Search Results for: sunday summary

Did you watch the Academy Awards last weekend? I missed it, but woke up the next morning to hear that Parasite surprised everyone by taking home the Oscar for Best Picture. The South Korean dark comedy/thriller is the first non-English language movie to earn the distinction. There’s lots of talk about diversity during awards season. […]

What do you think of nicknames as given names? The British seem far more amenable to the idea. Elea recently featured Sonny. And celebs have used names like Buddy and Daisy Boo. (Okay, maybe Jamie and Jools Oliver have hijacked my idea of what the English name their children.) Except that names like Alfie and […]

Do you know this quote: We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and riffle their pockets for new vocabulary – James Nicoll Nicoll is mostly a sci-fi book reviewer, but maybe it’s more fair to say he’s a cultural critic, if that’s a thing. […]

Newton’s third law states that “for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” He was talking about physics, not baby names or even popular culture. But it hits on something I’ve been wondering about lately. Not so long ago, I could have rattled off the dozen picks on every list of wacky celebrity […]

Here’s something that fascinates me: small screen names – from television characters, reality stars, or even someone mentioned on television lots, like a talk show host’s much-mentioned child – seem to be consistently more influential than names from movies, even blockbusters. There are exceptions, of course. And the pool of potential television names is many […]

I love a good character name. There are the obvious ones, of course, like Sherlock Holmes. Indiana Jones. Ramona Quimby. But this week I’m adding one more to the list: Amelia Wren of The Aeronauts. I’ve yet to see the movie, a fictionalized account of early hot air balloon flights and their impact on meteorology. […]