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Word of the Week: Mondegreen

5/28/2014

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mondegreen

\ˈmän-də-ˌgrēn\
When I was a kid, my professor parents occasionally hosted potlucks for philosophy department colleagues, staff and graduate students. This being Southern California in the 1970s, a department party involved many hairy bell-bottomed youths lounging around discussing Kierkegaard and smoking cigarettes (and other combustible substances). Someone would invariably contribute a big pot of lentil soup or a cheese-leaden casserole out of the Moosewood Cookbook (I had meant to type “cheese-laden,” but I will let it stand as is). There would be a lumpy and difficult salad involving raw carrots and too many alfalfa sprouts. One of my dad’s colleagues, a great scholar of medieval religious thought, would bring chocolate chip cookies and perhaps a pie. There would be olives and jugs of Gallo wine and by 10 PM all the food would be gone and people would end up in the kitchen scrounging for crackers and sardines and the unshelled peanuts my parents liked to snack on after dinner.

My pre-teen self would wander from room to room, eavesdropping on conversations, looking for attention, and taking in the general dissipation.


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Bike Commuting Tips: Finding Your Route

5/22/2014

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As you may know, because of last week’s wildfires and extreme heat, Bike to Work Day 2014 has been postponed until May 30.

This reprieve is great news for all you procrastinators! Not only will you (with luck) enjoy seasonable temperatures and smoke-free air when Bike to Work Day rolls around, you also get two extra weeks to plan your route and psych yourself up for the big day.

So for all you new riders and shilly-shalliers, here are a few tips on how to choose the right route for an enjoyable commute: 


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Word of the Week: Drought

5/19/2014

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Another seasonally appropriate word this week:
drought
\ˈdrau̇t\

Traveling in the Pacific Northwest a couple of months ago, we were shocked at how profligate people were with water. There was nary a low-flow showerhead in sight. Leaks went unattended for weeks. The city of Portland drained a 93 million gallon reservoir because some kid peed in it! More than once!

We were gobsmacked--these people were acting as if water just falls magically from the sky!

We don’t think that way. We empty our water bottles onto the potted plants. We keep buckets in the tub to collect the running water while the shower heats up. When Grimbert was small, he walked outside one day and discovered that it was raining. He looked up into the sky, puzzled, and said: “Bath?” He didn’t know what it was. We live in a place where a child can learn to walk and talk before ever getting rained on. 

Drought is a word we know well. 

It comes from the Old English drūgað (meaning drought, dryness, or desert) and drūgian, to dry up. Related to the Old English drȳge, or dry. 
Picture
By Famartin (Own work), via Wikimedia Commons
Looking over the OED's usage notes, I was struck that they included a couplet from Tennyson’s 1832 poem “Fatima.” Which is far from dry. In fact it is one of the most fabulous bodice-clutching heavy-breathing poems you are likely to find in any Great Works anthology. 

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Wildfire Diary

5/15/2014

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So Tuesday afternoon I was sitting in a coffee shop, writing and minding my own business, when I got an email from Arwulf: 
“considering del norte is on fire and they evacuated the school and it's like 95 degrees outside and really windy can i have a ride home?”
I’d been under the Cone of Silence* for a few hours so this was startling on a number of levels. I turned my browser back on and found my social media accounts buzzing, and local news feeds awhirl with footage of helicopters and great plumes of smoke and FLAMES. 

The FLAMES in particular got my attention, once I realized that they were very close to my house. Considerably closer, in fact, than I was. Close enough that we had probably better get the hell out.


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Word of the Week: Sprocket!

5/12/2014

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Bike to Work day is this Friday, so let’s celebrate with a cycling-oriented Word of the Week:
sprocket
\ˈsprä-kət\
A sprocket, as you no doubt know, is a gear with protruding teeth that can engage the links of a chain, especially a bike chain. I would argue that the sprocket is the single most essential innovation in bicycling: without the chain-and-sprocket drive train there would be no bikes as we know them, no Bike Month, no Bike to Work Day.

Time for some fun historical facts!


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Bike commuting tips: Won’t I be all sweaty at work?

5/8/2014

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Cross-posted at the SDCBC blog

One of the most common reasons people give for not riding their bikes to work is that they have no place to shower and they don’t want to spend their day sticky and smelly with sweat. 

Of course not! Who would? 

And yet not having a shower available does not have to be a deal breaker. At my last office job I bicycled to work 3 or 4 days a week, 13 miles each way, and even though I did not shower at work, I managed to keep looking (and smelling!) professional by following these 4 easy steps:

May is National Bike Month!
Picture
One in a series of posts about biking and bike commuting.

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Word of the week: Pedipalp!

5/6/2014

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I have a new favorite word, courtesy of Arwulf, who in zoology class was tasked with dissecting a crayfish and examining the pedipalp.

The pedipalp! I am enraptured! 

It sounds like a naughty Victorian undergarment. (“As Lady Anna reached languidly for the bell-pull, Montague gasped at the unexpected glimpse of her lacy pedipalp.”)   

Alas, my compulsive fact checking indicates that crayfish and other crustaceans do not in fact have pedipalps. Rather, they have “chelipeds.” This is a much less wonderful word. (Sorry, Arwulf!) The pedipalp is found exclusively in the sub-phylum Chelicerata, which includes spiders, scorpions, horseshoe crabs, mites and ticks.

Crayfish DO, however, have something called a rostrum. Sadly, this is not a platform on which tinier animals stand to declaim.  

Science is fun! Now when do we get étoufée?

Picture
Image courtesy of Wikipedia: “Male Striped lynx spider showing enlarged pedipalps.” Or perhaps he is just happy to see you. (And because I know your mind is in the gutter, yes, spiders do use their pedipalps For That.)
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