Learn more at its entry in WebElements and its entry at Chemicool.

The difference between 0.6 and 0.8 sounds small, but it actually means you get more than twice as many bounces (0.6 = 0.8^2.29).

  * .  |  * .  |  * *  |  * *  |  * .  |  * *  |  * *  |  * .  |  . *  |  . *
  . .  |  * .  |  . .  |  . *  |  . *  |  * .  |  * *  |  * *  |  * .  |  * *
  . .  |  . .  |  . .  |  . .  |  . .  |  . .  |  . .  |  . .  |  . .  |  . .
   a       b       c       d       e       f       g       h       i       j

  * .  |  * .  |  * *  |  * *  |  * .  |  * *  |  * *  |  * .  |  . *  |  . *
  . .  |  * .  |  . .  |  . *  |  . *  |  * .  |  * *  |  * *  |  * .  |  * *
  * .  |  * .  |  * .  |  * .  |  * .  |  * .  |  * .  |  * .  |  * .  |  * .
   k       l       m       n       o       p       q       r       s       t

  * .  |  * .  |  * *  |  * *  |  * .  |  * *  |  * *  |  * .  |  . *  |  . *
  . .  |  * .  |  . .  |  . *  |  . *  |  * .  |  * *  |  * *  |  * .  |  * *
  * *  |  * *  |  * *  |  * *  |  * *  |  * *  |  * *  |  * *  |  * *  |  * *
   u       v       x       y       z       ç       é       à       è       ù
                                          and     for      of     the     with

  * .  |  * .  |  * *  |  * *  |  * .  |  * *  |  * *  |  * .  |  . *  |  . *
  . .  |  * .  |  . .  |  . *  |  . *  |  * .  |  * *  |  * *  |  * .  |  * *
  . *  |  . *  |  . *  |  . *  |  . *  |  . *  |  . *  |  . *  |  . *  |  . *
   â       ê       î       ô       û       ë       ï       ü       œ       w
   ch      gh      sh      th      wh      ed      er      ou      ow

(The standard numbering for the dots in a single cell is

  1 4
  2 5
  3 6

As far as I can tell, in 2005 the same assignments are used throughout the English-speaking world that were standard in the UK by 1911. (This was not always so; vide braille variants.)

Besides the symbols listed, there are 23 other possible symbols, not counting the space (no raised dots). Part of the genius of Braille's assignments is in the symbols he did not use for letters. It seems to me that these virtues of braille have been too infrequently noted and praised. Now that Braille's system is universally accepted I suppose this is not a problem, but I still want to mention them to show off my cleverness in having noticed them, okay?

When a single letter or a few symbols are written in braille or a similar system, it is possible in principle that one might not be able to tell how they register. That is, a single dot might be in any of the six possible positions, two dots in a row might be at any of three heights, dots aligned vertically might be on the left or right, and dots that fit in two adjacent rows might be in the first and second or in the second and third rows. Braille's selection of assignments assures that for a sequence of alphabetic characters, however short, these ambiguities do not arise: there is only one alphabetic character (a) assigned a single dot, only one (c) is written as a row of two dots, etc. Furthermore, the sequence is reasonably systematic, with ten symbols in the upper two rows repeated systematically with the four different possible bottom rows.

Braille's symbol assignments mesh nicely with decimal numerals. The symbol

  . *
  . *
  * *

    *  *    * *
    *       *
  * *   

    *
    *  *    * *
  * *       *

Other common elevator braille:

  *    * *
    *  *    *
  *    *      *
   o    p    en

  * *  *    *      *
       *      *  *
       *    *    *
   c    l    o    s  (close)

    *  *    * *
         *  *
  *    *    *
   st   o    p

  *    *      *  * *
       *      *
       *    *    *
   a    l    ar   m

  *    * *
       *
  * *  *
   u    p

  * *    *  * *
    *  * *    *
         *  *
   do   w    n

       * *
    *  * *
    *
letter  g (g for ground floor)
 sign

When they are not preceded by a number sign, the letters a-j lowered by a row are punctuation signs:

