I’m reading a charming, well-loved 1965 Book Club edition of Dune from the local library. We take Space Opera for granted today, but observe how it needed to be described back then. Inside flap copy, after some standard stuff about Duke Leto and the great rival house of Harkonnen: (italics are from original source are [...]
Quite a wrought sentence from this article. We very rarely bloviate, although there are often exceptions to that rule. Speaking on behalf of tech journalists, the author clames they “very rarely” bloviate, as long as one overlooks “often exceptions”. Using weasel words is bad enough, but here they’re canceling each other out. In bloviating about bloviation, the [...]
The great Carl Sagan famously popularized the saying: Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. I’ve always disliked that saying. It was intended as a shout-out to objectivity, rationalism, and healthy skepticism, but it has the opposite effect for me. Any writer will tell you that overuse of adjectives will actually weaken the point the writer is trying [...]
Mad props to the Sumerian Lexicon by John A Halloran. This has been an indispensable resource in my current project, and the author has been gracious with questions I’ve had along the way.