Acetio | Blogma

As a freelancer, I sometimes wonder how I got to use a title that hearkened to the age of knights in shining armor, riding gantlets (and wearing gauntlets) and jousting.

Evidently the word "freelance" was coined by Walter Scott in his 1820 "Ivanhoe" to refer to mercenary soldiers unattached to a king. In some ways you could think of knight:freelance :: samurai:ronin at least in terms of a trained soldier either having or not having allegiance to a king.

Don Willmott writes:

"... as with most aspects of the Middle Ages, it only goes back to the nineteenth-century medieval revivalists. The earliest use of free lance (in early use, it was usually spelled as two words) meant 'a mercenary soldier of the Middle Ages', and goes back to the medieval novel Ivanhoe (1820), by Sir Walter Scott, who also effectively invented the concept of clan tartans and most other aspects of the Scottish Highlanders. This use pops up in various historical novels of the Victorian era.

The word was being used figuratively by the 1860s to mean 'a person (as a politician) who contends in various causes without being attached to a particular group'. The use of freelance referring to a writer arose by the 1880s, and the verb "to freelance" by around 1900."

http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/index.pperl?date=19960617

John and I were organizing some content and needed to come up with an umbrella term for email, instant messaging, and possibly cell-phone texting - all electronic communication via the transmission of text.

"Telephony"is a word that refers to telephones specifically, and sound communication in general ("tele" = 'Distant'; "phonos" = 'Voice').

And "Telegraphy" means communication by writing over distance, but usually refers to the specific technology of the telegraph.

So I suggested we call the category, "Telelogy" ("logos" = 'Word').
We did a search and nothing came up, other than sites devoted to "Teleology" (The study of causation and purpose) that had "teleology" misspelled as "telelogy".

So I guess we coined a word. Whether anyone would every use it, I don't know.

This is a punchline for which I just couldn't think of a good set-up:

"Orange you glad I didn't say, 'Banana hammock'"

If it needs explaining, it isn't worth it.

About 8 years ago, a colleague of mine, Alex Goldman, mentioned a phrase. I don't recall whether he came up with it himself or exactly how he described it, but the explanation had something to do with the potential ambiguity of spoken phrases.

The phrase is, "Ed had edited it", which, if spoken quickly but not unnaturally fast, sounds more like a sound effect than a phrase.

I don't think there is a name for such a phrase; one that is so potentially unclear when spoken - one that must be spoken slowly and deliberately to be understood.

A pangram is a sentence that includes each of the 26 letters in the alphabet.
The most familiar one is the old chestnut: "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog."

I was sitting on the train to Philly with about an hour to kill.
I completed the crossword and sudoku in the local paper but still had about 20 minutes, so I created a game for myself: what is the shortest pangram I can write that doesn't use any of the words of the example just given? (with the exception of the word, 'the')

We will know that we've won the War on Terror once we've begun naming sports teams after terrorists groups.

The Columbus Hamas
The Knoxville Al Qaida
The Cody Hezbollah
The Sacramento Mujahedin
The Birmingham Shining Path
The Portland Al Fatah
etc.

Etymology lesson:
cybernetic:
A thermostat is cybernetic in nature: There is a mechanism in place which keeps the room from getting too hot or too cold; it regulates things to ensure everything is in balance, that if something gets too far one direction, the system kicks on to bring it back in line.

My last name is Slaybaugh.

Some in my family have wondered what it means in its (presumably) Germanic origin.

Does it mean 'Limp' or 'Sleeping River'?

Here are my findings.

This site

http://www.rootsweb.com/~pasomers/amsurs.htm

says that one common Amish name is Slabaugh (Schlappach)

I've seen other similar names, such as Schlabaugh and Schlabach

Is your path relative or absolute?

A path begins with an anchor and a reference - do you have a target?

Does your style cascade?

Is your style inline or external?

Do you generate statically or dynamically?

What color is your background?

Content exists in a cell. Is your cell padded? Does it have a border?

If your path does not include a target you will remain in the same frame you are now.

Mr. 14 Minutes has a webapp that lets you coin new, currently undefined, yet syntactically correct words.

If it's not clear how he does it, just know that it's all about Markov chains

I hereby declare the word "matious" to mean "related to Matt"; "mathing" to mean "looking for Matt"; and "matiblyness" to mean "having the qualities of Matt".

And why is "mation" not a word? It should be. That's a quality word.