Author Archives: Jeremy Mercer

When I set out to buy this year’s holiday card supplies, I asked my fiancée how many cards she would be needing. “Nine,” she said. Nine? But last year she sent 25 cards? “Only nine people sent me cards,” she … Continue reading →

Today’s New York Times crossword puzzle was somewhat vexing. It was a Thursday puzzle, a day often given over to puzzle twists or innovations. The conceit of today’s puzzle was ‘Turn Turn Turn’, meaning that several answers were meant to be read by turning the puzzle 90, 180, or 270 degrees. Continue reading →

There is a scandal raging in Amercian sports circles at the moment because the basketball player Kevin Garnett allegedly told the basketball player Charlie Villanueva that he looked like a ‘cancer patient’. Now, this was during a heated moment in … Continue reading →

In the splendid Travels with a Tangerine, Tim MacKintosh-Smith touches briefly on a translation problem that has always preoccupied me: aesthetic vs literal. In this case, he was looking at various translations for the title of Ibn Battutah’s accounts of … Continue reading →

Apparently, Dutch shooting galleries offer a unique challenge: If you manage to hit the target, it triggers a camera shutter, and your prize is a photo of yourself eye-a-squint and gun-a-shoulder. Ria van Dijk, now 88, started visiting these shooting … Continue reading →

Stephen Pain – the mysterious, the bearded, the denizen of Shakespeare – has a son who runs a wacky video channel out of Japan. Hmm. The apple, close to the tree, falls. More here