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Archive of entries posted on February 2010

covert reading ops

I’ve been reading a lot lately (more on that later), so I’ve been frequenting the Prince George’s County Memorial Library in Hyattsville, Md. I fondly remember going to the C. Burr Artz Public Library in Frederick with my parents and brother as a kid at least monthly. I’m not sure that I read even half [...]

kornheiser suspended, world rejoices

The Washington Post reported today that Tony Kornheiser was suspended from the air by ESPN for making unflattering comments about his colleague Hannah Storm’s wardrobe. (I consider myself unqualified to make such a sartorial criticism.) Lately I have gotten into the habit of watching him and Michael Wilbon on PTI each evening, so I find [...]

undies

If nothing else I am known as a man with umpteen pet peeves. One of them is CAPTCHA. (It’s an acronym–I won’t provide the full expansion here for fear of barfing on my keyboard out of its sheer inanity.) I guess it’s great that it reduces comment spam and mass bot purchasing on Ticketmaster, but, [...]

one of those days…

photographic redunancy

My roommates and I hosted a party on Saturday night. The attendance was zero. Being the irrepressible scamps that we are, we partied by ourselves and took pictures anyway. Here’s a poorly Photoshopped one of me regaling me with a rather ribald anecdote that cannot be repeated here due to my intractable sense of public [...]

etymological redundancy

From last month’s Washington Post: “Metro Transit Police say they have a new unit working to deter terrorists from targeting the transit system.” Deter is from the Latin de (from) + terrere (to frighten), which is also the origin of terrorist. They used two words in a row that share a common derivation of a [...]

figures of speech, part two of ∞

Eunoia is doubly interesting–first, as a curiosity in being the shortest English language word to contain all five vowels, and second, as a figure of speech. From the Greek for “well mind,” it refers to the concept of benevolent goodwill. I read today’s op-ed in the Times about Microsoft, and it made me think that Bill [...]