ne plus ultra nee-plus-UL-truh; nay-, noun:
1. The highest point, as of excellence or achievement; the acme; the pinnacle; the ultimate.
2. The most profound degree of a quality or condition.
Ne plus ultra is from Latin, literally, “(go) no more beyond”, from ne, “not” + plus, “more” + ultra, “beyond.”
anile (AN-yl, AY-nyl) adjective
Of or like an old woman.
From Latin anilis, from anus old woman. (Yes, really.)
epizootic (ep-uh-zo-OT-ik) adjective
Spreading quickly among many animals.
noun
Such a disease.
[French epizootique, from epi- + Greek zoion animal.]
Author and humorist Mark Twain once observed, “The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.” Open a newspaper or magazine and chances are you’ll read about the frightening “epidemic” of mad cow disease. Of course, it is we who are mad when we feed these herbivore animals body parts of other animals, including other cows, but I digress. With today’s word we know the right term to use when it comes to an animal disease. The root dem(os) in the word epidemic, meaning `people’ is the same root that gave us the word democracy. Here are two other words with their animal equivalents: endemic/enzootic and demography/zoography.
Olestra, the fake fat that, according to the warning label – “induces nausea, loose stool and anal leakage”
Olestra was developed by procter and gamble… what are that outfit’s top selling products?
Pepto Bismol
Charmin Toilet Paper
Attends Adult Diapers
See a connection?
31st-Century English: Let’s get this straight, although I speak English, I’m not its biggest fan. What we have here is a language that began as a bad habit shared by Norman soldiers and Saxon barmaids who discovered that if they shared that habit they could share other things. Then the island empire they populated went all imperial and the bad habit was exported to at least four other continents. Then their colonies compounded the problem by revolting and splintering the language, and then insisting on the right to absorb other cultures ad hoc and ad nauseum (but not ad-free, unless you subscribe.)
Give me your tired, your poor
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
And I will give them a horrible new language to speak,
Which they will then mutate even more. (emphasis added*)
And then, as if that wasn’t bad enough, one of the colonies began exporting soldiers and technology across the face of the planet so that this mutated, awkward tongue became the de facto standard for business.
Needless to say, when Earthmen went to space and joined Galactic civilization, the language of corruption, conquest, and compromise struck the rest of the galaxy like a plague. It was like influenza among the native americans, or that Apple virus uploaded by that one guy during the Independence Day movie. Our galactic neighbors never stood a chance.
The worst part… Earth never apologized, and the descendents of the ancient royal families of the former British Empire (now comprising less than a billionth of a percent of the galaxy’s English-speakers) continued to insist that everyone else was talking funny.
*Emphasis is also indicative of abject corruption of the original poem.
cohort KOH-hort, noun:
1. A group or band of people.
2. A companion; an associate.
3. A group of people sharing a common statistical factor (as age or membership in a class) in a demographic study.
4. (Roman Antiquity) A body of about 300 to 600 soldiers; the tenth part of a legion.
5. Any group or body of warriors.
Cohort derives from Latin cohors, “an enclosure, a yard,” hence, “a division of an army camp,” hence “a troop, a company,” hence, “a division of the Roman army.”
I think they should rename the friends list to ‘cohorts’ and ‘cohort of’ 🙂 Just grouped with, no personal associations.
That’s for them that needs a good Fwap!
eremite ER-uh-myt, noun:
A hermit, especially a religious recluse.
He is in the private cave of his freedom, an eremite, a solitary; he orders his mind as he pleases.
–Cynthia Ozick, “Writers Domestic and Demonic” New York Times, March 25, 1984
Eremite derives from Late Latin eremita, from Greek eremites, “living in the desert,” from eremia, “desert,” from eremos,”lonely, solitary, desolate.”
Is it true that U.S. and Canadian federal law-enforcement agencies have a voice-activated system connected to local telephone networks that activates and records telephone conversations based on certain keywords? I only ask this because a reliable source told me so. However, I am very skeptical because I can’t believe any government agency has the authority, let alone the technology.
slake SLAYK, transitive verb:
1. To satisfy; to quench; to extinguish; as, to slake thirst.
2. To cause to lessen; to make less active or intense; to moderate; as, slaking his anger.
3. To cause (as lime) to heat and crumble by treatment with water.
intransitive verb:
To become slaked; to crumble or disintegrate, as lime.
Slake comes from Middle English slaken, “to become or render slack,” hence “to abate,” from Old English slacian, from slæc, “slack.”
“My companions never drink pure water and the… beer serves as much to slake their thirst as to fill their stomachs and lubricate conversation.”
