N n

Back when most of my work was in nanoelectronics, I named one of my Sun workstations enano. It was a pun.

Usage note: units named after people are not capitalized, but their symbols are. Hence, N abbreviates a unit that is spelled out as ``newton.''

1 N = 1 kg m/s²

When people say ``as free as the air,'' they're talkin' nitrogen, 78%, and that can go for as little as pennies on the cubic foot.

Gallium Nitride (GaN) has been used to create blue lasers, so now [I think I entered this entry in 1995] full-color flat-panel displays and area illumination based on compound semiconductors are anticipated. When people talk about the danger of material shortages that might result, they're not talkin'bout nitrogen.

Although this is essentially a phenomenological correction, it does have some theoretical justification, in a slightly more complicated approximation than that which yields the standard Ebers-Moll equations. If transport across the depletion region is modeled as taking place in two stages, then n = 2 is obtained as a limiting case. Usually the two theoretical approximations serve as bounds on the empirical fit: the nonideality factor lies between 1 and 2. For good Si devices, n in the range of 1.1-1.3 provides a good fit for high voltages, and 1.6-1.8 fits well for low voltages. (The transition between these regions is moderately sharp -- taking place over less than half a volt around 0.65 V -- so there are regions where constant-n is a useful approximation.)

Schottky barrier diodes with low-to-moderate doping, dominated by majority-carrier conduction, are nearly ideal (1 < n < 1.03). Space-charge layer recombination (essentially the ``more complicated'' mechanism described above) and hole injection from the metal can both increase n. Interfacial effects and other cruddy parasitic stuff can also raise n.

The large-n limit is ohmic behavior. As the doping on the semiconductor side of a Schottky is increased and the space-charge layer correspondingly shortened, quantum tunneling comes into play and is said to raise n. This is not so mysterious: a highly-doped Schottky (i.e., a metal contact to highly-doped semiconductor) is simply (precious word, that) an ohmic contact.

See also A and A₀.

Until well into the twentieth century, calculations used Loschmidt's number instead, to get around the fact that the atomic hypothesis was not universally agreed to have been conclusively demonstrated.

You'd suppose the adjective form corresponding to Namibia would be Namibian. But FWIW, they have a bi-weekly (issues on Tuesdays and Fridays) Afrikaans-English newspaper, based in Walvis Bay, called the Namib Times. It was founded by Paul Vincent in 1958 as a bi-weekly trilingual newspaper. He sold it in 2002 when his health started failing. At the time of his death in 2004 it was the country's second-oldest newspaper.

In chapter 5 of William Cobbett (1925), G.K. Chesterton makes an observation about NA that it was very characteristic of him to make:

We should think it rather odd if a profiteer had a country house that was called The Cathedral. We might think it strange if a stockbroker had built a villa and habitually referred to it as a church. But we can hardly see the preposterous profanity by which one chance rich man after another has been able to commandeer or purchase a house which he still calls an Abbey. It is precisely as if he had gone to live in the parish church; had breakfasted on the altar, or cleaned his teeth in the font. That is the short and sharp summary of what has happened in English history; but few can get it thus foreshortened or in any such sharp outline. ... The romantic reactionary at the end of the eighteenth century might not often find the Bad Baronet in a castle, but might really find him in an abbey. The most attractive of all such reactionaries, Miss Catherine Morland, was not altogether disappointed in her search for the Mysteries of Udolpho. She knew at least that General Tilney lived in an abbey; though even she could hardly have mistaken General Tilney for an abbot. Nor was she wrong in supposing that a crime had been committed by that gentleman in Northanger Abbey. His crime was not being an abbot. But Jane Austen, who had so piercing a penetration of the shams of her own age, had had a little too much genteel education to penetrate the shams of history. Despite the perverse humour of her juvenile History of England, despite her spirited sympathy with Mary Stuart, she could not be expected to see the truth about the Tudor transition. In these matters she had begun with books, and could not be expected to read what is written in mere buildings and big monuments. She was educated, and had not the luck to be self-educated like Cobbett. The comparison is not so incongruous as it may seem. They were the four sharpest eyes that God had given to the England of that time; but two of them were turned inward into the home, and two were looking out of the window. I wish I could think that they ever met.

(To ``look badly'' is not a comment on visual acuity but an expression meaning to ``look bad.'' It seemed to be common back in the 1960's and 70's, mostly among the frail elderly. Presumably it was an overcorrection among those who'd been taught that verbs are modified by adverbs, without recognizing the accepted exception of copula and seem-type verbs. Other common expressions of this sort were ``look poorly'' and ``feel badly'' (i.e., feel sympathy or guilt). Of course, the -ly was added by these kindly elderly folk because they knew that the -ly changes adjectives into adverbs.)

a*pha*sia (uh-fay'-zhuh) n. An impairment of the ability to use or comprehend words, usually acquired as a result of a stroke or other brain injury.

