Prime jargon

Found this jaw-dropping sentence in an otherwise readable Wikipedia article on the American bullfrog (Rana catesbiana). It’s about how bullfrogs catch prey: Adaptation to target image displacement due to light refraction at the water-air interface consists of the bullfrog’s application of tongue surface comparatively posterior to the perceived location of the prey target. I’m too […]

Moonlighting on Wikipedia

This week I’ve been clearing out the cobwebs by taking a break to write a Wikipedia article or three. Since Saturday I’ve added these obscure items to The Free Encyclopedia Anyone Can Edit: Georg Schäfer, a German capitalist, erstwhile Nazi official, and art collector. He needed to be distinguished from the globe-trotting, tale-spinning, acid-dropping painter […]

John Harvard Library

Last August I dashed off a pair of Wikipedia articles, one about the John Harvard Library book series from Harvard University Press, the other about its namesake, a lending library in Southwark. Today I took a break from other things to spruce up the first article. The John Harvard Library is now fifty years old […]

The immortal bard of somewhere in South Carolina

For the past few years I’ve thought that one of the most glaring omissions from Wikipedia (that most praised and blamed of websites) was an article on South Carolina bard J. Gordon Coogler, who penned the deathless lines Alas! for the South, her books have grown fewer— She never was much given to literature. Coogler […]