this reminds me of

...me, at age 10, when eating the dictionary was my favourite pastime,
happily inherited by all my children alhamdulillaah.

Reading the OED: One Man, One Year (excerpt from a NYT review)

Ammon Shea, a sometime furniture mover, gondolier and word collector, has written an oddly inspiring book about reading the whole of the Oxford English Dictionary in one go. Shea’s book resurrects many lost, misshapen, beautifully unlucky words — words that spiraled out, like fast-decaying muons, after their tiny moment in the cloud chamber of English usage. There’s hypergelast (a person who won’t stop laughing), lant (to add urine to ale to give it more kick), obmutescence (willful speechlessness) and ploiter (to work to little purpose) — all good words to have on the tip of your tongue when, for example, you’re stopped for speeding.

Shea’s book offers more than exotic word lists, though. It also has a plot. “I feel as though I am eating the alphabet,” he writes halfway through, and you want him to make it to the end. This is the “Super Size Me” of lexicography.

Back in the ’90s, Shea read Webster’s Second from beginning to end — no easy feat. Did doing so help him in any way? No. It didn’t make him a better or smarter person, or improve his test scores. In fact, it seems to have hindered his capacity for self-expression. “My head was so full of words that I often had trouble forming simple sentences out loud,” he writes, “and my speech became a curious jumble of obscure words and improper syntax.” But Shea seems to have loved this experience of verbal overspill — he underwent the prolonged brain-shiver that comes when thousands of unfamiliar meanings pour in without stopping. “It felt wonderful,” he says.

The logical next step was to read the O.E.D., but here Shea hesitated. The O.E.D. is huge, as everyone knows. It’s monstrously deep and serious and maddeningly detailed, each entry a miniature etymological seminar. And the lovely-ugly words, words that Shea didn’t know existed, leap up to his hand. Acnestis — the part of an animal’s back that the animal can’t reach to scratch. And bespawl — to splatter with saliva. In Chapter D, Shea encounters deipnophobia, the fear of dinner parties; Chapter K brings kankedort, an awkward situation.

Months in, Shea arrives — back-aching, crabby, page-blind — at Chapter N. “Some days I feel as if I do not actually speak the English language,” he writes, his verbal cortex overflowing. “It is,” he observes, “like trying to remember all the trees one sees through the window of a train.” Once he stares for a while, amazed, at the word glove. “I find myself wondering why I’ve never seen this odd term that describes such a common article of clothing.”

By Chapter O there is evidence of further disintegration. Is he turning into, he wonders, one of the “Library People”? The bag-toters and mutterers who spend all their time there? “Sometimes I get angry at the dictionary and let loose with a muffled yell.” At night he hears a deep, disembodied voice slowly intoning definitions.

But then, thank goodness, he breaks through into sunlight. In Chapter P he finds a rich harvest of words, including one, petrichor, that refers to the loamy smell that rises from the dry ground after a rain, and a nicely dense indivisible word, prend, that refers to a mended crack. He notes these down in his big ledger book.

Théophile Gautier read the dictionary to enrich and exoticize his poetry. Walter Pater read the dictionary to keep his prose pure and marmoreal — to learn what words to avoid. Shea has no interest in purity or poetry. His style is simple. He just wants to identify and savor, for their own sweet sakes, malocclusive Greek and Latin hybrids that are difficult to figure out how to pronounce. He is fond of polysyllabic near-homonyms — words like incompetible (outside the range of competency) and repertitious (found accidentally), which are quickly swallowed up in the sonic gravitation of familiar words. And a number of Shea’s finds deserve prompt resurrection: vicambulist, for instance — a person who wanders city streets.

The effect of this book on me was to make me like Ammon Shea and, briefly, to hate English. What a choking, God-awful mash it is! Surely French is better. Then I recovered and saw its greatness afresh. The O.E.D., Shea notes, is “a catalog of the foibles of the human condition.” Shea has walked the wildwood of our gnarled, ancient speech and returned singing incomprehensible sounds in a language that turns out to be our own.

dead and gone: the man who made childhood fun

very very sweet article on the man who invented the Hula Hoop and the Frisbee (among other fun toys)...as much an obituary of childhood as it was in the pre-pokemon cards and playstation era really as of the man himself.

