I i

Just as in the US route system, odd-numbered routes go (generally) north-south, and even-numbered routes east-west, but that system applies only to numbers below 100. Three-digit numbers refer to roads that bypass cities: e.g., 195, 295, 395 and 495 are used for bypasses around various cities on I-95. In contrast with the US road system, some of whose major roads were Rts. 1, 9, 22, 66 and 101, the interstate system tried to number the most important roads in multiples of five. Whereas the US route system started numbering in the Northeast (Rts. 1 and 22 go through New Jersey, 101 is California's coastal highway), the Interstate system starts numbering in the Southwest (I-5 and I-10 go through Los Angeles; I-90 and I-95 go through Boston),

USTravelGuide.com is oriented primarily to travel on interstates.

Alaskan, Hawaiian, and Puerto Rican highways that are part of the interstate system have the prefixes A-, H-, and PRI-.

Learn more at its entry in WebElements and its entry at Chemicool.

Here, from his The Isles of Loch Awe (1855), pp. 343-4, is the poem ``Iodine'' of Philip Gilbert Hamerton (1834-1894):

There was a time when we were taught
The elements were only four;
The curse of old Saint Athanase
Might cling to those who dreamed of more.
But now we have enlarged our faith,
And Science widens all her range,
Till recent knowledge holds as truth
What erst had sounded false and strange.

But none of all our elements
Is half so wonderful as thee,
Strange extract of the golden weeds,---
Strange daughter of the eternal sea!
And of our sixty elements
Not one has properties like thine,
Thou mistress of the solar light,
O violet-fuming Iodine!

Oppressed by Nature's vastest forms,
Lie hid in many a mountain chain
Poor souls who dwell from year to year
In shadowed darkness of the brain.
For these thou hast a potent charm
That fills their hearts with health and light,
And makes a sunrise in the soul
That slept before in haunted night.

I've seen about the western isles,
Encircling zones of golden weed,
A wondrous spirit lurks therein---
By fire alone it may be freed!
An artist-substance that receives
Distinct impressions line for line,
More sensitive than painter's eye,
The wonder-working Iodine!

Appended to this is a note, quoting Septimus Piesse in The Mining Journal:

Iodine derives its name from a Greek word, signifying ``violet-coloured;'' but the transcendent beauty of the colour of its vapour requires further elucidation than simply saying that it has a ``violet hue.'' If a little iodine be placed on a hot tile it rises into a magnificent dense vapour, fit for the last scene of a theatrical representation. This remarkable substance was discovered by accident about forty years ago. At that period chemical philosophy was in great repute, owing principally to the brilliant discoveries of Sir Humphry Davy. So singular a substance as iodine was to Davy a source of infinite pleasure. His great aim was to prove its compound nature; but in this he failed; and to this day it is believed to be one of the primitive ``elements'' of the world we live in. The sea furnishes an inexhaustible supply of iodine. Whatever be the food of sea-weeds, it is certain that iodine forms a portion of their daily banquet; and to these beautiful plants we turn when iodine is to be manufactured for commercial purposes. The inhabitants of the Tyrol are subject to a very painful disease called goître, or cretinism; for this malady iodine is a perfect cure. Photography tells the whole truth without flattery; and the colours used in this process are only silver and iodine.

If you were paying attention back when et al. was being defined, you may have noticed that `other people' there corresponded to alii rather than alios. I'll explain this later if I get around to it.

The Villanova University Law School provides some links to state government web sites for Iowa. USACityLink.com has a page with mostly city and town links for the state.

This IAAS is an affiliate member of EAAS.

IACAP also uses an expansion with of in place of for above. One of the first lessons of programming is to be consistent in the use of names.

Writing in his blog on October 25, 2004, Roger L. Simon, a former officer of the IACW, described it in passing as ``left-leaning.''

This trade association was founded in 1940, and has gone by the initialisms ODC and AAODC.

Some other similar resources: Bigfoot.com || Switchboard.com || Peoplefind.com || WhoWhere.com || Yahoo People Search.

Normally one associates an awkward expansion like this with a lazy, half-hearted, or merely incompetent attempt to justify a backronym. That might be the case here; one need only make the reasonable assumption that the creator of the acronym liked the sound of the target word but didn't happen to know its meaning or associations -- with race, say. A part of literacy -- even cultural literacy -- is possession of an adequate vocabulary. Fortunately, the subject charity doesn't really aim to educate anyone. Instead, it focuses on building self-esteem in kids who are disruptive in school. According to itself, the organization has been very successful with these ``at-risk kids.'' Also, students in the program are paid for raising their GPA's and for ``every positive remark of improvement from a teacher.'' (This is fair to the kids whose parents teach them to stay out of trouble: since they're well-behaved already, they're probably not eligible for ``remarks of improvement,'' so why should they be paid?)

Please donate money to this charity so they can continue and even expand their work. Things will have to be much more broken before anyone does what is obviously necessary to fix them.

AHC has a mailing list: H-AHC, sponsored by H-NET.

I admit it: I'm bored.

Hi y'all!

In 1986, I interviewed for a position in Athens, Ohio. When I came back I complained to my co-workers that it would be pretty uncool to work in a place named Athens. Paul K. commiserated. He said he once interviewed for a job in Dayton, Ohio. I asked ``Dayton was an ancient Greek city-state?'' I was just thinking lèse majesté. I didn't get the job. I wonder if the job Paul had interviewed for was at the University of Dayton.

``Orofacial Myology/Myofunctional therapy is defined as treatment of the orofacial musculature to improve muscle tonicity. It is the establishment of correct functional activities of the tongue, lips, and mandible, so that normal growth and development may take place or progress in a stable homostatic environment. It may include the treatment of parafunctional habits to eliminate noxious oral behavior patterns [I think this is where "digit habit" comes in]; or temporomandibular muscle dysfunction as it relates to bruxism/clenching, range of motion activities, or postural habits of the tongue, lips and/or mandible.''

Despite this, he's a lot of fun, so we'll be mentioning him at various places in this glossary, such as the Practical Criticism and mixed-metaphor entries, as well as the eventual Basic-English-related entries.

I have a big entry under development about this dude, but it might be years before I get around to finishing it, so let me at least mention the following: There's an old story about a small college that was considering expansion. If you're utterly out of the loop you may not have heard it, so I'll regale you with it now. The plan was to add one department: either physics, mathematics, or philosophy. The committee on expansion reported back to the trustees that the main difference among these was the cost of supporting research: physics professors need all sorts of expensive equipment, but mathematicians only need paper, pencils, and a garbage can. Philosophers don't even need a garbage can.

I guess they study Inter-Americans, whoever they or we are. It's gotta be better than studying Interahamwe. Safer, anyway. Oh, here it comes!

``The M.A. takes up a double perspective that concentrates on the hemispherical interconnections between Anglo-America and Latin-America and in doing so follows a recent trend of research within the framework of transnational regional studies. Literary, cultural, and media studies as well as linguistics, sociology, political science, and transnational history are integrated to participate in an interdisciplinary dialogue. The social, cultural, historical, and political developments in the Americas (both in regard to their specifically national characteristics and to the processes of transnational integration) form the main focus of the course of studies. Current research paradigms related to questions of transnationality, interculturality, globalization, and concepts of World Society are the major theoretical guidelines.''

``The program is designed for students with a B.A. certificate (or its equivalent) in a related area of studies, and provides them with an individual specialization within the participating fields of studies which will qualify them as future experts in international cultural, social, and communicative processes. Proficiency in English and Spanish, as well as German are needed, but can be improved throughout the course of studies.''

Heck, the Bielefeld folks still haven't ``improved'' their punctuation skills. Incidentally, I imagine that Brazil is not meant to be excluded from ``Latin-America.'' Some writers in Spanish mean, and occasionally state, that by latinoamérica they mean only the former colonies of Spain. It reminds me of the old joke about who a Yankee is.

A popular maneuver in postmodern or ``theoretical'' discourse is to make unnecessary plurals as a way of ``transgressing narratives'' or something. The idea is that anything you might like to say is false, because it's not perfectly true, and it's not perfectly true because your narrative is only one of many equally true (i.e., false) narratives, blah, blah. Anyway, I don't think that's what's going on in the ``Irish Literatures'' of the IASIL expansion. I think the idea is to emphasize that the bailiwick of IASIL includes Irish literature in both English and Irish Gaelic. But of course, I am probably wrong.

``The IASME is a non-profit scientific organization that promotes the Mechanical Engineering through Journals, Books, Conferences, Seminars, Workshops, Research Projects and Summer Schools. It was founded by WSEAS members in August 12, 2003 after a WSEAS successful conference in Crete, Greece.''

IATA collaborates closely with ICAO.

Also offers a referral service.

How significant is this movie? Karolyn Grimes played the youngest daughter of George and Mary (Hatch) Bailey. She had six minutes of screen time (out of a total running time of 129 minutes) and was listed thirty-third in the credits. Apparently her current career consists in making IAWL-related appearances and selling IAWL-related products. Visit her web site, <zuzu.net>.

IAWL's initial copyright period ended during the time when copyright terms lasted only twenty-eight years. The copyright holder could have an extension free for the asking, if the asking was done near the end of the initial period. (Later on, the copyright renewals became automatic, but that change did not affect works of IAWL's vintage.) Whoever had the responsibility of filing the request for extension reportedly forgot (or perhaps ``forgot''). If the copyright had been renewed, then it would clearly have been under copyright at the time that Sonny Bono's Egregious Bill To Extend Copyrights Obscenely In The United States Of America (not the official title) came into effect, and the film would have remained under copyright continuously and forever (new copyright extensions should be passed from time to time). Because the copyright was not renewed, it was widely assumed that the movie had passed into the public domain, and in the late seventies and through the eighties, IAWL aired on approximately every television station.

The rights to IAWL were originally held by Capra's company Liberty Films. Republic Pictures Corp. (NTA at the time) is successor in interest to Liberty Films. On June 14, 1993, Republic asserted that it owns the rights to (at least some of) the music in the film. (Republic acquired these exclusive music rights, which did remain protected, in a series of transactions with Warner/Chappell Music, Irving Berlin Music Co., Edward B. Marks Music Co. and Shapiro, Bernstein & Co. Inc.) Based on this and its ownership of the copyrighted short story upon which the movie was based, Republic has regained effective control over the distribution and use of the film and derivative products. I'm not sure that their claim has ever been tested in court, but the preponderance of legal opinion seems to be that they can make their claim stick. Their reasoning is based on (and their purchase of the music rights was motivated by) an April 25, 1990, US Supreme Court decision involving Alfred Hitchcock's ``Rear Window.'' The court ruled in that case that distributors of the movie were required to share rerelease earnings with the copyright holder of the underlying story on which the film was based. After a final cluster of independent broadcasts at Christmas 1993, Republic contracted an exclusive license with NBC.

In August 1995, Republic signed a joint marketing agreement for the film with cool, market-savvy heavy-weight...Borden, running Oct. 15-Feb. 29 (distribution began Sept. 19, 1995). It was the ``fiftieth anniversary'' of the 1946 release. That Winter, it peaked higher (#13) on the Billboard charts than the 1994 TV version of How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (#15) -- more authentic malice and greed, I guess -- but the next season Grinch was back on top. After Republic's aggressive protection and promotion of its movie, IAWL has dramatically declined in popularity.

Republic does not distribute a Colorized version. Video Treasures was one of the companies that did. The latter sued Republic in December 1993, challenging Republic's claim of sole ownership. On July 8, 1994, the suit was settled out of court, with VT acknowledging Republic's claim and Republic allowing VT to distribute a Colorized version until 1998. (Rights to that version had been acquired from Hal Roach Studios, which had been acquired by RHI Entertainment, which had reached agreement with Republic earlier in December 1993. Under the terms of that agreement, RHI ended the Video Treasures license in the U.S., as well as those with Gaga in Japan and Transvideo in Portugal.) Most of the 100 or so independent distributors of IAWL preferred to avoid litigation.

