A Curious Little Blog

Someone at work used the expression "We'll do" yesterday. It's supposed to be "Will do," as in, "Could you open that account for me?" -- "Will do." No big deal, just interesting how people misunderstand things. Another one, which bothers me a lot more for some reason, is "kitty-corner." It was originally "cater-corner," but is now usually "catty-corner" (http://www.dailywritingtips.com/the-post-office-is-kitty-corner-to-the-court-house/). The expression has nothing to do with cats or kittens of course -- apparently it bears some relation to the French "quatre," four, but I don't know how this led to the sense of "diagonal" -- but some people can't hear "catty" without thinking "kitty." I think the phrase "can't win for losing" is a Southernism; in any case, my parents both used it, and I don't hear it much elsewhere. The one time that sta...

I found out this week that the ticker symbol for Crocs, Inc. is CROX. I like that, for some reason. I have to speak out in support of Hilary Clinton, of all people, regarding her "outburst" in the Congo a few weeks ago. I don't actually think what she said was all that much of an outburst, and not a serious problem. I think anybody can understand why she was annoyed at the question -- what a weird question, in any case -- and why she answered it as she did. She could have given a better answer, of course. The best would have been to pass quickly over the reference to Bill and state her opinion, rather than making that the center of her answer (and not answering). But she didn't yell or attack the questioner. I think similarly about Barbara Boxer's comments to the general who called her "ma'am" instead of "senator." I don't view her comments as favourably, chiefly because there is nothing wrong with being called "ma'am,...

Medicine names often come in two parts, the main name and a second word that I suppose indicates the class of chemical, such as hydrochloride (Prozac, for example, is fluoxetine hydrochloride). I recently discovered a medicine with an unusual second word, "malate," which prompted me to look it up. Malate is a form of malic acid, a chemical that gives sour fruits their flavour. The name is derived from the Latin "malum," apple, because of its presence in green apples. Apparently it is an important substance in biochemistry, although I don't understand any of the technical reasons. But it is interesting that food manufacturers often add malate to foods to give them a sour or tart flavour. Malate is also found in grapes, some of which my wife grew this year in our yard. You don't realize just how tasteless store-bought grapes are until you taste home-grown grapes. Store-bought grapes are also big and juicy, but they hardly have any flavour. My wife'...

Medicines almost always have two names: the brand name, and the generic name. Tylenol is the brand name for a medicine containing acetaminophen, and Motrin is a brand name for a medicine containing ibuprofen. I always try to learn the generic name, because the same active ingredient can often be found in different brands, and I like to know what exactly I'm getting. I started learning generic names so I could identify whether store brands contain the same medicine as the more expensive brands, but I have found it useful in other cases as well. For example, there are various kinds of pain medications, most of which contain some combination of acetaminophen, ibuprofen, and aspirin; by looking at the exact contents, I can tell what I am actually getting. Another type of medication with a confusing variety of choices are antihistamines and decongestants (which are often combined in the same pill). The only one that ever seemed to work for me was Actifed, but one of its active ing...

Daisy was out standing in her field. It wasn't actually her field -- it belonged to Farmer Fred -- but she lived in it, and she thought of it as hers. She had risen early, as usual, to do her cowesthenics. Now she was done, and the other cows were starting to wander out onto the field. "Bullcrap!" muttered Elsie as she stepped in something on her way over to Daisy. "Actually, it's cow crap," Daisy said. "They don't allow bulls in here." They both turned to look across the field toward where Ferdinand, the farm's bull, stood grazing. "He's quite a stud," Daisy muttered dreamily. "Well, today's your lucky day," answered Elsie, "although I don't know what you see in him. He's kind of wimpy." Elsie had come from another farm, and she was always finding things to criticize about Daisy's farm. Daisy just ignored her. She pitied Elsie and her complaining. Not only had it turned al...

Peggy Noonan is a very smart woman. She has figured out that Barack Obama is, in her words, "brilliant at becoming president but not being president." She goes on to add, "Actually a lot of them are like that these days." Here's the thing, Mrs. Noonan. A person running for president can say virtually anything. He can oppose every policy of the man sitting in office, assure the electorate that he will correct every public ill, swear up and down that he will bring a new spirit of bipartisanship to the office. He can do this because he has no record as president to demonstrate what he will actually do. Once he becomes president, it is an entirely different matter. Suddenly, shutting down Guantanamo prison isn't so simple; suddenly, withdrawing our troops from Iraq involves complications. Whether the candidate willfully ignored these problems, or was honestly ignorant of them, doesn't matter. The point is that his promises run up against reality, ...