See also Alicia Courville's Speech Disorders page.

Related useless entry: AA for Academy of Aphasia.

The usenet newsgroups soc.support.fat-acceptance and alt.support.big-folks have lots of FAQ material.

``NAASO, The Obesity Society is the leading scientific society dedicated to the study of obesity. Since 1982 NAASO has been committed to encouraging research on the causes and treatment of obesity, and to keeping the medical community and public informed of new advances.''

NABC's, still often informally called ``Nationals'' even by many Canadians, are held thrice annually. They're called the Spring, Summer, and Fall NABC's, and they open in March, late July, and late November -- at different cities in the US and Canada. The 2006 NABC's were successively in Dallas, Chicago, and Honolulu. This list illustrates two decided tendencies in the siting that are apparent from the venues for 1997 to 2012:

1. The ``Spring'' NABC (sometimes technically in late Winter) is generally in an inland city. (Vancouver, in 1999, was the only solid exception.)
2. Every year since 2006, and infrequently before then, the Fall championship has been scheduled for a major city that is (a) a seaport or (b) close to Disney World (which is on Seven Seas Lagoon).

The main sessions of play (afternoon and evening) usually run 10 days, from a Friday until the second following Sunday. In addition to the major championships that give the tournament its name, lesser games are offered that are suitable for all levels of player; there are morning and midnight games for those who want even more. Consequently, these are the largest bridge tournaments anywhere, except for those involving simultaneous play at many sites.

The twenty-first was held in Lowell, Massachusetts, July 6-8, 2001.

On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union put into orbit the world's first artificial satellite. It was an 83.6-kg (186-lb.) metal sphere named Sputnik (Russian for `traveler'). Apart from going around the planet once every ninety-six minutes, it performed only two memorable actions: send out a lonely-toy beep, and send the West into a hysterical panic.

On October 1, 1958, NACA was succeeded by NASA.

It is probably fair to mention, in advance of further details, that the US space program suffered a number of embarrassing failures between those Octobers, but that they were the failures not of NACA but of the unprepared Navy program initially selected to carry out the effort.

The same word functions as a postposition meaning something like `according to [the object of the postposition].' See m.A.n. for an example.

Shows how much they know. Ask any advertising professional: image is everything.

That reminds me, in the Summer of 2005, the Royal Shakespeare Company is touring with Euripides' Hecuba. They're doing an English version by the poet Tony Harrison. Vanessa Redgrave stars. The last offering in a season of tragic plays, it should have been the climax. Reviews have been tepid. I'm not surprised. In this self-absorbed century, people -- even actors -- have a very selective ability to empathize.

NACUFS sponsors an annual ``National Culinary Challenge,'' and the winners receive American Culinary Federation medals. The six finalists are required to prepare four portions of an original hot entrée, with side dishes and sauces to balance the plate so that the center of mass is within one centimeter of the center. Okay, I added the words after ``plate.'' Contestants (``culinarians'') have seventy-five minutes to prepare the meal and present it to a panel of ACF judges. In the 2005 competition, it had to include lamb.

What, no ``other''? So narcotics are not dangerous drugs? That explains a lot.

In 2006, not even 80 months after the NCC co-membership decision, headlines read ``Rev. Ted Haggard leaves National Association of Evangelicals after male escort claims he paid him for sex for three years.'' Now, without reading the sordid article accompanying this headline, I can hazard a guess who was the ``he'' that paid, and who the ``him'' that got paid. (``Allegedly''! ``Allegedly''!) But it's not as clear as it would be if they were of different sexes. Things would be a lot clearer 99% of the time if we simply assigned everyone randomly at birth to one of 100 distinct grammatical genders, and referred to them by 100 corresponding distingishable third-person singular personal pronouns. Slime molds do something like that.

Sponsored jointly by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the Aerospace and Electronics Systems Society (AESS).

``NAECON is the premier national forum for the exchange of specialized aerospace electronics and related information. It includes a strong technical program featuring high-quality papers and tutorials, extensive exhibits of the latest technology and applications, and discussions of the latest trends in the area. The theme of this year's conference is `Technology --A Bridge to the Future' [some people think that just because the president of the US uses a meaningless phrase, it's eloquent] and emphasis will be placed on technology development and application of new technologies. NAECON should be of interest to all military, commercial, and academic members of the aerospace and electronic community.''

