What I Learned Today

Bored? Sleepy? Lack of oxygen? Who knows?

The Library of Congress posted an interesting analysis of this question in Everyday Mysteries: Why do we yawn? They conclude that it may serve a social function and/or a physiological one, which leaves the door pretty wide open.

The article claims that “generally speaking, we cannot yawn on command.” I find that I can yawn whenever I choose to, which is handy on airplanes. Do others find that they lack conscious control over yawning? (Stifling a yawn, however, is really difficult!)

Apparently 42-55% of non-autistic adults find yawning contagious. I’m surprised that the percentage isn’t higher. Do you find that the picture of the man yawning above makes you want to yawn? Try doing a google image search on “yawn” and see if you can escape the power!

As a bonus, I learned two nifty new words while reading this article:

• pandiculation: yawning and stretching the body on waking up or getting sleepy
• oscitation: yawning (“the involuntary opening of the mouth with respiration, breathing first inward, then outward”)

It never occurred to me to wonder where Motorola got its name. Recently, I heard this fascinating tidbit and followed up — it appears to be true!

From Motorola’s own timeline:

In 1930 Galvin Manufacturing Corporation introduced the Motorola radio, one of the first commercially successful car radios. Company founder Paul V. Galvin created the brand name Motorola for the car radio — linking “motor” (for motorcar) with “ola” (which implied sound). Thus the Motorola brand meant sound in motion.

Today, Motorola’s cell (mobile) phones give a whole new meaning to “sound in motion.”

Last Sunday found me once again on stage to spell under the spotlight. This was my third National Adult Spelling Bee, and I was surprised to discover that it felt more like a reunion than a competition. Many of the spellers greeted me by name, and I enjoyed seeing so many familiar faces. Vicky was there wearing a custom necklace with a Scrabble V tile for a pendant. Janice was back with her trademark air-spelling and joyful exuberance. I guess once you get started, it’s easy to get hooked!

This year about 30 spellers assembled on the stage, and the rounds began. I spelled the following words:

1. rockabilly
2. posse
3. jeopardy (when I sat down, my seatmate whispered that I’d forgotten the exclamation mark)
4. recuse
5. abridged
6. stellar
7. conundrum
8. imbricate
9. gavotte
10. imbrue: a new one on me! It means “to soil or stain.” I guessed… correctly.
11. pelagic: I knew my Master’s in Geology would come in handy someday (that’s where I learned this word).
12. esemplastic: another new one, meaning “shaping or having the power to shape disparate things into a unified whole.” Again, I guessed… correctly.

At this point we were down to five contestants. And then I was given “asceticism” to spell. I rolled the word around in my head for a moment to get it right, then started spelling. I was so focused on getting the “asc” part right that — alack! — I lost a syllable along the way. I spelled “a-s-c-e-t-i-s-m” and I was out, placing 4th (since two of the remaining spellers tied for third).

Photo by Ralph Millero

The final two rounds were amusing. We were down to two spellers. Michael Petrina, who comes all the way from Virginia (almost) every year for this event, was given “dossier” to spell, which he did. Patricia Knatz was then given “limen,” which means “a threshold of a physiological or psychological response.” She misspelled it, and then Michael was given “flageolet” (!! it’s “a woodwind musical instrument”). He laughed and said that he’d gotten that word at a previous bee and missed it! So, happily, he got it right this time, and walked away with first place (he also won in 2009. He’s a really great speller!).

I don’t know about other spelling bees, but I was really struck here by how friendly everyone was. One doesn’t applaud after each correctly spelled word, but instead on those moments when someone is spelled out. This applause was always very genuine, and often handshakes were extended between contestants. It’s a slightly weird feeling, sitting in a group where all the spelling antennae are so sensitized that you can feel the collective indrawn breath when a word is misspelled, and the collective nod of satisfaction when a word is spelled correctly. And yet it was also a feeling of being with “your” people—people who *feel* the rightness or wrongness of orthography. The focus was so intense that I started feeling simultaneously sort of floaty but also very, very present. Everything was crowded out but the words. You can’t help but spell along in your head for everyone else’s words. That’s two solid hours of words and letters and words. Whew!

I’m certain I’ll be back next year, ready to pit myself against the dictionary once more. I love it that spelling bees aren’t just for kids!

During a work meeting, someone referred to attending an “NSF charrette,” and everyone else blinked in confusion until someone asked, “What’s a charrette?”

It turns out that this is a word for “an intense period of design activity” (per wikipedia) and in this case refers to a meeting of minds devoted to focused work on a particular problem or program. Apparently it is often used in the context of land use planning or urban planning.

But the etymology is where it really gets fun. “Charrette” is French for “cart” or “chariot,” and as wikipedia explains:

“It was not unusual for student architects to continue working furiously, at the last minute, on the illustrations for their design presentations, even while riding in the school cart (en charrette) through the streets of Paris en route to submit the projects to their professors. Hence, the term metamorphosed into the current design-related usage in conjunction with working right up until a deadline.

An alternative explanation is that at the end of a class in the studio a charrette would be wheeled among the student artists to pick up their work for review while they, each working furiously to apply the finishing touch, were said to be working en charrette.

In the 16th, 17th, and 18th century when travel took long periods, a Charrette referred to long carriage rides in which politicians and policy makers would be sequestered together in order to collaborate in solving a set problem over the duration of their journey. This origin is most similar to the current usage of the word in the design world.”

(Awesome graphic — wish I could have found some credits for it!)

I recently learned what the term “rifle” means. It turns out that it’s far more interesting than “gun with a long barrel,” which was my previous definition. Instead, it represents a mechanical innovation. The long barrel contains spiraling grooves on its inside, such that the raised parts of the grooves make contact with the bullet and impart spin to it.

“Like throwing a football?” I wondered, and sure enough, wikipedia uses that exact analogy! The spin gives the projectile additional stability and therefore range (and precision targeting).

The term “rifle” comes from the French rifler, a verb that means “to graze or scratch”. The rifles, then, are the spiral grooves or scratches — and the gun originally was called a “rifled gun.”

So a rifle does have a long barrel, to accommodate the spiral grooves and enough time to spin the bullet (>100,000 rpms!). But it’s what’s inside that counts.