  . .  |  . .  |  . .  |  . .  |  . .  |  . .  |  . .  |  . .  |  . .  |  . .
  * .  |  * .  |  * *  |  * *  |  * .  |  * *  |  * *  |  * .  |  . *  |  . *
  . .  |  * .  |  . .  |  . *  |  . *  |  * .  |  * *  |  * *  |  * .  |  * *
  _,_     _;_     _:_     _._     _?_     _!_    paren   _``_     _*_     _''_

Here are some comments from A Cyclopedia of Education, ed. Paul Monroe (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1911), from the waning years of that wild and wooly era when many different schemes competed. (The comments are excerpted from the article ``Education of the Blind,'' written by Helen Keller. If you attended a US school, you probably heard a lot of inspirational stuff about her life before she became a socialist.)

  Curricula and Apparatus. -- The curricula of the ordinary institutions for the young blind are about the same as those of the common schools for the seeing, -- reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, history, etc. The chief difference in method lies in the apparatus, and is at once suggested by a study of the apparatus itself.
  The first embossed book for the blind was printed at the Paris Institution in 1786. The early books were expensive, not easy to read, and were used primarily for exhibition purposes. The type was a form of Roman letter. Many persons experimented with variations of our common letters and arbitrary arrangements of lines and curves. [A number of such systems were used, but] except for the very useful Moon type for the elderly blind and those whose fingers are insensitive, all line alphabets have been abandoned (the Perkins Institution only recently discontinued the printing of Roman line) in favor of point systems, braille and two variants of it.
  The base of braille is a cell of 6 points, thus [until I cook up a little image file, imagine two parallel columns of three equally-spaced dots]. The characters consist of various combinations of these 6 points. For instance, 3 points in a vertical line form the letter L. If the middle dot is struck out and placed at the right of the lower dot, the letter is U, and so on. There are 62 [sic] characters. Each represents a letter, a punctuation mark, or a contraction standing for several letters. This point system was made by Louis Braille in 1825, and bears his name. It is used all over the world. American braille embodies some changes, not in the form of the letters, but in the assignment of the letters to various combinations. The idea was that the letters which occur most frequently, such as E, O, R, S, T, should be made with the fewest dots. The changes do not alter the mechanical structure of the type any more than the mechanical structure of this ink type would be altered if it should be agreed to print s for e and e for s. New York point differs from braille in that the characters are not 3 points high and 2 wide, but 2 points high and 3 wide. It has no advantages, and some disadvantages as compared with braille. The variety of prints has caused some confusion and has resulted in reduplication of books. Some American institutions are provincial enough to cling to New York point when other American institutions and the whole of Europe use braille both for literature and for music. But any enterprising blind person who knows one print can easily learn another. The point systems can be written for notes, correspondence and manuscript books, on special writing machines and also by means of small hand frames and a stylus to indent the points. To write ink print the blind can use any typewriter, and typewriting is taught in the best schools. The blind also write pencil script, and there are several ingenious devices to guide the pencil.

Below are the letter symbols for braille and three other systems. (The cartouches are for the viewer's convenience only; no such boxes are normally embossed.) The ``English braille,'' coincides with Braille's braille in the letters shown. The American braille symbols differ as Keller explained. ``New York'' symbols are mostly identical with the ``Wait Anglo-American'' symbols for lower-case characters. [The symbols that differ are those for t, whose single dot the different systems have in different columns, and those for a, m, n, o, and s, which are only two columns wide in Wait l.c. symbols, but are three columns wide in New York (with a blank middle column). Not all the symbols that could have been stretched were, and it's hard to see a uniform principle according to which it was decided which letters would be wide.] There seems to have been some confusion of names. (And most tables of braille symbols that I have found in English-, Spanish-, and Italian-language encyclopedias contain some obviously erroneous symbol identification; none of the French encyclopedias I've checked gives a table.) There was a plate accompanying the cited article, source uncredited, that gave the Wait symbols but called them New York Lower Case and Capitals. (The braille system and most variants of it use a special character which indicates that a letter following it is capitalized.)

