Still in beta, I have work up some simple bash scripts to generate a sort of This Day In History podcast…for now this one is dedicated to the fathead of all fatheads Jean Shepherd. What was he saying on this date in history? Now you can find out easily by subscribing to this podcast. In the future I am going to work up a This Day In History podcast that includes all manner of radio shows, everything from classic science fiction to the Burns and Allen shows to whatever else I can scrape up from the Archive.org feeds. All the actual content is hosted up on Archive.org.
How cool would it be to set up a TelegraphNet around the house. Instead of calling the kids down to eat we could send out the message in Morse. hmmm an ya know we have a bunch of pots wire throughout the house doing nothing…oi. Thanks Make…  Reinventing Morse: Build your own telegraph kit.
One of the many things I want to teach the kids is how to pick locks. Yes I will wait to they have an understanding of the appropriate uses for the skill…and yes I sense some of you rolling your eyes thinking “why the heck would you teach your kids that?”…yes I am talking about you…The reasons are at least two….One…to show them how insecure most locks are…to make sure they do not have a false sense of security…a common lesson we come back to in our learning boils down to “Ignorance Hurts”. The second reason is to further their sense of exploration and discovery….to find the wonder in all things…well in lots of things. This article from Lifehacker has reminded me of being prepared to do this eventualy…. Learn to Pick Locks for Fun and an Increased Understanding of Security [Video].
“Sashura sent me a link to this NYT obituary by Margalit Fox of Sol Steinmetz, “a lexicographer, author and tenured member of Olbom (n., abbrev., < On Language’s Board of Octogenarian Mentors)”; Ms. Fox lards the obit with as many word histories (“his surname is the Yiddish word for stonemason”) as she can, and I’m sure its subject would have loved it. An excerpt:
An ordained rabbi, Mr. Steinmetz was a particular authority on Yiddish, in all its kvetchy beauty. His books on the subject include “Yiddish and English: A Century of Yiddish in America†(University of Alabama, 1986) and “Meshuggenary: Celebrating the World of Yiddish†(Simon & Schuster, 2002; with Payson R. Stevens and Charles M. Levine).
Mr. Steinmetz was a keen etymologist. In interviews and his own writings, he expounded ardently on the pedigrees of words like “klutz†(from Middle High German klotz, “block, log,†via Yiddish) and “clone†(from the Greek klon, “twigâ€), which entered English as a noun in 1903.
He was also a master of the first citation, scouring centuries of literature and decades of the airwaves to determine precisely when a particular word or phrase made its debut. “Suit,†in the sense of a bureaucrat, for instance, he traced to the television show “Cagney and Lacey†in 1982. Before he became a lexicographer in the late 1950s, he worked as a cantor (he “had a fine tenor voice”) and as a rabbi (in Media, Pa.); the obit ends with this wonderful passage: “‘He never had a bad word to say about anyone,’ said Jesse Sheidlower, the editor at large of the Oxford English Dictionary and a former protégé. ‘And he knew a lot of bad words.'” Alevasholem.”
LanguageHat -Â Â SOL STEINMETZ, RIP..
Back in 2006 I cobbled together a Serenity/Whedonesque themed bit of sound to a simple background sample. It is a 4 min journey into the Verse and then some. Being both Yeeee and Haw.
WSMF Broadcast Day Podcast