Archive for the ‘Whim’ Category
Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009
It has often been noted that English is deficient because it lacks a third-person pronoun that can refer to any person, without respect to sexual gender. Although some claim that "he" can refer to anyone in sentences like (1), most linguists agree that maleness is much more salient in these ...
Posted in Language, Whim | 3 Comments »
Thursday, March 19th, 2009
get down in the dumps
get down in the mud
get down in the dirt
get down in the trenches
get down in the gutter
get down in the muck
get down in the cornfields
get down in the weeds
get down in the wheat
I saw the expression "get down in the wheat" for the first time today.
Posted in Language, Whim | 3 Comments »
Thursday, February 12th, 2009
My epoch odometer.
Posted in Misc. and uncategorized, Science and Tech, Whim | Comments Off
Monday, August 25th, 2008
[Amazon.com] MP3 Albums > Christian & Gospel > Country Gospel > Sort Low to High
God's Gonna Ride a Harley
Golden Bowls of Compassion
Radiant Redbird
When Santa Claus Met Jesus
Pale Rider
Time is a Space
Mama was Judged
Tha Chronicles of Junglistic Hip Hop (EP)
Jesus Is My Spotter - the Race Car Driver's Anthem
Orca Chantress Beluga ...
Posted in Whim | 1 Comment »
Thursday, August 14th, 2008
I had no idea balloons played such a role in the movies: see VSL.
Posted in Whim | Comments Off
Wednesday, August 6th, 2008
First, take this fun quiz.
And then ...
Posted in Language, Search technology, Whim | Comments Off
Saturday, June 28th, 2008
A response to Mark's tagging me.
Seven factz about me:
Will Fitzgerald didn't use a computer until he was 23. It had cards.
It is difficult for Will Fitzgerald to refer to himself in the third person.
Despite his descriptivist linguistic training, Will Fitzgerald tries to distinguish 'between' and 'among'.
Will Fitzgerald was known ...
Posted in Personal and family, Whim | 6 Comments »
Monday, June 16th, 2008
Posted in Religion, Whim | Comments Off
Thursday, June 5th, 2008
# The evolution of a Ruby programmer
def sum(list)
total = 0
for i in 0..list.size-1
total = total + list[i]
end
total
end
def sum(list)
total = 0
list.each do |item|
total += item
end
...
Posted in Science and Tech, Whim | 6 Comments »
Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008
Many of us are familiar with the commercial in which the question is asked, "How do you spell 'relief'?" And the answer is "R-O-L-A-I-D-S." According to Wikipedia, this commercial has been around since the 1970's.
I came across an earlier example from 1793, in Elder John Leland's "The ...
Posted in Language, Whim | Comments Off
Sunday, April 13th, 2008
This Willie Mays PSA really scared me as a kid.
You protect your arms and hands legs and save your eyes. If you see a blasting cap remember now, don't touch them. Tell a police or a fireman or whatever it is. Have fun like I do with those (baseball ...
Posted in Whim | 2 Comments »
Saturday, April 5th, 2008
I talked to my brother Dave on the phone today, and we agreed that we haven't played basketball in 300 years. But we have a hoop in the backyard, and I've decided to try to get 'good' at shooting foul shots. The advantage of foul shots, of course, is that ...
Posted in Personal and family, Whim | 2 Comments »
Saturday, April 5th, 2008
My co-minions at Powerset have been growing (or faking growing) facial hair in the run up to our beta launch. And, of course, it has its own blog: Powerstache.com. It's even made the LA Times, and Michael Arrington's initial take on our beta product even mentions it.
Chris pretty much ...
Posted in Search technology, Whim | 3 Comments »
Wednesday, March 19th, 2008
From 'In pursuit of the G-d shot':
Millions of people probably get great coffee every morning with a standard home machine and ground coffee from a supermarket. I was starting to worry that, with a process that has as many variables as pulling an espresso, once you're daft enough to go ...
Posted in Language, Whim | 1 Comment »
Monday, January 7th, 2008
Here is my translation of the Catalan Christmas song, "Fum, fum, fum." I sang it at the Epiphany celebration at Church of the Sojourners last night. I'm sorry I didn't get the 'pastorets' to eat 'botifarra,' a Catalunyan sausage.
On December twenty-five
Fum, fum, fum
On December twenty-five
Fum, fum, fum
A child comes in ...
Posted in Whim | 2 Comments »
Saturday, December 8th, 2007
Kant attack ad
(Via Crooked Timber)
Posted in Whim | 2 Comments »
Friday, December 7th, 2007
Courtesy of Google's Chart API.
Posted in Science and Tech, Whim | Comments Off
Monday, November 26th, 2007
Worse than Failure posts about a silly function named:
RemoveSpecialCharsExceptQuote
AmpersandApostropheOpenBracketCloseBracketComma
HyphenFullStopCommaForwardSlash
Hah! If I'd written this in Lisp, it would be the *much* simpler:
remove_special_chars_except_quote_ampersand_
apostrophe_open_bracket_close_bracket_comma_hyphen_
full_stop_comma_forward_slash
which is why Lisp ...
Posted in Science and Tech, Whim | 3 Comments »
Thursday, November 22nd, 2007
I had a short article published in our local paper, the Kalamazoo Gazette:
It was New Year's Eve, and things were finally starting to go right. Our car had broken down outside Forsyth, Ga., on Christmas Eve, and we had had to hitchhike to northern Florida to visit my mother, leaving ...
Posted in Personal and family, Whim | Comments Off
Monday, October 29th, 2007
This cross-legg'd cabbage-eating son of a cucumber!
(Sir J. Jollup in Hone Every-day Book 2, from the OED entry for cucumber.)
Posted in Language, Whim | Comments Off