The first three letters of a license plate I saw the other day were EYB, which led me to think immediately of eyeball and has made me temporarily/mildly interested in shorthand. The incident was doubly amusing because the trio of letters corresponded to the organ I was using to read them. I’d like to develop…
If I ever marry, it’ll be to a girl whose first language is English. Having grown up in a bilingual household, I’ve witnessed the severity of the disadvantage associated with trying to argue your case in a language you didn’t learn until your college years. Even people who, under normal conditions, have a good grip…
Here’s something strange: in my experience, when people say “I have a bike,” they’re referring to a mountain bike. Ambiguity between road bike and mountain bike doesn’t exist because so often they mean the latter. None of this is strange yet. It makes sense that the abbreviated form of a word, or of groups of…
BCD: barrels, courts, disasters. I find the term ‘barrel’ as in ‘barrel of oil’ to be unique in that it strikes me as an unrefined and crude (sorry, fuck puns) word and yet it is used heavily in news publications and broadcasts to describe an aspect of the economy. It’s a word I would more…
There is a category of comedy that is funny in part because it isn’t supposed to be. Many examples of this type exist subtly amid the multitude of material outputs of a developed or undeveloped country and, when found, might make you smile. On the reverse side of a red ink rolling ball pen twin…
Roughly a month ago, during a fun filled evening of playing nails, a friend related to me and others his dissatisfaction with the Russian language course he took on campus. The complaint had to do with the emphasis on grammar. I think it’s a problem that plagues most language courses in general, probably even independent…
When two people meet for the first time, the stage is set for a common phenomena where what is initially said by person A to person B has a larger impact on how person B perceives person A than what person A says subsequently, and vice-versa. With few exceptions, as time passes, what person A…
I wonder if during typical child-parent communication the parent thinks to themselves “Wow, that makes perfect sense” or “That’s exactly the same kind of thinking process I use.” Might not the child’s brain be wired in a way similar to that of its parents? Yes, so much of brain development depends on upbringing, but I’d…
This is in the same vein as a former post. Before it gets underway, I should clarify that while it may seem this course is of no relevance to my major, it is one of four courses I can choose from to satisfy the three engineering science elective degree requirements. My fluid mechanics prof is…
There’s a tendency for public speakers (often lawmakers or other elected officials) to emphasize their point through speaking at a tempered pace and repeating a phrase, so that instead of “The people have said they’re tired of Washington corruption, dependence on foreign oil, and a suffering economy.” We are more likely to hear “The people…