Sunday, June 28, 2009
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Neologism / SCI FI
"When you're writing stuff that's already clotted with neologisms and trying to get across fairly abstruse concepts, you're already putting a heavy burden on the reader," he explains. Readers may find themselves in an unfamiliar universe, on another planet, or in a spaceship, and flowery sentences can end up getting in the way. He wants his prose to be "functional, but elegant", not "a gauze you have to look through".
"I don't like a lot of what's published as hard SF," he says. "Much of it is rightwing, reactionary crap." Hard SF's insistence on abiding by the laws of contemporary physics is more than just a straitjacket, he continues – it's also unrealistic. "If you're speculating about the state of knowledge 500 years from now, or even 50 years from now, there will clearly be things that will be known then that we would now consider to be nonsensical, or which would directly contradict present theories, in the same way that plate tectonics would have been considered pseudoscience 100 years ago."
•
News
'No one pointed a gun at my head and said, become a science fiction writer'
SF's rising star Alastair Reynolds has just signed a £1m contract to deliver 10 books over 10 years. He talks to Richard Lea about his plans for a space opera trilogy and the tricky business of peering into the future
Audio exclusive: short story by Alastair Reynolds
•
•
o Richard Lea
o guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 23 June 2009 08.43 BST
o larger smaller
'It’s not that hard to think of 10 books I want to write' ... Alastair Reynolds, who has just signed a 10-book, £1m contract with Gollancz. Photograph: Martin Godwin/Guardian
Alastair Reynolds is in reflective mood. Nineteen years after the science fiction author's first short story was published, and nine years after his first novel, Revelation Space, announced the birth of a new star in the SF firmament, he's just signed a 10-year, 10-book contract for £1m with Gollancz, confirming his status as one of the big players in a genre that's exerting an increasing pull on the mainstream.
"I love the writing, yeah. There's a tension there, in the sense that you've got 200,000 words, and you know you can't get every one of them right." Put like that, it sounds like nothing more than common sense, but this is an admission unimaginable from many more literary writers.
"One of the big breakthroughs I had as a writer was when I stopped agonising over every word," he continues. "Particularly when I made the transition from typewriter to PC ... the temptation to endlessly polish the first line, the first paragraph, the first page – it stymies a lot of people. You never get on to the second page."
For Reynolds, everything is bent to the service of the story. That's not to say that his prose is only a vehicle to get the job done, or that he doesn't put any effort into the nuts and bolts of his prose, he adds quickly – it's just that the effects he's interested in depend more on clarity than poetry.
"When you're writing stuff that's already clotted with neologisms and trying to get across fairly abstruse concepts, you're already putting a heavy burden on the reader," he explains. Readers may find themselves in an unfamiliar universe, on another planet, or in a spaceship, and flowery sentences can end up getting in the way. He wants his prose to be "functional, but elegant", not "a gauze you have to look through".
It's tempting to see the roots of this emphasis on transparency in Reynolds's scientific training. Born in south Wales in 1966, he studied astronomy at Newcastle and St Andrews before moving to the Netherlands to work for the European Space Agency, where he spent 16 years on a series of telescope projects: designing instruments, building software, analysing data and producing numerous technical papers. All the while, he was writing science fiction.
He's no longer sure whether his love of science sparked his interest in science fiction or the other way round; either way, he'd already completed two novels by the time he was 16. While he dismisses them now as derivative, these early experiments meant that he had no fear of writing at book-length, having learned the lesson that "if you do a certain amount of work every day, it will eventually become a novel". During the 1990s he grappled with anomalies in astronomical data during the day and wrote at night, gradually piecing together an invented universe in short fiction, and mapping out a massive novel.
Though perhaps a little rough and ready compared to the finely-tuned narrative engines of 2005's Pushing Ice and last year's House of Suns, Revelation Space brought together the elements that have fuelled each of the eight novels Reynolds has published since 2000. Strong characters pursue a galaxy-wide enigma at thriller pace through a universe which derives much of its strangeness from a willingness to take the laws of physics – in particular Einstein's theories of relativity – seriously, projecting them beyond our familiar environment to startling effect. It's an approach that has often seen his work grouped with "hard" science fiction, but the description makes him distinctly uncomfortable.
"I don't like a lot of what's published as hard SF," he says. "Much of it is rightwing, reactionary crap." Hard SF's insistence on abiding by the laws of contemporary physics is more than just a straitjacket, he continues – it's also unrealistic. "If you're speculating about the state of knowledge 500 years from now, or even 50 years from now, there will clearly be things that will be known then that we would now consider to be nonsensical, or which would directly contradict present theories, in the same way that plate tectonics would have been considered pseudoscience 100 years ago."
If you want the texture of an invented future to feel real, it must have some weirdness in it, he argues, because the future "isn't going to look like Star Wars, even if you're in the middle of an intergalactic space war". For Reynolds, the most telling moments in science fiction aren't the massive set pieces, the big, epic reveals, they're the quieter, subtler moments that offer a totally new perspective. He was careful, for example, never to describe the vast, interstellar spacecraft which drives the plot of Revelation Space from the outside, offering only glimpses from odd angles, or close-ups of particular sections, just as in a modern airport a passenger can board an aircraft, cross a continent and disembark without any clear idea of the machine that has carried them on their journey.
"When I look back at many of the moments of wonder, awe or terror that I've got from science fiction," he says, "it's often been because I've been put in the head of one of the characters." And it's with characters or fragments of scenes that his novels begin, often with drawings, doodles, sketches coalescing around a kernel of an idea. Then it's a question of leaping in to the story, stopping halfway along his 200,000 word journey to structure his thoughts with a felt-tip pen and the kind of whiteboard to be found in each and every scientific laboratory. It never starts with the science, he explains – "that always comes later. The science is almost window-dressing."
