Satay Sashay

From the book description at the Oxford University Press:

Seasoned generously with literary wit, The Diner's Dictionary is a veritable feast, tracing the origins and history of over 2,300 gastronomical words and phrases. John Ayto spreads across our table a veritable cornucopia, from common fruits and vegetables (apples, cherries, apricots, and broccoli, to name a few), to exotic foreign dishes such as gado-gado, nasi goreng, satay, and dashi, and even junk foods such as doughnuts, brownies, and candy. Thoroughly revised, the second edition boasts 1,000 new entries, including the word origins of affogato, bento, cava, goji berry, jalfrezi, mocktail, rugelach, vache qui rit, and zigni. In addition, Ayto has expanded the coverage of vocabulary from foreign cuisines, such as Thai, Korean, Vietnamese, and parts of South America.

How's that for an intro to The Diner's Dictionary:  Word Origins of Food and Drink by John Ayto?  Ayto's other contributions to literature include The Dictionary of Slang and the Oxford Dictionary of English Idioms.

Quirky word references, food, wit?  How could this be bad?

A Piece of the Pi

History of pi
Petr Beckman

You probably don't know me very well if you don't know I have a fascination with π (pi).  It started when I was a child enduring (reveling in, actually) my Dad's rhymes about cake and pi when we would cut dessert and continued on though my minor in Mathematics to my present day self, owner of numerous π themed items and of course, books (like this one).

I was pretty excited last night to discover 2Pi:  Rhymes and Radii via NPR.  Jake Scott is a teacher and he's aware that math can appear to some to be quite (I know this is shocking)  dull.  He also knows that kids' attention spans are short.  (Scott is obviously a realist.)  His solution, a math-rapping alter-ego 2 Pi.  The videos were brilliant and I love his statement that "...if there's no connection, then there's no response."  True for teaching.  True for life.

Mr. Scott, I salute your decision to education children, and I adore that you are finding ways to show that math can be fun.

Small Wins

With a little bit of luck, I will finally get to see The Hobbit this weekend.  The schedule has been a bit more intense than normal with flu recovery followed by the 2013 day to day obligations (i.e., a full time job and a new training routine).  Looking at my calendar, things will settle out by, well, you probably don't want to look at my calendar.

Here's hoping that you get to knock a small (or a large!) goal off your list this weekend.

To Infinity and Beyond Bridget

Sometimes you think you're going to write about one thing, then you click a link and your morning outlook changes.  GBC Kate posted a link to a LemonDrop article "What Dying of Breast Cancer (at 26) is Teaching Me About How to Live".  It's a good article.

Not content with this snippet (with my root cause background), I clicked to Bridget's blog and started reading.  (Going back to GBC Kate's comments to the link, I wasn't the only one tearing up over an electronic reading device.)

So, this morning, if things seem a little rough, remember Bridget.  Also revisit your calendars and as my Uncle once advised me, spend your free time with the people you love, not those that you like only a little.