Heinz's Email Blog May 2008 Archive

The Mandarin word for husband, 丈夫, sounds dangerously close to "junk food" ("chang fu"). Careful pronunciation can thus be advisable ("Is this your junk food?"). Careful spelling of husband, mari, ektemann ... Read More

Food from 2.90 A new bistro is about to open a few blocks from me. I meditated long and hard when I first saw the sign announcing the fact: what kind ... Read More

Staupenschlag: flagellation with a bundle of birch twigs — in the pillory for everyone to watch — was the most severe and disgraceful corporal punishment in Middle-Age Germany. The offence? Breaking ... Read More

Three hours do a good sauce make: three hours' simmering. Time aplenty, it seems, to compose a great Father's Day email to go along with the, well, pasta and tomato sauce ... Read More

"A chubby, squat glass bottle to hold ink with a wool felt wick and writing tip:" it sounds more poetic than practical, this description of purportedly the first felt-tip marker, ... Read More

Bin Ox is one I like, and Book I: Loon Tux is not bad either. Xobni, however, is but solely an anagram (and not an anagram of Outlook Inbox either); it ... Read More

Whisked away as if by helpful spirits, needles views no longer block the background image vista. Spirited Away elegantly hides applications after you haven't used them for, say, a minute. You ... Read More

"TCP Port Service Multiplexer" is only the beginning: it uses TCP port number 1 (a port acting much like a physical, say USB, port, but for network traffic). Other well-known ... Read More

Blind and deaf, wolf cubs are born weighing about 500 grams (1 lb). When the eyes open for the first time after about two weeks, they are beautifully blue — ... Read More

"What a fine mountain this is," the Zen master said. "I'm not asking you about the mountain. I asked you to explain the Way!" The monk was startled. He had climbed ... Read More

We used to mix a few grains of rice into the many grains of salt in our shakers to keep the salt from lumping. Today's salt is cleaner and less ... Read More

We all know what happens when you put somebody who barely learned to skate on a crudely frozen lake — somebody like me — on a polished and resurfaced ice ... Read More

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em: fabulous advice, of course. Join your roommates and partners gardening, dish-washing and watching football. The Times New Roman email default in Mozilla Thunderbird? Well, ... Read More

"There was an Old Man of the Hague, Whose ideas were excessively vague;" — We meet this old man in one of Edward Lear's limericks: "He built a balloon, To examine the moon, That deluded ... Read More

"The trick to enjoying something," says illustrious physicist Richard A. Muller in one of his theorems, "is understanding why others enjoy it." You don't have to enjoy everything, of course, but ... Read More

On Any Sunday, children and grown-ups abandon sanity. On motorcycles, they race on tracks and off field, against opponents and, it seems, against their own arms, legs and shoulders. Some of ... Read More

Your goal is to occupy three hieroglyph fields on the ancient Egyptian Tjau game board. On every turn, you move both your and your opponent's pieces. How far depends on the ... Read More

Cats, in ancient Egypt, were sacred animals. So their mother and goddess became very popular, too. Over old Egypt's long history, Bast — depicted as a young woman's body carrying a ... Read More

The Alps: majestic mountains bearing a name older than the languages spoken today. Conveniently for blog post etymology, Latin altus means "high", though, and albus is "white". — White and ... Read More

When King Henry III. of England, in the early 13th century, ordered Motheringday to be celebrated on Laetare, the fourth Sunday in Lent, he had the "mother church" more in ... Read More

I'll have to ask the street musicians if their earnings increase with loudness. It seems so. Their — sometimes, I must say, a bit repetitive — melodies delight me more and ... Read More

Candles are burning hot and massage oil, brrr, is always too cool. Is that not... well, that is probably true; but turn palm, shea and soy oil into a candle, ... Read More