Category Archives: humanities

translation sought

The log says נפגעי תקיפה מינית linked yesterday to one of my math doodles. Do you read Hebrew?

Posted in eye-candy, language, me!me!me! | 1 Comment

a bundle of sticks

On the Straight Dope site: Semantic and geographic wanderings, over the past two centuries, of the words fag, faggot.

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a question for philologists

Is the phrase “some are more equal than others” older than Animal Farm?

Posted in language, prose | Leave a comment

an even number of odd links

In a surprising place, a history of the hamburger. (Linked by Bruce Sterling.) Time Cube Central: your unofficial timecube resource (found through Crank Dot Net). 2006: dead.

Posted in humanities, sciences | 1 Comment

the creation of tradition

Aha! When this blog was young and innocent, I asked how the heck Madison came to be a favorite name for girls. Rick Heller cites a NYT article with the answer: a movie that I never saw.

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would they understand the joke?

My One True Ex, home from a week of theatre-hopping in London, reports that there exists a chain of sex-toy shoppes named Lovecraft. Do they sell Cthulhu dildos? tentacle rape manga?

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the spirit of ’89

The English Bill of Rights was enacted in October 1689. The US BoR was submitted for ratification in September 1789. Anybody happen to know if the centennial coincidence was played up in the rhetoric of the time?

Posted in history | Leave a comment