There are, first of all, methodological questions. A school's participation in the NAEP is voluntary, and half the schools selected to participate choose not to. In other words, what we know about the participating schools is that they were in the half of schools, roughly, that chose to participate. After you've controlled for the controllable factors like SES (socio-economic status), race, etc., you still have a skewed sample. If you try to compare poor districts with rich, for example, on the ``low-SES'' side of the comparison you probably have a relatively small fraction of schools whose administrators for some reason feel confident or competent enough to allow participation. On the ``high-SES'' side, you probably have a more representative sampling of rich districts. Thus, you compare best-of-the-worst, putatively, with typical-of-the-best. In effect, you weaken the apparent or poorly ``measured'' effect of all factors that really are effective.

There are also political reasons to be wary of NAEP data. Here, for example, is a footnote (#73, p. 219) from a chapter in The Black-White Test Score Gap ed. Christopher Jencks and Meredith Phillips (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Pr., 1998). The chapter (6) is ``Why Did the Black-White Score Gap Narrow in the 1970's and 1980s?''

Dramatic changes starting in one particular year also raise the possibility that changes in sampling procedures or participation rates could be distorting results. One conceivable ``explanation'' of the trend data is that black adolescents' scores are overestimated in 1988 for some reason. When the 1986 NAEP results for reading looked inexplicably low, the Department of Education suppressed them, even though focused investigations never found methodological problems that might explain the decline. The 1988 scores for black 17-year-old students look abnormally high, and the black reading decline after 1988 would be negligible if this single data point were eliminated. However, this is not true for thirteen-year-olds, whose reading scores show a steady decline after 1988. Errors that affect only blacks and not whites in 1988, affect blacks of all ages in 1988, and affect black thirteen-year-olds after 1988 appear unlikely.

(My emphasis.)

Here are some excerpts from a Heritage Foundation Report entitled Critical Issues: A New Agenda for Education, ch 3 ``The Growth of the Federal Role in Education,'' by Eileen M. Gardner. The relevant text concerns programs under Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). Title I provides federal aid to counties for compensatory (remedial) education for educationally disadvantaged students from low-income families. Gardner writes:

Studies assessing the effectiveness of Title I consistently have shown that the goal of the program has never been achieved. Yet Congress steadfastly has resisted efforts to eliminate it. By 1969, however, clear signals were reaching Capitol Hill that Title I was failing to live up to its expectations. Results of congressionally mandated evaluations showed that federal budget officials did not view the program as cost effective; educators complained of red tape, excessive regulations, and unwieldy bureaucracy; and parents of eligible children complained they saw little change in the quality of their children's education. Most telling, perhaps, the achievement test scores of the children served were not significantly better than their non-Title I counterparts. The small improvements they did make proved temporary.

She cites some of the research supporting her claims, and continues

Oddly, these data had no noticeable effect on Congress's views of the program. High levels of funding continued. In fact, by the early 1980s, public policy was forcing researchers to distort data. A prime example is a 1982 report by the congressionally mandated National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)⁹ on the reading, science, and mathematics performance of American youth during the 1970s. No grade levels were given; no standardized tests were used. Performance on subjective ``exercises'' created by ``specialists'' determined ``achievement classes.'' ``Lowest'' and ``highest'' were insufficiently defined. No objective criteria for reclassification from one group to another were given. Vague data for Title I eligible schools were given, but Title I students were not identified.

[Ftnt. 9: ``Reading, Science and Mathematics Trends: A Closer Look,'' National Assessment of Education Progress, December 1982.]

Contradictions were unclarified. On the one hand, students within Title I eligible schools were reported to have increased their representation in mathematics and science in the highest achievement class at age nine and to have decreased their representation in the lowest achieving math class at age seventeen. However, a separate chart dividing groups into lowest and highest achievers showed that the lowest achievers at ages nine and thirteen significantly improved in reading but made no significant progress in math (nine and thirteen) and science (nine). At seventeen, the lowest achievers had declined in math, as well as reading, and had made no progress in science.

Uh-ohhh: It looks like I missed a period! What will I do!?!?

Among Union opponents: ``No American Factories Turning out Anything.'' (``American'' here used in the sense of US.) In Spanish, TLCAN.

A jealous protectionism of jobs unites all nations. Under (US) federal law, a work visa cannot be issued until it is certified, in this case by a state's Labor Department, that no American is willing to take the job. Thus, when a nightclub in Stuart, Florida wanted to hire a foreigner for an $11/hour job as an exotic dancer, it had to place an ad asking prospective US applicants to send a résumé to the Bureau of Workforce Program Support at the state's Department of Labor. (The ad appeared the week of April 11, 1999; it ran in the Palm Beach Post.)