–Philippe Descola, The Spears of Twilight
ambisinister am-bi-SIN-uh-stuhr adjective
Clumsy with both hands. (Literally, with two left hands.)
Latin ambi- both, + sinister, on the left side.
carom KAIR-um, noun:
1. A rebound following a collision; a glancing off.
2. A shot in billiards in which the cue ball successively
strikes two other balls on the table.
intransitive verb:
1. To strike and rebound; to glance.
2. To make a carom.
transitive verb:
To make (an object) bounce off something; to cause to carom.
Carom derives from obsolete carambole, from Spanish carambola, “a stroke at billiards.”
There was no smoking aboard the wartime Zeppelins, and the only way around that was to volunteer for duty in the “spy basket”, a vaguely teardrop-shaped car suspended a few hundred feet below the airship. (The theory was that the ship would cruise above the clouds, and the man in the “spy basket”, dangling below the clouds, would serve as a spotter for navigation and bombing, communicating with the ship via a phone line braided into the suspension line for his perch. This was not as successful as it sounds, and the USN abandoned its own version of the idea in the early 30s…) The spotter wore a parachute, but it was generally believed that, if the cable broke, the suspension system would foul the basket opening long enough for the ground to come up and hit you while you were trying to work your way free… So you had to risk your neck for a chance to flick your Bic — better to simply wait until after the ship landed back in Germany!
The post WWI German commercial Zeppelins were rather fanatical about fire safety. IIRC, Graf Zeppelin (LZ-127) was a “smoke-free” airship. Hindenburg (LZ-129) and, I believe, her sister ship Graf Zeppelin II (LZ-129) included a “smoking room” — the only place anybody was permitted to smoke on the airship. This room was asbestos-lined, and you still couldn’t use your own matches or lighter (such implements were temporarily confiscated while you were aboard) — you had to use one of the special lighters that were chained to the tables!
The airships of every non-US nation during this period used hydrogen for two main reasons:
1. Hydrogen, in the purity normally used for filling an airship, will lift approximately 68 lbs per kcf, while helium will lift only 62 lbs per kcf.
2. Helium was found in useful quantity only in the US, and our government had restrictions on export of helium. Even in the US, it wasn’t inexpensive — it generally cost at least ten times what you would pay for an equal amount of hydrogen. This fact was not lost on a penny-pinching Congress, but use of helium in US airships had been mandated, ever since the loss of the Italian-built US military semirigid airship Roma, which struck a high-tension line, and crashed, with heavy loss of life, when her hydrogen cells caught fire. Los Angeles was filled with hydrogen for her delivery flight from Germany, but this was very soon replaced with helium. (However, Congress was slow to fund extraction of enough helium to refill the ship, so the gas from the Shenandoah had to be transferred over to Los Angeles, temporarily grounding that ship. Shenandoah only flew again after Los Angeles went in for overhaul!)
Airships went everywhere, including to the poles. Norge reached the North Pole, as did Italia later on (though Italia crashed on the way back), and even the Graf Zeppelin made an Arctic flight, though she didn’t cross the pole.
A polar expedition was planned for USS Shenandoah (ZR-1) in 1925, soon after the ship finished up a goodwill tour of the Midwest. Unfortunately, the Shenandoah broke up in a squall near Ava, Ohio, on the night of 2-3 September, 1925 (the anniversary of the ship’s commissioning!), killing over a dozen of her crew, including LCDR Zachary Lansdowne, her CO.
A good starting source for airship data is Airship: The Home Page for Lighter Than Air craft (http://spot.colorado.edu/~dziadeck/airship.html). If you want to go directly to the German Zeppelin data, try http://spot.colorado.edu/~dziadeck/zeppelin.html
For a picture of the Los Angeles doing a nose-stand at the high mast at Lakehurst NAS, in New Jersey, see
arriviste a-ree-VEEST, noun:
A person who has recently attained success, wealth, or high status but not general acceptance or respect; an upstart.
Arriviste comes from French, from arriver, “to arrive,” from (assumed) Vulgar Latin arripare, “to reach the shore,” from Latin ad-, “to, toward” + ripa, “shore.”
clochard KLOH-shahr noun:
A beggar; vagrant.
From French clocher, to limp, from Latin clopus, lame.
myopic my-OP-ik adjective:
1. Nearsighted; unable to see clearly objects at a distance.
2. Shortsighted; lacking foresight; narrow-minded.
From New Latin, from Greek, myopia, from myop- nearsighted, from myein, to close + ops, eye.
Why is stool brown?
