Today I Learned

Inigo Montoya (Mandy Patinkin), from The Princess Bride, via YouTube.com “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” For anyone not familiar with The Princess Bride , go watch it. I’ll wait. (The tragic death of director Rob Reiner  may lead to many new people watching this wonderful film, and many others to re-watch it. A true masterpiece.) For everyone else, just enjoy the exchange between Inigo Montoya (played by Mandy Patinkin ), and Vizzi

Charlie Chaplin, in The Great Dictator, 1940, via Wikimedia Commons Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about fascism. While I already had a fair degree of familiarity and understanding of the big picture, I’ve been picking up (and often blogging about) items which are new to me. Predictably, most are disturbing, but I occasionally come across something wonderful. Charlie Chaplin  was an immensely influential figure in the history of cinema, and his “Tramp” character has been an

Emo Philips, Opening for Weird Al Yankovic at the Apollo Theatre Today I learned the word “ paraprosdokian ”. According to Wikipedia, the...

WarGames, 1983: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXzNo0vR_dU I can only hear that question in the voice of the computer Joshua, from the...

“‘Who controls the past,’ ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.’” George Orwell,...

The Greek philosopher Diogenes is famous for carrying a lantern during the day, claiming he was “searching for an honest man”. Yet...

Recently, I was listening to an old episode of The Skeptics Guide to the Universe , (actually, episode 803, dated 28-Nov-2020 ), in which...

Everyone knows what a jerk is. And everyone knows someone who is a jerk. But why? Why are some people jerks? Or rather, why do we...

This might look like a standard cup game, but it’s actually a very interesting test. I won’t spoil it for you – give it a try. ...

People make mistakes. Lots of them. We’re very good at making them, but not so good at preventing them. It can be fun to go down the...

“What's in a name? That which we call a rose, By any other name would smell as sweet;” One of the most recognizable quotes in the...

Code talker ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_talker ) is a name given to military personnel who used a “little-known” language to...

For anyone not familiar with it, Mind Your Language ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_Your_Language ) was a British sitcom running in...

After commenting ( https://www.til-technology.com/post/d%C3%A9j%C3%A0-vu ) on how useful my prior familiarity with the C programming...