From the Examples: The woman yanked Dick's testicles to fight him off. http: / / digg. com / world_news / 88_year_old_woman_yanks_nude_intruder_s_testicles opensourcefood and run it as a personal project.
Aargh! Accidental duplication through newfangled case-sensitivity! Though I did discover in the process that Futility Closet's list isn't actually exhaustive; I'm currently still seeking a source that is...
Paw Prints: 'When Charles Dickens moved into Tavistock House, he made sure that every detail of it was to his taste. One of the features he installed was a hidden door to his study, made to look like part of an unbroken wall of books, complete with dummy shelves and fictitious titles. Dickens clearly derived much amusement from the invention of titles for these volumes. They ranged from the purely facetious—Five Minutes in China, three volumes, and Heavyside’s Conversations With Nobody—to straight puns, such as The Gunpowder Magazine. In later years he added Cat’s Lives (nine volumes) and The Wisdom of Our Ancestors, which consisted of volumes on ignorance, superstition, the block, the stake, the rack, dirt, and disease. The companion—The Virtues of Our Ancestors—was so narrow the title had to be printed sideways.'
It looks as though links in old Wordie posts which were formed with square brackets now point to capitalised versions of word pages if the linked text does, which means that some links have actually been repointed. Maybe comments with timestamps from the First Age of Wordie should automatically be made to point to lowercase versions...?
Well, some of them are already in the database (pulled from whatever sources) and therefore can turn up on a random word search (I'm tagging them caput). Whether that's the whole story I'm not sure.
h+ Magazine: 'It was created by wealthy cryonicists for the purpose of wealth preservation, as well as to fund both their cryopreservation and their eventual resuscitation.'
h+ Magazine: 'Leaving money to your future self is complicated. The courts have decided that cryopreserved people are not suspended or preserved. Rather, they are irrevocably dead, and by being dead have no legal right of ownership or inheritance. These laws may change if the first cryopreserved people are resuscitated and sue for some new kind of civil rights, but that could be decades away. In the meantime, those who are not yet being preserved have spent years pondering and discussing possible methods of self-inheritance. They call it Cryonics Estate Planning and there are now at least three ways to achieve the goal.'
According to this, it's a 'generic term' coined to refer to having to decide whether to carry out your deceased parent's dying wish. Whether it'll catch on remains to be seen, of course.
I can't hear these wonderful pronunciations everyone else seems to be talking about, in either Firefox or IE (WinVista). As far as I know my Flash installation is up to date; I'm behind a network proxy, if that's any help.
Edit: ditto in Opera under my Ubuntu installation.
'Kirstin, the significance of this fire for so much that-labor law that came after this and Frances Perkins's centrality to it all?' Whatever piece of code selects the headline quotations is starting to give WeirdNet a run for its money.
Not quite the oddity I was hoping for: '...If you feel that your material does not constitute infringement, you may provide Wordnik with a counter notification by written communication to the attention of "DMCA Counter Notification Dept." at <<insert contact email>> that sets forth all of the necessary information required by the DMCA...' (From page source)
irstin is the product of some kind of spidering bug: it's from a drop-down list of names on the source page, but initial letters have been chopped off. This one should be Kirstin.
Sorry, something has gone terribly, terribly wrong. When the screaming stops, please reload this page and with any luck it won't happen again.
Should you find yourself sans luck, or should it *ahem* happen again, please do let us know by sending a (hopefully) polite missive to youarebroken@removed to deter spam.
I see the tag handling is classic Wordie: the current Word of the Day, belter, has a definishing tag containing the " character, resulting in a truncated link. I tried to reconstruct the full URL by casting a hex, but the page I end up on still tells me nothing has been tagged with that string, irrespective of whether I decapitalise it.
Meaning: 'The annual meeting of the body charged with conserving Atlantic tuna opens on Monday to warnings that this is its "last chance" to manage things well.'
In case it wasn't obvious: 'Welsh Labour leadership candidate Carwyn Jones has reiterated his commitment to holding a referendum on full law-making powers for Wales.'
'"The Sun has the power of a Yotta microwave ovens," says Chris Budd, Professor of Applied Mathematics at the University of Bath, by way of explanation.'
It's worrying to see so many examples in that article where the writers had quite a bit more space to play with than the BBC's headline writers, and still produced mangled results.
Home Information Packs, not plans for the Ministry of Silly Walks. It doesn't help that the capitalisation on the source page has 'Hips' rather than 'HIPs'.
Special use of these would break existing comments that use them e.g. to replace square brackets in quotations. But see a related discussion five months ago on features, where I mentioned LibraryThing's double square brackets as as possible source of influence.
B.B.C. News: 'A project dubbed extreme squirreling is to seek out red squirrels in parts of the Highlands where few, or no, records of the mammals exist.'
Mike's Blender: 'The Japanese don't actually pick fruit, they hunt it. Momo-gari (peach hunting), mikan-gari (orange hunting), ichigo-gari (strawberry hunting), etc, the -gari ending actually means 'to hunt' and stems from days long past when fruit was more dangerous and fought back.
'Grape hunting season is just finishing up, so if you're still thinking of slaying a few bunches for the dinner table you'd better hurry up and get out there.'
Actually, this seems to sit well enough with English 'hunt for'; it's when you just turn it into fruit hunting that it begins to sound odd.
A Google Books representative on metadata: 'We would never ingest our own mirth into metadata records. There's too much there already. Like the time one of our partner libraries supplied us with a catalog record for a turkey baster. Not a book about turkey basting. An actual turkey baster, presumably to be found in the stacks. One European library classified Darwin's Origin of Species as fiction. And there's a copyright record for a book that has no writer, only a psychic who received the text "clairaudiently."'
Spotted here: 'All my experience (on both sides of the interview table) indicates that, in a crowded field, those with no publications get their dossiers circular-filed.'
I can't speak for other Wordies of course, but as far as I'm concerned your problem isn't so much trepidation (or rather, and putting it less psychologically, awareness that the intended goal presents considerable challenges) but the blunt fact that I'm not excited. The announcement we've got pretty much says this is a surprise fait accompli but with most of the detailed, concrete planning still to be done; and I can't share in any grand, optimistic vision if it barely exists yet and isn't being laid out at length. It's hard for me not to sound negative when, seriously, the prospect of a functional autocomplete isn't going to inspire me with enthusiasm; and indeed, I do presently think the 'portal' model sounds the most straightforward one for connecting two sites with complementary but distinct aims (there's probably a reason why the with-photos flickr.yahoo.com is a redirect).
Yeah, I'm seeing all the negatives again... and it's not as though I want you to turn project manager, or indeed to channel the spirit of Demosthenes. I'm willing enough to wait for some kind of consultation paper--but let me reiterate, your problem is not fear. It's that the headaches are presently much more obvious to me than the sweeping opportunities you apparently see, and for that reason I'm simply not excited.
Following a moment's thought... I can see more potential for data-sharing than for trying to mash functionality together. So you'd perhaps have a Wordie list/talk page and a Wordnik information page, and then link them together (with a wordie.wordnik.com subdomain for the social part, including what's presently the Wordie front page?) or perhaps have some JavaScript-enabled tabs at the top of the page to flip between them. Beyond that I really start to have Jack-of-all-trades worries, and not just in Web design terms...
Edit: oooh, some of these tags are nice. They are going to adopt our format (with spaces), though, aren't they?
Mmm. We'll have to wait for more specific, concrete plans to get a clear idea of what John and whoever's in charge at Wordnik have in mind. Certainly Wordnik's present word pages are hugely crowded, very much as opposed to Wordie's minimalist approach, so combining content without spreading it awkwardly across several related pages per word could prove quite a feat of Web design. (Edit: even more pages per word, rather, since Wordnik already has several + a combined summary page.)
Wikipedia claims that besides naming a Lovecraftian deity 'Yig can also be a slang name for "young innocent gash" around Britain'. I've never heard this, but maybe I've just lived a sheltered life. Anyone...?
Google, that master of contextual advertising, is showinh me an advert for bakerprobatelawyer.com with a picture of a smiling couple and their baby. Is it identifying lawyers with inhuman terrors, or recommending the baby as a sacrifice to Shub-Niggurath?
Serious Games: 'People from inside the game industry and many from outside it take a long hard look at the way that technologies are being applied to training and education. They conclude that the videogame industry is, in the main, extremely good at captivating an audience that can quite easily choose to go do something else and spend their money on something else. They then compare that to eLearning, CBT and edutainment and realise that there lies an industry that has a captive audience – employees and students generally have to take the course whether they want to or not – but which is serving up a diatribe of extremely dull, linear and pretty ineffective boreware.'
According to this, it's because of false etymology that je ne sçai quoi used to be used for what's now je ne sais quoi. Can anyone here confirm or deny this?
People who writesongs about Cthulhu seem to favour the pronunciation 'ril-lay', but that might just be to make the word fit into a song sung with human vocal chords in the first place. (See also the link about pronunciation on Cthulhu.)
'"Iä! Iä!" it was howling. "I am coming, O Rhan-Tegoth, coming with the nourishment. You have waited long and fed ill, but now you shall have what was promised. That and more, for instead of Orabona it will be one of high degree who has doubted you. You shall crush and drain him, with all his doubts, and grow strong thereby. And ever after among men he shall be shown as a monument to your glory. Rhan-Tegoth, infinite and invincible, I am your slave and high-priest. You are hungry, and I shall provide. I read the sign and have led you forth. I shall feed you with blood, and you shall feed me with power. Iä! Shub-Niggurath! The Goat with a Thousand Young!"'
Weird... I wanted to put ¡ on the Wordie Paradox list instead of the á it turns into when you try to list it, so I added the hexadecimal %C2%A1... but Wordie turned it into this %25c2%25a1, which apparently works perfectly normally. Following a ¡ link still doesn't, though.
Is Wordie now getting clever enough to break its paradoxes? If so, is this not a Wordie Paradox, or is it a meta-paradox...?
Edit: yes, it seems % now gets escaped into %25 when added to a list.
Thanks, Mr. style-type-text-css-h1-color-white-background-color-black-style-invertebrates listmaster--but didn't anyone else see a polar bear's muzzle with the rest of the bear camouflaged on the white background?
Edit: '2 wordies list'? It looks as though the system doesn't fully recognise that Invertebrates list, not wholly surprisingly.
Hmm. Pages like this, brought into being for that recently nuked list, now say '1 wordie lists' them even though they're not listed anywhere. I wonder whether it'll be permanent or just a temporary byproduct.
I love the way you have all these sophisticated-sounding names, like Posidonius Crater, and then among them one sees Soddy Crater and Sheepshanks Crater, which sound like the sort of places you'd find in rural England.
Baltimore Sun: 'A byproduct of home schooling, unschooling incorporates every facet of a child's life into the education process, allowing a child to follow his passions and learn at his own pace, year-round. And it assumes that an outing at the park - or even hours spent playing a video game - can be just as valuable a teaching resource as Hooked on Phonics.'
Register: 'It was what is known as a "christmas tree" amendment, in the sense that it did not relate directly to the text of the bill, but used the Bill as a convenient hook on which to hang.'
Estropico.org: 'A note on translation: "Sovrumanismo" is translated here as "overhumanism", but could as easily have been translated as "superhumanism". However, in English, superhumanism has become almost synonomous with transhumanism, hence the need for the ungainly neologism.'
In Northern Ireland: 'Almost 30 victims of the Troubles are to take places on a forum to advise on the needs of those who suffered during decades of violence.
'Members of the Victims Forum will be asked for their views on how a victim should be defined and how Northern Ireland should deal with its past.'
I'd have thought it would be a good idea to sort out the definition of a victim before seeking to recruit a forum of them.
'Richard Reames grows and shapes tree trunks using the ancient arts of grafting, framing, bending and pruning. Reames believes that his living arborsculptures could one day replace many of the things that trees are typically killed to make.'
Not really: 'Two US policewomen say the "robotic" behaviour of two girls accompanying Phillip Garrido led to his arrest over the abduction of Jaycee Lee Dugard.'
Ella Myers: 'Mika LaVaque-Manty's "Finding Theoretical Concepts in the Real World: The Case of the Precariat" offers a smart and well-argued reading of a new political entity, the precariat, that has recently emerged in Europe (and was especially significant in the 2006 protests in France opposing government-backed labor reforms)... The "precariat", as LaVaque-Manty explains, is a term meant to capture a new collective actor -- those who face an increasingly precarious working life. Significantly, the precariat is a "condition concept", meant to refer to a common condition faced by its members.'
PhilPapers abstract: 'Drawing on results discussed in the target article by Baumeister et al. ( 1 ), I argue that the claim that the modern mind sciences are discovering that free will is an illusion (“willusionism�?) is ambiguous and depends on how ordinary people understand free will. When interpreted in ways that the evidence does not justify, the willusionist claim can lead to ‘bad results.’ That is, telling people that free will is an illusion leads people to cheat more, help less, and behave more aggressively, but these responses may be based on people’s interpreting willusionist claims to mean that they lack the powers of rational choice and self-control.'
/. comment: 'It's also not (always) a problem of goofing off, a module you depend on not shipping in time but you being required to keep your deadline can already force you into doing just that: Delivering a hack that 'kinda-sorta' works, or at least the customer won't notice 'til we can ship the patch.
'Yes, that happens often. It's dubbed "Bananaware". Delivered green and ripens with the customer.'
B.B.C. News: 'The authorities in the Chinese city of Shanghai are starting a campaign to try to spot and correct badly phrased English on signs in public places.
'Chinglish, as the inaccurate use of the language is known, has long been a source of embarrassment for the authorities there.'
B.B.C. News: 'An Australian scientist says the continent needs five or six seasons to suit its climate.
'Tim Entwisle, chief of Sydney's Royal Botanic Gardens, says Australia should "unhook" itself from the "arbitrary" four seasons it inherited from Britain.
'Mr Entwisle has proposed "sprummer" - the season between spring and summer - and "sprinter" - an early spring.'
This news item about 'fake designer goods' makes me wonder why we talk about e.g. 'designer sunglasses' as though opposing them to naturally occurring sunglasses, freshly plucked from trees or dug up out of the earth. Besides, surely it's the identity of the manufacturer that makes them fake; they're typically still copied, albeit indirectly, from the original designer's work.
I wonder whether dwarrows belongs here, Tolkien having termed it the 'real 'historical' plural of dwarf: 'It should be dwarrows (or dwerrows), if singular and plural had each gone its own way down the years, as have man and men, or goose and geese.' (From the quotation given here.)
Book Patrol: 'We book folk are often socially inept or, if ept, we'd rather be reading: excepting the occasional clunker, a close relationship with books is very satisfying to the single/divorced and persnicketyprintslut.'
I've just noticed that while WeirdNet usually defines plurals formed with -s, it seems to leave out those formed by adding -es. Maybe we should wish that WeirdNet never ceases to arouse curiosity.
Private Eye used to run a regular column called 'The Neophiliacs', collecting examples of the 'X is the new Y' (especially where Y == "black") cliché in the press.
