by Brandy Cross | May 13, 2025 | Blog
On Leisure and Doing Nothing In early capitalism, a working day of 10-14 hours, 6 days per week was the norm for the working class. Today, in most Western countries, those hours are limited to 8 hours per day with an average of 5 working days. ...
by Brandy Cross | Apr 18, 2025 | Blog
English is full of words that don’t quite make sense, at least at first glance. Take George Carlin’s famous comedy bit: “Why do we park on a driveway but drive on a parkway?” _ George Carlin I’ll give you a moment to laugh, it is funny. The...
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by Brandy Cross | Oct 31, 2024 | Blog
Most English speakers are so accustomed to the fact that we split animal names from the food products made from their flesh that they don’t notice unless it’s brought to their attention. Think: Cow – Beef Calf – Veal Pig – Pork Sheep –...
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by Brandy Cross | Jul 17, 2024 | Blog
Any case of language contact will almost certainly result in change to both languages. That’s more pressing in situations where an invading language takes a position of power. E.g., the Norman French invasion of England resulted in almost half of our 1000 most...
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by Brandy Cross | Mar 29, 2024 | Blog
On the Monster in Western Society The word monster, coming from the Latin root monstrum, meaning a divine omen or a portent, first makes its appearance (to my knowledge) in the written English language in Chaucer’s Monk’s Tale, “Was neuere wight sith that this...
by Brandy Cross | Oct 17, 2023 | Blog
I’m going to ask for a little bit more of your time for this one, because I’d like you sit through a couple of videos. And if you can’t, you’re not going to get very much out of this blog. In which case, I’d like you to skip it. I want to ask you to feel...
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by Brandy Cross | Sep 27, 2023 | Blog
In April of 1651, a 63-year-old white man published a book that would go on to influence the rise and fall of governments, societies, nations. Thomas Hobbe’s Leviathan detailed the theory of the social contract, the idea that in a society, people give up the power of...
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by Brandy Cross | Jul 3, 2023 | Blog
“If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants” Everyone knows this quote. The thing is, it’s difficult to say if it means what you think it means. Sure, Isaac Newton, was referring to his teachers and the philosophers whom he...
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by Brandy Cross | Jul 3, 2023 | Blog
The the transition of the old gods to the new *this contains spoilers for the comic Sandman and for the comic Lucifer. If you’d like to read those works without insight into the plot, do come back later. In Neil Gaiman’s Sandman (published 1989-1993) the...
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by Brandy Cross | Apr 14, 2023 | Blog
On the convoluted origin of words Sometimes things are not what they seem. That’s true with a lot of things, but with words in the English language, it’s more common than not that a word might be so convoluted in origin as to be bordering on the...
