Whoa, got your attention, didn’t I? I recently picked up a copy of my cousin’s European History doctoral dissertation. Two Three hundred pages later, I’m almost finished. I don’t recommend it as a nightstand book, but there’s a lot of really interesting stuff in there. Here’s the latest thing. There were several groups of Jews, […]
Archive | January, 2008
Bigfoot
Not TOO long ago, I made my first ever podcast of sorts, about how early (but biologically modern) humans mingled with other hominids. The other hominids ended up dying off, but here we are. Seed magazine (linked to on the right of weeklyrob’s main page) this month has printed a conversation between a couple of […]
Good Luck and a Wish (to soon) Come True
And now, unusual for weeklyrob, a glimpse into my personal life: I was gorging myself on a plate of raw oysters on the half-shell yesterday, when I felt something round and hard in my mouth. Yes, ladies and gents, it was a pearl. My lunch-mates were suitably impressed, asking to hold the thing, even though […]
Edmund Wilson and the LOA
Today, aldaily.com points to an article calling the two-volume set of Edmund Wilson’s essays and reviews, published by the Library of America, “one of the summits of twentieth-century literary criticism.” This struck me because it wasn’t long ago that I received the first volume in the mail, and I was impressed with it. In fact, […]
Chaucer with an American Accent
Some people seem to think that the English spoken in England is somehow more pure than the version spoken in the US. That it better represents the language that Chaucer or Shakespeare spoke, and is therefore true English, whereas the language spoken in the US has changed into a new version. If they’re being kind, […]
Assorted Nonsense
Thank God for this blog, where I can dump stuff that no one would be interested in hearing in daily conversation. Item the first: The difference in meaning between “Bound to…” and “Bound for…” Nothing more to say about that. It just made something click in my brain this morning while listening to train announcements. […]
How Does Google Work?
I don’t know how Google works. I applied for a job as an editor there, but decided that they weren’t right for me.* So I guess I’ll never know. Today, as a sort of joke having nothing to do with Google, I created a foreign sounding phrase, and posted it as a comment on a […]
Life Insurance Market
Once we live in Gattaca, we’ll all know our genetic code and its implications for our personal life expectancies. But the government could end up restricting life insurance companies from using that information to adjust their rates. (They already restrict health insurance companies, as discussed the last time I mentioned Gattaca on this blog.) There’ll […]
Marrying Your Own Sister
I read recently that some MP or Lord in England claimed to know of a couple of twins, separated at birth, who married each other without knowing their relationship. The MP (or Lord) was trying to prove some point or other, and probably made the whole thing up. But it got me thinking. It seems […]
How Will You Die
I was just listening to a lecture (from the University Channel podcasts, linked on the right side of weeklyrob) about trends in dying, which is a funny phrase. It’s by the author of “The Living End: The Future of Death, Aging, and Immortality.” [Amazon US seems to think the title is slightly different, and spells […]