Word of the Day

prestidigitation \pres-tih-dij-ih-TAY-shuhn\, noun:

1. Performance of or skill in performing magic with the hands; sleight of hand.
2. Manual dexterity in the execution of tricks; sleight of hand; legerdemain.
3. A show of skill or deceitful cleverness.

"He was the man who had sat alone in a room for hundreds and hundreds of hours, his fingers manipulating cards and coins until he had learned and could perfectly reproduce every form of prestidigitation found in books of magic lore." -- Brian Moore, The Magician's Wife

"In his new work the magic is in the storyteller's prestidigitation as the stories pass from character to character and voice to voice, and the realism seems Homeric."--D. J. R. Bruckner, "A Storyteller For the War That Won't End," New York Times, April 3, 1990

"It all came about less through engineering skill than through political prestidigitation." --Marc Reisner, Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water

Quotation for Friday, June 24, 2005:

"I love the empty, silent, dewy, cobwebby hours."

Letters to an American Lady (C.S. Lewis)

Hey...me too!

nerd (nûrd) n. Slang

1. A foolish, inept, or unattractive person.
2. A person who is single-minded or accomplished in scientific or technical pursuits but is felt to be socially inept.

The word nerd first appeared in 1950 in Dr. Seuss's "If I Ran the Zoo":
“And then, just to show them, I'll sail to Ka-Troo And Bring Back an It-Kutch a Preep and a Proo, A Nerkle a Nerd and a Seersucker, too!” (The nerd is a small humanoid creature looking comically angry)

Nerd next appears, with a gloss, in a 1957 issue of the Glasgow, Scotland, Sunday Mail in a column entitled “ABC for SQUARES”:
“Nerd - a square...any explanation needed?”

The third appearance of nerd in print is back in the United States in 1970 in Current Slang:
“Nurd [sic], someone with objectionable habits or traits.... An uninteresting person, a ‘dud.’”

I also found this definition from Webster:
Nurd: a person who is extremely interested and knowledgeable about computers, electronics, technology, and gadgets; also called nerd, geek

And from WordNet...

nerd
1. [mainstream slang] Pejorative applied to anyonewith an above-average IQ and few gifts at small talk and ordinary social rituals.
2. [jargon] Term of praise applied (in conscious, ironic reference to sense 1) to someone who knows what's really important and interesting and doesn't care to be distracted by trivial chatter and silly status games. Compare the two senses of computer geek.

I was recently called a nerd. After reviewing the above, I'm thinking...what? Me? Socially inept, a square, a dud? Ouch. But, if I may be selective, I'll take the part where it says "above-average IQ" and "knows what's really important."

I just bought this Jack Johnson CD on a whim the other day at the mall.
I like it.

Word of the Day

antiquarian \an-tuh-KWAIR-ee-uhn\, noun/adjective:
1. Of or pertaining to objects or relics from the past.
2. Dealing in or concerned with old or rare items.

Except to antiquarians and preservationists, silent cinema has little presence on the cultural radar screen, its landmark films unrented on video, its iconic images spotted only as fodder for video collage on MTV. --Thomas Doherty, Pre-Code Hollywood

Quotation for Monday, June 13, 2005:

"Crying is all right in its way while it lasts. But you have to stop sooner or later, and then you still have to decide what to do."

The Silver Chair

(don't worry anyone...I didn't post this because I've been crying. Just liked the line.)

Almost here!

Smashmouth has now completed their new album, "Old Habits," and it's due out this summer. I plan to be first in line to get it when it's released!

And speaking of us evolving...

A quote from "My Sister's Keeper" regarding a subject I was not debating with a friend last week:

"...it's a huge leap from an amoeba to a monkey to a whole thinking person. The really amazing thing about all this is, no matter what you believe, it took some doing to get from a point where there was nothing to a point where all the right neurons fire and pop so that we can make decisions.

More amazing is how, even though that's become second nature, we all still manage to screw it up."

Monster Engine

Once again I'm borrowing content from the ever popular Jack. Check out this extremely cool site!

Word of the Day:

I just like the sound of this word. I definitely need to find a use for it soon!

agglomeration \uh-glom-uh-RAY-shuhn\, noun:
1. The act or process of collecting in a mass; a heaping together.
2. A jumbled cluster or mass of usually varied elements.

On flat farmland outside the town of Paulding, Ohio, sits an agglomeration of storage tanks, conveyors and long, rotating kilns that burn 60,000 tons of hazardous waste a year.
--David Bowermaster, "The cement makers' long sweet ride," U.S. News & World Report, July 19, 1993
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Agglomeration is the noun form of agglomerate, "to gather into a ball or mass," which derives from the past participle of Latin agglomerare, "to mass together; to heap up," from ad- + glomerare, "to form into a ball," from glomus, glomer-, "ball."

Quote of the day:

"Some books are to be tasted, some swallowed and a few to be chewed up and digested."

Sir Francis Bacon (1625)

I love this commentary by my good friend, Jack, about the griping some male race car drivers are doing over Danica Patrick's lesser weight.