• Obviate
• Belie

Got any more?

Comments? (13)

I want Kerry to win more than anything, which is why the following is so frustrating: A few weeks ago I got my first ever piece of real, physical political correspondence from the Kerry campaign. The first sentence reads, "All our hard work and determination -- all the energy and enthusiasm that you and so many other dedicated people have brought to our campaign -- are finally paying off."

Are?! Admittedly, this is a difficult sentence, since 'all our pennies are shiny' but in that case, 'our pennies' is plural. In the above case, "our hard work and determination" is singular, and the modifier 'all' doesn't group together many disparate items, but rather refers to the grand sum of a single item, as in 'all our work was for naught,' as opposed to 'all our work were for naught.'

Ugh. I hope part of my campaign contribution goes to a proofreader. In a battle like the one running for the next six months, it's stupid to miss points for something like this.

Update: Thanks to Andrew, for convincing me that the letter was correct after all. Hard work and determination are two individual things, so 'all' groups them together, making the total plural.

<Gilda>Nevermind!</Gilda>

Comments? (28)

...pation!

"Bated breath" vs. "baited breath"? Find out which, and find out why. As a former lingusitics student, I see this as a perfect example of how an incorrect spelling can overtake the original spelling. It's almost at the balance point.

Comments? (13)

Posit: Gilmore Girls is the unspoken Buffy substitute.

Yes? No? Discuss!

Comments? (20)

Things are very different when death comes in the middle of a life, and not at the end. In a thousand ways the life seems to go on, a dotted line continuing along the trail of what would have been solid if not for the sudden stop; electric bills, friends calling. The memory of an ongoing life, where we find ourselves stopping mid-thought to factor in this course correction in the midst of thinking our everyday thoughts.

I can't speak for other families and other tragedies, but one of the gifts my family has unspokenly given to each other is that of uncorrected tense. "Dad likes to do" this, or "Dad buys these kinds of trinkets on trips." Though it's been nearly a month, we all tend to put phrases like this in the present instead of the past, more often than not, though none of us mentions it.

Maybe we all have our own reasons. I can think of several. Functional fixedness, or habit, is an obvious possibility. I'm sure some out there might think it's denial. For me, it's an unconscious manifestation of the idea that what my dad was and is lives on. In so much as these qualities (that the present-tense comments are usually describing) shape our feelings about him, those qualities still live on. Naturally Dad doesn't literally take pictures at every possible opportunity anymore, but the quality that he takes pictures at every opportunity remains.

Like I said, I don't know the cause of this tense in the rest of my family, but I do know that we share the common emotion, the common little gift that we give each other whenever it happens. We don't correct each other. We don't force each other to open our hearts wide to the truth, like the harsh glare of the sun after a matinee. Instead we take the small comfort that we still can talk about Dad this way, that he's here and along for the ride, and not just a stop along the way.

Maybe over the years we'll migrate to "used to" and "I remember how he," but even then the focus will be on the living, and on the action, not the cessation. I'm proud of my family for this combination of maturity and support, that we're in a common struggle and gather strength from it, without pushing each other down to keep ourselves up.

This 'gift of tense' is just one of the things that makes this time more bearable.

Comments? (9)

I've been pretty free about spreading my email address around, deciding that since my email address is already on spammers lists, hiding it now would be like trying to stuff the genie back in the bottle. When I see people list email addresses as 'hello at fury dot com' and such, I wonder how well that kind of obfuscation thwarts email harvesting spiders.

The Center for Democracy & Technology knows where spam comes from. This article is the most insightful look into how the online world works that I've seen this year. It's truly fascinating reading.

Comments? (55)

A couple years ago I had a third-party spellchecker in Fury as part of the posting process. Then they started charging, with a minimum $100 buy-in, and I never ponied up, so the quality suffered.

All that's changed today, now that Apple released Safari Beta 2. Finally I'm likely to switch over from IE, and one of the features of Safari is now integrated spellchecking in text fields. Yay indeed.

Comments? (41)

The Dialect Survey Project has been the subject of a lot of conversation among my friends recently.

In a nutshell, you fill out a multiple-choice survey, asking how you pronounce certain words (coupon: 'coo-pahn' or 'cue-pahn'?), or which word you use (shopping cart vs basket vs buggy) and then you can see the results mapped visually across the United States.

