Lila Prime

These have accumulated for awhile and I might've missed some as there is currently a "scratch notebook" infestation throughout...

One of the continually fascinating and renewed interesting things about being... alive? Just about being a person , just about being , is of...

I have no particular, publicly-declarable goals to commemorate the incrementing of our calendar year, except that --- as always --- I want t...

Unsure of myself with new colleagues and a new position, and wanting to maintain a certain dignity and thus obtain a level of respect (and r...

Apartment searching in Paris is demoralizing. I thought I had reached a low when I discovered an "apartment" of 10 square meters f...

Any number of players can play Dictionary . When it is player i 's turn, she picks a word from the OED that no player knows. All playe...

Gauche , from gauche (French), from gauchir (Middle French), from gaucher (Old French), from welkan (Frankish), from *wankjan (Proto-Ge...

Here you see buns which look like pigs. Much to my disappontment, these are not pork buns -- they are some sweet paste-filled dessert bun. ...

I earlier expressed my displeasure at Malcolm Gladwell's writing . I'm not the only one! Someone with a bit more free time built t...

I've been reading a lot of good writing recently, and thinking about what makes it good. I'd like to figure out some lessons and th...

As a member of the educated elite, I take pedantic, sadistic pleasure in others' spelling and grammar mistakes. The Cake Wrecks blog t...

Recently I have had several people* tell me that I come across as cold and angry via text-only communications like email and instant messag...

It's Saturday, it's snowing, and I am happy. Yesterday was 4 hours of office hours, and board games, and finding the Madison, and th...

I erged (ergged?) yesterday and did my abs workout. This is a bad combination. Today all the muscles on the dorsal side of my body are ach...