So, this guy named Ammon Shea just spent a year reading the whole Oxford English Dictionary. The whole thing. He’s writing a book about it, but he’s also …
The Archives: Languages
Note: This isn't quite functional yet, but I'm working on it... :) -bmc 4.5.08
Just a quick bit of news: my brother Daniel got his mission call today, and he’s going to (drum roll) Hong Kong! :) He’s the next missionary to serve …
3. Seven habits
Tagging has two meanings in the blogosphere: the tags that categorize a post (whether internal or for some site like Technorati), and tag-you’re-it questionnaire thingies. I have …
I picked up my French copy of Les Misérables on a whim just a few minutes ago, and as fate would have it, opened directly to my favorite passage. …
Today is J.R.R. Tolkien’s birthday. He’d be 115 today, actually, which mainly makes me wonder why I wasn’t paying attention when his eleventy-first birthday happened back in 2005. ~sigh~
To …
I know, I know, four posts in one day is a bit OCD, but this is too cool to let sit around. In Google Talk (and Gmail chat as …
Tomorrow my arm’s getting amputated.
You see, BYU library’s power outage starts first thing tomorrow morning, and it’s going to black out over half the library — everything from the main …
Goodness, I completely forgot that today is C.S. Lewis’s birthday! (Thanks to Bruce Edwards for the reminder and also for the tribute he wrote.)
So, C.S. Lewis. …
Time for another random scattering.
First, I was walking through campus yesterday and overheard a guy on a cell phone saying, “I’ll give you her phone number. Do you have …
So, a comp lit fit has struck me. With my new biblical Hebrew study in the mornings, the modern languages were feeling neglected, and that just couldn’t be. …
I started reading an introduction to Hebrew a couple hours ago. (I’ve decided that my half-hour of language study each morning will be dedicated to Hebrew for the next …
12. Lingua franca
It’s way late and I really ought to be in bed, but I just got back from dinner at my family’s. But then again, I’ll be with them forever, …
In the quintessential example, the hammer slams against the wood and a flurry of typographical marks (#@!%^&@!) flies into the air as the nail breathes a sigh of relief when …
I wonder as I wander out under the sky,
How Jesus the Savior did come for to die,
For poor orn’ry people like you and like I,
I wonder as I wander, … …
15. Mynyd Mawr
Good news! A few days ago I talked with the department chair of Special Collections and snagged an internship there for this summer, going through all the valuable books …
In my phonology class today, the guy who sits behind me pulled out a copy of Crime and Punishment in Russian. Enter drool. Exeunt attention to professor and …
My thoughts on the Sunday morning session of General Conference.
James E. Faust. The story of Amish forgiveness was really touching. I especially liked Pres. Faust’s description — “anguish, …
A few ramblings:
1. Ken Burns came and gave a great lecture at our university forum on Tuesday. While I could write a whole long post about it (and probably …
I’m really supposed to be preparing for my two midterms (which are tomorrow) and my grad school application (which is due ASAP, probably Wednesday), but I need some release, and …
20. Four grey towers
Yet another multi-topic post.
1. Today’s Daily Universe has a series of articles about domestic abuse. I just finished reading them, and it made me so mad. How …
On either side the river lie
Long fields of barley and of rye,
That clothe the wold and meet the sky;
And through the field the road run by
To many-tower’d Camelot;
And up and …
22. Live backwards
Time for another potpourri post.
1. Being a creature of habit, over the past couple of years I’ve settled on three shirts that I cycle through each week (excluding Sundays). …
I just finished my last paper of the semester. All that’s left is a final in my Middle English class tomorrow afternoon. And considering that the midterm took …
Rikker pointed out an interesting find on Google Books. It’s a “New Proposal for the Publication of a New English Dictionary by the Philological Society.” And it’s …
25. The Chaos
[Thanks to Rikker for this. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!]
The Chaos
by Gerald Nolst Trenite (1870-1946)
Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, …
26. Scatterplot
1. I went to the BYU Men’s and Women’s Chorus Concert on Friday, primarily because the last three songs that the Women’s Chorus sang were from Wicked (”Popular,” “For Good,” …
27. Signs
I ran across Orson Scott Card’s two-part essay on homework this morning. A quote:
Homework is usually so mind-numbingly dull, so endless, so hopeless, so relentless, so useless that lots …
A day goes by without blogging and I feel like the world has come to a halt. Methinks I need to unplug from cyberspace a bit. (And while …
Since I’m not a big fan of Halloween (both on the condoning-the-occult front and on the candy front), I’ve spent the evening reading instead of trick-or-treating. A few chapters …
With Instant Handbrake I’m able to convert my DVDs to iPod (.mp4), so now I have To This End Was I Born, Mountain of the Lord, and Fan Chan …
31. Bon mot
You’d think I would have been all over podcasting as soon as I heard about it, and I’ll admit my interest was piqued at the beginning, but it wasn’t until …
I’m getting back into the groove of school, thankfully. And I’d forgotten just how much I enjoy doing homework. :) (I say that without any sarcasm, honest.) …
I was originally going to take the Latin Vulgate class this fall, but things have changed. This may be a petty reason to drop a class, but I’m pretty …
My copy of Novum Testamentum: Graece et Latine came in the mail today. :) Mmm. I read the first chapter or so of Matthew over dinner, with …
While studying Latin and reading Grimm this morning, I had so much fun that I couldn’t just stop there. So I picked up my copy of The Lion, the …
So, I’ve added a “Blogs I read” page. Keep in mind that anything computer-related will end up on Outside the Box (when I add a blogroll there), …
On Saturday I hunted down a copy of Grimm’s Fairy Tales in German from the library (it’s called Kinder- und Hausmärchen). Since yesterday was a holiday here in …
38. Librarythings
What shall I write about today? Well, for starters, the bookstore’s bargain sale ended 45 minutes ago, so I stopped by again earlier today and got four more books …
It’s so tempting to keep writing about how cool Swahili is, but I’ll refrain. At least for a day. :)
Not too long ago I got an e-mail from a …
40. Hamjambo, watoto
Swahili’s sweet. :) And let me just say that fifteen minutes go by way too fast. I wish I had an hour to devote to it. ~sigh~ …
41. Ilihawswahili
As a follow-up, I did wake up at 5:00 this morning and studied Latin for half an hour. (Since I wasn’t able to get any books on Swahili in …
Half an hour ago as I was walking through campus (don’t I seem to always start blog posts this way? ;)), it hit me just how much I love a …
43. Un, dau, tri
This morning after my scripture study I wrote the Welsh numbers (0-10) on an index card, along with the mutation chart. And during breakfast I memorized the numbers (and …
Every once in a while I get to a point where none of the things on my to-do list look all that appealing, and it is then that I usually …
This morning I caught sight of my Spanish Book of Mormon and couldn’t resist the urge to pick it up and read. And it was good. :) I …
46. Catchdown
I’ve got a long list of 32 various topics to write about (in this blog alone, not to mention my other blogs), so I’m going to speed through it and …
47. Confessions
In my Music 201 class we talked about St. Augustine and Confessions (and City of God, for that matter). And the little bits we read in class got …
48. Land of smiles
On Blank Slate I have a page, Thailand Links, that I started putting together a while ago. Only got about …
49. A new hobby
When we visited Tryst Press last week, Rob Buchert (the guy who runs the press) mentioned the old German Book of Mormon as a beautiful book, and I of course …