There are a few very cool terms there I never knew (what do you call rain during sunshine?) and it's a great diversion. You're sure to find something new.

In the weeks since I first came across this site, I've been coming up with other regional lexical idiosyncrasies. for example, most of the country's kids say 'do-over' but growing up in Los Angeles, people at my schools called it a 'take-over' (not the hostile kind).

The survey is really long, but it lets you take it a little at a time, save and finish later.

Comments? (20)

So it's week two and the semester's already at full tilt. I pulled my first all-nighter of the semester Sunday night, and have been packed with work all week, and all the week to come.

It feels SO GOOD.

I learned a new word yesterday: eustress. I haven't found it in an online dictionary yet, but I'm going to check out the Oxford. Eustress is an opposite of 'distress.' In effect, eustress is 'good stress.' To me it feels like 'frenzy' but then I'm a sicko who likes frenzy. Anyhow, that's what I've been swimming in, and I like it.

Every single one of my classes is awesome. My teachers are fantastic, in contrast to a mix of brilliance and disappointment last semester. I'll write up my course listing in the next couple days, and will dive into detail on each of my classes later on, with syllibi and possibly even photos and video.

Right now, I just finished a simple maze program, representing my first foray into visual basic. It's a simple maze game for my Programming Usable Interfaces class. We were told to code something, anything, in Visual Basic. Don't even try to map the maze; it randomizes each time you turn. It's nothing special, but it's great to have the freedom of sitting down in a computer lab for a few hours, letting my imagination being my guide. Oh, and I wouldn't have called it 'impress.exe' except that was the sole constraint of the assignment.

For a (very, very slightly) more down-to-Earth example of what I've been doing the last few days, our first project in Game Design was to create a new game based off of hopscotch. The assignment was in three parts:

1. Brainstorm at least 50 ideas for hopscotch.
2. Pick three or more ideas, and write a paragraph or two exploring them.
3. Pick one, create a rule set, playtest it, document your findings, iterate the ruleset, playtest again, and document your findings.

I love this place. Wait'll you hear about our project for this week. I'll write that as soon as I finish my reading for tonight's classes.

I'll need your help. Get ready for some great nostalgia.

Comments? (39)

I'm always collecting things in my head to blog, and once in a while two seem to match up in an odd way, forcing them to the front of the queue. Today's tidbits are about minimal languages, Toki Pona and K, minimal verbal and programming languages, respectively.

My friend, Pigdog's Mr. Bad, recently introduced me to the wonderful language of Toki Pona. Unlike Esperanto (another of Señor Bad's hobbies), Toki Pona is a constructed language that favors simplicity over clarity, and touts itself as "the language of good. The simple way of life."

The Toki Pona language consists of 119 words. By virtue of Toki Pona's extremely small vocabulary, and order-independent syntax, the language is good at talking about feelings and simple relationships, but not about the finer points of politics or silicon-on-insulator microchip fabrication techniques. Tokiponists believe this is exactly as it should be.

It only takes about a day of effort to learn, though the trouble comes when you have nobody to speak with but yourself. Mr. Bad himself admits that he has onl had Toki Pona conversations in email and instant message conversations which, sadly, rips away the simplicity latent on the very phonemes and the way the mouth moves to pronounce them.

Perhaps Toki Pona will become my Chinese as it's used in Firefly, the underlanguage for muttering under my breath. Then again, what place does a happy language have as a muttering language. Well, it could be an interesting experiment anyhow.

...

On the other side of the minimalist coin is a programming language I only found out about this morning called K. There's an excellent K introduction and primer on (appropriately enough) Kuro5hin.org.

I haven't played with K, but it seems to be for lists what perl is for well, big files. And, um I thought Lisp was the language for lists... But this looks pretty cool anyhow. The interesting part is the syntax of K, a language where operators are called verbs, objects are nouns, and linguistic analogistic structures like adverbs take the place of more traditional looping structures.

Sadly, they don't have a version for the Mac yet, just windows, Solaris, and Linux, but a port can't be far behind.

