Floods in northern India, mostly in the small state of Uttarakhand, have wrought disaster on an enormous scale. The early, intense onset of the monsoon on June 14th swelled rivers, washing away roads, bridges, hotels and even whole villages. Rock-filled torrents smashed vehicles and homes, burying victims under rubble and sludge.

Perhaps the public was simply less infatuated with the whole notion of space travel, skeptical about its cost, bored with its logistical whizbangery — certainly the television networks gave spaceflight far less euphoric coverage than in NASA's heyday.

And they counts my money and tickets, when I gets home, to see if I's got the change; and if I han't they half kills me. And serves you right, said Jane, the pert chambermaid, if you will take their money to get drunk on.

As I write, the flabbergastingly fecund David Crystal has just published another book in the tradition, The Fight for English: How Language Pundits Ate, Shot, and Left.