The late Stephen Jay Gould, a gifted science writer and celebrated Harvard professor, published a book in 1989 called Wonderful Life, describing radically new conclusions about the contingency and the rate of evolution. These conclusions, based on his graduate students' speculative reconstructions of fragile Cambrian fossils from the Burgess shale, would have been very important had they been correct. A fact not very clearly adverted in the book is that the hypothesis it promotes had never (as it has not since) achieved widespread acceptance, even among the gullible gaggle of paleobiologists. Gould's claim that the Burgess shale of British Columbia contained representatives of a large variety of exotic taxa (rather than a jumbled bunch of bits from rather ordinary phyla like annelids and arthropods, and the latter's apparent ancestors the velvet worms, still represented in 90 known living species) is no longer tenable, if it ever was, but his book remains in print. (Cue Marc Anthony's eulogy of Caesar.) Not that I have anything special against this specific book. Some of the minor errors in the book were not original with Gould, and anyway he was prolific and promoted ideas in other areas of his incompetence such as neoteny and intelligence measurement; his ideas are widely respected outside the scientific community to this day. IAWL was one of Gould's favorite movies; that's not a recommendation.

The use of ``bachelor's degree'' and related terms has evolved over time, and has evolved differently in different places. In Spain and Spanish America, the traditional sequence of titles is Bachillerato, Licenciado, and Doctor, corresponding to Latin Baccalaureatus, Licenciatus, and Doctor. At one time, the bachillerato was a sort of advanced high-school degree taken by students planning to go to college, equivalent to what is called the Abitur or Matura. (Graduation from nonacademic high schools might take place at age 16 or 17 -- i.e., a year or two earlier. Cf. the older Canadian system at the HS entry.)

Traditionally also, school courses in general education, general culture, liberal education or whatever you want to call it, were supposed to be taken care of in high school -- that is, with completion of the bachelor's degree. One entered college to pursue a specific career, and most courses were focused on that career and taken within the relevant department (facultad) of the university. The licencia was earned upon completion of coursework in that facultad. This traditional scheme is evolving irregularly toward a system more like the current American one, and a degree called the Maestría has been introduced.

I very bad.

IBC solves this by using what are lateral pn junctions on the back surface, defined by different implantations or diffusions into a high-carrier-lifetime bulk material.

Mirabile dictu -- they have!

According to this page, in March 2002,

``Founded in 1984 by William J. O'Neil, Investor's Business Daily is now America's fastest growing newspaper, boasting a daily readership of over 800,000. Designed to provide both concise and comprehensive coverage of business, financial, economic, and national news, Investor's Business Daily is highly organized and tightly edited to help you make the most of your time. This newspaper is a must have for all investors.''

IBM made the greatest corporate contribution to literary criticism in the twentieth century.

IBM is still by far the largest computer company (counting HW, SW, and services together).

This book is affectionately dedicated to the Type 650 computer once installed at Case Institute of Technology, with whom I have spent many pleasant evenings.

Suppose your economy has been expanding briskly but steadily, but that a large economy in your vicinity (like Japan's say) has been stagnating for the better part of a decade. Suppose further that the Japanese government convinces your largest importer (the US, say) to strengthen its currency to avert a further Japanese economic disaster, and that the prices of your export goods become relatively unattractive (because your currency is pegged to the dollar). Your exports weaken, currency speculators see an opportunity to sell you short and bet against your currency until it cracks, your stock market crashes and you start defaulting on loans to your biggest creditor (Japan, whose banking system was already insolvent anyway). That's the good news: Japanese banks go on cooking the books, so in the long run maybe you just default on some onerous loans and your credit rating takes a hit (so capital becomes expensive). The real bonus is you have a decent chance of replacing your corrupt dictators with a brand new set of kleptocrats. Of course, this requires a little short-term pain, since well-fed children don't riot. Okay, maybe this isn't such good news. But here's worse: the World Bank comes to your rescue! In exchange for a sequence of short term loans, you hand over central management of your economy to the seasoned experts who have been fixing the Asian economic crisis for all these years.

It would be cool if IBRD were BIRD in French, but I haven't seen that used. I'll have to keep on looking.

They say he ``is especially famous as the author of the philosophical theory known as `immaterialism'.'' That doesn't sound very substantial. He also ``made important contributions in the fields of philosophy, mathematics, and economics.'' Afaik, his most important contribution to mathematics was objecting that Newton's fluxions were not rigorously defined. That's exactly the sort of thing that philosophers would consider an important contribution. (In this case, it was. See this.)

But perhaps there was some interesting mathematics in his writings on vision. [On a quick look, though, A [sic] Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision (1709) has only the most elementary sort of geometric argument.] That brings us to physiology and... yes, medicine! What about George Berkeley's famous contributions to medicine? His most popular work was on that subject. [Most popular, that is, during his lifetime, and probably until the time that A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (1710) and Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous (1713) became regularly assigned college texts. Then again, can college texts truly be said to be popular? Give me 2000 words on that.] The work introducing his speculations on tar-water was Siris, Philosophical Reflexions and inquiries concerning the virtues of tar-water, and divers other subjects connected together and arising from one another (1744). Tar-water was the clear water drained off from a mix of pine tar and water after the (mostly insoluble) pine tar has settled. The diverse other subjects connected together and so forth are philosophical. The work went through a second printing in 1747, and in 1752 he published Farther Thoughts on Tar-Water. In 1753 he died.

Hail vulgar juice of never-fading pine!
Cheap as thou art, thy virtues are divine.
To shew them and explain (such is thy store)
There needs much modern and much ancient lore.
While with slow pains we search the healing spell,
Those sparks of life, that in thy balsam dwell,
From lowest earth by gentle steps we rise
Through air, fire, æther to the highest skies.
Things gross and low present truth's sacred clue.
Sense, fancy reason, intellect pursue
Her winding mazes, and by Nature's laws
From plain effects trace out the mystic cause,
And principles explore, though wrapt in shades,
That spring of life which the great world pervades,
The spirit that moves, the Intellect that guides,
Th' eternal One that o'er the Whole presides.
Go learn'd mechanic, stare with stupid eyes,
Attribute to all figure, weight and size;
Nor look behind the moving scene to see
What gives each wondrous form its energy.
Vain images possess the sensual mind,
To real agents and true causes blind.
But soon as intellect's bright sun displays
O'er the benighted orb his fulgent rays,
Delusive phantoms fly before the light,
Nature and truth lie open at the sight:
Causes connect with effects supply
A golden chain, whose radiant links on high
Fix'd to the sovereign throne from thence depend
And reach e'en down to tar the nether end.

To me, as I'm sure to many, it came as a revelation that the emotional disposition of internal organs could have serious health consequences. But why should we have been surprised? It's well known that repetitive stress can cause injury to the heart, and everyone has heard of Carping Tummy Syndrome (CTS). The legendary moodiness of the black lung is killing, and just one shot of testosterone has been known to make muscle's tone highly impertinent. These are organs with attitude.

But it's not just the bigger organs: research has shown that the aptly-named little gall bladder is full of bile, and the tiny appendix sometimes becomes dangerously inflamed. And that's not even the smallest. Within the ugly pancreas, the islets of Langerhans are lonely, and in the microscopic spaces where nerve processes whisper to each other, the serotonin levels themselves are depressed. This can ruin the mood of the entire organism.

Of course, it's natural to expect soft-tissue organs to show weakness, but there are even skeletal ``issues.'' I've heard reports of merciless ribbing. Pity too the alienation and desperate anomie of the dislocated shoulder. These problems are not rare. If rigid sternum were recognized as a disease, I'm sure it would be a pandemic.

It should be clear by now that these are not mere passing mood swings of the body, but persistent problems that must be regarded as full-fledged emotional or cognitive disorders of the feeling body. The ``funny'' bone, euphemistically so-called, is no joke, and the deviated septum should receive a wide berth. Yes, the wracked body just throbs with turbulent emotion -- from the in-groan toenail, past the glowering glomeruli and the violent spleen, right on out to the petulantly opposed thumbs.

The Dynamic Twirlers Majorette Corps notes on its history page that it was ``awarded `Most Improved Corps 2004' for the second year running'' (I assume the first year running, they won it for 2003), and that this ``has NEVER been award[ed] to any other Corps two years running in the history of the IBTA.'' They say they celebrated this.

The Illinois Central was chartered in 1851. It had its share of accidents. In 1900, it had a minor wreck at Vaughan, Mississippi. There was one fatality -- the engineer, John Luther Jones.

John Luther Jones was nicknamed after his home town -- Cayce, Kentucky. Wallace Saunders, an engine wiper, wrote a song about Casey Jones and the accident that killed him. The song became popular locally, and a couple of years later it was picked up and adapted by a song writer who was passing through Jackson, Tennessee. How much adapted is hard to know now, but the story has a Rashomon character -- every version is different, and the ballad tells a different story than the accident report or his widow recalled for an Erie Railroad Magazine reporter twenty-eight years later [also here], or than his fireman recalled fifty years later.

Find A Grave has found Casey's. The page points out that, though his widow years later used the spelling Casey in letters, John Jones himself used to sign ``Cayce.'' In the news article linked above and in railroad historian Bruce Gurner's interview with her at age 90, his wife is reported as giving Cayce as his place of birth, but according to an Encyclopedia.com article, he only moved there at age seventeen. That he worked as a telegraph operator there might help explain his nickname, but according to a possibly somewhat creative obituary of his wife, he got the nickname from her mother, who ran a boarding house in Jackson.

For a bit more on rail accidents, see the rail accidents entry.

Stefan, a Mancunian friend of mine, explained to me once why bad beers are traditional favorites in old industrial regions. I felt sure I passed this along, but just in case I didn't: it's because workers need something to drink before they start their shift at the steel mill. That suggests that the beers are bad because they're weak (small beers). I'll have to investigate this. It will require experimental work.

Granted that the administration of cooperation may sound a bit heavy-handed, even if it essentially consists of giving away money. But if you want something with shake-down bad vibes, there is today a <http://www.co-prosperity.org>. I suppose it's intended to be ironic, but the humor is a bit thin.

In English, those ICAA expansions above correspond to `The Canadian Academic Institute in Athens' and Canadian Archaeological Institute at Athens,' respectively. A bit more at the CAIA entry.

Right now, of course, and especially with the ``oral history'' thing, this just sounds like cultural propaganda. However, it reminds me of a walk I took on the mall in Washington, D.C., in the Summer of 1985, give or take a year. There was some sort of cultural fair going on, and some guy was being piously announced as a practitioner of a venerable and highly authentic folk craft called ``rap.'' So I guess these things can progress from public-radio curiosities to mass-market abominations.

ICANN has three ``foundations.''

• Generic Name Supporting Organization (GNSO). [Successor to the Domain Name Supporting Organization (DNSO), which used to serve the ccTLD's as well.]
• Address Supporting Organization (ASO), responsible for numbering.
• Protocol Supporting Organization (PSO), responsible for technical infrastructure issues.

ICANN has made an awful lot of people angry. ICANNWatch, for example, which offers a nice nontechnical tutorial.

ICAO collaborates closely with IATA.

Missile is an old word for missive, and is still sometimes used in that sense ecclesiastically.

James Baron, who has been a regular contributor to the Classics list, alludes to the message-carrying capacity of missiles in his .sig, which concludes with

Phone:
email:
ICBM:   W 76d 45' N 37d 16'

When physicists speak of the relativistic speed limit, they try to use precise formulations that allow for the movement of pre-constructed images at higher speeds. In order to exclude such apparent movement, one says that information cannot travel faster than the speed of light. Interestingly, one way of demonstrating the contradictory nature of higher speeds involves regarding a missile as a message.

