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AWADmail Issue 660

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From: Anu Garg (words at wordsmith.org)
Subject: Interesting stories from the net

A Long Decline of Language
The Economist
WebCite

How Smart Language Helped End Seattle’s Paralyzing Bikelash
People for Bikes
WebCite

From: Kent Stockton (kstockto wyoming.com)
Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--frankenfood

Your joke reminds me of the story of the guy who saw an ad for a guaranteed potato bug killer; he ordered it. He received two blocks of wood -- the instructions said, “Place bug on one block, then bring the two blocks forcibly together.”

From: Greg Holmes (gregholmes2100 gmail.com)
Subject: So-called frankenfood

More worrisome than the silly neologism frankenfood is the all-too real frankenfool, the superstitious Luddite who would deny humanity the manifest benefits of genetically modified crops, which save hundreds of thousands of lives around the world each year -- mostly in the poorest countries -- while causing no demonstrated harm.

From: Eric Grosshans (uhclem frii.com)
Subject: preternatural

This took me back 50 years to when I was a student in The Duke of York, a boys’ boarding school in Nairobi, Kenya. The school motto was “Nihil Praeter Optimum” (“Nothing but the Best”).

From: Jane Freeman (wordplayjane yahoo.com)
Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--preternatural

This word appears several times in Jane Eyre:

That’s an amazing photo accompanying the word. To me, it shows how we can feel embraced by words, which represent thoughts, and want to reciprocate by embracing back. Words, lots of words, can leap off the page and love.

From: Christopher Weaver (chrweave gmail.com)
Subject: logomaniac

Yesterday was Shrove Tuesday. Shouldn’t you have confessed that you are a logomaniac and been shriven then?

From: Cathy Perry Glass (c perryglass.net)
Subject: Logomaniac

Anu, you could have simply included your photo to show us the definition!

From: John Caperton (cprtn comcast.net)
Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--logomaniac

Today’s word makes me think of logo-maniac, one who only buys pricey name brands. So what’s the word for that?

From: Alex McCrae (ajmccrae277 gmail.com)
Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--logomaniac

If we can concede that the word “icon”, meaning-wise, could be interchangeable with the word “logo” in the context of corporate identity, then an ‘iconomaniac’ might be defined as an individual obsessed with icons. Odd, but within the realm of possibility, no?

From: Lise Rosenthal (lise rakefet.com)
Subject: parthenogenesis

Also aphids. The temple to Athene is called the Parthenon because she sprang fully armed from the brow of Zeus. That must have been some migraine!

From: Edmund Miller (edmund.miller liu.edu)
Subject: parthenogenesis

James Merrill has a double dactyl that makes use of the metrical and theological implications of the word:

From: Craig Floyd (cmfloyd swbell.net)
Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--bryology

Hornworts were traditionally considered a class within the division Bryophyta (bryophytes). It now appears, however, that this former division is paraphyletic, so the hornworts are now given their own division, Anthocerotophyta. The division Bryophyta is now restricted to include only mosses.

From: Dave Zobel (dzobel alumni.caltech.edu)
Subject: Schroedinger’s cat

He was anticipating the now-common misbelief that the cat is somehow both alive and dead simultaneously. (In truth, as long as the interior of the box remains completely isolated from our Universe, it can’t be said to be “in” any state at all, thanks to the quantum indeterminacy of physical systems. To misquote the Dave Mason song: “There ain’t no live cat; there ain’t no dead cat; there’s only live-cat/dead-cat possibilitie-ie-ies.”)

Not until the box’s contents are permitted to interact unambiguously with the environment (e.g., by being observed) is one state or the other “chosen”. At that moment, Reality takes, as it were, a snapshot.

From: Anu Garg (words at wordsmith.org)
Subject: Limericks

A fellow once prayed to St Jude
“I’ve been eating too much Frankenfood
I’ve got fangs like a cat
I drink blood like a bat
And the horns on my head now protrude.”

My granny had health preternatural
Not once in her life would you catch her ill
“Longevity’s clues
Are cigars, se x, and boo ze,”
She wrote (Boy, were her letters factual!).

A lim’rick each day is a zany act
The work of a crazed logomaniac
The stirring he feels,
A dark secret reveals,
That words are the best aphrodisiac.

Some say parthenogenesis,
In nature can be hit or miss,
Immaculate Conception,
Is surely the exception,
The old-fashioned way leads to bliss.

As a boy, Sasha Cohen liked bryology
Of the forest floor he was all knowledgy
His folks, at a loss
For his interest in moss
Grew nostalgic when he became Ali G.