February 2012
22 posts
Reasons
Reason Numero Uno That Makes Me Want To Be A High School Basketball Coach: So I can make students run suicides and then, with a voice that holds within it both intense anger and beneath that, a sea of tough love, bark “Again.”
Reason Numero Uno That Makes Me Want To Be A College Professor: So that when a student writes a great essay, I can take them aside and say to them,...
woah
I just read in an article that a Texas rapper got life in prison for distributing a fraction of a kilo of crack cocaine. That’s messed up. It’s a bad thing to do, and crack is an awful drug, but the punishment doesn’t fit the crime at all. There’s no violence or even stealing involved and the state took his whole life’s freedom.
You Should Know That
The reification of post-capitalist hegemony is virtually coextensive with the systemization of power/knowledge.
http://writing-program.uchicago.edu/toys/randomsentence/write-sentence.htm
haha
One Always Fails in Speaking of What One Loves
“Any sensation, if we want to respect its vivacity and its acuity, leads to aphasia.”
-Roland Barthes
Peninsula
“1530s, from L. pæninsula, lit. “almost an island,” from pæne “almost” + insula “island.” Earlier translated as demie island.” -Online Etymology Dictionary.
Also easy to see from one of the two french words for peninsula: presqu’île. The other french word for this is péninsule (f.). I love when I find out that what I took to be just a word is...
I don't speak Spanish
theybuildbuildings:
Not now not ever
pero sí, hablas español
January 2012
9 posts
Gossip overheard on the Goldman Sachs elevator. →
Seems like a bunch of funny, very rich, emotionally dead alcoholic assholes.
at the risk of sounding too epic...
finished day 3 of week 3 workout from this site.
Per Volar Sunata
Truth is, if you're guessing,
You might think that the verb “babble” comes from the biblical Babel, especially if you consider the french for “babble”: “babiller”. However, “No direct connexion with Babel can be traced; though association with that may have affected the senses” [OED].
Turns out it may be onomotopoeic (after the sounds of a baby). Oh Etymology, you scurvy dog!
It's the little things!
I just realized why the Spanish verb “gustar” makes sense for “to like”. Our word disgust must come from the Spanish “disgustar,” which means “to upset” or “to displease.” It’s kind of strange that we don’t also have the verb gust. As in, etymology gusts me, which my little brother absolutely can’t stand.
Furthermore,...
December 2011
14 posts
so an interesting thing about french is that
we take many words from that language, and often, when there’s an accent circonflexe over a vowel (in french), if there’s a word related to it in english, it will be transformed into an “s” after that same vowel. i made a list and it’s striking when you get a bunch of them together:
quête —> quest fenêtre (window) —> fenestrate côté (side)...
etymology o' clock
Puîné means younger in french (as in the younger of two siblings). This comes itself from two French words: puis (meaning after) and né (meaning born). Together, they mean later-born. As if that weren’t enough, our English word “puny” comes from this word “puîné”! So our “puny” is derived originally from the French for later-born.
i'll have you know
smart balance is the spread of the GODS
mathematics
pure math?
yes—only the purest, purest math.
November 2011
16 posts
lol, however
http://www.jewsagainstcircumcision.org/
this is kind of funny, but it also kind of describes how i feel
.
she treats men like subjects