     English   American     New       Anglo-American (Wait)
     braille   braille      York       Lower      
                                       Case        Capitals
     +-----+   +-----+
     | * * |   | * * |   +-------+   +-------+   +---------+
     | * * |   | * * |   | * * * |   | * * * |   | * * * * |
     | * * |   | * * |   | * * * |   | * * * |   | * * * * |
     +-----+   +-----+   +-------+   +-------+   +---------+

     +-----+   +-----+
     | *   |   | *   |   +-------+   +-------+   +---------+
  a  |     |   |     |   | *   * |   | * *   |   | * *     |
     |     |   |     |   |       |   |       |   |     * * |
     +-----+   +-----+   +-------+   +-------+   +---------+

     +-----+   +-----+
     | *   |   | *   |   +-------+   +-------+   +---------+
  b  | *   |   | *   |   | * * * |   | * * * |   | * * *   |
     |     |   |   * |   | *     |   | *     |   | *     * |
     +-----+   +-----+   +-------+   +-------+   +---------+

     +-----+   +-----+
     | * * |   |   * |   +-------+   +-------+   +---------+
  c  |     |   | * * |   | * *   |   | * *   |   | * *   * |
     |     |   |     |   |     * |   |     * |   |     *   |
     +-----+   +-----+   +-------+   +-------+   +---------+

     +-----+   +-----+
     | * * |   | * * |   +-------+   +-------+   +---------+
  d  |   * |   |   * |   |   * * |   |   * * |   | * * * * |
     |     |   |     |   |     * |   |     * |   |   *     |
     +-----+   +-----+   +-------+   +-------+   +---------+

     +-----+   +-----+
     | *   |   |     |   +-------+   +-------+   +---------+
  e  |   * |   | *   |   |   *   |   |   *   |   | *       |
     |     |   |     |   |       |   |       |   |   * * * |
     +-----+   +-----+   +-------+   +-------+   +---------+

     +-----+   +-----+
     | * * |   | * * |   +-------+   +-------+   +---------+
  f  | *   |   | *   |   | * * * |   | * * * |   | * * *   |
     |     |   |     |   |       |   |       |   |       * |
     +-----+   +-----+   +-------+   +-------+   +---------+

     +-----+   +-----+
     | * * |   | * * |   +-------+   +-------+   +---------+
  g  | * * |   | * * |   |     * |   |     * |   |     * * |
     |     |   |     |   | * * * |   | * * * |   | * * *   |
     +-----+   +-----+   +-------+   +-------+   +---------+

     +-----+   +-----+
     | *   |   | *   |   +-------+   +-------+   +---------+
  h  | * * |   | * * |   |   * * |   |   * * |   |   * * * |
     |     |   |     |   | * * * |   | * * * |   | * * *   |
     +-----+   +-----+   +-------+   +-------+   +---------+

     +-----+   +-----+
     |   * |   |   * |   +-------+   +-------+   +---------+
  i  | *   |   | *   |   |   *   |   |   *   |   | * * * * |
     |     |   |     |   |   *   |   |   *   |   | *       |
     +-----+   +-----+   +-------+   +-------+   +---------+

     +-----+   +-----+
     |   * |   | * * |   +-------+   +-------+   +---------+
  j  | * * |   |   * |   | * * * |   | * * * |   | * * *   |
     |     |   | * * |   |   *   |   |   *   |   |   *   * |
     +-----+   +-----+   +-------+   +-------+   +---------+

     +-----+   +-----+
     | *   |   | *   |   +-------+   +-------+   +---------+
  k  |     |   | * * |   | * * * |   | * * * |   | * * * * |
     | *   |   | *   |   |     * |   |     * |   |     *   |
     +-----+   +-----+   +-------+   +-------+   +---------+