At any rate, if you're a programmer, the primer is a good read, if it serves no other purpose than to be a reminder that just because so many of the coding languages we use have such a similar structure (Is concatenation done with '+', '.', or '&' in [language I'm coding in today]?) that doesn't mean that entirely other syntaxes exist and can prove valuable tools for specific problems.

the part that's amusing to me is that both of the above examples seek to distill existing languages down to core elements, but for entirely different reasons. Toki Pona strives to shape emotion by carving away parts of a language that breed stress, while K tries to distill languages down to core atomic components so that more complex questions can be answered with less chaff.

Either way, an interesting look at how narrowing a vocabulary can change the message conveyed.

Comments? (99)

So the newest web toy on the block is Googlism.

The site takes the name of a person, place, thing, etc, and will throw back an impressively long list of definitions garnered from the web. Not definitive definitions mind you, but a list of phrases that begin (in my own egotistical example) 'Kevin Fox is a...'.

The output is really impressive, as you'll no doubt see. I'm still sifting through, but the one that caught my eye was "Kevin Fox is my soulmate."

Sadly I don't play the cello, and dimes'll give you dollars that she's lusting after my nomesis, musician and creator of the "Six Degrees of Kevin Fox".

Nevertheless, here's my complete list. I've put links on the ones that I recognize as referring to me:

kevin fox is a cellist and guitar player residing in toronto
kevin fox is understudy for the title role in the musical 'buddy
kevin fox is the bass player for the jimmy nations combo
kevin fox is his own registered trademark
kevin fox is currently an interaction designer
kevin fox is suitably perplexed as the antipholus who finds himself being given money
kevin fox is an avid team roper
kevin fox is sure to celebrated as this insanely talented songwriter / much sought after string
kevin fox is trying a
kevin fox is trying a neat experiment on qwer
kevin fox is technical director of the spa and has trained closely with alan over the past ten years
kevin fox is new to toronto
kevin fox is writing
kevin fox is an experienced wrestler with great technique
kevin fox is
kevin fox is all right once the spelling starts
kevin fox is sl 538
kevin fox is loaded with complexity and good dialog
kevin fox is someone i met in the sca
kevin fox is making me giggle
kevin fox is fueled largely by exposition that is taken to a whole new level by the engaging performances of
kevin fox is now based in indonesia and plays for the jakarta bintangs
kevin fox is my soulmate
kevin fox is opening
kevin fox is working with an outfitter in asheville
kevin fox is struggling
kevin fox is coordinator of the school
kevin fox is now operations manager at wfxa
kevin fox is refining pcl's program to pay for this equipment replacement through the use of a general obligation bond act
kevin fox is the most clever human being on the planet
kevin fox is a genius
kevin fox is purposely meant to be cynical
kevin fox is the new mayor of roxbury of the mayor’s committee
kevin fox is the one that had to go to the scene when these dogs were lose
kevin fox is fun to talk to

Of course, I don't know about a lot of the remaining items, but I'll be spending a little time on Google searching for the phrases to find out. It's like referrer-checking (aka backlinking) but on a linguistic, not a linky, level.

So what are you?

Comments? (32)

So Manchester, UK was "rocked" by a 3.2 temblor this morning, and later was hit by two larger earthquakes which, at this time, don't have Richters attached to them yet.

The funny bit is that everyone seems so surprised that there could be a larger quake after the first. The term 'foreshock' apparently hasn't crossed the pond, and even experts at the British Geological Survey seemed a bit surprised:

Julian Bukits, of the BGS, told BBC News 24 that it was unusual to have further quakes that were stronger than the first.

He said it was usual to have a strong tremor followed by further smaller aftershocks, but sometimes there could be up to three quakes leading up to a "bigger earthquake".

In truth, foreshocks are really common, and in the event of a 4.0 or higher, the USGS will usually put out a warning that there's a 20% chance of a quake larger than the first within the next 48 hours.

Okay, okay, so maybe I'm just being picky. I just get a kick out of how the BBC put "bigger earthquake" in quotes.

Comments? (14)

Between the ages of 18 months and 15 years, a child learns a new word every two hours on average.

Comments? (59)

Speaking of regional language differences, I read an article on CNN today, discussing a site's survey about the regional dispursion of 'soda', 'pop', and 'coke' across North America.