To be clearer: the mathematics of relativity does not exclude the possibility of faster-than-light (FLT), but makes it equivalent to travel backwards in time. Although there are a lot of other questions left open if one tries to incorporate FLT into one's understanding of the universe, the main reason for rejecting FLT is the kinds of logical contradictions that arise automatically with ``time travel.'' For example, suppose a sentinel fires a missile (probably not an ICBM, but maybe similar) at any intruder as soon as it detects one. If the intruder interacts with any form of radiation that travels superluminally (faster than light) -- that is, if the intruder is ``visible'' in radiation of that speed, then the message can arrive ``too soon'': if the sentinel fires soon enough, even a fast but still subluminal missile can destroy the intruder before the time that it sent the signal that was detected by the sentinel.

Also ``implantable cardioverter-defibrillator.''

``ICD-9'' is the ``ninth revision of the ICD'' (meaning the eighth revision of the first ICD). As of 2003, we were still on the tenth, issued in 1989 and dated 1990. That's the longest we've gone without a new edition since ICD-1 in 1900. However, there's a separate ICD for Oncology, also bearing the title Morphology of Neoplasms. The three editions of that are dated 1975, 1990, and 2000. Also, in 2004, there was a ``provisional edition'' of selected five-character codes, modified in 2005. (Until ICD-9, the code characters were all decimal digits.) Looking at how the codes have been jumped around, I'm not so surprised that a few percent of my spam is email offers to help me code various tricky disorders. I have to admit that it's no less useful to me than the offers of all-natural breast enhancement.

You probably came to the ice cream entry with the following question: what is there that is half air not by volume but by mass? That's a toughie. Maybe some soap bubbles. (I'll come back and say for sure after I do a calculation.) The specific gravity of air at sea level pressure averages around 0.00124. That's pretty high, considering. Even in the middle of a heavy downpour, nitrogen and oxygen gas constitute not just most of the volume (good news for animals without gills) but even most of the mass (good news for animals without hard-hats).

This just in from the dollar table: The Ice Cream Diet (NYC: Award Books, 1970), by Gaynor Maddox (borderline nomen est omen, there), author of The Safe and Sure Way to Reduce. Maddox is or was a member of the National Association of Science Fiction Writers. Wait, strike the ``Fiction'' bit. It turns out that on this diet you can only eat ice cream ``sometimes three times a day,'' and the servings are only a quarter cup each. I think I'll stay with the beer diet -- I get to read the scale through beer goggles.

When my mother was a girl in Wroclaw, Poland (then Breslau, Germany), there was an Italian ices shop in town, with a very Italian name she doesn't remember. Her cousin Heinz Aaron went to work for his uncle, and with money from his first paycheck he took my mother out to try an Italian ice. That was 1935; they didn't have ice cream in those days. (Heck, she still remembers the times she ate chocolate.) Ice cream was a revolution. When it arrived, ices were history. Oh sure, they still have a bit of the market. Ice cream alternatives still try, too: fat-free ice-``cream,'' frozen yogurt... There's a reason why these presumptively healthier products don't stake out a very large corner of the market. The reason is a secret ingredient in fatty foods that makes them taste good. The secret ingredient is fat. Cream is mostly milkfat.

In German, ice is called Eis.

I mention Harvest of the Cold Months at the entry for traditional liquid measure. I'm going to have to have another look at that book.

Over the years, ICFC has invested by a varying mix of measures: making loans and guaranteeing loans, taking an equity share (the venture capital approach, avant le lettre), and supporting management buy-outs.

I was able to track down one instance of the phrase ``National Committee of the Fourth International'' here, and it appears not to be a typo. It apparently refers to AQI.

all three major Scrabble dictionaries accept ich and ichs. Given the ck pronunciation, that's the expected plural.

The official newsletter is called Oxygen. I see that ahead of the Barcelona meeting, the title is given as Oxigeno, which I have a guess is Catalan for `oxygen.' (If it were Spanish, it would need an accent on the i.)

``Rights & Democracy receives the majority of its funding from Canada's Overseas [officially International] Development Assistance [CIDA] Budget through the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade.'' (A pittance, actually: a bit over CAD 5 million in the 2000-1 and 2001-2 fiscal years. Still, it's ``on the International Labour Organization's [ILO's] Special List of NGOs.'' How'd they swing that?

The circular announcing the 22nd ICHS (ICHS05, in Beijing July 24-30, 2005) uses the English acronyms ICHS and IUHPS/DHS in the French- and Chinese-language sections as well.

They have a fairly forthright, yet still amusingly defensive, set of web pages.

I see LC.

The 1998 meeting began on Roman Polanski's sixty-fifth birthday in Berlin, and ended in the same city, on the seventy-sixth anniversary of the day ``Tarzan of the Apes'' was published.

As these examples indicate, mathematics is not the irrelevant subject many believe it to be.

The ICN is a federation of national nurses' associations. As such, its members are often grammatically female, because in Indo-European languages, abstractions typically are. When the ICN was founded in 1899, it was the first international organization for health care professionals. Its charter members were the national organizations of Germany (DBfK), the UK, and the US (see ANA). The current UK member of the ICN is the Royal College of Nursing (RCN), but that was not founded until 1916. Perhaps the original UK member of the ICN was the British Nurses' Association (now the RBNA), founded in 1887.

You know, in late 1998 the US proposed to give Russia up to a billion dollars' worth of emergency food aid. It took six months before that program could get under way, largely on account of Russian suspicions of US intentions. Apparently one of the concerns was that this was just a sneaky way for the US to support its own farmers. As far as I know, we never offered to ship them grain confiscated from farmers without compensation. (Must be on account of one of those pesky Constitutional rules.)

Interviewed at the 2003 meeting in upstate New York, Nelson Hoffman of the Vermont Transportation Agency explained that putting up fences helped his state preserve its waning frog population: ``It's making sure frogs are fat and not flat.'' Sounds like he took a page from the Jesse Jackson book of rhetoric. It's not easy being green; join the rainbow coalition.

According to Bill Ruediger, of the USDA Forest Service, ``over 200 people a year in the United States are killed hitting or trying to avoid hitting large animals.''

Article 1 of Title I of the ICOHTEC statutes declares emphatically:

ICP's sound is rap edging in the direction of rock, with melodies from the more advanced grade-school levels. The language is Detroit inner-city. (You know, like around Wayne State University.) The lyrics are poser violence with high school references. Members of the cult (viz. Juggalos and Lettes) actively seek each other out to hook up and sometimes even marry. Doesn't it occur to them that by the time they're a few years out of high school, this music will mean nothing to them? Eh.

The author of this entry took this quiz and earned a rating of ``TruE JuGGaLo/LettE ~ you know your icp shit. congratz. mmfcl'' on the first try. He also earned ``Bi Sexual-you like both men and women. you get the best of both worlds.'' on the ``Are you gay, strait or bi? ...Girls Only... (UPDATED...WITH PIX)'' quiz, but the pix were a let-down. This clown needs to get a life.

I've got such a headache!

Try trepanation for relief.

Oh. Am I embarrassed: turns out ICQ is a rebus for ``I seek you.'' It's chat software.

PowWow seems to be chat software too, but they pitch it as ``instant messaging and online community software.'' Yeah, whatever. Why all the obscurantism?

The term that ICU expands has been translated into Spanish as ``unidad de cuidados intensivos.'' It's a bothersome translation. The cognates are close enough translations, but cuidados for care presents interesting ambiguities. The verb cuidar means `take care of,' but cuidado normally means `wariness, carefulness.' Of course, cuidado can also refer to the person taken care of.

You see me. We both see too easily. Too easily to let it... Oh wait, wrong song. Or wrong word. Wrong something. I got it: ``the wrong word in the wrong song at the wrong time in the wrong place.'' I'm so impressively apothegmatic that I deserve to be your president. If this stuff interests you, and since the men in white coats won't be here for a while yet, and since you already recognized the John Kerry allusion, you should now meditate on Dr. John's ``Right Place, Wrong Time'' (1973).

(Incidentally, Dr. John's hit was written by Allen Toussaint. As Hurricane Katrina approached New Orleans in August 2005, about 25 thousand locals who didn't evacuate the city decided that the Superdome would be the right place to be, although the Saints' home opener wasn't for another week. Toussaint was there then.)

Dr. Johnson had a remark that was very much to the point, and fortunately Boswell was there to record it (Tour of the Hebrides, 5 October 1773):

``Established in 1992, [ICUC] is an autonomous, nonprofit, scientific research and training center. The Center addresses ways of increasing the use of underutilized crops for food, medicinal and industrial products, and also for environmental conservation. It provides expertise and acts as a collaborative institute for tropical, sub-tropical and temperate crop development. [And not subarctic? Where does that leave Minnesota, eh?] The ICUC operates through regional offices and works in close collaboration with national partners for sustainable technology development for products and marketing of underutilized crops.'' As centres go, this one doesn't sound very centric. They can't even seem to decide whether to spell it centererer or centrerere. But they have a headquarters, which I suppose is the center of the centre or something; in 2005, ICUC's headquarters relocated from the UK to Sri Lanka. This seems to be a popular itinerary for quixotic idealists, if Arthur Clarke is one. ICUC is now co-located with and hosted by IWMI at the latter's headquarters in Colombo, Sri Lanka. They got a broom closet with a special plaque. Okay, that's just a guess. ICUC and IWMI issued a joint statement in June 2005, announcing the move effective April 2005. This must have come as a shock to commuters in May.

The ICUC's idea of an underutilized crop seems to be mostly the sort I've been buying for 30 years in Oriental food stores from New York to San Francisco (but if you were stuck in Norman, Oklahoma, you'd have to drive all the way to Oklahoma City for this stuff). ICUC mentions taro, but oddly only in connection with New Zealand and Japan, as if it were not a major food crop in Africa. In Africa, the cucumber is widely used as a symbolic ``victim'' or sacrificial offering in traditional rituals. You were probably wondering what the point was of dressing the cucumber if you were only going to throw it out. (Yes, yes, taro is a larger part of traditional Polynesian diets, and common in Asia.)

Somehow connected with the Natural History Museum in London.

The Villanova University Law School provides some links to state government web sites for Idaho. USACityLink.com has a page with a few city and town links for the state.

Idaho is a community property state.

In the 1998 elections, colorful arch-conservative Helen Chenoweth won re-election to the US House despite admitting an adulterous affair with a former business partner. The same day, controversial Republican State Schools Superintendent Anne Fox lost her bid for re-election, but at the GOP election-night party, campaign supporter Mel Clarkson proposed marriage. She accepted.

And they say Virginia is for lovers.

In 1999, Chenoweth married her second husband, Wayne Hage -- a rancher at the center of Nevada's ``Sagebrush Rebellion.'' She retired from Congress at the end of 2000s, having served a self-imposed three-term limit. Hage died in June 2006 at the age of 69. On October 2, 2006, 68-year-old Helen Chenoweth-Hage was riding in a car driven by her daughter-in-law Yelena Hage, near Tonopah, Nev. She was holding Hage's 5-month-old son Bryan and not wearing a seat belt. There was a crash, and the two were thrown from the car. She was pronounced dead at the scene, but Bryan escaped with only minor injuries.

I don't know what the situation is now or had been before, but in the early 1960's, in Argentina, the national police issued the national personal photo-ID cards. The most prominent words on the card were ``Policía Nacional,'' and non-Argentines easily mistook it for the photo-ID of a member of the Argentine national police. In my case, however, the baby picture often gave it away.

When we went to get my passport, I guess we didn't bribe anyone, or enough. My mother and I stood in line for hours. After we finally reached the desk, and I did the fingerprint piano exercise, the little boy that I was found he had a sticky, inky hand, so he wiped it on the nearest cloth object, which happened to be the burrocrat's clean white shirt. When I think about it now, I wonder that my passport ever got processed.

