Generating worlds, exploring them, losing the thread.
In a recent post, “Get your new words while they’re hot,” we looked at neologisms that have appeared in these pages. Read on for more along those lines.
Back in March of this year Bill the Mathematician sent me to the “Church For Christ” site, which quoted Sarah Palin’s now-famous remark:
… Read more“We need to take this opportunity to talk about Jesus and rebute these lies and show people they cannot simply seek the truth, but
Two years after his death, Michael Jackson is back in the news, with his former doctor defending himself against charges of involuntary manslaughter. I’m not sure what emotions this case is arousing in the general public, but it has caused me to revisit my first reaction to the so-called King of Pop’s untimely passing.
… Read more“A long time after painting [his first wife] Camille on her deathbed, Monet confessed to his friend Georges Clemenceau about the pain or shock he felt
Watch the English language evolve! Here are some of this site’s neologisms—original, borrowed and even commissioned—from my posts over the past year or two. The numbers refer to how many hits each gets on Google as of right now.
* Cymbalalalazophobia (fashioned to order by Dr Anthony Alcock, coiner of words for our age extraordinaire). 0 hits (a big surprise) 
* Iktsuarpok (with thanks to the Inuit and to Adam Jacot de Boinod for collecting this specimen). 7,570 hits
Does Fate reflect a wormish agenda? We looked at aspects of this question in the last two posts. Read on for even more sinister developments.
Once upon a time within some dimension or another, a species of worm with an interesting civilization embraced a complex body of beliefs, not all of them consistent with one another, but that is in the nature of things.
Their consciousness, if we may call it such, was a collective phenomenon; taken individually, these worms … Read more
When neural parasites meet global warming: Trouble for all of us may be brewing on a remote uncharted island.
Who’s driving the bus, human beings or their parasites? From a manuscript found under a bed:
Let us visit an outlying island that must remain nameless. It is only uncertainly part of a tiny outlying archipelago, itself only uncertainly part of Indonesia which, with some 17,000 islands, is the largest archipelago nation in the world. This island barely breaks the surface … Read more
I’ve recently suggested that parasites can be our friends, with special reference to Bill the Mathematician’s quest to become infected with hookworm.
Now I see a member of the Bangkok Writers’ Guild has posted a reference to a story I’d filed some time ago among notes regarding neuro-parasites (“Zombie ants have fungus on the brain”).
… Read more“Tropical carpenter ants (Camponotus leonardi) live high up in the rainforest canopy. When infected by a parasitic fungus (Ophiocordyceps unilateralis) the
The demise of the novel? This has been predicted again and again over the decades, if not the centuries, yet people keep reading novels. Here’s a recent vote of confidence in their persistence:
… Read more“The book-length text is coded in our DNA and will never go away; it is the written version of the oral myths and histories told on consecutive nights around campfires for 80,000 years. In each new generation, roughly the same percentage of people is born with
Plagiarism has become more tempting and easier, perhaps, in this digital age. The danger of being found out may also be greater.
Here’s a copy of the letter I e-mailed a week ago to The Tribune, New Delhi (I’ve yet to hear from either the newspaper or the writer):
… Read moreDear Editors,
I must inform you that more than half of Uma Vasudeva’s review of C.Y. Gopinath’s The Books of Answers (The Tribune, New Delhi, 7 August 2011)
So just the other morning I suffered something like a flash of cymbalalalazophobia, which is hardly surprising, Sara claims, given my lifestyle.
My recent “Hope in dark times” post elicited the following Facebook query: Is there an official fear of hi-hat cymbals phobia?
If there weren’t, it stuck me that I had a friend who might be uniquely qualified to coin such an expression. Dr. Anthony Alcock is not only a fine classical scholar, linguist, Egyptologist, jazz & blues … Read more
Bill the Mathematician—yes, that’s Bill of the unaccountably broken back—is not always fully recognized as the trendsetter he really is. Right now he’s in Phnom Penh, on his way to the Pasteur Institute to ask for a dose of hookworm larvae. “I thought I’d found a source yesterday,” he tells me, “as PP now has a National Parasitological Center. But somehow they can’t help because ‘it’s time for exams.’ But they did suggest I try L’Institut Pasteur, so I’ll … Read more