     +-----+   +-----+
     | *   |   | *   |   +-------+   +-------+   +---------+
  l  | *   |   | *   |   | *     |   | *     |   | *   * * |
     | *   |   | *   |   | * *   |   | * *   |   | * *     |
     +-----+   +-----+   +-------+   +-------+   +---------+

     +-----+   +-----+
     | * * |   | * * |   +-------+   +-------+   +---------+
  m  |     |   |     |   | *   * |   |   * * |   | * *     |
     | *   |   | *   |   | *     |   |   *   |   | *   * * |
     +-----+   +-----+   +-------+   +-------+   +---------+

     +-----+   +-----+
     | * * |   |   * |   +-------+   +-------+   +---------+
  n  |   * |   |     |   |       |   |       |   |     * * |
     | *   |   | * * |   | *   * |   |   * * |   | * *     |
     +-----+   +-----+   +-------+   +-------+   +---------+

     +-----+   +-----+
     | *   |   | *   |   +-------+   +-------+   +---------+
  o  |   * |   |   * |   |     * |   |     * |   |   *     |
     | *   |   |     |   | *     |   |   *   |   | *   * * |
     +-----+   +-----+   +-------+   +-------+   +---------+

     +-----+   +-----+
     | * * |   | * * |   +-------+   +-------+   +---------+
  p  | *   |   |     |   | *     |   | *     |   | *     * |
     | *   |   |   * |   |   * * |   |   * * |   |   * *   |
     +-----+   +-----+   +-------+   +-------+   +---------+

     +-----+   +-----+
     | * * |   | * * |   +-------+   +-------+   +---------+
  q  | * * |   | * * |   | *     |   | *     |   | *     * |
     | *   |   | *   |   | * * * |   | * * * |   | * * *   |
     +-----+   +-----+   +-------+   +-------+   +---------+

     +-----+   +-----+
     | *   |   | * * |   +-------+   +-------+   +---------+
  r  | * * |   |     |   |     * |   |     * |   |   * * * |
     | *   |   |     |   |   * * |   |   * * |   | * *     |
     +-----+   +-----+   +-------+   +-------+   +---------+

     +-----+   +-----+
     |   * |   | *   |   +-------+   +-------+   +---------+
  s  | *   |   |     |   | *     |   |   *   |   | *   * * |
     | *   |   | *   |   |     * |   |     * |   |   *     |
     +-----+   +-----+   +-------+   +-------+   +---------+

     +-----+   +-----+
     |   * |   | *   |   +-------+   +-------+   +---------+
  t  | * * |   | *   |   |       |   |       |   |   * * * |
     | *   |   |     |   |     * |   |   *   |   | *       |
     +-----+   +-----+   +-------+   +-------+   +---------+

     +-----+   +-----+
     | *   |   | *   |   +-------+   +-------+   +---------+
  u  |     |   |     |   |       |   |       |   |       * |
     | * * |   | * * |   | * * * |   | * * * |   | * * *   |
     +-----+   +-----+   +-------+   +-------+   +---------+

     +-----+   +-----+
     | *   |   | *   |   +-------+   +-------+   +---------+
  v  | *   |   | *   |   | *   * |   | *   * |   | *   *   |
     | * * |   | * * |   |   *   |   |   *   |   |   *   * |
     +-----+   +-----+   +-------+   +-------+   +---------+

     +-----+   +-----+
     |   * |   |   * |   +-------+   +-------+   +---------+
  w  | * * |   | * * |   |     * |   |     * |   |     *   |
     |   * |   |   * |   | * *   |   | * *   |   | * *   * |
     +-----+   +-----+   +-------+   +-------+   +---------+