As part of the discussions over the new contract, he was asked to sketch out an idea of where he might be in 10 books' time, he continues, "which is crackers. But actually it's not that hard to think of 10 books I want to write." At the moment he's hatching a trilogy charting man's exploration of the galaxy, inspired by a visit to the Kennedy Space Center last year. "It was almost like an epiphany," he says. "I was completely sold on the idea that this is still a valid ambition for us as a species." He's planning to chart a possible future open to us if we can pass through the planetary bottleneck which confronts us now, with books set in logarithmic jumps 100, 1,000 and 10,000 years into the future. With a refreshing lack of the reluctance many novelists show when asked to discuss as-yet-unwritten works, he describes how he is aiming to move beyond the well-trodden path of setting up fictional bases on the moon or Mars, and re-examine how the solar system might be conquered in the light of new scientific data from the last 10 to 15 years.
He's also planning to extend his efforts to counter what he calls science fiction's "shocking track record" with women and gender – the strong female characters who are nobody's arm candy, who are more interested in pursuing their own goals than waiting around for someone to rescue them – to a more balanced treatment of race. "I've made the mistake sometimes of visualising one of my characters as black, and not stating it," he says. The trilogy will explore a future where the dominant technological culture has come from Africa, something that has been partly inspired by a new-found fascination with African music, as well as an astronomer's perspective on the possibilities for development. "They straddle the equator, the African nations," he explains, "and that immediately puts you into an advantageous position for space elevators and things like that."
Reynolds has no plans to move beyond science fiction because, he claims, he wouldn't be able to sustain his interest in any other genre. "I couldn't ever write a straight crime novel, there'd be an intrusion of weirdness at some point." However, he's quick to reject the idea that this reveals a lack of ambition, arguing that "as an SF writer you've got the infinite toolkit of the writer at your disposal", and refuses to worry about SF's lack of status.
"No one pointed a gun at my head at the start of my career and said 'Go away and become a science fiction writer'. I chose it myself. It was clear even then that you accept certain prejudices; that you will be viewed in a certain way, and that what you are writing will never have mainstream acceptance. You'll never be Booker-shortlisted, you'll probably never get on late-night TV chat shows. But I didn't want all of that anyway: for me, the rewards far outweigh the demerits."
Furthermore, it's a situation which Reynolds feels is gradually improving, with writers such as David Mitchell increasingly willing to dip into SF. Fittingly, the only concern he has for the genre which is his passion is on a much wider scale.
"The one thing that really terrifies me is we're going to get a signal from space that clears it all up," he laughs. "OK, this is how the universe works, guys." All that could come between Alastair Reynolds and a truly stellar career in science fiction, it seems, is a bunch of genuine, bona fide aliens.
• Email Recipient's email address Your first name Your surname Add a note (optional) Share Contact us Contact the Books editor
Report errors or inaccuracies: Letters for publication should be sent to: If you need help using the site: Call the main Guardian and Observer switchboard:
+44 (0)20 3353 2000 Listen In this new short story, Reynolds considers the ways in which the pressures of war shape those who fight them More on this story Space opera supremo Alastair Reynolds scores unprecedented 10-year, 10-book deal for his 'mean line in alien cultures and technology' 18 Jun 20096 Jun 200928 Feb 200916 Feb 2007 Email Recipient's email address Your first name Your surname Add a note (optional) Share Contact us Contact the Books editor
Report errors or inaccuracies: Letters for publication should be sent to: If you need help using the site: Call the main Guardian and Observer switchboard:
"I don't like a lot of what's published as hard SF," he says. "Much of it is rightwing, reactionary crap." Hard SF's insistence on abiding by the laws of contemporary physics is more than just a straitjacket, he continues – it's also unrealistic. "If you're speculating about the state of knowledge 500 years from now, or even 50 years from now, there will clearly be things that will be known then that we would now consider to be nonsensical, or which would directly contradict present theories, in the same way that plate tectonics would have been considered pseudoscience 100 years ago."
•
News
'No one pointed a gun at my head and said, become a science fiction writer'
SF's rising star Alastair Reynolds has just signed a £1m contract to deliver 10 books over 10 years. He talks to Richard Lea about his plans for a space opera trilogy and the tricky business of peering into the future
Audio exclusive: short story by Alastair Reynolds
•
•
o Richard Lea
o guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 23 June 2009 08.43 BST
o larger smaller
'It’s not that hard to think of 10 books I want to write' ... Alastair Reynolds, who has just signed a 10-book, £1m contract with Gollancz. Photograph: Martin Godwin/Guardian
Alastair Reynolds is in reflective mood. Nineteen years after the science fiction author's first short story was published, and nine years after his first novel, Revelation Space, announced the birth of a new star in the SF firmament, he's just signed a 10-year, 10-book contract for £1m with Gollancz, confirming his status as one of the big players in a genre that's exerting an increasing pull on the mainstream.
"I love the writing, yeah. There's a tension there, in the sense that you've got 200,000 words, and you know you can't get every one of them right." Put like that, it sounds like nothing more than common sense, but this is an admission unimaginable from many more literary writers.
"One of the big breakthroughs I had as a writer was when I stopped agonising over every word," he continues. "Particularly when I made the transition from typewriter to PC ... the temptation to endlessly polish the first line, the first paragraph, the first page – it stymies a lot of people. You never get on to the second page."
