Parvum Opus II

Parvum Opus (Latin for small work) is a weekly column on the English language, and more, that I've been writing since just before Christmas of 2002. This is Volume II, the collected work from 2004. In editing this collection, besides correcting errors, I added a few footnotes to clarify certain points, particularly when my understanding or opinion changed. A decade is a long time not to change one's opinions, especially considering all we've been through over these years. However, a few years ago I shifted most of my political comments to my Cincinnati Independent Examiner column, at www.examiner.com/independent-in-cincinnati. The collection of the first year of those columns is titled The Gritty Bits. Parvum Opus includes a lot of comments, questions, information, and corrections from steady readers over the years. Sometimes they wrote the column for me, and I thank them. When the great universities were established in Europe, professors taught the Trivium and the Quadrivium. The Trivium consisted of grammar, rhetoric, and logic. The Quadrivium consisted of arithmetic; geometry; music, harmonics, or tuning theory; and astronomy or cosmology. Someday, I may change Parvum Opus to Trivium Pursuit.