Many years later, when I was stopped by plainclothesmen in Florence, I took the opportunity to get a good look at what a real police ID looked like.

They were looking for someone who had participated in a bank robbery in Naples. I have never been to Naples. When I was stopped in Florence, I already had never been to Naples. A fortiori, I had never participated in a bank robbery -- in Naples. The plainclothesmen realized that I was a stupid American without the wit to rob a bank, so I walked.

When the carabinieri stopped me in Rome, they weren't looking for anyone in particular. They just wanted to examine ID's. Stands to reason.

I didn't go to Naples.

Naples is famous for pizza, even though everyone knows that the best pizza is made in the US. Last summer, some people who don't have enough real worries of their own came to the US from Italy. They called themselves the Neapolitan Police, and they pronounced themselves dissatisfied with American pizza [ftnt. 13]. I don't think they even visited Chicago. Outrage turned to scorn when it was revealed that these ``Neapolitans'' were from Milan.

To put the matter as generously as possible, Milan is not famous for pizza. The truth is, they haven't even evolved the enzymes necessary to digest tomato yet. Milan is famous for judges. When there began to be a backlash against the Milan judges during the summer of 1995, I was pleased.

Of course, the Italian people are not lashing back at the Milan judges because they are offended at the slander of American pizza. Those Milan pizza judges were faux judges, judges manqués. They were trying to pass themselves off as Naples police, but Naples police have no legal authority in the US, even with impressive-looking Argentine ID. Nothing special against Italians, but taking a trans-Atlantic flight to pick up a pepperoni pizza is not considered ``hot pursuit.''

No, the Italian people are concerned because of an imbalance between the parliamentary side of government and the judicial side. In normal times, a politician first serves a number of years in parliament, and then a few years in an institution of the judicial establishment. A responsible politician in good health used to have a chance to be in and out of several coalition governments before being formally charged. Now, however, the time between holding office and facing prosecution is decreasing. Some politicians, for whom political office reportedly represents the only source of personal wealth, don't get enough time in office to steal an adequate legal defense fund.

It is a stunning turnabout: Put simply, the Italian people, who for years had more governments than anyone else in the world, now face the possibility of a shortage. They're already cutting back on elections. In contrast, Iraq just had an election even though they only had one candidate. Soon the only candidates in Italy will be those too stupid or fanatical to rob a bank in Naples, or too smart and dangerous to get caught.

Last Friday the thirteenth, October 1995, a judge in Milan announced that recent PM Silvio Berlusconi would stand trial on bribery charges. I can't say for certain whether he's guilty or innocent, but I do know this: he didn't bribe anyone, or enough.

It is the end: Ciao, Fini.

Flash! 21 April 1996: The Olive Tree wins! Eurocommunists finally get to learn all the precious secrets NATO had entrusted to 53 safe Italian governments over the last 48 years or so! Yet Italy is also back on track to status quo ante: less than two years since previous elections!

If, despite these portents, you nevertheless decide to visit Naples, visit the Campanian Society entry first. Oh, here's something: in the August 1997 issue of The Atlantic Monthly (they pay me extra to italicize the definite article), a travel feature, ``Napoli Ever After'' gets the following brief in the TOC:

Even people who have never visited Naples can list reasons (the grime, the crime) not to go. Those reasons no longer pertain.

Mmm, here's some old news from Italy. Back in 52 (I mean 52 BCE), Rome was in the grip of mob warfare. After the senate building was burned down, the senate passed an unprecedented law making Pompey, a former general, the single consul. Among other things, or inter alia, as they might say, Pompey made a law that after any consul or praetor's one-year term of office, five years had to elapse before he could become a governor. The reasoning was that this would allow sufficient time for prosecution of any crimes he committed in the first office before he assumed the second.

Some years earlier, Gaius Verres had, um, served as governor of Sicily. His one-year tenure was extended twice. He liked to say (1 Verr. 40) that he'd be able to keep the first year's profit for himself, pay his patrons (who wangled him the post) and attorneys with the profits of the second year, and have all the third (and most lucrative) year's profit available for [bribing] the jury. Maybe he should have tried a different approach. He was convicted in 70 BCE, thanks to Cicero's great prosecutorial performance. That chick pea was an unbearably principled fellow.

The movie ``The Year of Living Dangerously'' (1982) depicts Suharto's murderous rise to power in the 1960's. Mr. Suharto banned the film in Indonesia. He stepped down after major rioting in 1998, when the Asian economic crisis took its show to Indonesia. Mr. Suharto's successor, Abdurrahman Wahid, appointed a new national board of censors which decided that this movie did not have too much sex or violence, and which claimed it does not consider politics (although some of the censors recommended that slogans on some communist banners in the film be blurred, as well a female breast). Their decision came in time by a few hours for the movie's scheduled first public screening (uncut), the evening of Nov. 8, 2000 at the Jakarta International Film Festival.

Of course, writers in English have from time to time independently used it (I mean it) as a noun, signaling the use by a determiner or adjective. There are also endless instances of ``an it,'' but here an is almost always the synonym of if, rather than the article. (You know -- ``an it please your worships,'' scrape, scrape.) Searching for ``the it'' in prose on the LION database, I find that all the modern instances either are instances of anacoluthon or really just mean ``the word it.'' I'm very happy about this, because if I don't find more occasions to use it, I'll never remember it (I mean the word anacoluthon, of course). A word pair that looks like ``the it'' occurs frequently in Old and Middle English, but the the is normally the word we now spell thee.

But poetry comes to the rescue. For example, A.R. Ammons published a poem in 1993 that mentions ``the it'' a number of times. He explains that `` `the it' is the indifference of all the differences.'' That sounds, encouragingly, somewhat -- let's say ``indifferently'' -- mathematical. In mathematics, terms are defined once. Everything else you can say about the thing defined, generally, either follows from the definition or is equivalent to the definition, if you've done your definition right. But Ammons also says that it (the it) is the finest issue of energy in which boulders and dead stars float. He says other things. The poem is called ``Garbage,'' and as the first lines make clear, the poem is self-referential (not to say self-obsessed).

James Broughton made good use of capitalization in ``Here's to It (A Metaphysical Drinking Song).'' His ``the It,'' also suffers from excessive definition, but at least the definitions rhyme. (E.g., ``It's a metaphysical hunting kit.'') The poem was apparently written in 1968. W.N. Herbert mentioned ``the it-iness'' of cities. Shouldn't that be ``it-ness''? It certainly makes better rhymes. Karl Jay Shapiro mentioned ``the it-ness'' of trees. Haven't any of these guys heard of the cooties?

When an IDA in NY takes title to a property as part of a project (exempting that property from property tax), the project developer and the IDA usually enter into a PILOT agreement under which the developer pays the IDA for basic services. (I don't know how or if that revenue stream eventually makes it into the police and fire budgets, which are the usual basic services named.) The developer also pays the special district taxes.

Prof. S. Chakravarty, of the Computer Science Department at UB, is coauthor of a book on IDDQ testing.

The IDE standard was based on a 16-bit bus (the IBM PC's ISA, originally); each drive with a built-in controller. It was largely replaced by Enhanced IDE (EIDE, q.v.), which is obsolete.

It's sponsored by Soros's OSI and its over two dozen member nations are basically all the former Warsaw Pact countries and their fragments (and Haiti). It's a fine do-gooder idea, and they even have a ``Karl Popper debate format'' -- ``a three-person format developed specifically for this program to encourage teamwork and cooperation.'' (Famous people should have the sense to trademark their names so this kind of thing doesn't happen to them after they're dead. Hmmm, seems back in 1999 or so Pablo Picasso's last surviving son licensed the family name to Citroën for some van, and Marina Picasso, one of the artist's granddaughters, sought a permanent injunction against the licencing. I'll have to look into how that turned out.)

I imagine it won't do much harm, and if Soros wants to spend his money on these games, well, it's his money (now). But logical thinking is not the problem. These nations regularly produce ten-year-old grand masters who whup our ass in chess, okay? And formal rhetorical skills are not exactly hallmarks of the leadership cadres of the triumphant democratic West, either.

The problem of contending religions has only ever been humanely solved by tolerance, and tolerance is not logical, and not clearly defensible on principles, unless the principles are cooked in advance. Tolerance is merely peaceable and reasonable. On perfectly sound principles, it may be irrational. In that case, sound leadership requires noble hypocrisy and fluent dissembling.

Making a successful civil polity is a bit like making wine. It requires many small ingredients, as Soros understands, and balance which no one can impose, and it is not easily accelerated. A complete list of necessary ingredients would be long indeed, but I would name three that are in obvious short supply in the many countries that have free speech, free elections, an independent judiciary, and long-term ``instability.''

1. General personal security
2. Confidence in the law
3. Good will

Oh, yeah -- that-all is opinion, my idea.

The word idem is normally used in English scholarly texts to compress and make obscure a sequence of citations in successive footnotes or endnotes, and it is conventionally understood to mean `the same as the source immediately preceding, where source is understood as being specified up to the part -- typically a page number or page range -- that is indicated to be different here.' This is normally described as ``the same as above.'' Things are confusing enough as it is. If it could also mean ``the same as below,'' you might combine it with op. cit. to make a formidable illogic puzzle. Idem is often abbreviated id.

In Spanish, the word is used more widely in ordinary speech. Spelled ídem, it can mean `the same.' That's the same as lo mismo, but not exactly the same as el mismo or la misma, which are better translated as `the same one' (male and female forms, resp.). There are even colloquial phrases like ``ídem de ídem'' (a slightly mock-serious phrase, so it seems to me, meaning `just what was said before').

``Serving to promote the technological, manufacturing, marketing and business progress of the disk drive manufacturing industry.''

this is the kind of rhetorical question that you can easily work into an ordinary, if somewhat belligerent, conversation .

``The glory of creation is in its infinite diversity.''
``And in the way our differences combine to create meaning and beauty.''

-- Dr. Miranda Jones and Mr. Spock, ``Is There in Truth No Beauty?,'' stardate 5630.8

The IDIC has become a very special symbol (and lifestyle) to Star Trek fans. Designed by the late Star Trek creator, Gene Roddenberry, the IDIC symbol was worn by Mr. Spock in TOS episode, ``Is There in Truth No Beauty?'' Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations represents a Vulcan belief that beauty, growth, progress--all result from the union of the unlike. Concord, as much as discord, requires the presence of at least two different notes. The brotherhood of man is an ideal based on learning to delight in our essential differences, as well as learning to recognize our similarities. The IDIC symbol is a union of a plain circle and triangle, uniting to produce the beautiful gemstone in the middle. The circle represents infinite, nature, woman, etc; the triangle can represent the finite, art, man, etc.

IDIC remains the simplest, purest, most powerful idea in Star Trek, an idea that has clear implications for our own times.

The ``first interracial kiss'' (or perhaps the first black-white) on TV took place on Star Trek. Roddenberry's casting was (rather obviously) ``progressive.'' Somewhere on the web ``Sulu'' describes the humility with which GR offered him what was rare in that day and still today: a role played by someone who simply happened to be Asian. Many (and to some degree all) of the episodes were morality plays about tolerance. Originally, the `emotionless' `logical' Spock character was supposed to be a woman, but there was too much resistance. Mr. Spock was, however, the child of a mixed marriage (human-Vulcan). ``Human'' is one of those old-fashioned words they used on Star Trek. It meant `terran.' Looks like Mr. Spock took after his dad. [But in this picture he is holding his hand as if giving a Jewish priestly (kohen) benediction. And he needs a shave.]

If it seems quaint or petty that this was once a big deal, then it may be that you can thank Roddenberry for some of your effortless sophistication. The real heroism of Star Trek was his social daring, taking altruistic risks in a syndication market governed by almighty ratings.