Paid a wage up front to dance?

Is the state of Florida qualified to make this certification? My friend Mike, a solid-state physicist, had a job bartending nights at a club in Maryland. The proprietor explained to him how to decide whether a girl was a good dancer: If people bought beer, she was a good dancer. [Girl is a technical term here, okay? A term of art. I've been in a bar where the dancing girls happened to be male, although they didn't seem to be. You gotta be careful, you never know what you'll pick up.]

A concern for the AFL-CIO: there are more cheap-labor countries on the mainland of North America (N. Amer., q.v.). Good news for the AFL-CIO: NAFTA will not be expanded! Bad news: FTAA.

I guess they noticed that the letter sequence N - A - G has poor associations. Their logo just has ``GWS.''

1 Heath Square, Boltro Road, Haywards Heath, RH16 1BL. Cf. NUT.

To be head, or naht to be head -- that is the question.

British `head teacher' is American ``school principal.''

The District of Columbia and about three-quarters of the states have an affiliated organization. Some of the state organizations (Iowa, Louisiana, Washington, and Wisconsin) have names of the form <State Name> Association of Independent Colleges and Universities. Unfortunately, there is only one NAICU member school in Hawaii (Chaminade).

The word national in the name is now used in the common sense of international. There are member companies in Australia, Canada, the Cayman Islands, Germany, Guam, Ireland, Singapore, the UK, and in the US, where the organization was founded.

I can't decide whether this entry should end on the line ``if you keep on doing that you're going to go blind!'' or some other.

``No.''

Allied Van Lines does long-haul OTR moving, but that doesn't seem to have anything do to with NALLA. Oh, well. I was just trying to be helpful.

Oh, alright, technically, it was created to find a third way, not aligning with either of the two post-WWII power blocs (US and USSR). Sure. The locus classicus of the ``moral equivalence'' fallacy. [To be excruciatingly fair, Yugoslavia, China, and Albania did follow alternate paths toward the end of socialism, independent and opposed to the USSR.]

With the end of the Cold War and with emergence of some NAM members from poverty (typically through exploitation of their resources by the West), the pretense that this organization has unity or meaningful purpose is often threadbare, but it must continue to exist (this is a universal law of C. Northcote Parkinson). In service of its continued existence, it continues to achieve prodigies of hypocrisy. Perhaps that is its purpose.

You can read online an address by the Prime Minister of India at the XII NAM Summit at Durban on 3 September 1998. About half of the speech is devoted to the issue of rolling back nuclear proliferation. The position is very easy to understand if you simply understand that there are good guys and bad guys. The bad guys are all the countries that have nuclear weapons, and nothing that the bad guys do is ever even remotely progressive. The good guys are the countries that are working so hard to ban the bomb. Most of the good guys have no nukes, but some, like, uh, India, have tested peaceful nuclear devices. India is still with the good guys, though, because India's heart is in the right place. India was forced to develop its peaceful devices by military threats from unnamed neighbors. This is in contrast with the bad guys, who only developed nuclear weapons because they want to destroy the world and harm the environment. Ditto Pakistan. Others coming soon.

There doesn't seem to be an official NAM site. This one from the government of South Africa looks relatively official. Let's try this one for the XIII NAM Summit in early 2003.... Oops: ``[an error occurred while processing this directive].''

``Covering 49 states, the District of Columbia and the Virgin Islands, NAMC's membership base includes general contractors, subcontractors, construction managers, manufacturers, suppliers, local minority contractor associations, state and local governmental organizations, attorneys, accountants, and other professionals.'' Organizational funding comes from membership dues, federal and state government grants, and private-sector grants and contributions.

I wonder if Vermont is the state where they have no members. In the last debate among Democratic Presidential aspirants before the Iowa Caucuses in 2004, Rev. Al Sharpton sharply criticized former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean for not having any blacks in high positions in his administrations in Montpelier. (I forget the wording.) Former Senator Carol Moseley Brown, who was in the presidential race just to rehabilitate her reputation, defended Dean against Sharpton. In the aftermath of this debate, Sharpton's poll numbers plummeted from 1% to 0.1%. Moseley Brown dropped out of the race, mission accomplished, throwing her support to Dean. Dean's poll numbers slid, and he fell from front-runner to a disappointing third-place finish.