An interesting article but their infographic totally ignored the western half of the United States and, true to CNN form, they're pitifully bad about giving links to sites, even when the site is the focus of the article. It's as if there's a mandate to not let people leave CNN.com, so they won't give you external links, or even printed URLs.

Nevertheless, I found the page, so enjoy the data for yourself!

(personally, I'm curious to know who on Earth uses the term 'netizen' (or 'blog-o-sphere' for that matter).)

Comments? (64)

A linguist at Temple University in Philly has come out with a paper spelling out the evolution and relevance of the slang term, 'like.'

Telling us GenX/Yers what we've known for, like, ever, it goes into reasons why 'like' is just as valid a word as any other.

Personally, I'm waiting for the inevitable copycat theses addressing such high-minded terms as 'was all' (eg. "And she was all, 'don't go there.'"), 'shiznit' 'hella' 'moted' (thanks Mellie for reminding me of that Valley gem!) and my new favorite: 'yinz.'

My favorite are the highly regional words (like moted and yinz). 'Sosh,' apparently revived from the '60s was another real-world valley girl fave. Got any of your own?

Comments? (64)

This proof of concept device is exactly the kind of direction I've been hoping that personal electronics would take: shifting from the consumption of media (tapes, CDs, books, etc.) to the creation of it (cameras, small writing devices, microphones).

In a nutshell, this device is constantly recording the sound around you, via a microphone at your waist and one in your ear and, upon recognizing a preprogrammed keyword or phrase, like "nice to meet you" or "I'll have to remember that", will store a predetermined portion of that buffer for you, for further retrieval.

They give the 'cocktail party' example of remembering the names of people you met (which I think would only be useful if there was also an integrated camera) but I could see countless uses in a classroom environement or social environment; anywhere you might hear something you want to remember, but weren't prepared for.

With the proper software, this could also be a very useful tool for people with ADD, giving them the ability to, with a simple voice or button-driven command, get a playback of the last 30 seconds of conversation, if their mind wandered. In fact, for some ADD people, the ability to run a constant, lower volume stream of the conversation, delayed 5-30 seconds from 'realtime' could help them keep their mind in the conversation, even as it wanders, with the first pass being a 'screening pass' and the second enabling them to turn their focus on the conversation.

The device also has a clock and GPS, so with each saved annotation would be the time and exact place where the conversation took place.

There aren't any commercial production plans yet, but this kind of technology could easily be added to existing consumer devices, such as cellphones or HD MP3 players, given the proper firmware and some hardware tweaks.

Comments? (19)

Good: OS X has built-in spellchecking in applications that choose to support it.

Bad: Thousands of common words are missing from the dictionary, especially place-names.

Worse: It completely ignores all words that are three characters or less, so forget about OS X helping you when you mistype 'teh' or 'iz' or say "ack! t his is soo wrong!"

Sometimes an ounce of cure generates a false sense of security that can end up doing more harm than good. When you don't see any more red squiggles and you assume everything's spelled right, it might just be that the OS isn't looking close enough.

Addition: Are there spelling bees in Spanish-speaking countries? Spanish words are pronounced strictly by their spelling (or more likely, vice-versa). Is the spelling bee a happy by-product of a disjointed, inconstant language? It'd be a shame if other countries never got to experience the joys of spelling bee championships.

Comments? (32)

Pet peeve of the day: When my (or any) computer says something along the lines of, "The user 'kfox' does not exist."

This bugs me because the computer grants existence to the object by by making it the subject of the sentence, then denying that there is any such thing. More accurate would be to say, "The user 'kfox' cannot be found" or "'kfox' is not a valid user on this system."

Of course, these don't address the larger problem, which is that I am the user 'kfox' and whether I have an account is the issue, not whether or not I exist. I don't think my computer is qualified to tell me that, even if I did name it Descartes.

Comments? (35)

There's a great story in today's SF Gate on Dotcom etymologies.

Comments? (52)

You should always check your spelling.

Especially if you're responsible for the most trafficked news home page on the planet, and are quoting Martha Stewart.

Even more especially if you produce live news coverage with noted political analysts.

We tend to rely so much on spellcheckers that we no longer feel the need to spell well without the training wheels. From Tron: "Won't that be grand? The computers will start thinking and the people will stop."

