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 [...]
Archive of posts filed under the reading category.
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 [...]
later, panda
Tai Shan is being deported to China on February 4. Rather than getting misty-eyed about his impending departure, I say, good riddance. That’s right–I’m anti-panda. The Supreme Court recently affirmed personal freedom of speech rights for corporations. I’d like to think that if there actually was a prosopopoetic corporation, he would sound like the stiff [...]