# Conversation and Fun > Just Conversation >  Word of the Day!

## hcjilson

When I was young, my grandfather helped me to increase my vocabulary by getting me in the habit of learning a new word every day.I did it regularly until I hit high school when I had come to the mistaken conclusion that I knew it all.I also used to do cross word puzzles a lot. As I grew older I got out of the good habits and into some bad one's-enough said! I noticed a woman in the office the other day, doing a crossword while waiting for the doctor. I asked her how she was doing (she was doing it with a pen!). She was hard of hearing and thought I had asked her WHAT she was doing.

"Excersizing my mind" she said. She then told me that as she grew older she needed to excersize her mind to keep sharp, and she said it helped her not to forget things. I told her I no longer did crosswords because I couldn't remember the "catch" words anymore. She advised me to get back into it because "the worst thing that could happen" is that I would learn new words.

That exchange gave me the idea for this thread.I'm not sure how, or if it will develop, but here goes!

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## rbaker

Harry,

Here is another good site:

http://wordsmith.org/

I started using this site back when it was a bulletin board (1985 ? ? ?)

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## hcjilson

The worse that can happen is we'll learn a bunch of new words every day- Many thanks for the assistance. hj

PS Feel free to add your own words whenever you can. They stay up for a day and then go in the "past words" post.

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## PAkev

Great Concept.........


I had an instructor in college that did something similar.    He often found unpopular words in the index of our textbook and offered extra credit on exams if we were able to define the word.   I learned a lot of new words from this class which had improved my colloquial vocabulary and boosted my GPA.

By the way this is the same instructor that coined a phrase I love:
 "Once you THINK you know EVERYTHING.......You STOP knowing ANYTHING !

Kevin

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## 1968

*Eschatology* was on the mind of the *panjandrum*, a reputed *cormorant*, when his *egregious* *malversation* was revealed as *contretemps* in front of those attending the *tattoo* in his honor this afternoon.

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## hcjilson

I've purposely left off the definitions so you could look them up. Use any dictionary you can find online to get the definitions. You will definitely be surprised at some of them.

panjandrum-  tattoo-  cormorant- eschatology-egregious-contretemps- malversation-exhort- genuflect-  solecism-extemporaneous- forgo- aborning- dulcet- hoi polloi-scurrilous- recherche-permeate-germane-disconsolate-Ratiocination-Ineluctable-exegesis-cornucopia

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## harry a saake

MR. JILSON, do you perhaps have a particular or  perculiar propensity for this plethora of words, or might it be a proclivity?

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## Shutterbug

This thread reminds me of a friend of mine who told me he was learning a new word every day and practicing it on his wife.

He got bogged down with the word "sensuous".  He thought and thought about how he could use it in a sentence without sounding unmanly.  His opportunity finally came when his wife excused herself from TV viewing to get a drink.  He said "Hey honey, sensuous up, how about bringing me a beer?"


 :Rolleyes:

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## 1968

*Eschatology* was on the mind of the *panjandrum*, a reputed *cormorant*, when his *egregious* *malversation* was revealed as *contretemps* in front of those attending the *tattoo* in his honor this afternoon. *Disconsolate* over the loss of his integrity, he elected to *forgo* his *recherché* posturing to *genuflect* before the *scurrilous* *hoi polloi* and proclaim, Im sorry that I done it. Although showing regret seemed *germane*, he immediately recognized that the *extemporaneously exhorted solecism* *permeating* the air crushed *aborning* what might have otherwise been a *dulcet* apology.

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## chip anderson

If we are gonna keep this up, someone is going to have arrange for a sound link so we can learn pronounciation.

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## hcjilson

> If we are gonna keep this up, someone is going to have arrange for a sound link so we can learn pronounciation.


Hey Chip!
Give me a call sometime and I'll do the best I can.....but I warn you now, it won't be with a Southern accent!  :bbg: 

harry

PS to all, from time to time I am going to remove posts from this thread just to keep it clean and readable. If you find your post is missing, thats the reason.
ksquared has volunteered to help while I'm away...and after if she is still willing. That goes for anyone who wants to add words.The help is most appreciated.
hj

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## hcjilson

Word of the Day for Saturday December 25, 2004

   benison \BEN-uh-suhn; -zuhn\, noun:
   Blessing; benediction.

     In  the  beginning,  Gibran's  small  estate was worth some
     $50,000,  benison  enough  for  a  village  of ten thousand
     souls.
     --Stefan Kanfer, "But is it not strange that elephants will
     yield  --  and  that  The Prophet is still popular?" [1]New
     York Times, June 25, 1972

     Yet  to be with him was a benison, a curiously exhilarating
     and  anarchic  experience, as the lightning celerity of his
     thought processes took you on a kind of helter-skelter ride
     of  surreal  non-sequiturs,  sudden accesses of emotion and
     ribald  asides, made all the more bizarre for being uttered
     in  those  honeyed  tones  by  the  impeccably elegant gent
     before you.
     --Simon  Callow, "A life full of frolics," [2]The Guardian,
     May 19, 2001
     _________________________________________________________

   Benison comes from Old French beneison, from Latin benedictio,
   from  benedicere,  "to bless," from bene, "well" + dicere, "to
   say."

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## ksquared

*Equanimity* (E-kwuh-nim'-uh-tE or e-kwuh-nim'-uh-tE) n.: Composure, calmness, sangfroid

*Equanimity* comes from a Latin word meaning _even-tempered_. The _equ root_, meaning _equal_ or _even_, is also found in words like _equation_ and _equality_.

*Equanimity* is the characteristic of being even-tempered, of possessing mental and emotional balance. Someone with equanimity is not easily upset or excited.

"Even the children's fighting could not disturb Petes *equanimity*. He simply inquired what the matter was.

The pressures of her job caused Karen to lose her usual *equanimity*.

The teacher didnt possess enough *equanimity* to face the rowdy students day after day without losing her temper.

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## ksquared

*Evince* (e-vins) v.: to exhibit, manifest, reveal

To *evince* is to show or demonstrate clearly by some outward sign. The word is applied to emotions, interest, and the like, not to physical characteristics.

He *evinced* no desire to go shopping with us.

*Evincing* his reluctance with a frown, the manager told Bill to come to his office.

Mom said she would have been more lenient if we had *evinced* any regret regarding our behavior over the holidays.

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## 1968

*Eschatology* was on the mind of the *panjandrum*, a reputed *cormorant*, when his *egregious* *malversation* was revealed as *contretemps* in front of those attending the *tattoo* in his honor this afternoon. *Disconsolate* over the loss of his integrity, he elected to *forgo* his *recherché* posturing to *genuflect* before the *scurrilous* *hoi polloi* and proclaim, Im sorry that I done it. Although showing regret seemed *germane*, he immediately recognized that the *extemporaneously exhorted solecism* *permeating* the air crushed *aborning* what might have otherwise been a *dulcet* apology. Despite the *ratiocination* that his ledger would be subject to an *ineluctable* *cornucopia* of *exegesis*, the official *evinced* *equanimity* as though receiving a *benison*.

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## Spexvet

> *Eschatology* was on the mind of the *panjandrum*, a reputed *cormorant*, when his *egregious* *malversation* was revealed as *contretemps* in front of those attending the *tattoo* in his honor this afternoon. *Disconsolate* over the loss of his integrity, he elected to *forgo* his *recherché* posturing to *genuflect* before the *scurrilous* *hoi polloi* and proclaim, Im sorry that I done it. Although showing regret seemed *germane*, he immediately recognized that the *extemporaneously exhorted solecism* *permeating* the air crushed *aborning* what might have otherwise been a *dulcet* apology. Despite the *ratiocination* that his ledger would be subject to an *ineluctable* *cornucopia* of *exegesis*, the official *evinced* *equanimity* as though receiving a *benison*.


That's easy for you to say!:bbg:

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## ksquared

Piper down!! vociferated the drum major, we have a Piper down!!.  Whoops, sorry I was visualizing.  What I really meant to say is "1968, you have a way with words".  Glad to see these are finding a good home.

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## ksquared

ALACRITY (uh-lak'-ruh-tE) adj.: eagerness, readiness, willingness

Alacrity is promtness, eagerness, lively readiness.  THe word is used of a person who is eager or quite willing to do something, and who will respond quickly and cherrfully when asked.

"When Darris asked her to the party, she accepted with alacrity."
"The alacrity with which Karen pursued her studies, surprised her husband: he hadn't thought she find the subject matter that interesting."
"The fireman responded with alacrity when the boy requested a demonstration of the fire trucks siren system."

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## ksquared

*MALEDICTION* (mal-uh-dik'-shuhn) n.: a curse, slander

THe _dic_ part of *malediction* comes from a Latin word meaning _speak_, it is also in words like _diction, dictation, predict_, and _contradict_.  The _mal_ part of the word means _bad_.  A *malediction* is bad speech directed at someone, a curse or slander.  It is the oppisite of _benidiction_, which is a _blessing_.

"THe customer uttered a *malediction* under her breath as she left the store without a full refund."
"Despite the *maledicitons* of his opponents the governer was reelected."
"The professor grew accumtomed to the students *maledictions* as he knew they were learning the material regardless."

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## ksquared

*PROTEAN* (prO'-tE-uhn or prO-tE'-uhn) adj.: changable, variable, versatile

In Greek mythology, Proteus was a sea god who could assume differant shapes at will.  *Protean* is an adjective from Proteus.  It is used of both physical objects and abstract qualities than can readily take on differant shapes or apperances.

"The artist loved the sea's *protean* quality, it was never the same color or shape twice."
"Her *protean* dispostion made her difficult to live with: you never knew when she was happy or sad or angry."
"The *protean* actor was capable of transforming himself instantly into any of a hundred differant characters."

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## ksquared

*APPOSITE* (ap'-uh-zit) adj.: fitting, suitable, appropriate

*Apposite* means _fitting, apt, pertinent_. The word is usually applied to something, like a quotation, that is strikingly appropriate for a particular situation.

"I thought the CFO's remarks about belt-tightening were extremely *apposite*, given the recent release of this years' budget figures."
"Although the text was resonably clear, the phtographs chosen to illistrate it were not particularly *apposite*."
"We thought it was an *apposite* decsision to end the New Year with a resounding chorus of "Auld Lang-syne".

As we bid adieu to 2004 and welcome 2005, let's think peace and toast health and happiness.

Words from "Scots Musical Museum," 1796. Music from Thomson's "Select Collection of Scottish Songs," Vol. II, 1799.

"Should auld acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind? Should auld acquaintance be forgot, And auld lang-syne? (translation: times gone by)?For auld lang-syne, my jo (term of affection like 'dear'), For auld lang-syne.We'll tak' a cup1 o' kindness yet, For auld lang-syne."

http://159.54.226.83/apps/pbcs.dll/a...0334/1066/NEWS

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## ksquared

*SEDULOUS* (sej'-U-luhs) adj.: diligent, industrious

*Sedulous* means _industrious_, and implies that a person is working hard and persitently at accomplishing something.

"She is not a genius, but her *sedulous* efforts earn her very good grades and a deeper understanding of the subject matter."
"*Sedulous* attention to detail marked Charles as a lab tech who took his job seriously."
"The CMA was *sedulous* in carrying out her duties; rarely was there a need for a remake in any of her designs."

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## ksquared

OBVIATE (ob'-vE-At) V.: to prevent, make unnecessary

Obviate comes form the same Latin root as obvious. Despite the similier derivations, however, obviate has a very different meaning form obvious. 

To obviate something is to anticipate it and make it unnecessary, for example by removing the conditions under which it may occur.

"Good nutrition now will obviate the need for exspensive medical treatments later on."
"Installing virus protection obviates the risk of theft and down time in your computer network."
"Making sure your customers understand the pros and cons of using a short corridor frame may obviate customer dissatisfaction once the job is complete."

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## 1968

*Eschatology* was on the mind of the *panjandrum*, a reputed *cormorant*, when his *egregious* *malversation* was revealed as *contretemps* in front of those attending the *tattoo* in his honor this afternoon. *Disconsolate* over the loss of his integrity, he elected to *forgo* his *recherché* posturing to *genuflect* before the *scurrilous* *hoi polloi* and proclaim, Im sorry that I done it. Although showing regret seemed *germane*, he immediately recognized that the *extemporaneously exhorted solecism* *permeating* the air crushed *aborning* what might have otherwise been a *dulcet* apology. Despite the *ratiocination* that his ledger would be subject to an *ineluctable* *cornucopia* of *exegesis*, the official *evinced* *equanimity* as though receiving a *benison*. Suddenly, a young girl stood forward with *alacrity* to shout an *apposite* *malediction*: You cant fool us, you pompous jerk! Your *protean* demeanor will not *obviate* our *sedulous* efforts to make you pay!

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## ksquared

*RISIBLE* (riz-uh-bul) adj.: funny, laughable, ludicrous

*Risible* comes from the Latin word meaning to _laugh_, also the source of _derision_ and _ridiculous_. *Risible* means able to excite laughter, _laughable_. Other forms of the word: *RISIBILITY*, n.

"The *risibility* of the situation soon became quite clear when the cookie began to crumble.

The thought of all those people trying to fit into the compact car was quite *risible*."

His *risible* and very creative use of words kept the opti-boarders chuckling to themselves for the rest of the day.

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## ksquared

*SUCCOR* (suhk-er) n.: aid, assistance, relief

Succor means help, especially help given to someone in distress.


The Opti-board is always there to give succor to those having trouble with their progressive lens.

In time of trouble, some find succor in their failth.

*Succor* is also the person or thing that gives help.

Fuel assistance is a great succor to families in need.

Those who have taken the time to aquire an in depth understanding are a succor to patients with a challenging RX. 

*Succor* is also used as a verb.

All attempts to succor the poor customer proved fruitless.

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## ksquared

*DILATORY* (dil-uh-tOr-E) adj.: slow tardy, causing delay

Dilatory is applied to people and their actions. A dilatory person delays, out of laziness, indifference, or simply out of a desire to delay.

Tim was so dilatory in returning books that finally the library took away his card.

Realizing the company was short of cash, the accountant was dilatory about paying the bills.

Dilatory actions are characterized by delay or are intended to delay.

The senators dilatory tactics prevented the bill from being considered before Congress adjourned.

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## ksquared

*BADINAGE* (bad-uh-nah zh or bad-uh-nij) n.: banter, light repartee

Badinage is lighthearted, playful banter, playful kidding.

Their badinage was very entertaining: witty puns and playful insults bounced back and forth like tennis balls.

Even if they dont look alike, the badinage in their conversation marked them as brother and sister: only siblings are so affectionately disrespectful.

On occasion the badinage went beyond what is acceptable in a public forum.

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## ksquared

*OSTENSIBLE* (o-sten-suh-bul) adj.: pretended, seeming, apparent

Ostensible comes from a Latin word meaning _to show_; it is related to the word ostentation, which is boastful showiness. Ostensible originally meant, open to view, able to be seen, but in modern use it suggests that what is apparent on the surface is not true underneath, that there is a hidden purpose or character to something.

She was ostensibly a patient, but in fact she was doing a survey on the over-all quality of the opticians fitting skills in her area. 

The ostensible purpose of his visit was to welcome them to neighborhood, but he really wanted to see how rich they were.

His ostensible business was running a golf pro shop, but it was discovered he was really an optician looking for customers.

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## ksquared

NASCENT (nas-uhnt or nAs-uhnt) adj.: beginning to exist, incipient

Nascent comes from a Latin word meaning _to be born_, and is related to such words as _natal_ and _native_. Something that is nascent is just beginning to be born, is coming into existence.

The nascent solar energy industry was greatly aided by the oil shortage.

Karens parents tried to encourage her nascent interest in classical music.

Other forms of the word: NASCENCE, n. and NASCENCY n.

Her interest in becoming an optician was beyond nascency, it was becoming a reality.

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## ksquared

*PROFLIGATE* (pro-fli-git) adj.: extravagant, wasteful, dissolute, immoral, and abandoned

Someone who is *profligate* is shamelessly immoral, totally given over to dissipation.

The *profligate* opticians wasted their lives gambling and drinking when not at work.

Very often the word refers only to a persons spending and wastefulness and means recklessly extravagant.

The heiress was so *profligate* that she soon spent all her inheritance and had to go back to work.

Profligate is also a noun, meaning an extravagant or immoral person.

The young *profligate* will never recoup her losses unless she mends her ways.

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## ksquared

*OTIOSE* (OshE-Os or O-tE-Os) adj.: Idle, indolent; ineffective, futile, useless

*Otiose* has two related meanings. The first is _idle_, _at leisure_.

He condemned those otiose young men who had never done a good days work in their lives.

From this *otiose* has come to mean lacking in effectiveness _futile_ or _functionless_.

The moderator felt that words were *otiose* at a moment of such high drama, so he said nothing.

The new CEO said the whole department was *otiose* and should be terminated.

Other forms of the word: *OSTIOSITY*, n.

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## chip anderson

Harry and K'squared:


I love you both for this post but don't you think we could put opthalmic words here instead?  I have found that appearently no major manufacturer knows what a chassis is (try ordering one by that name and see what happens).\

Words like squint, strabissmus, horebellum, and stuff like that could possibly be more usefull to our field.

Chip

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## ksquared

> love you both for this post but don't you think we could put opthalmic words here instead? I have found that appearently no major manufacturer knows what a chassis is (try ordering one by that name and see what happens).\
> 
> Words like squint, strabissmus, horebellum, and stuff like that could possibly be more usefull to our field.
> 
> Chip


HI Chip, That's a great idea! I need to learn some of those optical words myself and what better way than to type them out and use them. Plus I hope 1968 will continue with his most creative prose. Thank-you very much for the suggestion.
K2
:cheers:

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## ksquared

*DESCRY* (des-krI) v.: to notice, discern, espy

To *descry* means _to catch sight of_. The word implies keen vision that allows one to see something despite great distance or hindrance.

The townspeople could just barely *descry* the masts of the ships on the horizon.

The hiker decried the climbers on the adjacent peak in spite of the cloud cover.

*Descry* can also be used in a figurative sense of anything that is discovered by keen mental observation.

She thought she *decried* a pattern in what was causing the server to crash.


PS: Chip, I'll start mixing in those "optical" words next week. I have a nice list started but will need to do a bit more work on the example sentences. Also I'm out of the office untill Wednesday January 19th with no laptop so if anyone else wants to post words while I gone - feel free. I'll be happy to resume on my return. Cheers.

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## ksquared

AVER (uh-ver) v.: to assert, affirm, declare

The _ver_ part of *aver* comes from a Latin word meaning _true_; it is also found in such words as _verify_ and _verdict_. To *aver* something is to declare confidently that it is true.

Several witnesses heard him *aver* that he would get even if it was the last thing he did.

The coach *averred* that his team would win the championship easily.

Deny is the exact opposite. Many People are familiar with the word *aver* but perhaps havent seen it often enough to remember whether to *aver* something is to say it is true or say it is false. 

She *averred* that this was the case with many a word (or not depending on her mood).

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## hcjilson

Why not take a shot at it while ksquared and I are away......She'll be gone for a week and I won't be back till next friday (aweek). If you have the time, thanks in advance! The weather here in San Diego is a heck of a lot better than Cape Cod this time of year! hj

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## hcjilson

1. To satisfy; to quench; to extinguish; as, to slake thirst.
2. To cause to lessen; to make less active or intense; to
moderate; as, slaking his anger.
3. To cause (as lime) to heat and crumble by treatment with
water.

intransitive verb:
To become slaked; to crumble or disintegrate, as lime.

My companions never drink pure water and the... beer
serves as much to slake their thirst as to fill their
stomachs and lubricate conversation.
--Philippe Descola, [1]The Spears of Twilight

She had the money he gave her (never enough to slake her
anxieties).
--Nuala O'Faolain, [2]Are You Somebody
_________________________________________________________

Slake comes from Middle English slaken, "to become or render
slack," hence "to abate," from Old English slacian, from slæc,
"slack."

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## hcjilson

Word of the Day for Saturday January 15, 2005

profuse \pruh-FYOOS; proh-\, adjective:
1. Pouring forth with fullness or exuberance; giving or given
liberally and abundantly; extravagant.
2. Exhibiting great abundance; plentiful; copious; bountiful.

Lo and behold, when the time came to pay the check, it
turned out that my pants had been torn by a nail
strategically located under the table. Profuse apologies
and "please don't pay for this dinner" followed.
--George Lang, [1]Nobody Knows the Truffles I've Seen

[T]hickets of brambles and vines grew in profuse, obscuring
tangles between our house and the road.
--Reeve Lindbergh, [2]Under a Wing
_________________________________________________________

Profuse comes from Latin profusus, past participle of
profundere, "to pour forth," from pro-, "forth" + fundere, "to
pour."

Synonyms: exuberant, lavish, liberal, lush.

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## hcjilson

purblin


pur·blind ** *P***Pronunciation Key**(pûrblnd)
adj.
Having poor vision; nearly or partly blind.

Slow in understanding or discernment; dull: a purblind oligarchy that flatly refused to see that history was condemning it to the dustbin (Jasper Griffin).

Obsolete. Completely blind.



[Middle English pur blind, totally blind, nearsighted *: pur, pure; see pure + blind, blind; see blind.

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## hcjilson

Word of the Day for Tuesday January 18, 2005

voluble \VOL-yuh-buhl\, adjective:
1. Characterized by a ready flow of speech.
2. Easily rolling or turning; rotating.
3. (Botany) Having the power or habit of turning or twining.

Rostow was voluble, exuberant and full of good and
sometimes foolish ideas.
--Kai Bird, [1]The Color of Truth

Two glasses of wine made him voluble and three made him
bellicose, sentimental and sometimes slurred.
--"How Nixon turned into Tricky Dicky," [2]Daily Telegraph,
March 9, 1999

He listened patiently and with quiet amusement to my
enthusiasm. Indeed, this turned out to be our pattern: I,
more ignorant but more voluble, would babble on, while he
would offer an occasional objection or refinement.
--Phillip Lopate, [3]Totally, Tenderly, Tragically

Her tongue, so voluble and kind,
It always runs before her mind.
--Matthew Prior, "Truth and Falsehood"
_________________________________________________________

Voluble derives from Latin volubilis, "revolving, rolling,
fluent," from volvere, "to roll."

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## ksquared

*REFRACTION* (re-frac-tion) n.: the change in direction of a wave as it passes from one medium and enters another. 

How it works: Waves, such as sound and light waves, travel at different speeds in different media. When a wave enters a new medium at an angle of less than 90°, the change in speed occurs sooner on one side of the wave than on the other, causing the wave to bend, or refract.

A little history: In addition to his contributions to celestial mechanics, the German astronomer Johannes Kepler also is credited with establishing modern optics. Among Kepler's many accomplishments in that arena are these highlights: Kepler set forth the principles of the telescope, and he explained the process of vision by refraction within the eye. 

Follow the leader: Speaking generally, _refraction_ refers to the deflection from a straight path that is undergone by a light ray (or an energy wave) as it passes obliquely from one medium (such as air) into another (such as glass) in which its velocity is different.

Reflecting on the word _refraction_ leds us to _refringere,_ meaning "to break off"; when we break apart that Latinism, we get _re-_ plus _frangere,_ meaning "to break." Although _frangere_ plays a role in plenty of words besides _refract_, the meaning of those words isn't always easy to discern. For example, _refrangible_ means "capable of being refracted," while _frangible_ means "capable of being broken."

But the favorite _frangere_ terms of all are all obsolete: there's _confraction_ ("a breaking into pieces"),_ naufrage_ (an old term for "shipwreck," from the idea of a _navis,_ a ship, being broken), and finally, _fedifragous_ (meaning "faithless; perfidious," from the idea of a broken compact or federation).

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## ksquared

*Topic: Hyperpronunciation*
**
Let's take a wee break to take a look (and to see if everyone is paying attention) at the phenomenon in which English speakers give foreign names pronunciations so foreign they draw attention to themselves. Consider such examples as \pah-REE\, instead of \PAR-is\, and \MEH-hee-ko\, instead of the more familiar \MEK-sih-ko\. 

There are a number of ways to understand this linguistic approach, and those ways depend on one's perspective and attitude. Some folks consider \MEH-hee-ko\ and \pah-REE\ thoughtful acknowledgements of other cultures and languages. They believe making an effort to speak as locals do is a worthy goal. 

Other folks disapprove of such variants, pronouncing them affected at best, and at worst, logically inconsistentor perhaps it's the other way around. After all, they say, if we're going to put the French into \pah-REE\, why not put it into Brussels too, and pronounce that city-name \bruek-SEL\? Or perhaps we should do as the Flemish do, and say \BRUE-sel\. Where does one draw the line? Far better, say these folks, for English speakers to stick with Anglicized pronunciations than to give in to the foreign allure of the hyperpronunciation. 

We'll let H.W. Fowler have the last word on this one. That respected commentator wrote, "While we are entitled to display a certain fastidious precision in our saying of words that only the educated use, we deserve not praise but censure if we decline to accept the popular pronunciation of popular words."

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## ksquared

*SATURNINE* (SAT-er-nyne) adj.:
1.born under or influenced astrologically by the planet Saturn
2.cold and steady in mood: slow to act or change 
3.of a gloomy or surly disposition
4.having a sardonic aspect 

He only knew his mother from photos, which showed her to be a *saturnine* woman with a permanent frown.

Did you know?
Eeyore is saturnine. The gloomy, cynical character of A. A. Milne's gray donkey typifies the personality type the ancient Romans ascribed to individuals born when the planet Saturn was rising in the heavens. Both the name of the planet and today's featured adjective derive from the name of the Roman god of agriculture, who was often depicted as a bent old man with a stern, sluggish, and sullen nature. 

The Latin name for Saturn was "Saturnus," which is assumed to have yielded the word "Saturninus" (meaning "of Saturn") in Medieval Latin; that form was adapted to create English "saturnine" in the 15th century.

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## ksquared

*CIRCUMLOCUTION* (sir-kum-lo-KYOO-shun) n.: The use of many words to express an idea that might be expressed by few; indirect or roundabout language; a periphrase. 

Dickens gave us the classic picture of official heartlessness: the government *Circumlocution* Office, burial ground of hope in "Little Dorrit." 
--"'Balance of Hardships'," New York Times, September 28, 1999

In a delightful *circumlocution*, the Fed chairman said that "investors are probably revisiting expectations of domestic earnings growth". 
--"US exuberance is proven 'irrational'," Irish Times, October 31, 1997

Courtesies and *circumlocutions* are out of place, where the morals, health, lives of thousands are at stake. 
--Charles Kingsley, Letters

Prefer the single word to the *circumlocution*. 
--H.W. Fowler, The King's English

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## ksquared

*ACUITY* (a-cu-I-tee) n.: A quick and penetrating intelligence or sharpness of vision; the visual ability to resolve fine detail (usually measured by a Snellen chart).

A well developed vocabulary allowed some of the opti-boarders to argue with great acuteness while others had a more difficult time expressing themselves. 

*Visual acuity* is the spatial resolving capaicty of the eye to see fine detail usually expressed as the reciprocal of the minimum angular separation in minutes of two lines just resolvable as separate and that forms in the average human eye an angle of one minute. 

The *visual acuity* test measures the distance you stand from the eye chart (usually 20 feet) and the smallest line you are able to read at that distance.

*Visual acuity* is expressed as a fraction. The top number refers to the distance you stand from the chart. This is usually 20 feet. The bottom number indicates the distance at which a person with normal eyesight could read the line with the smallest letters that you could correctly read. 20/20 is considered normal. 20/40 indicates that the line you correctly read at 20 feet could be read by a person with normal vision at 40 feet.

Example: 20/-1250

What can be seen by the myopic eye at 20 feet can be seen by the normal eye at 1250.

(since so few are actually reading these I might as well have some fun and as you can see I'm easily intertained. ;) )

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## ksquared

*Snellen's Chart :* The most commonly used eye chart for measuring how well you see at various distances. The chart and the letters are named for a 19th-century Dutch ophthalmologist Hermann Snellen (1834-1908) who came up with them as a test of visual acuity, a measure of how well a person sees. 

Snellen's chart is imprinted with block letters that line-by-line decrease in size, corresponding to the distance at which that line of letters is normally visible. Each block letter is quite scientific in design (so that at the appropriate distance the letter subtends a visual angle of 5 degrees and each component part subtends an angle of 1 minute). 

While the Snellen chart is perfectly adequate for refraction purposes, there are some that beleive a number of flaws exist in its design which could affect it's accuracy as a test of visual performance.

One of the most obvious perceived problem is that there are a different number of letters on each row. This could mean that patients with poor acuity are required to read fewer letters than those with good acuity. The letters on the lower lines are also more crowded than those towards the top of the chart. This crowding could increase the difficulty of the task, particularly for children and some amblyopes. The small number of larger letters could also limit the usefulness of the chart when assessing low vision patients

Another perceived problem could be that the spacing between each letter and each row of letters bears no systematic relationship to the width / height of the letters. Thus, the task required of the patient may change as they read down the chart. 

Recording the results of a Snellen test can also be seen as problematic. In general, Snellen acuity is taken as the lowest row of letters that can be read. However in practice, patients seldom read all of one row and no letters on the row below and the endpoint may even spread over three lines. In these cases the clinician has to try and convey the result in the format 6/6-3 + . As there are no agreed standards for the exact notation in these situations, there exists the possibility for confusion!

WHile there have been many attempts to improve on the design of the Snellen chart, there is one chart design (Bailey-Lovie or LogMAR ) which appear to have overcome the shortcomings of the Snellen chart listed above. I'll take a closer look at this one tomorrow. ;)

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## ksquared

*LogMAR Chart* - Originally proposed in 1976, the Bailey-Lovie (or LogMAR) chart might be an improvement over the Snellen chart. 