Afterwards, Dean gave a rousing, animated we-will-not-give-up speech to his supporters and campaign workers. The speech was televised, and apparently people over the age of about 25 thought it was a little too animated. He didn't look presidential enough. Throughout 2003, the man looked like he was ready to burst with anger at George W. Bush, and now they notice that he's emotional? What a bunch of uptight honkies. The next week, there was a debate ahead of the New Hampshire primary. Dean actually felt it necessary to spin his performance in that televised pep talk, implying none too subtly that he'd been condescending to his young supporters. Sharpton was consoling, pointing out that if he (Sharpton) had spent the money Dean had spent, and gotten 18% of the vote, he would still be in Iowa celebrating. Apparently some candidates are in the race only to place or show. After the debate, Dean's poll numbers began to rally from his post-Iowa low, but Sharpton's soared immediately, from the neighborhood of 0.1% to the threshold of those heady single-digit heights. With just another factor-of-ten bump, Sharpton could be a contender for third place. See the MOE entry for an explanation of why these numbers are meaningful.

Seriously, Dean needs to find out about fitted shirts. For any given sleeve or chest size, these are available in a number of different neck sizes. Here's a picture of an angry Howard Dean pointing his finger:

Wait a second. That's Benjamin Netanyahu, former Israeli PM and current (2004) finance minister, angrily pointing his finger. Here's a picture of Howard Dean angrily pointing his finger:

``All I want to know is, What's the name of the guy on second?''

``That's right!''

Are you nuts? Good, then visit our majorette entry.

The association was formed on the 6th of January 2002. This new association was born out of the desire for an association for majorettes that would give a broad range of events at regional competitions with qualified judges and also the opportunity of representing England at European and World Majorette Championships, and at the same time keeping their identity as majorettes. At the end of each competition year we hold our National Championships from which we select the England Team for that year.

Name [sic] is affiliated to the National Baton Twirling Association under whose umbrella we are able to take part in the European and World competitions.

NAME's webpages are on N.B.T.A. England's site, but they appear to be somewhat distinct organizations, just as baton twirling and, uh, majoretting appear to be somewhat distinct activities.

Biological twinning is something that normally has to be arranged before birth -- usually in the first couple of days after conception, in fact. Name twins can be made at any time, by marriage and other mechanisms. Jeff Gillooly, husband (1990-1993) and partner in crime of Tonya Harding, changed his name to Jeff Stone in 1995, over the in-court protests of many of the people whose name twin he became.

Usually, this kind of blend is made possible by the fact that past participles of -ar verbs like amar (`to love') take an -ado ending, while other (-er, -ir) verbs take an -ido ending. In this case, however, the situation is a little bit different. The noun marido comes from the Latin adjective maritus. (Yes, it's ``maritus, a, um.'' The neuter form maritum is necessary for the sense of `paired, closely joined.') Anyway, there was a Latin verb maritare which was derived from the adjective, rather than the other way around. Portuguese also has the derived verb maridar, though it is much less used than various synonyms like casar. (Regarding this interesting word, see this CASA entry.) Very rare is the verb's past participle (p.p.) maridado (Latin maritatus).

The verb morrer (`to die') has both a regular and an irregular p.p. form, roughly like English `die.' In a decent approximation, one may say that the regular and irregular forms correspond: regular morrido with `died,' and irregular morto with `dead.' Portuguese also has words na (a preposition contraction meaning `in the' and a personal pronoun), but it's syntactically difficult to arrange a na morrido collocation to pun on namorido. Namorido still sounds kinda pungent, but then, slang is supposed to. I propose namorto for whatever semantic opportunities may befall.

As I've been writing and researching this (sure, in that order), I've found the the comparison of Portuguese and Spanish enlightening, or somewhat instructive, or at least, well, never mind, it's going in.

The Spanish congener of Portuguese namorado is enamorado, but it is rather more marked and dramatic than `boyfriend.' It's more like `enamoured one' in English. Naturally, then, enamorido (analogue of Port. namorido) would not be a very compelling neologism. Just last January, Laura mentioned a term that now fills that semantic slot in Argentina, but I forgot it. Sorry. The word na is only an archaicism in Spanish, derived from the even more archaic enna for en la, corresponding to the modern Portuguese contraction na.

Except for those referring to words beginning in n, all of this entry's statements about Portuguese also apply to Spanish, with the following adjustments:

1. There are various slight pronunciation differences of the words spelled identically in the two languages. Most have to do with vowel qualities. The greatest difference is that the d in Portuguese sounds like an English d, whereas the Spanish d (in all contexts above) is pronounced like the voiced th in English them.
   
   
2. Maridado in Spanish is merely quite rare, rather than very rare. Sounds like meat, I know. The vocable tends to be used in food discussions, in the somewhat bian sense of `accompanied' (fancy fast food: ``fish accompanied by chips''). The gastronomical sense also occurs (but is very rare, of course) in Portuguese.
   