For Reynolds, everything is bent to the service of the story. That's not to say that his prose is only a vehicle to get the job done, or that he doesn't put any effort into the nuts and bolts of his prose, he adds quickly – it's just that the effects he's interested in depend more on clarity than poetry.
"When you're writing stuff that's already clotted with neologisms and trying to get across fairly abstruse concepts, you're already putting a heavy burden on the reader," he explains. Readers may find themselves in an unfamiliar universe, on another planet, or in a spaceship, and flowery sentences can end up getting in the way. He wants his prose to be "functional, but elegant", not "a gauze you have to look through".
It's tempting to see the roots of this emphasis on transparency in Reynolds's scientific training. Born in south Wales in 1966, he studied astronomy at Newcastle and St Andrews before moving to the Netherlands to work for the European Space Agency, where he spent 16 years on a series of telescope projects: designing instruments, building software, analysing data and producing numerous technical papers. All the while, he was writing science fiction.
He's no longer sure whether his love of science sparked his interest in science fiction or the other way round; either way, he'd already completed two novels by the time he was 16. While he dismisses them now as derivative, these early experiments meant that he had no fear of writing at book-length, having learned the lesson that "if you do a certain amount of work every day, it will eventually become a novel". During the 1990s he grappled with anomalies in astronomical data during the day and wrote at night, gradually piecing together an invented universe in short fiction, and mapping out a massive novel.
Though perhaps a little rough and ready compared to the finely-tuned narrative engines of 2005's Pushing Ice and last year's House of Suns, Revelation Space brought together the elements that have fuelled each of the eight novels Reynolds has published since 2000. Strong characters pursue a galaxy-wide enigma at thriller pace through a universe which derives much of its strangeness from a willingness to take the laws of physics – in particular Einstein's theories of relativity – seriously, projecting them beyond our familiar environment to startling effect. It's an approach that has often seen his work grouped with "hard" science fiction, but the description makes him distinctly uncomfortable.
"I don't like a lot of what's published as hard SF," he says. "Much of it is rightwing, reactionary crap." Hard SF's insistence on abiding by the laws of contemporary physics is more than just a straitjacket, he continues – it's also unrealistic. "If you're speculating about the state of knowledge 500 years from now, or even 50 years from now, there will clearly be things that will be known then that we would now consider to be nonsensical, or which would directly contradict present theories, in the same way that plate tectonics would have been considered pseudoscience 100 years ago."
If you want the texture of an invented future to feel real, it must have some weirdness in it, he argues, because the future "isn't going to look like Star Wars, even if you're in the middle of an intergalactic space war". For Reynolds, the most telling moments in science fiction aren't the massive set pieces, the big, epic reveals, they're the quieter, subtler moments that offer a totally new perspective. He was careful, for example, never to describe the vast, interstellar spacecraft which drives the plot of Revelation Space from the outside, offering only glimpses from odd angles, or close-ups of particular sections, just as in a modern airport a passenger can board an aircraft, cross a continent and disembark without any clear idea of the machine that has carried them on their journey.
"When I look back at many of the moments of wonder, awe or terror that I've got from science fiction," he says, "it's often been because I've been put in the head of one of the characters." And it's with characters or fragments of scenes that his novels begin, often with drawings, doodles, sketches coalescing around a kernel of an idea. Then it's a question of leaping in to the story, stopping halfway along his 200,000 word journey to structure his thoughts with a felt-tip pen and the kind of whiteboard to be found in each and every scientific laboratory. It never starts with the science, he explains – "that always comes later. The science is almost window-dressing."
As part of the discussions over the new contract, he was asked to sketch out an idea of where he might be in 10 books' time, he continues, "which is crackers. But actually it's not that hard to think of 10 books I want to write." At the moment he's hatching a trilogy charting man's exploration of the galaxy, inspired by a visit to the Kennedy Space Center last year. "It was almost like an epiphany," he says. "I was completely sold on the idea that this is still a valid ambition for us as a species." He's planning to chart a possible future open to us if we can pass through the planetary bottleneck which confronts us now, with books set in logarithmic jumps 100, 1,000 and 10,000 years into the future. With a refreshing lack of the reluctance many novelists show when asked to discuss as-yet-unwritten works, he describes how he is aiming to move beyond the well-trodden path of setting up fictional bases on the moon or Mars, and re-examine how the solar system might be conquered in the light of new scientific data from the last 10 to 15 years.
He's also planning to extend his efforts to counter what he calls science fiction's "shocking track record" with women and gender – the strong female characters who are nobody's arm candy, who are more interested in pursuing their own goals than waiting around for someone to rescue them – to a more balanced treatment of race. "I've made the mistake sometimes of visualising one of my characters as black, and not stating it," he says. The trilogy will explore a future where the dominant technological culture has come from Africa, something that has been partly inspired by a new-found fascination with African music, as well as an astronomer's perspective on the possibilities for development. "They straddle the equator, the African nations," he explains, "and that immediately puts you into an advantageous position for space elevators and things like that."
Reynolds has no plans to move beyond science fiction because, he claims, he wouldn't be able to sustain his interest in any other genre. "I couldn't ever write a straight crime novel, there'd be an intrusion of weirdness at some point." However, he's quick to reject the idea that this reveals a lack of ambition, arguing that "as an SF writer you've got the infinite toolkit of the writer at your disposal", and refuses to worry about SF's lack of status.
"No one pointed a gun at my head at the start of my career and said 'Go away and become a science fiction writer'. I chose it myself. It was clear even then that you accept certain prejudices; that you will be viewed in a certain way, and that what you are writing will never have mainstream acceptance. You'll never be Booker-shortlisted, you'll probably never get on late-night TV chat shows. But I didn't want all of that anyway: for me, the rewards far outweigh the demerits."