     +-----+   +-----+
     | * * |   | *   |   +-------+   +-------+   +---------+
  x  |     |   | * * |   | *   * |   | *   * |   | *   * * |
     | * * |   | * * |   | * * * |   | * * * |   | * * *   |
     +-----+   +-----+   +-------+   +-------+   +---------+

     +-----+   +-----+
     | * * |   |   * |   +-------+   +-------+   +---------+
  y  |   * |   |   * |   |   *   |   |   *   |   |   *   * |
     | * * |   | *   |   | *   * |   | *   * |   | *   *   |
     +-----+   +-----+   +-------+   +-------+   +---------+

     +-----+   +-----+
     | *   |   | * * |   +-------+   +-------+   +---------+
  z  |   * |   | * * |   | * * * |   | * * * |   | * * * * |
     | * * |   |   * |   |   * * |   |   * * |   |   * *   |
     +-----+   +-----+   +-------+   +-------+   +---------+

To be fair, the two-row symbols (i.e., those that are two points high) have one apparent advantage over three-row symbols like Braille's: they can be scaled about 50% in point spacing and still be read across without having to zig-zag one's finger. As the original problems with Barbier's system demonstrated, and Keller's comments on Moon type suggest, this is not an inconsiderable issue. A drawback with the two-row symbols, and one difficult to remedy, is that one must have a sense of isolated dots' positions. In the Wait and New York systems, for example, the e and t symbols are both represented by a single dot (in upper and lower row, resp.). A similar problem, probably worse, occurs with the ``American braille'' (second column of cartouches above). Braille avoided these ambiguities; his solution to the problem is clearer when his assignments are represented in a ten-column table as shown at the braille letters entry.

The major variants were all eventually abandoned. So far as I can tell, most languages which sighted people read in Roman characters are read in Braille's braille, or in minor variants of it that preserve the symbol assignments of the 26 letters of the English alphabet as well as the number symbol that reassigns letters a-i and j following it to the numbers 1-9 and 0. Different languages' versions of braille do differ in the assignments of symbols for letters with diacritical marks. For Braille's original symbol assignments and for some of the extensions and changes to this in the standard English variant, see the braille letters entry. Likewise for German, see Blindenschrift.

In 1661 Mexico, the Baron Vitelius of Astara is sentenced to be burned alive by the Holy Inquisition of Mexico for witchcraft, necromancy, and other crimes. As he dies, the Baron swears vengeance against the descendants of the Inquisitors. 300 years later, a comet that was passing overhead on the night of the Baron's execution returns to earth, bringing with it the Baron in the form of a horrible, brain-eating monster that terrorizes the Inquisitor[s'] descendants.

The movie was released as El Barón del Terror in 1962. You wonder if they didn't miss an editing deadline. As I understand it, a dubbed version was released in the US in 1963, with the title Baron of Terror (literal translation of the original title) and broadcast on TV in 1969 as The Brainiac.

Kiss the girls and make them cry. It starred Abel Salazar, Mexico's answer to Paul Newman or George C. Scott. If you want to see a horror movie but you don't want to be scared or even entertained, this is an excellent choice. A fast-forward classic. It is one of the 41 horrible movies excerpted in the Horrible Horror video (1986).

Shucks -- at the studio (Alameda Films) they give the entire plot, including all the spoilers:

