And in high school news...

Didn't I just write that my high school has been haunting me lately? well, an old classmate just reconnected with me via Classmates.com, the first time that service has proved useful to me.

I wonder what's next.

Word(s) of the day...

Or, Things I learned at last night's spelling bee.

I misspelled this word:

Coeliotomy
Also celio-.
The operation of cutting into the abdominal cavity; laparotomy.
1881 Trans. Obstet. Soc. Lond. XXII. 128 If a new word was needed to supersede ‘gastrotomy’ perhaps ‘cliotomy’ would do. 1908 Practitioner Oct. 608 Anterior and posterior vaginal coeliotomy. 1954 BACON & TRIMPI in K. C. Jonas Babcock's Princ. & Pract. Surg. xliv. 1423 Celiotomy.In the doubtful or confusing case, exploratory laparotomy is advantageous.

That's from the OED. The reason I got it wrong is that coeli- is not an acceptable American spelling, like foetus, and I guessed the British spelling. But th word is easy otherwise as I remember from high school biology that whether or not an organism has an enclosed body cavity with differentiated cells on the inside and on the outside is an easy marker of complexity. Animals which almost have body cavities or whose cells are not quite specialized are described as having pseudoceloms (although I suspect the plural would be pseudocoela.)

Oddly, while celiotomy is the accepted American spelling as I stated above, I did find this word in Webster's:

Pseudocoel

So the "oe" has not altogether been replaced.



A word I got right last night:

Frankincense
1. An aromatic gum resin, yielded by trees of the genus Boswellia, used for burning as incense; olibanum; occas. the smoke from the same.
a1387 Sinon. Barthol. (Anecd. Oxon.) 42 Thus album, i. olibanum, franke ensens. c1450 Cov. Myst. (Shaks. Soc.) 8 Kynges iij With gold, myrre, and ffrankynsens. ?c1475 Sqr. lowe Degre 849 Cloves that be swete smellyng, Frankensence, and olibanum. 1552 LATIMER Serm. Gosp. vi. 188 Franckumsence to signify his priesthoode. 1645 FULLER Good Th. in Bad T. (1841) 50 He..sent Leonidas a present of five hundred talents' weight of frankincense. 1718 PRIOR Pleasure 904 Curling frankincense ascends to Baal. 1834 LYTTON Pompeii IV. iii, Odour of myrrh and frankincense.

That's an easy one to spell. It's etymology is literally incense of the Franks (or French.) That won me the game which made my competitor pissed; she had to spell:

Flammiferous
[f. L. flammifer bearing flame (f. flamm-a FLAME + -fer bearing) + -OUS.]
Bearing or producing flame.

I probably would ave gotten that right since the -iferous ending is usually pretty easy to spot and I think I got it wrong once, spelling it with only one m, I would have guessed two last night.


More words soon, I promise.

~A

Another sign that God is unfair...

Ed Bradley beats Andy Rooney to the grave!

There's probably some good jokes in here for next week's trivia team name, although the ones that pop to mind like "Ed Bradley now covering the afterlife" or "Ed Bradley scores exclusive interview with God" maybe come too close to my Cory Lidle Joke "Cory Lidle traded to the Angels."

I remember helping Ed Bradley when he shopped at Kate's Paperie from time to time, usually on a Sunday morning after he'd popped into Dean & Deluca. Seemed like a nice guy.

Two or three things

I'm happy today that the democrats were successful enough yesterday that they matched or surpassed pre-election predictions.

If we were playing trivia today (instead of hosting) my suggested teamname would be:

K Fed is K F****ed

I like how it looks on the page, tautological and also insensible. And it sounds good too!

And finally, I'm wearing my underwear backwards today. I don't know how this happens. If not wearing underwear is "going commando" then wearing underwear backwards should be something else, but I can't think of the right term.

I like trucks

Especially ones with neat names, like the Vactor 2100.

But I think the painter would be proud of the one below.

Them's good eatin'

From the Science and Space section of CNN.com

• Discovery prepped for December launch

Whe I first scanned the page I read the headline as:

Discovery peppered for December lunch

It's much more fun that way...and appetizing.

In the news...

Once in awhile a group of headlines simply appeals to me. Not for their humor, but for the way the various stories combine to present a remarkable view of society, a cross-section of stupidity, malice, venality and all the things that make humanity interesting. It's kind of like the Sesame Street song, "These Are the People in Your Neighborhood" but with a focus on criminality, not public service.

PHOTO: Police Seek Brooklyn Bank Robber
Trial Starts for LI Teen Charged in Sword Attack
Remains Search Rally Planned at Ground Zero
Con Ed: Power Outage Reported in Richmond Hill
Police Shoot Man in Tremont Section of Bronx
LIRR Starting Platform Gap Work at Woodside
Motorcyclist Dies Following Southern State Crash
John Kerry Apologizes for Iraq Comments
Children Named in White Plains Music Lawsuit
Third Man Surrenders in Shooting of LI Driver
VIDEO: Bob Barker to Retire From "Price is Right"
NYC to Hire More Experts in 9/11 Remains Search
Plane Mishaps Probed at Newark Airport
Joey Buttafuoco's Jail Sentence Postponed
NJ Senate Candidates Chime in on Kerry Comments
Archive

~A