Ginormously annoyed at Merriam-Webster

by | Jul 16, 2007 | culture, reading & writing

I guess it should come as no surprise that I am now officially on the losing end of my years-long battle against the word, ginormous. Trying to curry favor with the post-literate generation, those old bus drivers Merriam and Webster have officially added ginormous to...

In the Queue

by | Jul 15, 2007 | culture, media, reading & writing

In Book Club: The Tortilla Curtain by T.C. Boyle Picked up just for a bit on the topic of jetlag: Pattern Recognition by William Gibson The best or the worst business book yet, I’m still not sure: the dip by Seth Godin Oddly connected: The Yiddish...

This Week in Stupid

by | Jul 13, 2007 | culture, eating, economics, technology, transportation

We are prempting our regularly-scheduled feature, “This Week in Cheese” to bring you news of powerful successful seemingly intelligent people being just plain stupid with the internet. Cheese will have to wait because apparently stupid will not. Exhibit A:...

Don’t forget not to rob a bank!

by | Jul 12, 2007 | culture, economics, transportation

Here in the Peoples’ Republic of Cambridge, they clean the streets once a month. At least they do during the non-winter months. At least I think they do because there are signs up warning you not to park on certain special days. I’ve never seen them do it,...

Somebody’s paying attention to my laundry

by | Jul 6, 2007 | culture

I owe somebody somewhere in Asia a big tip. Somebody somewhere in the bowels of a hotel laundry room in Singapore or Hong Kong sewed a button back on to the cuff of one of my shirts. A button that had been crushed or ripped off by my usual local laundry shop months...