México, 1661. El Barón Vitelius ríe mientras la Inquisición lo tortura por seductor y brujo. Un Testigo, el portugués Marcos, recibe 200 azotes por defender a Vitelius. Mientras Vitelius es quemado en la hoguera, para una cometa. Vitelius anuncia que volverá con el cometa al cabo de 300 años para vengarse en los descendientes de los inquisidores Pantoja, Meneses, Álvaro Contreras y Herlindo del Vivar., En 1961, Reynaldo, descendiente de Marcos, y su novia Victoria, descendiente de Contreras, ven el cometa por telescopio en el observatorio de su maestro el astrónomo Millán. Una roca desprendida del cometa cae y se convierte en un monstruo que mata a un hombre, le quita su ropa, cobra el aspecto de Vitelius y se hace amigo de Reynaldo y Victoria, llegados al lugar. En un bar, Vitelius recobra su aspecto monstruoso para matar a una mujer que lo besa. Vitelius ofrece una fiesta de lujo y se hace monstruo para matar en ella a Indalecio y a su hija María, historiadores descendientes de los Pantoja. Millán queda desesperado por la desaparición del cometa: es un cometa maldito. Vitelius mata al ingeniero metalúrgico Luis, descendiente de Meneses, a su esposa, a Ana Luisa, descendiente de Vivar, y a su marido el Licenciado Coria. Victoria y Reynaldo son Invitados a cenar por el barón, que cobra su aspecto de monstruo para liquidarlos, pero llega la policía y lo destruye con lanzallamas.

It occurs to me that the movie did have some novelties. It seemed that he didn't eat all his brains immediately, but saved some for later. At least at one point in the movie, he noshes on some left-over brains. He uses a narrow spoon with a long handle. I hadn't realized that iced tea was popular in Mexico.

Another horrible horror movie with the title Brainiac was released in 2004. The principal thing it has in common with the original movie is that it involves a monster that sucks people's brains out. It was a low-budget independent production, and perhaps the question in everyone's brain was, ``is it so bad that it's good?'' The consensus seems to be no.

Naturally, the term may be used ironically. For instance, in Los Angeles on August 6, 2007, Britney Spears crashed her black Mercedes into a parked station wagon, and then told the paparazzi, ``I'm a brainiac!'' (This is according to the NY Post, from its Page-Six^SM gossip feature on August 8. I wasn't there myself, so I can't say for certain that this happened, but it sounds pretty plausible for someone ditzy and rich enough to drive disposable Mercedeses.)

It reminds me of one of the few really memorable quotes in Chamber of Secrets, the second book of the Harry Potter series. Arthur Weasley works at the Ministry of Magic, in the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office. (At some point, though I think it is after this book, he is promoted to another office in the ministry.) Naturally, Arthur is intrigued by muggle artifacts, as well as enchanted (misused) ones, and his interest is a dangerous weakness. Anyway, in Chamber, the life of his daughter Ginny is endangered by an enchanted diary. At the end of the book... SPOILER AHEAD... her life is saved by Harry (big surprise there, I'm sure). After Mr. Weasley has heard the whole story, he admonishes his daughter for falling under the spell of the diary: ``What have I always told you? Never trust anything that can think for itself if you can't see where it keeps its brains.''

It's actually a multidimensional problem. First you measure torso circumference just below the breast. You add four or five inches to that to get a number that is called the ``bra back size.'' Actually, it might be five or six inches -- I've read conflicting accounts and I'm too timid to ask a professional in person. In this other scheme you apparently add five and round up an extra inch if necessary to get an even number. So if you measure a torso circumference of 29.6 inches, you compute a bra back size of 36. No wonder these things use elastic. After you've done all this, you forget about it, apparently. If I see a consensus developing on exactly how to compute bra dimensions, I'll come back to this entry.

After determining the bra back size, give or take a couple of inches, you measure the bust at its greatest circumference. The difference determines the ``cup size'' according to a rule that must have a tortured history indeed, and which is displayed below:

(For a plus size, see the TTBOMKAB entry.)

Interestingly, these measurements are supposed to be performed while the body being measured is wearing a bra. I can imagine that this could lead to chicken-and-egg problems, or at best a method of successive approximations. That also reminds me - this glossary does not have size information for athletic cups, but we do have a table of egg sizes.

Automated Securities Clearance Ltd. owned the brass.com domain, but doesn't seem ever to have gotten a web site up. Copper Development Association owned brass.org, and had registered www.brass.org, but didn't do anything with it. Now (January 1, 1999) both brass.org and brass.com domains are without DNS entries.

Whoops! As of December 2002 the brass.com domain is used by an e-commerce solutions company named BRASS in capitals, no expansion offered.