I'm back in Georgia, and adjusting once again to the Deep South. For me, this mostly means getting used to the brutal summer heat -- over 100 degrees and humid on many days. Other people seem to have the idea that the Deep South is a foreign country. One friend of mine, otherwise intelligent, asked me, "Are they all Neanderthals down there?" No, they are human down here, and mostly not that much different from what you'd find in other parts of America; the days of the South being really distinctive are over. Apart from more subtle cultural differences -- attitudes and assumptions -- there are some differences that anyone would notice right away: the Deep South accent. I never get tired of hearing it, but not everyone is equally receptive. "Yes, sir." You feel like a gentleman (or lady) down here because everyone says "sir" and "ma'am." It's a good feeling, and easy to get into the habit of speaking the same way to other pe...

Recently I got to wondering about words with the letter "y" in them. Not words that begin with y -- those are fairly common -- or words that end with y -- those are really common -- but words that have a y somewhere in the middle. Naturally, I excluded multi-part words in which the y was at the beginning or end of one part of the word; thus, "shyness" would not qualify. The first words that occurred to me were names: Clytemnestra and Odysseus, from Greek myth. That turned out to be a good hint, because almost all of the other words I could think of also derived from Greek. This is a little ironic because, as far as I know, the Greek character for y, upsilon, is pronounced more like "u" than our long "i" sound. I did manage to find 6 English words with y in the middle, but I'll save those for the end of this post (see how many you can get -- I'm sure I missed plenty of others). Most of the Greek-derived words used prefixes that conta...

Some years ago -- nearly 10 by now, I think -- I had a Sony Vaio laptop. It was the thinnest, lightest laptop I had ever seen, and everyone who saw it stopped to gawk. It had one major drawback, which was that it didn't have a cd-rom drive (and we didn't buy the external one), which made it hard to install software. Oh, one other drawback: it broke several times, and eventually BestBuy replaced it with a new one of a different kind. I always liked that laptop, and now I have one much like it: the Asus EeePC 1000. The 1000 has a 10" screen, which means it is quite a bit bigger than earlier versions of the EeePC. I chose this size not for the screen, however, but for the keyboard: I wanted a computer that I could type at with ease, and those smaller versions just didn't work for me. Although the keyboard on the 1000 is still not 100% the size of a regular keyboard, it is close enough that I can type easily with few mistakes. The screen came as a bit of a shock t...

My family lived in the metropolis of Tappahannock (pop.: 2068) for the last few months. It may seem an odd place for people looking for work, but there was a good reason. My dad grew up there, and some years ago bought a small house (my wife insists that it is a "cottage") there where we could live rent-free until we get permanent jobs. This gave me a chance to explore Tappahannock in a way that I never did when I was growing up (in spite of our frequent visits). Tappahannock lies, appropriately, along the Rappahannock River, on Virginia's "Middle Penninsula." There are four major rivers that empty into the Chesapeake Bay through Virginia: from north to south, the Potomac, Rappahannock, York, and James. They divide tidewater Virginia into three penninsulas: again starting in the north, the Northern Neck, the Middle Penninsula, and the Virginia Penninsula. (Except for the Northern Neck, which is very old, I'm not sure how long these names have been ar...

"If a job is worth doing, it's worth doing poorly." I have always lived by these words of wisdom from G.K.Chesterton. You probably think he has it backwards, but I understand exactly what he means: it's better to do a job halfway than not at all. Imagine your car is covered in mud, and you rinse it off with a hose. That would be considered a poor excuse for a wash by most people, but you will have improved the appearance of your car drastically. If you go on to wash it carefully by hand, you will spend much more time and energy -- maybe 30 minutes instead of the 5 minutes to hose it down -- and your car will look only a little better. Some people probably won't notice the difference unless they look closely, but everyone will notice that you got the mud off. If this seems illogical to you, it might make more sense if you think of the 80/20 rule. This "rule" (more like a rule of thumb) states that 20% of the work on a project accomplishes 80% of...

I watched "Animal Crackers" this weekend, and I found it a mixed bag. It seemed to have more good lines than "A Night At The Opera," but I still didn't find myself doubled up with laughter. At one point, Harpo dealt cards for pinochle, in what may be the only funny thing I've seen him do. Best line: "One morning, I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas, I don't know." Did you know that Groucho's moustache was painted on? I never realized that. Now that I know, I can see it, but I'm surprised it's not more obvious. Probably the poor video quality makes it easier to hide; Groucho's blond wig is supposed to be red. Groucho did grow a moustache for his television show, "You Bet Your Life." And now for that other kind of Marxism, historical materialism. I was attending a history conference once when a professor (Henry Heller) began his paper by pompously declaring that Marxism provides a more ...