23 April 2024 Back in February I mentioned some of the dad jokes in funerary services books, such as undead Wolverine’s alter-ego Cadaverine. Today I am continuing to fill out my indexing and editing superhero team with a new mini-team: the Logistikons. Doesn’t that sound… Read More »The Superheroes of Indexing and Editing
11 April 2024 As a medievalist and as someone who’s written an article about medieval names, I thought myself pretty well versed in the various ways people referred to each other throughout the European Middle Ages, whether in Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or pagan communities. I… Read More »TIL: Medieval Names
26 March 2024 Somewhere, long ago, I encountered the theory that delusions are culturally constructed and coded. No one had a Napoleon complex before Bonaparte; no one thought they were Jesus before Christianity had permeated their society; ancient Greek conspiracy-theorists were not convinced that the… Read More »Devil Muppets
12 March 2024 The other week, the Guardian had a story about the first photographically documented instance of humpback whale sex–and it just happened to be between two males. It brought to mind this nugget I learned about grouper (the fish): there are sex-change operations… Read More »TIL: Sex Changes for Fish
27 February 2024 Indexing textbooks for funerary professionals comes with its own peculiar set of challenges (especially when dealing with the before photos), but it’s helpful when the authors have a sense of humour. To wit, Supercilium (eyebrows). As mentioned, cilia means “lashes” or “eyebrows,”… Read More »The Importance of a Sense of Humour
20 February 2024 I am not one to traditionally wax poetic about war (especially right now). Even less likely am I to get dewy eyed at the mere description of battleships. And yet here I sit, indexing a military history book, and finding myself needing… Read More »Indexing Reflections: Battleship Names
13 February 2024 Or makes it better, I suppose. Depends on how you look at it. All I can say is that Hamilton makes it very hard not to break out in song when indexing a book on the American Revolution. With every mention of… Read More »Pop Culture Ruins Indexing
So it turns out, doing your due diligence to find out if your spouse was dead in the seventeenth century, thus permitting you to remarry within the Church, required a trip to Veracruz. Of course, this assumes you’re already in the Caribbean. Pretty sure if… Read More »TIL: Due Diligence