10 Oct
I am actually very pleased to have had an opportunity to study in the Oregon State University. It wasn’t something planned. I wanted to do something in the space I was interested in, and [the] opportunity to go to graduate school at Oregon State [came up]. So, I went there. This was mid-1980s. The internet […]
21 Aug
In the beginning was the word, and the word was LOL, and from it, all memes were made. First came the cat jokes. They soon became so popular that even this €5.6 billion telecom company felt that this was a good way to impress people: The story goes back to 2006, when a Hawaii-based software […]
8 Aug
In an earlier Word Nerd, we emphasized how English as a language begs, borrows and steals. There, we talked about how its sources have been other languages – Hindi, German, French, Latin and so on. But, of late, it is the jargon of technology – articulated through the internet, science, and media, which is becoming […]
18 Jul
“(I)t is not desirable to confine knowledge to whatever can be put into a useful shape for examinations, drawing-rooms, or the still more pretentious modes of publicity.” —T.S. Eliot, Tradition and Individual Talent Quotations are a natural intellectual currency. Whether you’re a literature major, or a movie buff, an amateur historian or a sci-fi nerd […]
14 Mar
In an article on feminist vocabulary, a reader commented that the subject matter had “obviously become too hyperacademicated.” This makes it sound like the words had both tonsillitis and pneumonia, and were in need of research drugs. The other interesting fact to note is this reader was using an imaginary word that he (or she) […]
30 Apr
Manish Tewari, Minister of Information & Broadcasting, Government of India In the past two decades you’ve seen a fundamental transformation in the information architecture of the world. The emergence of the Internet toward the middle of the ‘90’s – now there are a lot of people who take credit for that invention but be that […]