Unlike the Snellen chart, each line contains the same number of letters  five. Each row is simply a scaled down version of the row above since the spacing between each letter and each row is related to the width and height of the letters respectively. This task of reading each line should therefore remain the same as the patient reads down the chart. 

The letter size progression increases by a constant ratio of 1.26 (0.1 log unit steps). Any line is always 1.26 times greater than the line below. This multiplier is the root of 10 or 0.1 log unit. 

The patients feedback is recorded in terms of a logMAR score (MAR or minimum angle of resolution using log10 form). Using this notation, 20/20 is equivalent to a logMAR of zero (log101=0), while smaller letters have a negative logMAR notation; the larger letters have a positive.

As letter size changes in units of 0.1 logMAR units per row, each letter can be assigned a score of 0.02 (there being five letters on each line). For example, if all five letters on the 20/20 line are read, the LogMAR score is zero. If one letter is missed on the zero line (all other letters being read on the lines above), the logMAR score is taken as +0.02, two letters +0.04 etc. 

In other words, 0.02 is added for each letter incorrectly read. If a patient reads the 0.4 line in its entirety they will have a score of 0.4. If they read the 0.4 line plus three letters of the 0.3 line, they will have a score of 0.34 (0.4  (0.02 x 3) = 0.34). The final logMAR score takes into account every letter that has been correctly read.

Snellen
Notation ------------*LogMAR Chart------------* logMAR
20/100--------- *F N P R Z* ------------ 0.4
20/80-------------- *E Z H P V* ---------------- 0.3
20/60----------------- *D P N F R --------------------* 0.2
20/40------------------- *R D F U V ---------------------* 0.1
20/20-------------------- *U R Z V H -----------------------* 0.0
20/16---------------------- *H N V R D ------------------------* -0.1

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## ksquared

*EGREGIOUS*(ih-GREE-juss) adj.:conspicuous; especially: conspicuously bad 

The armchair commentators at the office spent their coffee break grousing about the egregious errors of judgment they felt had been made by the coach of the losing team.

"Egregious" derives from the Latin word "egregius," meaning "distinguished" or "eminent." In its earliest English uses, "egregious" was a compliment to someone who had a remarkably good quality that placed him or her eminently above others. That's how English philosopher and theorist Thomas Hobbes used it in flattering a colleague when he remarked, "I am not so egregious a mathematician as you are." Since Hobbes' day, however, the meaning of the word has become noticeably less complimentary, possibly as a result of ironic use of its original sense.

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## hcjilson

ksquared,

Interesting piece on the LogMAR chart. How did you come across it?

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## ksquared

> ksquared,Interesting piece on the LogMAR chart. How did you come across it?


 Thank-you. Visual Acuity led me to do some reading on the Snellen chart which led me to the logMar chart. I hadnt encountered the logMar chart before so thought it would be nice to do a comparison between the 2. 

I actually liked logMar chart scoring system better than the Snellen as it seemed more exacting. There are even difference between the logMar charts themselves. Not all of them even use the same letters. I found one that rated each letter and than arranged them so each line had the same degree of difficulty.

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## ksquared

*TMESIS* (TMEE-sis) n.: in grammar and rhetoric, is a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is inserted into another word, often for humorous effect. The insertion may occur between the parts of a compound word, of an infinitive (split infinitive)

_Tmesis_ comes from the Greek word for an "act of cutting". The Greek verb that stands behind it is *temno*, meaning to "cut" or "prune" or "divide."

Examples:

"Forgive the quaint tmesis of his opening line:--How bright the chit and chat!"

"If on the first, how heinous e'er it be,
To win thy after-love I pardon thee." 
--Shakespeare's tmesis of "however" in Richard II) 

"His income-tax return, he remarked, was the 'most rigged-up marole' he'd ever seen." --Frederic Packard

"In two words, im possible." --Samuel Goldwyn

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## ksquared

*PROCLIVITY* (proh-KLIV-uh-tee) n.:an inclination or predisposition toward something; especially, a strong inherent inclination toward something objectionable

Our proclivity to remember things selectively often means that memory simply cannot be relied on.

Have you always had this leaning toward wanting to know about words and their etymologies? Maybe you even have a propensity to use the featured word several times in the course of the day -- due, of course, not to a proclivity for pretentiousness, but because you simply have a penchant for using a rich vocabulary. And perhaps you have a predilection for using lots of synonyms, such as "proclivity" (from "clivus," the Latin word for "slope"), referring to a tendency toward something bad, "propensity," suggesting an often uncontrollable inclination, "penchant," meaning an irresistible attraction, and "predilection," which describes a strong liking derived from one's temperament.


(not me....;) )

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## ksquared

*PER CONTRA* (per-KAHN-truh) adv.:on the contrary, by way of contrast, as an offset

The male peafowl is distinguished by a large fan-shaped tail that shimmers with brilliant iridescent color; per contra,the female is drab and pallid.

Luca Pacioli knew a thing or two about keeping the records straight. He was a Franciscan friar and mathematician who lived during the Italian Renaissance (he was, in fact, a friend of Leonardo da Vinci), and he is called the "father of accounting" because he was the first to publish a detailed description of bookkeeping practices that are still used today. Among his other counsel, Pacioli advised merchants to keep an accurate ledger with debits entered on the left side and credits on the right. The word "per contra" calls to mind this time-honored practice of balancing items on one side of a ledger against those on the other. The term comes from Italian, and it translates literally as "by the opposite side (of the ledger)."

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## ksquared

*ENCROACH* (in-KROACH) v.: to enter by gradual steps or by stealth into the possessions or rights of another, to advance beyond the usual or proper limits

The police offered a compromise that kept the sidewalk clear without encroaching on the protesters' rights.

The history behind "encroach" is likely to hook you in. First appearing in English in the 16th century, the word derives from the Middle English "encrochen," which means "to get or seize" and whose Anglo-French predecessor "encrocher" was formed by combining the prefix "en-" ("in") with the noun "croche" ("hook"). "Croche" also gave us our word "crochet," in reference to the hooked needle used in that craft. "Encroach" carries the meaning of "intrude" both in terms of property (as in "encroaching on one's land") or privilege (as demonstrated in our example sentence). The word can also hop over legal barriers to describe a general advancement beyond desirable or normal limits (such as a hurricane that encroaches on the mainland).

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## ksquared

*ABERRATION* (ab-u-rA-shun) n.: The failure of light, after reflection or refraction, to find a common focus. An aberration is a vision defect that occurs when light rays are improperly bent (refracted) in the eye. An aberration can occur because of a flaw in the structure of the eye, mainly the cornea or the natural lens itself. Some aberrations can be introduced or enhanced by the spectacle lens themselves, depending on the material used and the accuracy of the subjective refraction. 

There are 2 main categories of aberrations.

Lower Order Aberrations
These are the familiar vision problems that effect our ability to focus near and far. They include myopia (nearsightedness), hyperopia (farsightedness) and astigmatism (irregular cornea).

Higher Order Aberrations
These include a range of vision problems that effect the quality of our vision. The high order aberrations include spherical and chromatic aberration, coma, and secondary astigmatism. Some become more apparent in low light situations and are often associated with night vision problems, glare and halos.

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## ksquared

*SINECURE* (SYE-nih-kyoor) n.:an office or position that requires little or no work and that usually provides an income.

The organization recently restructured its workforce, eliminating several positions that had become mere sinecures.

*Sinecure* comes from the Medieval Latin phrase "sine cura," which literally means "without cure." Not surprisingly, the earliest known use of "sinecure" referred to an ecclesiastical benefice without cure of souls -- that is, a clerical office in which the job-holder did not have to tend to the spiritual care and instruction of church members. Such sinecures were virtually done away with by the end of the 19th century, but by then the word had acquired a broader sense referring to any paid position with few or no responsibilities.

(hey, that's my job you're talking about here  :Rolleyes:  )

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## ksquared

*JINGOISM* (JING-goh-iz-um) n.:extreme chauvinism or nationalism marked especially by a belligerent foreign policy

Albert Einstein found German jingoism in the 1930s so 
objectionable that he left his homeland never to return.

*Jingoism* originated during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878, when many British citizens were hostile toward Russia and felt Britain should intervene in the conflict. Supporters of the cause expressed their sentiments in a music-hall ditty with this refrain:

We don't want to fight, yet by jingo if we do, 

We've got the ships, we've got the men, 

We've got the money, too!

Someone holding the attitude implied in the song became known as a "jingo" or "jingoist," and the attitude itself was dubbed "jingoism." The "jingo" in the tune is probably a euphemism for "Jesus."

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## ksquared

*EMPIRICAL (**em·pir·i·cal*) adj.: relying on experience or observation alone often without due regard for system and theory. Empirical is most often used as a modifier of "knowledge". 

*Empirical* is knowledge obtained by experience. We know things in a number of different ways. Some things we know through discoveries we make in the physical world when we use our senses to test our enviromental *empirically*. After gatheirng information, we draw conclusions we believe are justified by the evidance. Philosophers sometimes call this *a posteriori* knowledge.The vast bulk of the *empirical* knowledge that ordinary people possess is gained via a mixture of direct experience and the testimony of others about what they have experienced . 

For example, "all things fall down" would be an *empirical* proposition about gravity that many of us believe we know; therefore we would regard it as an example of *empirical* knowledge. It is "*empirical* because we have generally observed that things fall down, so there is no reason to believe this will change. This example also shows the difficulty of formulating knowledge claims. Outside of the Earths gravitational field, for example, things do not "fall down", as there is no "down".

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## ksquared

*GAMUT* (GAM-ut)n.:the whole series of recognized musical notes or an entire range or series.

Jenny's musical tastes run the gamut from Bach to Janis Joplin to Usher.

To get the lowdown on "gamut," we have to dive to the bottom of a musical scale developed by 11th-century musician and monk Guido of Arezzo. Guido called the first line of his bass staff "gamma" and the first note in his scale "ut," which meant that "gamma ut" was the term for a note written on the first staff line. In time, "gamma ut" underwent a shortening to "gamut" but climbed the scale of meaning. It expanded to cover all the notes of Guido's scale, then all the notes in the range of an instrument, and, eventually, an entire range of any sort.

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## ksquared

*Bowl* as in _Super Bowl_ derives from the eating vessel _bowl_. Its first sports meaning was "football stadium," though such a stadium is no longer necessarily bowl-shaped. The Yale Bowl is an example of a football stadium so named. As a sporting event, it first referred to the Rose Bowl (1923) and, later, the Super Bowl. 

*Coach* first referred to a cart or carriage and came to mean "a private tutor" in British universities around 1848. The sense of "an athletic trainer" (especially for a boat race) was first recorded in 1885. 

The origin of *football* goes way back as an open-air game between two teams using an inflated ball. Mainly the ball was kicked, thereby _football_. A football game was played in China as early as 206 BC, and by 500 AD round footballs stuffed with hair were in use. In ancient Greece, a game with elements of football  _episkuros_ or _harpaston_  was played. It migrated to Rome as _harpastum_ by the 2nd century BC. Football has been associated with violence ever since 13th century England. The original form of the game, most often played on Shrove Tuesdays and other Holy Days, involved battles between neighboring villages and towns. 

A *quarterback* is so named because originally the player was positioned between the forwards (now the offensive line) and the halfbacks. The term was first recorded in print in 1895 according to the OED. 

*Referee* originally referred to a person appointed by the British Parliament to examine patent applications (1621) and was formed from English _refer_ and _-ee_. The sense of "an arbitrator or person to whom a dispute is referred" was first recorded in 1690; by 1840 the word acquired the further sense of "the judge of play in games and sports." 

(Go PATS!!! :cheers: )

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## ksquared

*DEFEAT (*dee-feet) N.: A coming to naught; frustration.

The act of making null and void.

To win victory over, to beat. 

To prevent the success of; thwart.

An unsuccessful ending.

The feeling that accompanies an experience of being thwarted in attaining your goals.

The feeling of dissatisfaction that results when your exspectatns are not realized.

An act of hindering someone's plans or efforts.
A feeling of annoyance at being hindered. 

Or to put it in more simplier terms : Failure to win. 

*VICTORY* (vi-toor-eeee) n.:

A successful ending of a struggle or contest.

A win over something or somebody. 
Defeat of an enemy or opponent. 

Success in a struggle against difficulties or an obstacle. 

The state of having triumphed. 

If both sides in the struggle cannot share in the victory, there is no victory. The outcome must be something that will not injure either side, but will indeed benefit both sides in the long run. (*I dont think so..please keep your propaganda out of my post*)

Any successful struggle against an oppo­nent or obstacle. 

That which we strive for in all competitive events. 

Temporary delusion in opposition to the inevitable.

And finally a rarity; a three syllable word that cheerleaders *CAN* spell. 

Congradulations Patriots

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## ksquared

*CONVERSATION* (kon-ver-sa-shun) n.: an oral exchange of sentiments, observations, opinions, or ideas. 

Today, lets turn things around a bit and look at some observations that might help spark a conversation or two. Well, maybe not, since the word doesn't really have any controversy associated with it but I think it's worth taking a quick look none the less. 

Our "turning things around" language recognizes the Latin origin of _conversation_: that word's ancestors meant "to associate with," literally "to turn around often." Appropriately enough, the meanings of _converse_ (and _conversation_) have themselves taken a turn or two over the years. 

_Converse_ dates back to the days when Middle English was spoken, but the verb's familiar "exchange thoughts and opinions in speech" sense didn't appear until the late 1500s. So what were people originally talking about when they conversed? Way back when, to_ converse_ meant "to have dealings." It also meant "to have sexual relations," and it meant "to have acquaintance or familiarity from long intercourse or study." 

Those senses are either obsolete or archaic, but the verb stayed the course. Late in the 20th century, _converse_ developed its most recent sense familiar to those conversant with modern technology: "to carry on an exchange similar to a conversation, as with a computer."

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## hcjilson

Its proof that there is a lot we don't know about common words we take for granted,and use every day conversationally!

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## ksquared

*DISMAYED* (dis-mayed) adv.: to destroy the courage or resolution of by exciting dread or apprehension, to cause a loss of enthusiasm

*DISAPPOINTED* (dis-ap-point-ed) adj.: to fail to satisfy the hope, desire, or expectation of. 

It would seem these days that _dismayed_ has become synonymous with _disappointed_. Some could argue, "when one is dismayed, one is filled with a sense of personal fear"; to be _dismayed_, is more properly used to describe someone "filled with a sense of personal fear [which makes one] therefore daunted." 

While it is true _dismay_ once meant "to become daunted, disheartened, or terrified," that intransitive sense is now considered obsolete. Having said that, we must admit that _dismay_ shares with _appall_, _horrify_, and _daunt_ the following sense: to "unnerve or deter by arousing fear, apprehension, or aversion." 
Are you now in despair over when to use _dismay_ and when to use one of the other three terms? Don't be. _Horrify_ seems to us the most distant in meaning from _dismay_: _horrify_ stresses a reaction of horror or revulsion, as when one is "_horrified_" by cruelty. _Appall_ implies one is faced with that which perturbs, confounds, or shocks, as when a person is "_appalled_" by another's behavior. _Daunt_ suggests a cowing, disheartening, or frightening in a venture requiring courage, as when a would-be explorer is "_daunted_ by the risks." Finally, there's _dismay_, which implies one is _disconcerted_, and at a loss with how to deal with something.

I was dismayed to hear all the animosity directed towards the consumers. I will be disappointed if this results in any changes.

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## ksquared

*PARAPHERNALIA* (par·a·pher·na·lia) n.: The articles used in a particular activity; equipment. Personal belongings. A married woman's personal property exclusive of her dowry, according to common law. 

Even if you know your Latin and Greek, puzzling out the meaning of words that contain the prefix (or combining form) _para_ isn't always easy. That's because _para_ has so many (and so many similar) senses. 

Para can mean "beside; alongside of.
And it can mean "beyond; outside of.
It can mean "abortive," 
and it can mean "perversion." 
_Para_ can mean "faulty; abnormal." 
And it also can mean "associated in a subsidiary or accessory capacity." 
And that's to say nothing of the _para_ that comes from _parachute_ and 
the _-para_ born of the Latin verb meaning "to bring forth; bear offspring." 

So your challenge today is this: which of these various _para_ meanings is associated with the word _paraphernalia_? _Paraphernalia_, of course, refers to "personal belongings; articles of equipment or accessory items." 

Give up????

If you know the earliest meaning of _paraphernalia_ in English, you can probably pick out the _para_ ancestor: it's the sense meaning "beyond." Originally, _paraphernalia_ named "the separate real or personal property of a married woman that she can dispose of by will (and sometimes according to common law) during her life." _Paraphernalia_ comes ultimately from the Greek word meaning "bride's property beyond her dowry."

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## ksquared

*BRUMMAGEN* (BRUM-ih-jum) adj.:not genuine:spurious; _also_ :cheaply showy:tawdry 

Example sentence:
The sales rep's case was filled with brummagem frames, not a single thing that anyone in their right mind would want to wear. But for those in their left mind.....

Did you know?
"Brummagem" first appeared in the 17th century as an alteration of "Birmingham," the name of a city in England. At that time Birmingham was notorious for the counterfeit coins made there, and the word "brummagem" quickly became associated with things forged or inauthentic. By the 19th century, Birmingham had become a chief manufacturer of cheap trinkets and gilt jewelry, and again the word "brummagem" followed suitit came to describe that which is showy on the outside but essentially of low quality. Perhaps the term was something of an annoyance to the people of Birmingham way back when, but nowadays "brummagem" is usually used without any conscious reference to the British city.

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## ksquared

*DESULTORY (*DEH-sul-tor-ee) _adj.:_ 
*1* *:* marked by lack of definite plan, regularity, or purpose
*2* *:* not connected with the main subject
*3* *:* disappointing in progress, performance, or quality 

*Example sentence:*
"His studies are very desultory and eccentric, but he has amassed a lot of out-of-the-way knowledge which would astonish his professors." (Arthur Conan Doyle, "A Study in Scarlet") 

*Did you know?*
The Latin adjective "desultorius," the parent of "desultory," was used by the ancients to refer to a circus performer (called a "desultor") whose trick was to leap from horse to horse without stopping. It makes sense, therefore, that someone or something "desultory" jumps from one thing to another. ("Desultor" and "desultorius" are derived from the Latin verb "salire," which means "to leap.") A desultory conversation leaps from one topic to another, and doesn't have a distinct point or direction. A desultory student skips from one subject to another without applying serious effort to any one. A desultory comment is a digressive one that jumps away from the topic at hand. And a desultory performance is one resulting from an implied lack of steady, focused effort.

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## ksquared

*WANDERLUST* (WAHN-der-lust) n.:strong longing for or impulse towards wandering.

Less than a year after Karen moved to New England, wanderlust set in again, and she decided to pack up her things and head out to the Nouthwest.

Did you know?
"For my part," writes Robert Louis Stevenson in "Travels with a Donkey", "I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move." Sounds like a case of wanderlust if we ever heard one. Those with "wanderlust" don't necessarily need to go anywhere in particular -- they just don't care to stay in one spot. The etymology of "wanderlust" is a very simple one that you can probably figure out yourself. "Wanderlust" is lust (or "desire") for wandering. The word comes from German, in which "wandern" means "to wander," and "Lust" means "desire."

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## chip anderson

*Aberration*: The failure of a refracting surface or lens to bring all rays from an object pont toward a desired image blur...  Aberrations also result in the curvature in the image of a straight line.. 

common types:
1) Chromatic Aberration
2) Spherical Aberrration
3) Coma
4) Marginal Astigmatism
5) Barrell and pincushion Distortion
6) Birefringence.

For those who would know more I referr you to the excellent article in February 2005 Opticourier by Don McCarthy.

Illustrates a lot of good points, including why flatter isn't better.

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## ksquared

Well, thank-you Chip! Can always use more information. :bbg: k2

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## ksquared

*VALENTINES DAY (val-in-tinz day) n.: February 14th*

*Roman Roots:* The history of Valentine's Day is obscure, and further clouded by various fanciful legends. The holiday's roots are in the ancient Roman festival of Lupercalia, a fertility celebration commemorated annually on February 15. Pope Gelasius I recast this pagan festival as a Christian feast day circa 496, declaring February 14 to be St. Valentine's Day.

*Valentines Galore:* Which St. Valentine this early pope intended to honor remains a mystery: according to the _Catholic Encyclopedia_, there were at least three early Christian saints by that name. One was a priest in Rome, another a bishop in Terni, and of a third St. Valentine almost nothing is known except that he met his end in Africa. Rather astonishingly, all three Valentines were said to have been martyred on Feb. 14. 

Most scholars believe that the St. Valentine of the holiday was a priest who attracted the disfavor of Roman emperor Claudius II around 270. At this stage, the factual ends and the mythic begins. According to one legend, Claudius II had prohibited marriage for young men, claiming that bachelors made better soldiers. Valentine continued to secretly perform marriage ceremonies but was eventually apprehended by the Romans and put to death. Another legend has it that Valentine, imprisoned by Claudius, fell in love with the daughter of his jailer. Before he was executed, he allegedly sent her a letter signed "from your Valentine." Probably the most plausible story surrounding St. Valentine is one not focused on Eros (passionate love) but on agape (Christian love): he was martyred for refusing to renounce his religion. 

In 1969, the Catholic Church revised its liturgical calendar, removing the feast days of saints whose historical origins were questionable. St. Valentine was one of the casualties.

*Chaucer's Love Birds:* It was not until the 14th century that this Christian feast day became definitively associated with love. According to UCLA medieval scholar Henry Ansgar Kelly, author of _Chaucer and the Cult of Saint Valentine_, it was Chaucer who first linked St. Valentine's Day with romance. 

In 1381, Chaucer composed a poem in honor of the engagement between England's Richard II and Anne of Bohemia. As was the poetic tradition, Chaucer associated the occasion with a feast day. In "The Parliament of Fowls," the royal engagement, the mating season of birds, and St. Valentine's Day are linked: 

For this was on St. Valentine's Day,
When every fowl cometh there to choose his mate.

*Tradition of Valentine's Cards:* Over the centuries, the holiday evolved, and by the 18th century, gift-giving and exchanging hand-made cards on Valentine's Day had become common in England. Hand-made valentine cards made of lace, ribbons, and featuring cupids and hearts eventually spread to the American colonies. The tradition of Valentine's cards did not become widespread in the United States, however, until the 1850s, when Esther A. Howland, a Mount Holyoke graduate and native of Worcester, Mass., began mass-producing them. Today, of course, the holiday has become a booming commercial success. According to the Greeting Card Association, 25% of all cards sent each year are valentines.

Hope you all have a great day!!!

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## ksquared

Define the Aberrations - part 2

*BIREFRINGENCE* (bi-re-frin-gence) n.: Optical distortion caused by a media that exhibits 2 refractive indicies which cause the light wave to travel at different velocities through the substance. 

Birefringence is another name for double refraction. It occurs when a single beam of light is split into two directions. Both of the refracted beams are parallel with one offset from the other which produces 2 distinct images. If the index of refraction depends on the polarization of the light wave, the media is said to be birefringent. Calcite, peridot, zircon, tourmaline, quartz and crystals without a cubic lattice structure are all examples of a birefringent materials. Other medias, such as glass or plastic, become birefringent when subjected to mechanical strain.

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## ksquared

*ULULATE* (ULL-yuh-layt) v.:howl, wail 

"People waved, ululated and punched the air with their fists, not bothered if those inside the motorcade were responding or even paying attention to the excitement outside." (_Africa News_, November 2004) 

Did you know?"When other birds are still, the screech owls take up the strain, like mourning women their ancient u-lu-lu." When Henry David Thoreau used "u-lu-lu" to imitate the cry of screech owls and mourning women in that particular passage from his book _Walden_, he was re-enacting the etymology of "ululate" (a word he likely knew). "Ululate" descends from the Latin verb "ululare." That Latin root carried the same meaning as our modern English word, and it likely originated in the echoes of the rhythmic wailing sound associated with it. Even today, "ululate" often refers to ritualistic or expressive wailing performed at times of mourning or celebration or to show approval.

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## ksquared

*Malthus and mathematic:*

The Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus was born on this date in 1766. Britain's first professor of political economy, Malthus was the father of the rather gloomy doctrine of _Malthusianism,_ which posits that a population tends to increase at a faster rate than its means of subsistence, and that unless a population is checked by moral restraint or disaster, widespread poverty and degradation will inevitably result. 

We make explicit two terms associated with Robert Malthus: _geometric population growth_ and the _arithmetic production of food._ An _arithmetic_ progression is explained simply: the difference between any term and its successor is constant. This means that each term in the progression is increased by adding the same number. So if X amount of corn was grown last year, this year, X plus Y corn will be grown; one year from now, X plus Y plus Y will be grown. 

A _geometric_ progression is a bit more complicated to understand: the ratio of a term to its successor is always the same, meaning that each term is _multiplied_ by the same number. If the population of a given year is, for example, 100, and the ratio is one to two, then the population for the next year would be 200, 400 the following year, and so on. It's easy to see why Malthus was pessimistic, but the 18th century economist did not forsee an agricultural revolution or reliable contraception.

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## chip anderson

Surely this idiot could not have imagined that each couple would produce an average of 2 children per year.  Also to follow such a progression these couples woul have to produce childen not only at such a rate but eventually at a rate of one child per adult plus one child per child produced.

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## hcjilson

is able to meet the demands of the western consuming public! Who would have thunk it!

hj

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## ksquared

*BILLINGSGATE* (BIL-ingz-gayt) n.:coarsely abusive language

"A steady stream of billingsgate could be heard coming from the basement after my father hit his thumb with his hammer." :finger: 

" Dr. Franklin said that it was the worse case of billingsgate he have ever seen."

Did you know?From the time of the Roman occupation until the early 1980s, Billingsgate was a fish market in London, England, notorious for the crude language that resounded through its stalls. In fact, the fish merchants of Billingsgate were so famous for their swearing that their feats of vulgar language were recorded in British chronicler Raphael Holinshed's 1577 account of King Leir (which was probably Shakespeare's source for _King Lear_). In Holinshed's volume, a messenger's language is said to be "as bad a tongue ... as any oyster-wife at Billingsgate hath." By the middle of the 17th century, "billingsgate" had become a byword for foul language.

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## ksquared

*Self-esteem*
**
Pat yourself on the back if you already knew February is International Boost Self-Esteem Month. The phrase _self-esteem_ is much older than we moderns might expect; as long ago as the 1600s, folks were using _self-esteem_ to refer to "self-respect" or to "a confidence and satisfaction in oneself." That's the way English poet John Milton used it when he wrote, "Oft-times nothing profits more / Than self-esteem, grounded on just and right / Well-managed." 

American feminist Gloria Steinem took a page out of Milton's book when she recalled, "I began to understand that self-esteem isn't everything; it's just that there's nothing without it." 

French essayist Michel de Montaigne shared Steinem's perspective; he wrote "Of all our infirmities, the most savage is to despise our being." In the view of British novelist William Hale White, "Blessed are they who heal us of self-despising. Of all services which can be done to man, I know of none more precious." 

How does one attain self-esteem? That question still inspires plenty of debate, but we can offer this bracing guidance from Scottish historian Thomas Carlyle. He believed, "nothing builds self-esteem and self-confidence like accomplishment." And we'll end with these encouraging words from French philosopher Jean Guitton: "We are all primary numbers, divisible only by ourselves."

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## chip anderson

*Wishington * Why a liberal travels to the East coast (if not already located there).     Anderson Dictionary of Conservative words.

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## ksquared

*WISHINGTONS* (wish-ing-tons) n.: The act or an instance of deliberate or extended wishful thinking.

"How come the man/woman of my dreams can never be found when Im awake???"

"I cant wait for retirement so I can relax and live it up on my Social Security."

"I dont know when and I dont know how, but someday soon someone else is going to need to buy the donuts."

"Time eventually heals all mis-understanings."

"If only I had a bigger house, another car, a slite lamp and a phoropher, I'd see my way clear to be happy."

"Im tired of thinking how about someone else taking a turn. "

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## ksquared

*VENIAL* (vE-nE-uhl) adj.: excusable, insignificant,pardonable,forgivable

Venial comes form a Latin word for forgiveness and is related to Venus, the Roman goddess of love. Venial is used of faults or sins that are not serious enough to require punishment, those that are easily pardonable. In Roman Catholic theology, venial sins are contrasted with mortal sins. A venial sin is a minor offense against divine law, while a mortal sin is a serious offense that merits eternal punishment.

These venial faults are not worth punishing: just explain to her what she did wrong.

He thought his offense was venial but apparently those in charge felt it merited expulsion.

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## ksquared

*PESSIMISM* (pes-si-mism) n.: an inclination to emphasize adverse aspects, conditions, and possibilities or to expect the worst possible outcome.

Sample sentance: Pessimism is for insects.

Arthus Schopenhauer, born in 1788, is nicknamed _the philosopher of pessimism._ Credit goes to Schopenhauer for _Schopenhauerism,_ which teaches that essential or absolute reality is a blind and restless will manifesting itself as a will to live. . . and that life is an evil curable only by overcoming the will to live. 

He didnt believe that people have individual wills but rather we are simply part of a vast and single will that pervades the universe - the cosmic will is wicked and the source of endless suffering. Schopenhauer saw that life itself is painful, manifested in aimlessness and dissatisfaction. 