Furthermore, it's a situation which Reynolds feels is gradually improving, with writers such as David Mitchell increasingly willing to dip into SF. Fittingly, the only concern he has for the genre which is his passion is on a much wider scale.
"The one thing that really terrifies me is we're going to get a signal from space that clears it all up," he laughs. "OK, this is how the universe works, guys." All that could come between Alastair Reynolds and a truly stellar career in science fiction, it seems, is a bunch of genuine, bona fide aliens.
• Email Recipient's email address Your first name Your surname Add a note (optional) Share Contact us Contact the Books editor
Report errors or inaccuracies: Letters for publication should be sent to: If you need help using the site: Call the main Guardian and Observer switchboard:
+44 (0)20 3353 2000 Listen In this new short story, Reynolds considers the ways in which the pressures of war shape those who fight them More on this story Space opera supremo Alastair Reynolds scores unprecedented 10-year, 10-book deal for his 'mean line in alien cultures and technology' 18 Jun 20096 Jun 200928 Feb 200916 Feb 2007 Email Recipient's email address Your first name Your surname Add a note (optional) Share Contact us Contact the Books editor
Report errors or inaccuracies: Letters for publication should be sent to: If you need help using the site: Call the main Guardian and Observer switchboard:
Thursday, May 7, 2009
word #1,000,000 right around the corner!
I had never thought of 'how many words are there....."a new word every 98 minutes" I certainly hope there are no new adverbs.
& why are the word counters in Texas?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturenews/5285085/One-millionth-English-word-could-be-defriend-or-noob.html
LONDON TELEGRAPH
One millionth English word could be 'defriend' or 'noob'
The English language will celebrate its one millionth word next month, with "defriend", "noob" and "chiconomics" among the candidates, linguistic experts have predicted.
By Matthew Moore
Last Updated: 5:32PM BST 06 May 2009
Comments 11 Comment on this article
The English language will celebrate its one millionth word next month, with 'defriend', 'noob' and 'chiconomics' among the candidates Photo: GETTY
The milestone will be passed at 10.22am on June 10 according to the Global Language Monitor, an association of academics that tracks the use of new words.
The widespread popularity of English as a second language in Asia has brought about the most fertile period of word generation since William Shakespeare's time with new terms coined on average every 98 minutes, the Texas-based group claims.
It acknowledges new words once they have been used 25,000 times by media outlets, on social networking websites and in other sources.
The terms it is currently monitoring which could take English to the one million threshold include "defollow" and "defriend", words describing what users of websites like Twitter and Facebook to do contacts with whom they do not wish to stay in touch.
Another internet word "noob" – a derogatory name for someone new to a particular task or community – is also in the running, along with "greenwashing" (what companies do to appear environmentally friendly) and "chiconomics" (recession fashion).
Paul Payack, chief analyst at the Global Language Monitor, said: "Despite having a million words at our disposal it is unlikely that we will ever use more than just a tiny fraction of them.
"The average persons vocabulary is fewer than 14,000 words out of these million that are available. A person who is linguistically gifted would only use 70,000 words."
The organisation first predicted that the millionth English word was imminent in 2006, and has repeatedly pushed back the expected date. Other linguist have expressed scepticism about its methods, claiming that there is no agreement about how to classify a word.
end end
& why are the word counters in Texas?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturenews/5285085/One-millionth-English-word-could-be-defriend-or-noob.html
LONDON TELEGRAPH
One millionth English word could be 'defriend' or 'noob'
The English language will celebrate its one millionth word next month, with "defriend", "noob" and "chiconomics" among the candidates, linguistic experts have predicted.
By Matthew Moore
Last Updated: 5:32PM BST 06 May 2009
Comments 11 Comment on this article
The English language will celebrate its one millionth word next month, with 'defriend', 'noob' and 'chiconomics' among the candidates Photo: GETTY
The milestone will be passed at 10.22am on June 10 according to the Global Language Monitor, an association of academics that tracks the use of new words.
The widespread popularity of English as a second language in Asia has brought about the most fertile period of word generation since William Shakespeare's time with new terms coined on average every 98 minutes, the Texas-based group claims.
It acknowledges new words once they have been used 25,000 times by media outlets, on social networking websites and in other sources.
The terms it is currently monitoring which could take English to the one million threshold include "defollow" and "defriend", words describing what users of websites like Twitter and Facebook to do contacts with whom they do not wish to stay in touch.
Another internet word "noob" – a derogatory name for someone new to a particular task or community – is also in the running, along with "greenwashing" (what companies do to appear environmentally friendly) and "chiconomics" (recession fashion).
Paul Payack, chief analyst at the Global Language Monitor, said: "Despite having a million words at our disposal it is unlikely that we will ever use more than just a tiny fraction of them.
"The average persons vocabulary is fewer than 14,000 words out of these million that are available. A person who is linguistically gifted would only use 70,000 words."
The organisation first predicted that the millionth English word was imminent in 2006, and has repeatedly pushed back the expected date. Other linguist have expressed scepticism about its methods, claiming that there is no agreement about how to classify a word.
end end
Friday, February 13, 2009
Lexical: a word's word!
http://www.merriam-webster.com/cgi-bin/mwwodarch.pl?Feb.11.2009
The Word of the Day for February 11, 2009 is:
lexical • \LEK-sih-kul\ • adjective
*1 : of or relating to words or the vocabulary of a language as distinguished from its grammar and construction
2 : of or relating to a lexicon or to lexicography
Example Sentence:
As stated in the catalog, the university’s second-year language courses were designed to emphasize lexical skills.
Did you know?