I looked because of Der Streit der Fakultäten, Kant's most accessible and by far most amusing book (and his last, not counting posthumous stuff and stuff published for him by others during his last sickness). A fair translation of the title in context would be The Conflict of the [Academic] Disciplines. Somewhere in the three essays this book comprises (essays staking where the Philosophy Department's turf meets those of the Theology, Medicine, and Law Departments), he paraphrases some other discipline's protest as ``Sie heissen uns Idioten!'' [`You call us idiots!'] Presumably he meant that in the original sense. That's the trouble with learning too much: it makes your writing harder to understand.

The book is celebrated by Kantophiles as a heroic stand for freedom of speech in the academic context -- i.e., ``academic freedom.'' It does make a limited plea for freedom, but that is sadly modest, a reminder of the absolute monarchy under which it was written and eventually allowed (by one censor) to be published. This in 1798.

A ``nonce word'' is an invented word (like philosophunculist) with a sense that is obvious (from the putative etymology, say). The term ``nonce word'' does not cover the idiosyncratic, possibly idiolectical use of an ordinary word in an unusual but (by some) understandable sense. Perhaps we can say instead that Kant's Idiot is a nonce sense.

I plan to return to this entry at some point in time, and add some information.

Newsgroup and listserv usage.

Well if you don't know, I can't help you. I mean, what are you saying here? Could you be more specific? Your paratactics are getting on my nerves. Scram!

If you take a good look at the Milky Way (I won't say a good close look) from someplace within it but toward the edge (from earth, say), you'll notice that the very middle is not as bright as the edges. That's because of all the IDP.

A book described at the manual transmission entry contains this exchange:

How far is it to Fairfax?

Dunno.

Does this road go to Fairfax?

Dunno.

Say, you don't know much, do you?

Nope ... but I ain't lost.

I once lived in Fairfax County, Virginia, but what this reminds me of is an experience I had biking in rural France.

I was on a language-related mission: I biked to the town of Condom to buy condoms, just so I could say I had done so. (I have done so.) You cannot imagine my chagrin, when after 25 km that I recall to have been all uphill, I whipped out my pocket dictionary and did not find this word. A protective amnesia has settled over the period when I learned the necessary vocable (preservatif). I do recall that it involved pantomime.

On the way back, after I got lost, I received directions in sign language. For example:

English:

You are very far from Chateau de Bonas.

Universal sign language:

Repeat ``Chateau de Bonas?'' wide-eyed, slap forehead once.

I also encountered nasty little bicycle-chasing dogs, and also ruminants. The ruminants did not give very energetic chase, but they acted like they had never seen a bicycle before. Many of them trotted up to their fences to get a better look. French cows seem to be a different breed than American cows -- either more nearsighted, or more intellectually active (or both, conforming to stereotype as well as recent research on humans). The fences looked too flimsy to detain any seriously intrigued bovine. This concern became more acute over the last dozen km, which I had to walk on account of a flat tire, pushing the borrowed old cast-iron three-speed beside me, in the rain, in the dark (all uphill again!).

Because the road was narrow and I had no lights, after it got dark (I got back to Chateau de Bonas long after dinner) I would push over to the side of the road whenever I heard a car coming. Sometimes the car was one of those Peugeot Rattletrappes (I think Rattletrap is French for a `three-cylinder, two-stroke, zero-muffler engine,' but maybe it means `corrugated-tin roof resonator.') These were so loud and slow that I usually spent five minutes waiting for them to appear. For another Peugeot achievement in technologie hybride (that'd be moto/automobile-merdiquée hybrids), see the differential entry.

Back in the 40's or 50's, Vance Packard wrote an interesting popular report on studies of animal intelligence, issued under a couple of titles, one of which was Animal IQ. I understand that why dogs bark is an open and active research question. Presumably, why cows low is similarly unknown, but I suspect that they lack the intelligence to engage in very interesting communication. For evidence, read about ``hardware disease'' at the cow magnet entry. (Reports from England in 2006, however, assert the existence of distinguishable local ``accents'' in cow mooing, including something identified as a ``Somerset drawl.'')

Probably the most famous rule is

``i before e except after c.''

``i before e except after c, or when pronounced as a.''

The latter rule takes care of neighbor, their, the heir/hierarchy confusion, and deity, for which a special mnemonic is given below. Some special cases are still left over (e.g., height), and while it is best simply to memorize many of these, some others are best regarded simply as diphthongs not covered by the rule (e.g., science, although words like conscience are trickier cases).

For more English spelling help, see this 28-rule list.

There is a similar, much less severe problem in German. Words with ``ie'' are pronounced in some cases, depending on the accent and the consonants following, like words with ``i.'' English speakers are taught to choose between ``ei'' and ``ie'' spellings according to the (English) sound of the second letter (d.h., ``ei'' for ``long i,'' ``ie'' for ``long e''). These spellings, which obviously represent literal transcription of diphthongs in earlier pronunciations, have an interesting history, because the old pronunciations they represent arose among German-speaking settlers in the ``east.''

Here's the Irish page of an X.500 directory.

Indo-European is the official language family of the Stammtisch Beau Fleuve. Nevertheless, we concede that Chinese is a major world language. Unix curses have also been uttered.

The WWW Virtual Library has an Industrial Engineering index.

In Spanish, however, IE is Ingeniería Electrónica, which stands for `Electronic Engineering.' We`re everywhere!

LookSmart has a short page of IE links.

Of course, I'm just kidding. Everybody realizes that the only reason the acronym appears in two languages is to assuage British resentment of French cultural success. Look, in the twentieth century Britain was forced to give up a world-wide empire that extended to every inhabited continent, whereas France lost a much smaller area mostly restricted to Africa and Asia. And no amount of ``European plane'' window-dressing can disguise the fact that final assembly of Airbuses is in Toulouse. High fashion too takes off from the runways of Paris, not London, and no one eats ``British cuisine.'' Finally, France has completely outclassed England in the competition that matters most -- outrageous idiot intellectuals. The glory days of Karl Marx at the British Museum are long past. What can England answer to Sartre, Foucault, Derrida, Lacan? Benny Hill? Freud's granddaughter hosted an interview programme on the Beeb whose lame attempt to epater le bourgoise was using a bed for a couch. Oh, it's crushingly hard to be British these days, when your long-time rival is so triumphant.

Interestingly, whereas Electrical Engineering degree programs in the US are accredited by an organization (ABET) separate from the IEEE, in Britain the IEE handles the job.

(Not to be confused with Interface Engineering Inc., Consulting Engineers.)

Don't believe me? Okay, it's in charge of deciding when to make time jump, as explained at the UTC entry. They also have a longer official name: International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service.

Subsequent amplification may be conveniently performed at this frequency. This has the advantage that the frequency range of signal to be amplified is fractionally small (i.e., a small fraction of the IF). Within this narrow band, it is easy to achieve linear, frequency-independent amplification.

IF is not the final frequency because after amplification, the desired signal is extracted as deviations (AM, FM, or long story) away from a pure IF signal.

For information on the use of punctuated forms of the abbreviation, read the attributive noun entry.

If information is nonnegative, then it probably won't hurt much to visit the ABC entry.

The comedian who smashes watermelons with a mallet on cable TV has complained that the ``brightness'' knob on most sets does not seem to work properly. (He should talk.) This is why.

The IFBB was founded in 1946 by Ben Weider and his brother Joe. In January 1998, then-President of the IOC Juan Antonio Samaranch welcomed the IFBB ``into the Olympic family.'' (That doesn't mean it gets to be even so much as a demonstration sport at any Olympics. Cf. WBF.)

Bodybuilders have always been at the cutting edge (that's a pun, son) of chemical progress. Wayne DeMilia, who headed the IFBB pro division from 1980 until 2004 and oversaw such limited testing as was conducted, said in 2005 that ``everybody in bodybuilding takes drugs.''

``The problem, as the media is finding out now, is that testing runs two to three steps behind people coming up with new drugs and masking agents,'' he said. In addition, he noted that there are no effective tests for growth hormone or insulin, and masking agents for diuretics have grown more effective. Possibly most important, except for a few years in the mid-1990's, the IFFB didn't conduct off-season random testing of the bodybuilders. As the Olympics and such mainstream sports as football and baseball have learned [SBF is echoing news reports here; the SBF content-injector doubts that mainstream sports have learned very much], announced tests on the day of competition are unlikely to catch anyone who has been alerted. ``Let's be honest,'' DeMilia said, ``They're taking stuff that can't be detected.''

Ben Weider, CM, CQ, SBStJ, PhD, is still president of the IFBB as of this writing (2006). He is also a historian by inclination and publication, so the following is mildly amusing. In a 1999 interview (and elsewhere) he rhapsodizes: ``Getting bodybuilding recognised by the IOC was almost like making an impossible dream become reality. ... As Churchill said during the Second World War, it was a struggle of `blood, sweat and tears,' and a lot of perseverance.'' Of course, ``Blood, Sweat, and Tears'' is just the name of a rock band; everyone knows that WSC's famous phrase was ``blood, toil, tears, and sweat.'' It's evident that Weider wanted to include the toil concept, so it's amusing that the president (of an activity that is practically distilled toil) remembered only the bodily fluids.

The national organizations that are members of IFED are generally called academies. The British academy doesn't belong to IFED, but it's BAAD.

Maybe IFED could hire K-Fed as a goodwill ambassador. He's got a nice smile, and like the UN goodwill ambassadors his celebrity is mostly expired, and I hear he's available cheap.

You think I'm kidding, that nothing could be as bad as dread Physical Chemistry? This article, written from a pedagogical point of view, uses words like fear and loathing, and urges that the courses be made easier so the students will show up in class (I exaggerate only a little).

Do you realize that, if they had hurried up and founded it in 1901, they could be celebrating their centennial this year, instead of this awkward bis-jubilee next year. That would be cool. The ``and Institutions'' was not part of the official name until after 1976 sometime. It didn't just happen to be left unrepresented in the acronym.

Cf. ICLC.

You know, I'm a poet too. There aren't any certification tests for poet. I'm a five-star black-belt poet with an iron cross, eagle ring, six olive clusters, and three large coconuts, and my poems can crush your poems without breaking a sweat.

On second thought, I think that another high-level conference is just the thing that will bring lasting peace. But only if the joint closing statement is carefully crafted to paper over the unresolvable differences.

AFLAC!!!!

IFPI is affiliated with RIAA.

``A nongovernmental organization in official relations with WHO,'' who have this information sheet for the IFRHO.

IFRT used to be the IFC.

``An Online Teaching And Reference Institute
of N U M E R I C A L Systematic Philosophy
Ideometry. A Natural Science
Tables of Prime Factors In Ideo-Quinary Numerals

You get the idea. If you poke around, you can read about ``Computer Aided Philosophy.''

An IGC met in Turin in 1996.

The idea for an IGFET was patented in Britain in 1935. The first commercially successful IGFET's were Si MOSFET's, which became available in the later sixties (nMOS ROM and SRAM) once cleanrooms became clean enough to keep sodium out of the oxide.

A special case is the non-denial denial.

Okay, here's the information you've been waiting for: what's the weather like in Changchun? Thanks to a job posting, we can say that it is ``normally sunny, dry and clear'' but
Winter c. -25 to -10 °C
Summer c. 16 - 28 °C

Take a sweater.

For more information, see this posting on the Classics list.

Alfred Nobel's first great technical achievement was the invention of dynamite, a manageable form of nitroglycerine.

``I HOP'' may also express the idea that ``I am hopping [mad]!'' Today I ate at the local IHOP for the last time. I was served late, I had to ask three times for my drink, my order was taken and forgotten, then apparently taken incorrectly, and the food was unsatisfactory. At least I didn't have to wait five minutes to be cashed out, as happened on an earlier occasion.