Brass.org has further information on useful copper alloys.

An unusual transitive use, equivalent to aufwenden müssen, is for time required to complete a task: ich habe eine Stunde gebraucht, `it took me an hour' or more literally `I needed an hour.' In another acceptation, brauchen is a synonym of gebrauchen or benutzen (`use'). Although this is less common without context help (ich könnte es brauchen, for example, is more likely to mean `I could use it'), derived words usually take a sense related to gebrauchen. Examples include Brauch (masc., plural Bräche), `custom,' and brauchbar (`usable, wearable, useful'); cf. gebraucht.

Goethe's Faust is a sort of story of Job, with Dr. Faust in the role of Job, although the methods of the Devil are much less unpleasant than in the Biblical story. The stage for Faust's attempted seduction is set during a discussion among God, the Devil, and some angels -- a prologue in heaven. There Mephistopheles (the Devil) comments on man:

Er nennt's Vernunft und braucht's allein,
Nur tierischer als jedes Tier zu sein.

[He calls it reason and uses it only
to be more beastly than any beast.]

(This is, of course, only a trend rather than a rigorous rule.)

The Portuguese referred to the area they colonized as ``terra do brasil'' (`land of brazil'). Shortened to Brasil, this eventually became the country name. Despite the development of artificial dyes, the existence of this tree is still useful because it grows in the Scrabble forest; all three major Scrabble dictionaries accept brasil and brazil, and their regularly-formed (-s) English plurals.

In electronic design, the verb to breadboard is commonly used as a synonym of to prototype (to make a prototype of, to test as a prototype).

Some websites:

• In German: a site primarily for people seeking their roots in Breslau from the time when it was German.
• Official pages of the Wroclaw Municipality with many resources in English.

My mother was born in Breslau, and that accounts for some of my interest in the place. She and I visited it in 2005.

The neo-Kantian philosopher Ernst Cassirer was born in Breslau on July 28, 1874. The German economist Karl Schiller was born there on April 24, 1911. Otto Stern, later famous for the Stern-Gerlach Experiment (1922), received his doctorate in physical chemistry at the University of Breslau in 1912. Fritz Stern, a historian of the various aspects and precursors of the Nazi era and now perhaps most famous for his book Einstein's German World, was also born there -- in 1926. I don't know if they're related.

You may have found yourself wondering: ``What's the weather like in Breslau in June?'' If so, you read my mind! Stop that! Overnight lows in the sixties Fahrenheit, highs around eighty.

Here's some interesting text I read in the Winamp3 License Agreement: ``Licensee may not ... (v) publish any results of benchmark tests run on the Product to a third party.'' One wonders how far this clause is valid under the first amendment. There are such things as nondisclosure agreements, but this is ridiculous. Freedom of speech includes the right to say the product (sorry -- the Product) sucks or rocks, but they think they can restrict the right to say by how much. Computer-mag reviews of this product could get interesting.

Gee, while we're reading along (everybody takes time out from the installation procedure to study these things carefully, of course) there's the following:

INDEMNIFICATION. Licensee agrees to indemnify, hold harmless, and at Nullsoft's request and
its
expense, to defend Nullsoft and its affiliates from any and all costs, damages and reasonable attorneys' fees resulting from any claim that Licensee's use of the Product has injured or otherwise violated any right of any third party or violates any law.

Whose ``its''?