   
3. There are slight and increasing differences between the use of morrer in Portuguese and its congener morir in Spanish. The spelling difference represents a phonemic difference, and the r and rr of standard Portuguese correspond reasonably closely to the r and rr of Spanish. However, so far as I know, not being able to pronounce the rr properly (r is easy) is generally regarded as a speech defect throughout the Spanish-speaking world, whereas there are places in Brazil where the distinction is muted and in some contexts disappears.
   
   Like Portuguese, Spanish has two past participles for this verb. They are morido (for Port. morrido) and muerto (for morto). In Spanish, however, the use of morido has been steadily losing ground to muerto, so that now muerto is used in constructing all analytic conjugations. (This is especially so, that I know of, in Argentina.) A somewhat similar situation within English is that of some old adjectives like brazen, flaxen, leaden, leathern, and silvern. These special adjectives have largely given way to the attributive use of the corresponding nouns brass, flax, (do you even know what that is?) lead [the metallic kind], etc. (Of course, brazen survives in its transferred sense.) Other such adjectives -- golden and wooden spring to mind -- have fared better. So morido vs. morrido. So it goes. In functional terms, verbs make a closer analogy (lit/lighted). In some cases in English, strong forms are displacing the more modern weak forms. Don't tell me ``that makes sense.''
   
   

The irregularity of Port. morrer (and Span. morir) has a simple cause, somewhat similar to the cause of the oddity associated with maridar. In all these, an original Latin adjective was carried forward into Romance along with a verb from which it was not derived. At all stages of evolution, the verb also had a regularly derived p.p., which could be used as part of an analytic verb conjugation or as an adjective. (A little useful terminology: a verb form (normally a participle) used as an adjective is called a gerundive, just as a verb form (also normally a participle) used as a noun is called a gerund.)

In the etymology of marido and maridar, a Latin adjective maritus gave rise to a verb maritare. In the case of morto and muerto, the adjective and irregular p.p. is derived from the Latin adjective mortuus, which is in fact a regularly formed p.p. of the Latin verb morior. This is, however, a deponent verb. (Cue disquieting drumroll.) The verbs of modern Romance languages all use verbs that function more or less like active (i.e., nondeponent) verbs in Latin. (Cue disquieting sound effects.) Something had to happen, and something did, but different things in Portuguese and Spanish. The Spanish verb morir, like most cognate verbs in Romance languages, is derived from the Vulgar Latin active verb morire. (Cue monkeys.) A small number of Romance varieties constructed an active verb from moririor. The latter was an alternative form of the deponent, archaic but well-attested, that disappeared in the classical Latin of Rome; it evidently persisted in places. It is presumed that the rr in Portuguese morrer arose from collapse of the unstressed syllable -rir-.

This entry is what Wikipedia would call a stub, the sort of thing that painfully ambushes your toe. It's a twisted stub, and one day when I want to put off grading again I'll extricate the mori- material and create a new entry. Maybe by then I'll have some idea how moririor, a third-conjugation verb like morior (I think), gave rise to -er verbs in Portuguese and some obscure dialects.

I'll be sure to note that morto and muerto, in the respective languages, function as irregular p.pp. of matar -- yes, matar, `to kill,' as in matador. In Spanish, for example, instead of saying that a man was ``matado por la justicia,'' (`killed by [the legal instrumentalities of] justice') you say he was ``muerto por la justicia'' (`dead by justice' -- a marked construction, somewhat like our `put to death'). Imagine: we still don't have a defective-verbs entry!

Exactly how the semantic load is distributed between the regular and highly irregular participles of matar and cognates, however, varies a great deal. It is intriguing that Basque has a complete identity between matar and morir: its verb hil means both `to die' and `to kill.' ``Hil da'' means `he is dead,' while ``hil du'' means `he has killed.' Du and da mean `he has' and `he is,' resp. They are the respective forms of ukan and izan, as an atheist God is my witless, er, witness. These are the auxiliaries of all transitive and intransitive verbs, respectively, even if the transitive verb (like kill) doesn't happen to be taking an explicit target at the time. I'm dying; take me to the Camptown Races. (For enlightenment, see this DD entry.)

Incidentally, although it's not obvious from the orthography, the Portuguese verb morrer is a stem-changing verb like Spanish morir: the normally close o changes to an open o in the third person and the second-person singular of the present indicative. Something happens in the imperative too. The stem change is more extensive in the conjugation of Spanish morir, but apart from the stem change and the past participle, the verbs are basically regular. You wanted to know.

