Ten percent of U.S. electricity is generated from old Russian nuclear warheads. It took two ad creatives all of 45 minutes to invent Baileys Irish Cream in 1973. For $64 an hour you can hire a Los Angeles photo studio that looks like the interior of a private jet—to impress people on Instagram.

Those are just three of Tom Witwell’s 52 Things I Learned in 2021, one of the few year-end lists that’s actually worth reading. BONUS: There are links for each year’s list, going back to 2014, at the end of the article.

posted by: Aaron Bragg  |  category: random thoughts  |  make a comment

Oof. The last time we posted anything here was October 21. I think that’s a record.

To be fair, I was gone for a couple of weeks, gallivanting about Nevada (and, incidentally, Oregon, Arizona, California, and Idaho) with the missus. So it’s not like I don’t have an excuse.

Can I just say how stunning the desert is? This was taken somewhere between Goodsprings and Pahrump, off a gravel road that was not nearly as forgiving as promised.

Then there’s Wheeler Peak, over on the other side of the state. Side note: You’ve not seen the Milky Way till you’ve seen it from Great Basin National Park.

There’s an awful lot of gunshot victims in the Goldfield Pioneer Cemetery. Alas, this isn’t one of them.

Camped a couple of nights in Valley of Fire State Park, where we were visited by bighorn sheep, kit foxes, and wannabe Instagram models.

Albert Szukalski’s Last Supper, Goldwell Open Air Museum, Beatty.

And despite the fact that we stayed in no fewer than three—three!—purportedly haunted hotels with precisely zero spooky encounters, we managed to get in plenty of hiking, kayaking, exploring, and Bloody Mary-drinking to make up for it.

Now, back to our regularly scheduled blog posting…

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The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has some choice words for those of you who think flotsam and jetsam are just synonyms for odds and ends:

Flotsam and jetsam are terms that describe two types of marine debris associated with vessels. Flotsam is defined as debris in the water that was not deliberately thrown overboard, often as a result from a shipwreck or accident. Jetsam describes debris that was deliberately thrown overboard by a crew of a ship in distress, most often to lighten the ship’s load.

Does it really matter, though? Glad you asked.

Under maritime law the distinction is important. Flotsam may be claimed by the original owner, whereas jetsam may be claimed as property of whoever discovers it. If the jetsam is valuable, the discoverer may collect proceeds received though the sale of the salvaged objects.

Pays to be precise, I reckon.

posted by: Aaron Bragg  |  category: the writing life  |  make a comment

Science nerds, rejoice!

River Runner enables you to “drop a raindrop anywhere in the contiguous United States and watch where it ends up;” 3D Periodic Table offers up all sorts of customizations, like sorting elements by their atomic radius or electronegativity or abundance in Earth’s crust.

Keep in mind that these are under the headline “Timewasters” for what should be fairly obvious reasons. I therefore cannot be held responsible for any loss of productivity.

posted by: Aaron Bragg  |  category: random thoughts  |  make a comment

I’ve been trying—no, really, I have!—to be less judgmental about typos in print. But inevitably I’ll come across something like this: “Both songs, which are among the catchiest in the KISS cannon, still hold up, particularly the former.”

Now, unless KISS stores its songs in a piece of heavy artillery (which would be pretty much on-brand for these guys), the writer probably meant canon*:

canon noun “The body of rules, principles, or standards accepted as axiomatic and universally binding in a field of study or art.”

That’s not quite right, though. By definition, a canon must include works by multiple artists, e.g. the heavy metal canon. So I think what the writer actually intended to convey was oeuvre:

oeuvre noun “The works of a writer, painter, or the like, taken as a whole.”

Yes, yes, it’s perhaps a bit much to use a pretentious French loanword when speaking of a band whose bass player wears “demon makeup…breathes fire…and spits out blood.” But then, a grown man actually reviewed a KISS concert in 2021, so….

*To be fair, homophones, which I’ve written about here and, more recently, here, can trip up even the most careful of writers.

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Bidding on a first-edition copy of Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations commences in five days. Fewer than a thousand were printed, and it sold out in six months. Christie’s estimates the book, in two volumes, will bring in $80,000 to $120,000 – which, when you think about it, is a pretty paltry sum for “the first major expression of the theory of free trade.”

And in the event you’re interested in purchasing any of 13 vehicles featured in the 2015 film Mad Max: Fury Road, Lloyd’s will no longer accept offers after 7 p.m. Australian Eastern Standard Time on September 26th. Don’t worry if you can’t be there to pick up your War Rig or Ratrod Chev: “Nitrous, no-nonsense shipping can be arranged for anywhere in what’s left of the World.”

posted by: Aaron Bragg  |  category: random thoughts  |  make a comment

Following up on Tuesday’s post, I think a lot of people reflexively use if instead of whether because the latter is homophonous with weather. We already have enough trouble with its and it’s (not to mention medal, meddle, metal, and mettle), and it’s just easier to avoid embarrassment, even if that means being a little less clear.

I get it. In fact, I’m pretty sure the only reason I’m slightly less inclined to make that mistake is that, when I was a kid, I learned that yet another spelling and meaning exists: A wether is a castrated ram.* Which makes weather, wether, and whether multinyms.

*I learned this from, um, castrating rams. Which led to coming up with what 12-year-old me thought was a knee-slappingly hilarious joke: I’d choose the next victim from the pen and announce, “He’s next.” Then I’d grab my trusty elastrator and get to work. After the poor lamb staggered back to the flock in shame, I’d turn to my step-dad and say, “I just predicted the wether!”

Get it? Get it?

posted by: Aaron Bragg  |  category: the writing life  |  make a comment