An Early Morning Thought

Sometime in that fuzzy period while I was waking up, I coined a new word:

snorange - n. Something that is created for a specific purpose, but has much broader applicability.

Example: "That law was a snorange. It was created to close a narrow loophole in the tax code, but the IRS found they could use it to go after a wide variety of tax cheats."

Of course snorange is a snorange itself. I thought of it as a word to rhyme with orange, but it could serve a useful function in the language. I can't think of another English word that captures this idea.

Just for the fun of it, I googled snorange and found that there are already two definitions in the urban dictionary. In fact every word ending in "orange" that I tried had at least one definition in the urban dictionary. If we're ever going to have a "real" word that rhymes with orange, one that enters the general vocabulary, we're going to have to pick one and start using it. So go and look in the urban dictionary and propose your favorite, most useful orange rhyme in the comments.

The Ultimate Student Computer

My children--the mermals as we call them--have reached college age. One of the many decisions that have to be made when sending your kids off to college is what kind of computer to buy. A colleague of mine suggested what I think is the ultimate solution for most college students. Buy a netbook and a desktop at the same time. The netbook is small, portable, and adequate for most tasks away from the dorm, such as taking notes, checking e-mail, web surfing, and reading. It is small enough that it can be tucked into a backpack or satchel and carried around campus. It's not powerful enough to do more intensive work; this is where the desktop comes in. The desktop can be the workhorse for more computationally intensive work, with a better processor and more hard drive storage. Because it is a desktop, it is less easily stolen. Similarly, because netbooks are cheaper they are less often stolen and easier to replace if they are stolen.

The Plastic Mind

The other day someone mentioned something about the interesting ways that our minds work. It reminded me of when my family purchased an electric toothbrush. Our dentist recommended it, and so we bought one. The one we bought had a timer so that it would turn off after the recommended two minutes of brushing. The first time I tried it I almost didn't finish; it felt to me like putting a bumblebee into my mouth. The tickling vibration sent a shiver down my spine and it was all I could do to keep the thing pressed against my teeth. I thought to myself that there was no way I was going to be able to use this device regularly.

I resolved to give it a couple weeks before deciding. If I'm anything, I'm a dutiful patient. It was the second or third time I tried using the toothbrush that it happened. I stuck the thing into my mouth and turned it on. Once again I felt the shiver down my spine. Somewhere in that two minute period though, something happened. My mind wandered just a little bit and my brain readjusted. When the timer went off, I realized that the sensation no longer bothered me. I continue to use the toothbrush to this day.

Many years ago I read about an experiment in which people were fitted with glasses that flipped the image that the wearer saw so that it was upside down. Within a couple of days the subjects minds had adjusted. They no longer perceived the image as upside down but right side up. I have experienced something like this myself when getting new eyeglasses. When you first get them, it's like looking from within a fishbowl. The world looks warped as if taken with a fish eye lens. Within a few days, however, the image straightens out and looks normal. It's an amazing insight into the plasticity of the mind.