His pessimism so affected his mother's social guests, who would disperse after his lengthy discourse on the uselessness of everything, that she finally forbade him her home. He was, however, considered by some to be a brillient conversation "his audience, consisting of a small circle of friends, would often listen to him until midnight. He never seemed to tire of talking, even during his last days."

Schopenhauer's view of women: (they) are directly fitted for acting as the nurses and teachers of our early childhood by the fact that they are themselves childish, frivolous and short-sighted; in a word, they are big children all their life long. They are an "undersized, narrow-shouldered, broad-hipped and short legged race ... they have no proper knowledge of any; and they have no genius." It goes without saying that Schopenhauer never married.

Although Schopenhauer clearly had his dark side, but for every dark there is a light 

"If we were not all so interested in ourselves, life would be so uninteresting that none of us would be able to endure it." 

"We forfeit three-fourths of our selves to be like other people" 

The wise have always said the same things, and fools, who are the majority have always done just the opposite.

With people of limited ability modesty is merely honesty. But with those who possess great talent it is hypocrisy.

"Every person takes the limits of their own field of vision for the limits of the world." 

And my personal favorite  Boredom is just the reverse side of fascination: both depend on being outside rather than inside a situation, and one leads to the other.
Have a great day..

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## ksquared

*RATIOCINATIVE* (ra·ti·o·ci·na·tive) adj.: ) Of, relating to, marked by, or skilled in methodical and logical reasoning, a reasoned train of thought. 

_Synonyms__:_ logical, analytice, and rational - These adjectives mean capable of or reflecting the capability for correct and valid reasoning: a logical mind; an analytic thinker; a rational being.
Antonyms: Illogical contradicting or disregarding the principles of logic, without logic; senseless. 

Example sentence:
"Darris, known for his keen sense of humor as well as his ratiocinative debate, reached a point where he could bear it no longer and put an end to the mind numbing illogical discussion."

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## ksquared

*CABBAGE* (KAB-ij) v.: steal, filch

Example sentence:
"In the late 18th-century play, The Reconciliation, Mrs. Grim confesses that she "now and then cabbaged a penny."
"I readily admit that I've been known to cabbage a quote."
"Keep a good eye on him to make sure he doens't cabbage a frame or two."
"We always tryand cabbage a beer on St. Patrick's day."

Did you know?
Does the "filching" sense of "cabbage" bring to mind an image of thieves sneaking out of farm fields with armloads of pilfered produce? If so, you're in for a surprise. That "cabbage" has nothing to do with the leafy vegetable. It originally referred to the practice among tailors of pocketing part of the cloth given to them to make garments. The verb was cut from the same cloth as an older British noun "cabbage," which meant "pieces of cloth left in cutting out garments and traditionally kept by tailors as perquisites." Both of those ethically questionable "cabbages" probably derived from "cabas," the Middle French word for "cheating or theft." The "cabbage" found in cole slaw, on the other hand, comes from Middle English "caboche," which means "head."

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## ksquared

despot \DESS-putt\ noun 

1: a Byzantine emperor or prince b : a bishop or patriarch of the Eastern Orthodox Church
2: an Italian hereditary prince or military leader during the Renaissance
3: a ruler with absolute power and authority *b : a person exercising power tyrannically

Example sentence: 
"Her spoilt younger sister, Phoebe, is a lip-glossed despot, able to command ... attention with a flick of her pretty head." (Lisa Allardice, _The Daily Telegraph_ [London], March 22, 2003)

Did you know?
In his 1755 dictionary, Samuel Johnson said of "despot," "the word is not in use, except as applied to some Dacian prince; as the despot of Servia." Indeed at that time, the word was mainly used to identify some very specific rulers or religious officials, and the title was an honorable one (it comes from a Greek word meaning "lord" or "master" and was originally applied to deities). That situation changed toward the end of the century, perhaps because French Revolutionists, who were said to have been "very liberal in conferring this title," considered all sovereigns to be tyrannical. When democracy became all the rage, "despot" came to be used most often for any ruler who wielded absolute and often contemptuous and oppressive power.

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## ksquared

*VICISSITUDE* (vuh-SISS-uh-tood) n.:noun
1. the quality or state of being changeable : 
2. natural change or mutation visible in nature or in human affairs
3. a favorable or unfavorable event or situation that occurs by chance
4. a fluctuation of state or condition
5. a difficulty or hardship attendant on a way of life, a career
6. a course of action and usually beyond one's control
7. alternating change : succession

Example sentence:
You have to be able to withstand critisism and mis-understandings to weather the vicissitudes of the changing enviroments.

Did you know?
"Change is not made without inconvenience, even from worse to better," wrote British theologian Richard Hooker in the 16th century. That observation may shed some light on "vicissitude," a word that can refer simply to the fact of change, or to an instance of it, but that often refers specifically to hardship or difficulty brought about by change. To survive "the vicissitudes of life" is thus to survive life's ups and downs, with special emphasis on the downs. "Vicissitude" is a descendant of the Latin noun "vicis," meaning "change" or "alternation," and it has been a part of the English language since the 16th century. In contemporary usage, it most often occurs in the plural.

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## ksquared

*Strabismus* (stra-bis-mus) - Commonly known as crossed eyes, wall-eyes, deviating eye and eye turns. It involves the deviation of the alignment of one eye in relationship to the other and is caused by a lack of coordination between the eyes. This condition may initially cause double vision because the eyes look in different directions instead of focusing simultaneously on a single point.

There are 2 catagories of strabismus, constant (eye turns occurs all of the time) and intermittent (eye turns occur on occasion, sometimes during stressful situations or during an illness.) 

In children, the brain may learn to ignore the input from one eye (called suppression) and if this is allowed to continue could result in vision loss (called amplyopia). Its estimated that up to 5% of all children have some type or degree of strabismus. Intermittent strabismus is a normal development milestone up to the 1st 6 moths of age. After 6 months, if present, it needs to be evaluated. Aggressive and early treatment may be necessary in order to re-establish proper use of the eyes if the condition is constant. 

In adults, the binocular vision system has already been established so problems associated with amblyopia do not usually occur. Strabismus can be caused by injuries to the orbit of the eye or brain, including closed head injuries or strokes.

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## ksquared

"rabbit, rabbit"

*AMBLYOPIA* (am-bli-o-pia):from the Greek word for "dulled vision", is poor vision in an eye. It's sometimes called "lazy eye." When one eye develops good vision while the other does not, the eye with poorer vision is called amblyopic. 

The condition is common, affecting approximately three out of every one hundred people, usually children. Amblyopia can occur in an eye that did not have adequate use during early childhood or results from either a misalignment of a child's eyes, such as crossed eyes, or a difference in image quality between the two eyes (one eye focusing better than the other.) In both cases, one eye becomes stronger, suppressing the image of the other eye. If this condition persists, the weaker eye may become useless. With early diagnosis and treatment, the sight in the "lazy eye" can be restored. 

Amblyopia is thought to be reversible up to the age of about 8 years. However, current research has conclusively demonstrated that effective treatment can take place at any age, but the length of the treatment period increases dramatically the longer the condition has existed prior to treatment.

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## ksquared

Binocular Vision - The blending of the separate images seen by each of two eyes into a single image. Normal binocular vision yields a stereoscopic image and parallax-induced depth perception. 

Each eye looking at the same object sees a slightly different image. The perceived image of one eye and the precevied image of the other are combined in the visual cortex, located in the occipital lobe of the brian. The mind combines the small differences between the 2 images to produce a "blended" image that is more than the 2 parts it was created from.. In other words a richer, final picture. People lacking good binocular vision are unable see the images in the "magic pictures" and will have trouble perceiving depth and judging distances.

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## ksquared

*CONJUNCTIVA* (KAHN-junk-TY-vuh)  The delicate thin transparent mucous membrane that lines the inner surface of the eyelid and covers the white surface of the eye (sclera).

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## ksquared

*TENEBROUS* (ten'-uh-bruhs) adj.: gloomy dark,murky

Tenebrous is a somewhat literary term meaning "dark and gloomy." It can be used of actual physical darkness:

"There were living creatures even in the tenebrous depths of the cave."

Or it can be used in a figurative sense:
"THe tenebrous atmospere created by a lack of sleep was both mysterious and frighteneing."

Tenebrous, our word for the day.

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## ksquared

*ARCHAEARIUM (ar-kay-e-r-i-um) n.: an archeological excavation covered by a glass building, basically a non-building.*

Comprised of 2 words, Greek _archeo_ meaning ancient and Latin _arium_ meaning place for.

Historic Jamestowne took a major step Friday evening when the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities and the National Park Service broke ground for an archaearium. Its a unique facility to showcase artifacts and the findings of the dig at the original fort of 1607. 

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## ksquared

*BABALOG* (ba-ba-log) n.: a young, Westernized socail group or individual (me) concerned with wealth, pop culture fads, appearance, material goods or other superficialities; a yuppy, guppy or yuppies. Formerly associated with associates of Rajiv Gandhi.

In Hindu _bab_ means father and l_og_ means people, tribe,caste or folk. 

Star News, with its socioeconomic category A and A+ audience firmly in mind, hires the babalog of New Delhis movers and shakers, the sort of young people who have trouble reading the Devnagri script.

"The Brown Sahebs babalog go to public schools where they wear caps and striped ties (the tie is Very important, it is the bond of a lifetime), learn latin, play cricket and eat Irish stew.

Im anyway opposed to this Kakaji (Babalog) culture where these brats are given so many resources and power that they consider themselves much above the lesser mortals.

**The Babalog are gearing up for the party ahead (everythings a party, darling, when you get to the bottom of it)." 

These are the babalog, the young crowd, or to use the buzzword of the Indian media, the GenNext: cyber-savvy, computer-literate, young urban professionals.

Sometimes the babalog of the political threads gets to be a bit too much.

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## ksquared

*CALIFUNNY* (cal-a-fun-ee) n.: a jocular or derisive name for California

I have known three very contradictory people in my time. Two, from back in redneckland and one from sometimes free and easy Marin county Califunny. **

It wasnt his fault really. After all, he was posting from Southern Califunny, all that smog, for all those years.

I once voted for a governor, when I was living in Califunny. Alas, Arnold won.

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## ksquared

*DECLEAT* (de-cleet) v.: in American Football, to knock an apponent off his feet. Also n., _decleater_

USCs, Todd Steele, earned the teams award as decleater of the week for his blocking. He buried some Illinois defensive backs last week. 

You run at them with the pitch and power plays and, although you might not get the yards at first, theyll be worn down in the third and fourth quarters to the point that they dont feel like coming off blocks and you can decleat them. 

Chambless charged downfield, upending all the would-be blockersa decleating, in NFL parlanceand dropped his opponents like nobody else was even on the field."

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## ksquared

*ECO-ROOF n.: a roof planted with vegatation*

**Hines argues that there are sound technical reasons to use an eco-roof. A grass roof protects the roof membrane on flat roofs from extremes of temperature and also blocks ultra-violet light, which helps the membrane last longer, he says.

Sustainability is the key. The eco-roof is a roof that is planted in cactus and other water-retaining vegetation.

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## ksquared

*FANTOUCHE* (fan-toosh) adj.: fancy, extravagant, frivolous

1947 _Dictionary of the Scots Language_: There are quite a number who consider it more fantoosh to do their shopping in Perth. 

1996 Sheila McGregor Usenet: soc.culture.celtic (May 25) Re: Cernunous: It seems to me very like the situation in England; Scots is closer to the short-word phase, having lost all its fantoosh expressions when it lost its Court and fashionable people in the 1600s. 

2000 [journeytox@aol.com (Kim)] Usenet: alt.tv.x-files (Aug. 10) Re: R: News from Locarno?: Well watch some Mitch and later, Ill try out my sister-in-laws fantouche recipe on you. 

2003 Simon Taylor Scottish Place-Name Society (Scotland) (Aug. 5) About the Scottish Place-Name Society: Onomastics is the leirit or fantouche word for the study of names of all kinds, especially personal and place-names.

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## Monkeysee

*Sisyphean* (siss ee fee an)

1)  of or like *Sisyphus
2) endless and toilsome




*Sisyphus _Greek myth- a greedy king of Corinth doomed forever in Hades to roll a heavy stone uphill, only to have it always roll down again._


*"Getting the three O's to agree has become a Sisyphean task."*


(came across this word on my Onion-Ad Nauseum  calender awhile back-and have been using it regularly ever since!).:p

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## hcjilson

Excellent!

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## ksquared

*GEOSEQUESTRATION* (ge-o-se-que-stra-tion) n.: the storage of compresses near-liquid carbon dioxide in underground chambers.

*Geosequestration* is a seemingly sensible idea - trap polluting gases from power plants, compress them until they are liquid and pump them underground. No more greenhouse gases trapping heat in the atmosphere and, therefore, no global warming.

The nightmare scenario for *geosequestration* - also known as geostorage - occurred in Africa in 1986. In the dark of night, Lake Nyos in Cameroon emitted a huge cloud of carbon dioxide. The gas, which is heavier than air, settled in a thick layer over the surrounding area, asphyxiating 1800 people and countless animals.

The so-called "catastrophic release" is one reason why many groups are nervous about geostorage. But defenders of the process point out a couple of things. The Lake Nyos disaster was a natural disaster - the lake is in a volcanic basin where carbon dioxide occurs naturally on the lake floor. No sane power producer would pump carbon dioxide and other waste gases into a lake (ocean geostorage is possible but not popular). It would be pumped hundreds of metres underground into porous rock.

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## ksquared

*Hamster Care* _n._ high-volume health care in which patients are not given specialized attention. Also _hamster health care._ 

*1999* Federal News Service (July 14) National Press Club Newsmaker Luncheon With Dr. David Lawrence, CEO, Kaiser Permanente: Ian Morrisonhas coined a phrase. I think its going to appear in Modern Health Care, actually. He calls it _hamster care_, where people are just churning like mad to keep up with the demand. 

*2000* Richard Smith _British Medical Journal_ (Dec. 23) Hamster health care: time to stop running faster and redesign health care: Perhaps the purest examples of _hamster care_ are in Canada and Germany. In these countries there is a fixed budget for all services provided by doctors and a standardised schedule of fixed fees. Doctors try to earn their target income by providing more and more services. But as the number of services provided by all doctors rises and exceeds set total budgets, so the fee for each service goes down. Like frantic hamsters the doctors run ever fasterbut to no avail. 

*2004* Nancy Luna @ Santa Ana, Calif. _Orange County Register_ (Calif.) (Jan. 12): The average doctor is seeing thousands of patients a year to survive, and the result is _hamstercare_, or treadmill medicine, said Dr. Jack Lewin, chief executive officer of the California Medical Association. 

*2004* Arthur Caplan _Witchita Eagle_ (Kan.) (July 7) Good health care should not be only for wealthy: One might wonder why it is necessary to pay a bounty to get a doctor to call you back. The answer is that under the watchful eye of managed care and insurance companies, the quality of care has gotten so awful that doctors refer to it as _hamster_ _care_. Only those patients who pay more are going to get treated by the concierge doctors who get off the daily treadmill and practice good medicine.

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## ksquared

*interview without coffee* _n._ a formal disciplinary meeting or official reprimand; a dressing-down. 

*1990* John Goodbody _Times_ (U.K.) (Apr. 2) Greater communication urged to fight drugs: Mahony said that the final interview by the IOC Medical Commission was one of the most unpleasant, intimidating experiences of my life. After two carefree days, with a medal burning a hole in my pocket, it was an interview without coffee. It was not a pleasant experience. 

*1999* [Tex Bennett] Usenet: uk.people.ex-forces (Apr. 30) Re: Off topic fried bread: Stern warning, does that mean Off Caps at Defaulters on the QD? An interview without coffee? 

*2000* [Phil Mc Carty] Usenet: alt.military.army-cadet (Jan. 27) Re: What Would You Do?: A definite Commandants IWOC (as we used to say in the Regularsan Interview without Coffee) and serious disciplinary sanction. (Demotion? Transfer?) 

*2001* Matthew Hickley _Hobart Mercury_ (Australia) (Dec. 1) Daring raid fails to nab bin Laden: Eighteen Taliban were killed and dozens wounded and taken prisoner. I imagine they will be given a fair but tough interrogationwhat the lads call interview without coffee. 

*2004* Robert Fox _Evening Standard_ (U.K.) (Jan. 19) Troops face an unacceptable level of risk p. 2: The meeting between Geoff Hoon and Samantha, the widow of Sergeant Steve Roberts, shot after he had handed back his body armour in Iraq, will be something of an interview without coffeemilitary jargon for a commanders dressing-down of a subordinate. 

*2004* James Kirkup, Gethin Chamberlain _The Scotsman_ (July 22) Commanders warn all ranks to silence dissent in public p. 2: Punishments could include administrative action and a nasty letter or interview without coffee, a reference to a formal disciplinary meeting with superior officers. 

*2005* Ireland On-Line (Jan. 21) Officer not punished over Iraqi crackdown order: The order by Major Dan Taylor breached the Geneva Convention and the crackdown which followed at an aid camp near Basra led to three soldiers being charged with abusing civilians. But Maj Taylor was only dealt with at summary level, which means he was spoken to by senior officersa process known in Army slang as interview without coffee. The officers concluded that he was guilty no more than misguided zeal, the court heard today.

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## ksquared

*Ja well no fine* - a noncommittal expression of unconcern, indifference, apathy, or ambivalence. 

*1991* John MacLennan _Sunday Star_ (Johannesburg, South Africa) (July 7) The ANC could take a tip or two from the NP p. 14: The question was put directly to new secretary-general Cyril Ramaphosa this week and his inconclusive reply can best be described as a diplomatic Ja, well, no fine. 

*1994* James Flannery @ Johannesburg, South Africa (Reuters) (Apr. 14) Paradoxes abound in S. Africas march to democracy: A casual conversation includes the benediction: Ja well, no fine, meaning: How interesting, do go on or I"ve had enough, go away. 

*2000* Kurt Shillinger @ Johannesburg, South Africa _Boston Globe_ (Oct. 22) Letter from South Africa: Blend of Languages Hard to Digest p. A17: Consider the local expression, Ja, well, no fine.".Is it one word? Does it have commas? Even the Dictionary of South African English stumbles: to explain this to a non-South African is a challenge. A few years ago, the former radio broadcaster RJB Wilson, who coined the expression back in 1978, tried to explain it. My youngest brother, he wrote, was in the habit of saying no fine to everything that really required a cest la vie or thats the way the cookie crumbles. It had a nice South African feel to it. I added Ja, well to it to reinforce the South Africanism. 

*2002* Jean-Marie Dru _Beyond Disruption: Changing the Rules in the Marketplace_ (Apr. 12) p. 93: Because ja well no fine make sense to us. 

*2004* [Marcia Klein] _Sunday Times_ (South Africa) (May 2) Grapevine: Casualties of jargon: The blurb reads: The intention is to pilot various healthcare models to focus on cost-effective and quality healthcare delivery that is comprehensively measured by clinical outcomes. Ja-well-no-fine.

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## ksquared

*KATASTROIKA* (ka-tas-tro-I-ka) n.: In the former Soviet republics, a disastrous government reform or change, esp. the _perestroika_ movement of the 1990s and the collapse of the Soviet Union. Also _catastroika_

*1989* Richard I. Kirkland Jr. _Fortune_ (NYC) (June 19) How Chinas Chaos Affects the West p. 77: While Gorbachevs political reforms are breathtaking, his economic perestroika appears overly cautious and utterly ineffectual. French scholar Jacques Rupnik has suggested a new label: catastroika. The sprawling Soviet empirefull of fractious Ukrainians, Armenians, Tatars, and other nationalitiesconstantly threatens to come apart at the seams. 

*1990* Jonathon Steele _Guardian_ (U.K.) (Mar. 9) Five Years of Gorbachev: Soviet fears of katastroika: In the first phase of Mr Gorbachevs rule, some Russians thought that glasnost was just a trick to get the reformers to stick their heads above the parapet and identify themselves. Perestrelka, said the satirists, meaning a general shoot-up. Now the joke is at the expense of the economic collapse: katastroika. 

*1991* Desmond Christy _Guardian_ (U.K.) (Oct. 18) Europe: Light at the OperaGazetta: _Catastroika_. A mixture of catastrophe and perestroika, it is used by Alexander Sinoviev in the title of a satirical novel he wrote in 1989. 

*2004* Mark G. Field _New England Journal of Medicine_ (July 8) HIV and AIDS in the Former Soviet Bloc vol. 351, no. 2, p. 120: The threats in the region from AIDS and other epidemics are potentially dire. Prophecies are always hazardous, but in the former Soviet Bloc, the outlook for the next few decades is perhaps best characterized by a Russian neologism invented to describe the adverse effects of the disintegration of the Soviet system: katastroika.

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## ksquared

*learning cottage* _n._ a residential trailer (British caravan; American mobile home) used as a temporary or portable classroom. 

*1996* Mark Schultz _Chapel Hill Herald_ (Durham, N.C.) (July 10) Trailers still needed despite new school p. 1: The big joke around here is we call them learning cottages, said Joines, who taught in the same trailer last year, her first in the system. 

*1999* Victoria Benning _Washington Post_ (May 6) Learning On The Run: Trailer classrooms are a way of life at Centre Ridge Elementary, which makes getting to classand to the bathrooma negotiation p. B1: Eight of the trailersor learning cottages, as Fairfax parents and staff jokingly call themhouse fourth-grade classes, four are third-grade classrooms, and the remaining ones are used for music and classes for gifted and disabled students. 

*2000* Mary MacDonald _Atlanta Journal-Constitution_ (Ga.) (Nov. 4) Marietta schools fight battle of bulge; Retreat today to discuss influx p. G6: Photo Fifth-graders in Erica Allens class at Lockheed Elementary School place their book bags into plastic bins outside their trailer, which has been dubbed a learning cottage. 

*2004* Meredith Byrne B9_Learning (Atlanta, Ga.) (Dec. 9) A Little TinTin-Nabulation:Trailer Trainin (web hook-up)!: Somehow, trailer (be it on a farm, or in a public school parking lot) just seems to lack esteemable associations. So now theyve coined the term learning cottage to soften up the blow...at the same time I cant help but to think learning cell.

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## ksquared

*monkeyfishing* _n._ to catch fish by charging water with an electric current then netting the stunned or panicked fish which rise to the surface. This works as long as you have some fish left to stun.

*1995* Jovida Fletcher _Orlando Sentinel_ (Fla.) (Mar. 19) Resident Recalls Times Of Drunken Hogs, Monkey-Fishing p. 3: In those days, he said, before it was outlawed, fishermen monkey-fished area lakes, meaning they would shock the fish and collect them as they floated to the top. 

*2004* _The Ledger_ (Lakeland, Fla.) (May 29) Anglers Charged With a Shocking Crime (in Ocala, Fla.): Once highly popular, a monkeyfishing angler uses a homemade device to send an electrical charge into the water. To escape the shocks, the fish swim to the surface where fishermen scoop the stunned fish out of the water with a long-handled dip net. 

*2004* J.R. Absher _Sportmans Guide_ (June 2) The Outdoor News HoundShock And Awe Fishing: The act of taking game fish through the use of an electro-shocking device is known in some regions as telephoning, and in others as monkey-fishing.

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## ksquared

*neurodiversity* _n._ the whole of human mental or psychological neurological structures or behaviors, seen as not necessarily problematic, but as alternate, acceptable forms of human biology. 

*1998* Harvey Blume _Atlantic_ (NYC) (Sept. 30) Neurodiversity: Neurodiversity may be every bit as crucial for the human race as biodiversity is for life in general. 

*1998* [lioness1@prodigy.net] Usenet: alt.support.learning-disab (Dec. 29) Neurodiversity Pride: Any thoughts on the idea of neurodiversity pride: that is, that _those who are wired differently from what is considered the norm_, are not BAD, or DISABLED and dont need fixing, but merelydifferent? 

*2004* _Coventry Evening Telegraph_ (U.K.) (Jan. 14) Open meeting p. 15: The next meeting of the Coventry and Warwickshire Neurodiversity Group is on January 29 at 7.30pm.Guest speaker Janet Taylor will talk about dyspraxia, a condition affecting movement and co-ordination. 

*2004* Amy Harmon _New York Times_ (May 9) Neurodiversity Forever p. 4-1: But in a new kind of disabilities movement, many of those who deviate from the shrinking subset of neurologically normal want tolerance, not just of their diagnoses, but of their behavioral quirks. They say brain differences, like body differences, should be embraced, and argue for an acceptance of neurodiversity.

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## ksquared

*on (ones) bicycle* _adj._ in boxing, constantly moving around a ring (to avoid an opponent). 

*1979* _Globe and Mail_ (Toronto, Can.) (Nov. 26) Weaver defeats LeDoux (in Bloomington, Minn.) p. S20: We came out here (in the 12th) and Weaver was on his bicycle, dancing around. 

*1996* W.H. Stickney Jr. _Houston Chronicle_ (June 24) Nunn takes his time, defeats Armenta p. 11: Capitalizing on the expansive 18-foot ring, Sullivan got on his bicycle for the entire fight to avoid the power and hand speed of Zamarron, who trains in the same Austin gym.

*2003* Tim Smith _N.Y. Daily News_ (NYC) (Sept. 21) Win Despite Boo Byrds p. 81: He never got on his bicycle, as they say in ring parlance about excessively defensive fighters, during his boxing career. 

*2005* Brett Anderson _Opti-board Forum Analysis_ (Cyberspace, US) (March 24th) Lady boxer will hang up her gloves: In the 11th round it looked like she had hit her opponent with a clean right, bouncing him into cyber-space. And for a breif moment got on her bycycle as we all awaited the final outcome.

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## ksquared

*paleoconservative* _n._ a holder of outdated or old-fashioned conservative beliefs; a long-standing conservative. Also _adj._ 

The term *paleoconservative* (sometimes shortened to paleo or paleocon when the context is clear) refers to an American branch of conservativeOld Right thought that stands against both the mainstream tradition of the _National Review_ magazine and the neoconservatives. The term derives from the greek _paleo-_ meaning ancient, and has a humourous association with the dinosaurs through terms like "paleolithic" and "paleobiology."

The phraseology "paleoconservative" was a rejoinder issued in the 1980s to differentiate itself from "neoconservatism". The rift is often traced back to a dispute over the director of the National Endowment for the Humanities by the incoming Reagan Administration. The preferred candidate was professor Mel Bradford and he was replaced after an effective media and lobbying effort (focusing on his dislike of Abraham Lincoln) by William Bennett. The trends preceding that pronounced schism go back as far as the 1950s.

The paleoconservatives view the neoconservatives as interlopers. Their view of the mainstream conservative movement is that of a self interested movement lacking the self confidence to defend its old ideas. 

Many American Paleoconservatives see themselves as iconoclasts, breaking what they regard as liberal taboos. 

Paleoconservatives esteem the principles of subsidiarity and localism in recognizing that one must surely be an Ohioan, Texan or Virginian as they are an American.

Though paleoconservatives may often hold views considered to be out of the "mainstream" in terms of conservative thought, a distinction should be drawn between them and right wing extremists. While paleoconservatives remain engaged in political discourse and promote academic and intellectual discussion, the latter group is characterized mostly by their pursuit of isolation and fringe status, as well as a general obsession with race and violence at the expense of broader political concerns

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## ksquared

*qualoid* _n._ a newspaper format roughly the size of a traditional tabloid, but with content similar to that of a broadsheet. Also _adj._ 

*1990* _Campaign_ (U.K.) (Sept. 28) Sunday Correspondent; advertising must grab readers: The qualoid form may just be enough differentiation to help the Corrie escape the continuing broadsheet print warfare.

*2002* _Svenska Dagbladet_ (Sweden) (Oct. 25) Tunga nomineringar för SvD p. 64: Lena K. Samuelsson nomineras för att hon lett den journalistiska förnyelsen när SvD utvecklas från missmodig broadsheet till själfull qualoid. 

*2004* Steve Johnson _Kansas City Star_ (Kan., Mo.) (Nov. 12) For U.S. newspapers, future may be in tabloid size: The roughly 18 1/2-by-12 1/2-inch size is also known as the European midi (Frances _Le Monde_ uses it) or, really grimly, as qualoid, as in quality tabloid.

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## ksquared

*Rummys Dummies* _n._ a derogatory name for the U.S. military under the leadership of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. 

*2001* NY Transfer News Collective (NYC) (Dec. 21) Mullah Omar, Entire Taliban Leadership Safe: Its only the tribal leaders loyal to the new Afghan government of Karzai who are getting wiped out at the moment, thanks to the Talibans superior counterintelligence convincing Rummys Dummies to bomb them onthe Road to Kabul. Good title for a movie. 

*2004* [Quixotoes] Usenet: soc.sexuality.spanking (May 9) Re: Another paddling cop: Love that unauthorized photography charge. Its probably all that will happen to Rummys Dummies. 

*2004* Richard Kiefer @ Golden, Colo. _Rocky Mountain News_ (Denver, Colo.) (May 26) Letters: Just what did Rummys dummies think Saddam and his cronies were doing while they were fighting a token war against coalition forcesknitting prayer shawls? 

*2005* Tim Appelo _Seattle Weekly_ (Wash.) (Mar. 9) A Rap on War: The sharpest blow to Rummys Dummies is a scene, shot long before the recent Rumsfeld press-conference debacle, wherein a gunner in mock-TV-news tones explains how safe he feels. 

(8 more to go and we are through the alphabet. I for one can hardly wait!!!)

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## ksquared

*salvage* _v._ to kill or assassinate. 

