So today I found myself agreeing with someone online and went to type "hear hear" but then remembered seeing someone else type "here here" a couple days earlier.

I was pretty sure the correct phrase was "hear hear" as opposed to the other variants I'd seen ("here here", "hear here", "here hear") but I'd never actually looked it up. So I decided to check popular internet usage using Google:

1. "hear hear" = 1,740,000 hits
    
2. "here here" = 3,880,000 hits
    
3. "hear here" = 307,000 hits
    
4. "here hear" = 334,000 hits

Well dang. According to popular usage twice as many people say "here here" than say "hear hear". But is that correct? Wikipedia says no:

Hear hear (Wikipedia):
...Hear, hear is an expression used as a short repeated form of hear ye and hear him. It represents a listener's agreement with the point being made by a speaker.

It was originally an imperative for directing attention to speakers, and has since been used, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, as "the regular form of cheering in the House of Commons", with many purposes depending on the intonation of its user. It is often incorrectly spelled "here here", especially on websites...

A quick double check of OneLook Dictionary Search confirms this. Six dictionaries list "hear hear" and only one lists "here here" (and that one happens to be the wiki article above.)

Popular usage drives the movement of meaning, though, so at some point in the future "here here" may end up being the correct phrase if we don't do something about it.

So if you want to avoid yet another English colloquialism that will have your great grandchildren scratching their heads and saying "WTF?" (or whatever kids will be saying in those days) then type "hear hear" at every opportunity.

Go on, say it, you know you want to.

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8:07 PM EDT today, March 20, marks the Vernal Equinox and the official start of Spring 2007.  Today at that time the sun will pass over the equator from the southern hemisphere to the northern.   This is what you probably already know.

But I learned a couple of things today that I didn't know.  First is that "equinox" means "equal night", which makes sense because on the equinoxes the length of day and night are exactly equal.  Here in the northern hemisphere the days will continue to get longer until the Summer Solstice at 12:06 PM EDT on June 21, 2007.  Since the last Autumnal Equinox we in the northern hemisphere have been getting less direct light than the southern hemisphere.  As of 8:07 we will officially begin receiving more direct light than the southern hemisphere.

The other thing I should have known is that, for the southern hemisphere, this time will mark the Autumnal Equinox.  I mean, I was aware that the seasons of the south are the reverse of the seasons of the north, winter here summer there, fall here spring there, but it just never occurred to me that the solstices and equinoxes were similarly flipped.  Silly that should never have occurred to me.

Oh, one other little thing I learned is that "solstice" means "sun stands still".  Since the solstice marks when the sun stops moving north or south and reverses direction, that's a very sensible thing to call it.

Another interesting tidbit, apparently the great Sphinx of Egypt is oriented so that it exactly faces the sunrise on the morning of the Vernal Equinox.

Tip of the hat to Pandora's Tea Room for providing a link to this fun quiz.

You definitely have a Boston accent, even if you think you don't. Of course, that doesn't mean you are from the Boston area, you may also be from New Hampshire or Maine.

Some Mexican road workers uncover a strange stone block covered with hieroglyphs while building a road. Then, nearly 10 years later, a team of archaeologists get a look at it and detemine that it is the only existing example of the writing of the Olmec people, and the oldest surviving writing in North or South America. How cool is that?...   more »

Here's another little audio challenge, which I think you may find harder than the last challenge, or maybe not. This time the clips vary in size from 5 seconds to 20 seconds, and each one includes spoken dialog from a movie. But there's a catch...   more »

The word "gigabyte" is from this point forward banned.  From now on, the appropriate phrase will be "giggle byte".  I've already used the phrase once today, and I encourage you to do the same.

That is all.

 Yes, I'm still on my meds, before you ask!

I've seen the construct "should of" written several times in the last couple days, including appearing on a slide at a company presentation where I work. It drives me positively batty...   more »