EDIT: Oh, they have a note about plurality vs. singularity on gallows: 'In OE. the sing. galasga and the pl. galasgan are both used for ‘a gallows’, the pl. having reference presumably to the two posts of which the apparatus mainly consisted. Occasional examples of the sing. form occur in ME., and even down to the 17th c.; but from the 13th c. onwards the plural galwes and its later phonetic representatives have been the prevailing forms. So far as our material shows, Caxton is the first writer to speak of ‘a gallows’, though he also uses the older expression ‘a pair of gallows’; but it is, of course, possible that the pl. form was sometimes treated as a sing. much earlier. From the 16th c. gallows has been (exc. arch. in ‘pair of gallows’) used as a sing., with a new plural gallowses; the latter, though perh. not strictly obsolete, is now seldom used; the formation is felt to be somewhat uncouth, so that the use of the word in the plural is commonly evaded.' (asg is how an 'insular g' comes out when you copy and paste from O.E.D. Online.)
Somebody's added soft line breaks. The title bar of my Firefox window is actually showing 'Wordie: Pneumono-ultra-micro-scopic-silico-volcano-coniosis'.
Another problem with Browse is that it doesn't seem to be entirely accurate in its categorisation: clicking 'aurek-besh thru autofellatio' is actually producing a page that reads:
# aureation is listed 1 time and has 0 comments
# aurebesh is listed 1 time and has 0 comments
# aurei is listed 1 time and has 0 comments
# aurek-besh is listed 1 time and has 0 comments
# aurelian is listed 2 times and has 0 comments
...
# autoethnography is listed 1 time and has 0 comments
# autoethnology is listed 1 time and has 0 comments
# autoevolution is listed 1 time and has 0 comments
# autoevolutionist is listed 1 time and has 0 comments
Note that the category preceding that one is appearing as 'Atticus thru aurelian' (in reality, Attica to Aurebesh). You have to go into the next category, in which autoevolution is the first word, to find autofellatio.
It seems to be putting special characters in unpredictable places. A starts off well with 'a thru a fictional character from a screenplay by chained_bear', but at the bottom of the page, after 'axon thru Å', we have:
...and they never escape its grasp. Oh, wait: 'Government claims that victims of crime are at the heart of the criminal justice system have raised "damaging" expectations, says a report by MPs.'
Not, in fact, a particularly tasteless game show. 'Families who claim their children were born with defects caused by exposure to toxic waste in Northamptonshire have won a legal battle at the High Court.'
The string 'about n hours ago, on x's profile, p said' has started displaying as 'about n hours ago, on x profile, p said' on the recent comments page, but the bug seems not to be showing up on the front page.
TechRadar: 'Cracker intros (also known as 'cracktros') started appearing at the beginning of copied games. In the early days, these could not yet be described as 'artistic', and generally featured pertinent information displayed within scrolling text bars.'
'Both are known as snap-traps because they actively hunt animals, snapping shut specially adapted leaves to trap any hapless creature that crosses them.'
Futurismic: 'Still battering on about nanotech? Man, you’re soooo noughties, get with the program. The new small-scale frontier is femtotech – we’re talking customised atomic nuclei strings here.'
GameSetWatch: 'There have been a number of intriguing articles written over the last few weeks about one of the key concepts, and most criticised features, of roguelikes: permanent death, often shortened to permadeath. This is the notion that should the game avatar die, the player should start from the beginning of the game.'
I don't think this has seeped into general philosophical jargon yet, but it makes an appearance in Peter Cave's This Sentence Is False: 'Being a bird or an elephant – a birphant – is a poor way of classifying creatures, when concerned about trampling dangers; performing well at operations overall is paradoxically a poor way of classifying hospitals when concerned about the likelihood of our surviving – and to think otherwise leads to puzzles of a gruesome kind in more ways than one.'
She isn't charging in the picture, but this baby tapir is looking for a name. The zoo wants 'a fun and relevant name with a good explanation behind it'.
T.H.E.: 'Remember the economics student who attributed the run on Northern Rock to the "laxative enforcement policies" of the Financial Services Authority?
'Or last year's winning insight into the work of author Margaret Atwood: "The Handmaid's Tale shows how patriarchy treats women as escape goats"?
'Yes, it is that time of the year again. Times Higher Education is inviting entries to its annual "exam howlers" competition - the chance for scholars to share this year's most off-the-wall offerings.'
Rock, Paper, Shotgun: 'There’s something about the idea of creating an FPS that is lower-res than Wolfenstein that seems brilliantly perverse. Demakes often don’t follow the exact principles of the game they’re based on, but in this case it’s a fully-functional FPS, albeit in four colours.'
Joo Sung-ha, the defector turned South Korean journalist, says there is an easy explanation for North Korea's use of seemingly antiquated words like "brigandish" to refer to its opponents.
"They're using old dictionaries," he says.
"Many were published in the 1960s with meanings that have now fallen out of use, and there are very few first-language English speakers available to make the necessary corrections."
'My other car is a modal counterpart.' 'Show drivers behind you that your car does not have trans-world identity, but has counterparts in other possible worlds.'
Ben Goldacre: 'Regular readers with be familiar with the intellectual land-grab of “medicalisation�?. Sometimes it’s about transforming a subjective moral objection into an objective, sciencey problem, as we saw with homosexuality and psychiatry. Sometimes it’s about reframing a problem to sell a solution: drug companies foster a belief that depression is down to serotonin, even though the evidence is hugely contradictory, to a public eager for simple, molecular answers. Bad school performance is related to omega-3, imply the supplement peddlers: so buy an omega-3 fish oil pill. Clomicalm, say the adverts, is “the first medication approved for the treatment of separation anxiety in dogs�?.'
But an exact explanation as to why the game glitches in this exact way? Some questions just don't have answ-
The tail wag sound effect is written (B0), then the 1-UP (40) is ORed, resulting in F0. It writes the wrong "length" for the 1-up, and as it reads bytes in reverse, the beginning is broken instead of the end.
I love that the Internet is home to people devoted enough to explore these sorts of things. "Video Game Archaeologist" isn't a real job title yet, but it definitely should be.
Spiked: 'As employed by the government and the anti-obesity industry, denormalisation is a made-up word that functions as both a noun and as a verb to describe both a state in which the obese are perceived to be abnormal, aberrant, even deviant, and a series of activities designed to achieve this end.
'In practice, denormalisation means that the government attempts to shame adults into changing their behaviour.'
A spending spree, that is: 'The politician Mayawati has been accused of wrongly using public cash to make statues of herself and her allies, in a case at India's Supreme Court.'
If you're not already familiar with this story, you won't know whether it refers to the British embassy in Iran or an embassy in the U.K., and you won't know whether five people from the embassy were freed or whether five people were freed from the embassy.
T.H.E.: 'Researchers have become experts in "stealth research" - taking money with the promise of a specific goal and then using it to support a wider "space of play".'
Ruins of the Present: 'Another version is the abandoned, incomplete high-rise. Commonly a steel and cement framework is erected (because that’s pretty easy), and then there’s some legal or economic brouhaha and the builders just down tools and walk off. In Brazil a skeleton framework of this kind is called a “squelette.�?'
Edit: and my attempt to create a comment readable only by viewing the page source has been foiled... John must have set Wordie up to block such tricks.
I imagine they are. Any game called something like Thrust Out the Harlot has at least one odd aspect, though it would be nice to know whether it actually does involve harlot-thrusting.
Supposedly meaning: 'Martin McGuinness has warned the Orange Order that Sinn Fein stewarding of protests at controversial parades "cannot last forever".'
T.H.E: '"Interdisciplinarians" may reply that this trend towards ever more specialisation is exactly what they are striving to counter, but how do they intend to do so?'
T.H.E.: '"Interdisciplinarity." The word has become a mantra. The concept has become a human right. The US Constitution needs to be amended to add it to the original Bill of Rights. The French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen must be updated to include it. Any curtailment of the interdisciplinary impulse warrants a hearing at The Hague.
'But just what is interdisciplinarity, and why is it touted as the intellectual equivalent of penicillin? Taken tamely, interdisciplinarity means venturing beyond one's own discipline to another. The expectation is that something in the other discipline - a fact, a theory, an approach - will abet the practitioner of the home discipline... Taken boldly, interdisciplinarity means more than acquaintance with another discipline. It means the beholdenness of one discipline to another. Here interdisciplinarity is not merely an option but a requirement. Here progress within a discipline can be found only by looking beyond one's native land. To stay within one's discipline is to guarantee parochialism and stagnation. Disciplinary boundaries must be crossed, perhaps even effaced.'
A not altogether explanatory citation: 'After 250 written responses, 12 "unconferences" (whatever they are) and "more than 500 bilateral engagements between stakeholders ... and the core team", yesterday saw the release of the government's Digital Britain report.'
Spiked: 'Goerlitz’s empathy with smokers is one reason why he finds himself out of line with a movement that has become preoccupied with ‘denormalising’ smoking to the point where it is denormalising human beings. Groups like Action on Smoking on Health (USA) have called for smokers to be banned from fostering children and has suggested businesses should not employ smokers.'
'Junfeng Geng at the University of Cambridge, in the U.K., and buddies have found a way to polymerize these microballs so that they line up into buckywires.
'The trick that Geng and co have found is a way to connect two buckyballs together using a molecule of 1,2,4-trimethylbenzene--a colorless aromatic hydrocarbon. Repeat that and you've got a way to connect any number of buckyballs. And to prove it, the researchers have created and studied these buckywires in their lab, saying that the wires are highly stable.'
I keep seeing old posts with no body text: on syllogism, for example. I wonder whether they were entered with no content, whether they're failing to load properly, or whether maybe the content was in the title field and this is a manifestation of the vanishing comment title bug.
Elizabeth Anscombe's retort to the idea of a practical syllogism: that if there was a special kind of syllogism for reasoning about what one ought to do, we might as well speak of a distinct kind of syllogism for any topic, such as mince pies. 'The peculiarity of this would be that it was about mince pies, and an example would be "All mince pies have suet in them – this is a mince pie – therefore etc."'
B.B.C.: 'Even in your own language, it is difficult to catch accurately the words of a song if they are not written down in front of you, and in France, which imports most of its music from the US or UK, there is even a word for the appropriation of lyrics.
Thanks to Google's autosuggester we know that popular searches beginning with this character are:
۩۞۩๑
۩ orkut v.i.p. account ۩
۩๑
In spite of which ۩ itself returns no results. According to decodeunicode.org it's the Qur'anic Place of Sadjah Sajdah (and the Wikipedia link above does work accordingly).
Dunsany.net: 'Lord Dunsany is cited as a major influence by many writers and artists and as an important figure in the development of fantastic literature by editors, academics and critics. His work formed part of the foundation of fantasy, along with that of Poe, Morris and Rider Haggard, and fed into later work such as that of Tolkien, Lewis and Lovecraft. The reference Dunsanian evokes a particular style and atmosphere which has, in the words of more than one commentator, been much imitated but never duplicated.'
Some words from his fantasies may be perused on this list.
'So why ride that swaybacked steed, weighed down with its multifarious semantic baggage, in the first place? ... Becauseall our political terms are shopsoiled by history; to talk about autonomy or toleration or dignity is to join a conversation that has been ongoing long before you arrived and will continue long after you've departed.'
Kwame Anthony Appiah, The Ethics of Identity, p. xi.
T.H.E.: '"Edu-babble" has been identified as a threat to the British education system by a University of Oxford study. The Nuffield Review into education for 14-19-year-olds warns that teachers' efforts are being stymied by "Orwellian language seeping through government documents" that is dominating educational planning. Mary Bousted, general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, said on 9 June: "We call it 'edu-babble'. It completely denudes education."'
Museum of Hoaxes (which concludes that this story is probably apocryphal): 'Hughes told the media that he had financed an expedition to search for a rare South American creature, the Reetsa. For a year he supplied them with updates about the expedition. Then, finally, he announced that a Reetsa had been caught and would be shipped to New York City. On the day of its arrival, reporters were gathered at the pier as Hughes proudly led a mangy bull down the gangway. Reetsa was "a steer" spelled backwards.'
Guardian: 'The unknown enemy is cast, very much like the ill-defined threat presented to Oceania in Nineteen Eighty-Four, as a pervasive, cunning and unseen foe that requires total watchfulness and, it follows, the sacrifice of the essential right of privacy. In the programme, Pepper explains the challenges that face his former colleagues at GCHQ with a diagram that shows how information is carried in discreet packets across the internet, a development which he implies must be met by granting the agency total access to all our communications.
'You can see GCHQ's problem, but we should not take the word of a securicrat with a narrow view of how a free society works to be the only voice in this debate.'
Physorg: 'Psikharpax -- named after a cunning king of the rats, according to a tale attributed to Homer -- is the brainchild of European researchers who believe it may push back a frontier in artificial intelligence.'
The Register: 'The theory implied by their PR is that Wikipedia is a stuffy, respectable resource which provides very little information on topics of an adult nature – and that Carnalpedia will therefore fill in the gaps for all those interested in exploring their personal sexual fantasy through the medium of an online index (encyclopedophiles?).
'Unfortunately for the theory, a short browse through Wikipedia reveals perfectly good, descriptive articles on practices such as "cunnilingus" and "fellatio", as well as a variety of articles on practices previously unheard of at El Reg, including "dacryphilia" and "autogynephilia" – which appears to have nothing at all to do with cars.
'More seriously for the publishers of Carnalpedia, their work appears never to have heard of these terms either.'
I feel this would be a suitable term for a writer of lengthy and impenetrable Terms of Service documents stating that by using the site on which they're located you agree to sign away the soul of your firstborn child, etc.
Culture24: 'Culture Minister Barbara Follett has placed a temporary export bar on a medieval carved ivory oliphant or hunting horn valued at £3.35million.'
According to a comment here, this 'refers to a (possibly apocryphal) story of IBM sending a customer an empty tape box, then explaining when it arrived that it must have been screwed up in the shipping department. This bought the necessary time for the software to be completed.'
Scientific American: 'A team of researchers says they have found in a Russian mineral sample the first natural example of a quasicrystal, an unusual material that displays some of the properties of a crystal but boasts a more intricate and complex structure. Since quasicrystals were characterized 25 years ago, numerous versions have been cooked up in the laboratory, but a natural example would indicate that nature's products are more diverse than previously thought.
'Quasicrystals display ordered arrangements and symmetries but are not periodic—that is, they are not defined by a single unit cell (such as a cube) that simply repeats itself in three dimensions. The term "quasicrystal" was coined by physicists Dov Levine and Paul Steinhardt, both then at the University of Pennsylvania, to describe the class of quasiperiodic crystals in 1984, shortly after another group published observational evidence for such a material.'
Your local students' union may offer both university-branded merchandise for sale during the day and opportunities to get drunk at night. (In collegiate university towns it's not unusual to see people wearing college colours.)
I see WordNet doesn't know about the boozing sense. A few years back 'stash=branded merchandise and lash' was a standard coupling around my university; I don't think I've seen it recently, but that may be a result of spending less time around undergrads.
WeirdNet's preferred sense is absent from the O.E.D., although it does turn up on dictionary.com (credited to the Random House Dictionary) as an alternative spelling of laager.
I love the way WeirdNet calls hedgehogs both 'relatively large rodents' and 'relatively small placental mammals', and then uses plain 'small' in the other definitions. What's the average volume of an adult placental mammal?
