Gifts for book lovers: Martha recommends one for lovers of libraries and another for students of Spanish. Grant suggests some enchanting novels for young readers. When it comes to books, though, you can’t always judge them by their original titles...
Remember the classic films Dogumentary and $3000? Those were their working titles, before they became Best In Show and Pretty Woman. We look at how movie titles evolve and change. Also, is Spanglish a real language? And balaclavas, teaching your...
Where do we get the expression more than you can shake a stick at? It probably just derives from counting. Imagine herdsmen bringing in their cattle or sheep at the end of the day, pointing with a stick in order to do a headcount. This is part of a...
Pity the poor typeface designer, always seeing anachronisms in movies and television. Imagine how painful it must be watching a World War II movie only to see a document printed in Snell Roundhand Bold, a font invented in 1972. Here’s typeface...
trillion n.— «NBA TRILLIONAIRES: When an end-of-the-bench guy gets in a blowout for a minute, and doesn’t record a shot, rebound, assist or point, his boxscore line is known as “one trillion,” a one followed by nine zeroes. Imagine how it looked to...
Hesco barrier n.— «Iraq and Afghanistan are dangerous. Real dangerous. Mortars, RPGs, snipers and car bombs, you name it. Imagine you’re a soldier in the occupying army. How can you even sleep at night with all those munitions aimed at you? The...