Inner Editor
WORD CRIMES
July 01, 2020
So there!
March 25, 2020
Handy dandy all-purpose editor's note to critics and trolls (borrowed from Ed Yong of The Atlantic):
"If you have sent abuse or insults, please know that I have filed away your comments for the time when my toilet paper eventually runs out."
And then there's this classic kiss-off:
"Here I sit in the smallest room of my house with your letter before me. It will shortly be behind me."
Commatose
February 25, 2020
Are you a demonym?
February 09, 2020
"A demonym is a word used to describe the residents or natives of a place: New Yorkers, Oregonians, or Japanese, for example." Likewise, Pacifican is a demonym, adds Pacifican Peter Loeb.
Exotic new stone fruit?
February 09, 2020
seen at Pacifica Grocery Outlet by designer Beth Brann
Gross car wash?
August 08, 2019
NextDoor post on trying to find a replacement for the South San Francisco car wash that went out of business: "That car wash is getting remolded at the moment. Not sure when it will open up again."
Pierre Messerli
Hiding in plain sight: Columbus son's 500-year-old classic found on wrong bookshelf in Denmark library
April 27, 2019
High school journalism teacher defends student newspaper's constitutional rights
April 26, 2019
The Oath
April 13, 2019
Style guide for the 1 percent?
February 12, 2019
The hyphenated whale Moby-Dick
February 01, 2019
Wandering & Wondering keeps surfing on Riptide
January 25, 2019
Thanks to my Pacifica Tribune readers for following my Wandering & Wondering column the past 20 years. I have folded the column and refocused my journalistic energies on this blog, covering the Coastside from Pacifica to Pescadero. All my newspaper columns are archived here on Riptide: Just click the Wandering & Wondering category on the sidebar.
John Maybury
No count
January 17, 2019
Best media corrections of 2018
January 05, 2019
REAL NEWS
December 10, 2018
BAY AREA TEEN WINS BULWER-LYTTON PRIZE FOR BAD WRITING
September 05, 2018
WHAT'S WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE?
July 11, 2018
"Or take a stroll over to Ink Dwell, the new studio of painter Jane Kim, who specializes in ornate audoban-style murals of still wildlife...” (One Day One Place: Half Moon Bay, July 11, by Greg Thomas, S.F. Chronicle travel editor)
WHAT IS 44 + 66?
July 03, 2018
From The (San Mateo) Daily Journal, Letters to the editor, July 2, 2018:
San Mateo County Chief Elections Officer Mark Church opined recently that the June election had been "extremely successful" because 44 percent of residents voted […]. How sad that in a democracy where all citizens have an equal right to vote, fewer than half take advantage of the privilege. Do 66 percent of citizens subscribe to the bromide "I don’t really care, do u?”
(Reader Pierre Messerli caught this mathematically challenged letter.)