Fess up: do you have a pet name for your car? How about your computer? Martha and Grant discuss the urge to give nicknames to inanimate objects in our lives. Also, why do we speak of vetting a political candidate? And what in the world is a zoo...
John Chaneski’s latest puzzle is “The Yo-Yo Quiz,” and it’s not about famous cellists or first person pronouns in Spanish. The object is to guess the missing word that can be paired with either “up” or...
Slocum n.— «Sea gliders were conceived in the 1980s by Douglas Webb, a former researcher at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Only in recent years, though, have they become fully operational and more capable. Some are called...
Why do we use a capital letter “I” for the first person singular pronoun, but don’t capitalize any other pronouns? This is part of a complete episode.
face taint n.— «Last night, Ryan said “face taint.” I searched the internet and it’s a fact, he is the first person to ever call the part between your top lip and nose the face taint. As much as I wanted to steal it, I have to give...
yowie n.— «Defence spokesman Major Klaus Boehme says the sniper’s outfit of hessian bags and appropriate camouflage paint evolved from a British idea of about 35 years ago. It had been developed in the mid-1970s when the Army started...