From citation on phantom island; I removed it from the Phantom Islands list on realising that it was probably either a misspelling or a variation on Frisland.
Strange Maps: '...many of the islands pictured here in the western Atlantic Ocean are quite clearly some of the many phantom islands that for a long time were recorded on maps, but were never more than legends. One such example is Hy-Brasil, probably one of the islands pictured closest to Ireland.
Another phantom island, mentioned on this map, is Antillia, also known as the Island of Seven Cities or St Brendan’s Island, and often used as a synonym for the Isles of the Blessed or the Fortunate Islands. The muddled legends of Antillia have been around since at least Plutarch’s time (ca. 74 AD). Its name might be a corruption of Atlantis; or a derivation of anterioris insula, Latin for an island located ‘before’ Cipangu; or a transformation of Jazeerat at-Tennyn, Arabic for ‘Island of the Dragon’. Toscanelli on his map uses Antillia as the main marker for measuring distance between Portugal and Cipangu.
The reference to Sete Ciudades (‘Seven Cities’) is reminiscent of an Iberian legend of seven bishops fleeing the Arab conquest of the peninsula and founding a city each on the island, which became a sort of Utopian commonwealth. Some claim the legend of Antillia represents an earlier discovery of the islands that eventually became known as… the Antilles. Improving nautical knowledge eventually led Antillia to disappear from maps, but the legends surrounding it continued to inspire explorers for a long time – e.g. the ‘Seven Cities’, that were sought in the Southwest of the US or even posited on Cape Breton Island in Canada.'
Strange Maps: 'In 1811, the Russian merchant and explorer Yakov Sannikov reported seeing a ‘bluish fog’ to the northeast of the New Siberian Islands. In 1886 and 1893, fellow Russian explorer Eduard Toll also sighted what many by then presumed to be an as yet undiscovered island, provisionally named ‘Sannikov Land’. Intensive searches couldn’t locate it, but Sannikov Land appeared on maps well into the first half of the 20th century.
'Only then could scientists prove beyond doubt that Sannikov Land did not exist. In fact, it might be considered something of a modern version of Frisland...'
Strange Maps: 'In 1569, Gerhard Mercator copied the Zeno map into his influential World Map. Abraham Ortelius did the same for his renowned map of the Northern Atlantic in 1573. In 1595, Mercator included Frisland (not to be confused with Friesland, which does exist on the North Sea coast of the Netherlands and Germany) in a separate inset on his 1595 map of the North Pole. Thus Frisland, and the other fanciful lands fabricated by the 16th century Zeno (most likely), came to be known as ‘fact’, and were copied by other cartographers, often with variations on the name such as Fixland, Freezeland or Frischlant. Only much later did it become clear they were imaginary.'
The geographical version of Lieutenant Kizhe. Strange Maps: 'I had never heard of Fagunda. A 17th-century map places it in the North Atlantic, not far from Estotiland, Bus and Frislant. These and other so-called phantom islands were a by-product of the Age of Discovery. They started out as errors of nautical observation, and lived on as cartographic misconceptions – sometimes for centuries...'
There used to be a bug that produced a 500 Application Error (see comment 9 months ago by oroboros), but it was fixed. (I don't know exactly when John fixed it.)
B.B.C. News: 'The discovery of a Jupiter-like "exoplanet" orbiting the star VB 10 is the first to be made using the astrometry method. Astrometry is based on measuring small changes in a star's position.'
B.B.C. News: 'New software has enabled researchers to recreate a long forgotten musical instrument called the Lituus. The 2.4m (8ft) -long trumpet-like instrument was played in Ancient Rome but fell out of use some 300 years ago. '
Private Eye: 'Wally begins to describe a secret night life in which he creeps out into Manhattan and has sex with cats... Wally exhaustingly catalogues sexual possibilities that even the most sophisticated member of the audience can rarely have contemplated: felinatio, moggylingus.'
I added it to the spammer's list along with spam, abuse, etc., then noticed it had been listed 1 time with 0 comments. So it's on the side of Right, but nevertheless was born on the battlefield, or something.
Boing Boing: 'Eve Ensler explains that Congolese militias use rape to enforce discipline among a slave workforce that mines columbite-tantalite ore, a common raw material for many devices... She is proposing that electronics manufacturers and their customers--us--began to concern themselves with the notion of "Rape-Free" products in which the raw, mineral components of consumer electronics are traced back to sources that can be verified to have procured them ethically. (She allows that "Rape-Free" is probably not a moniker that would be comfortable plastered on boxes and signs.)'
I think this is supposed to say that people wouldn't be comfortable with it; in which case I'm inclined to concur.
What it means: 'The public services ombudsman for Wales is investigating a Swansea councillor who claimed that some members of the council aged over 60 were "past it".'
Maybe people like that are scared future employers will discover their tastes for bilabial fricatives and self-descriptions as homonyms seeking autoantonyms.
Oooh, I just noticed that at some point John's fixed the weird list links, e.g. Meta is now reachable from /lists/meta again, rather than defaulting to /lists/metaphysics-buzz-words-2.
The Uncredible Hallq: 'If all goes well, next fall I will be taking a graduate class on “metaontology,�? which means the project of trying to answer questions about ontological questions. I decided to be a go-getter and buy the main textbook for the course (the anthology Metametaphysics) several months in advance...'
BibliOdyssey: 'Hands up anyone who knew what a watch-paper print was? Yeah, I thought so. Me neither... Originally designed as a simple protective insert, watch-papers came to be used as an advertising medium for the watchmakers in the second half of the 18th century and another means by which print artists could ply their trade. These types of "professional" or conservative watch-papers form the majority of the genre, but a popular "amateur" variety also emerged that were valued as keepsakes.'
John, what do the house rules say about thematic consistency like this? I'm not sure whether desum is trolling in search of a reaction or just deeply single-minded.
Some interesting " behaviour: there's a tag on Lucy reading aesop rock song "no regrets", but even once I've reconstructed a working URL by changing " to %22, I still get a 'nobody has used this tag' message.
Hmm. WeirdNet defines wriggling as 'moving in a twisting or snake-like or wormlike fashion', but its definitions for wormlike involve submissiveness rather than movement.
B.B.C.: '...more than 100 million years ago, in the early Cretaceous period, a major shift in the design of spiders' orb-shaped webs came about.
'Before then, spiders coated the spirals in their webs with puffs of dry adhesive. These dry spirals trapped insects by physically entangling around the tiny hairs known as setae on their bodies. A group of spiders living today, known as deinopoid spiders, still weave webs in this way.
'However, during the early Cretaceous, araneoid orb weaving spiders evolved which weaved a different type of web. These spiders replaced the dry adhesive with wet droplets of glue. These are much stickier.'
T.H.E.: 'Wilhelm von Humboldt created the template for contemporary Western universities when he organised his Berlin-based institution into schools and departments based on areas of knowledge. Previously, academic disciplines were integrated and professors rarely specialised. The reforms inspired by Humboldt have led to unparalleled progress in research and knowledge. Recently, however, this extreme specialisation has come in for criticism because of its undesirable consequence: "silo syndrome", in which academics deal only with colleagues in their subject and students gain only a narrow perspective on knowledge.'
on the tags/pos box when first viewed might be less taxing on my schedule.
Actually, in all seriousness it may be worth wondering whether the tags/pos box could have some short, explanatory wording added; I imagine people might be more likely to read it than to browse an entire FAQ page.
It just doesn't have separate defintions for plurals (although sometimes it does prioritise different definitions for plural forms, e.g. eye vs. eyes).
Comments on tags which no longer appear on any words also act as ghost comments of a sort: I can see on the recent comments page that bilby has commented on /tags/cyncism, but when I go there I find a 'nobody has used' page with no comments (and no comment entry box) visible.
I think I've previously mentioned this on either bugs or features.
telofy made a channel for Wordie at one point (four months ago?), but the comment on this page seems to have vanished. Maybe it didn't get enough of a reaction...
T.H.E.: 'We have plenty of nostalgic and ideologically loaded analyses of what new and graduating students can't do. There is precious little account taken of what today's 'screenagers' can do that many of their predecessors - and at least some of their teachers - can't," Sir David said, in a lecture titled "Students aren't what they used to be - and never were".'
WeirdNet defines this word and also employs it in its definition of deliciousness, but none of the other dictionary.reference.com sources lists it, and neither does the O.E.D....
Oddee uses this header apparently by mistake, since the article goes on to talk about underwater hockey. If underwater cycling didn't exist, they may have inadvertently invented it.
Swebounce: 'Powerisers are bouncy stilts that you strap yourself into. With some training you can run as fast as 20mph and jump 2 meters high. For many people it’s enough to just run around and bounce but there are many kind of tricks you can perform on powerisers. I would say that this is the extreme sport of the future.'
Oddee: 'Feeling jaded by garden-variety bungee jumping? You might consider imitating how these Aussies spice up the sport: bungee jumping into a body of water containing live crocodiles.'
LRB: 'In early modern England, tachygraphy, tachography, zeitography, zeiglography, semigraphy, semography all vied for the loyalty of court recorders, parliamentary reporters, diarists (think of Pepys), clergymen (who used it to rip off each other’s sermons) and theatregoers (who used it the way some filmgoers use a handicam). Dickens broke into parliamentary reporting by memorising Thomas Gurney’s book, Brachygraphy, or, an Easy and Compendious System of Shorthand.'
LRB: 'In the US, court reporters have abandoned stenotype machines, whose keyboards use chord-like combinations to represent sounds, for a technique called voice writing. The "writer" – really a speaker – repeats testimony into a microphone nestled in a hand-held mask that prevents her voice from being heard in court; the recording is later transcribed, usually with speech-recognition software.The Stenomask dates back to the 1940s, when an American court reporter encased a microphone first in a cigar-box, then in a tomato tin, and finally in an old coffeepot, but it didn’t become a standard fixture until the advent of speech recognition programs. It’s also cheaper: machine stenography takes three years to learn, voice writing six months.'
Modern Mechanix: 'Swami, by itself, reacts like any other object: supported at one end only—it falls. But, add a fairly heavy belt, as shown in the photo, and it will not only stay up but actually take quite a bit of extra pressure to make it tilt down, even slightly.'
Slate: 'As if that weren't complicated enough, Klingon also has a large set of suffixes... Klingon has 36 verb suffixes and 26 noun suffixes that express everything from negation to causality to possession to how willing a speaker is to vouch for the accuracy of what he says. By piling on these suffixes, one after the other, you can pack a lot of meaning on to a single word in Klingon—words like nuHegh'eghrupqa'moHlaHbe'law'lI'neS, which translates roughly to: They are apparently unable to cause us to prepare to resume honorable suicide (in progress).'
Science Daily: 'Millefiore is a glass-working technique created from glass rods with multi coloured patterns that are only visible at the cut ends – like a stick of rock with the writing only visible once cut. These rods are created by heating and melding lengths of different coloured glass to create an individual pattern. Here, a solid red cane is set at the core with blue and white canes set around it to produce the petal effect. The small cross sections of glass rod are then used to create bigger pieces. It is a very labour intensive – and hence very exclusive – craft.'
rampantgames.com: 'For example - in an adventure game, you've generally got one - usually convoluted and amusing - solution to a problem. A good RPG, on the other hand, should make that puzzle a goal condition and leave other options to achieve that goal available. Failure to do that leads to frustration, as in the "plot-driven door" problem (or as a friend of mine calls it, "objects made of the indestructable material plotonium"). In an adventure game, you expect it - but even then, it gets frustrating when you see what appears to be an obvious solution which doesn't work.'
Graphpaper.com: 'An elegant solution, designed and patented in 1901 by the German engineer A.A. Newman, is called the “watchclock�?. It’s an ingenious mechanical device, slung over the shoulder like a canteen and powered by a simple wind-up spring mechanism. It precisely tracks and records a night watchman’s position in both space and time for the duration of every evening. It also generates a detailed, permanent, and verifiable record of each night’s patrol.'
Allan Gibbard, Thinking How to Live: 'I can say "Hey, Bob!" to accost him, to attract his attention. "Hey!" of course isn't a predicate; the syntax of "Hey!" is not that of a predicate. Couldn't we, though, remedy this? Let's invent a predicate, and imagine that it is a standard part of our language: saying "Bob is hiyo in assertoric contexts, let's specify, accomplishes the speech act of accosting Bob—and likewise for saying that anyone else is hiyo.'
Did you want these definitions to go on word pages? People new to Wordie often add definitions to list pages by mistake, but you don't seem to have listed any words either...
Japan Times: 'Sumo is often called "kokugi" in the Japanese media and by the population at large, and kokugi is a phrase most dictionaries translate as "national sport." Likewise, sumo is performed at a stadium known as the Kokugikan — with "kan" meaning hall or stadium.
'However, few with an in-depth awareness of the professional game would ever refer to sumo as simply a sport. It's more of a "way," with sumodo a term often heard in professional circles. Also, unlike nine other nations, Canada (lacrosse in summer and ice-hockey in winter), Argentina (pato — a sport played on horseback similar to polo), and Mexico (charreria rodeo) included, Japan has no legally recognized national sport.'
Comments by vanishedone
Show previous 200 comments...
vanishedone commented on the word British Student Time
GMT minus at least three hours. Especially on a research course with no lecture schedule.
November 17, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word theybang
A more inclusive shebang.
November 17, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word opensourcefood
From the Examples: The woman yanked Dick's testicles to fight him off. http: / / digg. com / world_news / 88_year_old_woman_yanks_nude_intruder_s_testicles opensourcefood and run it as a personal project.
Yum.
November 17, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word Matthew’s Nursery Songs
See Malthus’s Nursery Songs.
November 17, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word Malthus’s Nursery Songs
Or Matthew’s Nursery Songs, depending on the source. This one strikes me as more likely correct.
November 17, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word Strut’s Walk
The source actually says Strutfs Walk, which I assume to be a typo.
November 17, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word most
The honeymoon is over already, isn't it?
November 17, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word Kant’s Eminent Humbugs
Or maybe Kant’s Ancient Humbugs, on which see comments.
November 17, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word Kant’s Ancient Humbugs
Hmm. Ancient seems to be attested here, however.
November 17, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word Kant’s Ancient Humbugs
Judging by this source, Futility Closet got this one wrong, and the correct title is Kant’s Eminent Humbugs.
November 17, 2009
vanishedone commented on the list charles-dickens-imaginative-literature
Aargh! Accidental duplication through newfangled case-sensitivity! Though I did discover in the process that Futility Closet's list isn't actually exhaustive; I'm currently still seeking a source that is...
November 17, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word The Virtues of Our Ancestors
See citation on The Wisdom of Our Ancestors.
November 17, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word The Wisdom of Our Ancestors
Paw Prints: 'When Charles Dickens moved into Tavistock House, he made sure that every detail of it was to his taste. One of the features he installed was a hidden door to his study, made to look like part of an unbroken wall of books, complete with dummy shelves and fictitious titles. Dickens clearly derived much amusement from the invention of titles for these volumes. They ranged from the purely facetious—Five Minutes in China, three volumes, and Heavyside’s Conversations With Nobody—to straight puns, such as The Gunpowder Magazine. In later years he added Cat’s Lives (nine volumes) and The Wisdom of Our Ancestors, which consisted of volumes on ignorance, superstition, the block, the stake, the rack, dirt, and disease. The companion—The Virtues of Our Ancestors—was so narrow the title had to be printed sideways.'
