Okay, one last entry for this morning.
All geeks worth their NaCl know that Pi Day is celebrated on 3/14 every year. For some reason, it’s considered Breaking News on Lycos where, better yet, the title of the AP story even has a parenthetical “Get it?” to ensure the general population that they’re being let in on a cute joke for math geeks.
Durrrrrrr…..
Yet in the article, the date is explained with the afternote “Obviously.” The author, Erin McClam, clearly assumes (as she should) that her readers have passed at least one high school math class. Yahoo’s title for the same story is “Pi fans have their day” which I like much better. I found the Lycos article because I was looking for a news link with less ads than Yahoo annoyingly has on every page.
To first approximate Pi, Archimedes used the method of exhaustion. I sometimes exhaust myself when trying to understand the general public.
Medieval Tech Support
This one’s a winner because:
1) I haven’t seen it before.
2) It’s in Norwegian (don’t worry, it’s also subtitled in English and Danish).
3) The thematic content includes a book, a geek and an average user… all set in a dank medieval room!
I’ve had a bad cold the last few days, and it really sucks. I don’t normally get sick (or “fall ill” or seem “under the weather,” depending on your preferred phrase) so I don’t know if I’ve just been a baby or if virii can really make me feel like this particular strain of shit.
The natural choice for the title of this journal entry was “SIck as a Dog,” which just got me thinking about the etymology of the phrase. I did some light Internet research as usual, and in the process discovered that horses can’t puke. Ladies and Gentlenerds, THAT is how to become versed in useless trivia. Well, perhaps not useless if you are an equestrian aficionado or a veterinarian. I found a tolerable etymological answer on World Wide Words, where I’ve found some interesting tidbits before.
There’s also this kid-friendly explanation of the meaning from kidshealth.org: “If you’ve ever been very sick, you may have used this expression. Because dogs eat just about anything they find, they often get sick. So it’s fitting to describe someone who is not feeling well as being “sick as a dog.” Arf!”
That was a fun little piece of journalism. I think I’m going to end this blog with some onomatopoeia related to being sick. Barf!