The word "lexicon" can be used as a synonym of "dictionary," and the word "lexicography" refers to the practice of dictionary making. Both of these words, as well as "lexical," derive from the Greek word "lexis," meaning "word" or "speech." A fourth descendant of "lexis" is "lexiphanic," an adjective describing one who uses pretentious words for effect. "Lexis" should not be confused with the Latin "lex," or "law," which is used in legal phrases such as "lex non scripta," meaning "unwritten law."
++++++++++++++
.
The Word of the Day for February 11, 2009 is:
lexical • \LEK-sih-kul\ • adjective
*1 : of or relating to words or the vocabulary of a language as distinguished from its grammar and construction
2 : of or relating to a lexicon or to lexicography
Example Sentence:
As stated in the catalog, the university’s second-year language courses were designed to emphasize lexical skills.
Did you know?
The word "lexicon" can be used as a synonym of "dictionary," and the word "lexicography" refers to the practice of dictionary making. Both of these words, as well as "lexical," derive from the Greek word "lexis," meaning "word" or "speech." A fourth descendant of "lexis" is "lexiphanic," an adjective describing one who uses pretentious words for effect. "Lexis" should not be confused with the Latin "lex," or "law," which is used in legal phrases such as "lex non scripta," meaning "unwritten law."
++++++++++++++
.
Friday, February 6, 2009
just heard: IN HOUSE VACATION
lets see, how to i mimic an online dictionary
IN HOUSE VACATION
probably a noun
pronounciation: as expected
d.
A work day lacking supervision, bosses, et al.
example:
John was enjoying an in house vacation day while his boss was at the conference.
now, how is that? future iterations: in house vacation week, in house vacation long weekend.....
......
IN HOUSE VACATION
probably a noun
pronounciation: as expected
d.
A work day lacking supervision, bosses, et al.
example:
John was enjoying an in house vacation day while his boss was at the conference.
now, how is that? future iterations: in house vacation week, in house vacation long weekend.....
......
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
a new word, not a neolgism? or a neologism? eponymous
and not for the banks! and never, NEVER, do a bale out in a library.
BALE OUT
1.
Bale Out
When someone's stress level explodes to an epic proportion and a 5-minute f-bom laden tirade is unleashed on the unlucky soul who was in the wrong place at the wrong time -- much like Christian Bale on the T4 set.
bale out anger frustration f-bomb stress by BlagoGal Feb 3, 2009
hear it live, will the OED stick 'bale out' in next year as a new word? which bale out? let's bale some hay....
Maybe he could run for guv of Illinois?
now, the musical Remix:
Bale Out - RevoLucian's Christian Bale Remix!
with fine pictures of Mr. Bale....
.
BALE OUT
1.
Bale Out
When someone's stress level explodes to an epic proportion and a 5-minute f-bom laden tirade is unleashed on the unlucky soul who was in the wrong place at the wrong time -- much like Christian Bale on the T4 set.
Pam was trying to study for her midterms in the library but the kid across the table kept tapping his pencil to his ipod making her Bale out and get suspended from the library for a week.
bale out anger frustration f-bomb stress by BlagoGal Feb 3, 2009
hear it live, will the OED stick 'bale out' in next year as a new word? which bale out? let's bale some hay....
Maybe he could run for guv of Illinois?
now, the musical Remix:
Bale Out - RevoLucian's Christian Bale Remix!
with fine pictures of Mr. Bale....
.
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Podcast a New word, from the OED (Oxford English Dictionary)
Notes on OED's December 2008 release of new words
http://dictionary.oed.com/news/updates/newwords0812.html
podcasting n.
A very new word, for a recent phenomenon, and a great example of how technological change, especially that relating to the Internet and the media, can be a driving force not only in generating new words, but in determining whether they survive and succeed. In this case the rapid adoption of podcasting (the technology) as a means of making audio material available has seen podcasting (the word) move quickly from its first tentative steps in 2004, as only one of a number of suggested names for the process, to near-ubiquity in 2008. The current OED quarterly release also includes other members of the same family: podcast as a noun and a verb, podcaster, and even the somewhat ungainly adjective podcasted.
more from the OED:
podcasting, n.
The use of the Internet to make available digital recordings of broadcasts for downloading to a computer or personal audio player.
2004 Guardian 12 Feb. (Life section) 28/1 MP3 players, like Apple's iPod, in many pockets, audio production software cheap or free, and weblogging an established part of the internet; all the ingredients are there for a new boom in amateur radio. But what to call it? Audioblogging? Podcasting? GuerillaMedia? 2005 R. MATHIESON Branding Unbound vii. 182 Newer phenomena, like ‘podcasting’, are opening up whole new possibilities. 2008 State (Columbia, S. Carolina) (Nexis) 28 Apr. B5 The district's first class on podcasting was last year, and some schools are in early stages of launching blogging.
COMPOUNDS
General attrib.
2004 Seattle Times 18 Oct. C1/5 Geeks are going nuts over this, holding ‘podcasting parties’ and exchanging all sorts of content. 2006 Technol. Horizons in Educ. Jrnl. 1 Advanced blogging and podcasting experiences to keep up with the digital generation. 2008 Canberra Times (Nexis) 7 Jan., An example of the policy issues is the need to relax firewall security to enable the implementation of a Podcasting tool.
http://dictionary.oed.com/news/updates/newwords0812.html
podcasting n.
A very new word, for a recent phenomenon, and a great example of how technological change, especially that relating to the Internet and the media, can be a driving force not only in generating new words, but in determining whether they survive and succeed. In this case the rapid adoption of podcasting (the technology) as a means of making audio material available has seen podcasting (the word) move quickly from its first tentative steps in 2004, as only one of a number of suggested names for the process, to near-ubiquity in 2008. The current OED quarterly release also includes other members of the same family: podcast as a noun and a verb, podcaster, and even the somewhat ungainly adjective podcasted.
more from the OED:
podcasting, n.