November 17, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word geneticgenetics
That's not an example, that's a list...
November 17, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word most
But whatever does a commercial-looking link to a page about a dental product have to do with the word most...?
November 17, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word comments
It looks as though links in old Wordie posts which were formed with square brackets now point to capitalised versions of word pages if the linked text does, which means that some links have actually been repointed. Maybe comments with timestamps from the First Age of Wordie should automatically be made to point to lowercase versions...?
November 17, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word para-site
A link aggregator.
November 17, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word Firbankian
Not the best of usage examples.
The O.E.D. says this has to do with one Ronald Firbank.
November 17, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word MORNING
Well, some of them are already in the database (pulled from whatever sources) and therefore can turn up on a random word search (I'm tagging them caput). Whether that's the whole story I'm not sure.
November 17, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word irstin
As mentioned on bugs, this is Kirstin with the first letter lopped off, making Kirstin look a little decayed.
November 17, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word cryonicist
h+ Magazine: 'It was created by wealthy cryonicists for the purpose of wealth preservation, as well as to fund both their cryopreservation and their eventual resuscitation.'
November 17, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word self-inheritance
Citation on Cryonics Estate Planning.
November 17, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word Cryonics Estate Planning
h+ Magazine: 'Leaving money to your future self is complicated. The courts have decided that cryopreserved people are not suspended or preserved. Rather, they are irrevocably dead, and by being dead have no legal right of ownership or inheritance. These laws may change if the first cryopreserved people are resuscitated and sue for some new kind of civil rights, but that could be decades away. In the meantime, those who are not yet being preserved have spent years pondering and discussing possible methods of self-inheritance. They call it Cryonics Estate Planning and there are now at least three ways to achieve the goal.'
November 17, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word Dmitri's dilemma
According to this, it's a 'generic term' coined to refer to having to decide whether to carry out your deceased parent's dying wish. Whether it'll catch on remains to be seen, of course.
November 17, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word bugs
I can't hear these wonderful pronunciations everyone else seems to be talking about, in either Firefox or IE (WinVista). As far as I know my Flash installation is up to date; I'm behind a network proxy, if that's any help.
Edit: ditto in Opera under my Ubuntu installation.
November 17, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word clut
In case anyone was wondering about the first definition on the main page, by the way: colour look-up table.
November 17, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word tomato garden piracy
Possibly a bit late to ask, but: why 'tomato garden'?
November 17, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word adobeair
The tagspam here rather exposes a difficulty with the layout when tags get numerous.
November 17, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word Kirstin
'Kirstin, the significance of this fire for so much that-labor law that came after this and Frances Perkins's centrality to it all?' Whatever piece of code selects the headline quotations is starting to give WeirdNet a run for its money.
November 17, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word CFP
In academia, a call for papers. I wonder what sense the person had in mind who listed wildcard as an antonym.
November 17, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word tos
I didn't know we ever had rights to J.K. Rowling.
November 17, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word tos
Not quite the oddity I was hoping for: '...If you feel that your material does not constitute infringement, you may provide Wordnik with a counter notification by written communication to the attention of "DMCA Counter Notification Dept." at <<insert contact email>> that sets forth all of the necessary information required by the DMCA...' (From page source)
November 17, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word tos
I am presently scouring the ToS linked at the bottom of this page, just in case...
If Wordnik ever sues anyone for violation, I wonder, might John's Wordie comment of eight months ago be cited by the defence...?
November 17, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word bugs
irstin is the product of some kind of spidering bug: it's from a drop-down list of names on the source page, but initial letters have been chopped off. This one should be Kirstin.
November 17, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word caput
While we wait for the OCSJTS list to be restored to life, may I propose this as a fitting tag for dodgy capitalisation?
November 17, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word noisy sex woman
...loses appeal bid.
November 17, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word unable to complete request
Very politely, no doubt. Try gift wrap.
November 17, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word !!!
It's like !!! but with long vowels.
November 17, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word !!!
Hmm. Those square brackets aren't creating links...
test
test!
!test!
!
Edit: only the first one worked. Shall we assume John knows about this stuff and leave it a while before sauntering over to bugs?
November 17, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word VanishedOne
The example is from Errata; but Errata seems to have, er, vanished.
November 17, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word unable to complete request
Apparently the new name for a 500 Application Error.
Sorry, something has gone terribly, terribly wrong. When the screaming stops, please reload this page and with any luck it won't happen again.
Should you find yourself sans luck, or should it *ahem* happen again, please do let us know by sending a (hopefully) polite missive to youarebroken@removed to deter spam.
November 17, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word bugs
I see the tag handling is classic Wordie: the current Word of the Day, belter, has a definishing tag containing the " character, resulting in a truncated link. I tried to reconstruct the full URL by casting a hex, but the page I end up on still tells me nothing has been tagged with that string, irrespective of whether I decapitalise it.
November 17, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word comments
I've been decapitated too, which is an odd sort of welcome. (Which perversely makes it feel more like home.)
November 17, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word 'last chance' for tuna authority
Meaning: 'The annual meeting of the body charged with conserving Atlantic tuna opens on Monday to warnings that this is its "last chance" to manage things well.'
November 10, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word contender says yes to power vote
In case it wasn't obvious: 'Welsh Labour leadership candidate Carwyn Jones has reiterated his commitment to holding a referendum on full law-making powers for Wales.'
November 8, 2009
vanishedone commented on the list the-enterprise
A very musical collection of tags, but they take up rather a lot of useless space on all those word pages...
November 7, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word dead girl 'met man on internet'
In the long run.
November 5, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word doctor admits baby 'may interact'
The missing information is that the baby is on a life support machine which may get turned off.
November 5, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word dead girl 'met man on internet'
...before she died.
October 28, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word yotta
B.B.C. News: 'The actual number, 1,784 billion trillion, is equal to 1.784 multiplied by 10 to the 24th power, or roughly 1,784 followed by 21 zeroes.
'Using the International System of Units, this number is called a Yotta.
'Which is how much exactly?
'"The Sun has the power of a Yotta microwave ovens," says Chris Budd, Professor of Applied Mathematics at the University of Bath, by way of explanation.'
October 24, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word anvil shooting
As seen here.
October 21, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word bugs
Image search is working again for me.
October 18, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word crash blossom
It's worrying to see so many examples in that article where the writers had quite a bit more space to play with than the BBC's headline writers, and still produced mangled results.
October 18, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word stormtrooper effect
Henchmen with remarkably bad aim. Also known as Stormtrooper Syndrome, the Principle of Evil Marksmanship or the Inverse Ninja Law.
October 7, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word suicide target 'will not be met'
Suicide prevention.
October 7, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word tories would make hips 'history'
Home Information Packs, not plans for the Ministry of Silly Walks. It doesn't help that the capitalisation on the source page has 'Hips' rather than 'HIPs'.
October 6, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word bugs
Broken for me:
Firefox, IE.
(Rhymed poetry!)
October 5, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word wordnikie suggestion box
Special use of these would break existing comments that use them e.g. to replace square brackets in quotations. But see a related discussion five months ago on features, where I mentioned LibraryThing's double square brackets as as possible source of influence.
October 5, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word [fish]
Strangely enough, ] (%5D) gets stripped out when appended to words being listed but can still be listed on its own.
October 5, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word extreme squirreling
B.B.C. News: 'A project dubbed extreme squirreling is to seek out red squirrels in parts of the Highlands where few, or no, records of the mammals exist.'
October 5, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word rolls-royce shop crash man
Here.
September 25, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word salty 'free from' foods exposed
What it means: 'People choosing wheat or dairy-free products could be risking their heart health because many are loaded with salt, a study reveals.'
September 24, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word notspot
Presumably not a hotspot.
September 16, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word kercher accused request rejected
Would it help if I told you Kercher was a surname?
September 14, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word student finance 'shambles' anger
In which 'shambles' is presumably not a verb, transitive or otherwise.
September 14, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word hunt
Mike's Blender: 'The Japanese don't actually pick fruit, they hunt it. Momo-gari (peach hunting), mikan-gari (orange hunting), ichigo-gari (strawberry hunting), etc, the -gari ending actually means 'to hunt' and stems from days long past when fruit was more dangerous and fought back.
'Grape hunting season is just finishing up, so if you're still thinking of slaying a few bunches for the dinner table you'd better hurry up and get out there.'
Actually, this seems to sit well enough with English 'hunt for'; it's when you just turn it into fruit hunting that it begins to sound odd.
September 14, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word clairaudiently
A Google Books representative on metadata: 'We would never ingest our own mirth into metadata records. There's too much there already. Like the time one of our partner libraries supplied us with a catalog record for a turkey baster. Not a book about turkey basting. An actual turkey baster, presumably to be found in the stacks. One European library classified Darwin's Origin of Species as fiction. And there's a copyright record for a book that has no writer, only a psychic who received the text "clairaudiently."'
See also clairaudient.
September 9, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word circular-filed
Spotted here: 'All my experience (on both sides of the interview table) indicates that, in a crowded field, those with no publications get their dossiers circular-filed.'
I suspect this is a euphemism for binned.
September 9, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word wordnik
I can't speak for other Wordies of course, but as far as I'm concerned your problem isn't so much trepidation (or rather, and putting it less psychologically, awareness that the intended goal presents considerable challenges) but the blunt fact that I'm not excited. The announcement we've got pretty much says this is a surprise fait accompli but with most of the detailed, concrete planning still to be done; and I can't share in any grand, optimistic vision if it barely exists yet and isn't being laid out at length. It's hard for me not to sound negative when, seriously, the prospect of a functional autocomplete isn't going to inspire me with enthusiasm; and indeed, I do presently think the 'portal' model sounds the most straightforward one for connecting two sites with complementary but distinct aims (there's probably a reason why the with-photos flickr.yahoo.com is a redirect).
Yeah, I'm seeing all the negatives again... and it's not as though I want you to turn project manager, or indeed to channel the spirit of Demosthenes. I'm willing enough to wait for some kind of consultation paper--but let me reiterate, your problem is not fear. It's that the headaches are presently much more obvious to me than the sweeping opportunities you apparently see, and for that reason I'm simply not excited.
That of course may yet change...
September 9, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word wordnik
Following a moment's thought... I can see more potential for data-sharing than for trying to mash functionality together. So you'd perhaps have a Wordie list/talk page and a Wordnik information page, and then link them together (with a wordie.wordnik.com subdomain for the social part, including what's presently the Wordie front page?) or perhaps have some JavaScript-enabled tabs at the top of the page to flip between them. Beyond that I really start to have Jack-of-all-trades worries, and not just in Web design terms...
Edit: oooh, some of these tags are nice. They are going to adopt our format (with spaces), though, aren't they?
September 9, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word wordnik
Mmm. We'll have to wait for more specific, concrete plans to get a clear idea of what John and whoever's in charge at Wordnik have in mind. Certainly Wordnik's present word pages are hugely crowded, very much as opposed to Wordie's minimalist approach, so combining content without spreading it awkwardly across several related pages per word could prove quite a feat of Web design. (Edit: even more pages per word, rather, since Wordnik already has several + a combined summary page.)
September 9, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word yig
Wikipedia claims that besides naming a Lovecraftian deity 'Yig can also be a slang name for "young innocent gash" around Britain'. I've never heard this, but maybe I've just lived a sheltered life. Anyone...?
September 9, 2009
vanishedone commented on the list all-you-need-is-lovecraft
Google, that master of contextual advertising, is showinh me an advert for bakerprobatelawyer.com with a picture of a smiling couple and their baby. Is it identifying lawyers with inhuman terrors, or recommending the baby as a sacrifice to Shub-Niggurath?
September 9, 2009
vanishedone commented on the user asativum
I could offer Seamonkey and Netscape as a bargain double pack. Who wouldn't want a Seamonkey?
September 9, 2009
vanishedone commented on the user asativum
Hmm. I suppose I could spare the odd word: how about mangemange? Exotic, very collectible...
September 9, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word terraqueo
Presumably ghosted in favour of terráqueo. I'm not sure whether it deserves a typo tag, not least because I don't speak Portugese.
September 9, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word slut
WeirdNet, but not in they way you might expect. Whoever thinks of sluts as necessarily untidy?
September 8, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word tart
Yes, WeirdNet, that too.
September 8, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word hood
They must talk about criminals a lot in Princeton.
September 8, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word boreware
Serious Games: 'People from inside the game industry and many from outside it take a long hard look at the way that technologies are being applied to training and education. They conclude that the videogame industry is, in the main, extremely good at captivating an audience that can quite easily choose to go do something else and spend their money on something else. They then compare that to eLearning, CBT and edutainment and realise that there lies an industry that has a captive audience – employees and students generally have to take the course whether they want to or not – but which is serving up a diatribe of extremely dull, linear and pretty ineffective boreware.'
September 8, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word bugs
Browse is still glitchy, I'm afraid. If I click on these...
# monotone thru mooncurser
# mooncurser thru more fun with used syringes!
...the first actually gives 'moon tune thru mordant', the second 'monosemantemic thru moon-noon'.
September 8, 2009
vanishedone commented on the user asativum
So that's what happened to she and uselessness. How regular do we have to stay in order not to become targets for the ambitious?
September 8, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word cloak-and-dagger
Never knowingly.
September 8, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word trousers woman
Source
September 8, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word cloak-and-dagger
The WeirdNet thesaurus strikes again. Hugger-mugger, anyone?
September 8, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word lynx
I suppose it's understandable that WeirdNet's priorities lie with software.
September 8, 2009
vanishedone commented on the user asativum
Well, someone has to be... At least you're comfortably within the top 150 of 14,213.
September 8, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word sçai
According to this, it's because of false etymology that je ne sçai quoi used to be used for what's now je ne sais quoi. Can anyone here confirm or deny this?
September 8, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word r'lyeh
People who write songs about Cthulhu seem to favour the pronunciation 'ril-lay', but that might just be to make the word fit into a song sung with human vocal chords in the first place. (See also the link about pronunciation on Cthulhu.)
September 8, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word cthulhu
Pronunciation? Erm...
September 8, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word iä
'"Iä! Iä!" it was howling. "I am coming, O Rhan-Tegoth, coming with the nourishment. You have waited long and fed ill, but now you shall have what was promised. That and more, for instead of Orabona it will be one of high degree who has doubted you. You shall crush and drain him, with all his doubts, and grow strong thereby. And ever after among men he shall be shown as a monument to your glory. Rhan-Tegoth, infinite and invincible, I am your slave and high-priest. You are hungry, and I shall provide. I read the sign and have led you forth. I shall feed you with blood, and you shall feed me with power. Iä! Shub-Niggurath! The Goat with a Thousand Young!"'
H.P. Lovecraft, of course.
September 8, 2009
vanishedone commented on the list wordie-paradox
Quite a few of these are broken (read: working as normal words) now... although whether they'll work in comments seems to be another matter.
September 7, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word features
Has some extra handing for the % symbol been added, or has it always been there without my having noticed before %25c2%25a1?
