Cladistics is big doin's in biology these last few decades. I like expanding these technical terms into more general usage, but I'm sure you've noticed that already.

I understand what Sluggo is saying, and now that I'm learning the ropes of this site - both culturally and technologically - I will, as one of the aforementioned newbies, toe the line with more discretion. Concerning the issue of flooding the forum with posts, I have only small and random windows of...

Mars is very dramatic here, too. It's almost at zenith around midnight, and it's in the same general part of the sky as the other big, red thing up there, Betelgeuse, which marks the point of Orion's left shoulder. (From our perspective, that is, assuming we are looking at Orion's ventral surface. H...

No, I imagine there's a different descriptor, comparable to "rhyming compound," that would apply to non-rhyming (but alliterative) phrases such as "tit-for-tat." When I talked about the unusual poetic devices in the Icelandic sagas, one to which I was referring was their use of l...

Putting on my cladist hat and assuming the custom developed in England, I see two possibilities at first glance. First, the custom developed after 1776 and was not transmitted to America but was transmitted to the remaining British colonies in Canada, Australia, and elsewhere. Second, the custom exi...

NASA isn't a super-double-secret agency. They've just been told to start trying to find evidence for global warming in lieu of exploring the universe, so they may as well be renamed West Anglia College.

Try here: http://blogs.nasa.gov/cm/newui/blog/blogs.jsp

Railroads and highways also act as vectors for the seeds of plants here in the U.S., enabling them to travel long distances. One can find northern plants and their associated insects along certain railways here in Florida.

I don't know where "duck" in the military sense (and not meaning "to assume a prone position with haste") originated. "Waterproofed" seems to make sense - as one might call canvas - but the green (olive drab) color of everything infantry rubbed off on the word. For some...

As the culture of Europe recedes into the 13th Century, thanks to its fecund new citizens, I was imagining that movies, as we know them, and all other artifacts of the modern world as well, will slip into oblivion. A zoetrope may well become the penultimate thrill in entertainment; the ultimate, of ...

Being good with puns is an oxymoronic phrase. They should evoke a groan, not a laugh.

I wonder if there's a name for "tit for tat" and similar phrases. They're similar to rhyming compounds, but they are clearly not

I'm no closer than anybody else, by email. It's about 150 miles from me, and I can see the shuttle launches from my front porch. Once, during a night shuttle launch, I was at the beach here and could feel the vibrations through my feet. They changed the name of the geographical feature back to Cape ...

As I understand the word, the creek itself is not riparian, but the creek's presence makes the land on either side - the banks of the creek - riparian. The riparian environment may extend some distance from the river itself; it will include all land influenced grossly by the presence of the river. T...

Codswallop is a noun, so how can one be codswalloped?

I imagine the same way an item may be boxed or a nail hammered. Speakers take great liberties with these things.

It won't be long before people wishing to see classic French culture will have to peer into a zoetrope or some similar device. (Again, I am clearly herding our commentary back toward the appropriate barn.)