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Many hands make light work
English Proverb: Many hands make light work Many people have fond memories of their school days. Unfortunately, though, being a school student also means enduring school assemblies. In my school days, students would set up the chairs in the gym for each assembly. It may have seemed like a mammoth task, but many hands made…
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Nascent
Word of the Day: Nascent The drones are no longer in their nascent stages. They are coming! In fact, they are already here. Last summer, one crashed into Himeji Castle, but drones are still a relatively new technology, and society doesn’t fully understand how to deal with them yet. When something is new or has…
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Out of the woods
English Idiom: Out of the woods A few weeks ago, I introduced the phrase in the weeds. If you have not read that post yet or forgot what it means, you can click on it and read it now. Anyway, out of the woods means that you are out of trouble or danger. So when…
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Steampunk
Word of the Day: Steampunk Steampunk is both a genre of science fiction and a type of subculture. As you can guess from the name, it comes from the age of steam in the 19th century when there was no electricity and no internal combustion engine. Think about Jules Verne or Phillip Pullman, and you…
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Keep your nose to the grindstone
English Idiom: Keep your nose to the grindstone Keeping their noses to the grindstone is one of the things that the Japanese do best. When you keep your nose to the grindstone, you concentrate on your work for a long time. Japanese are specialists at persevering with a task until the job is done and…
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Dongle
Word of the Day: Dongle A dongle is a computer attachment that enables a computer to connect to the internet or run some special software. They are usually shaped like thumb drives or memory sticks. Sometimes hotels or other places do not offer Internet access or charge for inferior Wi-Fi service. These are the times when…
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Too many cooks spoil the broth
English Proverb: Too many cooks spoil the broth Sometimes, it is better to have a few people working on a project than a lot – too many cooks spoil the broth, as they say. When too many people are involved in a project, there may be too much negotiation and compromise, and the project will not be…
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Moonshot
Word of the Day: Moonshot A moonshot is research into technology that does not exist yet and probably seems impossible for the foreseeable future. Some thinkers believe that seasteading will become normal one day, and people will live in floating cities on oceans. Of course, no one knows how to do this yet. I mean,…
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Rags to riches
Idiom: Rags to riches Going from rags to riches means to advance out of poverty into extreme wealth. You know, it used to be the stereotypical American dream to immigrate to the US, work hard and become a big-time business person. One of the best rags-to-riches movies that I have ever seen is Slumdog Millionaire.…
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Cheeky
Word of the Day: Cheeky I have an interesting one for you today, everybody. When someone is cheeky, they are respectfully rude. Yes, you can be politely rude. When people are cheeky, they usually joke around or are playful. Imagine that your ageing father cannot find his newspaper. He has looked all around and cannot…
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