Xah's A Word A Day — the making of belles-lettres

Transhumanists seek to expand technological opportunities for people to live longer and healthier lives and to enhance their intellectual, physical, and emotional capacities. Both present technologies, such as genetic engineering, information technology, and pharmaceuticals, as well as anticipated future capabilities, such as nanotechnology, machine intelligence, uploading, “paradise-engineering”, and space colonization, are all part of the transhumanist ambit.

(Christian) Eschatology

“Alright you two! Enough lollygagging! Let's get to work!”

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, in a whirlwind, are grilled before the Senate over the prisoner abuse scandal.

MyDoom Net Worm Scores Hit, Knocks Out SCO Site: LONDON (Reuters) - The MyDoom Internet worm claimed its first scalp Sunday, paralyzing the Web site of American software firm SCO Group with a massive data blitz.

... In imagining what might have happened, one of America's most provocative young writers, Katie Roiphe, has created a deep, richly textured fictional portrait of Alice and Dodgson: she changing from an unruly child to a bewitching adolescent, and he, a diffident, neurasthenic adult whose increasing obsession with her almost destroys him.

neurasthenic royal is accused of making more crank calls.

Each of the requisite technologies can be justified on its own as solving clamant problems of the present day Internet, and may be expected to be promoted or mandated as so doing.

One thing we could say by way of exculpation is that the American magazine industry, like American politics, is diseased by formula and a global failure of courage and creativity. And popular magazines practice a sort of least-common-denominator moronism that is common to all American mass-media, from major-label pop music to network television to, um, men's magazines. In fact, magazines such as Maxim are essentially Cosmo for men, and display no deeper set of truths. But the theme of what's wrong with men, though rich, must be left for another occasion.

OK, Xah. I'll talk to you later then. (I'll regale you the rest later!)

Ever wonder why trains have this wedge-like shaped thing at the front? It is called the cowcatcher↗. In the early days of trains (giant, black, iron-clad, coal-burning steam-engined trains, humongous cylindrical shaped that are water-boilers), often it would run into cows. Of course it would kill the cows but may leave undesirable things on the track. Thus, they developed this wedge-shaped metal grille that swipes animals in-the-way out of the way. (Of course it would still kill the cows, but human amenity has priority) As times moved on, cows no-longer stands in the ways of trains, but the cowcatcher evolved into an aesthetic element, as if to say: “nothing will get in my way!”.

One of the benefits of being the Big Kahuna is that I get to trump everyone else in these decisions.

Kahuna burger

A year ago, Trent Edwards was winning games for Los Gatos High School, collecting awards as one of the nation's top quarterbacks and eventually making a ballyhooed commitment to Stanford.

What's up with you? Still finding orkut.com fascinating? Meeting any interesting people? Dates? Engaging in exothermic verbal salvos?

prattle (used in lyrics of Disney's Little Mermaid (1989) movie, sung by the octopus witch.)

The first press screening at Cannes was at 8:30 a.m. That's the screening where all the real movie people attend — the critics, festival heads, distributors, exhibitors, film teachers, other directors, etc. (the evening black-tie audience is far more philistine). After the screening, the auditorium filled with booing and cheering — so equal in measure that people started booing or cheering at each other.

“It looked as if a tornado touched down and hopscotched across Granby,” he told reporters.

politicians throw junkets

frugivorous animals are called frugivore; while there are herbivore, insectivore, carnivore and of course omnivore. Human animals are, of course, rather promiscuous when it comes to food. Herbs and insects are much eaten in Asia, while in modern West there's systematic birth'n'slaughter houses for meaty-animals (aka livestock). Asian tends to probe exotic food-choices. For example, they savor dog meat, rhino-hone, tiger penis, snake blood, shark fin, bear palm, monkey brain. Eating humans by humans is called cannibalism. Such practice can vary in context from survival to gourmet, both are rather hard to find and much looked down by modern educated ignoramuses.

Ever since French semiotician Roland Barthes called professional wrestling a "spectacle of excess" in the 1950s, a small cottage industry of theorizing intellectuals has grown up around the sport. They've mined it for deeper meanings that casual fans might be missing, finding in the grandiloquent theatricality ancient dramas of Good versus Evil, morality plays exploring masculine virtues, and a postmodern pastiche of archetypes and characters drawing from cultures around the globe and across time.