Mike Scott, the druidic leader of the long-lasting, constantly changing British Isles ensemble The Waterboys, honors a friend who flashed through the world like a comet in the anthemic “Whole of the Moon,” recorded a quarter-century ago. Enjoy the incantation.

For the past 33 years, the annual American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, directed since its inception by current New York Times crossword editor Will Shortz, has brought together the nation’s leading crossword solvers, constructors, and aficionados for a weekend of competition and camaraderie.

I attended and competed in last weekend’s tournament …

Boa Sr has died in India at the age of 85.

With her dies a 70,000-year-old language, one of the world’s oldest.

Though the written word seems horribly low tech, I have little doubt that in 2050 — or 2100, for that matter — we’ll still be happily reading and writing.

But writing will survive in a debased form. It will lose its richness.

We will no longer read and write words. We will merely process them, the way our computers do.

… all are words deserving banishment from the English language, according to the word mavens at Lake Superior State University.

Read on for others on their “List of Words Banished from the Queen’s English for Mis-use, Over-use and General Uselessness.”

One question evoked by the end of the decade is what to call it.

We have the Fifties, the Sixties, the Seventies, the Eighties, the Nineties, and then the…whats? Zeroies? Double aughts? Oh-ohs?

If this question troubles you at all, thank your chosen power or deity for giving you a quiet life.

What does English sound like to someone who doesn’t speak English?

Perhaps something like, “Chompin’ on the judge cause the paper’s a sham” or “You call me silver freezing cold and ants and I tools old,” two of the randomly jabberwockian lines in Italian singer Adriano Celentano’s “Prisencolinensinainciusol.”

Click below for a video of Antonello Venditti’s ballad “Sara.”

In many ways, Australia is just like America. But there are a few obvious differences I must discuss.

Even though we speak the same language, there are some definite words and phrases that I had to learn during my time down under. We all know terms like g’day, mate, no worries and the loo.

But what about …

Here’s a classic Candid Camera skit, with an interpreter on the hot seat.

Each Saturday we highlight a humorous and sometimes poignant video, comic, or skit concerning different “careers,” past and present. From W.C. Fields to Rowan Atkinson, from classic films and commercials to Monty Python—all and everything will be tapped for this look each week at various professions and pastimes.

Click here for all of the videos and careers highlighted to date.

When Joe Wilson shouted “You lie!” at President Obama earlier this year, it offended many of his colleagues in Congress, who sought a way to express their displeasure.

But they didn’t warn or rebuke Wilson; no, they “admonished” him, and news reports about it sent millions running for their trusty dictionaries to find out what on earth the word meant.