interesting winners. […]
25 January 2010
I was thinking about tongue-twisters the other day. I think the most effective ones are two or three words long. Also, there are a lot of tricky two-word phrases—it’s not just a small few that are hard to say. […]
18 November 2009
While you’re all waiting for the next instalment of my account of the National Bible Bee, I thought I might give everyone a little something to think about—The Game.
The Game has three rules, viz.: […]
English