New URMA issue on my desk

Vol. 38, No. 2: the Fall 2009 issue of ugaresearch (Univ. of Georgia)

New URMA issue on my desk

Volume LXII, Number 2: the Fall 2009 issue of Engineering & Science (Caltech)

New URMA issue on my desk

The Fall 2009 issue of Ideation (William & Mary)

New URMA issue on my desk

Vol. 22, No. 4: the November 2009 HHMI Bulletin

More Weary Words

"A few years ago it seemed as if writers couldn’t be hired at The Times unless they used the word “frisson” in just about every column. That usage has receded a bit, but not much. The new word-that-must-be-used is “trope,” meaning metaphor, example, literary device, picture — and maybe whatever else the writer wants it to mean."

More Weary Words (via The New York Times)

Writing quote of the day:

"Anyone who translates knowledge from the technical into the popular language is disregarding the rules of caste, and is thus taboo. Technical terms, long words, learned-sounding phrases, are the means by which second-rate intellectuals 'inflate their egos' and feed their sense of superiority to the multitude. If an idea can be expressed in two ways, one of which involves a barbarous technical jargon, while the other needs nothing but a few simple words of one syllable which everyone can understand, this kind of person definitely prefers the barbarous technical jargon. He wishes to be thought, and above all to think himself, a person who understands profound and difficult things which common folk cannot comprehend." W.T. Stace, "The Snobbishness of the Learned," in Atlantic Essays 94, 99 (Samuel N. Bogorad & Cary B. Graham eds., 1958).

I know what they MEANT, but...

Warning on a piece of equipment at my gym:

STOP EXERCISING IF YOU FEEL WEAK OR FAINT