Comments? (4)

Every now and then I or a friend misspells a word and the misspelling completely replaces the original in my written (and sometimes verbal) vocabulary, or at least my vocabulary with that person.

Some of my favorites 'disspellings' are:

• broken: ab0rken
• phereomone: pherognome
• porn: pron (common usage)
• remedy: rememdy
• spellcheck: spekkcheck

Do you have any disspellings? What are they?

Comments? (58)

It's odd how we can be at war with them, or they can be at war with us, and the term doesn't give any indication on which one is the one being attacked, or where the war is taking place.

I guess it's because before roughly 300 years ago, wars were things that happened on mutual borders, so it didn't matter as much who started it, as both populaces felt the real effects of the struggle. Certainly many wars are still like this, and there are terms for it, 'border conflict' for example. We have 'civil war,' and 'coup' for an internal struggle, but we don't really have words for some of the modern faces war takes on.

Consider that war almost always involved the desire to acquire land. This is a natural reason for wars to happen along borders, to push them one way or another. Distant wars, the Falklands War, the Revolutionary War, though not attached to the 'mother country' were still about gaining or keeping ownership of land.

I guess the change started with allies. In WW I and WW II we were allies to various countries under siege, and after winning the war, these governments were either solidified or reinstated. It wasn't about the US getting more land, even in the countries that surrendered. Sure there were places where land was divvied (East/West Germany and Israel to name a few), but the US wasn't going for a land grab.

Vietnam, Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan. All these wars involved massive US troops on foreign soil for reasons having nothing to do with gaining territory, but to enforce ideology and, in the larger sense, decrease future threats to our own country.

'War' is a great umbrella term, and maybe there's a more specific term that's just slipping out of my mind at the moment, but I can't think of it.

Now that I'm ending this post, I'll confess that I didn't really have a point. It just seems that, evidenced by the stupid names CNN, ABC, et al have for this 'military action' we need to do what English-speakers do best, and expand our vocabulary with a few new terms.

Comments? (52)

Sometimes a picture can say a thousand words... Sometime's it can't even say one.

Either kerning, or even better, a different typeface, could have solved this problem before it became one. Then again, maybe this is just the clientele they're trying to target, and I'm just not giving them enough credit.

Comments? (63)

Call me nitpicky, but I find it amusing that today's front page of Wired has a picture of a Palm device with 'Back to schqql" written on it...

People have been bitching about computers inability to regognize human writing. It's refreshing to see that the reverse is sometimes true as well.

Comments? (5)

Oh my god. I got the link to Dictionaraoke from LYD, where he also linked to their rendition of NIN's Closer.

I try not to crib links, but I have to, because their rendition of Green Eggs & Ham is simply the most amazing thing I've heard for three months (and that includes POE's Haunted, which is also amazing).

Go to the site, but the gist is they took known songs or written works and remixed them, using only the word readings from Merriam-Webster's Speaking Dictionary mixed with music and beats. This is really amazing.

Comments? (34)

Looking in my menu of applications, I just misread Microsoft Entourage as Microsoft Espionage. For just a moment, everything made sense...

Comments? (3)

I'm writing on the train, but I'm not going to worry about posting wirelessly. I'll just hotsync the palm and post once I get home.

So, today's blogfodder falls into the realm of serendipity. I was thinking about a project I wanted to make, a relatively simple one, but with wide application. I'll describe it later (that is, if you're one of those like Karen who reads the blog chronologically, bottom-to-top (and for whom posts longer than one screen must mean a lot of zigzagging up, then down, then up again) but I digress.. If you read from top-to-bottom, then you already know what I'm talking about.)

At any rate, I was looking for a nice, short mnemonic domain for this service which, for lack of a domain I'll call 'clip' (at least initially it will probably live at 'clip.fury.com').

So I was domain-name hunting before work this morning and after a few hundred ideas (nearly all taken in .com, .net. and .org) I settled on either ibidibi.com (pronounced 'ibbi-dibbi' and though a cool palendrome, not quite as cool as idibidi.*, which I'm pretty sure is taken), or voxen.net.