Edit: goodness, a lot of the Wordie Paradox list has lost its paradoxical nature.
September 7, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word %c2%a1
Weird... I wanted to put ¡ on the Wordie Paradox list instead of the á it turns into when you try to list it, so I added the hexadecimal %C2%A1... but Wordie turned it into this %25c2%25a1, which apparently works perfectly normally. Following a ¡ link still doesn't, though.
Is Wordie now getting clever enough to break its paradoxes? If so, is this not a Wordie Paradox, or is it a meta-paradox...?
Edit: yes, it seems % now gets escaped into %25 when added to a list.
September 7, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word control order man
Source
September 7, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word vulnerable babies call rejected
Meaning: 'The Government has dismissed calls from the charity Barnardos for at-risk children to be taken into care earlier.'
September 7, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word molestation
A stop on the Underground, perhaps.
September 7, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word �?�
Thanks, Mr. style-type-text-css-h1-color-white-background-color-black-style-invertebrates listmaster--but didn't anyone else see a polar bear's muzzle with the rest of the bear camouflaged on the white background?
Edit: '2 wordies list'? It looks as though the system doesn't fully recognise that Invertebrates list, not wholly surprisingly.
September 7, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word heedless horseman
At risk of becoming a headless horseman.
September 6, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word headless
In the context of 'Running Old Desktops Headless?' it seems to mean 'without a monitor', although I had a momentary vision of a headless horseman calling tech support.
September 6, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word demmed
We seek him here! we seek him there!
Those Frenchies seek him everywhere!
Is he in heaven? is he in hell?
That demmed elusive Pimpernel?
(The Elusive Pimpernel)
September 6, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word mymmoshop scam
Hmm. Pages like this, brought into being for that recently nuked list, now say '1 wordie lists' them even though they're not listed anywhere. I wonder whether it'll be permanent or just a temporary byproduct.
September 6, 2009
vanishedone commented on the user john
Another spammer bites the dust, I see. Cheers!
September 6, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word wurzelspeak
See list for explanation.
September 6, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word wurzel
Short for mangel-wurzel, but see also this list.
September 6, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word golf
Whoever tagged this rhymeless presumably wasn't called Rolf.
September 6, 2009
vanishedone commented on the list celestial-geography
I love the way you have all these sophisticated-sounding names, like Posidonius Crater, and then among them one sees Soddy Crater and Sheepshanks Crater, which sound like the sort of places you'd find in rural England.
September 6, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word freaquals
See tag.
September 6, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word catapostrophe
By virtue of having access to the same Greek roots, if that is what bilby meant.
Anyway, the local variant is capostrophe.
September 6, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word �?�
A polar bear.
September 6, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word iplaf!
Judging by what looks like ¡Ayyy!, though, mightn't it be ¡PLAF!, despite the filename?
September 6, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word congo
Vicar-speak for congregation, I'm given to understand.
September 5, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word new remains found in babies probe
It sounds unpleasant whichever way you read it.
September 5, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word unschooling
Baltimore Sun: 'A byproduct of home schooling, unschooling incorporates every facet of a child's life into the education process, allowing a child to follow his passions and learn at his own pace, year-round. And it assumes that an outing at the park - or even hours spent playing a video game - can be just as valuable a teaching resource as Hooked on Phonics.'
September 5, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word clonehenge
A replica of Stonehenge.
September 5, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word christmas tree amendment
Register: 'It was what is known as a "christmas tree" amendment, in the sense that it did not relate directly to the text of the bill, but used the Bill as a convenient hook on which to hang.'
September 5, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word overhumanism
Estropico.org: 'A note on translation: "Sovrumanismo" is translated here as "overhumanism", but could as easily have been translated as "superhumanism". However, in English, superhumanism has become almost synonomous with transhumanism, hence the need for the ungainly neologism.'
September 4, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word new troubles victims forum formed
In Northern Ireland: 'Almost 30 victims of the Troubles are to take places on a forum to advise on the needs of those who suffered during decades of violence.
'Members of the Victims Forum will be asked for their views on how a victim should be defined and how Northern Ireland should deal with its past.'
I'd have thought it would be a good idea to sort out the definition of a victim before seeking to recruit a forum of them.
September 4, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word redacted
We could try it and find out: 'This tag is for ██████████ and sometimes ██████████████ and best of all █████ █████ █████████.'
September 4, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word redacted
We can't tell you unless you've been cleared.
September 4, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word arbortecture
D.R.B.: 'Today a growing number of tree grafters, arborsculptors and botanical architects are working to create new organic forms. Among them are Richard Reames who coined the phrases arborsculpture and arbortecture.
'Richard Reames grows and shapes tree trunks using the ancient arts of grafting, framing, bending and pruning. Reames believes that his living arborsculptures could one day replace many of the things that trees are typically killed to make.'
September 3, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word bugs
We'll need to create some new open lists in order to push /lists/randomnesssssssisisisisiisisiaosaso off the 'Recent' list.
September 2, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word kenya fury at new graft tsar term
What it means: 'Campaigners have condemned the reappointment of the head of Kenya's anti-corruption agency by President Mwai Kibaki.'
September 1, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word duhkha
It's also frequently rendered as unsatisfactoriness.
September 1, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word 1337
It's because they're so leet. (Wikipedia link)
September 1, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word lawn roller woman
The B.B.C. has such a tasteful way of referring to injured people...
August 30, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word add me
*Feigned innocence* Surely because himself can be used to imply both sexes indeterminately?
More puzzling to me: why not oneself, if it's something everyone could do?
August 30, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word 'robot girls' clue to dugard case
Not really: 'Two US policewomen say the "robotic" behaviour of two girls accompanying Phillip Garrido led to his arrest over the abduction of Jaycee Lee Dugard.'
August 30, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word add me
Unless you're a word. Or a tag.
August 29, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word precariat
Ella Myers: 'Mika LaVaque-Manty's "Finding Theoretical Concepts in the Real World: The Case of the Precariat" offers a smart and well-argued reading of a new political entity, the precariat, that has recently emerged in Europe (and was especially significant in the 2006 protests in France opposing government-backed labor reforms)... The "precariat", as LaVaque-Manty explains, is a term meant to capture a new collective actor -- those who face an increasingly precarious working life. Significantly, the precariat is a "condition concept", meant to refer to a common condition faced by its members.'
August 29, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word willusionism
PhilPapers abstract: 'Drawing on results discussed in the target article by Baumeister et al. ( 1 ), I argue that the claim that the modern mind sciences are discovering that free will is an illusion (“willusionism�?) is ambiguous and depends on how ordinary people understand free will. When interpreted in ways that the evidence does not justify, the willusionist claim can lead to ‘bad results.’ That is, telling people that free will is an illusion leads people to cheat more, help less, and behave more aggressively, but these responses may be based on people’s interpreting willusionist claims to mean that they lack the powers of rational choice and self-control.'
August 29, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word grossury
A dozenal century (World Wide Words).
August 29, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word the united states of america
Hey, some of us live in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland... (It's a description, but at least we manage to slip Great into it.)
August 28, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word live coding
More prosaically: 'It might just be the most conceptually complex way of making music that modern man has yet devised.
'But that is the challenge of live coding - the process of writing computer code, in real time, to compose and play music or design animations.'
August 28, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word sex attack deportation man
Probably not a superhero. See sex attack deportation man jailed.
August 28, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word sex attack deportation man jailed
In fact, a 'convicted sex attacker who assaulted two women after he should have been deported has been jailed' (emphasis added).
August 28, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word permanent blue
Presumably this is one of 'the latest ways to use technology for teaching and learning'.
August 27, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word burnside
WordNet has this one right: 'side-burn BURNSIDE, after side-hair, etc.'>alteration of BURNSIDE, after side-hair, etc. orig. U.S., a short side-whisker' (O.E.D.)
Edit: and here's Burnside with his sideburns.
August 27, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word 1 wordie lists how sweet tooth fairy dust cover drive wheels around about there then nothing worthwhile
This, presumably.
August 27, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word children's hearing reform delayed
The legal sense of hearing.
August 27, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word bananaware
/. comment: 'It's also not (always) a problem of goofing off, a module you depend on not shipping in time but you being required to keep your deadline can already force you into doing just that: Delivering a hack that 'kinda-sorta' works, or at least the customer won't notice 'til we can ship the patch.
'Yes, that happens often. It's dubbed "Bananaware". Delivered green and ripens with the customer.'
August 26, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word choice editing
Sinister political jargon for forcing people to do what you want by removing alternatives.
August 25, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word fraud britons lodge brazil appeal
What it means: 'Two British law graduates who admitted falsely claiming to have been the victims of a theft in Brazil have formally lodged an appeal.'
August 25, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word aromatically equivalent
Spotted on Slashdot: 'I would be slightly less worried (the difference in sheer scope between Wikipedia and the Britannica is a stunner) if the "trusted editors" weren't quite so agressive in their reversions. I find this aromatically equivalent to "untrustworthy".'
August 25, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word chinglish
B.B.C. News: 'The authorities in the Chinese city of Shanghai are starting a campaign to try to spot and correct badly phrased English on signs in public places.
'Chinglish, as the inaccurate use of the language is known, has long been a source of embarrassment for the authorities there.'
August 25, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word sprummer
Actually, the linked article does mention that 'Aboriginal Australians use up to eight seasons in some parts of the country'.
August 24, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word sprinter
As a newly invented Australian season: citation on sprummer.
August 24, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word sprummer
B.B.C. News: 'An Australian scientist says the continent needs five or six seasons to suit its climate.
'Tim Entwisle, chief of Sydney's Royal Botanic Gardens, says Australia should "unhook" itself from the "arbitrary" four seasons it inherited from Britain.
'Mr Entwisle has proposed "sprummer" - the season between spring and summer - and "sprinter" - an early spring.'
August 24, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word designer
This news item about 'fake designer goods' makes me wonder why we talk about e.g. 'designer sunglasses' as though opposing them to naturally occurring sunglasses, freshly plucked from trees or dug up out of the earth. Besides, surely it's the identity of the manufacturer that makes them fake; they're typically still copied, albeit indirectly, from the original designer's work.
August 22, 2009
vanishedone commented on the list tolkien-s-archaisms
I wonder whether dwarrows belongs here, Tolkien having termed it the 'real 'historical' plural of dwarf: 'It should be dwarrows (or dwerrows), if singular and plural had each gone its own way down the years, as have man and men, or goose and geese.' (From the quotation given here.)
August 20, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word printslut
Book Patrol: 'We book folk are often socially inept or, if ept, we'd rather be reading: excepting the occasional clunker, a close relationship with books is very satisfying to the single/divorced and persnickety printslut.'
August 18, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word sex card challenge to phone firms
Sex Card Challenge is not a competition, perhaps disappointingly.
August 18, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word bugs
It may be the . that's the problem in toniatriggy@gmail.com; see Prolagus's comment 11 months ago concerning amun.x.
August 18, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word missing sea girl
Missing in the sea.
August 17, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word minority councillors help urged
The urged were no doubt grateful.
August 15, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word wishes
I've just noticed that while WeirdNet usually defines plurals formed with -s, it seems to leave out those formed by adding -es. Maybe we should wish that WeirdNet never ceases to arouse curiosity.
August 15, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word neophile
Oh, yes. (On the other hand, it's ages since we last saw the picture of the conference delegates.)
The Neophiliacs still appear from time to time, but, like Me And My Spoon, they've become an occasional feature.
August 15, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word neophile
Private Eye used to run a regular column called 'The Neophiliacs', collecting examples of the 'X is the new Y' (especially where Y == "black") cliché in the press.
August 14, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word neophiliac
Citation on neophile.
August 14, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word bytesexual
Credit where credit's due. See also byte sex.
August 13, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word gallow
The O.E.D. lists it only as a verb, actually.
EDIT: Oh, they have a note about plurality vs. singularity on gallows: 'In OE. the sing. galasga and the pl. galasgan are both used for ‘a gallows’, the pl. having reference presumably to the two posts of which the apparatus mainly consisted. Occasional examples of the sing. form occur in ME., and even down to the 17th c.; but from the 13th c. onwards the plural galwes and its later phonetic representatives have been the prevailing forms. So far as our material shows, Caxton is the first writer to speak of ‘a gallows’, though he also uses the older expression ‘a pair of gallows’; but it is, of course, possible that the pl. form was sometimes treated as a sing. much earlier. From the 16th c. gallows has been (exc. arch. in ‘pair of gallows’) used as a sing., with a new plural gallowses; the latter, though perh. not strictly obsolete, is now seldom used; the formation is felt to be somewhat uncouth, so that the use of the word in the plural is commonly evaded.' (asg is how an 'insular g' comes out when you copy and paste from O.E.D. Online.)
August 12, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word friends backs resolution takeover
A company called Friends Provident, that is.
August 11, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis
Somebody's added soft line breaks. The title bar of my Firefox window is actually showing 'Wordie: Pneumono-ultra-micro-scopic-silico-volcano-coniosis'.
August 9, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word browse
Cheers! (Although currently it's actually showing numbers rather than punctuation.)
August 9, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word test-word to bork-up the front-page with a real multi-line pain in the beetle-bomb
Did it work?
August 8, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word é
I see http://wordie.org/by_letter/©/ also produces a list of words beginning with é.
August 8, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word "horror vacui"
Currently on Browse:
# "horror vacui" thru "i shouldn't have done that"
August 8, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word ruby on rails
Ooh, an Easter egg: URLs like http://wordie.org/by_letter/2/ and http://wordie.org/by_letter/%22/ will work even though Browse doesn't visibly offer non-alphabetical options. Categorisation still gets a bit weird, though:
# 2nite thru 2x fayreform black bras
# 2t(f √e) thru
# 2x fayreform black bras thru
Edit: I see multiple letters work too: http://wordie.org/by_letter/aa/ For some reason, though, words like aïstopod and año are also turning up there.
Edit: so what determines how many letters I can enter into the URL? aaa gets a 500 Application Error, but wid is accepted...
August 8, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word bugs
Another problem with Browse is that it doesn't seem to be entirely accurate in its categorisation: clicking 'aurek-besh thru autofellatio' is actually producing a page that reads:
# aureation is listed 1 time and has 0 comments
# aurebesh is listed 1 time and has 0 comments
# aurei is listed 1 time and has 0 comments
# aurek-besh is listed 1 time and has 0 comments
# aurelian is listed 2 times and has 0 comments
...
# autoethnography is listed 1 time and has 0 comments
# autoethnology is listed 1 time and has 0 comments
# autoevolution is listed 1 time and has 0 comments
# autoevolutionist is listed 1 time and has 0 comments
Note that the category preceding that one is appearing as 'Atticus thru aurelian' (in reality, Attica to Aurebesh). You have to go into the next category, in which autoevolution is the first word, to find autofellatio.
August 8, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word ruby on rails
It seems to be putting special characters in unpredictable places. A starts off well with 'a thru a fictional character from a screenplay by chained_bear', but at the bottom of the page, after 'axon thru Å', we have:
# ℮ thru बेध�?ंद
# बेटू thru üğşçö
# ürgsel thru
(Should we continue this on bugs?)