You're probably thinking I should stop complaining and just get a life, but stop a moment and think: I am I really the sort of glossarist who would bore you with the petty irritations of my life if there were not some important larger point to be made? Would I just blather on about such stuff? What do you think?

Wrong! There is a bigger point here, and I'll make it eventually.

Once while waiting too long to be seated, I looked at the seating chart and noticed a management notice to the effect that employees caught hanging out at a certain nearby table would be dismissed. I guess management was never there when I was. For reasons beyond my ken, employees at that IHOP are particularly prone to haunting the place when they're off duty. Scratch that, generalize; they're particularly prone to being off-duty when they're there. The second-to-last time I ever go there, as I was beginning my meal, my waitress asked if there was anything I would want, as she was going on break. An off-duty co-worker sitting nearby razzed her, saying ``you just took a break!'' You probably think I'm making this stuff up. Your fall-back opinion is that it serves me right for going more than once. I guess I just thought it had to be a fluke, and another fluke, and... Really poor service is rarely a fluke; it's a management failure. Today among the off-duty personnel at nearby tables, I overheard one waitress complaining that the other day she figured out that she had only earned 4.5% in tips. I was tempted to tell her that that was probably right. (I actually checked discreetly to see who it was. She wasn't anyone who had ever waited on me, though of course I'd seen her around.) In the future if I want service this poor I can go to Denny's -- it's closer.

I can't say that all big restaurant chains have shabby service. Indeed, over the long run you imagine none can. But in the highly competitive restaurant business, chains exhibit the effects of management failure in interesting ways. To contrast, consider the restaurants in my area that are not franchises of some chain. They go out of business at an extraordinary rate, as I suggest at the pork rinds entry. But more to the point, on an individual basis they decline quickly. The suddenness is expressed in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman (1949):

Willy was a salesman. And for a salesman, there is no rock bottom to the life. He don't put a bolt to a nut, he don't tell you the law or give you medicine. He's a man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine. And when they start not smiling back -- that's an earthquake. And then you get yourself a couple of spots on your hat, and you're finished.

Most retailing is like that; it doesn't matter whether the salesman travels to the customers like Willy, or puts up a sign and waits for the customers to come to him. What matters is that when you're being paid for a commodity, you're often competing on the basis of customer service. Restaurants -- prepared-food retailers -- can compete by offering unusual cuisine (don't tell me they can offer food that everyone likes more) or low price, or convenient location or speed. But it's not called ``food-service'' for nothing.

Oops! You made a mistake: you came here before I finished the entry. Say ``my bad'' and come back in five months.

• Centre for Metropolitan History (CMH)
• Centre of Contemporary British History (CCBH; earlier ICBH)
• Victoria County History (VCH)

Look, I know the following is disordered, but it might help you to figure things out until I do.

That briefly is the usual practice with ruling houses. A definite outlier is the House of Reuss, which has had a number of lines (e.g., younger and older Reuss-Plauen lines, and Reuss-Lobenstein) as well as extinctions. One is reminded of Candide's adoptive family and their precious quarterings. The Reuss Younger Line, is a dynasty that ruled a German principality from 1806 (founded with Napoleon's Confederation of the Rhine) until 1918 (defeat of the German Empire). All the males of that house were named Heinrich, but they each got a serial number that was unique enough (counting restarted each century). Hence, the first member of the family to reign in the principality was already Heinrich XLII. If some later ruler of the principality had had the same number, then presumably he would have been Heinrich XLII the Second, or Heinrich XLII II, not to be confused with his cousin Heinrich XLIV.

This is a real entry, and not something concocted by Monty Python. All males of the House of Reuss have been named Heinrich since Heinrich I von Weida. Read some of the messy details here. The Reuss Elder Line followed the same numbering practice (and ruled a smaller principality that existed from 1778 to 1918), but was less fecund. Both comprised archipelagos of territory in Thuringia. They had the unimaginative names of Fürstentum Reuß <fooere> Linie, where <fooere> took the values ältere and jungere, resp. (`Principality of the Reuss <Foo> Line,' <Foo> `Elder' and `Younger'). The lines were also distinguished as Reuß-Greiz (elder) and Reuß-Gera (younger). There were a number of lines in the Reuss house, and a few extinctions.

The weird numbering of the Reusses (set aside the use of a single given name for all males) approximates the usual practice of assigning numbers to nonrulers. In the line of a common family, a ``Jr.'' is used to distinguish the son when a father and son have the same given names; II and III are used to designate bearers of a name in the second and third generations when three generations bear the same name. For an instance of 2.0, see the downtown Holland entry. The Romans used many given names that simply stated birth order. In this connection, see Septimus; for a related idea, read about Jefferson Finis Davis. You may not want to be reminded of Bush 41 or Bush 43.

Most names in English are specifically male or female, but it sometimes happens that a parent and child of opposite sex share a name. For example, I know a father and daughter Gene and Jeanne, though I don't know how they spell their names. Dale and Dana would be clearer-cut cases. Anyway, I've never encountered Jr. or II used in such a case, and it would seem odd to me, but you never know.

It occurred to me to write this entry when I learned of a Douglas MacArthur II who was the nephew of General Douglas MacArthur. There wasn't any remarriage involved. Captain Arthur MacArthur III and Mary McCalla MacArthur had a son in 1909 and named him Douglas Arthur MacArthur or something after Arthur's younger brother Douglas (who did not have a middle name Arthur), and this Douglas was known as Douglas MacArthur II. So far as I can tell without working too hard, Gen. Douglas MacArthur had one son, by his second wife, in 1938, and Douglas MacArthur II did not have a son.

Using IIAR too frequently can make you seem self-centered and dismissive of others' contributions. Therefore, be sure to also consider ``If You Are Wrong.''

I think the Beatles had a relevant song.

You don't have to refrigerate ammonia. It keeps.

In the foreword to their Sphere Packings, Lattices and Groups (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1988), J. H. Conway and N. J. A.  Sloane wrote:

At one point while working on this book we even considered adopting a special abbreviation for ``It is a remarkable fact that,'' since this phrase seemed to occur so often.

For a greater example of prescience, see the entry for ``Likes romantic walks on the beach.''

And for all you militantly descriptivist lexicographers out there, no, I've never seen the abbreviation given above, in either form, in use anywhere else... yet.

1. IIC's funded and accountable to outside parties, with staffs and members, ultimately selected by outsiders, whose interests do not conflict with the goal of a thorough investigation and an accurate and complete report.
2. Real IIC's.

IIII, VIIII, XIIII, XXXX, LXXXX, CXXXX, DCCCC, MCCCC were fairly standard in (Roman) Republican times. In early Imperial times, subtractive forms became increasingly common -- not just IX for nine but XIIX for eighteen, etc. There was evidently a long period during which both subtractive and additive forms were common. For an analysis of the epigraphic evidence see B. E. Thomasson ``Zu den Notis Numeralium in Lateinischen Inschriften,'' Opuscula Romana 3.1961, 169-178, in particular the table on p. 171.

(As the example suggests, the group-I elements are transition metals -- group IB in the most common traditional namings, or group 11 in the IUPAC numbering. Also as the naming and examples suggest, the group-III and -VI elements are main-group elements in the p-block: groups IIIA and VIA in the traditional American scheme, IIIB and VIB in the traditional European scheme, and 13 and 16 according to IUPAC. It's a lot easier to add obvious comments about the notation than to go and learn anything about the actual semiconductors.)

IIM was created in 1963. As an entertainment input to those who would never think of learning about this organization and having a cynical chuckle or curl of the lip, I present their self-description. IIM is

a non-profit research and social action organization, dedicated to promoting an ever-deepening understanding of cultural pluralism, intercultural relations and social change. Its scope is local, national as well as international.

Although harmonius [sic] ethnic relations and cultural diversity are generally recognized as desirable, little is understood about the transformative possibilities they offer our pluralistic world.

iim is committed to exploring these possibilities in order to meet contemporary economic, ecological, social and civilizational challenges. These can only be met by a sincere search for wisdom and insight from each and every culture, through dialogue, understanding and cooperation.

The philosophy and practices of iim find their roots in the non-institutional and community sectors of our societies. The Institute's spirit has been one of engaging itself in a dynamic interaction between the public and private or the formal and informal sectors, without compromising its identity as a community organization.

A major motivation to study II-VI semiconductors is their broad range of bandgaps (from 0 in HgTe to wide in CdTe) and the demonstrated possibility of making MBE- and MOCVD-grown heterostructures as in the III-V system. (VCSEL's are popular structures.) They also have interesting magnetic properties [Dilute Magnetic Semiconductors are generally II-VI materials with low Mn (or Fe) concentration]. A variety of technological challenges, though, have so far prevented the practical fabrication of electronic and electro-optic devices out of II-VI semiconductors. These include difficulties in doping, instabilities in the epitaxial growth process, and rapid micromechanical degradation of optical devices during use (2.5-hour laser lifetimes were reported at an 8/95 II-VI conference in Edinborough).

There was an unofficial II-VI homepage, which is supposed to have moved to this new location, but I can't reach it.

A friend of mine (Dan) works for II-VI Incorporated, so I've put a link in. See?

Cleveland Crystals serves a list of properties.

There's a low-traffic UK-based mailing list for II-VI researchers called semiconductors-2-6.

German words with the root Kolleg- are often faux amis of English words with a cognate root. The English word colleague does correspond to the German Kollege (female form Kollegin), but Kollege also means `counterpart, opposite number': interior ministers of different countries, though they might hardly be ``colleagues,'' are conventionally Kollegen (yup: the plural form).

German Kolleg usually refers either to a course of lectures or specifically to a Roman Catholic theological college. On the edge of similarity is the use of Kollegs or Kollegien (alternative plurals) for special secondary schools to prepare adults for university admission. I don't know much about them, but it sounds like an honest description of a junior college. Kollegialität is not exactly `collegiality' now but either `friendliness' or `loyalty to one's co-workers.'

Normally, Ike is the nickname of someone named Isaac.

There's a business hagiography by Bertil Torekull, Leading by Design: The IKEA Story {tr. Joan Tate} (New York: HarperBusiness, 1999). According to Appendix C, IKEA was registered as a firm 1941-1943. In 1941, Mr. Kamprad turned 15. That sounds about right. IK's cousin is quoted on his early years:

... He caught fish and crayfish and was adventurous and bold, stuffing the crayfish he'd just caught down the back of his long johns. He was like that.

The Villanova University Law School provides some links to state government web sites for Illinois. USACityLink.com has a page with mostly city and town links.

iGuide is ``Your Guide to Israeli Internet.'' (I think by ``your'' they mean mine, but I don't object if you, dear reader, use it as well. Consider it yet another generous service of the Stammtisch Beau Fleuve.) Sponsored by NetVision.

A very useful feature, given the varying ways in which Jewish names are transliterated across different alphabets, is the phonetic-match name email address lookup provided at IBM Israel's Electronic phonebook.

Here's the Israeli page of an X.500 directory.

You can see the Wailing Wall here, from the safety of your ergonomic chair.

Is the organization name pronounced ``I'll go''? They've been trying to march in New York City's annual Saint Patrick's Day parade since at least 1991. The Ancient Order of Hibernians, which organizes the parade, denied them permission to march that year (as every year since), but they participated anyway as invited guests of then-mayor David Dinkins. They and he were pelted with nasty words and beer cans. I often wonder about these situations: is there a place where protesters who didn't plan ahead can exchange their empty bottles for acceptable aluminum projectiles, or are they reduced to relying on their verbal creativity?

During WWII, domestic car manufacture was halted so production capacity could be devoted to war materiel, and gasoline and rubber were rationed (see also Jeep). Ford then sold its building on the northeast corner of West 54th Street and Broadway in Manhattan to the ILGWU. You can see a picture of the building on page B25 of the July 7, 2000, New York Times (first page of the Weekend Section), illustrating David W. Dunlap's article ``Street of Automotive Dreams'' (a mile and a half of Broadway, centered approximately on Columbus Circle).