*1983* _Globe and Mail_ (Toronto, Can.) (Sept. 22) Church leads way as Filipinos urge political reforms p. P17: According to the task force report, 1,082 Filipinos were extra-legally executed or salvaged (a euphemism for assassinations) between 1975 and 1983. During the same period, 266 others disappeared. 

*2003* _Manila Standard_ (Philippines) (Sept. 9) Use Arnold in a Sentence: One has to admire the way Panfilo Lacson has evolved as a public figure. The development of his vocabulary adequately reflects this. Ping is quoted as saying it would be ridiculous for me to execute my own witness. The three syllable word execute shows a marked improvement over that two syllable Pinoy colloquialism, salvage. Four syllable words assassinate, exterminate and annihilate cannot be that far behind. 

*2004* Patricio P. Diaz _Minda News_ (Mindanao, Philippines) (July 13) On Regrettables: During martial law, salvage came into use in the Philippines to mean to execute or dispose of a person summarily and secretly. Filipino journalists use it that way without regret. I wonder if it will ever be entered into reputable English dictionaries.

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## ksquared

*twidget* _n._ a soldier or other military individual whose job primarily involves using or maintaining electronics. 

*1995* P.T. Deutermann _Edge of Honor_ (May 1) p. 110: A twidget was anybody who wasnt an engineer, and therefore, according to the snipes, not a real man. 

*1996* Alex Lee _Force Recon Command: 3D Force Recon Company in Vietnam, 1969-70_ (Nov. 1) p. 152: As the Marines laughingly said, once they had become fans of the use of sensors, If you want it done right, keep the twidgets out of the field! 

*2002* Douglas Morgan _Tiger Cruise_ (Mar. 1) p. 63: At this evenings muster, ET2 Fred Larousse, one of _Cushings_ twidgetselectronic techniciansand the senior man on the BAF, was holding forth on the subject of security alerts. 

*2004* Peter Hall _Express-Times_ (N.J.) (June 20) Cullen kind of an oddball in Navy: Cullen was a twidgetsomeone who made fine adjustments to computers rather than turning a wrench to fix the ships heavy equipment.

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## ksquared

*unass* _v._ to dismount or disembark (a vehicle); to get off of (something); to unseat (someone); to leave (somewhere). 

_English.__Military.__Slang._ This term dates back to at least the 1960s and the Vietnam War. It is especially associated with the military, from where it has spread to politics and aeronautics.

*1989* Richard West _The Independent_ (U.K.) (Nov. 29) Misfortunes of war: About FaceDavid H Hackworth & Julie Sherman: Airmobile assaults were both exciting and frightening. Each one was a gut-churning event not dissimilar to the moment before you unassed a plane with a parachute on your back. 

*1990* [geoffm@purplehaze.EBay.Sun.COM (Geoff Miller)] Usenet: rec.autos.driving (Nov. 15) Re: getting rear ended: Ill take un-assing the A.O. to mean helping up the arresting officer.""Get a clue. The phrase is Army slang for leaving the area of operations. 

*1992* [Rick Pavek (kuryakin@bcstec.ca.boeing.com)] Usenet: sci.military (Dec. 30) Re: Sheridan: The crew felt they would be more useful elsewhere and dismounted the tank in record time. (We called it Unassed the vehicle.") 

*1993* [prb@access.digex.net (Pat)] Usenet: sci.space (Aug. 14) Re: engine failures and safety: There have been numerous cases of the plane making an acceptable touchdown while significant passenger casualties are taken before they can un-*** the aircract. 

*1993* [barrey@Novell.com (Barrey Jewall)] Usenet: alt.war (Oct. 13) Re: barefooted warriors in somalia: Un-*** the place and leave them to fight over the food and die! 

*1997* [ciacon@ix.netcom.com (Wayne Johnson)] Usenet: soc.culture.african.american (Dec. 20) Re: The national debt to slavery: But all these kinte-cloth pillbox hat mumia fans arent going to get two feet trying to convince anyone to un-*** several BILLION dollars, with the weak **** Ive seen bandied about here. 

*1999* ["Redleg" (jgriffin@qadas.com)] _Usenet: alt.war.vietnam_ (Dec. 16) Re: Vietnam F.A.Q.: Move it. Move it. Move it! Unass my chow line. 

*2004* [DonLampson@webtv.net] Usenet: rec.outdoors.rv-travel (Sept. 23) Re: OTShould we remain in the UN: Trying to unass the 3rd world leader of it because we dont like him sure would be sending a message to the rest of the world community, wouldnt it? 
*2004* Argghhh! (Nov. 14) Monteith provides this dope about the Ferret: The Saracen swapped the engine from the rear to front for reasons of easy debussing (dismounting, un-assing in US miltary parlance) by the PBI (Poor Bloody Infantry) carried in the back area.

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## chip anderson

I suspect the term goes back to when people rode mules and donkeys (asses).

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## ksquared

> I suspect the term goes back to when people rode mules and donkeys (asses).


And still (being ridden) today. But I digress, if I'm ever going to finish the alphabet I mustn't let myself get distracted...and wouldn't you know I couldn't make up my mind so here are 3 words that begin with "v", who'd have thought.......

*Verwaltungsvereinfachungsmassnahmen* _n._ an anti-bureaucratese, anti-bafflegab campaign. 

Ger. _Verwaltungs_ administration + _vereinfachungs_ reduction + _massnahmen_ measures 

2000 CDU/CSU Fraktion (Germany) (Oct. 12) Verbesserung des Meister-BAfoeG dringend erforderlich (in Berlin): Verwaltungsvereinfachungsmassnahmen sollen ebenfalls zu einem Zulauf an Antragstellern und damit potentiellen Existenzgruendern fuehren. Es bleibt abzuwarten, ob die bisher untaetige Bundesregierung aufgrund dieses Vorstosses der Opposition aus ihrer Lethargie erwacht. (if you need a translation, send me a PM.)
2004 Don Hill @ Prague, Czech Republic Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (June 9) Writing Campaigns Encouraging Bureaucrats To Come In From The Fog: Theyve assigned the effort to rid their writing of fogginess a name. It is Verwaltungsvereinfachungsmassnahmenthat is, simplified administrative procedures. 

*voodoo poll* _n._ an opinion tallying system whose results are easily manipulated or are otherwise untrustworthy. Never happens in our media....

1990 David Zizzo _Sunday Oklahoman_ (Oklahoma City, Okla.) (July 29) 2 Republican Candidates for Governor Battle Over Poll  p. 16: Cole previously had called a Hargis poll showing Hargis leading in Tulsa a shell game. Hunter said this weeks poll for Price was a voodoo poll. 
1995 _Econmist_ (U.K.) (June 17) SpecialDemocracy And TechnologyElectioneering: The telephone has made opinion polling vastly easier and faster. It has encouraged not only the carefully structured poll, which confronts a large random sample with a well-designed question, but what Robert Worcester, head of MORI, Britains largest polling firm, calls the voodoo poll, whereby newspaper readers or television viewers are encouraged to telephone with their opinions on some burning issue of the day. Charging a premium rate for the call makes money, too. 
1995 Robert M. Worcester _Independent_ (London, England) (July 23) Condon and the voodoo poll p. 22: To test the system, I rang nine times in the two minutes given to register a yes vote (although I would not normally participate in such a voodoo poll). 
2005 [Anthony Wells] UK Polling Report (Feb. 24) Voodoo Polling Corner: Voodoo polls is a term coined by Sir Bob Worcester to refer to phone-in, click-on or press-the-red-button polls, the sort of thing you see on Sky News, the AOL homepage or in the tabloid press. These polls have no statistical validity whatsover, they do not attempt to be representative of the population, they are entirely self-selecting and they are spectacularly easy to fix by getting partisan supporters to repeatedly ring them. No one should mistake them for a worthwhile indication of public opinion. 
2005 Kay Squared Personal Exsperience Archives (April 3rd) If you craft a question just right, you can the majority of the poll participants to say yes to just about anything. The masters are the political polling pundits and ABC news.

*visibility whip* _n._ a worker responsible for precisely orchestrating the presentation of placards, chants, and other demonstrations of support among delegates at a political convention, especially during speeches. 

1988 _Omaha World-Herald_ (Neb.) (July 19) Dukakis Can Talk State Issues Kerrey Backs National Ticket: Beatty Brasch of Omaha said her assignment at the Democratic National Convention is visibility whip, or cheerleader, of the Nebraska delegation. It is extremely important that we demonstrate at the right time and that we are spontaneous, she told the delegation. 
1996 Brad Cain (AP) (Aug. 29) Weeks Worth of Politicking Just the Ticket for Delegate Couple: Eymann is the state delegations visibility whip. Its her job to coordinate which slogans the delegates chant, or the signs that they hold up at the right moment. On Wednesday night, it was her job to make sure delegates held up large cardboard pictures of salmon, fir trees and wheat when it came time for the Oregon delegation to cast its votes to nominate President Clinton. 
2004 National Journal (July 27) Convention Dispatches: Definitely Thinkin About Tomorrow: Take, for example, the Americas Future signs brought out for President Clintons speech Monday night. Hotline sources report that DNCC visability whips were under strict orders not to pass them out even one second before New York Sen. Hillary Clinton finished her introduction.

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## ksquared

*white knowledge* _n._ information acquired without conscious effort. 

_English._ [This term originated in science fiction writing and is associated with the author Terry Pratchett, who probably coined it.] 

*1995* [Colm Buckley] Usenet: alt.fan.pratchett (Feb. 12) Re: IT Annotations (spoiler): I think its just a joke; the storming of the winter palace in the Russian Revolution is far more ingrained into peoples white knowledge. 

*1997* Neil Gaiman _Neverwhere_ (July 1) p. 9: He continued, slowly, by a process of osmosis and white knowledge (which is like white noise, only more useful), to comprehend the city, a process that accelerated when he realized that the actual City of London itself was no bigger than a square mile. 

*1999* [knepveu@lynx.neu.edu (Kate Nepveu)] Usenet: rec.arts.sf.written.robert-jordan (Mar. 13) Re: More on Verin: _Why_ must you use the Socratic method to introduce the Old Testament? I mean, granted, most of your students will have absorbed the basics in a white knowledge sort of mannerI did, and Ive never read it. 

*2000* [Cassady Toles] Unknown Armies RPG Mailing List (Sept. 25) Pacific NW Clio sites: My friend Alexai describes the existance of a certain white knowledge that everyone has, but doesnt know where they got it. 

*2004* Priti Trivedi @ Toms River, N.J. Fractured Blog (Oct. 15) See how busy we are?: The production team is slowly picking up the lingo, so that last night when Chad asked for a Half apple I actually knew 1. what he was talking about 2. where it was and 3. where he needed to put it. Thats amazing! Okay, so maybe apple boxes was a bad example, but the amount of white knowledge were all picking up on this movie is what keeps us going when the going gets tough. Or cold.

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## ksquared

*yips* n. nervousness which interferes with precision playing, especially in golf; a case of nerves; the jitters. 

_English._ _Sports._ Golfer Sam Snead has been credited with coining this word, but while he certainly used it, no evidence has been found to support the claim that he created it. 

*1937* Bill Braucher @ New York _Hammond Times_ (Ind.) (July 3) Tales in Tidbits p. 9: Carl Hubbell says he got the yips so bad during his recent slump that he was walking into closed doors. 

*1940* Hutt Martin _Nevada State Journal_ (Reno) (Aug. 11) Its Well Worth While to Practice on Getting Out of Golfing Trouble p. 14: The grass between the ball and the blade will cause a bit of run so allow for it and practice this shot at least twenty times the next time you go out, not that you will perfect it that quickly but having practiced itit wont give you those mental yips the next time youre in that spot. 

*1984* Jim Lassiter _Daily Oklahoman_ (Oklahoma City) (June 15) Moody a Winner On Seniors Tour Moody Finds New Life on Seniors Tour: Putting always was hard, if not impossible, for Moody, who spent 14 years in the armed services. He had trouble with three-footers. He seldom had a clue on anything longer than six feet. He had what they call the yips."If youre a golfer and you have the yips, you dont have to be told what they are. You also dont have to be told youre in trouble. 

*2004* Barry Horn _Dallas Morning News_ (July 3) Rangers Bierbrodt tries to put shooting behind him: After winning his first game against the Mariners on June 23, pitching six encouraging innings, Bierbrodts control looked lost again. In 1 2/3 innings Monday, he walked five batters. Once more, some misses could be measured in feet. In baseball, such misfiring is referred to as yips. They cost one-time Pittsburgh star Steve Blass his career. Most recently, St. Louis pitcher Rick Ankiel was afflicted with the yips in 2000.

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## ksquared

*zeitgeber* _n._ a naturally occurring cue, such as light or temperature, which regulates biological rhythms; something which influences or regulates the timing or rhythm of something else. 

_zeit_ time + _geber_ giver. Coined by Jürgen Aschoff, ca. 1954.

*1958* Colin Pittendrigh, Victor Bruce, Peter Kaus _Proceedings of the Natl. Acad. of Sciences (US)_ (Sept. 15) On the Significance of Transients in Daily Rhythms vol. 44, no. 9, p. 966: Light and temperature are the only periodic or quasi-periodic environmental variables to which endogenous oscillation can be coupled: in nature they entrain the endogenous oscillation, thereby controlling period and establishing appropriate phase. They are, to use Aschoffs phrase, the principal _Zeitgeber_. 

*1962* Miklos D. F. Udvardy _American Midland Naturalist_ (Apr.) Biology and Comparative Physiology of Birds vol. 67, no. 2, p. 507-8: No reference is made to diurnal activity, Orstreue, Zeitgeber, and other terms of the last thirty years. 

*2003* Franz Halberg _Journal of Circadian Rhythms_ (Sept. 24) Transdisciplinary unifying implications of circadian findings in the 1950s: All three of us redefined our terms, they a _zeitgeber_ and I a synchronizer (as primary or secondary), respectively, as an external agent, usually a cycle that does not give time and merely synchronizes existing body time with its own. 

*2004* Alison Stein Wellner _Inc.com_ (NYC) (June) The Time Trap p. 42: All companies exist in a cacophony of competing time rhythms, relentlessly drummed out by, among others, suppliers, clients, and competitorsThese external pacers are known among academics as _zeitgebers_German for time giversand they exert tremendous influence on your company. Zeitgebers can include anything from the fiscal year to the production schedule of a supplier to the school calendar in your community, and every company possesses a unique set of them. The more activities in your organization are synchronized with a particular zeitgeber, the more youre entrained to it. 

And that concludes the off-words (finally)

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## ksquared

*bloviate* (BLOH-vee-ayt) verb: to speak or write verbosely and windily 

Example sentence:On occasion I like to turn on the news and watch the media pundits bloviate about the top issues of the day.

Did you know?
Warren G. Harding is often linked to "bloviate," but to him the word wasn't insulting; it simply meant "to spend time idly." Harding used the word often in that "hanging around" sense, but during his tenure as the 29th U.S. President (1921-23), he became associated with the "verbose" sense of "bloviate," perhaps because his speeches tended to the long-winded side. Although he is sometimes credited with having coined the word, it's more likely that Harding picked it up from local slang while hanging around with his boyhood buddies in Ohio in the late 1800s. The term probably derives from a combination of the word "blow" plus the suffix "-ate."

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## hcjilson

For some further reading on Harding, try getting ahold of "Shadow of Blooming Grove" Warren G. Harding in his times, by Francis Russell. Its a fascinating account of this president. Amazon has it from $1.95 (used, I am sure) and if you get it, I guarentee you some excellent reading.

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## hcjilson

for Ksquared.......who works very hard at keeping this thread going. Great Job !!!!

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## ksquared

*Schadenfreude* - schadenfreude  (shäd'n-froi"du), noun

-- Listen to the pronunciation: WAV format or AU format

Vincent could not contain his schadenfreude

    a.) the sight of   his dear friend humiliated and carted off to jail caused him untold anquish.
b.) the   comeuppance of his arrogant and supercillious tormenter filled him with a   delicious sense of glee.
c.) his ambivalence and inability to choose a set course and   stick with it continued to plague him.

  

And the answer is:b
schadenfreude - Pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others.

 German  : *Schaden*, _damage_ (from Middle High German schade, from Old High German scado) + *Freude*, _joy_ (from Middle High German vreude, from Old High German frewida)

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## ksquared

*Garrulous**   -* garrulous   (gar'_u_l_u_s, gar'y_u_-lus) adj.

-- Listen to the pronunciation: WAV format or AU format

I am a well-prepared, meticulous lecturer. In the cafeteria, however, I overhear one of my students complaining of my garrulous manner. Does this student consider me.

a.) casual and indifferent.
b.) chatty and annoying.
c.) derisive and bitter.
d.) Thought provoking and intelligent



And the answer is: b
1. excessively talkative in a rambling, roundabout manner, esp. about trivial matters. 
2. wordy or diffuse: _a garrulous and boring speech.

(how could they be so mistaken)
_

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## ksquared

*soporific* -  (sop-o-rif-ic) adj.

 -- Listen to the pronunciation: WAV format or AU format

 *On a trip to the Amazon to collect plant specimens, you discover the* *soporific** effects of the leaves of a climbing vine. As soon as you can, you place an excited call home to your wife. What do you tell her?*

    a.) That you've discovered a cure for airsickness.
b.) That you've found a cure for insomnia.
c.) That you've found a safe appetite supressant.

 


And the answer is: 

*1.* causing or tending to cause sleep. 
*2.* pertaining to or characterized by sleep or sleepiness; sleepy; drowsy.
*3.* something that causes sleep, as a medicine or drug.

(hey, the same end result as my lectures!!)

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## hcjilson

Or....of late, ....my office, mid-afternoon!

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## ksquared

WHich begs the question, how many insomniacs can you fit on the head of a pin,  oh.... I guest that suppsed to be angels.  Now wonder people fall asleep.

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## ksquared

*importunate** -* im-po-tu-nate (im-pôr'ch_u_-nit) adj.

*The* *importunate** customer tried the patience of many an optician with* 

    a.) his tedious, sad-sack stories.

    b.) his endless wavering and inability to make up his mind.

    c.) his many insistent questions and demands.





And the answer is: 
*1.* urgent or persistent in solicitation, sometimes annoyingly so.
*2.* pertinacious, as solicitations or demands.
*3.* troublesome; annoying: _importunate demands from the children for attention._

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## ksquared

*AMBLYOPIA* (am-bli-o-pia):from the Greek word for "dulled vision", is poor vision in an eye. It's sometimes called "lazy eye." When one eye develops good vision while the other does not, the eye with poorer vision is called amblyopic. 

_TOP STORIES_   4/13/2005
Patching found effective in older children
Children up to 17 years of age can benefit from patching therapy for the treatment of amblyopia, according to a large nationwide study. Prior to this study there had been no consensus on whether older children with amblyopia could benefit from patching, researchers noted. 

 In children older than 13 years who had been previously treated for amblyopia with patching, little benefit was seen, but in patients in this age group not previously treated there was a strong suggestion of improvement, the researchers said. 

 Members of the Pediatric Eye Disease Investigator Group studied the efficacy of patching for amblyopia in 507 children ranging in age from 7 to 17 years, including 103 children between 13 and 17 years old. Visual acuity in the patients ranged from 20/40 to 20/400; all children were provided with optimal optical correction and then randomized to a treatment group. Most patients had moderate to high degrees of hyperopia in the amblyopic eye. 

 The patients were randomly assigned to either new prescription glasses only or to the new glasses prescription plus patching therapy for 2 to 6 hours daily. Children in the 7- to 12-year-old range received atropine in addition to patching. The children were also asked to perform near vision activities. 

 Successful vision improvement was defined as the ability to read at least two more lines on a standard eye chart in the eye with amblyopia after treatment completion. 

 In preparation for conducting the randomized trial, the study group performed a pilot study in 66 patients between 10 and 17 years old to estimate the response rate to treatment with part-time patching combined with near visual activities. 

 In that preliminary study, the researchers found improvement in visual acuity of two or more lines in 27% of patients, they reported in the April issue of _Archives of Ophthalmology._ 

 In the randomized study, 53% of the 7-to-12 year old children who received both glasses and treatment with patches and near activity had vision improved by at least two lines. Only 25% of children in that age group who received glasses alone had vision improved by at least two lines. 

 In 47% of the children between 13 and 17 who had not been previously treated for amblyopia but were prescribed glasses, patching and near activity work, VA improved by at least two lines. Twenty percent of those treated with glasses alone improved by that amount. 

 Despite the benefits of the treatment, most children, including those who responded to treatment, were left with some visual impairment, according to a National Eye Institute press release on the study. NEI funds were used to support the study. 

 It is not known whether vision improvement will be sustained in the children once treatment is discontinued, according to the NEI. A follow-up study to assess the long-term benefits in these older children is planned.

http://www.osnsupersite.com/default.asp?ID=10294

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## ksquared

*Realpolitik* - re-al-po-li-tik(rA - äl' - pO" - li - tEk) noun
Always the optimist, you support negotiation over confrontation. But when communist troops threaten to take over your alfalfa farm, the realpolitik sets in. Now you believe

a.) practical politics are not always peacefulsometimes might makes right.
b.) the communist agenda does not allow organic farmers to farm in peace.
c.) alfalfa farms belong to the state.







And the answer is: c

1.political realism or practical politics, esp. policy based on power rather than on ideals. 
2.politics based on practical rather than moral or ideological considerations
3.A usually expansionist national policy having as its sole principle advancement of the national interest.


German: real, _practical_ (from Latinreal) + Politik, _politics_ (from French politique, political, policy)

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## Uncle Fester

Shiboleth- "A language useage that distinguishes the members of one group from another" :)

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## ksquared

*pastiche* (pa-stEsh',) noun
Listen to the pronunciation: WAV format or AU format

The pastiche offered at the theater last night was not to your liking. It was

a.) a ridiculous mix of ideas and themes borrowed from many different sources.
b.) a licorice-flavored liqueur served in a tall glass.
c.) a dull performance.






And the answer is: a

1. a literary, musical, or artistic piece consisting wholly or chiefly of motifs or techniques borrowed from one or more sources. 
2. an incongruous combination of materials, forms, motifs, etc., taken from different sources; hodgepodge (like the word for the day or some of the threads??).

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## ksquared

*refractory*  (re-frac-to-ry) adj. and  noun  "_ies" _ 

THe behavior of many an opticians dog could best be described as refractory

    a.) eager to please, quickly caughting on to everything the owners tried to   teach them.
b.) lazy old mutts who  could barely be bothered to rouse themselves for a walk, even if tempted with a "yummie".
c.) stubbornly refusing to obey, snarling at friend and foe alike, and causing unmentionable damage to the office furnishings.
d.) possessing highly developed problem solving skills, making them a welcome addition to any practice.





And the answer is:
_
 adj._  
*1.* hard or impossible to manage; stubbornly disobedient: _a refractory child._ 
*2.* resisting ordinary methods of treatment. 
*3.* _Obs._difficult to fuse, reduce, or work, as an ore or metal. 

_n._ 
*1.* a material having the ability to retain its physical shape and chemical identity when subjected to high temperatures. 
*2. refractories,* bricks of various shapes used in lining furnaces.

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## ksquared

*ossify*  (os-si-fy) verb

The government official gave an ossified   performance at the press conference. 

a.) He repeated the same old talking points again and again, never diverging from his original message.
b.) With one flamboyant and outrageous comment after another, he   alternately amused and scandalized the audience.
c.) The dullness of his monotone was equaled by the   vacuity of his words.





And the answer is:
*a.* to become rigid or inflexible in habits, attitudes, opinions, etc. 

_I began to ossify right after college._

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## ksquared

*Supertonic*  (su-per-ton-ic)   - noun 

Listen to the pronunciation: WAV format or AU format

*You're having trouble reaching a supertonic**. Why?*

   a.) Mom always keeps the best soda pop on the top shelf.
b.) You strained your voice singing that aria at the opera last night.
c.) Your computer does not have a fast enough modem.







And the answer is:b
the second tone of a diatonic scale, being the next above the tonic.

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## ksquared

*quisling * (quis-ling) noun   
-- Listen to the pronunciation: WAV format or AU format

    "You quisling!" Karen cried,

   a.) "Weaklings like you have no business climbing high altitude mountains and endangering the rest of us!"
b.) "How could you abandon the Socialist Club of Central High School and join the Future Investment Bankers of America?!" *
c.) "How dare you consider yourself an optician when you dont even know how to line up the OC with my pupil.





And the answer is: b
"a person who betrays his or her own country by aiding an invading enemy, often serving later in a puppet government; fifth columnist"

 Don't like the word "quisling", use one of these instead:
apostate, back-stabber, backslider, Benedict Arnold, betrayer, conspirator, copperhead, deceiver, defector, deserter, double-crosser, fifth columnist, fink, hypocrite, imposter, informer, intriguer, Judas, miscreant, narc, plotter, *quisling*, rat, rat fink, rebel, renegade, snake, sneak, snitch, snitcher, spy, squealer, stool pigeon, stoolie, tattletale, traducer, treasonist, turncoat, two-timer, whistle-blower, wolf

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## ksquared

*polemic* (pu-lem ik) noun

-- Listen to the pronunciation: WAV format or AU format

With impeachment already decided in the House, the senator went on a polemic about whether to call witnesses for the Senate trial. The senator is now on

a.) a brief vacation arranged by the White House travel office.
b.) a mild antidepressant medication designed to curb erratic behavior.
c.) probation because of his aggressive, excoriating rant.








And the answer is : c

* 1.* a controversial argument, as one against some opinion, doctrine, etc. 
*2.* a person who argues in opposition to another; controversialist.

_adj._ 
Also,*polem'ical.*of or pertaining to a polemic; controversial.

_"I'd prefer drugs instead", said he._

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## ksquared

*occultation * (okul-t*A*sh_u_n)   noun

   -- Listen to the pronunciation: WAV format or AU format

 You're an amateur astronomer and photographer known for your expertise and for your time-released photos of solar eclipses. Occultation is particularly exciting to observe because:

   a.) It is the only time the signs of the zodiac become visible.
b.) The movement of the moon prevents you from seeing the sun.
c.) It is accompanied by a humming sound believed to be   the hum of the universe.






And the answer is "b".

*1.* _Astron._the passage of one celestial body in front of another, thus hiding the other from view: applied esp. to the moon's coming between an observer and a star or planet. 
*2.* disappearance from view or notice. 
*3.* the act of blocking or hiding from view. 
*4.* the resulting hidden or concealed state.

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## ksquared

*parallax * (par _u  _  laks) noun
-- Listen to the pronunciation: WAV format or AU format

          Uncle Mike finds parallax to be most useful to him
 a.) after he eats.
b.) when he's disciplining the hounds.
c.) when Aunt May starts throwing plates at him.






And the answer is "c"  _(pass the plate)_
 *1.* the apparent displacement of an observed object due to a change in the position of the observer. 
2. _Astron._the apparent angular displacement of a celestial body due to its being observed from the surface instead of from the center of the earth (diurnal parallax or geocentric parallax) or due to its being observed from the earth instead of from the sun (annual parallax or heliocentric parallax). Cf. parallactic ellipse. 
*3.* the difference between the view of an object as seen through the picture-taking lens of a camera and the view as seen through a separate viewfinder. 
*4.* an apparent change in the position of cross hairs as viewed through a telescope, when the focusing is imperfect.

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## ksquared

*terpsichore* (turp-sik' _u_-rE) noun

"With the help of my muse *Terpsichore*," she cried, "I have once again created a work of astonishing genius!" 

a.) The choreographer leaned back in his chair, exhausted and exhilarated after completing the dance.
b.) The poet then cast his eyes lovingly back to his poem, in awe of his own lyric brilliance.
c.) The thief marveled at the sophistication and audacity of his magnificent plan to rob the Federal Reserve.




And the answer is: a

*1.* _Class. Myth._ the Muse of dancing and choral song. 
*2.* _(l.c.)_ choreography; the art of dancing.

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## ksquared

*TROGLODYTE* \TRAHG-luh-dyte\ noun

1 : a member of any of various peoples (as in antiquity) who lived or were reputed to live chiefly in caves
*2 : a person characterized by reclusive habits or outmoded or reactionary attitudes

Example sentence:
Instead of acting like troglodytes, it's would be more productive to embrace the changes takibng place in teh Industry and look for new opportinities. 

Did you know? 
Peer into the etymological cave of "troglodyte" and you'll find a "trogle." But don't be afraid. "Trogle" may sound like a scary cave-dwelling ogre, but it's actually just a perfectly unintimidating Greek root that means "hole" or "cave." Is "troglodyte" the only English word to have descended from "trogle"? Not exactly. "Troglodyte" and its related adjective "troglodytic" (meaning "of, related to, or being a troglodyte") are the only "trogle" offspring that are widely used in general English contexts, but another "trogle" progeny, the prefix "troglo-," meaning "cave-dwelling," is used in scientific contexts to form words like "troglobiont" ("an animal living in or restricted to caves").

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## ksquared

*glower* \GLOW-er ("OW" as in "cow")\ verb: to look or stare with sullen annoyance or anger

Example sentence:
Mariah crossed her arms and glowered at Jeff, making it perfectly clear that she'd had enough of his teasing.

Did you know?
Do words of uncertain origin make you scowl? If so, "glower" may put a frown on your face, because only part of its history can be validated. The well-established part of its story leads us to Scotland, where "glower" (or "glowren," to use the older Scottish form of the word) has been used since the late Middle Ages. Originally, the word meant simply "to look intently" or "to stare in amazement," but by the late 1700s, glowering stares were being associated with anger instead of astonishment. Beyond that, however, the history of the word is murky. The most we can say is that "glower" is a distant relative of Middle Low German "gluren," which means "to be overcast," and of Middle Dutch "gloeren," meaning "to leer."

