Security Words

Since it was a popular post the last time I did this, I've decided to do it again.

Many websites that allow readers to post comments require you to prove you're a real person (as opposed to a "bot"). To do so, you are asked to type a string of seemingly characters into a text field. I will bet that you always assumed that these were nonesense words that were made up on the fly, right? Well, we here in Upham Manor pride ourselves on educating the public to what these words mean. What follows are some of the security words I encountered recently and their true meanings.

faingli - (n.) The loose and drooping skin of the eyelids that does not fully retract when the eyes are open.
"Man, if it wasn't for his eyelashes holding his faingli up, he wouldn't be able to see at all."

urrigi - (n.) The remaining 8 to 14 macaroni at the bottom of the serving bowl at the end of a meal that no one has room enough to eat.

ancleta - (n.) The highly irritating and very distracting bit of spittle that develops on the lower lip and/or in the corners of a speaker's mouth that causes the listener to think of nothing else than wiping that person's mouth for them.

shnomb
- (v.) To increase the perceived size of one's person by means of spreading the legs, extending the shoulders, stiffening the elbows, etc.
- (n.) A person who does so on the T to discourage people from taking the vacant seat next to them.
"I got shnombed right out of my seat at Copley Station."

propon
- (v.) To quietly assert oneself for the purpose of self-gain while pretending not to care.
- (n.) A person who, by means of subtle positioning, aligns himself along a subway platform where he believes the train's doors will open and then quickly injects himself into the car to gain the most desirable available seat.


Those are my offerings. Do you have any of your own you care to share?

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One's Own Self-Worth

I recently Stumbled Upon a website that I thought was rather intruiging. Using a rather wide array of questions (some of the exceedingly personal, though not personally identifiable), it provides you with a statement of how much you would cost if you were to sell yourself. There is no implication of prostitution or slavery in this valuation -- the site was simply attempting to provide an objective measure of your relative worth given things such as your education, lifestyle, health, etc.

So I gave it a try. Since no one was watching me take the test, and since it seemed clear they weren't going to ask me for my name or social security number, I tried to be as honest as I could. The test came back with a result (no marketing gimmicks, thank heaven and they didn't ask for a cell phone number), and a link that you could post in Facebook or on your blog. My links are below.

One part of the test asked you to provide your results to a second, connected test: a test found at the website Am-I-Dumb.com. This part of the test was the most interesting to me. I really expected it to be another of those "Which weighs more, a pound of feathers of a pound of iron" types of tests, but it was not. In fact, it was pretty intense. If it hadn't been short, I might have bailed.

If you enjoy a good test, I recommend this one. I'll admit it, it was challenging, but I'm rather pleased to say that I scored 24 out of 25. I'm happy to report I did not Google any part of it or cheat in any way. It took me 4 minutes and 28 seconds to complete. Care to give it a go? Click the links below.



HumanForSale.com

I am smarter than 93.68% of the rest of the world.
Draftstreet Review

No Postage Necessary

This morning, I inserted an envelope bearing the mark, "No Postage Necessary if Mailed in the United States" in the mail slot of my front door. In the envelope were the various glossy colored pages that had been sent to me by a company peddling a line of history books.

In fact, the full package received from this company included a DVD in rather impressive packaging that claimed to contain a promotional video presenting information about King Tut's tomb and explaining how their monthly subscription service worked. I perused a few pages of their highly stylized literature and learned that for a monthly fee, with a low introductory rate, I too could be provided with historical information that was otherwise freely available on the Internet.

I quickly tore open a sealed packet contained in the marketing literature and found that I was one of the "lucky few" to have received a gold sticker that I could affix to my order form to be returned in the envelope. This would entitle me to even more valuable material that would be mailed to me each month.

I firmly affixed the sticker over my name and account number on the form and hand wrote a brief note to the company:

Thank you for this informational package and the DVD. However, I have no interest in this material as there is a near-limitless offering of historical information in multimedia form available on the Internet for free. Moreover, as I have to pay a fee in my town for garbage pickup, I am returning all of your materials to you in the postage paid envelope you have provided. Thank you once again."

I then stuffed all the junk mail they had sent me into their own return envelope and graciously returned it to them. I'm sure their next customer will be happy to bear the costs of this company's printing, postage, and dumpster.


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Architectural Innovation

Take a look at the picture on the right and ask yourself this question: "Which of these things doesn't belong?"