The color comes mainly from bilirubin, a pigment that arises from the breakdown of red blood cells in the liver and bone marrow. The actual metabolic pathway of bilirubin and its byproducts in the body is very complicated, so we will simply say that a lot of it ends up in the intestine, where it is further modified by bacterial action. But the color itself comes from iron. Iron in hemoglobin in red blood cells gives blood its red color, and iron in the waste product bilirubin gives rise to its brown color.
Why does my poo smell?
Poop stinks as a result of the products of bacterial action. Bacteria produce smelly, sulfur-rich organic compounds such as indole, skatole, and mercaptans, and the inorganic gas hydrogen sulfide. These are the same compounds that give farts their odor.
exegesis ek-suh-JEE-sis, noun;
plural exegeses -seez:
Exposition; explanation; especially, a critical explanation of a text.
Exegesis comes from Greek, from exegeisthai, “to explain, to interpret,” from ex-, “out of” + hegeisthai, “to lead, to guide.” Thus an exegesis is, at root, “a leading or guiding out of” a complexity.
No variety of love is too trivial for exegesis. No aspect of love is so ridiculous that it hasn’t been exhaustively reviewed by the great thinkers, the great artists, and the great hosts of daytime talk shows.
–P. J. O’Rourke, Eat the Rich
Push The Ailment If You Have The Cure
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About two years ago, newspaper, magazine and television news stories began popping up across the country about a little-known malady called social anxiety disorder. Psychiatrists and patient advocates appeared on television shows and in articles explaining that the debilitating form of bashfulness was extremely widespread but easily treatable.
The stories and appearances were part of a campaign, coordinated by a New York public relations agency, that included pitches to newspapers, radio and TV, satellite and Internet communications, and testimonials from advocates and doctors who said social anxiety was America’s third most common mental disorder with more than 10 million sufferers.
So successful was the campaign that according to a marketing newsletter, media accounts of social anxiety rose from just 50 stories in 1997 and 1998 to more than 1 billion references in 1999 alone. And about 96 percent of the stories, said the report in PR News, “delivered the key message, ‘Paxil is the first and only FDA-approved medication for the treatment of social anxiety disorder.’ ”
The plug for a drug was no accident. Cohn & Wolfe, the public relations agency coordinating the campaign, did not serve at the pleasure of the doctors and patient advocates who participated in the education campaign. Instead, the agency worked at the behest of SmithKline Beecham, the pharmaceutical giant now known as Glaxo SmithKline, which makes the antidepressant Paxil.
Searching For The Truth
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Attacking an increasingly popular Internet business practice, a consumer watchdog group Monday filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission asserting that many online search engines are concealing the impact special fees have on search results by Internet users.
IRS Advice, Don’t Follow Our Advice, Except For This Advice
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A Treasury Department sampling of service at IRS walk-in centers this year found agents gave taxpayers incorrect or insufficient advice on their tax questions 73 percent of the time — a slight improvement over last year’s 81 percent error rate.
Gooey Viagra
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New treatments in the pipeline for sexual dysfunction
Could a rub-on gel boost erections? Topiglan is one product that is being studied for this use.
Now That Its Up, What Happens?
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A new therapy could offer help for millions of men suffering from premature ejaculation, British psychiatrists said Friday.
A SMALL PILOT study of a latex rubber ring has shown that it can relieve the problem that afflicts an estimated 29 percent of sexually active men.
Samurai Psycho
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A MENTAL patient escaped up to seven police officers who had been called to his home before he was shot dead in the street while wielding a samurai sword.
Police said that they tried to restrain Andrew Kernan by using CS spray outside a busy pub in Liverpool and opened fire only when it failed to subdue him. Mr Kernan, a 37-year-old schizophrenic, was taken to Royal Liverpool Hospital but died from injuries to the chest.
Police had gone to his house after being alerted by his family when he became disturbed. It was unclear yesterday how Mr Kernan, who was wearing pyjamas, was able to leave the house and arm himself with the sword.
What happens during a full moon when a werewolf has bitten another wolf?
Is it piracy music when you’re copying someone who samples other music?
Today’s bonus word of the day: coulrophobia: fear of clowns. This particular phobia seems to be pretty wide spread for some reason. The majority of the people I know dislike clowns, the level of distaste ranging from the merely “icky” to the very direct “if you come any closer, I’m gonna shove that joy buzzer right up your oversized clown trousers”.
http://phobialist.com/ there’s a lot of ’em.
crux KRUHKS, noun;
plural cruxes, also cruces KROO-seez:
1. The basic, central, or critical point or feature.
2. Anything that is very puzzling or difficult to explain or solve.
Crux is from Latin crux, “cross, torment, trouble.”
The crux of why I just made a poo joke isn’t as confusing as it might appear. 🙂