February 2012
32 posts
Feb 10th
137 notes
Feb 10th
4 notes
"Downton Abbey": Tracking the Anachronisms →
Leave it to us word nerds to ruin everything. WARNING: there are some minor spoilers! (One, really. Which didn’t spoil anything for me.)
Feb 10th
1 note
Feb 9th
207 notes
Feb 8th
2,001 notes
Feb 8th
1,364 notes
Feb 8th
1 note
Feb 7th
Prop 8 declared unconstitutional: What you need to... →
newsweek: ruthoutspoken: Here’s the breakdown of what you need to know: Today’s ruling: The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in a 2-1 vote that Prop 8 is not constitutional. This affirms Judge Vaughn Walker’s earlier ruling that Prop. 8 violated the U.S. Constitution by denying rights to a certain group of people. “Although the Constitution permits communities to enact most laws they...
Feb 7th
1,106 notes
Etymology of the Day
From Online Etymology Dictionary: pie (1) “pastry,” c.1300, from M.L. pie “meat or fish enclosed in pastry,” perhaps related to M.L. pia “pie, pastry,” also possibly connected with pica “magpie” (see pie (2)) on notion of the bird’s habit of collecting miscellaneous objects. Not known outside English, except Gaelic pighe, which is from...
Feb 7th
1 note
Feb 7th
161 notes
Feb 7th
129 notes
Feb 7th
145 notes
Feb 6th
1,857 notes
Feb 6th
3,233 notes
Feb 6th
71,789 notes
Feb 6th
5 notes
Feb 3rd
1,876 notes
"Not to Put Too Fine a Point Upon It": How Dickens... →
Feb 3rd
Feb 3rd
145,283 notes
6 tags
In case you believe in astrology
There have been some silly arguments for astrology from readers of the Tumblr blogs Scipsy and CWL. They were similar to an argument that I heard recently at a dinner party*, so I thought I would add a couple of facts into the discussion, so astrologists can ignore them. ON THE GRAVITATIONAL EFFECTS OF THE PLANETS, FROM NASA’S WEBSITE: Here is a table of tidal forces of the Sun, Moon, and...
Feb 3rd
76 notes
Feb 3rd
386 notes
Feb 3rd
151 notes
Feb 3rd
248 notes
Feb 2nd
180 notes
Stephen Tobolowsky's Podcast Episode About Making... →
popculturebrain: Seems appropriate. Listen up. (ht katiecamosy) Listening to this podcast episode is an excellent way to celebrate Groundhog Day.
Feb 2nd
17 notes
Understand Groundhog Day
fakescience:
Feb 2nd
1,979 notes
2 tags
Feb 2nd
5 notes
Feb 1st
9,007 notes
Feb 1st
414 notes
Feb 1st
182 notes
Feb 1st
28 notes
January 2012
78 posts
Jan 31st
409 notes
“The act of worship, as carried on by Christians, seems to me to be debasing...”
– H.L. Mencken, in a letter to Will Durant on the subject of the meaning of life (from Letters of Note)
Jan 31st
2 notes
It Takes 24 Million Generations For a Mouse To... →
Jan 31st
Jan 30th
1 note
Jan 30th
221 notes
Jan 30th
1,069 notes
Jan 30th
397 notes
ShortFormBlog: How old does Google think you are?... →
shortformblog: Google thinks I’m a senior citizen. Based on the websites you visit and the stuff you search for, Google infers your interests, age and gender, in order to show you more relavent ads (digression: It does this, in part, by having partner websites place a cookie on your computer; more on that here). Anyway, head on over to Google’s Ad Preferences page, and you can see what Google...
Jan 30th
91 notes
Jan 30th
58 notes
To My Old Master →
This letter, posted on Letters of Note, almost made me stand and cheer at my desk. Explanation below: “In August of 1865, a Colonel P.H. Anderson of Big Spring, Tennessee, wrote to his former slave, Jourdan Anderson, and requested that he come back to work on his farm. Jourdan — who, since being emancipated, had moved to Ohio, found paid work, and was now supporting his family — responded...
Jan 30th
6 notes
Jan 30th
“Thou eunuch of language; thou Englishman, who never was south the Tweed; thou...”
– Robert Burns, responding to a critic in 1791 (via Letters of Note)
Jan 30th
Jan 30th
20,937 notes
1 tag
Jan 27th
5,379 notes
Listenhalphillips: connorratliff: ELVIS COSTELLO...
Jan 27th
50 notes
Jan 27th
646 notes
Jan 27th
2,194 notes
Jan 27th