The use of the Internet to make available digital recordings of broadcasts for downloading to a computer or personal audio player.
2004 Guardian 12 Feb. (Life section) 28/1 MP3 players, like Apple's iPod, in many pockets, audio production software cheap or free, and weblogging an established part of the internet; all the ingredients are there for a new boom in amateur radio. But what to call it? Audioblogging? Podcasting? GuerillaMedia? 2005 R. MATHIESON Branding Unbound vii. 182 Newer phenomena, like ‘podcasting’, are opening up whole new possibilities. 2008 State (Columbia, S. Carolina) (Nexis) 28 Apr. B5 The district's first class on podcasting was last year, and some schools are in early stages of launching blogging.
COMPOUNDS
General attrib.
2004 Seattle Times 18 Oct. C1/5 Geeks are going nuts over this, holding ‘podcasting parties’ and exchanging all sorts of content. 2006 Technol. Horizons in Educ. Jrnl. 1 Advanced blogging and podcasting experiences to keep up with the digital generation. 2008 Canberra Times (Nexis) 7 Jan., An example of the policy issues is the need to relax firewall security to enable the implementation of a Podcasting tool.
from an opposer comes an inadvertant "how to" (a primer?)
create a neologism for the colorful foto (not the black and white one)
http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=20879696&site=ehost-live
I have highlighted the fun parts!
A rant against jargon and neologisms.
Young, Simon N.
Co-editor-in-chief, Journal of Psychiatry & Neuroscience, and Department of Psychiatry, McGill University, Montréal, Que.
Journal of Psychiatry & Neuroscience;
May2006, Vol. 31 Issue 3, p155-156, 2p
The article criticizes modern trends and jargons in psychiatry neuroscience. The spread of knowledge in the scientific community is hampered by jatrgons and neologisms imposed by scientists upon themselves. The trend concerning the proliferation of jargons started with the introduction of "genomics" in 1964 and "proteomics" in 1997. The use of suffixes like "omics" and prefixes like "neuro" somehow complicate studies and research in the field.
Shortly before he retired, Richard Smith, the editor for many years of BMJ, started an editorial with the statement “Today I'm in old fart mode.”1 I am grateful to him for having set the precedent, because today I am definitely in old fart mode. As befits such a state, I am going to rant about modern trends. Today the topic is language and, in particular, jargon and neologisms. My particular prejudice is that many new terms are problematic in that they do not facilitate communication (and are often inelegant). Whereas God prevented the building of the Tower of Babel by imposing different languages on humanity, scientists from different subdisciplines impose jargon and neologisms on themselves, and this does not help in the building of knowledge. Before I start, I should make 2 things clear. First, what I am going to say is not JPN policy. Articles containing all the terms I criticize will be welcome at JPN and will be assessed without consideration for my particular idiosyncrasies and dislikes. Second, I realize that I am revealing my ignorance. However, if you have the urge to email me and point out how one of the terms I am criticizing has a clear, specific and useful meaning, please don't. Over the years, several of my colleagues have attempted to educate me, but without success. Only my students are up to the task.
It all started with genomics. Whereas the first entry I could find for genomic in MEDLINE was in 1964, genomics did not follow until 1988. Nearly another decade passed before the appearance of proteomics in 1997, to be followed by transcriptomics in 1999 and metabolomics (or it is metabolonomics or metabonomics — they all produce hits on PubMed) in 2000. After that came a proliferation of -omics, including variations such as nutrigenomics and metagenomics and other neologisms including, but hardly limited to, glycomics, chronomics and phenomics. All these terms and probably many more get hits on PubMed. And, by the way, phenomics is apparently used for mapping fluxomes,2 whatever that means. There is even a journal titled Omics.3 The proliferation of -omics is different from the earlier proliferation of the suffix -ology (as in psych-, pharmac-, physi-) in a number of respects. First, there is the larger number of -omics. Second, there is the ugliness of terms such as transcriptomics and metabolomics. (Why can't the life sciences be like physics and produce terms that are simple and almost poetic as in the subatomic particle the charm quark?) Third, and this possibly helps to account for the fact that ignoramuses such a myself are not able to define all these terms, whereas the -ologies were conceptually based, the -omics are methodologically based. This may reflect a subtle change in how science progresses.
Life scientists and, in particular, neuroscientists are just as bad with prefixes as with suffixes. Neuro-can be put in front of anything so, for example, we have neurophilosophers considering neuromental parameters in relation to neuroscientific hypotheses.4 Presumably the term neuromental helps to distinguish those mental processes that involve neural activity from those that involve no neural activity. Neuro-words proliferate rapidly. How about neuroethics, neuroeconomics, neuroethology and neuroecology, all of which produce hits on PubMed? Are these terms really needed? Does, for example, neuroethics imply something that ethics does not? For some reason the prefix psycho-is not as popular as neuro-. While psychoeconomics produces a single hit on PubMed, psychoethics and psychoethology produce hits on Google but not on PubMed. At one time I used to tell people that my research was in psychonutrition but had to stop using that term when I found out that some researchers were using it seriously. Thankfully, combining neuro-and psycho-caught on in only a limited way as in neuropsychopharmacology. The constant use of that term has not diminished my dislike of it. I am thankful that this journal managed to grab the title Journal of Psychiatry & Neuroscience before any other journal did, thereby helping to avoid having neuropsychopharmacology in the title. I find it interesting that all journals with it in the title publish papers not involving drugs and, therefore, outside the scope of the journal title. Why use such a cumbersome word if you ignore its precise meaning? However, I have found one good use for neuropsychopharmacology. If I want to get rid of a bore at a (nonresearch) party, telling him I am a neuropsychopharmacologist usually does the trick.