BY MITCH ALBOM
Last week, at age 82, Richard Knerr died. You probably don’t recognize his name. You probably can’t pronounce it. He wasn’t an actor or a war hero. He cured no diseases. Made no scientific breakthroughs.
In fact, you could say Richard Knerr was about one thing and one thing only: fun. But if you measure a man by what the world would be like without him, here a few things that, minus Knerr, you would never know:
The Hula Hoop.
The Frisbee.
The SuperBall.
Those alone took up a third of my childhood.
Knerr was the co-founder of Wham-O, the company that made those items and more, including the Water Wiggly, the Slip ‘N Slide and Silly String. If there was a philosophy to Wham-O’s products, it was this: Keep it simple, keep it cheap, keep it something kids like to do, over and over.
You’ll notice what is left out.
Violence. Noise. Weapons. Video.

Just for the fun of it
Believe it or not, there was a time when “free time” in America meant doing things like trying to shake a Hula Hoop without it falling down your legs. Or lining up a perfectly flat Frisbee throw, so that it glided on air like a flying saucer.
I know, I know. Anyone under 30 is groaning just reading this. But we make no apologies. This was what we did for fun. We threw Frisbees back and forth. We shook Hula-Hoops around our waists. We flicked a SuperBall against the pavement so hard it would bounce onto someone’s roof.
And then Mom called us for dinner.

[...]

I didn’t know Richard Knerr. But I recently saw an old photo of him in a shirt and tie, goofing it up, Hula Hoops swinging from his shoulders. And I was saddened by his death, because it reminded me of how a certain philosophy has died with him.
Today, kids’ fun has to be at someone’s expense. Blowing up your opponent is fun. Clobbering your friend in Madden football is fun. Insulting people on MySpace or laughing at a geek on YouTube is fun. You don’t see kid “crazes” anymore — the way SuperBalls or yo-yos were crazes. Today a kid craze is cell phones or PlayStations. Today the idea of bouncing a ball as high as you can seems so incredibly lame, you’d wonder if the kid doing it had problems.
But that’s the thing. We didn’t have problems. Not like they have today.
We bounced our balls, threw our Frisbees, shook that silly plastic ring until our hips hurt. And it was fun. It was fun because we weren’t proving ourselves. Our toys didn’t define us, rank us or socialize us. They were meant to be played with. What else could a product from a company named Wham-O be?
By the way, it doesn’t surprise me that Wham-O was sold to a conglomerate in 1982, then later sold to Mattel, then later to a bunch of investors. Guys like Knerr and Melin, who started in their parents’ garages, are often bought out, left with memories, photos and a big check.
Just the same, I was sad to see Knerr’s obituary, because it reminded me of so many youthful things that have waved good-bye. I know when something drops out of style, they say “it went the way of the Hula Hoop,” but they shouldn’t mean childhood.

'tis the season to eat/make halwa!

The winter chill seems to say: chuck out the calorie counter and dig out the degchis, it's time to make hot, tastes-best-with-ginger-tea halwa.

Chana, carrot, sooji: take your pick.

PS: Now that I've finally acquired the knack of making halwa, I'm appalled at how easy it is!
I mean all these years I've been thinking that there's this huge subtle art behind it that can only be achieved by a chosen few Cordon-Bleu cooks (or the desi-equivalent thereof), and now I find it's ridiculously easy.

Try it, honestly. It's great calorie-rich food for growing kids (not so good for mums though):P

one dad's answer to "can I cook my sister" and other FAQs

Ever wondered the best way to answer the endless stream of questions that invariably come from children in the back of a car during long journeys?

Wendell Jamieson decided to tackle the problem by putting the most common queries to academic experts on a range of subjects, from mammalian evolution and medicine to ancient history and meteorology. Here are some of the most fascinating questions and answers from a new book he has compiled.

How far up in the sky can a child's balloon go before it pops?

I'm assuming this is a typical rubber balloon, which can have a diameter of up to three feet and is filled with helium. It will expand in proportion to the decrease in atmospheric pressure and, in theory, could reach about 28,000 feet before the rubber gets brittle from the lower temperature and then pops.

Why do people "fall" in love?

We don't really fall in love; we jump in love - we are at the mercy of our chemical make-up. Chemicals are released in our brain when we are drawn to someone. One of these, phenylethylamine, makes us feel very excited - everything seems wonderful. It's almost like flu: your face is flushed, your palms are sweaty, you breathe heavily, you even feel a slight tingle in the hands and feet.
Generally, people are attracted to opposites of themselves - the organised person to the disorganised; the bookworm to the social butterfly.
In the next stage of love, a hormone called oxytocin is released. This plays an important role throughout our lives: it is a "cuddle hormone" and acts as a kind of infatuation chemical. Childbirth and the noise of a baby crying also make it flow.