The six-story Ford building was built in 1917 to designs of Albert Kahn, one of the foremost American architects of the century. It has a red-tiled hip roof, so you think you're in a lazy Mediterranean villa, get loose and careless, wander out onto Broadway and get flattened by a delivery van. Then again, maybe not. The building runs half a block along Broadway; UNITE has a twenty-foot-by-ten-foot elevator. Talk about feeling guilty for not using the stairs. The ground floor, which used to be a showroom, is occupied by UNITE-owned Amalgamated Bank.

On the northwest corner of the same intersection, mostly facing W 54th, there used to be a REO showroom. Now it's a deli.

Set a half a block back from Broadway, the old Automobile Club (ACA) building (1910) and its annex span the block from 54th to 55th. There was parking for about 1000 cars, and amenities included accommodations for chauffeurs and Turkish baths. Now the buildings house the Labor Department (NYSDOL) and the Hearst Corporation. Like a lot of Auto Clubs around the country, the one in New York became a local affiliate of the AAA and changed its name to reflect its diminished territorial ambitions (``Automobile Club of New York''). You know, New York is the ``Empire State.'' The Auto Club is falling down by having its headquarters in Garden City. New Jersey is the Garden State. In two hundred years, New York hasn't invaded Vermont. Oh, wait, there's something here. They also have a travel agency at 1881 Broadway (NW corner with 62nd Street), upstairs from the Bank of New York. That building used to house the Martin Cadillac showroom. Since property values drove the last dealership to Eleventh Avenue in 1985 (gee, that's 15 years ago already), that little AAA travel agency may be the last toehold of auto business on old Auto Row.

Gary's dad was in the furniture business for a while. When a new furniture store set up near his store, his son worried that that'd steal business. Gary's dad said that to the contrary, they wanted the furniture stores clustered together. It's better for business. Another thing, in the big fire, I guess the competition burned down too. People can make surprising jokes at their own misfortune, but it may be hard to remember them afterwards. I'm just typing here, it may come to me. Hmm. It'll have to be in a later revision.

A guy I sat next to on a plane was reading internal literature from his company, Discount Auto Parts. When he went to the bathroom, I learned that they don't worry about having stores in nearby towns. There's a synergetic effect: putting a new DAP store moderately near an old one actually increases business at the old store. Studies Show that. But maybe people go to the old store because they see ads for DAP and go to the one they already know. Maybe this steals business from the new store. Evolutionary biology is all about this kind of thinking, but this isn't an evolutionary biology entry, is it? No, I didn't think so.

Now Gary lives close to Mishawaka. (So do I, but to mention that here would interrupt the flow of the definition narrative, so I don't. Sharp glossarists like me don't miss a trick.) Mishawaka-area auto dealers are concentrated on a stretch of Grape Road where the speed limit is 40 MPH, and on the same road there are competing auto parts stores across the street from each other. In Elkhart, the auto dealerships are on Bypass Road. If you want to select a car, you wait until the dealers go home and then visit the dealers' lots with Rob, who knows more about the cars and isn't working on commission. If you don't know Rob, I guess you're out of luck, huh? When you've chosen a car (test-drive any former friend's model) you order on the internet, and the local dealer that wins the bid hates you. That's why the auto lots are protected by guards. At Bypass Road, after waiting politely for Rob to pause in his discussion of options, the guard asked if we knew where she could buy that yellow police tape for cordoning off restricted areas. Must've been for another job.

We're talking Indiana, here, okay? If you want to know where the dealers are out of state, try 11th Ave. in NYC or North Avenue in Westfield, NJ. This should be obvious. If Mishawaka were in Japan, it would be Mishakawa, and there would probably be other differences as well.

There's a computer type font named Mishawaka, too.

Have you ever noticed how, when you buy a package of two or four chicken breast halves, they're all from the same side? They ``spoon'' better that way (here I suppose it would be enough to say they stack better), but it means that it takes two chickens to make one package of two chicken-breast halves.

Here is the mythical genealogy, specifically the paternal line, that explains some of the names:

1. Zeus
2. Dardanus
3. Erichthonius
4. Tros
5. Ilos
6. Laomedon
7. Priam

The region of Troy is called Dardania (see 2 above) and the legendary founder of the city is Ilos (5). The city is called after him or Troia after his father (4). Priam and his children have starring roles in the Iliad and in a variety of other works. A separate genealogy concerns another son of Tros, named Assaracus. The paternal line here goes

4. Tros
5. Assaracus
6. Capys
7. Anchises
8. Aeneas
9. Ascanius

The legendary mother of Aeneas, incidentally, was Venus. Aeneas is the star of Virgil's great epic which we call the Aeneid. I guess you could have figured that out yourself.

Each of the Homeric epics is divided into 24 books, although there is some question when this division was imposed. They're probably divided into 24 books because the Greek alphabet had 24 letters. The Aeneid is divided into 12 books, the first six modeled on the Iliad and the second six modeled on the Odyssey. The Aeneid begins with the words arma virumque cano, `arms and the man I sing.' One of the earliest plays (1894) of George Bernard Shaw was entitled ``Arms and the Man.''

Regarding that ``the'' there... (Say that out loud.) There is no definite article in Latin, so whether one should occur between the ``arms and'' and the ``man'' in English is a matter for the translator's judgment. (As the old saying goes, ``a translation is a commentary.'') Normally, new characters in a story are introduced with the indefinite article. (E.g., ``a priest, a minister, and a rabbi enter a bar.'') This is not a hard-and-fast rule, however. In many cases, the introduction of a character or situation implies others that no longer require an introductory indefinite article. (``The bartender says, `what is this, a joke'?'') There are other situations where one uses the definite article with the first mention of a subject. This usage carries the implication that you are already there or you already know this. It can have various effects on the reader, producing a sense of falling into an unfamiliar situation in medias res, for example, or a sense that the subject spoken of is so important or well-known as not to require introduction. For the Aeneid's opening halfline, many translations use ``the man'' or an equivalent expression. I happen to prefer that version.

One of the most recognizable scenes in Western art is Aeneas carrying his lame father on his shoulder through the burning ruins of defeated Troy, holding the hand of his son Ascanius.

Romance languages derive the forms of their nouns from the Latin accusative or ablative singular form (final ems became silent in Vulgar Latin, decreasing the difference between accusative and ablative). Hence, in Spanish the epic is known by the title La Ilíada (that's right stress: on the second i) and in French as L'Iliade. Other languages followed the cultural lead of France: Iliad in English, Iliade in German, etc. The philhellenic movement and classical philology of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries led German scholars to prefer a direct transliteration of the original Greek names over the traditional Latin and Romance forms. Thus Ilias is now common in Germany, while Iliade is clearly antiquated. (A similar tendency exists among English classicists, though it has had a variable impact. For example, classicists often use Herakles for Hercules, but that usage has not become common. On the other hand, the Greek name Athena seems to have almost completely supplanted the Latin Minerva in common usage, as Odysseus has Ulysses to a lesser extent.)

Writing in the classics list CLASSICS-L, Alice P. Radin recalls Herbert M. Howe thundering out the orthographic mnemonic:

The Iliad is not ill, nor is the Odyssey odd!

She has added that deities don't diet (but see ie entry), and solicited mnemonic help for the prophecy/prophesy dichotomy.

Actually, the Odyssey is odd. For that matter, there's probably an Otto somewhere in Ottawa.

The Homer and the Papyri website has

1. Up-to-date lists of papyri pertinent to the Iliad and the Odyssey.
2. A repertoire of variant readings contained in these papyri.

A little reflection shows us that if what we are maintaining is false, then anything implied by what we are maintaining is false. I must, however, admit that I know a learned man who professed himself unable to give unhesitating assent to this contention.

I trust that the stupidity of Stebbing's contention is obvious to most people, whether or not they use words like contrapositive or converse. Nevertheless, an example may be amusing: the proposition ``animals with four legs are dogs'' implies that cats are dogs and that dogs are dogs. Since cats are not dogs, dogs are not dogs either.

Stebbing, according to the back cover of this book, lectured in symbolic logic at Columbia University in 1931-32, and was the author of A Modern Introduction to Logic. There's a profile picture of her on the back cover, showing that she at one time suffered from either nausea or some other dyspepsia. She was also at one time Director of Moral Science Studies at Girton and Newnham Colleges, Cambridge, and she was President of the Aristotelian Society, and also of the Mind Association.

According to the same materials, from 1933 she was Professor of Philosophy at the University of London. This prompts me to rush to the defense of my good buddies in philosophy. Apart from phenomenologists, ``political philosophers,'' postmodern ``philosophers,'' philosophers of science, Kantians, Hegelians, other continental philosophers, analytic philosophers, philosophers of language, and a small number of other exceptions, most philosophers are intelligent. The stupid quote at the beginning of this entry is not representative of the kinds of mistake that philosophers generally make.

It's good they're only going for plain old excellence. You know the old saying -- ``better excellence is the enemy of good excellence.''

You know, when you think about it, excellent isn't an absolute adjective. Indeed, when you get right down to it, excellence is a very subjective thing. One man's ``fair'' is another man's ``excellent.'' This is a liberating thought, because it allows you to flatter with a clear conscience, i.e. without shame, or shamelessly, as the expression goes.

These thoughts are no reflection on ILRT, about which I know very little. Indeed, I've practically never heard of this internationally known center of excellence.

There's a Puerto Rican & Latino Studies Institute at the University of Connecticut, and there are plenty of Institutes Of Latin American Studies, such as The Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies at UT Austin (LLILAS).

If I hadn't been on the ILS mailing list, I would have remained blissfully unaware of the following important event: the premiere on January 23, 2002, of American Family: the first drama series on broadcast television to feature a Latino cast.

American Family was created by Academy Award-nominated director Gregory Nava (El Norte, Selena). ``The series is about an American Family living in Los Angeles that happens to be Latino,'' says Nava. ``I wanted to create a show that will make the audience laugh and cry as it chronicles the daily struggles and triumphs of a family. American Family is about everyone's family.''

I have somewhat mixed feelings about this. On one hand I suppose it is overdue. If you don't watch Univisión you might have the weird idea that the Los Angeles area is as Anglophone as whitebread 90210. On the other hand, the real problem with television is not that it fails to represent the real world accurately, but that it accounts for so much of peoples' limited understanding of the world that its knowledge lacunae become theirs. Of course, no one watches PBS, so the program is a nonevent.

A system for landing instruments, if the instruments are appropriately equipped aircraft.

1. Butterfly,
2. Backstroke,
3. Breaststroke, and
4. Freestyle.

This is the standard order. In the three-stroke medley, the butterfly part is eliminated. Each stroke (i.e., each style of swimming) is done for an integer number of laps. Freestyle must not be any of the previous strokes, but since it's a race, anyone who would repeat one of the earlier strokes could as easily be disqualified for drugging, since ordinary stupidity alone could not explain such a choice.

In a medley relay (in swimming), each of the different strokes is performed by a different swimmer. The order of the strokes is different then. If it turns out that there's an abbreviation for medley relay, then we'll make an entry for it and explain the order there. If it weren't for the Olympics, we would probably not be motivated to improve ourselves by acquiring this athletic knowledge. What we really need now is a ``muscular Christianity'' entry, but at least we have an entry for the word medley.

Amazing but true: in the state of Indiana, there is no automobile inspection. Not annual, not biennial, never. It's illegal to operate an unsafe vehicle, of course, but it'll have to be pretty bad before they stop you.

(Honesty compels me to admit that most IM-ing occurs in a guilt-free haze of unreflection. A shame culture without the shame.)

``Send an instant comment to me / Initial it -- with loving care!'' is a lyric from the Yes song ``I've Seen All Good People.'' (It seems to be about speed chess.)

