November 2015
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I hit a ball sharply to right field into the cosmos and made it safely to second base. (By "cosmos" I do not mean that I hit the ball into the universal void, but rather into a patch of cosmos i.e. cosmos bipinnatus, the common herbaceous perennial that was growingly thickly against the stadium wall, something like the…
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I asked some friends how they understood Senator Marco Rubio's very blunt statement that "Welders make more money than philosophers. We need more welders and less philosophers." I received a variety of answers. My linguistically conservative friends asserted that we obviously need grammarians more than either philosophers or welders, because Rubio doesn't respect the difference between…
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It's a little late in the day for me to embark on a career in pteridology. Too many ferns, too little time. There may be a backup option: intimate, private pteridophilia or even pteridomania. But in fact, empty enthusiasm is no substitute for knowledge. It's mortifying that after all these years of treading upon, admiring…
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"Enough" is a mighty peculiar looking word, but a good one nevertheless. It frequently shows up in older texts as "enow." I don't know how the original medieval velar fricative signified by "ough" evolved into so many different pronunciations: e.g. although, through, hiccough, plough, rough. My favorite enough proverb dates back to the fifteenth century,…
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When I taught Shakespeare for the first time, at CCNY in the mid-60s, fresh out of graduate school, I was mightily unprepared. I set myself the challenge of teaching a new play every week for thirty weeks. So every weekend I would tackle a play that I had read but not studied and then MWF…