Author Archive
Word 196: Gobbledygook
it first opened, protesters treated Python’s Gospel gobbledygook much like Martin Scorsese’s blistering The Last Temptation of Christ.
gobbledygook (n) : incomprehensible or pompous jargon of specialists – source: Popmatters’ Life of Brian review
Word 195: Multifarious
While the unorthodox conclusion to Wang’s investigative mystery both points to a fundamental difference between Western and Chinese thinking and suggests the crucial importance of what is absent (i.e. China itself, as the shots of water at the film’s end imply), the prime point of interest of Chan is Missing is not the conclusion to the search but the multifarious clues unearthed during the search itself.
multifarious (adj) : having many aspects [syn: many-sided, multifaceted] – source: Stranger than Paradise, p. 113
Word 194: Druthers
I don’t wanna be a journalist. I mean, my hat is off to the guys who go out there and do it every day under a deadline. They’re some amazing people, and I’ve come to be close friends with some of them, especially computer industry journalists – I don’t really know that many straight journalists. But given my druthers, this is good.
druthers (n) : the right or chance to choose [syn: preference] – source: Under Heavy Weather: An Interview with Bruce Sterling
Good things
Sometimes things just work out. Lovely, innit?
Sleepy heads
”Dozing”
In less than 40 000 words
Geek humor
If you take a close look at the form Google filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the exact value of its planned offering is $2,718,281,828 dollars, which some would immediately recognize as the mathematical constant e. E, for those not blessed with a Ph.D. and a job at Google, is Euler’s number, which is used as the base for natural logarithms.
A nerd is a nerd is a nerd.
So many pages, so little time
The decision has been made: I’m going to download all this, get an IV drip, and spend the rest of my days digging through the volumes upon volumes of free text the ’Net has to offer.
Word 193: Bailiwick
I’m an author and I’m interested in free expression, and it’s only natural because that’s my bailiwick.
bailiwick (n) 1: the area over which a bailiff has jurisdiction 2: a branch of knowledge [syn: discipline, subject, subject area, subject field, field, field of study, study, branch of knowledge] – source: Bruce Sterling’s Speech to the High Technology Crime Investigation Association