Why do all animals have tails, except for humans, chimpanzees and gorillas? It is not just humans, chimpanzees and gorillas that don't have tails. Other apes such as orang-utans, bonobos and gibbons do not have them either.
Basically, tails are designed to provide balance for animals, particularly those that might live in trees. A tail counterbalances the weight of the head at the front of the body.
As humans became more upright and some apes started to use arms for more than just walking, the need for a tail for balancing became smaller, so over time and through evolution, it faded out.
However, we do have the remains of a tail - the bottom three or four vertebrae of the human spine are fused together to form the tailbone (coccyx).
This still has a use, anchoring muscles such as the one of your bottom, and it still really hurts if you fall on it.

Why did ancient Egyptians build pyramids? Why not giant rectangles or some other shape? Egyptologists assume they represent primeval hills, the hills that on the day of creation rose out of the flood. This idea certainly comes from the natural state of Egypt in former times. the land was flooded by the Nile, and when the flood retreated, islands appeared which were considered to be symbols of the day of creation. So a pyramid could represent such a hill.
But one could ask: why was it not just a rounded hill, why did it have edges leading to a top? Another idea is that kings used pyramids to climb up to their heaven.
But these are all speculations. A final theory is that in the Egyptian city of Heliopolis (the centre of the sun cult in Egypt) there was a monument called a benben stone.
It could be that this sacred stone had the shape of a pyramid, and that the people who built the pyramids were trying to recreate that, because the top piece of a pyramid is called a benben.

Why is the sky blue?

At first, people thought the sky was blue because there were water droplets in it, but if that were true you'd get a deeper blue when the air is more humid and that's not the case.
After a little more investigation, it was realised that the blue was due to the air molecules in the atmosphere.
The light from the sun is made up of many different colours, each of which is a different wavelength of light. The wavelength of red, for example, is longer than the wavelength of blue.
Longer wavelengths for the most part travel straight through air molecules, while shorter ones are more scattered by them.
So when the blue wavelengths hit the air molecules, they are scattered all over the sky - and that's what you see when you look up.
At sunset, when the sun is lower on the horizon, its light has to travel through many more air molecules than when it is right above us. All these molecules scatter the red wavelengths, too, and that's why the sun looks red at the end of the day.

In Antarctica, are people upside down?

Of course, when standing at the bottom of the Earth, you don't feel upside down. Your feet are on the ground and the sky is above you.
But an astronaut in Outer Space may look down at you and notice that your head is pointing in the opposite direction to someone standing at the North Pole. (Incidentally, from the same view, someone in London may look somewhat sideways.)
Thanks to gravity, we're all grounded on the Earth with our heads towards the clouds, and we're all right- side up relative to our location. Life is all about perspectives.

If you don't hit anything with it, how does a whip make that noise? That very satisfying "crack" is a miniature version of a sonic boom as the very tip of the whip - which is called the "cracker" (made out of a tuft of thread or string or nylon) - moves faster than the speed of sound and breaks the sound barrier.
The speed of sound in air is 760mph. Only whips with crackers make that sound. The whip was probably the first manmade object to actually break the sound barrier.

Why does red mean stop?

The 19th-century Scottish engineer Robert Stevenson, who was active in designing early lighthouses, looked for an alternative colour to white - most lighthouses had a white beacon - when he built a lighthouse near to one that already existed, because he was afraid ships wouldn't be able to tell which was which. Of the light sources and coloured glasses available at the time, he found that red was a particularly intense light, meaning it could be seen from the greatest distance.
So in maritime signalling, red became an alternative to white, and was later adopted by the Admiralty in 1852 to mark the port-side on steam vessels. Green was adopted for the starboard-side, and vessels seeing the green light on other ships had the right
When train tracks were developed, engineers adopted this system as meaning stop and go - and the same system continued with cars.

Why do we have eyebrows?

In his surprisingly weird book The Expressions Of The Emotions In Man And Animals, Charles Darwin maintained that human eyebrows are descended from the vestigial remnants of the scattering of long hairs one finds in the very same place on other mammals, including chimps and dogs.
But why were eyebrows preserved, while most of the rest of our hair was lost?
In accordance with Darwin's views on sex selection, he believed that those human hairs which remain are those which are attractive to the opposite sex.
However, another suggestion is that they're important for forming facial expressions that are more easily recognised by other individuals in one's social group.
They also serve the practical purpose of stopping sweat and rain running down your forehead into your eyes.