If you're like me, you have a bedroom. I'm willing to bet that if we have that in common, then we probably also share the dilemma of keeping that bedroom clean. Now, unless you're below the age of 12, your mess probably doesn't entail a spilled box of Legos and the assorted guns and equipment for your action figures. I'm guessing that a substantial portion of your mess is comprised of various textiles you use to attire your person.

I submit to you, gentle reader, a futher question: What does the rainment with which one adorns oneself have to do with the quarters in which one seeks repose?

For reasons I shall not attempt to plumb in this space, our culture, and the architecture that it produces, assumes that we will each have a dresser, bureau, and/or closet in our bedroom. I for one fail to see the connection between clothes and sleep. If you think about it, this arrangement is nonsensical, and does not make it easy to keep a bedroom clean. You are forced into a "clothing life-cycle" that follows this sort of order:

Carry clean clothes to your bedroom.

Put clothes away. (Or more realistically, set them down to be put away later.)

Awake in the morning. Put night clothes in hamper or back in drawer (or most likely, on floor).

Dress.

Return to bedroom in the evening. Undress. Put clothes in the hamper, closet, or floor.

Put on night clothes.

Awake in the morning. Repeat process.

After several iterations of this, carry hamper to laundry room. (We'll pretend your clothes are in the hamper.)

In the laundry room, wash and dry clothes. (Unless you live in Hanover, don't pretend you have enough room in the laundry room to fold your clothes.)

Carry clean clothes to your bedroom.

This is silly. It's inefficient at best and messy at its worst. I have a better idea.

Rather than toting our clothes around into rooms they don't belong, I propose we dispense with the outdated laundry room concept and instead construct a clothing room. The clothing room in your house will be the first and last stop for all of your clothing. It serves as your closet, your dressing room, and your laundry room all in one.

Envision, if you will, an area behind closed doors in which the collective closets and bureaus of the family are all centrally located. A house can much more efficiently contain one large clothes-storage area for a family than it can smaller individual ones. This area will have large cubbies, shelves, racks, and other recepticles to store all manner of apparel.

The family enters this room, each takes their individual clothes from the shelves, and steps into a small "fitting room" such as you would have in a store. Once dressed, the family member emerges, drops their dirty clothes directly into the hampers (one for colors, one for whites) and then goes about their business. When the time comes to do laundry, you will find that the clothes are already conveniently positioned next to the machines. Moreover, the folded clothing is very quickly and easily returned to the appropriate shelves that are right there in the room.

For added convenience, I would position a full bathroom next to this clothing room. One could stop out of the bath, dry themselves, don a robe, and step into the clothing room to commence dressing.

I've been doodling plans for my dream house. This is one innovation I want to include. Maybe someday.

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The Right Word

You can say what you will about Rush Limbaugh, but he has one quote that I love. "Words mean things." His point is a good one. We cannot ingenuously force a word to convey a meaning it does not bear.

Too often people are lazy with their word usage; perhaps it's a simple product of poor vocabulary. This is shameful because the English language is replete with sufficient words to effuse perspicuity. Thus, I present here a short list of words that I feel are too often incorrectly used. Consider this one more battle in my crusade for linguistic propriety.

Shoot - You can shoot targets. You can shoot the moon. You can shoot your mouth off. But you don't shoot a gun. When I hear that phrase, I picture a person holding a one rifle and firing at another rifle. Did you get that? Firing. You fire a weapon. You'll hear police and military personnel speak of discharging a weapon. "Shoot a gun" makes the speaker sound like my two year old son as he chases me through the house with the semi-automatic Nerf rifle I bought him the other day.

Light as a verb. When I looked this one up online to see if I was at all off-base, I found that the definitions of "light" did not reference the word as a verb until the twenty-seventh entry in the list. "Light" is best used as a noun or a verb. Don't say, "Light the light." Ugh, that's just terrible. You illuminate a light, you don't light it. Granted, this is less irritating to hear when one is addressing the issue of a flame. "Light the candle." "Light the fire." But are you really lighting these things or are you igniting them? Words mean things. When you intend to convey a meaning, use the word that bears that meaning.

Disconnect - This one makes me want to resort to violence. "I believe there is a disconnect between my department and yours." Disconnect is a VERB. Stop using verbs as nouns. This was a pattern than began a few years back in the business world. All of a sudden, people started using verbs as nouns in business conversation. Would you believe someone actually once said to me, "I will modem you the file" in reference to uploading a document to me? Say it again. Say it again. I dare you. I double dog dare you...

Electric(al) - Electric what? This is a word I hear contractors misuse all the time. "We need to replace the plumbing, the heating, and the electric(al)." "Electric" is an adjective. It has to modify something. You cannot simply float it out there all alone. The sentence, "I need to upgrade my electrical system" works. If you don't like using two words, then somebody needs to invent a new word. How about "electrolics"?

