Lately I have been musing on the nature of the word arbitrary. In my mind, the Venn diagram of the word encompasses both whimsical and verging-on-random decision-making. I looked up the definition in my favourite dictionary (the Oxford English Dictionary) and found that my sense of the definitions is very close to right: 1. To …
Category Archives: Language
Language Envy
I have long regretted not growing up in a culture where people routinely learn multiple languages in the course of everyday life. Growing up, I had a friend whose family spoke 4 languages at home. At the dinner table, the family spoke an amalgam language, seamlessly switching between languages to use the most accurate word …
Judging a Blog Post by its Title
My least read post is one of my favorite that I have written thus far. I take full responsibility for its low readership numbers. After all, I’m the one who gave it the off-putting title: How I Became a Hacker (and How You Can Become One Too). The term hacker has a lot of technical …