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## ksquared

*parietal* \puh-RYE-uh-tul\ adjective 

1 a : of or relating to the walls of a part or cavity b : of, relating to, or forming the upper posterior wall of the head
2 : attached to the main wall rather than the axis or a cross wall of a plant ovary
3 : of or relating to college living or its regulation

Example sentence:
The college's parietal rules allow for coed dormitories.

Did you know?
Fifteenth-century scientists first used "parietal" (from Latin "paries," meaning "wall of a cavity or hollow organ") to describe a pair of bones of the roof of the skull between the frontal and posterior bone. Later, "parietal" was also applied to structures connected to or found in the same general area as these bones; the parietal lobe, for example, is the middle division of each hemisphere of the brain. In the 19th century, botanists adopted "parietal" as a word for ovules and placentas attached to the walls of plant ovaries. It was also in the 19th century that "parietal" began to be heard on college campuses, outside of the classroom; in 1837, Harvard College established the Parietal Committee to be in charge of "all offences against good order and decorum within the walls."

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## ksquared

*EXTEMPORANEOUS (ex·tem·po·ra·ne·ous)* adj.
1.Carried out or performed with little or no preparation; impromptu: an extemporaneous piano recital.
2.Prepared in advance but delivered without notes or text: an extemporaneous speech.
3.Skilled at or given to unrehearsed speech or performance: an accomplished extemporaneous speaker.
3.Provided, made, or adapted as an expedient; makeshift: an extemporaneous policy decision.

Example Sentance:

"Rinselberg is good at finding extemporaneous stuff." http://www.optiboard.com/forums/showthread.php?t=12614

Although this statement is true (Rinselbeg "is" good at finding stuff), the adjective used to describe the stuff Rinselberg finds is incorrect. "Finding" involves performing a search or doing some research which is quite differant than the _impromptu, unrehersed,__ unpremeditated,__ ad-lib,_ and_ spontaneous_ nature of the word *extemporaneous*_.
_
 see also:*
ex·tempo·ra·nei·ty n.* *
ex·tempo·rane·ous·ly adv. 
* *ex·tempo·rane·ous·ness n.*

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## Don Lee

*Emmetropia* (em-uh-TROH-pee-uh). Refractive state of having no refractive error when accommodation is at rest. Images of distant objects are focused sharply on the retina without the need for either accommodation or corrective lenses. 

In other words, we ain't needed.  :cry:  

Don

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## Don Lee

*presbyopia* (prez-bee-OH-pee-uh). Refractive condition in which there is a diminished power of accommodation arising from loss of elasticity of the crystalline lens, as occurs with aging. Usually becomes significant after age 45. 

Don

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## ksquared

*trammel*  (TRAM-uhl) 

noun: Something that impedes activity, progress, or freedom, as a net or shackle.

transitive verb:To entangle, as in a net; to enmesh or to hamper; to hinder the activity, progress, or freedom of. 

 A trammel fishing net traditionally has three layers, with the middle one finer-meshed and slack so that fish passing through the first net carry some of the center net through the coarser third net and are trapped. Appropriately, "trammel" traces back to the Late Latin "tremaculum," which comes from Latin "tres," meaning "three," and "macula," meaning "mesh." Today, "trammels" is synonymous with "restraints," and "trammel" is also used as a verb meaning "to confine" or "to enmesh." You may also run across the adjective "untrammeled," meaning "not confined or limited."

I feel she dances a symbol of human happiness as it should be, free from unnatural *trammels*. 
 --John Sloan, quoted in New York Modern, by William B. Scott and Peter M. Rutkoff

    In fact, corporate governance is based on the belief that managers (like anyone else) work best not when their freedom is *trammelled* but when they are made to account for what they do with it. 
 --"The way ahead," The Economist, January 29, 1994

    It is quite inconsistent to claim to promote an enterprise society on the one hand and to *trammel* it with regulations on the other. 
 --Sir Iain Vallance, quoted in "Stop squeezing business, CBI," by Charlotte Denny and Michael White, Guardian, May 22, 2002

 And it encourages the coercive use of political power to wipe out choice, forbid experimentation, shortcircuit feedback, and *trammel* progress. 
 --Virginia Postrel, The Future and Its Enemies

 Ive decided to abandon those miserable *trammels* of reason and post a comment. --Ignis Fatuus, Optiboard Conversation Forum,

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## ksquared

*ABSQUATULATE* (ab- skwa - tu - late)To make off, decamp, or abscond.

   Online shopping is absquatulating my profits.

 The 1830sa period of great vigour and expansiveness in the USwas also a decade of inventiveness in language, featuring a fashion for word play, obscure abbreviations, fanciful coinages, and puns. Only a few inventions of that period have survived to our times, such as _sockdologer_, _skedaddle_ and _hornswoggle_. Among those that havent lasted the distance were _blustrification_ (the action of celebrating boisterously), _goshbustified_ (excessively pleased and gratified), and _dumfungled_ (used up).

_Absquatulate_ has had a good run and is still to be found in modern American dictionaries. It was common enough that it became one of the favourite _bêtes noires_ of writers on style in the latter part of the century. One such was Walton Burgess, who wrote _Five Hundred Mistakes of Daily Occurrence in Speaking Pronouncing and Writing the English Language, Corrected_, a title sufficient in itself to make the strongest heart quail. He included the word in a list of those to avoid, with this evocative example of it in action: He has absquatulated, and taken the specie with him. He remarked disdainfully that  absconded is a more classical word.

   A writer in the New Orleans _Weekly Picayune_ in December 1839 noted that the origin of the word lay in _squat_, to which had been added the Latin _ab_ (from _abscond_), meaning off, away, and the verb ending _ulate_ (borrowed from words like _perambulate_), so making a word meaning to get up and depart quickly. Or, as a writer in the old _Vanity Fair_ magazine in 1875 elaborated: They dusted, vamosed the ranch, made tracks, cut dirt, hoed it out of there.

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## ksquared

*BLATHERSKITE (bla  ther  skite)*
A noisy talker of blatant rubbish; foolish talk or nonsense.

   "You can avoid the blatherskites by adding them to your ignore list but than you wouldnt be able to read this." 

This is actually a Scots word known from the seventeenth century on. These days, though, its more American than either British or Scots. That came about through one of those curious accidents of linguistic history that make the study of etymology such fun.

   Both halves of the word seem to be from Old Norse. _Blether_ is a Scots word meaning loquacious claptrap, which comes from Old Norse _blathra_, to talk nonsense; it exists in various forms now, such as _blather_ or _blither_ (if you call someone a _blithering idiot_,  youre using the same word). _Skate_ (_skite_, as Australians and New Zealanders will know it) is more problematic, but is the Scots word for a person held in contempt because of his boasting, which may derive from an Old Norse word meaning to shoot (and, if true, is probably the origin of the American _skeet_, as in _skeet shooting_, so that phrase actually means shoot shooting).

_Blatherskite_ is first recorded in an old Scots ballad called _Maggie Lauder_, attributed to Francis Sempill (or Semple) and dated about 1643, still well known today. 

The song was pleasantly risqué (the piper, for instance, explains how all the girls swoon when he blows his chanter) and was very popular with the American side in the War of Independence. This introduced _bletherskate_, later _blatherskite_, to the American vocabulary, where it has remained ever since, albeit hardly on everyones lips daily.


 <http://www.worldwidewords.org/>

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## ksquared

*CATARACT*: A large waterfall; a medical condition of the eye.

      So how did this word end up with two completely different meanings?    

It originated with the Greek word  _kataraktes_, meaning something that is rushing or swooping down which is a derivative of _katarassein_, from _kata_ down plus _arassein_ strike.  There are several words whose first element comes from _kata_, including _cataclysm_, _catapult_, _catalepsy_, _catalogue_ and _catastrophe_.

 The Greek word applied to a number of things that rush down, including a swooping bird and a waterfall. It was transferred into Latin in the form _cataracta_ and in that language could refer to a waterfall, a flood-gate or a portcullis (the vertical grated gate to a castle which could be dropped to bar entrance). 

   But than from about the middle of the sixteenth century, _cataract_ also began to be applied to the medical condition in which the lens of the eye goes progressively opaque. It seems that doctors were using the word as a simile for something that stopped light entering the eye. An older expression for the same condition was _web in the eye_, so the name was most likely derived from the barred structure of the portcullis or window grating, rather than as a physical barrier. It sounds improbable, but nobody seems to have come up with a better explanation.


http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-cat1.htm

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## ksquared

*DACTYLONOMY* (dack-till-ON-oh-mee) n.:  The art of counting on the fingers. . The word is from Greek _daktulos_, finger, plus _nomia_, related to _nomos_, law, that we use to mark some specified area of knowledge.

 When the coach discovered his players could only count to 10 when in uniform, he insisted they enroll in the dactylonomy class.

 Every finger has a knuckle, two joints and three bones (one joint and two bones for the thumb) and all of them, on both hands, can be used to count up to 9,999. This system can be extended to represent numbers up to one million by positioning the hands in different ways upon different parts of the body.

 How it works: 
Divide each hand into two parts: on the left hand, the middle, ring and little fingers represent the numbers 1 to 9 while the thumb and index fingers represent the tens. On the right hand, the thumb and index fingers represent the hundreds while the remaining three fingers represent the thousands.

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## ksquared

*FLIBBERTIGIBBET* (FLIB-ur-tee-jib-it) n:  A silly, flighty, or scatterbrained person, especially a pert young woman with such qualities.

You have to be a flibbertigibbet if you post on a daily basis. I think Ill use dactylonomy to determine how many of us there are."

This is the foul fiend Flibbertigibbet: he begins at curfew, and walks till the first ****; he gives the web and the pin, squints the eye, and makes the hare-lip; mildews the white wheat, and hurts the poor creature of earth. --King Lear, iii. 4.

Although theres a risk of tripping over all those syllables, this is a great word to use on occasion. The original seems to have been recorded about 1450 as _fleper-gebet_, which may have been just an imitation of the sound of meaningless speech (_babble_ and _yadda-yadda-yadda_ have similar origins). It started out to mean a gossip or chattering person, but quickly seems to have taken on the idea of a flighty or frivolous woman. 

 A century later it had become respectable enough for Bishop Latimer to use it in a sermon before King Edward VI, though he wrote it as _flybbergybe_. 

The modern spelling is due to Shakespeare, who borrowed it from one of the 40 fiends listed in a book by Samuel Harsnet in 1603. In _King Lear_ Edgar uses it for a demon or imp.

There has been yet a third sense, taken from a character of Sir Walter Scotts in _Kenilworth_, for a mischievous and flighty small child. But despite Shakespeare and Scott, the most usual sense is still the original one.

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## RGC_man

*Blackguard.* We argued about this for weeks at work until someone (me) finally bought a decent dictionary. I thought it was Irish slang for a scoundrel, but it turns out that a blackguard was the lowest servant in the house, responsible for the pots and pans. Not sure when it changed its meaning.

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## ksquared

RGC_Man - I beleive that you were more correct before you purchased your dictionary, just a couple of centuries too late.

 *BLACKGUARD* (blag-gard)A man who behaves in a dishonourable or contemptible way.

 "Its sad that this contemptuous term for a scoundrel has fallen out of use, since it carries a big punch. Our usual pronunciation as blaggard obscures its curious composition. Who or what was the _blackguard_ that got itself such a dreadful reputation? "

1535  the term originally referred to the low menials, scullions or kitchen-knaves in a royal or noble household who looked after the pots and pans and other kitchen utensils. Nobody knows for sure why they were said to be blackperhaps the colour of the pots literally or figuratively rubbed off on them. A slightly later sense is of the rabble that followed an army about**: the servants, camp-followers and general hangers-on (here _black_ presumably has its common derogatory sense). There seems to be a third sense, which refers to a guard of attendants or soldiers who were dressed in black; its possible that there really was a Black Guardso calledat Westminster about this time (there are account records that refer to them, but nobody has any idea who they actually were).

1700 - the meaning was changed to a term used for the children and young people who made a living any way they could, either as boot blacks or general assistants to soldiers (presumably this was a joke on the literal form of the word).

 1730  changed again to the highly offensive term for a scoundrel or villain, or any low worthless minor criminal. THe original meaning was long forgotten.

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## RGC_man

Thanks for the clarification. I was thinking today my post wasn't very precise.

Here's another purely for the pronunciation:

*Plano.* It was strange during an American holiday walking into a Lenscrafters lab at random and hearing the technician talking about "play-no" lenses instead of the British "plah-no".

You say tomato, I say tomato...

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## ksquared

you say tomato, I say potato - Dan Quail VP 1986

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## ksquared

*FAINEANT* (fay-nay-AHNG the final "NG" is not pronounced, but the vowel is nasalized)adj: idle and ineffectual : indolent

 Karen preferred a life of fainéant self-indulgence to the pressures of a career in optometry, and her on-line business made such a life possible.

 You've probably guessed that "faineant" was borrowed from French; it derives from "fait-nient," which literally means "does nothing," and ultimately traces back to the verb "faindre," or "feindre," meaning "to feign." (The English word "feign" is also descended from this verb, as are "faint" and "feint.") "Faineant" first appeared in print in the early 17th century as a noun meaning "an irresponsible idler," and by 1854 it was also being used an adjective. As its foreignness suggests, "faineant" tends to be used when the context calls for a fancier or more elegant word than "inactive" or "sluggish."

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## ksquared

*GROZE* - To nibble away the edges of a brittle material, especially glass.

 This word doesnt seem to appear in any of the dictionaries but is a relatively common word among craftspeople who work in glass. It refers to the action of taking small bites from the edge of a piece of glass with nippers or pliers to trim it to shape. Since no etymological information is directly available, one can assume its derived from the same source as _grozing-iron_, a term which the _Oxford English Dictionary_ says is long obsolete but which in the nineteenth century was the name for the tool with which glaziers cut glass. This came from the Dutch _gruizen_, to crush or grind. Its very prossible that the English verb has been around for at least a century, but since its a term limited to one pursuit (a trade term) it hasnt achieved enough circulation for publishers to justify adding it to dictionaries.


http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords

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## ksquared

*HYPNOBIOSCOPE* (hyp-no-bio-scope) - A fictional device for learning while asleep.

 Adjusting nose pads and complaining about the evil empire left so little time for improving our education that our office manager installed a hypnobioscope in the break room. ;)

 This word was invented by Hugo Gernsback who is commemorated in the Hugo Awards, one of SFs annual prizes. In 1908, Gernsback started publishing his science-based stories in his magazine _Modern Electrics_ for which he coined the term _scientifiction_ that has thankfully not survived. 

   In 1911-12 he wrote and published a serial with the snappy title _Ralph 124C 41+_, set 750 years in the future. Ralph was one of the greatest living scientists and one of ten men on the whole planet earth permitted to use the Plus sign after his name.The writing was appalling and the plot mundaneRalph falls in love with a beautiful young woman and saves her from the clutches of an evil fellow scientistbut as part of the story, Gernsback has him invent a remarkable device: It remained to Ralph, however, to perfect the Hypnobioscope, which transmitted words direct to the sleeping brain in such a manner that everything could be remembered in detail the next morning. This was made possible by having the impulses act directly and steadily on the brain. For thousands of years humanity had wasted half of its life during sleepthe negative life.

 This was the first reference in print to the idea that several decades later became known as sleep learning or hypnopaedia, an indirect method of playing recordings to people while they were asleep. (Greek _hupnos_, sleep, plus _paideia_, education; the term was first used by Aldous Huxley in _Brave New World_ in 1932).

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## RGC_man

Is *grozing* similar to *shanking*? 

Old 'uns will know what I'm talking about.

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## ksquared

*INTERROBANG* (in·ter·ro·bang) n.: A punctuation mark in the form of a question mark superimposed on an exclamation point, used to end a simultaneous question and exclamation.

This punctuation mark is not yet standard, and probably never will be. It was invented in 1962 through the actions of Martin Speckter, head of a New York advertising agency. He felt that advertising people needed a mark that combined a question with a shout, that mixture any parent produces at stressful moments: "You did WHAT?!". His idea was to provide a marker for the rhetorical questions so much favoured by advertising copywriters. He asked readers of his magazine _Type Talks_ to suggest a name for the character, and chose _interrobang_ from among the resulting entries. 

 It combined _interrogation_, for the question mark, with _bang_, an old printers term for the exclamation mark, a usage since taken over into computing (along with _pling_ and _shriek_ from other sources). Alas, though _interrobang_ received some attention at first, it has never caught on, though for a brief period in the 1960s it was added to a few typewriter keyboards. However, it is not dead: its name appears in a couple of American dictionaries, it is in one Windows symbol font I know of, and it is also in the Unicode character set.

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## ksquared

*nonagenarian*  (non-uh-juh-NAIR-ee-uhn) _noun_:
A ninety year old person; someone whose age is in the nineties. 

   There seemed to be relatively few octogenarians and *nonagenarians* alive in the early 1930s. Contrast that with my current practice, in which I see a great number of patients in their eighties and nineties. -Stephen L. Richmond, "Tales from the Death Certificate," Physician Assistant, January 1999

   Good health is essential, of course--a gift that none of these *nonagenarians*, having outlived friends and loved ones, takes for granted. -Roy Huffman, "Working Past 90," Fortune, November 13, 2000

    When they have what they believe to be a slam dunk they drive it home like a blind *nonagenarian* through a farmers market in Santa Monica.  Carl Oda  Feeling the Pressage Optiboard June 7th 2005

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## ksquared

*KELEMENOPY* (ke-lem-en-opy) n.: A sequential straight line through the middle of everything, leading nowhere.

 Do not seek this word in your dictionary of choice. It will not be there. This is a recent example of what Walter Skeat called _ghost words_. He coined the term in 1886 when he wrote about the problems of compiling a dictionary. He described them as words which had never any real existence, being mere coinages due to the blunders of printers or scribes, or to the perfervid imaginations of ignorant or blundering editors.

 Today's word falls into a sub-category of _hoaxing ghost words_ that are admitted not to exist. It was coined by John Ciardi, the American poet, in _A Browsers Dictionary_ in 1980. He said it was from my own psychic warp, to see if anyone would notice, and because I have always dreamed of fathering a word. (Havent we all?) The genesis of his creation was the sequence _klmnop_ from the centre of the alphabet, with ten letters before and ten after it, which Mr Ciardi described as a strictly sequential irrelevance.

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## ksquared

*unctuous*   \UNK-chuh-wus\   adjective 
1a : fatty, oily  
1b : smooth and greasy in texture or appearance  
2 : plastic  
3 : revealing or marked by a smug, ingratiating, and false earnestness or spirituality

"The unctuous optician tried every gimmick in the book, trying to get the her to spend more of her ample supply of money. But she was not impressed and insisted on poly in a cheap plastic frame." 

Nowadays, "unctuous" has a negative connotation, but it originated in a term describing a positive act, that of healing. The word comes from the Latin verb "unguere," which means "to anoint," a root that also gave rise to the words "unguent" and "ointment." The oily nature of ointments may have led to the application of "unctuous" to describe things that are afflicted with an artificial gloss of sentimentality. An unctuous individual may mean well, but his or her insincere earnestness may leave an unwelcome residue with others, much like some ointments.

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## ksquared

*MACILENT* (ma-sil-ent) adj.: Lean, shriveled, or excessively thin.

 This word was marked as rare in dictionaries a century ago and has become even more so since, though it retains a niche in elevated or pretentious prose. Its from Latin _macilentus_, lean. In 1851 a writer used it to describe an over worked optician at the end of a very long day: of whom I could recollect nothing but a *macilent* figure, stretched upon a sofa and scarcely breathing. 

 It can also have a figurative sense that refers to poor-quality or inferior writing. A reviewer of Opti-board posts once described one of the responses to a controversial subject to be as lost and *macilent* and alluring and eager to please and disturbingly empty-eyed as the author.

 A more common use is as an adjective describing the inherent properties of a lens material. The stinking rich, once they have bathed, prefer a *macilent* lens and are quite willing to pay a little extra, assuming they can find a qualified optician who can justify the cost. 

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## ksquared

*MAKEBATE -* A person who creates contention or strife.

 Weve all met people like this, whose chief aim or pleasure is to spread discord and disharmony. Sir Walter Scott was a great user of this word, as here in _The Abbot_ (1820): *Elsewhere he may be an useful and profitable member of the commonwealhere he is but a makebate, and a stumbling-block of offence*.

   Somebody who is a _makebate_ is clearly making a bate. The second half survives today in _abate_ and _debate_; it comes from Latin _battere_, to beat or fight. As a noun, _bate_ described discord that was severe enough to result in a fight.

   British readers might think they recognise in this another form of _bate_, a fit of rage or bad temper, an example of which appeared in the _Daily Mail_ in January 2004: *Shrieking with simulated frustration, Clarkson flew into a bate, picked up a hammer and smashed his desktop to smithereens*. But the evidence suggests this _bate_ derives from a nineteenth-century respelling of the verb _bait_, to persecute a person with persistent attacks, so that a person was said to be in a bate as a result of being baited.

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## chip anderson

Makebate:  Is this an old synonym for Democratic Senator?

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## ksquared

Chip wrote:



> Makebate:  Is this an old synonym for Democratic Senator?


I beleive you may be thinking of *MUGWUMP* - A person who remains aloof from controversial issues.

 This archetypal American word derives from the Algonquian dialect of a group of Native Americans in Massachusetts. In their language, it meant great chief. 

*Mugwump* was brought into English in the early nineteenth century as a humorous term for a boss, bigwig, grand panjandrum, or other person in authority, often one of a minor and inconsequential sort. This example comes from a story in an 1867 issue of _Atlantic Monthly_: Ive got one of your gang in irons  the Great *Mugwump* himself, I reckon  strongly guarded by men armed to the teeth; so you just ride up here and surrender.

 The word hit the big time in 1884, during the presidential election that set Grover Cleveland against the Republican James G Blaine. Some Republicans refused to support Blaine, changed sides, and the _New York Sun_ labelled them *little mugwumps*. Later, it came to mean a politician who either could not or would not make up his mind on some important issue, or who refused to take a stand when expected to do so. Hence the old joke that a* mugwump* is a person sitting on the fence, with his *mug* on one side and his *wump* on the other.

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## ksquared

*MULLIGRUBS* - A state of depression or low spirits.

   "All this talk about makebates and mugwumps, put me into a mulligrub."

   If makebates and mugwumps didnt get your goat, than mulligrubs will most assuredly do the trick..

Its not altogether certain where this strange-looking word comes from. The first spelling, which appears at the end of the sixteenth century, is _mulliegrums_. That may be a fanciful form of the older _megrims_ for a headache, an English contortion of the French _migraine_. By the sixteenth century _megrims_ could refer to somebody suffering from low spirits, the same sense as _mulligrubs_ then had. Later, _mulligrubs_ could be used humorously for an attack of colic or stomach-ache.

 You will find it only in the most comprehensive of modern dictionaries, as it is now rarely encountered outside some British dialects. Thats a pity, as it deserves wider circulation. Heres an example, dated 1898, from _Brann The Iconoclast_ by William Cowper Brann: 

It is easy enough to say that a pessimist is a person afflicted with an incurable case of mulligrubsone whom nothing in all earth or Heaven or Hades pleases; one who usually deserves nothing, yet grumbles if he gets it.

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## ksquared

*NESCIENT* - Ignorant.

 This is a most useful word, unknown to most people, with which you may bait your opponents: if they dont know the word, then their ignorance is doubly obvious. It comes from Latin _nescire_, to be ignorant, from _scire_, to know. This is the same Latin stem that bequeathed us _nice_, a word which has gone through more shifts of sense than almost any other, but which started out meaning foolish or stupid.

_Nescient_ is rare, though it appears in _Ulysses_ by James Joyce, in which he speaks of the lethargy of *nescient* matter. The noun, _nescience_, is somewhat more common; G K Chesterton used it in _The Innocence of Father Brown_: 


 Flambeau had been missed at Harwich; and if he was in London at all, he might be anything from a tall tramp on Wimbledon Common to a tall toast-master at the Hotel Metropole. In such a naked state of *nescience*, Valentin had a view and a method of his own.

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## ksquared

*OMPHALOSKEPSIS* - contemplating ones navel as an aid to meditation.

 This word seems to be relatively new, at least the Merriam-Webster Word of the Day column claims it to have been invented only in the 1920s. It turns up in only a few dictionaries and seems to be a word that survives more for the chance to show off ones erudition than as a real aid to communication. If so, this article is a further perpetuation of its unreal status. It is formed from two Greek words, _omphalos_, navel, boss, hub, and _skepsis_, the act of looking; enquiry. The former turns up in words such as _omphalotomy_, cutting of the umbilical cord, in the related _omphalopsychic_ for one of a group of mystics who practised gazing at the navel as a means of inducing hypnotic reverie, and _omphalomancy_, an ancient form of divination in which the number of children a woman would bear was determined from counting the knots in her umbilical cord at birth.

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## ksquared

*PARALIPSIS* - A rhetorical device.

 There are so many technical terms in rhetoricaporia, hypallage, paraprosdokian, and zeugma are just a fewthat I need to look them up as I cant seem to keep them in mind. If I had wanted to learn a stack of weird words, Id have taken up optometry. 

Paralipsis is a kind of irony, a rhetorical trick by which the speaker or writer emphasizes something by professing to ignore it. Key phrases that give you the clue to an approaching paralipsis include not to mention, to say nothing of, leaving aside, without considering, and far be it from me to mention. For example:

 "It would be unseemly for me dwell on the Evil Empires forward thinking business plan to bring both quality and profit back into the industry." 

"Far be it from me to mention that some people will fail to see the writing on the wall." 

 "Surely I need not remind any of us that some people are more focused on making the most amount of profit instead of aquiring an in depth understanding of the products they are selling."

   "It would be most inappropriate for me to point out the shortcomings of some of the opticians Ive surveyed to date."   

"Lets not even mention that the lack of national standards may not be the real issue."

 "I would never question whether profit is the determining factor in how well the patient will see as apposed to the measuring capabilities of the optician."

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## ksquared

*PEBKAC* (peb-cack) noun  an IT term for a problem that exists between keyboard and chair.

   Example Sentence: "The least reliable and most generally irksome component of a computer system is the warm soft one that spends its time staring at the monitor."

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## RGC_man

*Rimlesses.* Is this a word? I suppose it depends if *rimless* is a noun or adjective. Didn't sound right when a colleague used it at work today.

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## ksquared

> *RCG_man writes: 
> Rimlesses.* Is this a word? I suppose it depends if *rimless* is  a noun or adjective. Didn't sound right when a colleague used it at work  today.


 *RIMLESS* (rim-less) adjective  
If you are an optician: 
lacking a rim or frame rimless glasses

*RIMLESS* (rim-less) noun   
If you are a hunter: 
A type of cartridge with an extraction groove cut into the base of the case, allowing the base to be the same diameter as the head.

*RIMLESS* (rim-less)  objectative 
If you are clueless and rude at times: 
ksquared

*RIMLESS'* -  "plural"

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## ksquared

*elucidate*   \ih-LOO-suh-dayt\   verb
     1 : to make lucid especially by explanation or analysis 
    *2 : to give a clarifying explanation

Example sentence:
Karen was asked to elucidate a bit for those in the audience who weren't up-to-date on the latest research.

To "elucidate" is to make something clear that was formerly murky or confusing -- and it is perfectly clear how the modern term got that meaning. "Elucidate" traces to the Latin term "lucidus," which means "lucid." "Lucidus" in turn descends from the verb "lucere," meaning "to shine." So "elucidating" can be thought of as the figurative equivalent of shining a light on something to make it easier to see. "Lucere" has also produced other shining offspring in English. Among its descendants are "lucid" itself (which can mean "shining," "clear-headed," or "easily understood"), "lucent" (meaning "giving off light" or "easily seen through"), and "translucent" (meaning "partly transparent" or "clear enough for light to pass through").

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## ksquared

*TEMPORIZE*  (tem'p_u_-rīz"), _v.i., -rized, -rizing._
*
* In response to Frank's job offer, Karen temporized

 a.) realizing a girl had to be breathtakingly practical about such things, she demanded a complete accounting of his stores profits before she would answer.
b.) not sure whether she really wanted to spend any of her work days with Frank, Karen babbled on, delaying a final decision.
c.) this was the moment she had dreamed of her entire young life.

    And the answer is b.
1. to be indecisive or evasive to gain time or delay acting. 
 2. to comply with the time or occasion; yield temporarily or ostensibly to prevailing opinion or circumstances. 
 3. to treat or parley so as to gain time (usually fol. by _with_). 
 4. to come to terms (usually fol. by _with_). 
 5. to effect a compromise (usually fol. by _between_).

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## ksquared

*TETCHY*(TETCH-ee)adjective: irritably or peevishly sensitive; ie:touchy

Example sentence:
After learning how tetchy some of the participants could be, she stifled her urge to post an epigram lest she further offend any additional delicate sensibilities.

"Tetchy" is a word that may have been coined by Shakespeare -- its first known use in English occurs in _Romeo and Juliet_ (1592). Etymologists are not certain how the word came about, but some have suggested that it derives from "tetch," an obsolete noun meaning "habit." The similarity both in meaning and pronunciation to "touchy" might lead you to conclude that "tetchy" is related to it, but there is no conclusive evidence to suggest such a connection. The adjectives "teched" and "tetched," meaning "mentally unbalanced," are variations of "touched," and are probably also unrelated to "tetchy."

