This week’s obscure English word is saponify. It means to turn something into soap. I suspect this works only with certain ingredients and would fail miserably if you tried to saponify granite, liquid helium or rodents, among other things. Your challenge: make up a sentence using this word, in the comments. Copyright © Matthew Wright … More The obscure word of the week is saponify
A little while back somebody began sending me links to some very weird ‘history’ videos and pages on the web, and asking me what I thought. All of it was about an alternative kind of history in which The Truth had allegedly been Hidden by the Establishment (including by Historians) to Intentionally Deceive the Public. … More Why do people follow weird pseudo-history?
This week’s obscure English word is lampyridine. It’s to do with glow-worms. Your challenge: write a sentence or two in the comments using this word. Copyright © Matthew Wright 2019
It’s fifty years today since Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped out on the surface of the Moon. I was a kid when it happened, but I remember it as yesterday – watching the wobbly image of Armstrong, on TV, as he made his way across the lunar surface. Looking back, we can see through … More Dreams of humanity: fifty years on
I find it incredible to think that this week has marked the fiftieth anniversary of the flight of Apollo 11 – the first landing on the Moon. Half a century: and yet, in many ways, it seems like yesterday. I was a kid at the time. Back then space was the place, as Sun Ra … More A half century since Apollo 11: a personal memoir
As part of a series of posts marking Apollo 11’s fiftieth I thought I’d re-post something I penned way back in 2013 on the REAL moon conspiracy – the Russian cover-up of their own failures. I posted a while back about the claims that NASA faked the Apollo programme. This idea is so stupid it doesn’t … More The truth behind the moon landing conspiracy – the real hoax was Soviet
This week’s obscure English word is scumbling. It’s a wonderful sounding word, isn’t it. All kinds of potential for scurrilous onomatopaea – maybe. Actually, it has a fairly ordinary meaning, if it a bit technical. It’s an art term and means to alter the image, either by adding a thin layer of opaque or patchy … More The obscure word of the week is scumbling