Significant(ly) - "There was significant damage to my car." Oh really? And, pray tell just what does said damage signify? Or is it possible you mean to say, substantial damage to your car? These are two different words with two different meanings, yet somehow people use them interchangeably. If something is "significant", it means it has some further, as yet unrevealed meaning. The fact that I'm driving a minivan is significant of my status of a father of three.

Literally - "I literally fell out of my laughing." Liar. I was right there when he told the joke and you did no such thing. Why do people say "literally" when they literally mean the very opposite of that? You figuratively fell out of your chair. "Literally" means it actually happened; "figuratively" means your speaking symbolically to express your meaning.

These are just a few that come to mind as I mulled over this topic. Some of these, you may argue with me. You might even find dictionary entries that say I'm wrong. However, I'm willing to bet you that if you do, it's an example of the dictionary bowing to common usage rather than the other way around.

Which words do you find are misused? I'd love to hear your list.

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News & Notes

Do You Like Snew? (Feb 11)

Perhaps the biggest news event of the past month is that Upham Manor hasn't had any additional snowfall for over 48 hours. In fact, I can almost guarantee that there will be no appreciable snow in the foreseeable future. I know this to be true because I finally got my snow blower working properly. The Manor remains firmly covered in a blanket of better than two feet of snow, with some drifts and piles of snow measuring twice that.

Upham Street itself and the very end of my driveway is encased in a sort of ice-titanium allow that likely won't melt until well into July. I have a theory that ice, once adequately driven over and mingled with dirt, sand, and other roadway particulates, over time, metamorphs itself into a completely different element that is harder than steel, denser than concrete, and has a melting point somewhere in the high 60s. I call it "ticetanium", and it's one of the hardest naturally occurring materials on earth. I spread salt down on it last night and it laughed at me.

Death & Taxes (Feb 11)

While no one I know has come back from the grave recently, I am very pleased to find that we are going to be seeing a large tax return this year. Janet's home day care business was a concern for us. Being self employed, she has had to set aside sufficient money to pay her taxes as well as her social security. She vigilantly put aside money through the course of the year to pay these taxes. Last night, as we sat down with our tax preparer, our concern and hope, respectively, was had we put aside enough and would we perchance be able to keep some of what had been saved? I nigh broke into the "Hallelujah Chorus" when our preparer looked up from his forms and pronounced that we were getting money back. Yes, not only did we get to keep all of what she had saved, we were getting more back as well. God is good.

Later that night, we had a small celebratory supper at The 99 Restaurant and we talked about our financial coup. I expressed some bit of self-reproach that something as shallow as money would give me such a glorious feeling of peace. Something she said made me feel better, in fact, it made me feel even better than getting the money back did. She told me that we'd given to the "right places"; that we'd helped friends and family, and we've been faithful to our church. Why shouldn't we enjoy what blessings God has provided to us? Good advice. Made sense, and aligns very well with the teachings of the Bible too.

Work (Feb 17)

Work has been largely good overall of late. I've often said that in my chosen profession, Information Technology, I've done everything except programming. Well, it looks like that's going to change in at least a small way. I'm signed up to take a class in Visual Basic. VB is a high level development language that is used commonly to manipulate Microsoft Office applications. My hope is to bring to bear the power of this tool for increased performance in MS Excel. Lately that's been my MO around here, making Excel spreadsheets for people. It's been both a blessing and a curse in some ways, but I'm very proud to be able to say that thus far no one has been able to come to me with a request that I've not been able to handle. I'm batting 1.000 and it feels good. What's better is that people know it and they come to me with requests directly. If you've seen the movie Pulp Fiction, you may remember the character Harvey Keitel played called, "The Wolf". He was the guy you called in to fix stuff. If things have really gone to crap, you call The Wolf. Around here, if your data is a mess, I'm your Wolf.

Love & Marriage (Feb 17)

Last weekend, Janet and I attended a marriage conference at our church. The program was created by Family Life Ministries. Friday night and Saturday we watched a video series that featured noted authors; counselors; lots of interviews with married couples who had experienced a range of challenges and problems, as well as victories; and numerous dramatic vignettes. I think Janet and I both expected to get a lot out of the weekend, but neither of us were quite prepared to learn so much about topics with which we were already familiar or to go away feeling so dramatically changed. I need to blog about marriage one of these days. I feel like I've learned quite a lot that might be worth sharing. If nothing else, it might make for good discussion in the comments section.