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## ksquared

One of the regular contributors is a self-proclaimed philosopher.  She produces reams of taradiddle. Her writing can be described as:

 a.) Old-fashioned and out of date.

 b.) Confessions of the self-absorbed.

 c.) Pretentious nonsense.








 And the answer is "c". 

 *TARADIDLE* (tar-a-did-dle) noun: pretentious nonsense.

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## ksquared

The students considered their teacher a *martinet* who

 a.) inspired them with his exceptional passion for and knowledge of his subject matter.

 b.) enjoyed punishing his students for the slightest infraction.

 c.) parroted the teaching methods of others and was devoid of creativity.







 And the answer is b

 *MARTINET* (mar-ti-net) noun
_Pronunciation:_ (mär"tn-et', mär'tn-et")

*1.* a strict disciplinarian, esp. a military one. 
*2.* someone who stubbornly adheres to methods or rules.

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## ksquared

*INSELBERG* (in-sul-berg) noun: an isolated mountain

Karen tied her hiking boots, adjusted her pack, and looked out across the distance at an inselberg rising abruptly from the flat plain surrounding it. "Not to worry", said she "I've been training all year and have the utmost confidance in my abilities".

"Inselberg," which first appeared in English in 1913, comes from the German words "Insel," meaning "island," and "Berg," meaning "mountain," apparently because German explorers thought isolated mountains rising from the plains of southern Africa looked like islands in the midst of the ocean. Geologically speaking, an inselberg is a hill of hard volcanic rock, such as granite, that has resisted wind and weather and remained strong and tall as the land around it eroded away. Ayers Rock and Olga Rocks in central Australia are two spectacular examples of inselbergs. The word "monadnock," derived from the name of Mount Monadnock in New Hampshire, is a synonym of "inselberg."

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## rinselberg

> *INSELBERG* (in-sul-berg) noun: an isolated mountain ...


Thanks for clearing that up!

-- R. Inselberg

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## hcjilson

> *INSELBERG* (in-sul-berg) noun: an isolated mountain
> 
> "



Count the day lost when you can't learn something new! That was good.....Very Good!
best to you both......hj

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## ksquared

*JILSON* (jill-son) n: American slang for a modern day Rip Van Winkle

 Although this word never reached a high degree of popularity, you can still find it used in some parts of the United States. Its one of those words whose origin is based on the name of a real person, Jilson Setters. 

 Jilson Setters, an obscure but talented optician, became a world famous fiddle player and songwriter in his later years. He apparently suffered from culture shock as a result of his exposure to modernity and it is thought that these brief but traumatic encounters were what drove him over the edge resulting in a dramatic career change. This spectacular event also provides credence to the adage that you can in fact teach an old dog a new trick and that past experiences can have some redeeming value. 

   The inspiration for the words of his most famous of all songs Up On An Inselberg was most likely based on his own peculiar past experiences. Sadly, not all of his tunes made it into the top 10, some of which never graced a single ear.  If I Only Had A Pal faded into audio obscurity as one of the most dismal failures of all time.  

*UP ON AN INSELBERG*
(to the tune of Drunken Hiccups which can be traced back
to even older variations of the same in the British Isles)
 
I tune up my fiddle, I rosin my bow
I make myself welcome wherever I go
I eat when Im hungry, I drink when Im dry
If hard times dont kill me, Ill earn til I die

Hiccup, oh lordy, how safe here I feel
Hiccup, oh lordy, how safe here I feel

I bought my own poly, I made my own lens
If I didnt get it right, Id make em again
You myops, you presbops, you were all friends of mine
You killed my competitors, but you dont trouble my mind

Hiccup, oh lordy, how clever I feel
Hiccup, oh lordy, how clever I feel

But all those picky myops refusing to budge
 Insisting on perfection no matter my nudge
 Those vain presbyopics, wanting tiny little glasses
 Starting me thinking they all must be asses
  
 Hiccup, oh lordy, how crazy I feel
Hiccup, oh lordy, how crazy I feel
 
    So way up on an inselberg, I now wander alone
 Im drunk as the devil and a long ways from home
 Let the evil empire have them for all that I care
 My profits all gone, no more of them to share
 
Hiccup, oh lordy, how goodly I feel
Hiccup, oh lordy, how goodly I feel

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## hcjilson

That is definitely the first and only time I've been one up on "Inselberg". It won't happen again anytime soon! :bbg: 

Outstanding job ksquared!

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## slaboff

LOL, wow that was funny

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## rinselberg

*agitprop*
n.
Political propaganda (especially, Communist propaganda) communicated in the form of literature, drama, cinema, visual art, music; etc.

_Many of Rinselberg's posts, promoting a distinctly neocon foreign policy agenda in the Just Conversation forum, were dismissed as mere agitprop by those with a different point of view._

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## hcjilson

> *agitprop*
> n.
> Political propaganda (especially, Communist propaganda) communicated in the form of literature, drama, cinema, visual art, music; etc.
> 
> _Many of Rinselberg's posts, promoting a distinctly neocon foreign policy agenda in the Just Conversation forum, were dismissed as mere agitprop by those with a different point of view._


Among whom I used to be one, however gradually, .......very gradually, he's bringing me around! :bbg:  :bbg:

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## ksquared

*AWFULIZE* (ah-full-ize) verb: to imagine or predict the worst circumstances or outcome. 

_       I believe its quite common to awfulize when the topic is foreigh policy. Fortunately there are always those who can de-awfulize the world to the full extent of the initial awfulness. The liberal response may be how come youre so wrong, my little neo-con, but this shouldnt mean we couldnt all be Pals._

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## ksquared

*NICE* (nice) adj:pleasing, agreeable, respectable, overdelicate, fastidious, polite 

  Baseball great Leo Durocher. Durocher played the infield for two decades, but he is better remembered as the manager who led the New York Giants to their 1954 World Series championship. He is also remembered for coining the phrase nice guys finish last, a tough-guy observation that he may or may not have spoken exactly that way and which he used as the title for his 1975 autobiography.

 Although these days, the _nice_ in _nice guy_ is considered praisethis is the sense of _nice_ synonymous with pleasant, agreeable, congenial, and favorablethese positive senses didnt develop until the early 1700s, centuries after _nice_ first appeared in print.

    So what did _nice_ mean for its first few hundred years of existence? Plenty of things. For starters, _nice_ shares a linguistic ancestor with the word _nescience,_ meaning ignorance; lack of knowledge or awareness. Earlier incarnations of (and influences on) _nice_ meant foolish, wanton, simpleminded, and stupid. That helps explain some of the other-than-_nice_ senses that once flourished: lewd, wanton, and dissolute; coy, modest, diffident, and reticent; lacking vigor, strength, or endurance; and lacking significance; trivial.

    For when mine hours
 Were nice and lucky, men did ransom lives
 Of me for jests (Shakespeare). 

    Ere...
 The nice Morn on th' Indian steep,
 From her cabin'd loop-hole peep (John Milton).

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## ksquared

*RIGHT* (right) adj., n., adv., v.intr.: so many meaning for such a little word or to put it another way, a little word that carries a big stick.

n.:That which is just, morally good, legal, proper, or fitting. _right_
adv.:In the proper or desired manner:_The frame  doesn't fit right._ 
v. tr.:To put in or restore to an upright or proper position: _They righted their boat._ 
v. intr.: To regain an up_right_ or proper position.

 And the list goes on and on. But the question I have for today is  how did the political _Right_ came to be known by that name? 

Let's begin by noting that when they are applied to politics, the terms _Right_ and _Left_ are more arbitrary than absolute. Although _right_ and _left_ are envisioned at opposite ends of an axis, political theorists question what is being measured along that axis: prioritizing equality on the left and liberty on the right? Economic security at one end and economic liberty at the other? You get the idea. 

 But lets get back to the origin of _Right_ (and, of course, _Left)._ Those senses originated in the legislative assemblies of the French Revolution, where royalists would sit on the right side of the chamber and the radical politicians would sit on the left. 

 Over the years and throughout the world, legislative seating and the political beliefs of the _Right_ have moved a few times, but most lexicographers of American English agree on this definition: the _Right_ refers to individuals who profess support of the established order and who favor traditional attitudes and practices and conservative governmental policies. 

 Of course, that leads to the question of just how to define _traditional attitudes_ and _conservative governmental policies_.  One could almost say "when you're _right_, you're _right_ but when you're left you're also _right_",  but luckily for you, I'm out of time.

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## ksquared

*BELABOR* (be·la·bor) tr.v.: To discuss repeatedly or at length; harp on: _Don't belabor the point_.

  Now if youre looking for a word to describe - one who spends an unnecessary amount of time explaining a commonly understood topic, Im afraid _belaborer_ (one who explains or insists on excessively) doesnt quit work.  Some people might use _a Karen_, but this term should only be used for those very special occasions (and this isnt one of them).   

No, the word I'm looking for describes someone who makes a point of explaining something very obvious, mistakenly thinking they are bringing exceptional clarity to an obvious situation. So why not use _platitudinarian_one given to banal, trite, or stale remarks - one might ask? Well, Im not quite sure this one is quite right either.

Other words that may come to mind are _preacher, patronizer_, and _proselytizer_, _condescender_, and _harper_  that is, one who harps.   Your own children might use _parent_.  

With so many choices it seemed a moot point consulting Ambrose Bierces Devils Dictionary and I suppose we would be guilty of belaboring the obvious to marvel over how very scathing this dictionary is. Plus it didnt have an exact match for what we were looking for either. It did, however, contain this superb definition for a word weve most likely used if only in our thoughts. _A bore_", which according to Bierce, is a person who talks when you wish him to listen.

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## ksquared

*CHIP* (chip) noun:
A      (cantankerous at times) master optician (see also rare or/and dying breed)A small piece of wood used to make pulp. Chips are made either from wood waste in a sawmill or pulpwood operation, or from pulpwood specifically cut for this purpose. Chips are larger and coarser than sawdust.A      triangular wooden float attached to the end of a log lineA      thin crisp slice of potato fried in deep fatA      piece of dried bovine dungA      mark left after a small piece has been chopped or broken off of      somethingA small crystal of a silicon semiconductor fabricated to carry out a number of electronic functions in an integrated circuitA      small round discs used instead of money at the poker table.A      tiny missing  pieceAn      image subset window, used in the correlation process.A lofted shot played from around the green. Usually played with a pitching wedge or a sand wedge where the hands do not pass hip height and the wrists hinge very little.Another name for a household. Big chip refers to the family of the eldest son, while little chip refers to the family households of the younger sons.The length of time it takes to transmit either a "0" or      a "1" in a binary pulse code. A program, established by the Balanced Budget Act, designed to provide health assistance to uninsured, low-income children either through separate programs or through expanded eligibility under state Medicaid programs.A      simple game language.A nickname He asked his friends to call him Chip to avoid confusion.

    He was so much like his Dad, everyone started calling him Chip.

    He could take a chip off the old block and grind it into a pair of lens.

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## RGC_man

*Nice.* I'm sure it was Jane Austen who thanked someone for scolding her in a _nice_ letter. And Chaucer used it to mean _wanton_.

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## rinselberg

accolade



"accolade" is a noun, meaning:

1.	
a.	An expression of approval; praise.
b.	A special acknowledgment; an award.

2.	A ceremonial embrace, as of greeting or salutation.
3.	Ceremonial bestowal of knighthood.

alternatively:

a tangible symbol signifying approval or distinction; "an award for bravery" [syn: award, honor, honour, laurels]


"accolade" can also be a transitive verb: 

To praise or honor: His works are invariably _accoladed_ as definitive even as they sparkle and spark (Malcolm S. Forbes). 


ETYMOLOGY

People usually have to stick their necks out to earn _accolades_, and this is as it should be. In tracing _accolade_ back to its Latin origins, we find that it was formed from the prefix_ ad-_, to, on, and the noun _collum_, neck, which may bring the word _collar_ to mind. From these elements came the Vulgar Latin word _accollre_, which was the source of French _accolade_, an embrace. An embrace was originally given to a knight when dubbing him, a fact that accounts for _accolade_ having the technical sense ceremonial bestowal of knighthood, the sense in which the word is first recorded in English in 1623.


USAGE

rinselberg's posts, all of which are accessible from the Home Page referenced in his User Profile, have won *accolades* from other OptiBoard members, including:




> What is this? :hammer:





> There's no box to check for *I can do without rinselberg entirely.*


and


> Rinselberg,
> 
> What *do* you *do* for a living? You seem to spend endless hours on OptiBoard being disagreeable, eccentric and just plain (insert the word). I don't understand why you would waste a post with this? I mean "Just Conversation" is just that: CONVERSATION. There is nothing to converse about with this.
> 
> Buddy, contribute or move along. I understand there are other chat boards and I would be happy to send you links to them. But either join in and play accordingly, or move along. I, for one, am getting really tired of your rhetoric!



Dictionary reference: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by the Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Also: WordNet ® 2.0, © 2003 Princeton University

----------


## chip anderson

Actually, it was my old bald headed grandfather whom I resembled at birth and therefore actually was named Chip for "Chip off the Old Block."

----------


## ksquared

*Pop-metaphysics* (noun)  An underlying philosophical or theoretical principle that has no scientific evidence to support it.

Example:
Although he does concede the universe  all time, all matter, and all space  exploded out of nothing (1), Dr. Adkins, an atheist, struggles to explain how the universe came into existence, uncaused, out of nothing. He finds himself trapped in self-contradictions. In his book _The Creation Revisited_ he has this to say: 

Now we go back in time beyond the moment of creation to when there was no time and there was no space. He imagines a swirling dust of mathematical points which recombine again and again and again and finally by trial and error to form our space universe. 

Dr. Adkins provides us with an excellent example of pop-metaphysics, a theoretical idea that has no scientific evidence to support it. Its also self-contradictory because it assumes time and space before there was time and space.

(1) Einsteins theory of General Relativity predicted that Universe is expanding from a single point in the distant past. Science has since confirmed Einsteins prediction with observable facts. The universe exploded into existence from a single point in the distant past.  A scientific "truth"  that can't be denied no matter how you look at it or how imaginative you may be.

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## slaboff

Yes but what caused that explosion?

----------


## ksquared

Well....if you are an atheist you can have only one answer: "*nothing created something out of nothing* which flies in the face of science.

If you are one of the others listed below you can answer with: "*something created something out of nothing*"

You might be interested to know that Einstein believed the universe was static and eternal and its creation was not dependant on any outside cause.  He wasnt all that thrilled with his own theory. In 1914 He introduced a cosmological constant into his equation so he could avoid an absolute beginning to the universe.

In 1919 British cosmologist Arthur Eddington confirmed Einsteins GR theory while he was studying a solar eclipse. He wasnt happy either and said, Philosophically, the notion of a beginning of the present order of nature is repugnant to me. I would like to find a genuine loophole.

Unfortunately, it all slid down hill from there. In 1922 Russian Mathematician Alexander Friedman found Einsteins fudge factor.  Einstein had divided by zero; something every school child knows is a no-no.

In 1927 astronomer Edwin Hubble found even more concrete evidence for an expanding universe. He observed a red shift in the light from every observable galaxy, which meant that all of the galaxies were moving away from a single point. 

Einstein visited Mt. Wilson (where Hubble made his observations) so he could see for himself the observable evidence.  Sure enough, it was just as his theory had predicted. Afterwards, Einstein redirected his efforts to solving the puzzle of life to know how God created the world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know His thoughts, the rest are details.

So you see, as irritating as it may be, General Relativity supports one of the oldest formal arguments for the existence of a theistic God.

*Agnostic* - I do not know if God or gods exist.
*Atheist* - I do know, God or gods do not exist.
*Theist* - I do know, God or gods do exist.
*Polytheist* - Many gods exist.
*Henotheist* - The henotheist worships only one of the many gods who exist.
*Monotheist* - Only one God exists.
*Pantheist* - All things that exist are part of God. Therefore God is impersonal.
*Deist* - The one God who exists is personal, yet He is not involved with humanity.
*Personal Theist* - The one personal God is intimately involved with humanity.
*Unitarian -* God is only one person.
*Trinitarian* - The one God who exists, is, by nature, a Trinity - three distinct persons within the nature of the one God.

----------


## ksquared

*ARGUMENT (ar-gu-ment) n.:* A discussion in which disagreement is expressed; a debate, a quarrel; a dispute, a course of reasoning aimed at demonstrating truth or falsehood, a set of statements in which one follows logically as a conclusion from the others. 

      So much arguing about arguing. What exactly is an argument one might ask.

 Some people think arguing is simply a means of stating their prejudices and/or opinions. Some take arguing to mean a verbal fistfight. But this isnt what arguments really are. They arent simply a statement of views or a dispute. 

 Arguments are attempts to support certain views with reasons. Giving an argument means providing a set of reasons or evidence in support of a conclusion. 

 Arguments are also essential. Not all viewpoints are equal and you cant always tell whos right by consulting your prejudices. So how does one decide which viewpoint is true? By arguing of course. An argument whose conclusions are supported by good reasoning and evidence will outweigh the other alternatives. We need to give arguments for the different conclusions and than assess those arguments to see which of them is stronger.

 Arguments are essential for another reason too. Once we have arrived at a conclusion that is well supported by reasons, argument is how we explain and defend our conclusions. A good argument doesnt just repeat conclusions. Instead, it offers reasons and evidences for how the conclusions were reached. Once youve become convinced of something, you must be able to explain how you arrived at your conclusions. That is how you will convince others, by offering the evidence that convinced you. _It is not a mistake to have strong views.  The mistake is to have nothing else._

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## Spexvet

> *ARGUMENT (ar-gu-ment) n.:* A discussion in which disagreement is expressed; a debate, a quarrel; a dispute, a course of reasoning aimed at demonstrating truth or falsehood, a set of statements in which one follows logically as a conclusion from the others.


No, it's not:

http://orangecow.org/pythonet/sketches/argument.htm

:bbg:"
*Man:* I came here for a good argument.

*Mr Vibrating:* No you didn't; no, you came here for an argument.

*Man:* An argument isn't just contradiction.

*Mr Vibrating:* It can be.

*Man:* No it can't. An argument is a connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition.

*Mr Vibrating:* No it isn't.

*Man:* Yes it is! It's not just contradiction.

*Mr Vibrating:* Look, if I argue with you, I must take up a contrary position. 

*Man:* Yes, but that's not just saying 'No it isn't.'

*Mr Vibrating:* Yes it is!"

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## ksquared

*Arguments by Example*  these types of arguments offer one or more specific examples in support of a generalization. They're only effective if the examples given are accurate. In order to check an arguyments examples, or to find good examples for your own arguments, you will need to do some research. But even than, generalizing from the pemises can still be tricky. To avoid some common pitfalls give more than one exmample, use representative examples, and consider using some counter examples.

----------


## hcjilson

Thanks to you both for the lessons above!  :)

----------


## RGC_man

*Bissextile.* A word to strike fear into the heart of every self respecting man. It relates to February 29th every fourth year when women can ask their men to marry them. I first came across it in Dickens. He was worried women would follow the example of Queen Victoria and try to get happily married. Shocking.

----------


## rinselberg

*diot*
n. 
Defined
A foolish or stupid person.

Etymology
[Middle English, ignorant person, from Old French idiote, from Latin idita, from Greek idits, private person, layman, from idios, own, private. See s(w)e- in Indo-European Roots.]


Can a word that everybody already knows be a logical choice for "Word of the Day!" --?

Maybe it's not always the definition that counts, but the *usage.* Yesterday, the Boston Red Sox completed their tenure as baseball world champions by losing for the third straight time to the Chicago White Sox in the American League Divisional Playoff Series. What a difference a year makes: Last October, the Red Sox were on the threshold of the most implausible reversal of fortune in baseball history. After losing the first three games of the American League Championship Series to the New York Yankees (the third game by the lopsided score of 19-8), the Red Sox rallied to beat the Yankees four times in a row, and then swept the St. Louis Cardinals in the 2004 World Series in four straight games. Pete Hanlin and company may be Ready for some FOOTBALL - but for some of us, it's the _Boys of Summer_ that still occupy center stage at the moment.

Centerfielder Johhny Damon was the first to get onboard with a new theme for the 2004 Boston Red Sox: We're just idiots.


> It was Johnny Damon that put the label of "idiots" on the 2004 Boston Red Sox: "Were not going to try to figure it out," Johnny Damon told a reporter during the 2004 season, when asked how they were going to beat the Yankees. "Were just a bunch of idiots. Were just going to throw the ball, hit the ball, catch the ball. We want to keep the thinking process out of it."


credit: Red Sox leading idiot Johnny Damon on "Beating the [Babe Ruth] curse"



Johnny Damon was first: We're just idiots ... and sometimes it gets real "hairy" (under my batting helmet)


Just before the first game of the 2004 "Impossible Finish" playoff series between the Red Sox and Yankees, first baseman Kevin Millar improvised another verbal riff on the already celebrated "idiots" theme: 


> It's just, you know, we are idiots -- and I just think we're experienced idiots and that comes with that next statement, "controlled swagger."


credit: Kevin Millar pregame quotes



Kevin Millar made it official: We're just idiots. 


Having "done" college near Boston, I'm more than a little partial to the Red Sox. But I grew up in St. Louis and think this is going to be a _St. Louis Cardinals_ year when it's all said and done.

_Graphics: http://vnboards.ign.com/WoW_Communit...03/92273493/?1_ 



rinselberg - good posts for your good times
http://www.optiboard.com/forums/show...3&postcount=16

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## ksquared

*University*  An institution for higher learning

University is a composite of the words unity and diversity. It used to be a place where they taught you how to find unity in diversity. In others words, a place where you could go to acquire an in depth understanding of how all of the diverse fields of knowledge (the arts, philosophy, the physical sciences, mathematics, etc.) fit together to provide a unified picture of life. Although universities used to exist through out the world, most have since been closed. There are a few of these old schools left in existence but as time goes by they are becoming increasingly rare.

Today instead of *universities*, we have are *pluraversities*, institutions that teach every viewpoint, no matter how ridiculous, no matter how unsubstantiated, no matter how lacking in evidence, is just as valid as any other. All viewpoints have equal status and as such, are equally true. All viewpoints that is, except the viewpoint that just one religion or worldview can be true. Thats the one viewpoint considered intolerant and bigoted.

----------


## rinselberg

*cowboy*

noun 1: a hired hand who tends cattle and performs other duties on horseback [syn: cowpuncher, puncher, cowman, cattleman, cowpoke, cowhand, cowherd] 2: a performer who gives exhibitions of riding and roping and bulldogging [syn: rodeo rider] 3: someone who is reckless or irresponsible (especially in driving vehicles)


I bet you knew *that* already - but what about *usage?* What happens when one man's noun becomes (part of) another man's verb? Let's dial the Time Machine here back to late September, 2003 - in Boston:


> Call it a spur-of-the-moment thing, but it's no bull. Red Sox fans are talking a new brand of talk, pardner, as their team gallops toward a playoff berth and a potential showdown with the black-hatted New York Yankees. Around Fenway Park, where doubt is the bucking bronco every fan rides toward postseason play, this year's rallying cry is *"Cowboy up."* Seldom heard around these parts -- or east of Dodge City, anyway -- the expression became popular several weeks ago thanks to Kevin Millar, the first baseman and designated hitter who obviously knows a cutting horse from a cut fastball, and relief pitcher Mike Timlin, a stalwart of the Sox (Brahma) bullpen.
> 
> Millar trotted out the phrase last month when certain cynics - those saddle-sore knights of the keyboard, otherwise known as _sportswriters_ - questioned the team's toughness. "I want to see somebody *cowboy up* and stand behind this team and quit worrying about all the negative stuff," Millar growled after a loss to the Oakland A's.
> 
> "For this team it's perfect," Millar told a reporter from South Florida's Sun-Sentinal last week. "A cowboy is just like your tough guy, the guy that falls off the horse, broken arms and all that kind of stuff." Recalling how he and outfielder Trot Nixon picked up the phrase back in 1995, when the two played winter ball in Mexico together, Millar added, "This team has that kind of makeup ... a bunch of guys that go out and basically *cowboy up.*"



_I know I've seen that face around here a couple of times before: Uh-oh, it's another Kevin Millar sighting on OptiBoard ..._

But there's more:


> Insofar as it can be determined, the expression got its biggest boost from the 1994 movie "8 Seconds," a lame Hollywood oater based on the life of bull-riding legend Lane Frost. (Eight seconds is how long a bull rider needs to stay astride to win -- not how long it took the ball to roll through Bill Buckner's legs in 1986.)
> 
> Played by "Beverly Hills 90210" hunk Luke Perry, Frost was a legendary tough guy who rode hard and died young. In the film, fellow rider Tuff Hedeman admonishes Frost to climb back aboard after he suffers a bad spill. By "cowboy up," Hedeman explains, he means carry on "when you are injured or down and the prospect of doing whatever you're about to try is so bleak that the best you can hope for is to live through it."
> 
> Notwithstanding the fact that "8 Seconds" rode straight to video, more or less, "cowboy up" has managed to buck the odds and hit linguistic pay dirt, having been branded onto everything from clothing lines and bumper stickers to bull-riding documentaries and coffee-table tomes about the Wild West. Kiefer Sutherland starred in a rodeo-themed movie titled "Cowboy Up" that was released in 2001.
> 
> "Cowboy Up" is also the title of a novel, a country band from Tacoma, Wash., a line-dance, a marketing campaign by the state of Wyoming, and at least two songs, the chorus to one of which goes:
> 
> _Oh, come what may, it's all a rodeo - Hang on and try to be tough - And when you draw the worst one - You get thrown and it hurts, son - Dust off and cowboy up_


credit: http://www.boston...rallying_cry_spurs_sox_to_finish_ride

Well, this is certainly something to sing about - and sing you may, if you care to check your PC speaker volume level adjustment and then _click_ on the loudspeaker icon ...

 ... and *that* is the theme song of the Boston Red Sox.

Visit the RinselTunes** online jukebox sponsored by Laramy-K Optical.


rinselberg has posted previously on the topic of Major League Baseball under these post titles:

Oswalt that ends well
"Beat me in St. Louis"
blah-blah-blah the White Sox
Roberto "Remember the Alomar" and Jim "Two Silhouettes on Deshaies"
Somebody had to do it ...
After a thorough review of your question ...
It takes real talent ...
idiot
The Green Monster
Crazy Crab and the Acme Chop House
Splash Landing
The Universal Baseball Association, Inc.: J. Henry Waugh, Prop.


This post is dedicated to charter OptiBoard member and moderator "Harry" hcjilson and to any and all others who are online among us from _Red Sox Nation._





Thirsty? Crack open an ice-cold OptiBoard post on the topic of *Bud Light* by selecting Anheuser-Busch pulls plug on popular MP3 audio downloads. If you haven't been back to see it lately, you haven't seen it all!

----------


## rinselberg

It's not my usual style to go "back to back" on this thread, one post right after another, but today has brought a remarkable convergence (linguistically speaking) between French cuisine and French politics - or sociology.

*bouillabaisse*
n. 
1.	A highly seasoned Mediterranean stew made of several kinds of fish and shellfish.
2.	A combination of various different, often incongruous elements: a bouillabaisse of special interests.

I am not a huge gourmet, but I had an association between the word "bouillabaise" and the Mediterranean port city of Marseille - an association that anyone may verify by doing a Google search with the keywords "bouillabaisse" and "Marseille". It came to mind after I posted a report elsewhere on the Internet about the racially diverse city of Marseille, which has remained largely peaceful, in contrast to the wave of rioting and civil disorder that has recently swept across France from border to border. I am struck by the second definition (above) for bouillabaisse: It could be said that in terms of its racial or ethnic demographics, Marseille *is* a "bouillabaisse" - and apparently, all the better for it.

If you would like to see what was posted about the situation in Marseille, _click_ on RinselNews and it will open you to a "mini-OptiBoard" sponsored by Laramy-K Optical.

That's rinselberg - thanks for being part of it.

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## RGC_man

*Bleeding Heart.*
*
*_n._ 
Any of various perennial herbs of the genus _Dicentra,_ especially the Old World _D. spectabilis,_ having arching clusters of pink to red or sometimes white, heart-shaped flowers.A person who is considered excessively sympathetic toward those who claim to be underprivileged or exploited.*bleed'ing-heart*' (-härt') _adj._

Not sure where this one comes from, but I recently visited Bleeding Heart Yard in London, a tiny enclave of industry that survives the expansion of the financial district. It was used by Dickens in _Little Dorrit_ and would once have also been a slum housing area. 

What you notice is a high wall in a gap between buildings covered in pretty balustrades. Leave the yard, and go for a walk round the block and you come across Ely Place, an exclusive private road with security guards, and a large balustraded wall at one end keeping London's rich and poor just a few feet apart.

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## ksquared

*IRREDUCIBLE (ir·re·duc·i·ble) adj.:* )Impossible to reduce to a desired, simpler, or smaller form or amount: irreducible burdens, irreducibly complex. 

_irreducibly complex_ - a single system composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning.

An irreducibly complex system cannot be produced directly by slight, successive modifications of a precursor system, because any precursor to an irreducibly complex system that is missing a part is by definition nonfunctional. 

If an irreducible complex biological system cannot be produced gradually, their exsitantance presents a powerful challenge to Darwinian evolution. Since natural selection can only choose systems that are already working, irreducible complex biological systems would had to have already existed in order for natural selection to have any thing to act on.

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## spartus

*Pro·tis·ta (prO-'tis-t&) n.*

Any member of a kingdom (Protista) of diverse eukaryotes, including algae, protozoans, and lower fungi.

Most are single-celled organisms, though the algae tend to be multicellular. Many can move, mainly by using flagella, cilia, or footlike extensions (pseudopodia).

