I have been using “cf.” wrongly for my entire life
Number theory was famously described as absolutely, gloriously useless by G H Hardy, but is now vital for encryption and therefore the digital economy (and all else “e”) While looking…
Category: misquotes
Literary graffiti in Clonmel
The other day I spied this scrawled on a wall in Clonmel: Impressively erudite, and with correct use of apostrophes. Although I did find the need to specify that these…
Review of “Life Ascending”, Nick Lane, Eurotimes July 2009
This fine book on evolution was well reviewed at the time and won the 2010 Royal Society prize for science books. Here is my review from Eurotimes . Or rather…
Silence and the limits of language
“That for which we find words in something already dead in our hearts. There always is a kind of contempt in the act of speaking.” – Nietzsche, The Twilight of…
“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers”
There are quotes – like “Let them eat cake” and an awful lot of things supposedly said by Mark Twain – which are indestructibly associated with the wrong person, or the completely wrong context. This…
Séamus Sweeney 