When all that's out, there'll be plenty of space to talk about Italian inamorata and the fact that wife in Portuguese and Spanish is not marida but esposa (that's right: `female spouse').

NANDA also designates a general-purpose taxonomy of nursing diagnostic terminology. There are a bunch of these ``standardized nursing languages.''

It's virtually impossible to pronounce NANP so it sounds different from NAMP. NANP is administered by ...

You also want to celebrate International Orthopaedic Nurses Day! Hey -- any excuse for a party. Just don't throw your back out.

• Chicago
• New York
• San Francisco
• DC (``MAE East'')

Keynote, which monitors ISP performance, finds that they are a major bottleneck.

Remember: for pig accessories, NAPPA. For motorcycle accessories, try a NAPA distributor.

Hmm. It seems to have been a consistent spelling error by their original homepage wizard. It's ``Patristics'' after all.

Oh yeah, ``The North American Patristics Society is an organization dedicated to the study of the history and theology of early Christianity.'' They publish The Journal of Early Christian Studies.

NAPS used to hold a members-only session at the annual APS, but in 1980 they went off on their own, and today (2004) they hold an annual meeting in Chicago in May.

That name turned out to be a foe paw, I think it's called. In particular, the word abortion doesn't have very positive associations, so those who favor it also favor a circumlocution when one is possible. ``Choice'' is the choice euphemism, and the right to abort is ``rights of pregnant women.'' Eventually (possibly as late as 2004 or 2005), they disestablished or something the expansion and started going exclusively by ``NARAL - Pro-Choice America.'' This business works in both directions (the anti-abortion side favors ``pro-life,'' since everyone is pro-``pro'' and anti-``anti''), and maybe I'll have more to say about it after I cook up a shibboleth entry. Cf. NRLC.

``Today, regional organizations include not only regional councils of governments--or COGs--but also regional transit, sewer and other public authorities, regional chambers of commerce, regional studies institutes, regional civic organizations, regional faith-based groups and regional leadership forums.''

More at the 0-ary entry.

During the Democratic party's presidential nominating convention in 2000, nominee Albert Gore was suddenly overcome by sexual passion and completely spontaneously decided to give his wife Tipper a long wet movie kiss on prime time television, thus completely inadvertently proving that while his economic program was pure Clinton, he was obviously faithful to his wife (unlike some other people). Al must think that Tipper is quite a number. And Al invented computer functions. He probably also wrote that song about Tipperary. (Sorry. The song just kept going through my mind as I optimized the entry; I had to find some excuse to squeeze it in.)

The Greek root for the number one is hen-. Another song, written by Murray and Weston in 1911, was covered by Herman's Hermits for the US market in 1965. The words came out

I'm Hen-ary the eighth I am
Hen-ary the eighth I am, I am
I got married to the widow next door
She's been married seven times before

The aitch is silent. The lead singer Peter Noone -- ``Herman'' -- is a Mancunian half-heartedly faking a Cockney accent. (Incidentally, his surname is pronounced ``noon'' -- a single syllable.)

In Greek (ancient and modern), the aitch sound is not indicated by a separate alphabetic character but by a breathing mark or spiritus placed over an initial vowel. Originally, there was only a rough-breathing mark; the absence of that mark indicated smooth breathing. Later a smooth-breathing mark (an inverted rough-breathing mark) was developed to indicate the same thing. This was not an improvement; the tops of the letters are cluttered enough with tiny illegible accents.

The rough breathing mark can also appear over the rho, where it roughly (sorry again) indicates aspiration. Aspiration on unvoiced plosives is indicated by a change of letter (kappa to chi, pi to phi, tau to theta). In Latin transliteration, all four aspirated consonants have the aspiration indicated by an aitch (rh, ch, ph, th), but initial rough breathing on a vowel is indicated by an initial aitch (as in hero, herpes, etc.). Farsi (the Persian language) also has that distinction in the arr sound, which is often indicated in English transliteration by r versus hr. (With a fricative, the aspiration is more or less simultaneous with other elements of articulation, so it's not surprising that when explicitly indicated, the feature has appeared both before and after the base letter.)

They've been proliferating, diluting their prestige among National Academies of Sciences and Engineering, and an Institute of Medicine. The thin end of the wedge was economists, then other social ``sciences.'' It was downhill from there. The same thing happened with the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton (IAS). When it was started by the Bambergers, partly as a haven for ``European scientists'' fleeing fascism, it was mostly physicists and mathematicians. Today it's mostly historians and social scientists.

Here are some of their tips for not getting taken (from back in 1989, when fraud was not universal).

