Harmless Drudgery

Random thoughts from a wordsmith, budding lexicographer, and 'snapper up of unconsidered trifles'.

Copies of my published work, in various stages of completion, are here. You may need an online reader app such as eBook Viewer and Converter to access these.

Monday, 14 November 2022

The uneven playing field

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A lot of ink has recently been spilled on a story that makes extravagant claims such as this: There’s Never Been a Crash Test Dummy Modeled ...

Tuesday, 1 November 2022

Hot and cold and head and chief

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Having just updated a fairly recent post about about paths of least resistamce, and specifically what make English "cold" and Ital...

Tuesday, 25 October 2022

And only man is vile, take 2

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Last week's Science in Action had a short piece about a plastic-eating caterpillar (following another piece about plastic pollution of ...

Thursday, 13 October 2022

Bear-baiting and de-nazification

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In George Kennan's Op-Ed article in the New York Times shortly after Bill Clinton's second inauguration (25 years ago), he wrot...

Friday, 23 September 2022

I thought this was settled

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The interminably tiresome issue of how to make "referendum" plural has reared its ugly head again, although of late it had seemd ...

Tuesday, 13 September 2022

Plus ça change...

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... c'est la même shows. I've said before <pre-script post=" this "> A choral singer knows he's getting on whe...

Wednesday, 24 August 2022

Blowing hot and cold

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In The Unfolding of Language. Guy Deutscher asks "Have you ever wondered, for example, why in Italian caldo means not 'cold...

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About Me

@BobKLite: After a misspent youth as an aspiring folk-rock hero and freelance polymath, I became a technical writer in the IT world and then - when I finally ran out of lives, having dodged redundancy for more than 10 years (towards the end of which I coined the word 'sub-Damoclean', to refer to my own position) - a teacher, resource creator, and writer.

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