I Read It So You Don’t Have To Dept. The Information Inferno, by Whodini™ If it is hard for ‘kids today’ to appreciate what life was like before the advent of cell phones, it is almost as difficult even for those of us who lived through that strange sea change we now just call ‘the …
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1. mansuete — mild, gentle, meek And so, my brother, I implore you to enter this holy season with a mansuete and humble inclination, turning your thoughts away from the recent unpleasantnesses. 2. emmet — ant Consider the lowly emmet, too small to have large thoughts, yet still he has concern for his community …
1. brangle — to squabble, to noisily dispute Though I’ve had to contend with many a bothersome neighbor, this Kenneth was the only one I ever had predisposed to brangle over any issue, no matter how small. 2. nonage — legal minority; immaturity Due to this similarity in name he had had judgement passed …
1. pooka (also pookah) — malevolent spirit in Irish folklore, often taking the shape of a rabbit or horse or other animal Sure and now he’s a Rationalist and a deep thinker, he is, but I remember him storming through that door there, wailing that he’d been chased all the way to the pub by …
1. cerement (usu. pl cerements) — cerecloths for wrapping the dead; burial clothes or wrappings But in the morning when finally we opened the innermost coffin, we discovered only a desiccated pile of cerements, as if the corpse itself had somehow dematerialized from its tomb after burial. 2. lour (variant of lower) — to …
As I mentioned last week, though I just finished my 900th book (since beginning this fatuous book tracking project in June of 2015), I still owe you a book list—if not the data analysis I never seem to get around to—of the hundred books read up to Book #800, which I finished away back in …
1. confusticate — [slang] to perplex, to bother, to confuse With fourteen voices clamoring at him all at once demanding this and that and the other, Kip was so confusticated that he put the towels in the microwave and the sausages in the sink. 2. umbel — [botany] inflorescence of short flower stalks radiating …
1. luthier — maker of stringed instruments In addition to being a talented songwriter in her own right, Shelsea is also a trained luthier, having learned the craft from her uncle who crafted guitars and mandolins for the greats of the Grand Ol’ Opry. 2. nard — scented balsam derived from the Himalayan spikenard …
1. soubise — onion sauce For this delicate filet an equally delicate soubise is the perfect accompaniment, the sauce also serving to highlight the flavor of the fresh leeks. 2. prescind — to cut off; to separate in thought, to consider apart But as Peirce points out, one cannot prescind color from space or …
Yesterday I finished my 900th book, counting back from the time when my wife gave me a barcode scanner and a book database and I started keeping track of such things, back in 2015. My 900th book (as usual discounting comic books and graphic novels from my ‘official’ count, of which I’ve read some 118 …