I like voxen.net, as it sounds cool, is short, and even has a little Latin root in there to spark the imagination. It's a little like vox (speech), vixen (sex sells), and voxel (a 3D pixel). In fact, a geek prone to hypercorrection might think that voxen is the plural of voxel.

But I digress...

After deciding on voxen.net, I started thinking about how it lends itself perfectly to my voice-blogging project (that and Dinah noting that vox is voice). Briefly, the voice-blogging project would be a service using VoiceXML and Tellme's developer services to allow registered users call Tellme and record voice blog entries that will automatically post to their site. A lot has to be hammered out, including whether I can do on-the-fly mp3 compression or if I have to use aiff or wav. Then there's hosting. Should I follow Blogger's model and let those who have room and wherewithall to host their own voiceblog entries use the service for free, and either charge those who use Voxel's hosting, or have some sort of advertising model. Anyhow, that's a bit out there, and a lot of things need to be figured out before we get there.

So that, really briefly, is the current vision for voxel.net. You're in your car, stuck in traffic (which frankly is where I get most of my interesting ideas, the forebrain wanders as the backbrain takes the wheel), and you have a thought, you call tellme, login through voice commands, and share your thoughts.

Leia doesn't think she'd use it beyond playing with it a few times, because she wouldn't want to present herself in her voice. I completely understand. I have a lot more control over my tone and content when I'm in front of a keyboard (though you'd never guess it from this rambling post touching on many thoughts but mastering none). I think the idea voice-blogging is like text blogging without a backspace key or the ability to stop for even a moment. Heck, I record my answering machine greeting 10 times before I'm happy done.

Think it's useful? Have an alternate use in mind for the application? I'm all ears.

Actually, as a big 'sike' to everyone, I'm not going to try to explain 'clip' just yet. I'll have it done in a bit (unlike my other projects, when this one's up it'll be fully functional in its glorious simplicity) and you can see it and use it for yourself. Some of the best mainstream tools are born from the inventor personally wanting to salve a problem for themself. Clip falls in that category. I hope you find it useful...

Comments? (5)

Chek this out: Phat isn't the neo-def werd that most people who use it think it is.

And some people out there think linguists are NPVA.

Comments? (3)

If you watched the season finale of The West Wing last Wednesday, you might have wondered what Bartlet was saying when he was talking to God in Latin. I know I was curious, so I went and found out:

• "Gratias tibi ago domine." -- I give thanks to you, O Lord.
• "Haec credam a deo pio? A deo iusto, a deo scito? Cruciatus in crucem. Tuus in terra servus, nuntius fui. Officium perfeci. Cruciatus in crucem. Eas in crucem." -- Am I really to believe that these are the acts of a loving God? A just God? A wise God? To hell with your punishments. I was your servant here on Earth. And I spread your word and I did your work. To hell with your punishments. To hell with you.

I can't wait until next season...

Comments? (4)

Okay, I pulled out my copy of Basic English Revisited to settle in my head the question of when to use "who" and when to use "whom."

Basically, substitute the word in question (who/whom) with "I" or "me." If "I" fits better than "me" then it should be "who." Otherwise it should be "whom."

So, in the sentence, "they are going to meet who/whom," "they are going to meet me" makes a lot more sense than, "they are going to meet I." Therefore, the sentence should be, "they are going to meet whom?"

I'm also finally getting my quotation mark and punctuation rules down, so I'll stop being sloppy with my punctuation. Spelling, on the other hand, is another matter entirely.

Comments? (6)

or: "English is so ambiguous"

One of my favorite books in school was "Basic English Revisited" or 'The thin yellow book' as we called it. My 7th grade teacher enouraged us to 'lose' them at the end of the semester, have our parents pay the fees, and keep the books for ourselves. It had all the gems of the english language including how to use an apostrophie correctly, how to quote properly, how to write all kinds of bibliographic references (though there's no data on citing web pages. The book came out too URLy...).

What I remember most from the book though was the bit about ambiguity in sentences. Accompanying the phrase, "we make combs for people with unbreakable teeth" there was a cartoon of a trapese artist hanging from the sky, holding a rope carrying an elephant, using only his teeth.