Change of Mind (Feb 17)

Part of my recent disappearance from this forum can be attributed to my attitude. I think I was battling a bit of despondency. I'm prone to the occasional bout of melancholy. In some strange ways, I almost enjoy those episodes. When they're done, I feel strangely recharged. But this was different. I couldn't seem to recharge. With the drastic changes around the house, my schedule, my interests, my free time, and my spiritual life, I was sucking pretty hard. I couldn't break free. A couple things came together that really changed that for me.

I think the first big crack in the fetters that were holding me came while I was reading (don't laugh) The Chronicles of Narnia. I started reading the series about 40,000 years ago when I was around 13 years old. But, in that period of growing up, I began to see the books as children's books so I put them down after book two. Lately, I thought it might be fun to revisit them. Janet got me a complete volume for Christmas so I've begun to plow through all the books. It's no secret that much of the story is allegorical and symbolic of Jesus Christ. Without going into detail, I started to see things in the character of Aslan that made me realize I had failed to see in my understanding of Jesus. Very quickly, I felt like the scales fell from my eyes. I experienced a refreshing that I desperately needed. The other big breakthrough was at the aforementioned marriage conference. By God's hand, things in my life were fixed that weekend that have brought about significant transformations in my mind and heart.

Furniture (Feb 17)

Janet and I bought a couple pieces of furniture via the Interwebs over the last week. We've been looking for a sectional couch for the parlor and I found a very useful triangularly shaped coffee table that will fit nicely with the sectional in the den. In addition we've been moving some old pieces out to storage and we brought in a desk that FINALLY gives me a place I can call my own. Ah, sweet repose! I now have a place I can sit and relax, and work, and play.

Erosion of Tradition

I've been reading a number of interesting articles from the Cato Institute about the role and evolution of tradition in our society. "Tradition is under assault," it is stated, whether by commercialism, globalization, the media, or liberalism. But true to form, the argument from the postmodern viewpoint is that traditions never were what we thought they were. Our traditions are merely our own personal preferences as we've thrust them upon the world around us. They never were what we thought they were.

A number of commentators chime in on this debate with articles of their own, but it seems that it all comes down to one thought: that the authority of tradition has eroded until it is at last denied to have ever been at all.

And for me, in my little slice of the world, that's been the rub. It isn't that the world around me has conspired to disagree with those views I've carried all my life, it's more to the point that they deny the legitimacy of the authority of those views. Coming at the world as I do from a Christian perspective has, heretofore, always been relatively easy to do. As a very young man, if I was in a debate with others, my position of standing behind the bulwark of scripture or Judeo-Christian ethics may have been disagreeable to my opponent, but it was never assailable. The viewpoint always stood on its own merits because of the innate authority it carried within our society.

This isn't true anymore. So often I feel that when dealing with many people today, you'd get just as far (or further) defending your opinions with a glib, "because I saw it on the Internet" as you will with a dictum from a source such as the Bible.

Let me give you a real life example. About five years ago, I became friendly with a friend of a friend. I and this person, whom we'll call Cheryl (because that's her name), fell into a conversation regarding religion. I explained to her my personal beliefs on God, Jesus Christ, and various matters of history and religion. In turn, Cheryl told me about her beliefs. She believes that there are two cosmic sides of gods who are eternally warring one against the other. These gods meet on a field of battle in another plane of existence. Human beings, it follows, choose which side to be on and, in a normative sense, should be fighting one another. To the death.

As she was staying in my home for a time, and as I was deemed to not be on the same side as she, I inquired as to whether I need be concerned for my safety or that of my family. "No," she assured me. As one who had taken her in and was giving her shelter, it would be dishonorable to slay me.

I kid you not.

I asked her where she ever got this notion; how, after some 5,000 years or so of recorded history she came to this conclusion in spite of there being zero evidence for it.

"I decided it was so."

Where I could point to two thousand years of scholarship, sacred texts that are revered the world over, literally millions of witnesses who could testify of the working of God's power in their lives, she rested her eternal soul (which she admitted to having) on what she thought up herself. Why? Because none of that authority carried any value for her. To her postmodern thinking, one thing is as good as another. Who are you -- who is anyone -- to say what is better? There is no truth. There is only opinion.

Acceptance of the authority of tradition has eroded. I've got more to say on this subject in upcoming posts, but for now, I just wanted to lay a bit of groundwork.

http://www.cato-unbound.org/2011/01/11/russell-arben-fox/traditionalism-in-a-changing-world/