Using surprising juxtapositions of different terms is always popular. For example, astrobiology is now an established discipline. I sometimes wonder which strange combinations of terms will come to exist in the future. Medical geology already exists,5 and neurotheology produces a hit on PubMed. I am waiting for psychobotany and quantum synaptology to emerge.
I do not know if my dislike of new terminology is shared by others, but webometrics6 (not to be confused with the related discipline of journalology6) should let me know if anyone reads this editorial. This editorial will probably be appreciated only by those who share my characteristic of sometimes being a mumpsimus. For those of you who do not have a copy of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary handy, mumpsimus is an ancient term that should have persisted in common usage but unfortunately did not. The word describes someone who sticks obstinately to an opinion even when shown to be wrong.
In a more serious vein, I have to admit that whether we like it or not, language is not static, and new terms will always be coined. The danger of new terms is that they are used initially only by a subgroup interested in a particular area of research. If the precise meaning of new terms does not become known to a larger group, the result is that the isolation of the subgroup is accentuated by their jargon. This is seen, for example, in the lack of understanding of qualitative research by quantitative researchers. If you doubt what I am saying ask any quantitative researcher to describe the differences between hermeneutics and narratology (and I certainly could not tell you). Even within disciplines, the exact meaning of new words will not necessarily spread beyond a select few. I asked various researchers whom I respect for their breadth of knowledge to tell me the difference between allostatic load and stress, and between allostasis and adaptation to stress. None were able to do so. This does not mean that these terms are not useful. However, as with all new terms, they will help to promote knowledge and ideas only if their precise meaning becomes known to a broad range of researchers. Only time will tell what will become a useful scientific term and what will remain the jargon of a subgroup of researchers.
Footnotes
Competing interests: None declared.
Correspondence to: Dr. Simon N. Young, Department of Psychiatry, McGill University, 1033 Pine Ave. W, Montréal QC H3A 1A1; fax 514 398-4370; simon.young@mcgill.ca
References
1.
Smith R. Self pity will destroy you. BMJ 2004;328:i.
2.
Sauer U. High-throughput phenomics: experimental method for mapping fluxomes. Curr Opin Biotechnol 2004;15:58-63. [PubMed].
3.
Omics: a journal of integrative biology. Available: http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/redirect3.cgi?&&auth=0BkRnwl5IrL6Zzy68qojwJyn1JsAW75IdYmS6k5bt&reftype=extlink&artid=1449876&article-id=1449876&iid=130675&issue-id=130675&jid=119&journal-id=119&FROM=Article%7CCitationRef&TO=External%7CLink%7CURI&rendering-type=normal&&www.liebertpub.com/publication.aspx?pub_id=43 (accessed 2006 Mar 31).
4.
Forrest DV. Philosophy of the brain: the brain problem [book review]. Am J Psychiatry 2005;162:408-9.
5.
Dissanayake C. Of stones and health: medical geology in Sri Lanka. Science 2005;309:883-5. [PubMed].
6.
Garfield E. The history and meaning of the journal impact factor. JAMA 2006;295:90-3. [PubMed].
I have highlighted the fun parts!
A rant against jargon and neologisms.
Young, Simon N.
Co-editor-in-chief, Journal of Psychiatry & Neuroscience, and Department of Psychiatry, McGill University, Montréal, Que.
Journal of Psychiatry & Neuroscience;
May2006, Vol. 31 Issue 3, p155-156, 2p
The article criticizes modern trends and jargons in psychiatry neuroscience. The spread of knowledge in the scientific community is hampered by jatrgons and neologisms imposed by scientists upon themselves. The trend concerning the proliferation of jargons started with the introduction of "genomics" in 1964 and "proteomics" in 1997. The use of suffixes like "omics" and prefixes like "neuro" somehow complicate studies and research in the field.
Shortly before he retired, Richard Smith, the editor for many years of BMJ, started an editorial with the statement “Today I'm in old fart mode.”1 I am grateful to him for having set the precedent, because today I am definitely in old fart mode. As befits such a state, I am going to rant about modern trends. Today the topic is language and, in particular, jargon and neologisms. My particular prejudice is that many new terms are problematic in that they do not facilitate communication (and are often inelegant). Whereas God prevented the building of the Tower of Babel by imposing different languages on humanity, scientists from different subdisciplines impose jargon and neologisms on themselves, and this does not help in the building of knowledge. Before I start, I should make 2 things clear. First, what I am going to say is not JPN policy. Articles containing all the terms I criticize will be welcome at JPN and will be assessed without consideration for my particular idiosyncrasies and dislikes. Second, I realize that I am revealing my ignorance. However, if you have the urge to email me and point out how one of the terms I am criticizing has a clear, specific and useful meaning, please don't. Over the years, several of my colleagues have attempted to educate me, but without success. Only my students are up to the task.
