Do you remember being forced to read Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales in high school? Do you remember how weird the English of that period sounded? The English language is constantly changing; Google has become a verb. I was reminded of this again when I ran across the article “20 Delightful Slang Terms From the 1930s”
There hasn’t been much good news on the climate front lately. We’ve just survived a record hot summer, and the very expensive natural disasters continue. Yet here is something positive — painting roofs white can significantly lower urban temperatures. This revelation came from London, which is expecting a changing climate to bring hotter and drier summers,
Seventeen short stories for general audiences ranging from the unusual to the unbelievable to the just plain strange. Now at Aamazon.com https://www.amazon.com/Stories-Short-Strange-Bob-Welbaum-ebook/dp/B0D3S444J3/ref=sr_1_1? Paperback $15.99 Kindle Unlimited $0.00 or $3.99 to buy
I read a very disturbing article recently in The New York Times — “The Troubling Trend in Teenage Sex” by Peggy Orenstein. The trend is a disturbing increase in “rough sex” among college students, especially sexual strangulation, more commonly known as choking. Not only it is dangerous, it’s more dangerous than you might even imagine.
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Tired to hearing about how much food is wasted? There is an imaginative way to start taking advantage of leftover food at commercial establishments — restaurants, bakeries, grocery stores — especially if you like surprises. The idea is called Too Good To Go (https://www.toogoodtogo.com/en-us). According to its website, “Too Good To Go is a social
Do you have a superpower? Mine is turning a two-sided piece of paper into a one-sided piece of paper. Okay, it’s actually a mathematical trick (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-timeless-journey-of-the-moebius-strip), but middle-school students don’t know that, so I usually get away with it. Yes, humans can have superpowers, although maybe not the kind found in comic books. For example,
When I worked as “Christmas help” at the local Disney Store one holiday season, I learned that calling someone a “customer” wasn’t a compliment. Our patrons were our “guests” and “customer” was a code word for a suspected shoplifter. I was reminded of this after reading”14 Secret Code Words You Might Want to Know” by
The origin of common expressions is always a fascinating subject. Some origins are reasonably obvious, like “flash in the pan” and “going off half-cocked,” come from firearms. But other derivations are more obscure. Take the word “tarnation.” According to the Oxford English Dictionary, this expression is a combination of two terms: darnation, a natural variant of damnation; and tarnal, a
You can take a rest, but is it possible to rest your brain? Consider when you’re zoning out on the couch — is your mind inactive too? All indications are the answer is no, your brain is still very much engaged. Through about 20 years of research, scientists have found what they’re calling a default