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## rinselberg

> *Pro·tis·ta (prO-'tis-t&) n.*
> 
> Any member of a kingdom (Protista) of diverse eukaryotes, including algae, protozoans, and lower fungi.
> 
> Most are single-celled organisms, though the algae tend to be multicellular. Many can move, mainly by using flagella, cilia, or footlike extensions (pseudopodia).


???

Offhand, I'd say there are at least one or two CIA agents who are about to lose their TG holiday because they will be working overtime, trying to decipher that last post - looks like an AQ sleeper cell trying to send a coded message over the Internet ...

----------


## spartus

> ???
> 
> Offhand, I'd say there are at least one or two CIA agents who are about to lose their TG holiday because they will be working overtime, trying to decipher that last post - looks like an AQ sleeper cell trying to send a coded message over the Internet ...


This proves is that Word of the Day is a vital learning resource. Evidently, it's not a term you were familiar with, so I'm happy I could help.  :) This would be a good start to continue your, er, continuing education.

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## ksquared

*cilia:* hair-like structures that are used for locomotion, and in some species, for feeding.

   Today we take a look at the simple cilia.

A cilium consists of a membrane-coated bundle of fibers called an axoneme. The axoneme contains a ring of 9 double microtubules surrounding 2 central single microtubules. The filaments of the 11 microtubules are composed of two proteins called alpha and beta tubulin and are held together by three types of connectors. The subfibers are joined to the central microtubules by radial spokes, the adjacent outer doublets are joined by linkers that consist of a highly elastic protein called nexin, and the central microtubules are joined by a connecting bridge. Finally, every subfiber has two arms, an inner and an outer, both containing the protein dynein.

 Experiments indicate that ciliary motion results from the chemically-powered "walking" of the dynein arms on one microtubule up the neighboring subfiber of a second microtubule so that the two microtubules slide past each other. However, the protein cross-links between microtubules prevent neighboring microtubules from sliding past each other by more than a short distance. These cross-links convert the dynein-induced sliding motion to a bending motion of the entire axoneme. 

Dynein isn't the only protein involved. Cilia are composed of at least a half dozen proteins: alpha-tubulin, beta-tubulin, dynein, nexin, spoke protein, and a central bridge protein. These combine to perform one task, ciliary motion, and all of these proteins must be present for the cilium to function. If the tubulins are absent, then there are no filaments to slide; if the dynein is missing, then the cilium remains rigid and motionless; if nexin or the other connecting proteins are missing, then the axoneme falls apart when the filaments slide.

 What we see in the cilium is not only profound complexity, but also irreducible complexity on the molecular scale. The cilium *must* have the sliding filaments, connecting proteins, and motor proteins for function to occur. In the absence of any one of those components, the apparatus is useless.

 The lowly cilia may be composed of single molecules but the complexity of the cilium is final and fundamental. Since the irreducibly complex cilium cannot have functional precursors it cannot be produced by natural selection, which requires a continuum of function to work. Natural selection is powerless when there is no function to select.

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## rinselberg

> ???
> 
> Offhand, I'd say there are at least one or two CIA agents who are about to lose their TG holiday because they will be working overtime, trying to decipher that last post - looks like an AQ sleeper cell trying to send a coded message over the Internet ...


Great post there, ksquared.

You have just tied up the entire code-breaking assets of the CIA, NSA, all DoD branches and whatever else there might be under Homeland Security for the NEXT MONTH.

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## rinselberg

Main Entry:	*blogosphere*
Part of Speech:	noun
Definition:	a collective term for the world of weblogs, the community of all weblogs; also called blogsphere
Etymology:	1997; blend of blog + stratosphere

Main Entry:	*blog*
Part of Speech:	noun
Definition:	an online diary; a personal chronological log of thoughts published on a Web page; also called Weblog, Web log
Example:	Typically updated daily, blogs often reflect the personality of the author.
Etymology:	shortened form of Weblog

Source: Webster's New Millennium Dictionary of English, Preview Edition (v 0.9.6)
Copyright © 2003-2005 Lexico Publishing Group, LLC

Usage:

OptiBoard member rinselberg has created a modest, but ever expanding Web footprint, by carving a cyberspace subset of URLs and hypertext links, richly augmented with graphics, audio and text data, on the global information-trading commodity and futures exchange known as the *blogosphere.*


_Boston Red Sox baseball player Kevin Millar has already made three appearances (to date) in rinselberg's cyberspace, which he promotes under the mock umbrella tradename rinselberg._

rinselberg's first and second blogs, Home Page and RinselWorld, chronicle his Internet posting activities from January 2004 through July 2006.

*RadioFreeRinsel* is rinselberg's third and latest blog: A catalog of his more recent posts, from the end of July 2006 and forward.

rinselberg has also created a "blog-like entity" which he promotes under the mock tradename RinselTunes**.

RinselTunes serves up user-selected streaming or downloaded audio files, featuring a small but growing repertoire of popular music, consisting mostly of club and recording studio jazz tracks, augmented in an iconoclastically eclectic style by interspersing movie soundtrack themes, classic rock and soft/vocals pop/fusion tracks.

The collection includes vintage recordings that date back to, or artistically recreate, certain 20th century periods, notably the swing and bop eras and the cool or West Coast jazz sound, along with some memorable World War Two era voice recordings and soundtrack themes.

RinselTunes is available to the Internet community in the format of an _online jukebox_ sponsored by Laramy-K Optical: As a subsidized Laramy-K promotion, its services are free to all.


_RinselTunes currently offers more than 100 audio track selections, and hypertext links to Web pages offering many more._

The next destination of interest is another blog-like entity, also sponsored by Laramy-K Optical, and promoted under the mock tradename RinselNews**.

RinselNews is updated less than daily, but more than weekly, with a spectrum of news stories culled from MSNBC Online and other online news sources.

Common themes are international politics and security issues, Iraq, GWOT (Global War On Terror), national politics, the environment, science and technology developments (sometimes related to optics), new artistic endeavors and the occasional humorous or "peculiar" news posting.


_First photograph of a living giant squid: From a recent RinselNews post. Credit: MSNBC._

rinselberg wants his guests in cyberspace to spend some quality time online, as a small coffee or soft drink break at their Internet workstation, desktop or laptop, and come away shaking their heads and saying to themselves "It just *bloggles* the mind ..."

The hypertext links that serve as the standard vBulletin software powered gateways to rinselberg's cyberspace are provided as "clickable" and mnemonically-disguised URL text strings in rinselberg's OptiBoard Poster Signature field, immediately below.

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## amoura_0

hey, great blog there , i mean great post....

keep it up ;)

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## hcjilson

At the risk of butting into the fine work by others that have graced this thread, notably ksquared and rinsel, I submit the following and hope that the readers of this thread, and the contributors will feel free to use it when appropriate! ( except after posts I make! :bbg: )

Word of the Day for Tuesday December 6, 2005

   logorrhea \law-guh-REE-uh\, noun:
   Excessive talkativeness or wordiness.

     By  his  own  measure,  he is a man of many contradictions,
     beginning with the fact that he is famous as a listener but
     suffers  from  "a  touch of logorrhea." He is so [1]voluble
     that one wonders how his subjects get a word in edgewise.
     --Mel  Gussow,  "Listener,  Talker, Now Literary Lion: It's
     Official." [2]New York Times, June 17, 1997

     It's also not good if your date has logorrhea.
     --Monte  Williams,  "8  Minutes  in  the  Life  of a Jewish
     Single:  Not  Attracted? Next!" [3]New York Times, March 5,
     2000

     Mr.  King,  who  possesses  an  enviable  superabundance of
     imagination, suffers from a less enviable logorrhea.
     --Michele  Slung,  "Scare  Tactics." [4]New York Times, May
     10, 1981
     _________________________________________________________

   Logorrhea  is  derived  from  Greek logos, "word" + rhein, "to
   flow."

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## ksquared

*EPICURE* (EP-ih-kyur) noun:one with sensitive and discriminating tastes especially in food or wine 

"Griffin considered himself something of an epicure, with an ability to taste and smell that was the functional equivalent of perfect-pitch." (Terence Monmaney, _Discover_, September 1987)

Epicurus, a Greek philosopher who lived from 341-270 B.C., believed that the best life was one of simple pleasures in which a person lived with a tranquil mind and freedom from pain. When "epicure" entered English in the 16th century, it referred to someone who followed the philosophy of Epicurus. But over time people came to believe that the philosopher actually encouraged his followers to pursue material and sensual gratification, so the term was soon applied to anyone devoted to materialistic self-indulgence; it later came to be used for one who loves good food and wine.

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## ksquared

*AMBIGUITY*(am·bi·gu·i·ty) n.: an expression whose meaning is unclear by virtue of it having more than one meaning.

   Examples:
_After Hubert Humphrey lost the election to Richard Nixon, he said, "I'd always wanted to run for president in the worst way, and now I have."__When Barry Goldwater ran for president, his slogan was, "In your heart, you know he's right."_There are three categories of ambiguity - lexical (part-of-speech), syntactic (structural), and semantic.

      Examples:
_Iraqi head seeks arms (semantic)__ Prostitutes appeal to pope (lexical)__ Stolen painting found by tree (structural)_Although ambiguities can be a harmless and amusing feature of ordinary language, if unnoticed in the context of otherwise careful reasoning, it can lead to one of several informal fallacies which can cause an unsupported conclusion to be reached.

   Examples:
_ "Ill give you a ring tomorrow."__"One morning in Africa, Captain Spaulding shot an elephant in his pajamas. Therefore, it is dangerous for large animals to wear human clothing."__"Offered a hand__Chip__,_ _politely declines__ "I'll  only take an eye or a tooth._

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## ksquared

*dagmar*:noun

Large bullet-shaped protrusion on bumpers of cars in the 1950s. It was named after the nickname of a buxom television star, Virginia Ruth Egnor (1921-2001). 



Dagmar is also an automobile of which only the 25-70 models of 1925-1948 are classic cars.

----------


## ksquared

*MIASMA (*my-AZ-muh; mee) _noun_:
1. A vaporous exhalation (as of marshes or putrid matter) formerly thought to cause disease; broadly, a thick vaporous atmosphere or emanation.
2. A harmful or corrupting atmosphere or influence; also, an atmosphere that obscures; a fog. 

The critics, he says, "will sit in their large automobiles, spewing a *miasma* of toxic gas into the atmosphere, and they will thank you for not smoking a cigarette."-- Charles E. Little, "No One Communes Anymore,"

To destroy such prejudices, which many a time rise and spread themselves like a *miasma*, is an imperative duty of theory, for the misbegotten offspring of human reason can also be in turn destroyed by pure reason.-- Carl von Clausewitz, On War (Translated by Colonel James John Graham)

Who would have thought such a simple question could generate such *miasma*. - - Chm2023, hi I'm new - could you help me? (Translated by K times 2)

----------


## rinselberg

*xistentialism* is not a philosophy, but a mood embracing a number of disparate philosophies; the differences among them are more basic than the temper which unites them. This temper can be described as a reaction against the static, the abstract, the purely rational, the merely irrational, in favor of the dynamic and concrete, personal involvement and engagement, action, choice and commitment, the distinction between authentic and inauthentic existence, and the actual situation of the existential subject as the starting point of thought. Beyond this the so-called existentialists divide according to their views on such matters as phenomenological analysis, the existential subject, the intersubjective relation between selves, religion, and the implications of existentialism for psychotherapy ...

Insofar as one _can_ define existentialism, it is a movement from the abstract and the general to the particular and the concrete ...

_Brent Dean Robbins, "Mythos & Logos" at http://mythosandlogos.com/_


Usage:


> By referring to himself in the third person, using post titles that are idiosyncratic and crafted to appeal to a fictional or surrealist aesthetic (as opposed to an objective transparency or consistent rationalism), appending the commercial trademark symbol "TM" to his poster name, recycling advertising taglines in a self-referential way and creating a web of self-referential poster signatures and psuedo-blogs to link each new post to one or more of his previous posts, OptiBoard member rinselberg** strives to transform the activity of Internet forum posting into a daily affirmation of postmodernist *existentialism.*



Graphics: http://www.pointlessart.com/newArt/a...ges/E%20is.htm

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## ksquared

*puerile* (PYOO-uhr-uhl) adj.: Displaying or suggesting a lack of maturity; juvenile; childish. 

And, in one of the most puerile episodes of his adult career, he punishes his old schoolmates for being rich and vulgar by breaking into their houses to soak the labels off their boasted wine collections.
-- Thomas R. Edwards, "Mordecai Richler Then and Now," New York Times, June 22, 1980

Political argument is becoming a puerile cartoon about the moral . . . doing battle with the immoral.
-- George F. Will, "The Costs of Moral Exhibitionism," Washington Post, April 15, 2001

A puerile post belies (misrepresents) senility, and causes problems where none need exist.
-- Cape Codger, Consumer Questions, Opti-board March 19,2006

----------


## rinselberg

*uark*


PRONUNCIATION: kw&#244;rk, kw&#228;rk 

NOUN: Any of a group of six elementary particles having electric charges of a magnitude one-third or two-thirds that of the electron, regarded as constituents of all hadrons ...

ETYMOLOGY: From "Three *quarks* for Muster Mark!", a line in Finnegans Wake by James Joyce.

WORD HISTORY: "Three quarks for Muster Mark!/Sure he hasn't got much of a bark/And sure any he has it's all beside the mark." This passage from James Joyce's Finnegans Wake, part of a scurrilous thirteen-line poem directed against King Mark, the cuckolded husband in the Tristan legend, has left its mark on modern physics. The poem and the accompanying prose are packed with names of birds and words suggestive of birds, and the poem is a squawk against the king that suggests the cawing of a crow. The [modern] word "quark" comes from the standard English verb _quark_, meaning "to caw or croak", and also from the dialectal verb _quawk_, meaning "to caw or screech like a bird".

It's easy to see why Joyce chose the word, but why should it have become the name for a group of hypothetical subatomic particles proposed as the fundamental units of matter? 


The Standard Model of quantum physics: What the universe is made of. Credit: sciencemaster.com.

Murray Gell-Mann, the physicist who proposed this name for these particles, said in a private letter of June 27, 1978, to the editor of the Oxford English Dictionary that he had been influenced by Joyce's words: "The allusion to three *quarks* seemed perfect." (Originally there were only three subatomic quarks.) Gell-Mann, however, wanted to pronounce the word with (&#244;) not (&#228;), as Joyce seemed to indicate by rhyming words in the vicinity such as "Mark". Gell-Mann got around that "by supposing that one ingredient of the line 'Three _quarks_ for Muster Mark' was a cry of 'Three _quarts_ for Mister Mark ... ' heard in H.C. Earwicker's pub," a plausible suggestion, given the complex punning in Joyce's novel.


First "fingerprint" of the elusive top quark. This is a computer enhancement of the original image from the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois. Credit: particlephysics.ac.uk.

It seems appropriate that this perplexing and humorous novel [Finnegans Wake] should have supplied the term for [subatomic] particles that come in six quantum "flavors"and three quantum "colors". 


Graphics: http://www.julen.net/cfp/alphabet/digital/

Dictionary reference: The American Heritage&#174; Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Copyright &#169; 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by the Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.


How to deal with those "problem" spectacle and contact lens patients?
Rinselberg's equation: OphthalmicOptics + ArtificialIntelligence = VirtualOptician™

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## rinselberg

ADJECTIVE: Of or relating to the sense of touch; tactile.

ETYMOLOGY: Greek _haptikos_ or _haptesthai_ - to grasp or touch.

USAGE: ImmersiveTouch is the next generation of augmented virtual reality technology, being the first system that integrates a *haptic* device, with a head and hand tracking system, and a high-resolution and high-pixel-density stereoscopic display.



Its ergonomic design provides a comfortable working volume in the space of a standard desktop. The *haptic* device is collocated with the 3D graphics, giving the user a more realistic and natural means to manipulate and modify 3D data in real time. The high-performance, multi-sensorial computer interface allows easy development of medical, dental, engineering or scientific virtual reality simulation and training applications that appeal to many stimuli: audio, visual, tactile and kinesthetic.



A half-silvered mirror is used to recreate an augmented VRE (Virtual Reality Environment) that integrates the users hands and the virtual 3D models in a common working volume. Since the users hands are behind the translucent mirror, they dont occlude the virtual image, preserving the stereo illusion, and allowing the user to see his/her hands while interacting with the virtual objects.


Dictionary reference: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by the Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

Tech credits:
http://www.evl.uic.edu/core.php?mod=4&type=3&indi=270
http://www.immersivetouch.com/specifications.php

Poster art, courtesy of Linotype.com: Umbra Medium.


_The UAE (United Arab Emirates) was the country at the center of the recent US port terminals controversy. Why are they known as America's "Top Gun" in the Middle East? RinselNews has the answers ..._

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## rinselberg

prejudice



SYLLABICATION:	prej·u·dice

NOUN:	1a. An adverse judgment or opinion formed beforehand or without knowledge or examination of the facts. b. A preconceived preference or idea. 2. The act or state of holding unreasonable preconceived judgments or convictions. See synonyms at predilection. 3. Irrational suspicion or hatred of a particular group, race, or religion. 4. Detriment or injury caused to a person by the preconceived, unfavorable conviction of another or others.

TRANSITIVE VERB:	Inflected forms: prej·u·diced, prej·u·dic·ing, prej·u·dic·es
1. To cause (someone) to judge prematurely and irrationally. See synonyms at bias. 2. To affect injuriously or detrimentally by a judgment or an act.

ETYMOLOGY: Middle English, from Old French, from Latin praeidicium : prae-, pre- + idicium, judgment (from idex, idic-), judge.

rinselberg on USAGE:

It's not the common usages of the word that interest me, but its more colorful appearance in the fictional and movie tagline "terminate with extreme *prejudice* ... ".

The Wikipedia traces that phrase all the way back to 1973, in the novel _Don't Embarrass The Bureau_ by Bernard Connors, where it was used as an idiom for "assassinate".

Quoting from Wikipedia :

_[Subsequently], the term has been used [again] in the same context, particularly in the 1979 [Coppola screen epic] "Apocalypse Now", in which Martin Sheen's character [Willard] is ordered to terminate the insane Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando) with "extreme prejudice."

The extraction extreme prejudice is popularly thought to have originated in military circles, [meaning] a "take no prisoners" or "show no mercy" attitude by military forces. However, The U.S. military denies using the term or supporting any [such] actions as depicted in any of the literature. Extreme prejudice has since become a jocular term meaning to take any action to extremes, such as to "borrow with extreme prejudice" - meaning to steal._

Reporting on the singular event of the past week from Iraq, MSNBC used a shortened form of the idiom with this:



That photo was replaced with a larger and more gruesome one of the dead Zarqawi, under the column heading "TERMINATED".

The New York Post issued this ...



... which drew the ire of one blogger on CBS News.

For literary pretense, however, if not for sheer obscurity, it would be hard to top media giant rinselberg*™*, which remarked on the Zarqawi killing by recycling one of the taglines from Francis Ford Coppola's 1979 Vietnam-themed screen blockbuster Apocalypse Now :


_This unnamed CIA officer commented on the joint US/Iraqi attack on the safe house where terrorist mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed. CLICK ON THE PHOTO FOR AUDIO CONTENT._

The actor in the photo is Jerry Ziesmer, who only had a cameo acting role in the film: That one memorable phrase might have been his only line. (He was actually the First Assistant Director.)

More sound bites from Apocalyspe Now can be heard online at http://www.phattie.net/apocalypse.htm.

Dictionary reference: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by the Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.


*Only you can prevent CPU fires*

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## rinselberg

Just in time for Major League Baseball's All-Star Game ...

*Sabermetrics* is the analysis of baseball through objective evidence, especially baseball statistics. The term is derived from the acronym SABR, which stands for the Society for American Baseball Research. It was coined by Bill James, who has been its most enthusiastic (and by far its most famous) proponent.

From David Grabiner's *Sabermetric Manifesto:*


> Bill James defined sabermetrics as "the search for objective knowledge about baseball." Thus, sabermetrics attempts to answer objective questions about baseball, such as "which player on the Red Sox contributed the most to the team's offense?" or "How many home runs will Ken Griffey, Jr. hit next year?" It cannot deal with the subjective judgments which are also important to the game, such as "Who is your favorite player?" or "That was a great game."


Sabermetricians call into question traditional measures of baseball skill. For instance, batting average is considered to be a statistic of limited usefulness because it turns out to be a poor predictor of a team's ability to score runs. Typical sabermetric reasoning would say that runs win ballgames, and so a good measure of a player's worth is his ability to help his team score more runs than the opposing team. Accordingly, sabermetric measures - such as Bill James's Runs Created and Win Shares or Pete Palmer's Total Player Rating - are usually phrased in terms of either runs or team wins; a player might be described as being worth 54 runs more than an average player at the same position over the course of a full season, for example.

Sabermetrics is concerned both with determining the value of a player in a season gone by, and with trying to predict the value of a player in the future based on his past performances. These are not the same thing. For example, a player with a high batting average one year may have been very valuable to his team, but batting average is known to be a volatile stat and relying on it to remain high in future years is often not a good principle. A sabermetrician might argue that a high walk rate is a better indication that a player will retain his value in the future.

While this area of study is still in development, it has yielded many interesting insights into the game of baseball, and in the area of performance measurement generally.

Some sabermetric measurements have entered mainstream baseball usage, especially OPS (on-base plus slugging) and, to a lesser extent, WHIP (walks plus hits per inning pitched). (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabermetrics.)

Bill James, the "dean" of the sabermetricians, used the methodology to select his greatest ever starting nine: The best nine-man starting roster that a manager could ever hope to field, if he could select players from any time in baseball history, going back to day one. Some of his selections would probably be surprising to many modern fans of the game. (See "Bill James All-Stars" at http://science.discovery.com/converg.../baseball.html.)

Tufts University, in Boston, even offers sabermetrics in the form of a university extension course, called "Sabermetrics 101".



What keeps some Tufts students up late at night - a graphic from "Sabermetrics 101".

The Tufts syllabus includes some impressively titled statistical analyses, such as "The Green Monster Effect: A Run Saved or a Run Earned?" - a reference to the unique and famous left field wall at Boston's Fenway Park - and "Weather Impact on Pitchers", "Phenotypes of Superscrubs" and "The Effect of Moneyball on Inefficiencies in the Free Agent Market". (Source: http://sabermetrics.hnrc.tufts.edu/.)

Sabermetrics raises many questions about traditional baseball strategies.

Does the exact ordering of the hitters in a batting lineup matter very much? Is it ever logical to try to steal a base? Is it ever advantageous for the batter to try to move a runner on first base over to second with a sacrifice bunt? The advent of the "closer" - the relief specialist who comes in from the bullpen to pitch the last inning of a game when his team is ahead, but only by a few runs, so that the game is still in doubt: Does that make any sense, statistically?

Some of the particular innovations of sabermetrics are in the domains of "park effects", which considers the differences in play between ballparks, and fielding stats, which historically have not been compiled as systematically as pitching, batting and base-stealing stats.

Before the advent of sabermetrics, there was *Stephen Jay Gould.*

Dr. Gould, who died somewhat prematurely and not all that long ago, was a giant in the field of paleontology: An internationally celebrated author and long-time Harvard professor and scientist who contributed as much or more to the modern or Neo-Darwinist theory of evolution as any other scholar - by anyone's standards, as much a part of Neo-Darwinism's "starting nine" as Charles Darwin himself.

Gould was also an avid *baseball* fan and wrote at some length on the application of modern methods of statistical analysis to the game of Major League Baseball.




See why computing with those tedious, old-fashioned bits (binary digits) is becoming so *20th century* . . .  http://www.optiboard.com/forums/showthread.php?t=17515

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## rinselberg

yroball





Video: Daisuke Matsuzaka throws a gyroball

MSNBC video clip "Dice-K"



The *gyroball* is the name given to a breaking pitch [purportedly] used by baseball players in Japan.

The pitch was developed by two Japanese researchers ... who used computer simulations to create a new style of delivery intended to reduce stress on the pitcher's body. At the point of release, instead of having the pitcher's arm move inwards towards the body (the usual method in the United States), the pitcher rotates his arm so that it moves _away_ from his body, towards third base [in the case of a right-handed pitcher]. This [innovative motion] creates a bullet-like spin on the ball, like a perfectly thrown football. When thrown by a right-hander, the pitch moves sharply down and away or "outside" from right-handed batters and "inside" or in towards left-handed batters.

In baseball, most pitches are thrown either with backspin, like a fastball, or with a forward spinning motion or topspin, like a curveball or slider. Batters use the [pitcher's arm speed and whatever they can see of the spin on an incoming baseball], highlighted by the stitching of its seams, to judge the speed of a pitch. The gyroball is thrown with the same arm speed as a fastball but [actually travels] much slower. Since it has that bullet-like spinning motion, which is neither backspin or topspin, on occasion (perhaps when the seams are hidden from the view of the batter) it is said to [deceive even] the most capable batters [into swinging] either wildly ahead of or behind the baseball.

The gyroball has been simulated in Baseball Mogul 2007, a computer game. In Baseball Mogul 2007, the trajectory of the ball looks [like] a fastball or changeup, with a late lateral break away from right-handed batters (when thrown by right-handed pitchers) ...

The gyroball is often confused with a completely different Japanese pitch called the shuuto, due to an error in a well-known article [under the title of The Ghost Pitch] by baseball writer Will Carroll ... Although Carroll later corrected himself, this confusion still persists.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


_Was all of that clear enough? Maybe not. Try this:_

A *gyroball* is a breaking pitch thrown at about the same speed as a two-seam fastball (faster than a slider, but slower than a four-seam fastball). The pitch starts out looking like a straight change or hanging curve before making a sharp break directly away from the batter (when thrown by a right-handed pitcher to a right-handed batter).

Some scouts have used the term "pure slider" to refer to the gyroball because the late lateral break contains little or no vertical movement. The movement is somewhat similar to a slider (away from right-handed batters). But because players are [generally] unfamiliar with this pitch, it has so far proven harder to hit than a typical slider. Without the horizontal break typical of a slider, perhaps a comparison to Mariano Rivera's cut fastball is more appropriate.

Although American coaches tend to agree that there is a continuum from 'fastball' to 'cut fastball' to 'slider' (and then on to 'slurve' and 'curve'), there is no consensus as to whether the gyroball has a place on this continuum. Unlike the linear mechanics practiced by American pitchers (building momentum from the legs up through the torso and into the pitching arm and hand), the gyroball is delivered with a circular motion that puts the pitching hand "inside" the ball upon release. Although hard to describe, many scouts agree that the gyroball constitutes a new method of delivering the ball. At this point it's difficult to [predict whether] this [little known] pitch and its [innovative] mechanics will grow in popularity, or fall out of favor due to excessive arm strain or some other weakness.

Sports Mogul Inc. - Glossary of Pitches


As of this writing, the only professional pitcher credited with throwing the gyroball is Daisuke Matsuzaka of Japan's Seibu Lions. Matsuzaka throws his fastball in the low nineties. According to reports, his gyroball is thrown only a couple of miles per hour slower. Odds are good that Daisuke Matsuzaka, Japan's reputed gyroball specialist, will be playing here (in the United States) for one of the Major League Baseball teams in 2007.


Long before there was baseball, Isaac Newton wrote a text in 1671 on the curved trajectory that is imparted to a baseball (i.e., a baseball-like object or baseball _precursor_) when thrown with a spin.



In 1852, the German physicist Gustav Magnus elaborated on Newton's groundwork, performing experiments that led to the term "Magnus Effect" - an artifice used by baseball players around the world - and with the increasing emergence of college educated athletes on Major League Baseball rosters, it may be that many of them would be thinking to themselves "ah, the Magnus Effect" - if they were able to silently analyze their every pitch or throw of the ball.

Credit: Boundary Layers and Life in Velocity Gradients


Stills, graphics support and video clip:
http://www.rotoauthority.com/2005/08...ep_2006_f.html
http://www.logolalia.com/abcdefghijk...es/002239.html
http://www.juventudrebelde.cu/seccio...html/japon.htm
http://seti.alien.de/index_german.htm
http://www.gifworks.com/index.php
http://www.imageshack.us/


More than just a search for little green men

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## rinselberg

vicariance



"Vicariance" is a noun. It's a term used by biologists and paleontolgists and is defined as: The separation or division of a group of organisms by a geographic barrier, such as a mountain or a body of water, resulting in differentiation of the original group into new varieties or species.

Usage:

During the Jurassic period (200 to 150 million years ago), the great supercontinent of Pangaea, driven by plate tectonics, began to fragment and separate along plate boundaries, creating distinct land masses that drifted further and further apart until they formed the configuration of continents and oceans that we know today.


The supercontinent of Pangaea

At the start of the Jurassic, an extreme monsoon climate prevailed across most of Pangaea, characterized by hot, desert conditions almost year round. The only seasonal change was an annual but brief deluge of rain in incredible proportions that has been called a "mega monsoon". Dinosuars, at the beginning of their evolution, were constrained by the harsh climate, and were restricted to a relatively small number of species, generally small, and not very different from one species to another.

As the supercontinent continued to break apart and become divided by seas, resulting in more coastal areas, marine air currents sweeping inland brought about a change to a milder climate: Warm and wet all year round over much of the land. Plant life became superabundant. Plant eating dinosaurs evolved into much larger forms, and the evolution of carnivorous dinosaurs, driven by both opportunity and need, followed suit with a trend towards giantism in speciation.