Why do clouds make shapes?

Meteorologists divide the infinite varieties of cloud formation into ten basic types. Not all of them make shapes - some are just too blurry and indistinct to have any clear edges to them. But the most distinct are the sharp-edged "cumulus" clouds, which are the fluffy cottonwool tufts you see on a sunny day. They often look like elephants. This is because they can develop vertical towers, borne on rising columns of air (thermals).
After about ten minutes, the cloud's droplets start to evaporate at the sides, leaving a central trunk that curls upwards as it is blown along in the wind and looks like the trunk of an elephant.
This might be why ancient Hindus and Buddhists believed elephants to be the spiritual cousins of clouds.

Why do you never see baby pigeons?

Because they can't fly. You'll never see them unless you look into a nest, which pigeons build hidden away from predators such as cats, dogs, hawks and people. The squabs (chicks) will be there three to four weeks before they can fly. You probably do see young birds, you just don't realise it because young birds are the same size as adult birds. If you see one out there chasing other pigeons around, it is probably a baby begging its parents to feed it.

Do unborn babies know they're in there?

Thankfully, no - if you knew you were in there, it would be kind of scary for nine months.
The foetus is growing, of course, but the frontal lobe of our brain - which gives us emotion and self-recognition - develops very slowly.
Even until adulthood, the frontal lobe isn't fully developed: that's partly why we sometimes see bad judgment in teenagers.
Foetuses do all sorts of exploring behaviour in the womb. They run their hands along the inside of the womb, they feel their own feet and their faces, and they put their hands in their mouths.
Studies have also shown that a newborn infant will recognise its mother's voice compared to a stranger's voice and will also recognise its native language versus a foreign one.

How many hairs do I have on my head?

The average adult has about 100,000 hairs or follicles - and children have the same amount. Redheads have fewer because their individual strands are thicker. It's extremely rare for children to lose their hair. Usually it will happen in their 20s, 30s or 40s, depending on their genetic code.

Why do your hands and feet go wrinkly in the bath, but not the rest of you?

The outer layer of your skin, the epidermis, produces an oily substance called sebum - you can see it when you touch a mirror or a window; it's the oil you leave there.
Sebum keeps water off your skin, but after a long period underwater, the sebum is washed off and the skin starts to absorb water.
When you are immersed for a long time, dead cells in the outermost layer of your skin (which protects the body from the environment) absorb the water. This causes this layer to expand and therefore have a greater surface area. Being attached to the tissue below, it wrinkles to compensate for the greater surface area.
This outer skin layer is thicker on the palms of your hands and on the soles of your feet than on the other parts of your body, so absorbs more water here, making the wrinkling more noticeable.

(Extracted from Father Knows Less by Wendell Jamieson, published by Putnam at £9.99. Copywright 2007, Wendell Jamieson.)

good stuff: the week of young people's blogs

interesting :

"For over eight years, the City Circle has been running a supplementary school that offers academic support to students between the ages of 8 and 18. The school is run by volunteers and serves around 110 students. CC Saturday School enjoys a great reputation and fantastic feedback.

Inspired by the movie Freedom Writers, we decided to give our students the chance to share their views on the CC blogs. The students were given the freedom to write about whatever they want and that the good pieces would be published unedited. To encourage the students, we promised prizes to the best six stories. Over this week, the CC blogs belongs to the young ones, the innocent, those with no political agendas. Some bits will make you laugh, other make you shed a tear, some are entertaining, others thoughtful. Above all, we cannot ignore them. They are the future.

To find out more about the school please visit the school's page.

Sid Djerfi is Head teacher of the City Circle Saturday School.''

Read the 'Pick of the Blogs' here

parental plug: smell the roses

if you want to see the impossible -- spring in winter, blooming pink roses et al, check out the Sisters-in-Faith blog's newest makeover.

One can almost smell the roses,

e-'Eid cards

so, we've been sending out e-'Eid cards the last couple of days and were wondering whether some of the readers of this blog might like to check out our new, revamped card service.

alternatively, if you scroll down the page, you'll see the pale blue bravenet e-card service box sandwiched somewhere among the host of other boxes on our sidebar.

suggestions on improving the service/sketches/gifs are always welcome.
jazaakumullaah khayr.