Monthly archives for "February 2015"

All I can say is: when Kirk goes, I will commence with gross sobbing.

Poignant

Leonard Nimoy, who played Mr Spock in the original Star Trek series, has died.

This scene killed me as a kid

How strange it is to mourn the passing of an actor because of the character he developed. But how much less strange it is when the character meant a lot to you as a child. Nimoy himself struggled with his strong association with Spock, but he eventually recognised that he became a true icon of pop culture. It’s a sad, and yet inevitable, day.

I’ve just finished Mark Forsyth’s great book The Elements of Eloquence, a run-down of rhetorical tricks that have been taught, and used, for millennia. Under “Hyperbaton”, he writes about the 7-year-old JRR Tolkien, who wrote a story about a “great green dragon”. His mother explained that this couldn’t be, and he was so disheartened that the didn’t write another story for years (for which we are all thankful).

Why is it impossible? “Great” cannot be before “green”, it must come after. In fact, I had to read the example three times before my brain stopped putting the words in their “correct” order.

The reason for [the] mistake, since you ask, is that adjectives in English absolutely have to be in this order: opinion-size-age-shape-colour-origin-material-purpose Noun. So you can have a lovely little old rectangular green French silver whittling knife. But if you mess with that word order in the slightest you’ll sound like a maniac.

The mind crackles. I love discovering new things. This book is highly recommended.

The Weeks lists 15 unique illnesses you can only come down with in German.

As someone going through his Second Midlife Crisis: Torschlußpanik. I can relate.

The Guardian reports that a skull found Galilee, thought to be female and 55,000 years old, suggests the location where humans first had sex with Neanderthals.

This of course raises the important question: was Jesus a Neanderthal?

[Ducks hate mail]