I was just reading a photo-essay on yoga and I came across the phrase: "Herbal animal eye pillows are available for serious relaxation-seekers' and I was thinking of all the different ways to read it. Pillows made out of animal eyes? Herbal pillows for animal eyes? Shaped like animal eyes? Shaped like animals? I'm not sure any of these interpretations would really help me achieve 'serious relaxation'...

Comments? (3)

With a dash of human distributed processing and a pinch of humor, Google is sponsoring a community effort to let users translate its site (not all the sites on the web, just all pages with google-specific content) into as many languages as possible.

Several languages, including French, Hungarian, Welsh, Estonian, and Greek are already complete. Other interesting languages 100% completed are Esperanto, Latin, Pig Latin, and BorkBorkBork!

But it's not over yet! Sign up as a volunteer translator and you can help finish the translation to Hacker (30% complete), Elmer Fudd (14% complete), and Klingon (1% complete)!

This could get interesting...

Comments? (3)

It's so funny how we all talk about wireless this and wireless that. I'm too young to remember, but I'm sure a lot of people giggle to themselves, remembering the 20s, when 'the wireless' was the big box in the corner that all the sounds of the world came from.

The more things change, and all that...

Comments? (1)

Man, I'm so out of the l33t haxOr culture. I used to be hip to tha jive, but I saw this on Geeklife and I can't make heads or tails of it:

Current Rating: 5 - Votes: 1
Rate this story:  1 -  2 -  3 -  4 -  5
(1 = sux0rs to 5 = totally ballz)

Which is good and which is bad? Sexual innuendo can mean so many things...

Comments? (1)

I encourage folks to check out the third Put Those Words To Use Contest. Ignore the posted deadline and submit as soon as possible.

This reminds me of a chinese proverb I (sadly) saw enscribed on the wall of a San Francisco Post Office: "I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand." Give these words a go and you may never forget them!

PS: If you do enter, drop me a cc.

Comments? (3)

I just saw a commercial telling me to check out the latest models at my nearest "Ford store" instead of "dealer". Is this the first step in a shift away from the franchised dealer model and towards a "Gateway-esque" model of brick-and-mortar showrooms and direct sales?

Comments? (1)

And just when I thought I knew what a word meant:

The Word of the Day for October 3 is:

Nimrod \NIM-rahd\ (noun)
1 : a descendant of Ham represented in Genesis as a mighty
hunter and a king of Shinar
*2 : not capitalized : hunter

Example sentence:
Dad fancied himself a mighty nimrod after he captured
the rabbit who had been eating our garden.

Heck, I guess that's why I subscribed to the list!

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I was looking up 'tautology' on Merriam-Webster's site, and got the following:

• 1.
  • a : needless repetition of an idea, statement, or word
  • b : an instance of tautology
• 2. a tautologous statement

So is 1.b an instance of tautology? Is 2 a tautologous statement? Who says entymologists aren't fun?

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While I was studying for the GRE I subscribed to Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day. Today's word is thaumaturgy.

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It's funny how phrases are used as the seeds of new concepts. If someone says "The quarterback is toast" everyone knows he means toast as a metaphor for death, which is in turn a metaphor for done or defeated.

This metaphor chain goes so far that if someone says "that bread is toast" most people get the implication that the bread has somhow become unfit, not that it, surprisingly, is actually toasted bread.

Okay, interesting, but a couple days ago a friend of mine used "big brother" as an adjective, as in "the whole sitch is so Big Brother, only I was the red room!"

A month ago, to call something 'Big Brother' would have referenced the invisible, omnicient hand of society's leaders in Orwell's 1984. Before that was published, it just meant the benevolent, if heavy-handed and overprotective, actions of a metaphorical or literal older brother.

Everything's gone meta. My friend's English teacher used to say, "The greatness of the English language is thatany noun can be verbed." Nowadays it seems that any metaphor can be coined anew, and served as the basis for a new one. Talk about language recycling.

Another quick example: Did you realize that the word 'realize' didn't mean to notice or comprehend, but more to literally picture something? Language moved on, and 'actualize' was brought in to fill the gap left by the migration of 'realize.'

Random note: I hate it when people say "I literally blah-blah-blah" like "I literally died right there." or "I literally blew my top." don't people know what the word means? It's almost as bad as "Ironic". but that's a whole other story I might do a project on next semester. That would be ironic.

Or would it?

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