As the continents continued to drift further apart and new mountain ranges appeared, dinosaur populations became divided and quarantined by a growing number of impassable barriers. Migration routes were curtailed or eliminated altogether by the new geography. This resulted in one of the greatest episodes of *vicariance* in the history of life.

The coupling of these two evolutionary trends - of giantism, together with *vicariance* - gave rise to an evolutionary explosion of dinosaur speciation during the middle and late Jurassic period, which is when the iconic dinosaurs and flying reptiles familiar to our popular culture began to emerge.









The middle and late Jurassic. From top to bottom: Stegosaurus, Apatosaurus, Allosaurus and Pterodactylus. Click on the images to enlarge.


The computer generated image of Pangaea was created by Paul E. Olsen, Storke Memorial Professor of Geological Sciences at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University since 1984. The image was lifted from the website of Auburn University. The dinosaur art is from critters.pixel-shack.com. The science is courtesy of the "Jurassic" segment from The Science Channel. Image hosting courtesy of ImageShack. Dictionary reference: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by the Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

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## rinselberg

veridical



"Veridical" is an adjective, defined as truthful or veracious, as in _veridical testimony._ Also: Coinciding with future events or apparently unknowable present realities as in (a) _veridical dream_ or _veridical hallucination._ Veridical is more or less interchangeable with _evidential_ and _empirical._ 


Usage:

OptiBoard member rinselberg has just updated the *veridical* paradox known as the "Monty Hall problem" under the post title Three Card Rinsel.



Image hosting courtesy of ImageShack. Dictionary reference: The American Heritage&#174; Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Copyright &#169; 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by the Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

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## rinselberg

subtext

The implicit meaning or theme of a literary text; an underlying theme in a piece of writing or speech; the underlying personality of a dramatic character as implied or indicated by a script or text and interpreted by an actor in performance.


Usage:

The Most Wanted Iraqis playing card images in Three Card Rinsel - a post that was created on the foundation of an ostensibly simple card game - could be interpreted as a political *subtext* - or just as plausibly, as having the format of a political *subtext*, but without being bound to any practical meaning or objective - something along the lines of a small jazz improvisation in the language of words instead of musical notes: An example of putting form above function.

Or to look at it another way: The playing card images could be interpreted as a literary *subtext* about the possibility of *subtexts* within the format of an Internet post.



Credit: The American Heritage&#174; Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Copyright &#169; 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by the Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

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## rinselberg

*Superluminal*

Adjective for a physical process or event that either appears (or more speculatively, is confirmed by experiment) to move faster than the speed of light - or one that is literally instantaneous.


*Usage:*

See ... Quantum Mechanics: "Spooky Action At A Distance"



*Science and Technology news stories on rinselbergTM*

Visit an asteroid before an asteroid visits you ...
Evolutionary anthropologists pay tribute to Mr. Potato Head
"Landmark" experiment with light delves into mysteries of quantum physics
Rocket science you can drink
How would you like to refract THESE eyes?
Jurassic Post
In search of lost time: Update on the Antikythera machine
Gone In Sixty Seconds

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## Grubendol

lib·er·al  (lbr-l, lbrl)_adj._*1.* *a.*  Not limited to or by established, traditional, orthodox, or authoritarian attitudes, views, or dogmas; free from bigotry.
*b.*  Favoring proposals for reform, open to new ideas for progress, and tolerant of the ideas and behavior of others; broad-minded.
*c.*  Of, relating to, or characteristic of liberalism.
*d.*  *Liberal* Of, designating, or characteristic of a political party founded on or associated with principles of social and political liberalism, especially in Great Britain, Canada, and the United States.

*2.* *a.*  Tending to give freely; generous: a liberal benefactor.
*b.*  Generous in amount; ample: a liberal serving of potatoes.

*3.*  Not strict or literal; loose or approximate: a liberal translation.
*4.*  Of, relating to, or based on the traditional arts and sciences of a college or university curriculum: a liberal education.
*5.* *a.*  _Archaic_  Permissible or appropriate for a person of free birth; befitting a lady or gentleman.
*b.*  _Obsolete_  Morally unrestrained; licentious.

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## rinselberg

Gitmo-ize

To reorient or reorganize a prison or interrogation center using the example of Camp X-Ray at the U.S. Marine base at Guantanamo, Cuba.

Forms: Gitmo-ized; Gitmo-izing.

Etymology: "Gitmo" (short for Guantanamo) + verb suffix "ize".


*History:*



*"Wish you were here."* Camp X-Ray.





> "Gitmo-ize" first surfaced publicly in a claim by Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, who was nominally in charge of the military police brigade at the U.S. administered Abu Ghraib prison and interrogation center in Iraq. Karpinski has said that when she met with Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller during his initial visit to Abu Ghraib in September 2003, he told her he was going to "Gitmo-ize" ...





*"It's Miller time."* Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller at Abu Ghraib prison on May 17, 2004.




> But according to the transcript of an Aug. 21, 2004 interview ... Miller claims that Karpinski is mistaken ... During the interview conducted by attorneys representing some of the soldiers prosecuted for abuse at Abu Ghraib, Miller said, "As far as I know, I never used the word _Gitmo-ize_  - ever."


http://www.salon.com/news/feature/20...major_general/


Some credit the idea that it was Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld ...



... who first coined the term, or at least launched it towards its eventual public circulation. According to this story (another "urban legend" ..?), Rumsfeld scribbled the injunction "Gitmo-ize" on a memorandum from Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, who was about to visit Iraq in 2003 with a plan for setting up Abu Ghraib - a plan that was fortified by some 200 pages of interrogation guidelines and operating procedures that Miller had implemented at Camp X-Ray.


*Rummy* wanted more positive results from the interrogations of Iraqi detainees.


*Usage:*

Senator Barack Obama, currently a candidate in the 2008 presidential election, bears the telltale middle name of "Hussein". He is known to have attended an Islamic madrasa or school with a Wahhabist orientation at the primary level, where he honed his skills, even at that tender age, in conspiracy, assassination and IEDs. He has disguised his fidelity to Islam by declaring himself a member of the United Church of Christ. Therefore, DOJ should look into the possibility of *Gitmo-izing* Obama (by covert means, if necessary) and confining him at Camp X-Ray until he "talks" ...



*About to be "X-Rayed" ..?*


Source: OptiBoard; "The Wild Wild West ..."


_Latest news stories on rinselbergTM ... "Eight Men Out" ... Talk Like a Pirate Day ...  St. Patrick's Day: Bet you didn't know THIS ... Red Sox fans have eyes on "Dice-K" ... "Real Men of Genius" ... "Landmark" experiment with light_

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## gemstone

Can't vote for him.  His ears are too big.

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## Grubendol

> Can't vote for him.  His ears are too big.


i know I always choose presidential choices based on ear size.  that's why i didn't vote for Perot or GeeDubya

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## rinselberg

kludge



sometimes spelled "kluge"


NOUN:

_Slang_ 1. A system, especially a computer system, that is constituted of poorly matched elements or of elements originally intended for other applications. 2. A clumsy or inelegant solution to a problem.


ETYMOLOGY:

Ironic use of earlier _kluge_, meaing smart or clever; German_ kluge_; Middle High German _kluc_; Middle Low German _klok_.


OTHER FORMS: kludge - VERB; kludgy - ADJECTIVE


USAGE:

*Newsweek*
April 9, 2007




> Let others rhapsodize about the elegant design and astounding complexity of the human brain—the most complicated, most sophisticated entity in the known universe, as they say. David Linden, a professor of neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University, doesn't see it that way. To him, the brain is a "cobbled-together mess." Impressive in function, sure. But in its design the brain is "quirky, inefficient and bizarre ... a weird agglomeration of ad hoc solutions that have accumulated throughout millions of years of evolutionary history," he argues in his new book, "The Accidental Mind," from Harvard University Press.
> 
> More than another salvo in the battle over whether biological structures are the products of supernatural design or biological evolution (though Linden has no doubt it's the latter), research on our brain's primitive foundation is cracking such puzzles as why we cannot tickle ourselves, why we are driven to spin narratives even in our dreams and why reptilian traits persist in our gray matter ...



What David Linden is describing (above) is very much a *kludge*; i.e. the "cobbled-together mess", arrived at through some billion or so years of Darwinian evolution, that serves as our brain.


"In Our Messy, Reptilian Brains" - two page report from Newsweek Online:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17888475/site/newsweek/




_The American Heritage&#174; Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition._

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## RGC_man

*EKE.*

An old English word meaning "also". Essential to know if you are reading Chaucer. Apparently the word "nickname" was originally an "eke-name" (also-name).

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## RGC_man

> The *gyroball* is the name given to a breaking pitch [purportedly] used by baseball players in Japan.


Pah, that's for cissies. Try being on the receiving end of one of these as they bounce up towards your head from the ground a couple of yards away.
http://www.channel4.com/sport/cricket/analyst/bowling/

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## rinselberg

*sardonic*


Adjective: Characterized by bitter or scornful derision; mocking; cynical; sneering: a *sardonic* grin.

Adverb: sardonically; Noun: sardonicism. Synonyms: biting, mordant, contemptuous.

Origin: 163040; alter. of earlier _sardonian_ (influenced by F _sardonique_) < L _sardoni(us)_ (< Gk _sardónios_ of Sardinia) + -an; alluding to a Sardinian plant which when eaten was supposed to produce convulsive laughter ending in death.

_Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006._


That etymology (origin) was rather sketchy, so let's look further:


> 1638, from Fr. _sardonique_ (16c.), from L. _sardonius_ (but as if from L. _sardonicus_) in _Sardonius risus_, from Gk. _sardonios (gelos)_ "of bitter or scornful (laughter)," altered from Homeric _sardanios_ (of uncertain origin) by influence of _Sardonios_ "Sardinian," because the Greeks believed that eating a certain plant they called _sardonion_ (lit. "plant from Sardinia," see Sardinia) caused facial convulsions resembling those of *sardonic* laughter, usually followed by death ...


Source: Online Etymology Dictionary

And from Wikipedia:


> The phrase *sardonic grin* is derived from the grimace or contorted facial expression said to be characteristic of victims that were poisoned by a certain plant found in Sardinia which contains strychnine-like alkaloids. It's said that families would use this readily available poison to dispatch their infirm and elderly when they decided that they could no longer afford to keep looking after them.


What was this plant? One source suggests that it was _Strychnos nux-vomica_, but after some cursory research, I'm not able to place that species anywhere in the Mediterranean and not specifically on the island of Sardinia. I think that the plant could well have been *Datura stramonium* or "Jimson weed", which is cited in the medical literature as both hallucinogenic and toxic, and also, widely distributed and easily accessible. I'm prompted by this ...




> Homer's "moly" identified as Galanthus nivalis L.: physiologic antidote to *stramonium* poisoning.





> The antidotal properties of certain naturally occurring medicinal plants against central nervous system intoxication appear to have been empirically established in ancient times. Homer, in his epic poem, the Odyssey, described a plant, "moly," used by Odysseus as an antidote against Circe's poisonous drugs. Centrally acting anticholinergic agents are thought to have been used by Circe to induce amnesia and a delusional state in Odysseus' crew. We present evidence to support the hypothesis that "moly" might have been the "snowdrop" plant, Galanthus nivalis, which contains galanthamine, a centrally acting anticholinesterase. Thus the description of "moly" as an antidote in Homer's Odyssey may represent the oldest recorded use of an anticholinesterase to reverse central anticholinergic intoxication.


Source: NCBI PubMed; NLM/NIH


As for usage, anyone could have offered "sardonic grin", but I found a more topical and interesting example on another online forum ... 


Putting aside the constant, over-the-top vulgarity, bathroom "humor", miscogeny, and racial and sexual innuendo that was their nightly staple, the show had its redeeming moments, when Bernard McGuirk's edgy and *sardonic* treatment of current events took center stage; for example:


Pray for peace, oh Imus in the morn'.

_Lord hear our prayer._

That the Arabs and Israelis, b'Jesus, stop kickin' each other's as*,
If only because it raises the price of our gas ...



Attired in dark, wrap-style sunglasses and "Catholic" headgear constructed from a cardboard FedEx box, and affecting a thick Irish accent, producer and cast member Bernard McGuirk appeared from week to week as the hilarious, foul-mouthed "Cardinal Egan" on the Imus in the Morning radio show, which was also simulcast on MSNBC in their 03:00 to 06:00 AM weeknight TV slot.


Then he added (parenthetically) that it wasn't literally "Arabs and Israelis", but two mildly derisive epithets that were perfectly acceptable (and comic) for a program in that time slot. "I didn't want to repeat the epithets that were used. Because we're not in that same time slot ...". This was followed by a quote from MSNBC's Tim Russert:


> I love when Bernard McGuirk puts that FedEx box on and mocks the cardinal ...



_I found about ten online videos of "Cardinal Egan" by searching at http://www.youtube.com with keywords "Imus", "Bernard McGuirk" or "McGuirk" and "Cardinal". If you're not averse to coarseness and vulgarity in the service of exceptionally good humor ..._

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## rinselberg

The RAF's Nimrod MRA4 is the latest version of the world's only jet-powered maritime patrol aircraft. Select ("click") the photo to enlarge it.


*Nimrod* 
Biblical: A mighty hunter and king of Shinar who was a grandson of Ham and a great-grandson of Noah.

*nimrod*
1. A hunter. 2. [Informal] A person regarded as silly, foolish, or stupid.

*Etymology*
The traditional usage (hunter) is derived from the Biblical "Nimrod". The derivative meaning (person regarded as silly ...) is thought to have originated from the phrase “poor little Nimrod,” used by the cartoon character Bugs Bunny to mock the hapless would-be hunter, Elmer Fudd.

The American Heritage&#174; Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition.  2000.




OptiBoard's panel of experts tries thinking "outside of the box" about the threat of international terrorism. Join the discussion at It's a start and Wrong route to stop terrorism?

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## chip anderson

There is another Nimrod, perhaps not as old as the Bibical Nimrod but much older than Bugs Bunny.  When I was about 6 my parents gave me a book called "The White Stag".   I might even still have the book, but I do remember that Nimrod was a hunter in Norse mythology and was the father of twin sons.  One of which I think was named Atilla.  In any event they pursed a white stag, don't remember what happened next other than they split up and one of them founded Hungary.

Chip:cheers:

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## rinselberg

... Eurostyle Roman. Credit: Linotype.


"To glomarize" or a "glomarization" is terminology that refers to any statement or disposition (usually by a government department or agency) that "neither confirms or denies" the existence of requested or relevant documents or records.

_http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1341145_

Whether it's "glomarize" or "Glomarize" seems to be at the discretion of the user. There is no entry for this word in my usual dictionary reference, which is the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition.


Etymology: The reference is to the Project Jennifer episode, wherein the CIA, in cooperation with Howard Hughes, deployed a massive, purpose-built, one-of-a-kind of salvage vessel _Hughes Glomar Explorer_ in an effort to raise parts of a sunken Soviet submarine, _K-129_, to be analyzed for their intelligence value by U.S. military experts.



"G" is for Glomar. Glomar is a contraction of Global Marine.


In 1975, after the secret operation was publicized, in a story broken by the _Los Angeles Times_, journalist Harriet Ann Phillipi submitted a request under the Freedom of Information Act for any government records regarding CIA actions intended to silence media outlets on the topic of _Glomar Explorer_. The CIA denied this request under the first exemption of the FOIA and issued the now-famous statement that it "could neither confirm nor deny the existence" of such records. It was the first use by the CIA of that now famous coinage.



"We can neither confirm nor deny ..." The first time the CIA used this now famous coinage was in 1975, during the legal and journalistic bruhaha attending the public revelation of the _Glomar Explorer's_ secret mission.


Sometimes rendered as the "Glomar response" or a "Glomar denial", this terminology has become commonplace and serves as a kind of shorthand or to underline a point when discussing cases or problems involving classified or restricted documents and access issues.


Usage:

"If a patient asks for a Crizal certificate, or an invoice that confirms that their lenses are genuine Transitions or 1.67 or anything like that, don't *glomarize* - take the extra time to find the document or invoice that will help make their experience here a complete success from their point of view. A happy customer is a habitual customer ..."

_That's a stretch! But here are some real, documented usages ..._




> In seeking to keep its role in the [Afghanistan/Gitmo] detainee-abuse scandal from public view, the CIA has invoked the so-called "Glomar response," named for the _Glomar Explorer_, the deep-sea mining ship built by a Hughes-owned company for the CIA. The operation was exposed in 1975, leading to a Freedom of Information Act suit that established the precedent.
> 
> Steven Aftergood, the director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists who has extensive experience in Freedom of Information Act cases, said the use of the Glomar response is relatively rare and is particularly questionable in the context of records of detainee abuse. A more typical use, he suggested, would be a request for information about a secret technology or installation.
> 
> "The Glomar response has its place in FOIA litigation, but it doesn't follow that every time it's invoked, it is legitimate," he said ...
> 
> Lewis said the ACLU is certain to challenge the CIA's use of the Glomar case to shield the alleged documents. She singled out the legal memos about the torture convention as particularly egregious.
> 
> The memos "look like particularly inappropriate uses of the Glomar response because they are basically legal analyses of laws against torture and the use of certain harsher interrogation techniques, which on its face does not look like it would compromise national security," Lewis said.
> ...


More *glomars* there than you can shake a stick at; from the _Boston Globe_, 2004: CIA resists request for abuse data.





> Kimball asked if there were any exemptions for recordkeeping for the CIA. Langbart said that to his knowledge there weren't. Nancy Smith said "Except that all agencies can glomarize," i.e., they can fail to confirm or deny the existence of records. But Langbart pointed out that this does not exempt the CIA from having to follow provisions of laws and regulations relating to the disposition of records. He said that the word "glomarize" came from the _Glomar Explorer_ ...


That was from the minutes of a meeting held at the U.S. Department of State in 1996. The Department of Justice has a section regarding FOIA under the title Privacy "Glomarization", in which the term "glomarize" (etc.) is used 13 different times; this from 1986.





*Hughes Glomar Explorer.* The most famous ship in the history of modern international espionage. For the rest of the story, see "The Mine That Never Was" ...

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## chip anderson

*Sunch*:    noun   new word for late lunch supper combination.
Synonyms:  *Lupper   lunner  Dunch  * 

Source:  Chip's wierd mind.:hammer:

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## k12311997

> *Sunch*: noun new word for late lunch supper combination.
> Synonyms: *Lupper lunner Dunch* 
> 
> Source: Chip's wierd mind.:hammer:


This brings up a discussion my dad and I have frequently.  Lunch= mid day meal.  Dinner = evening meal.  Supper is where we differ he uses it as a synonym for Lunch I say Supper is the same as Dinner.  Now usually I'm not that picky food is food whatever you call the meal, but this has occasioned one or the other of us attempting to meet at the right place at the wrong time.

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## chip anderson

Actually I read up on this and Dinner is a formal sit down meal at either noon or  evening, supper is just an evening meal whether a sandwich individually or a group at a table.

Chip

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## HarryChiling

Lab Porn - the optical catalogs we read through when the office is slow drooling over the various tools we would like in the office.

(laughed my but off when I saw this on the optiglaze forum)

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## rinselberg

*nichevo*

In 2006, an article castigating the Bush administration in general, and in particular over the Iraq war, appeared on the BushFlash website under the title Nichevo, American Style. It provides an excellent definition and usage of "nichevo":


> "Nichevo" is one of those foreign [Russian] terms that doesn't exactly translate into English. It can be approximated by saying that "it doesn't matter" or "it can't be helped." Words, however, are mere shadows of [historical] concepts, thoughts, and experiences...
> 
> Russian serfs endured generations of virtual slavery [under the Czars] with resignation: Nichevo.
> 
> World War One and a Russian civil war [Reds vs. Whites] killed millions and razed the country down to its foundations. The people just sucked it up and kept on going: Nichevo.
> 
> Stalin forcibly collectivized agriculture and starved millions. Those that survived to plow the fields that now held the graves of their families tried to endure the unendurable: Nichevo.
> 
> From 1941 to 1945, more than 20 million Russians died in a war even more terrible than the wars that forged the Communist revolution, and those left standing [on the political left - or not] were also left with only one thing to say: "Nichevo."
> ...


Research confirms that "nichevo" was known to English speakers around the world long before 2006; during World War Two, for example, when Nazi propagandists found a use for it. Their intended audience was anyone at sea in the Atlantic or stationed in the United Kingdom or North Africa (esp. Allied soldiers and civilians) with a short wave radio. Radio programs were scripted with renditions of popular jazz tunes by "Charlie And His Orchestra". Any English speaking listener, working the frequency dial of a short wave radio, might inadvertently stumble onto an instrumental preamble that was unmistakably "swing". If they were well versed with the jazz standards of the day, the melody would be familiar and they might recognize a song by name - such as "The St. Louis Blues" or "Makin' Whoopee", to cite two known examples. But if they were still listening closely when the vocalist joined in, they could be in for a shock, because the standard English lyrics were sometimes reworked into sardonic Nazi propaganda set to music.



In this memorable recording, which you can actually audition by selecting ("click") the audio icon (just above), the venerable jazz arrangement "Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen" is combined with song lyrics that ridicule one of the Nazi arch-enemies: Communists. "Nichevo" sums it all up from the Nazi point of view. This selection is from the cream of the crop of Nazi radio propaganda: There's no outright vulgarity or overt racism; no unmistakably racial or ethnic slander. So I offer it carefully and with due deliberation.

A more complete perspective on the odd relationship between jazz and the Third Reich is provided by three recent articles that are available on line: Hitler's Jazz Band, Swinging for Goebbels and Swing Time for Hitler. 

"Nichevo" took center stage in a 1943 report in _Time Magazine_ on wartime conditions in Russia under the title Nichevo, Tovarish:


> For generations large-familied Russians have repeated a proverb: "V tesnote, da Ne V Obide", i.e. crowding is no discomfort. Veronika, a Moscow glovemaker, remembered it as she got up from her narrow bed, stumbled over her sleeping daughters and lit a fire in the little iron pechka in the center of the tiny room. It was below freezing in the room, water had to be left dripping to keep the pipes from freezing and on this, the first day of 1943, Veronika Popova, Russia's "Jane Smith", dressed quickly, repeating to herself a newer Russian proverb: "Nichevo, Tovarish" ... "Everything's fine, Comrade."
> 
> Veronika lit her improvised lampa cup of kerosene with a twisted thread for a wickand made breakfast: water-thin gruel, black bread and brick tea brewed on the pechka. When it was ready she woke 16-year-old Grusha, fed her and, with an endearing Nichevo, sent her off to work in a war plant. Eight-year-old Fanya tied her ragged valenkis on her feet and went off to school. "Nichevo, Mama, I am not very hungry," she said.
> 
> There was no letter from her husband, but Nichevo, he had everything he needed at the front ...


In 1950 there was an encore appearance in _Time Magazine_ in a report that was titled The Nichevo Line:


> As if trying to prove Dean Acheson's wishful point that the Russians might become good boys some day ... the Russians were being relatively mellow at U.N.'s General Assembly. Andrei Vishinsky opposed the U.S. plan for widening the powers of the Assembly, but he was less vitriolic than usual. Jacob Malik, the Relentless Rudolph of last month's Security Council sessions, softened to the point of telling one reporter to remember the Russian word "nichevo". "It means," explained Malik, "don't worry, things will turn out all right ..."


As a respite from tackling the world's great social, political and economic issues, "nichevo" has enjoyed an occasional holiday for more recreational pursuits; for example, Tigran Vartanovich Petrosian, who won the World Championship of Chess in 1963, was famous for his "Nichevo Attack", which was a chess strategy so subtle that opponents seldom realized that they were losing until it suddenly became apparent that they were about to be checkmated in a few moves - and by then, there was no escape.


_Fischer vs. Petrosian, 1970. It's apparent from Petrosian's pained expression that it wasn't a good day for his patented "Nichevo Attack". Fischer won. Credit: ChessBase News._


"Nichevo" has not been just a landlubber. At least as recently as 1995, the ferryboat _Nichevo II (1962)_ was in service between Bayfield, WI and Madeline Island on Lake Superior, at the very north end of Wisconsin. It was a successor to an earlier ferryboat _Nichevo (1929)_ which plied the same routes.


_Credit: Madeline Island Ferry Line._


Is there a niche for "nichevo" in the optical dispensary? Perhaps there's an OptiBoarder ready to give it a try. What could you say the next time a not-so-favorite customer asks for the "Acme" brand anti-reflective lens coating Certificate of Authority or if going from a 1.67 up to a 1.74 index will shave an additional 0.1 millimeter from the edge thickness of the lens ..?

*Nichevo.*

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## rinselberg

overburden


To wit: "overburden" is defined ...


_So, there are two ways to use it: First, as a verb. And secondly, as a noun. I don't want to overburden myself trying to think of an example of how to use "overburden" as a verb, so ... I am going to offer an example of how to use "overburden" as a noun ... right here! And it starts with a question:_


Is Natanz so deep that a nuclear bunker buster is necessary?


_You mean one of these ..?_


Iranian officials claim Natanz is more than 18 meters underground. Hersh suggests 23 meters. Anyway, this is the bottom line: Natanz is about 20 meters underground ...

Depth, though, is less important than the ... "concrete *overburden* equivalent" of a Hard and Deeply Buried Target (HDBT). Natanz was constructed using the "cut and cover" method: First, dig a hole; then build a reinforced concrete roof; cover with rock and soil; and repeat. Its a Persian mille-feuilles, with dirt, rebar and concrete.



_Persian mille-feuilles: Select ("click") image to enlarge. I'm not sure I can tell which layers are the dirt, which are the rebar and which are just concrete - but the whole thing looks scrumptious_.


"Concrete overburden equivalent" measures the combined strength of the concrete, rock, and soil [as if it were all just] concrete. In other words, how [many meters] would an equally strong structure of reinforced concrete amount to? The "concrete overburden equivalent" at Natanz is probably considerably less than the actual meters of structure, rock, and soil above the facility. Generally speaking, shallow cut and cover facilities are thought to be vulnerable to the current suite of earth penetrating munitions ...


_"Cut and cover" ..? I thought it was supposed to be "duck and cover" ... I could sure use a coffee (black) with that extraordinary looking Persian mille-feuilles ... ummm ... can't we do better than this?_


Currently, two basic types of construction methods are used to create an underground complex, "cut and cover" and tunneling. Cut and cover facilities are created by digging deep trenches in the ground, constructing a steel-reinforced concrete bunker deep in the trench, and back filling the excavated earth over it. The amount of earth and/or rock on top of the buried facility is called *"overburden"* and typically, the greater the amount of overburden, the [more protected] the facility is against aerial assault from bunker busters; i.e. bombs designed to burrow deeply into the earth before detonating ...


_Now that's more like it ... but we still need a picture!_



An artists concept of an underground facility with ventilation shafts and an entrance more than a mile-and-a-half from the main facility. The *overburden* is the amount of material (soil; rock; concrete; etc.) covering the roof of the buried facility.


_I mean a real picture._


 Select ("click") image to enlarge.

Additional layers of reinforced concrete and fill dirt create a multi-layer sandwich (i.e. *overburden*) designed to defeat conventional earth-penetrating precision munitions. Date: 8 June 2003. Image Source: DigitalGlobe.


*Fantastic!*





*Countdown Iran*
High profile OptiBoard poster rinselberg reports on the Pentagon's latest plans ...

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## rinselberg

*Manicheism* is a religion founded by [a Persian named "Mani"] in ... the Third Century. It purported to be the true synthesis of all the religious systems then known, and actually consisted of Zoroastrian dualism, Babylonian folklore, Buddhist ethics, and some small and superficial additions of Christian elements. As the theory of two eternal principles, Good and Evil, is predominant in this fusion of ideas and gives color to the whole, Manicheism is classified as a form of religious dualism. It spread with extraordinary rapidity in both East and West and maintained a sporadic and intermittent existence in the West (Africa, Spain, France, North Italy, the Balkans) for a thousand years, but it flourished mainly in the land of its birth (Mesopotamia, Babylonia, Turkestan) and even further East in Northern India, Western China and Tibet, where [around] A.D. 1000, the bulk of the population professed its tenets and where it [eventually] died out at an uncertain date.

_-- from the Catholic Encyclopedia online
_

Michael Heller, a Polish cosmologist and Catholic priest and scholar, alluded to Manicheism or manicheistic doctrine in a statement accepting the 2008 Templeton Prize:


> Adherents of the so-called "intelligent design" ideology commit a grave theological error. They claim that scientific theories, that ascribe the great role to chance and random events in the evolutionary processes, should be replaced, or supplemented, by theories acknowledging the thread of intelligent design in the universe. Such views are theologically erroneous. They implicitly revive the old *manicheistic* error postulating the existence of two forces acting against each other: God and an inert matter; in this case, chance and intelligent design. There is no opposition here. Within the all-comprising Mind of God what we call chance and random events is well composed into the symphony of creation.



_For more about Michael Heller, see OptiBoard: Michael Heller awarded the 2008 Templeton Prize._

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## chip anderson

Snob: 
 Meaning: A snooty person; someone who puts on airs.
Origin: "It seems that Oxford freshmen were required to register 'according to rank.'  Those not of noble birth added after thier names the phrase _sine nobilitate_ which was then abbreviated to 's. nob.,'  thurs creating a perfect definition fo the commoner who wishes to mingle with nobles" (_From Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origions_, Vol. III, by William and Mary Morris).

Chip 
 :Rolleyes:

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## ksquared

Copenhagen Syndrome - A belief in your own miracles. It is thinking that those who crowned you king actually knew what they were doing. It is buying into your own tulip bulb mania. It is the floating evanescent bubble of self. God help you when it bursts.

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