In most of the longer entries of this glossary, you could usually insert BTW somewhere along about the beginning of the second paragraph, and IMAO at the end.

Oh-wait-a-second... That wasn't an I, that was a lower-case el. They weren't being frank about their opinions, they were laughing!

All video purchase links at IMDb point to <Amazon.com>. This might owe something to the fact that Amazon owns the IMDB. Other places to search for videos are

1. Facets.com
2. Reel.com
3. MoviesUnlimited.com

According to research published in Desirable Men, ``[o]ut of 20 activities listed that people typically do on dates, movies ranked as the most likely type of date to be cancelled. These results were ranked the same for both men and women.''

The last comment reminds me of research that shows men reporting significantly different frequencies of whatever with their wives than women report having with their husbands.

Most of the vehicle mass is in fuel, so if fuel can be manufactured on the Moon, it becomes attractive to start from there, and IMLEO becomes smaller and less critical.

Here's something on angel.

``I might steal your diamonds but, I'll bring you back some pearls.'' -- Fake pearls.

The whole eighteen cubits: He was named Titus Flavius Vespasianus at birth. (Titus was frequently abbreviated T.) On accession his title became Imperator Titus Flavius Vespasianus Caesar, and in August 69 C.E. he became Imperator Caesar Vespasianus Augustus. The next year he accreted ``pontifex maximus'' and ``pater patriae,'' and by the time he died he was Imperator Caesar Vespasianus Augustus, Pontifex Maximus, Tribuniciae potestatis X, Imperator XX, Pater Patriae, Consul IX. Of course, his pals just called him Max.

I really hope that the word imp is derived from this title abbreviation, but I fear it may not be, so I haven't dared to look it up. You'll just have to trust me on the etymology, and reason that it must be correct, since I wouldn't mislead you on a matter of this importance.

In fact, the past-participle adjective was used as early as 1601 in a botanical context (Philemon Holland's translation of Pliny's Historia Naturalis) with the sense of ``forcefully pressed into (or against).'' That adjective has continued in widespread botanical and medical use, and is probably most widely known from the expression ``impacted tooth.'' It is not necessary or even common to add the English past-participle suffix -ed to a word that happens to be constructed on the basis of a Latin participle, and in fact the original form of the adjective impacted (attested as early as 1563) was impacte or impact. It seems that this was misunderstood as short for a hypothesized form impacted, and that there the trouble began. Perhaps if the word had been impactate, none of this would have gotten started. Holland should have known better.

In due course the verb impact was back-constructed from the miscounstructed word impacted, and the verb was nouned to give the word we started out talking about two paragraphs ago. The scientific noun impact early on came to be used figuratively, as a colorful synonym of effect that implied a sudden or forceful cause.

Now that this history has been explained, we can get to the point of this entry, the casus belly-ache, so to speak.

In one chapter, Edna O'Brien compares the Ireland of her youth and of the present (the interview was conducted in 1984): ``Ireland is very different now, a much more secular land, where, ironically, both the love of literature and the repudiation of literature are on the wane.'' Irony, like humor generally, is not to be explained. Therefore, we must simply disagree that this coincidence is ironic. She continues: ``Ireland is becoming as materialistic and as callow as the rest of the world.'' Ireland was also becoming one of the economic tigers of the EU, so perhaps now it has the prosperity to be less materalistic. Want makes hunger, you know. The notion of becoming callow is an interesting one, however, since callowness is immaturity or lack of experience. If you want irony, growing into callowness would be it.

Earlier in the interview, Roth raised the issue of writing from exiles of various sorts. Edna O'Brien made her home in London and wrote about Ireland. Ireland could boast, if that's the word, of exporting many great writers, among them Becket and Joyce. O'Brien: ``But you have to go if you find your roots too threatening, too impinging. Joyce said that Ireland is the sow that eats its farrow. He was referring to its attitude toward its writers--it savages them. It is no accident that our two greatest illustrissimi, himself and Mr. Beckett, left and stayed away, though they never lost their particular Irish consciousness. In my own case, I do not think that I would have written anything if I had stayed. I feel I would have been watched, would have been judged (even more!), and would have lost that priceless commodity called freedom.'' (I thought the ancient name for Ireland was Hibernia. Now I think I had that wrong; it must have been Claustrophobia.)

This writing-from-exile trope is a recurring one in interviews with O'Brien. (See, for example, this Salon.com Lit Chat item from 1995.) Naturally, the Roth interview included some discussion of the issues of exile and freedom facing Eastern European writers. I'll touch on that somewhere later. The Eastern European experience under communism is also fodder for the head topic of this entry.

Oh yes, and for your convenience, documents saved by the new release cannot be opened by the old one. So there's something the old version can't do.

Has a good list of high-interest links.

Related interest:
• Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA).
• Middle East Newsline
• Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA).

Minoru is the given name, I believe, of Mr. Minoru Toyoda. The Toyoda family founded and controls Toyota and the associated keiretsu. (More on that at the Jabba entry.) The stupendously innovative ``idea of a global IMRA research and development network ... was championed by Mr. Minoru Toyoda, the Honorary Advisor to the All Aisin Group. Aisin is Japan's largest, and one of the world's top ten manufacturers of automotive related components.'' Somehow Aisin Seiki scraped up the funds, and the facility at Nice was the first one founded. Sites were added in Germany and the U.K., and the lot became IMRA Europe S.A. There's an IMRA America, Inc. -- it describes itself as ``a globally active company dedicated to the leading edge in ultrafast and short-pulsed fiber laser technology for commercial and research applications.''

What may not be apparent is that the term ``monitor'' does not refer to the fact that the earth is being monitored. What ultimately is being monitored is compliance with the terms of the comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty (CTBT), article IV (``Verification'') of which established the IMS. Thus, ``monitoring'' includes (article IV [section B], paragraph 16) radionuclide, hydroacoustic, and infrasound monitoring as well as seismic monitoring, and may include such things as electromagnetic pulse (EMP) monitoring, as appropriate (article IV [section A], paragraph 11). The IMS is supervised and coordinated by the Technical Secretariat instituted by that treaty (Article II, Section D). The data gathered by the IMS is made publicly available by the International Data Centre (IDC).

A table of the stations comprising the IMS is on-line, but we were just desperate to add entries, so a fine selection of the three-, four-, five- and yes, even six-letter acronyms designating these stations are scattered among these pages. We also serve the list in alphabetical order.

According to this page, IMTA was created by a presidential decree on August 7, 1986, as an agency separated out of the then Secretaría de Agricultura y Recursos Hidráulicos, `Secretariat of Agriculture and Water Resources,' (SARH). In a presidential decree of December 28, 1994, IMTA was absorbed into the then Secretaría de Medio Ambiente, Recursos Naturales y Pesca, `Secretariat of Environment, Natural Resources and Fisheries' (Semarnap). Persuant to a presidential decree of October 30, 2001, IMTA is now (2004) a public agency operating separately from the federal government, coordinated by the Secretaría de Medio Ambiente y Recursos Naturales, `Secretariat of Environment and Natural Resources.' (Semarnat). Whatever is unclear to you in the above explanation is probably unclear to me too.

At the time of the Apollo missions, the IMU, also called an inertial platform, had a gyroscope but no accelerometers: it measured only orientation. A New York Times article about Apollo 9 (on March 4, 1969; page 14) explained that the Apollo capsule's on-board computer took three kinds of navigational inputs: data from ground radar radioed up to the spacecraft, IMU data, and star and landmark sightings made by an astronaut with an electronic sextant. Actually, the way it worked was that the orientation of a star was typed into the console and the capsule reoriented itself. There was an ``alignment optical telescope'' (AOT) fixed to the spacecraft and oriented to view whatever the capsule was oriented to. The lunar module did not have an AOT.

The famous Apollo 13 crisis began 56 hours after liftoff when one of the two service-module oxygen tanks ruptured, and the second tank began leaking slowly. The leaking gas cooled on expansion into the vacuum, and the cooled gas condensed into a cloud many miles wide. This cloud surrounding the spacecraft was thin enough to see through, but just like earth's atmosphere it scattered sunlight and made it impossible to see any stars ... with one exception. As a desperation measure (much of what was done during the Apollo 13 mission fell under that rubric), the IMU was calibrated by sighting on the Sun.

Every NASA space shuttle has three IMU's in the nose cone, each the size of a breadbox. The shuttle can fly and land with just one, but you know -- redundancy. The agency's safety rules specify an early but not immediate end to a flight if one of the three fails. There have been IMU problems on at least five flights, but they mostly came late in the flight and had little or no effect on the flight schedule. In late November 1991, the No. 2 IMU aboard Atlantis, turned off early in the mission to conserve power, started giving faulty velocity readings some hours after being reactivated, and the mission was cut short by three days. In June 1991 and in April 1993, Columbia missions were delayed by an IMU malfunction.

If you hope to join this organization, there is one important question that you must ask yourself:

Am I a country?

The name of the inch comes from the Anglo-Saxon word ynce. This was a very early borrowing of the classical Latin word uncia. Both words meant `twelfth' (fractional part, not ordinal number) in general, and `inch' (twelfth part of a foot) specifically. In post-classical Latin, uncia also came to have the specific meaning of a twelfth of a pound. A twelfth of a troy or apothecaries' pound is still called an ounce (ultimately from uncia, of course, but via French) or something similar in various European languages. The sense of ounce was extended slightly to mean a subdivision of a pound or of a volume that weighs a pound, so we have the avoirdupois ounce, which happens to be a sixteenth part of an avoirdupois pound, and the fluid ounce.

Although German has Unze in the (now largely disused) sense of `ounce,' it seems that no Germanic language besides English borrowed uncia as a unit of length. It is typical that English reborrowed uncia and has two derived words. Since Romance languages developed from post-classical Latin, it was slightly harder for them to borrow uncia in the earlier sense. They typically use the word for thumb or a word derived from it. (E.g., in Spanish pulgar is `thumb' and pulgada is `inch.' In Italian and French the word for thumb also means `inch,' though in Italian one can also use dito `digit' for `inch.') The classical Latin word pulex (`flea') gave rise to similar-sounding words (e.g., Spanish pulga) for flea. The English word puce is derived from the French word for flea.

There's an Indology mailing list, archives at <http://listserv.liv.ac.uk/archives/indology.html>; you can subscribe by sending the one-line message
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to <LISTSERV@LISTSERV.LIV.AC.UK>.

Here's the Indian page of an X.500 directory.

``accessIndiana'' is the state's official web site. The Villanova University Law School provides some links to state government web sites for Indiana. USACityLink.com has a page with mostly city and town links for the state.

Here's a page of legal and legislative information served by the Indiana University School of Law -- Bloomington.

In 1868, Heinrich Schliemann tried to become a citizen of Indiana (a ``Hoosier'') so that he would be able to divorce Ekaterina.

Indium is a soft metal at room temperature. This makes it especially useful in putting together waveguides. A typical waveguide system is composed of mostly straight lengths of copper waveguide, each length with a flange soldered to each end. The flanges have screw holes in standard locations, and the units are screwed together flange-to-flange. If you need a really good seal -- to maintain a vacuum or a particular gas at some determined pressure, say -- you probably need a sealant between the flanges. Indium does the trick: loop some indium wire on the face of one of the flanges and screw it tight. Of particular importance is the fact that indium, because it is a metal, conducts electricity. Hence, there is not a large impedance discontinuity at the join. (Indium is not a very good conductor, but the seal is thin and broad, so it conducts well enough.)

Learn other stuff at its entry in WebElements and its entry at Chemicool.

1. Widely well regarded
2. crap.

``Be a man!'' said I. ``You are scared out of your wits! What good is religion if it collapses under calamity? Think of what earthquakes and floods, wars and volcanoes, have done before to men! Did you think God had exempted Weybridge? He is not an insurance agent.''