The giant statues of Easter Island are called moai. They’re the subject of a Nova/National Geographic special about who those statues might have been moved into place. The technique that islanders used to move them may have involved tugging at ropes...
Boustrophedon is writing that changes direction with each line, right to left, then left to right, and back again, like an ox turning at the end of a furrow. The word comes from Greek bous, “ox,” and strophe, “turn.” The same ox root appears in...
Puzzle Dude John Chaneski has a quiz about the unofficial terms for familiar things that have less familiar official names. “The Academy Awards of the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences,” for example, are unofficially...
T-wall n.— «Developed by the Israelis in order to put up a physical barrier between themselves and the Palestinians, the Iraq version of these segmented walls is constructed out of thousands of portable, twelve-foot-high slabs of steel...
Bremer wall n.— «Developed by the Israelis in order to put up a physical barrier between themselves and the Palestinians, the Iraq version of these segmented walls is constructed out of thousands of portable, twelve-foot-high slabs of...
