Future anterior

Thursday, November 1st, 2007

Here’s another neologism for you — premem — similar to my previous new word, and also triggered by one of my children. It means “pre-memory”, and while sounding like something out of a Philip K. Dick story, my meaning refers to a more intimate epiphany, one of those “golden moments” when you can already visualize, […]

Postlapsarian PNP: After the fall from grace

Friday, September 28th, 2007

The recent general election in Jamaica was a close run between the People’s National Party, in power for 18 years, and the Jamaica Labour Party. While at least one of the sixty seats remains to be decided by the courts, the JLP still managed to squeeze past the incumbents with a four-seat majority.
Politically motivated violence […]

Two cultures clash

Wednesday, November 8th, 2006

Talk of banning the “dance of death” is still doing the rounds here in Kingston, or at least it was this morning at the hairdresser’s. The dance in question is of course the “Dutty Wine”. In a country where new dance moves pop up every week, the Dutty Wine has shown unusual endurance since its […]

Writing wrongs

Tuesday, October 10th, 2006

Taking a break from the political meltdown here in Jamaica, I got a tip-off from a fellow editor in Rome about a new term for spellcheck mis-corrections: The Cupertino Effect.
The origin of the term, coined at the Language Log, is from the the common mistyping of “cooperation” as “cooperatino”. Bizarrely, certain spellcheckers offer “Cupertino” as […]

Amor vincit omnia fe true

Friday, May 12th, 2006

We have 125 channels on TV.
I watch very little and very irregularly: The Daily Show, The Colbert Report and, the main advantage of so many channels, reruns of great US comedies such as Seinfeld, Frasier and vintage Cheers. Yet it’s one of the mysteries of the universe that I seem condemned to see the same […]