• The harder a telephone salesperson presses, the wiser it is to resist. If a caller turns abusive, hang up.
• Don't fall for any claims of spectacular rewards or promised ``guarantees'' until you can verify the legitimacy of the deal and have a clear picture of all the risks involved.
• If you can't understand an investment, don't buy it without the counsel of a trusted and knowledgable adviser. [Ah -- there's the rub! Finding an adviser you can trust.]
• Never give your credit-card number to a stranger on the phone. [Uh-oh...]
• Be especially suspicious of propositions involving delayed delivery of the investment in question.
• Likewise, look warily at any deal in which the seller proposes some unusual arrangement to collect your money, such as sending a messenger.

NASCA says it ``is an organisation devoted to areas of science that are otherwise poorly covered.'' It puts one in mind of things better covered, to say nothing of honored, in the breach.

I beg the reader's indulgence, but since I have a NASCAR entry and a Spam entry, I can't resist drawing a connection. In a townhall.com column September 10, 2004, Jonah Goldberg ridiculed US Democratic party presidential candidate John Kerry for slumming, in so many words, like a candidate campaigning for votes:

``Who among us doesn't like NASCAR?'' Kerry asked not too long ago, about as convincingly as a French chef lauding Spam.

The anticipated synergies did not materialize and the business model was abandoned. On January 24, 2002, NASD put the Amex up for sale. I still have to check on the current status of that.

Stocks listed on the NASDAQ are analyzed by the NSG (NASDAQ Stock Guide?) which is not affiliated with NASDAQ.

``Well-prepared, safe, wholesome'' ... this sounds like lunch. How about learned, demanding, effective?

Okaaaay! Well started is half done.

Nash was one of the companies that merged (as part of Nash-Kelvinator) into American Motors (q.v.) in 1954. The Rambler was Nash's most successful line at the time, and much of the early marketing effort of AMC was bent on leveraging the Rambler product and name. They rebadged Ramblers for sale by Hudson dealers in 1954; later the separate marques were dropped and all cars sold by AMC were called Ramblers. That happened in 1958. The same year there was a joke pop song in 1958 about a guy driving a Cadillac (in the 1950's this was a luxury car rather than your grandfather's pimpmobile) and a guy driving a ``little Nash Rambler.'' The story is told from the point of view of the guy in the Cadillac, who describes a race in which the Rambler driver is trying to show him up. The song was ``Beep Beep,'' by The Playmates, and it was on Doctor Demento from time to time. Choose a lyrics page for it from among these.

``America's only private, non-profit, non-partisan resource center made up of the nation's leading experts on social insurance. Both in the United States and abroad, social insurance encompasses broad-based public systems for insuring workers and their families against economic insecurity caused by loss of income from work and the cost of health care.

The Academy's scope includes such social insurance systems as Social Security, Medicare, workers' compensation and unemployment insurance, and related social assistance and private employee benefits.''

It must be frustrating to be an expert in a field where everyone has a politically motivated opinion.

Too long to pronounce as an initialism, but how to pronounce ``LGC''? My best guess at the spoken form, until I am informed otherwise: ``Nasal Gee Cee.''

As of 2004, NATAS is having a hard time figuring out how to make internal hyperlinks that work at the natas.tv site linked at the begining of this entry. They seem to have a number of independent, equally official sites. Try the slow-loading emmyonline.org or natasonline.com instead.

1. American -- as in `National Football League' (NFL).
2. Not American -- as in `National Football Conference' (NFC). Cf. AFC.
3. Canadian -- as in `National Hockey League' (NHL).
4. Of the US and Canada -- as in `National Junior Classical League' (JCL). You actually find some people who think that ``American'' can be used without qualification in Canada to mean ``North American'' or ``Canadian and/or of the US'' or some such. That might be logical, but it might also be inconvenient. Anyway, it doesn't work that way, other than in proper nouns for continental (or so) organizations.
5. Any-old-countrian -- as in the 100+ `National Contract Bridge Organizations' members of the WBF (details here), which is to say
6. International -- as in NAID or NWR.
7. Quondam country (adj.) -- as in TNN.
8. Of England and Wales (but not all of Great Britain, let alone the UK) -- as in NUT. London-born Kingsley Amis went to live in South Wales in 1948 (he got a teaching position at the University of Wales, Swansea), and he commented in his Memoirs that people there then made no distinction between England and Wales. They thought of themselves as living in England. (And presumably they used ``Englishman'' as a synonym of Briton, q.v.) These people spoke no or little Welsh, and many of them had short histories in the place. Amis noted that the culture was different further north and