For what might be the most random and unpractical Tool ever, I present Wordsmith.org’s Internet Anagram Server (or “I, Rearrangement Servant”). I suppose this would come in handy when you needed to be witty, or if you had a character in your novel who loved anagrams, or if you were a blogger trying to come [...]

I am so, so late to the party on this one, but nonetheless: I loved John Hodgman on Jon Stewart. I loved (still love) him as the stodgy PC to Justin Long’s faux-cool Mac. (Nobody else thinks Long is Trying Too Hard?) But I couldn’t get more than a few pages through The Areas of [...]

Came across an interesting post over at Language Log about the prepositions in/on/at. The basic principles are simple: in relates to a 3-dimensional container on relates to a 2-dimensional surface at relates to a 1-dimensional location Time and space as portrayed by Flickr user: Charles Van L. The experiential key here is that a day [...]

Well, it’s not a Moleskine. But for Christmas my sister went to an indie book shop and picked up the 2008 Slingshot Organizer, a move that I had previously thought was “so not her.” (Go sis!) The thing is printed by an all-volunteer collective in Berkeley and is just a tetch more interesting than your [...]

Tom Chandler at Copywriter Underground covered nine (why not 10?) top buzzwords for 2007 and inadvertently taught me about Buzzwhack.com. My favorite buzzwords on Tom’s list are above, but you can read the whole list here. Other “good” (for some definitions of the word) buzzwords: yogurt cities: Cities with thriving “active cultures” — museums, symphonies, [...]

That’s right, folks, the true origin of text-messaging is contained right here. No other blog is breaking investigative pieces like this, so make sure you keep us bookmarked. The TRUE origin of text messaging abbreviations

Well, not well. But I did keep a journal, of sorts, that explains, at least in part, what it’s like. I’d hate for the journal to be shoved into a dark corner and never see the light of day, so read on:

Thanks to a random night of Googling with Chris a while back, I (we) discovered a food writer at Time named Joel Stein. This is the guy I aspire to be one day: Forget about restaurant openings and specialty coffee roasters. Stein writes about horsemeat, wine in juiceboxes, and that one time he fasted for [...]

For all my professed cosmopolitan leanings, I’m still a Midwesterner at heart, because for me, without these, it’s not a holiday. As more proof that great journalism doesn’t have to be about taking down the mayor and changing the world, Post writer Monica Hesse takes us to the one and only French’s French Fried Onion [...]

The “Commenter of the week” award goes to Danny Lucas for his comment on “Coffee Jargon.” He who flung the stars into the galaxy with His breath now swings my attention to Starbucks. Gold Coast is never up front with common varieties. It must be carefully pursued. “I do”, and the wedding of bean and [...]