It all started with genomics. Whereas the first entry I could find for genomic in MEDLINE was in 1964, genomics did not follow until 1988. Nearly another decade passed before the appearance of proteomics in 1997, to be followed by transcriptomics in 1999 and metabolomics (or it is metabolonomics or metabonomics — they all produce hits on PubMed) in 2000. After that came a proliferation of -omics, including variations such as nutrigenomics and metagenomics and other neologisms including, but hardly limited to, glycomics, chronomics and phenomics. All these terms and probably many more get hits on PubMed. And, by the way, phenomics is apparently used for mapping fluxomes,2 whatever that means. There is even a journal titled Omics.3 The proliferation of -omics is different from the earlier proliferation of the suffix -ology (as in psych-, pharmac-, physi-) in a number of respects. First, there is the larger number of -omics. Second, there is the ugliness of terms such as transcriptomics and metabolomics. (Why can't the life sciences be like physics and produce terms that are simple and almost poetic as in the subatomic particle the charm quark?) Third, and this possibly helps to account for the fact that ignoramuses such a myself are not able to define all these terms, whereas the -ologies were conceptually based, the -omics are methodologically based. This may reflect a subtle change in how science progresses.
Life scientists and, in particular, neuroscientists are just as bad with prefixes as with suffixes. Neuro-can be put in front of anything so, for example, we have neurophilosophers considering neuromental parameters in relation to neuroscientific hypotheses.4 Presumably the term neuromental helps to distinguish those mental processes that involve neural activity from those that involve no neural activity. Neuro-words proliferate rapidly. How about neuroethics, neuroeconomics, neuroethology and neuroecology, all of which produce hits on PubMed? Are these terms really needed? Does, for example, neuroethics imply something that ethics does not? For some reason the prefix psycho-is not as popular as neuro-. While psychoeconomics produces a single hit on PubMed, psychoethics and psychoethology produce hits on Google but not on PubMed. At one time I used to tell people that my research was in psychonutrition but had to stop using that term when I found out that some researchers were using it seriously. Thankfully, combining neuro-and psycho-caught on in only a limited way as in neuropsychopharmacology. The constant use of that term has not diminished my dislike of it. I am thankful that this journal managed to grab the title Journal of Psychiatry & Neuroscience before any other journal did, thereby helping to avoid having neuropsychopharmacology in the title. I find it interesting that all journals with it in the title publish papers not involving drugs and, therefore, outside the scope of the journal title. Why use such a cumbersome word if you ignore its precise meaning? However, I have found one good use for neuropsychopharmacology. If I want to get rid of a bore at a (nonresearch) party, telling him I am a neuropsychopharmacologist usually does the trick.
Using surprising juxtapositions of different terms is always popular. For example, astrobiology is now an established discipline. I sometimes wonder which strange combinations of terms will come to exist in the future. Medical geology already exists,5 and neurotheology produces a hit on PubMed. I am waiting for psychobotany and quantum synaptology to emerge.
I do not know if my dislike of new terminology is shared by others, but webometrics6 (not to be confused with the related discipline of journalology6) should let me know if anyone reads this editorial. This editorial will probably be appreciated only by those who share my characteristic of sometimes being a mumpsimus. For those of you who do not have a copy of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary handy, mumpsimus is an ancient term that should have persisted in common usage but unfortunately did not. The word describes someone who sticks obstinately to an opinion even when shown to be wrong.
In a more serious vein, I have to admit that whether we like it or not, language is not static, and new terms will always be coined. The danger of new terms is that they are used initially only by a subgroup interested in a particular area of research. If the precise meaning of new terms does not become known to a larger group, the result is that the isolation of the subgroup is accentuated by their jargon. This is seen, for example, in the lack of understanding of qualitative research by quantitative researchers. If you doubt what I am saying ask any quantitative researcher to describe the differences between hermeneutics and narratology (and I certainly could not tell you). Even within disciplines, the exact meaning of new words will not necessarily spread beyond a select few. I asked various researchers whom I respect for their breadth of knowledge to tell me the difference between allostatic load and stress, and between allostasis and adaptation to stress. None were able to do so. This does not mean that these terms are not useful. However, as with all new terms, they will help to promote knowledge and ideas only if their precise meaning becomes known to a broad range of researchers. Only time will tell what will become a useful scientific term and what will remain the jargon of a subgroup of researchers.
Footnotes
Competing interests: None declared.
Correspondence to: Dr. Simon N. Young, Department of Psychiatry, McGill University, 1033 Pine Ave. W, Montréal QC H3A 1A1; fax 514 398-4370; simon.young@mcgill.ca
References
1.
Smith R. Self pity will destroy you. BMJ 2004;328:i.
2.
Sauer U. High-throughput phenomics: experimental method for mapping fluxomes. Curr Opin Biotechnol 2004;15:58-63. [PubMed].
3.
Omics: a journal of integrative biology. Available: http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/redirect3.cgi?&&auth=0BkRnwl5IrL6Zzy68qojwJyn1JsAW75IdYmS6k5bt&reftype=extlink&artid=1449876&article-id=1449876&iid=130675&issue-id=130675&jid=119&journal-id=119&FROM=Article%7CCitationRef&TO=External%7CLink%7CURI&rendering-type=normal&&www.liebertpub.com/publication.aspx?pub_id=43 (accessed 2006 Mar 31).
4.
Forrest DV. Philosophy of the brain: the brain problem [book review]. Am J Psychiatry 2005;162:408-9.
5.
Dissanayake C. Of stones and health: medical geology in Sri Lanka. Science 2005;309:883-5. [PubMed].
6.
Garfield E. The history and meaning of the journal impact factor. JAMA 2006;295:90-3. [PubMed].
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Bored, have a look: http://www.arcimboldo.art.pl/english/index1.htm
Giuseppe Arcimboldo(1527-1593) was born in Milan. Italian painter, draughtsman and tapestry designer,activ also in Austria and Bohemia. He came from a distinguished Milanese family that included a number of archbishops of the city.Guseppe is first documented in 1549, working with his father for Milan Cathedral.
or this, for the spaceee spacer.....
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