August 8, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word justice claims 'damaging' victims
...and they never escape its grasp. Oh, wait: 'Government claims that victims of crime are at the heart of the criminal justice system have raised "damaging" expectations, says a report by MPs.'
August 6, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word baling
You're bailing out, I think, unless you now propose to bale up your hay.
August 2, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word penguinery
Someone who almost married into the family Guinery?
August 2, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word bugs
Cheers. I see the random word feature is also back to normal.
August 1, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word bugs
A very minor bug: derelict is showing up twice on the recent tags page.
August 1, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word features
Seconded. For people who like the new version there's always http://wordie.org/get_random_widget, which is what http://wordie.org/random now appears to be using.
July 31, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word dildo
Is WeirdNet thinking of vibrators?
July 31, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word families win birth defect battle
Not, in fact, a particularly tasteless game show. 'Families who claim their children were born with defects caused by exposure to toxic waste in Northamptonshire have won a legal battle at the High Court.'
July 29, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word etymologged
See tag.
July 28, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word bugs
The string 'about n hours ago, on x's profile, p said' has started displaying as 'about n hours ago, on x profile, p said' on the recent comments page, but the bug seems not to be showing up on the front page.
July 27, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word contractarianism
Actually, the S.E.P. prefers to distinguish (Scanlonian) contractualism from contractarianism.
July 25, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word shanghai encourages second child
Presumably this is newsworthy because it's only ever happened once before.
July 24, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word swine flu woman
B.B.C. News, again.
July 24, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word euthanasia man
B.B.C. News, of course.
July 23, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word ajami
Or here for the writing system Ajami.
July 23, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word ª s°k°
Yes! We dare.
July 21, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word SHAZAM!
Two years later and I'm not John, but: it may have been Synonym, although that one isn't wholly capitalised.
July 21, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word bugs
Judging by a tag on ishy, multiple full stops in tags have the same effect as multiple apostrophes. I can get to the tag page via tags/replaces 'sort of%2e%2e%2e; and 'i guess%2e%2e%2e' in conversation%2e, but Wordie still thinks nobody has used it.
July 21, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word form
Corrected link: XKCD. (A stray tag had crept in.)
July 21, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word cracktro
TechRadar: 'Cracker intros (also known as 'cracktros') started appearing at the beginning of copied games. In the early days, these could not yet be described as 'artistic', and generally featured pertinent information displayed within scrolling text bars.'
July 21, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word snap-trap
B.B.C. News: 'Carnivorous plants come in many forms, and are known to have independently evolved at least six separate times... But among all these plants, two species stand out: the Venus flytrap (Dionaea muscipula) and the waterwheel plant (Aldrovanda vesiculosa).
'Both are known as snap-traps because they actively hunt animals, snapping shut specially adapted leaves to trap any hapless creature that crosses them.'
July 21, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word femtotech
Futurismic: 'Still battering on about nanotech? Man, you’re soooo noughties, get with the program. The new small-scale frontier is femtotech – we’re talking customised atomic nuclei strings here.'
July 20, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word more uk pupils in china tested
For swine flu,whatever the word pupils might have led you to expect.
July 19, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word permadeath
GameSetWatch: 'There have been a number of intriguing articles written over the last few weeks about one of the key concepts, and most criticised features, of roguelikes: permanent death, often shortened to permadeath. This is the notion that should the game avatar die, the player should start from the beginning of the game.'
July 18, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word spencer street
Mercer Road in simplified English, apparently.
July 18, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word charging baby tapirs! what are you doing here
Sister, surely. (Maybe Sweetie? Crust has the wrong ring about it somehow.)
July 18, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word birphant
I don't think this has seeped into general philosophical jargon yet, but it makes an appearance in Peter Cave's This Sentence Is False: 'Being a bird or an elephant – a birphant – is a poor way of classifying creatures, when concerned about trampling dangers; performing well at operations overall is paradoxically a poor way of classifying hospitals when concerned about the likelihood of our surviving – and to think otherwise leads to puzzles of a gruesome kind in more ways than one.'
July 17, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word mechanism
WeirdNet is teaching chemistry today.
July 17, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word cosmism
Also Russian Cosmism, which was associated with immortalism.
July 17, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word charging baby tapirs! what are you doing here
She isn't charging in the picture, but this baby tapir is looking for a name. The zoo wants 'a fun and relevant name with a good explanation behind it'.
July 17, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word howler
T.H.E.: 'Remember the economics student who attributed the run on Northern Rock to the "laxative enforcement policies" of the Financial Services Authority?
'Or last year's winning insight into the work of author Margaret Atwood: "The Handmaid's Tale shows how patriarchy treats women as escape goats"?
'Yes, it is that time of the year again. Times Higher Education is inviting entries to its annual "exam howlers" competition - the chance for scholars to share this year's most off-the-wall offerings.'
July 16, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word paramotoring
T.H.E.: 'Fancy the matchless freedom of paragliding - but any time, any place, anywhere? Paul Chapman does, that's why he took to paramotoring.'
July 16, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word bugs
/people/comments/emilywalkin says 'emilywalkin has made 4 comments and citations', but only one is displayed. Meanwhile, people/comments/VanishedOne is giving me a 500 Application Error.
Edit: progress? Today it's giving me a 404.
July 16, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word e-nnui
You'd think refreshing would be more refreshing.
July 14, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word demake
Rock, Paper, Shotgun: 'There’s something about the idea of creating an FPS that is lower-res than Wolfenstein that seems brilliantly perverse. Demakes often don’t follow the exact principles of the game they’re based on, but in this case it’s a fully-functional FPS, albeit in four colours.'
July 14, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word supersonic acrobatic rocket-powered battle-cars
Plucked from a list of 'the longest game names of all time'.
July 14, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word brigandish
B.B.C. News:
July 14, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word modal counterpart
'My other car is a modal counterpart.' 'Show drivers behind you that your car does not have trans-world identity, but has counterparts in other possible worlds.'
July 14, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word deaths not halting success - pm
The overall success of British troops in Afghanistan, not the success of the deceased.
July 12, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word ineffable
See also the OCSJTS tag.
July 12, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word 'leak' claims candidate removed
You might imagine this means that a 'leak' claims that a candidate was removed from something, but in fact it means that a candidate who it's claimed leaked information was removed from a party shortlist.
July 12, 2009
vanishedone commented on the user jeaniepixie
As sionnach pointed out, pixiebaby doesn't look like a word of two syllables, which your second comment apparently says it is.
July 11, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word medicalisation
Ben Goldacre: 'Regular readers with be familiar with the intellectual land-grab of “medicalisation�?. Sometimes it’s about transforming a subjective moral objection into an objective, sciencey problem, as we saw with homosexuality and psychiatry. Sometimes it’s about reframing a problem to sell a solution: drug companies foster a belief that depression is down to serotonin, even though the evidence is hugely contradictory, to a public eager for simple, molecular answers. Bad school performance is related to omega-3, imply the supplement peddlers: so buy an omega-3 fish oil pill. Clomicalm, say the adverts, is “the first medication approved for the treatment of separation anxiety in dogs�?.'
July 11, 2009
vanishedone commented on the user jeaniepixie
Maybe it's one of those names with a surprising pronunciation, like Cholmondeley ('Chumly'). Edit: ah, here's the list.
July 11, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word first 'healthy' swine flu death
At least they used inverted commas.
July 11, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word lack of swing mystifies england
An entire nation is perplexed by modern playground design.
(Okay, it's actually about cricket.)
July 11, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word video game archaeologist
Press The Buttons:
July 10, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word bugs
Apostrophes in tags don't produce 404 pages like full stops, but they do seem to produce 'nobody has used' pages even if the tag is in use somewhere.
Edit: hang on, I think it's double apostrophes that do this. Contrast /tags/dinosaurs 'r us (fully functional) with /tags/ghouls 'n' ghosts (not, although it appears on firebrand).
Later edit: oddly enough though, /tags/ghouls 'n' ghosts?u=VanishedOne works normally.
July 5, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word bee ball
B.B.C. News: 'Honeybee hordes use two weapons - heat and carbon dioxide - to kill their natural enemies, giant hornets.
'Japanese honeybees form "bee balls" - mobbing and smothering the predators.
'This has previously been referred to as "heat-balling", but a study has now shown that carbon dioxide also plays a role in its lethal effectiveness.'
July 4, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word denormalisation
Spiked: 'As employed by the government and the anti-obesity industry, denormalisation is a made-up word that functions as both a noun and as a verb to describe both a state in which the obese are perceived to be abnormal, aberrant, even deviant, and a series of activities designed to achieve this end.
'In practice, denormalisation means that the government attempts to shame adults into changing their behaviour.'
July 1, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word man
'The story of man is told in headlines around the world.'
July 1, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word mayawati statues spree challenged
A spending spree, that is: 'The politician Mayawati has been accused of wrongly using public cash to make statues of herself and her allies, in a case at India's Supreme Court.'
June 30, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word iran frees five from uk embassy
If you're not already familiar with this story, you won't know whether it refers to the British embassy in Iran or an embassy in the U.K., and you won't know whether five people from the embassy were freed or whether five people were freed from the embassy.
June 30, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word stealth research
T.H.E.: 'Researchers have become experts in "stealth research" - taking money with the promise of a specific goal and then using it to support a wider "space of play".'
June 26, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word squelette
Ruins of the Present: 'Another version is the abandoned, incomplete high-rise. Commonly a steel and cement framework is erected (because that’s pretty easy), and then there’s some legal or economic brouhaha and the builders just down tools and walk off. In Brazil a skeleton framework of this kind is called a “squelette.�?'
June 25, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word stranger kidney donations rising
Donations to strangers, not by them. I'd hoped it was the strangeness of the donations or the kidneys that was rising.
June 25, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word !-- --
Edit: and my attempt to create a comment readable only by viewing the page source has been foiled... John must have set Wordie up to block such tricks.
June 24, 2009
vanishedone commented on the list the-oddympics
I imagine they are. Any game called something like Thrust Out the Harlot has at least one odd aspect, though it would be nice to know whether it actually does involve harlot-thrusting.
June 23, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word parades need dealt with: sf mp
Supposedly meaning: 'Martin McGuinness has warned the Orange Order that Sinn Fein stewarding of protests at controversial parades "cannot last forever".'
June 23, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word bugs
I'm using Firefox 3.0.10, and haven't encountered that problem myself.
June 21, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word milipede
Maybe a particularly militant variety.
June 19, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word interdisciplinarian
T.H.E: '"Interdisciplinarians" may reply that this trend towards ever more specialisation is exactly what they are striving to counter, but how do they intend to do so?'
June 18, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word interdisciplinarity
T.H.E.: '"Interdisciplinarity." The word has become a mantra. The concept has become a human right. The US Constitution needs to be amended to add it to the original Bill of Rights. The French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen must be updated to include it. Any curtailment of the interdisciplinary impulse warrants a hearing at The Hague.
'But just what is interdisciplinarity, and why is it touted as the intellectual equivalent of penicillin? Taken tamely, interdisciplinarity means venturing beyond one's own discipline to another. The expectation is that something in the other discipline - a fact, a theory, an approach - will abet the practitioner of the home discipline... Taken boldly, interdisciplinarity means more than acquaintance with another discipline. It means the beholdenness of one discipline to another. Here interdisciplinarity is not merely an option but a requirement. Here progress within a discipline can be found only by looking beyond one's native land. To stay within one's discipline is to guarantee parochialism and stagnation. Disciplinary boundaries must be crossed, perhaps even effaced.'
June 18, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word witch's brew
Presumably Wordie retrieves only single-word entries from WordNet, since there isn't an automatic one on this page.
June 18, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word unconference
A not altogether explanatory citation: 'After 250 written responses, 12 "unconferences" (whatever they are) and "more than 500 bilateral engagements between stakeholders ... and the core team", yesterday saw the release of the government's Digital Britain report.'
June 18, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word denormalise
Spiked: 'Goerlitz’s empathy with smokers is one reason why he finds himself out of line with a movement that has become preoccupied with ‘denormalising’ smoking to the point where it is denormalising human beings. Groups like Action on Smoking on Health (USA) have called for smokers to be banned from fostering children and has suggested businesses should not employ smokers.'
June 17, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word buckywire
Technology Review: 'Finally! Something useful from buckyballs.
'Junfeng Geng at the University of Cambridge, in the U.K., and buddies have found a way to polymerize these microballs so that they line up into buckywires.
'The trick that Geng and co have found is a way to connect two buckyballs together using a molecule of 1,2,4-trimethylbenzene--a colorless aromatic hydrocarbon. Repeat that and you've got a way to connect any number of buckyballs. And to prove it, the researchers have created and studied these buckywires in their lab, saying that the wires are highly stable.'
June 17, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word bugs
I keep seeing old posts with no body text: on syllogism, for example. I wonder whether they were entered with no content, whether they're failing to load properly, or whether maybe the content was in the title field and this is a manifestation of the vanishing comment title bug.
June 16, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word mince pie syllogism
Elizabeth Anscombe's retort to the idea of a practical syllogism: that if there was a special kind of syllogism for reasoning about what one ought to do, we might as well speak of a distinct kind of syllogism for any topic, such as mince pies. 'The peculiarity of this would be that it was about mince pies, and an example would be "All mince pies have suet in them – this is a mince pie – therefore etc."'
June 16, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word yoghurting
B.B.C.: 'Even in your own language, it is difficult to catch accurately the words of a song if they are not written down in front of you, and in France, which imports most of its music from the US or UK, there is even a word for the appropriation of lyrics.
'It is "yaourt", or "to yoghurt".
'You start singing confidently... and then trail off into inarticulate "yoghurting" when your lexicon runs dry.
'As far as I understand it, so long as you look slightly pained and shut your eyes while you yoghurt, you seem to get away with it.'
June 15, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word noumenal
See noumenon, about one year ago.
And so the Great Cycle of Wordie continues: 'tis the season to be perplexed by Kant.
June 14, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word ۩
Thanks to Google's autosuggester we know that popular searches beginning with this character are:
۩۞۩๑
۩ orkut v.i.p. account ۩
۩๑
In spite of which ۩ itself returns no results. According to decodeunicode.org it's the Qur'anic Place of Sadjah Sajdah (and the Wikipedia link above does work accordingly).
June 14, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word dunsanian
Dunsany.net: 'Lord Dunsany is cited as a major influence by many writers and artists and as an important figure in the development of fantastic literature by editors, academics and critics. His work formed part of the foundation of fantasy, along with that of Poe, Morris and Rider Haggard, and fed into later work such as that of Tolkien, Lewis and Lovecraft. The reference Dunsanian evokes a particular style and atmosphere which has, in the words of more than one commentator, been much imitated but never duplicated.'
Some words from his fantasies may be perused on this list.
June 13, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word you can borrow all 5,485 of my books
If other people do, I imagine they round to at least the nearest ten.
June 12, 2009
vanishedone commented on the list heaveno-s-list
The way this ends with a copyright declaration is particularly striking.
June 12, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word lemming
Coined as a philosophical term of art by Brian Weatherson: 'The best suggestions seemed to be that I have a purely disjunctive label. But “Language, Epistemology, Metaphysics and Mind�? seemed to be too long. What we needed was a shortening. Maybe an acronym. But LEMM seemed boring. If we just add a suffix we could have a name. I know… LEMMINGS!'
