On the NPR puzzle show with Will Shortz this morning, the last question (usually the hardest) had as answer “wowie zowie” upon which the NPR host (forget her name) asked, rhetorically, when was the last time anyone heard the expression wowie zowie to which I joyously, shouted out, to no one in particular: “Last night!” Because my colleague Alex Field had his ipod playing in his car as we were driving back from Yosemite after a couple long hikes, and one of the albums played was The Mothers of Invention (i.e. Frank Zappa) and Wowie Zowie was the one song I thought was pretty decent. (Shockingly, dear reader, I had never actually heard what I am sure some sub-cult of true believers calls MOI before.) So, here’s to obscure forgotten phrases. [Correction: I was just listening, not actually on the show, which would have been fun!]
-
Recent Posts
- AI as an existential threat – Kevane preliminary draft
- “What can it do?” A living list of computational problems that deep learning/AI/neural nets can or seems likely to “do” (at varying cost and efficacy)
- Reading August-September 2025
- The typical popular sci-fi version of AI posing an existential risk?
- AI productivity growth and “the economy”
Archives
Categories
Friends of African Village Libraries (I post regularly here)- Kitengesa library in Uganda newsletter for 2025
- Burkina Faso libraries December 2025 newsletter
- COLAU’s latest newsletter with updates from August to December
- Some photos from Nyariga Community Library in Ghana
- Rapport de mission d’une équipe de ABVBF à Waly
- Visite du centre de lecture et d’étude de Béréba (CLEB)
- Don de livres par ABVBF à l’école primaire publique de Waly
- Sortie de la BMP: Ste Thérèse de Houndé, Burkina Faso
- Distribution des livres CMH aux élèves de l’école B de Koumbia, Burkina Faso
- Night activities at Sumbrungu Community Library, Ghana