June 12, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word shopsoiled
'So why ride that swaybacked steed, weighed down with its multifarious semantic baggage, in the first place? ... Because all our political terms are shopsoiled by history; to talk about autonomy or toleration or dignity is to join a conversation that has been ongoing long before you arrived and will continue long after you've departed.'
Kwame Anthony Appiah, The Ethics of Identity, p. xi.
June 11, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word reetsa
Citation on reesta, thanks to a slip of the keyboard.
June 11, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word reesta
Oops.
June 11, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word edu-babble
T.H.E.: '"Edu-babble" has been identified as a threat to the British education system by a University of Oxford study. The Nuffield Review into education for 14-19-year-olds warns that teachers' efforts are being stymied by "Orwellian language seeping through government documents" that is dominating educational planning. Mary Bousted, general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, said on 9 June: "We call it 'edu-babble'. It completely denudes education."'
June 11, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word reesta
Museum of Hoaxes (which concludes that this story is probably apocryphal): 'Hughes told the media that he had financed an expedition to search for a rare South American creature, the Reetsa. For a year he supplied them with updates about the expedition. Then, finally, he announced that a Reetsa had been caught and would be shipped to New York City. On the day of its arrival, reporters were gathered at the pier as Hughes proudly led a mangy bull down the gangway. Reetsa was "a steer" spelled backwards.'
June 11, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word bugs
http://wordie.org/words/coquettish displays for me; /words/http://wordie.org/words/coquettish doesn't, of course, but if that was what was in your browser address bar you shouldn't have seen a Wordie 404 page at all, since /words isn't a recognisable protocol...
June 11, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word securicrat
Guardian: 'The unknown enemy is cast, very much like the ill-defined threat presented to Oceania in Nineteen Eighty-Four, as a pervasive, cunning and unseen foe that requires total watchfulness and, it follows, the sacrifice of the essential right of privacy. In the programme, Pepper explains the challenges that face his former colleagues at GCHQ with a diagram that shows how information is carried in discreet packets across the internet, a development which he implies must be met by granting the agency total access to all our communications.
'You can see GCHQ's problem, but we should not take the word of a securicrat with a narrow view of how a free society works to be the only voice in this debate.'
June 11, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word psikharpax
Physorg: 'Psikharpax -- named after a cunning king of the rats, according to a tale attributed to Homer -- is the brainchild of European researchers who believe it may push back a frontier in artificial intelligence.'
June 10, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word cauliferous
Are you sure, tagger? The O.E.D. definition is 'producing or having a stem or stalk'.
June 10, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word bother
You don't say: 'Both his mother and sister had hanged themselves five years ago and this had always bothered Ligesh.'
Is this word taken to have a stronger sense in India, or is this sheer understatement?
June 9, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word interest in property 'up again'
Interest in Proudhon correspondingly waning. No, wait: it's about real estate.
(Why do we call it the property market, anyway?)
June 9, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word putik
Intoxicated, perchance...?
June 9, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word carnalpedia
The Register: 'The theory implied by their PR is that Wikipedia is a stuffy, respectable resource which provides very little information on topics of an adult nature – and that Carnalpedia will therefore fill in the gaps for all those interested in exploring their personal sexual fantasy through the medium of an online index (encyclopedophiles?).
'Unfortunately for the theory, a short browse through Wikipedia reveals perfectly good, descriptive articles on practices such as "cunnilingus" and "fellatio", as well as a variety of articles on practices previously unheard of at El Reg, including "dacryphilia" and "autogynephilia" – which appears to have nothing at all to do with cars.
'More seriously for the publishers of Carnalpedia, their work appears never to have heard of these terms either.'
June 9, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word wordnik
And now in open beta. Judging by wordnik.com/words/eyes, they've got WeirdNet too.
June 9, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word god damnit
A holy ghost!
June 7, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word afloat
WeirdNet and its thesaurus aspirations...
June 6, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word tos-er
I feel this would be a suitable term for a writer of lengthy and impenetrable Terms of Service documents stating that by using the site on which they're located you agree to sign away the soul of your firstborn child, etc.
Although I did like John's anecdote on ToS.
June 6, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word pétomain
Did someone need a hand in spelling pétomane? This one seems anatomically worrying.
June 6, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word obstain
A stain that stubbornly refuses to be washed away.
June 6, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word oliphant
Culture24: 'Culture Minister Barbara Follett has placed a temporary export bar on a medieval carved ivory oliphant or hunting horn valued at £3.35million.'
June 6, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word empty-boxing
According to a comment here, this 'refers to a (possibly apocryphal) story of IBM sending a customer an empty tape box, then explaining when it arrived that it must have been screwed up in the shipping department. This bought the necessary time for the software to be completed.'
June 6, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word google squared
Named after Sir James Wordie, apparently. So it turns out some people are Wordies from birth...
June 6, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word lash
I haven't heard it, but that doesn't mean much.
June 5, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word re-victualate
See link on victualate.
June 5, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word victualate
The only usage of this Google knows about is re-victualate in Darwin—A Novel.
June 5, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word shpandoinkle?
I see it's still possible to land on a page ending in ? via Random Word and be persented with a 'nobody is listing' screen.
June 5, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word quasiperiodic
Citation on quasicrystal.
June 5, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word quasicrystal
Scientific American: 'A team of researchers says they have found in a Russian mineral sample the first natural example of a quasicrystal, an unusual material that displays some of the properties of a crystal but boasts a more intricate and complex structure. Since quasicrystals were characterized 25 years ago, numerous versions have been cooked up in the laboratory, but a natural example would indicate that nature's products are more diverse than previously thought.
'Quasicrystals display ordered arrangements and symmetries but are not periodic—that is, they are not defined by a single unit cell (such as a cube) that simply repeats itself in three dimensions. The term "quasicrystal" was coined by physicists Dov Levine and Paul Steinhardt, both then at the University of Pennsylvania, to describe the class of quasiperiodic crystals in 1984, shortly after another group published observational evidence for such a material.'
June 5, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word nephrangibility
I imagine this is a kidney-based pun on refrangibility, but I'm at a loss to guess at the intended meaning.
June 5, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word screw like rabbits
I wonder whether screw-like rabbits would burrow more efficiently.
June 5, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word sep
I think Douglas Adams got there before Urban Dictionary.
June 5, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word lash
Your local students' union may offer both university-branded merchandise for sale during the day and opportunities to get drunk at night. (In collegiate university towns it's not unusual to see people wearing college colours.)
June 5, 2009
vanishedone commented on the list wanted-comic-strip-name
So was there a winner?
June 5, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word lash
I see WordNet doesn't know about the boozing sense. A few years back 'stash =branded merchandise and lash' was a standard coupling around my university; I don't think I've seen it recently, but that may be a result of spending less time around undergrads.
June 5, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word lager
WeirdNet's preferred sense is absent from the O.E.D., although it does turn up on dictionary.com (credited to the Random House Dictionary) as an alternative spelling of laager.
June 5, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word levidity
A song about jeans.
June 5, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word hedgehog
I love the way WeirdNet calls hedgehogs both 'relatively large rodents' and 'relatively small placental mammals', and then uses plain 'small' in the other definitions. What's the average volume of an adult placental mammal?
June 5, 2009
vanishedone commented on the user john
Thanks for killing off globalapostilleservice. Is it even worth giving a warning to this one, given that the style looks familiar?
June 4, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word netbook
Not 'netbooks'. Low cost small notebook PCs.
Bound to catch on...
June 3, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word frislant
From citation on phantom island; I removed it from the Phantom Islands list on realising that it was probably either a misspelling or a variation on Frisland.
June 3, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word hy-brasil
Citation on Antillia.
June 3, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word antillia
Strange Maps: '...many of the islands pictured here in the western Atlantic Ocean are quite clearly some of the many phantom islands that for a long time were recorded on maps, but were never more than legends. One such example is Hy-Brasil, probably one of the islands pictured closest to Ireland.
Another phantom island, mentioned on this map, is Antillia, also known as the Island of Seven Cities or St Brendan’s Island, and often used as a synonym for the Isles of the Blessed or the Fortunate Islands. The muddled legends of Antillia have been around since at least Plutarch’s time (ca. 74 AD). Its name might be a corruption of Atlantis; or a derivation of anterioris insula, Latin for an island located ‘before’ Cipangu; or a transformation of Jazeerat at-Tennyn, Arabic for ‘Island of the Dragon’. Toscanelli on his map uses Antillia as the main marker for measuring distance between Portugal and Cipangu.
The reference to Sete Ciudades (‘Seven Cities’) is reminiscent of an Iberian legend of seven bishops fleeing the Arab conquest of the peninsula and founding a city each on the island, which became a sort of Utopian commonwealth. Some claim the legend of Antillia represents an earlier discovery of the islands that eventually became known as… the Antilles. Improving nautical knowledge eventually led Antillia to disappear from maps, but the legends surrounding it continued to inspire explorers for a long time – e.g. the ‘Seven Cities’, that were sought in the Southwest of the US or even posited on Cape Breton Island in Canada.'
June 3, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word sannikov land
Strange Maps: 'In 1811, the Russian merchant and explorer Yakov Sannikov reported seeing a ‘bluish fog’ to the northeast of the New Siberian Islands. In 1886 and 1893, fellow Russian explorer Eduard Toll also sighted what many by then presumed to be an as yet undiscovered island, provisionally named ‘Sannikov Land’. Intensive searches couldn’t locate it, but Sannikov Land appeared on maps well into the first half of the 20th century.
'Only then could scientists prove beyond doubt that Sannikov Land did not exist. In fact, it might be considered something of a modern version of Frisland...'
June 3, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word frisland
Strange Maps: 'In 1569, Gerhard Mercator copied the Zeno map into his influential World Map. Abraham Ortelius did the same for his renowned map of the Northern Atlantic in 1573. In 1595, Mercator included Frisland (not to be confused with Friesland, which does exist on the North Sea coast of the Netherlands and Germany) in a separate inset on his 1595 map of the North Pole. Thus Frisland, and the other fanciful lands fabricated by the 16th century Zeno (most likely), came to be known as ‘fact’, and were copied by other cartographers, often with variations on the name such as Fixland, Freezeland or Frischlant. Only much later did it become clear they were imaginary.'
June 3, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word phantom island
The geographical version of Lieutenant Kizhe. Strange Maps: 'I had never heard of Fagunda. A 17th-century map places it in the North Atlantic, not far from Estotiland, Bus and Frislant. These and other so-called phantom islands were a by-product of the Age of Discovery. They started out as errors of nautical observation, and lived on as cartographic misconceptions – sometimes for centuries...'
Edit: in fact, I feel a list coming on.
June 3, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word bugs
Working normally for me, two hours later.
There used to be a bug that produced a 500 Application Error (see comment 9 months ago by oroboros), but it was fixed. (I don't know exactly when John fixed it.)
June 3, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word kitsch > deseo de aparentar ser
Arrowneous.
June 1, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word drapetomania
Strange in what way?
June 1, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word astrometry
B.B.C. News: 'The discovery of a Jupiter-like "exoplanet" orbiting the star VB 10 is the first to be made using the astrometry method. Astrometry is based on measuring small changes in a star's position.'
June 1, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word delete
The Wordie Paradox strikes again: fittingly, delete is 404'd.
June 1, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word bugs
It isn't just the subject lines either; the delete option that appears when you edit a comment is also vanishing after a page refresh.
June 1, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word lituus
B.B.C. News: 'New software has enabled researchers to recreate a long forgotten musical instrument called the Lituus. The 2.4m (8ft) -long trumpet-like instrument was played in Ancient Rome but fell out of use some 300 years ago. '
May 30, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word felinatio
Private Eye: 'Wally begins to describe a secret night life in which he creeps out into Manhattan and has sex with cats... Wally exhaustingly catalogues sexual possibilities that even the most sophisticated member of the audience can rarely have contemplated: felinatio, moggylingus.'
May 30, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word unwelcome
I added it to the spammer's list along with spam, abuse, etc., then noticed it had been listed 1 time with 0 comments. So it's on the side of Right, but nevertheless was born on the battlefield, or something.
May 30, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word unwelcome
Poor unwelcome: its only Wordie listing is on a spammer's list, albeit on the side of Right.
May 29, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word soronous
Wailing sorrowfully?
May 29, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word rape-free
Boing Boing: 'Eve Ensler explains that Congolese militias use rape to enforce discipline among a slave workforce that mines columbite-tantalite ore, a common raw material for many devices... She is proposing that electronics manufacturers and their customers--us--began to concern themselves with the notion of "Rape-Free" products in which the raw, mineral components of consumer electronics are traced back to sources that can be verified to have procured them ethically. (She allows that "Rape-Free" is probably not a moniker that would be comfortable plastered on boxes and signs.)'
I think this is supposed to say that people wouldn't be comfortable with it; in which case I'm inclined to concur.
May 29, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word councillors 'past it' row inquiry
What it means: 'The public services ombudsman for Wales is investigating a Swansea councillor who claimed that some members of the council aged over 60 were "past it".'
May 28, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word features
Maybe people like that are scared future employers will discover their tastes for bilabial fricatives and self-descriptions as homonyms seeking autoantonyms.
Oooh, I just noticed that at some point John's fixed the weird list links, e.g. Meta is now reachable from /lists/meta again, rather than defaulting to /lists/metaphysics-buzz-words-2.
May 28, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word features
Apparently so, since an hour later /people/profile/palindromica is 404'd.
May 28, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word scots mortgage market 'behind uk'
No, you haven't missed a change in political geography: 'Scotland's mortgage market appears to be lagging behind the rest of the UK, the latest lending figures have shown.'
May 27, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word metametaphysics
Citation on metaontology.
May 27, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word metaontology
The Uncredible Hallq: 'If all goes well, next fall I will be taking a graduate class on “metaontology,�? which means the project of trying to answer questions about ontological questions. I decided to be a go-getter and buy the main textbook for the course (the anthology Metametaphysics) several months in advance...'
May 27, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word curios
Are you thinking of curiosity?
May 27, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word tetricitie
Is this what slow-falling blocks are carved out of?
May 27, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word darqueau
Ghosted but clearly not exorcised.
May 27, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word dozenal
The Dozenal Society of America advocates counting in base twelve.
May 27, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word bugs
There's some inconsistent escaping in tags that contain /
hindi/urdu viewed on ghungroo points to /tags/hindi\/urdu
However, the same tag appearing on the tags page points to /tags/hindi/urdu
Either way, it's 404'd and changing the / to a %2f doesn't help with this one.
May 26, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word chris' head weighs a ton
Worrying.
May 26, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word watch-paper
BibliOdyssey: 'Hands up anyone who knew what a watch-paper print was? Yeah, I thought so. Me neither... Originally designed as a simple protective insert, watch-papers came to be used as an advertising medium for the watchmakers in the second half of the 18th century and another means by which print artists could ply their trade. These types of "professional" or conservative watch-papers form the majority of the genre, but a popular "amateur" variety also emerged that were valued as keepsakes.'
May 26, 2009
vanishedone commented on the user john
John, what do the house rules say about thematic consistency like this? I'm not sure whether desum is trolling in search of a reaction or just deeply single-minded.
May 26, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word babirusas
Image Search includes some pictures of big cats and polar bears to make up the numbers.
May 24, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word sacroscant
Adj. Not very sacred.
May 24, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word dungeon
I think WeirdNet means the keep.
May 24, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word stretcher
How familiar does WeirdNet #1 sound to other people? Stretcher makes me think of medical assistance...
May 24, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word duck island mp 'feels humiliated'
Not the Hon. Member for Duck Island, wherever that might be, but an M.P. who tried to claim expenses for a floating island to house his ducks.
May 23, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word enervating breath
With this and Absorb Weapon ghosted, I get the impression someone compiled and deleted a tabletop RPG ability list.
Sure enough, Magic Missile and Turn Undead are ghosted too...
May 23, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word bugs
Some interesting " behaviour: there's a tag on Lucy reading aesop rock song "no regrets", but even once I've reconstructed a working URL by changing " to %22, I still get a 'nobody has used this tag' message.
May 23, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word gÖdel's theorem
Oops. See Gödel's theorem. I wonder whether OCSJTS should cover these...
May 23, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word wormlike
Hmm. WeirdNet defines wriggling as 'moving in a twisting or snake-like or wormlike fashion', but its definitions for wormlike involve submissiveness rather than movement.
May 23, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word deinopoid
B.B.C.: '...more than 100 million years ago, in the early Cretaceous period, a major shift in the design of spiders' orb-shaped webs came about.
'Before then, spiders coated the spirals in their webs with puffs of dry adhesive. These dry spirals trapped insects by physically entangling around the tiny hairs known as setae on their bodies. A group of spiders living today, known as deinopoid spiders, still weave webs in this way.
'However, during the early Cretaceous, araneoid orb weaving spiders evolved which weaved a different type of web. These spiders replaced the dry adhesive with wet droplets of glue. These are much stickier.'
May 22, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word chicken soup
Duly detagged.
May 22, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word chicken soup
Twelve hours later, John has clearly done his good work: bonniebonniebonnie is 404'd. (bonniebonnie still exists but is thus far inactive.)
Does anyone feel like adopting chicken soup?
May 22, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word silo syndrome
T.H.E.: 'Wilhelm von Humboldt created the template for contemporary Western universities when he organised his Berlin-based institution into schools and departments based on areas of knowledge. Previously, academic disciplines were integrated and professors rarely specialised. The reforms inspired by Humboldt have led to unparalleled progress in research and knowledge. Recently, however, this extreme specialisation has come in for criticism because of its undesirable consequence: "silo syndrome", in which academics deal only with colleagues in their subject and students gain only a narrow perspective on knowledge.'
May 21, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word crazy rasberry ant
ken5.com: 'The crazy Rasberry ant is named after exterminator Tom Rasberry, who first discovered it in 2002.'
May 21, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word features
<div style="color: red; font-size: 30pt; text-transform: uppercase;">
<blink>
Tags are not the same as definitions
</blink>
</div>
on the tags/pos box when first viewed might be less taxing on my schedule.
Actually, in all seriousness it may be worth wondering whether the tags/pos box could have some short, explanatory wording added; I imagine people might be more likely to read it than to browse an entire FAQ page.
May 21, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word mascot
See /tags/candidate for wordie mascot, with the winner tagged /tags/official wordie mascot.
There's also /tags/candidate for wordie mascot 2009, but thus far it's been used only once.
May 20, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word palatals
It just doesn't have separate defintions for plurals (although sometimes it does prioritise different definitions for plural forms, e.g. eye vs. eyes).
May 20, 2009
vanishedone commented on the list estevens-s-list
Were you by any chance intending to add those words to the list? Other box, one by one.
Welcome to Wordie.
May 19, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word ghost comments
Comments on tags which no longer appear on any words also act as ghost comments of a sort: I can see on the recent comments page that bilby has commented on /tags/cyncism, but when I go there I find a 'nobody has used' page with no comments (and no comment entry box) visible.
I think I've previously mentioned this on either bugs or features.
May 19, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word aphasia
A.k.a. WeirdNet. You haven't seen the worst of it...
May 19, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word study ball
curiosite.com presumably intends it as a spoof item; I wouldn't put it past some parents to take the idea seriously, though.
May 19, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word study ball
Telegraph: 'Concerned mums and dads set the desired study time on the Study Ball and attach it to their child's ankle.
'A red digital display counts down the "Study Time Left" and the device beeps and unlocks when the time expires.
'The prison-style device weighs 9.5 kg (21 pounds), making it difficult to move while wearing it.'
See also ball and chain.
May 19, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word features
Absurd lists on Wordie? Unthinkable.
May 19, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word Å
This one seems to be working nowadays, although å still isn't.
May 17, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word private note
See private notes.
May 15, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word copyleft
How about ↄ?
May 15, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word admire
Has someone been feeding it blood...?
May 15, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word irc
Sorry, wrong link. Try this.
May 15, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word irc
telofy made a channel for Wordie at one point (four months ago?), but the comment on this page seems to have vanished. Maybe it didn't get enough of a reaction...
May 14, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word bugs
Where housekeeping is concerned, we're waiting for John's posse to saddle up (see features, 3 months ago).
May 14, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word admire
Judging by the usernames, I suspect English is not their first language.
May 14, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word screenager
T.H.E.: 'We have plenty of nostalgic and ideologically loaded analyses of what new and graduating students can't do. There is precious little account taken of what today's 'screenagers' can do that many of their predecessors - and at least some of their teachers - can't," Sir David said, in a lecture titled "Students aren't what they used to be - and never were".'
May 14, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word admire
That was erich13; apparently he couldn't work out how to remove the tags again, and John may get around to doing it someday.
May 14, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word bonus secondary head suspended
What it means: 'A London head teacher has been suspended following "serious" allegations about pay and bonuses.'
May 13, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word absorb weapon
This seems to be a tabletop RPG ability.
May 13, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word appetizingness
WeirdNet defines this word and also employs it in its definition of deliciousness, but none of the other dictionary.reference.com sources lists it, and neither does the O.E.D....
May 13, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word circumhorizontal
A.P.O.D.: '...circumhorizontal arcs are quite unusual to see. This circumhorizon display was photographed...'
May 13, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word postive
Pertaining to postage?
May 13, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word over my dead body
Perhaps it had to be prised out of its list.
May 13, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word earlings
A wonderful O.E.D. definition for this: 'Possibly a transl. of Fr. oreillettes ‘wires about a woman's head’ (Miège Fr. Dict. 1701); cf. ear-wires.'
May 13, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word earling
If memory serves Titus Groan uses this to denote a ceremony installing a new earl; it's not in the O.E.D., so presumably Peake coined it.
May 13, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word chronologically misplaced
WeirdNet's euphemism for anachronistic.
May 13, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word anachronistic
This WeirdNet definition makes me think of time travel: "We're not lost in the past... we're merely chronologically misplaced."
May 13, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word hallux
A veritable bouquet of superlatives, WeirdNet.
May 13, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word slackline
Slacklining is like tightrope walking, but without the tightness.
May 12, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word airkicking
Oddee: 'In this strange extreme sport, a human catapult launches individuals over 26 feet in the air into a swimming pool or foam pit.'
May 12, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word underwater cycling
Oddee uses this header apparently by mistake, since the article goes on to talk about underwater hockey. If underwater cycling didn't exist, they may have inadvertently invented it.
May 12, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word poweriser
Swebounce: 'Powerisers are bouncy stilts that you strap yourself into. With some training you can run as fast as 20mph and jump 2 meters high. For many people it’s enough to just run around and bounce but there are many kind of tricks you can perform on powerisers. I would say that this is the extreme sport of the future.'
May 12, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word cliff diving
Maybe not strange enough for the Oddympics list, but it certainly sounds risky.
May 12, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word crocodile bungee
Oddee: 'Feeling jaded by garden-variety bungee jumping? You might consider imitating how these Aussies spice up the sport: bungee jumping into a body of water containing live crocodiles.'
May 12, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word train surfing
Oddee: 'Usually an illegal sport, train surfing involves riders climbing or "surfing" on the outside of a moving train or subway.'
May 12, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word limbo skating
Oddee: 'For what may appear to be near-impossible, limbo-skating — roller skating under cars — is the latest rage in India...'
May 12, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word volcano boarding
Via Oddee.
May 12, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word ever-circulator
LRB: '...later, chain letters called ‘ever-circulators’, composed in shorthand, were sent through the imperial mail.'
May 12, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word tachygraphy
LRB: 'In early modern England, tachygraphy, tachography, zeitography, zeiglography, semigraphy, semography all vied for the loyalty of court recorders, parliamentary reporters, diarists (think of Pepys), clergymen (who used it to rip off each other’s sermons) and theatregoers (who used it the way some filmgoers use a handicam). Dickens broke into parliamentary reporting by memorising Thomas Gurney’s book, Brachygraphy, or, an Easy and Compendious System of Shorthand.'
May 12, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word stenomask
LRB: 'In the US, court reporters have abandoned stenotype machines, whose keyboards use chord-like combinations to represent sounds, for a technique called voice writing. The "writer" – really a speaker – repeats testimony into a microphone nestled in a hand-held mask that prevents her voice from being heard in court; the recording is later transcribed, usually with speech-recognition software.The Stenomask dates back to the 1940s, when an American court reporter encased a microphone first in a cigar-box, then in a tomato tin, and finally in an old coffeepot, but it didn’t become a standard fixture until the advent of speech recognition programs. It’s also cheaper: machine stenography takes three years to learn, voice writing six months.'
May 12, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word children sanitation alert issued
With just an extra 's it could have sounded less as though the words were in a random order.
May 12, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word amiga
WordNet lists amigo but not this, even though it's this one that's the name of a famous series of computers.
May 12, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word definished
No objections on terpsichorean - pertaining to dance (terpsichorean circumvention), so I'm going to introduce this to OCSJTS. It should also serve for words tagged with definitions like /tags/occurring in or being a third stage: as a: being or relating to the recovery of oil and gas from old wells by means of the underground application of heat and chemicals b: being or relating to the purification of wastewater by removal of fine particles.
See tag.
May 11, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word 'major failings' at abuse school
Not enough people passing their abuse exams?
May 11, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word copyleft
Can you see a reversed c here? → Ↄ
I got it from here, but I can't view it on my machine.
There's been some discussion about the possibility of adding the symbol here.
May 11, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word swami
Modern Mechanix: 'Swami, by itself, reacts like any other object: supported at one end only—it falls. But, add a fairly heavy belt, as shown in the photo, and it will not only stay up but actually take quite a bit of extra pressure to make it tilt down, even slightly.'
May 10, 2009
vanishedone commented on the list vince12-s-list
What leads you to believe it has one?
May 9, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word nuhegh'eghrupqa'mohlahbe'law'li'nes
Slate: 'As if that weren't complicated enough, Klingon also has a large set of suffixes... Klingon has 36 verb suffixes and 26 noun suffixes that express everything from negation to causality to possession to how willing a speaker is to vouch for the accuracy of what he says. By piling on these suffixes, one after the other, you can pack a lot of meaning on to a single word in Klingon—words like nuHegh'eghrupqa'moHlaHbe'law'lI'neS, which translates roughly to: They are apparently unable to cause us to prepare to resume honorable suicide (in progress).'
May 8, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word millefiore
Science Daily: 'Millefiore is a glass-working technique created from glass rods with multi coloured patterns that are only visible at the cut ends – like a stick of rock with the writing only visible once cut. These rods are created by heating and melding lengths of different coloured glass to create an individual pattern. Here, a solid red cane is set at the core with blue and white canes set around it to produce the petal effect. The small cross sections of glass rod are then used to create bigger pieces. It is a very labour intensive – and hence very exclusive – craft.'
See also millefiori.
May 8, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word bugs
Judging by this it's probably associated with the AddThis widget at the bottom of the page.
May 7, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word plotonium
rampantgames.com: 'For example - in an adventure game, you've generally got one - usually convoluted and amusing - solution to a problem. A good RPG, on the other hand, should make that puzzle a goal condition and leave other options to achieve that goal available. Failure to do that leads to frustration, as in the "plot-driven door" problem (or as a friend of mine calls it, "objects made of the indestructable material plotonium"). In an adventure game, you expect it - but even then, it gets frustrating when you see what appears to be an obvious solution which doesn't work.'
May 7, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word it makes a loud noise all the time over there
A.k.a. Malibu.
May 7, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word guilt experienced while engaging in "normal" social activities that the time would be better served devoted to wordie
It was presumably replaced by remorse over having created another Wordie page that needs a work-around to access.
May 6, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word neo-victorian
Zeitgeisted?
May 5, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word watchclock
Graphpaper.com: 'An elegant solution, designed and patented in 1901 by the German engineer A.A. Newman, is called the “watchclock�?. It’s an ingenious mechanical device, slung over the shoulder like a canteen and powered by a simple wind-up spring mechanism. It precisely tracks and records a night watchman’s position in both space and time for the duration of every evening. It also generates a detailed, permanent, and verifiable record of each night’s patrol.'
May 5, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word hiyo
Allan Gibbard, Thinking How to Live: 'I can say "Hey, Bob!" to accost him, to attract his attention. "Hey!" of course isn't a predicate; the syntax of "Hey!" is not that of a predicate. Couldn't we, though, remedy this? Let's invent a predicate, and imagine that it is a standard part of our language: saying "Bob is hiyo in assertoric contexts, let's specify, accomplishes the speech act of accosting Bob—and likewise for saying that anyone else is hiyo.'
May 5, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word malodonus
Err... an unwanted gift?
May 3, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word edible
It can be a noun - the O.E.D. has examples from 1611 to 1884 - but n. above adj., WeirdNet?
May 3, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word circumlocation
This seems to be in (minor) use, though it's hard to find out exactly where.
May 3, 2009
vanishedone commented on the list runeswriter-s-list
Did you want these definitions to go on word pages? People new to Wordie often add definitions to list pages by mistake, but you don't seem to have listed any words either...
May 3, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word graphook
I'm not sure whether this was a typo or not; Googling produces a few caes of grap hook or grap-hook.
May 3, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word try yappa dingdingding on your coworkers :)
How does one do that?
May 2, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word terpsichorean - pertaining to dance (terpsichorean circumvention)
So what's the tagging protocol for cases like this? Definished?
May 2, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word powdered water
The punchline is 'just add water', isn't it?
May 2, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word charreria rodeo
Citation on sumodo.
May 2, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word pato
Citation on sumodo.
May 2, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word sumodo
Japan Times: 'Sumo is often called "kokugi" in the Japanese media and by the population at large, and kokugi is a phrase most dictionaries translate as "national sport." Likewise, sumo is performed at a stadium known as the Kokugikan — with "kan" meaning hall or stadium.
'However, few with an in-depth awareness of the professional game would ever refer to sumo as simply a sport. It's more of a "way," with sumodo a term often heard in professional circles. Also, unlike nine other nations, Canada (lacrosse in summer and ice-hockey in winter), Argentina (pato — a sport played on horseback similar to polo), and Mexico (charreria rodeo) included, Japan has no legally recognized national sport.'
May 2, 2009
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