• AAFP (mentions dental bridges)
• AAFP (road bridges)
• air bridge (microelectronics fabrication; we're not talking bridge circuits, such as those mentioned at the mho, rectenna, or TET entries)
• backboard (mentions a bridge on a guitar)
• BBN (bridge in a molecule)
• bridge to the future (hardly a metaphor)
• Bridgeville, California (what, I have to preview everything?)
• Brooklyn Bridge
• chitlins (suicide bridges)
• more honored in the breech (beautiful bridges)
• SBF (steel bridges)
• venter bridge

The card game bridge, related to whist, takes its name from a Russian word transliterated as biritch, vel sim. If you wanted to learn about this sort of bridge, the web site you're reading this from might not be the best place to do so. If you insist, however, you can visit the following entries:

• ABA
• ABA
• ACBL
• BFAAME
• BFAME
• BCRJ
• CAC
• CACBF
• CSB
• EBL
• FBB
• FCB
• FEDEBRIDGE
• FPB, FPBri, FPBridge
• F.V.B., FVB
• MAFIA... are you sure you want to visit this entry?
• NABC
• NBO
• PABF
• rubber bridge
• SPABF
• WBF
• TOX
• SBF

(These lists are under construction at this very hour!)

His metaphor was criticized as meaningless. This is pretty unfair, because if it's truly meaningless, then it's probably not a very big lie. You might say that building a bridge to the past -- connecting somehow with heritage -- is more meaningful than building a bridge to the future. I mean -- what happens if you don't? Will time come crashing to a halt in the space of a Planck time? When will we find out that it happened? Perhaps it already has!

But I'm not really concerned with that. Let's just say for argument's sake that there is a river in time and that we need to get to the other side without getting wet. I'm concerned about the practicalities. Do we have to build it as we go and carry it with us to the bank, or is there some way we can build it at the shore we haven't reached yet? What about the future? They're presumably already there, probably waiting for us to arrive. They could build it now. Why do we always have to foot the bill? We're being economically exploited! In the words of Marx, ``what has posterity ever done for me?''

But I'm not really concerned with that. I only put this entry in because I noticed an earlier use of the phrase ``bridge to the future,'' but now I can't find it. I will, though, in the future. Until then, there's ``a one-way ticket to midnight'' in a song explained at the triboelectricity entry.

The reserve price was $775,000, and bidding was frenzied , but when the original winner of the 2002 auction (with a bid of $1.78 million) backed out, it was purchased for $700,000 by Orange County banker Bruce Krall. That's a puzzling come-down. Krall relisted Bridgeville on eBay in 2006, saying he couldn't afford to continue making restorations. He finally flipped it for $1.25 million in August, to Daniel La Paille, a 25-year-old Los Angeles entertainment manager and college student. La Paille brought in work crews to repair many of the town's homes and began building a park. He wanted his whole family to move there, and in October his cousin Adam Wade went there to be the property manager and maintenance man. In November, however, La Paille committed suicide. (He shot himself in the chest and in Los Angeles.) Soon afterwards, town improvement efforts faltered. They need a new well, too, which will cost $50,000, and they don't even have the money for that. They are repainting the post office exterior in earth tones, however.

As of July 2007, it is described as having eight houses, a post office, and a café, and a population of ``about 30.'' They couldn't be more precise? According to Bruce McNaughton, the real estate agent handling the sale for the family, it's on the market for $1.3 million.

When the British Library was founded in 1973 (by an Act of the previous year), it absorbed the book and manuscript collections of the British Museum library and a number of less well-known British libraries. Details here. In 1997, the library was moved to vast new quarters at King's Cross. People who used it at the old location were generally pleased with the new digs.

Over the years of exploration and empire, the museum accumulated scattered artifacts like the Elgin Marbles (the Parthenon frieze, removed by Lord Elgin with the approval of local Turkish officials duly bribed; a continual thorn in the side of relations between Britain and fellow EU member Greece), the Rosetta Stone, royal Egyptian mummies, and one of the original holographs of the Magna Carta (I don't think there's any shadow on the title to this item).

Do not confuse the old company name British Rail with the marketing name Britrail.

She's also done a children's book.

These SAT-prep problems -- (1) (2) (3) -- embody, so to speak, the same idea. And adds a new item to the ``spherical cow'' toolbox of physics approximations. Sit down, Kanye. I'm reminded of a story Stanislaw Ulam told in his autobiography, Adventures of a Mathematician. It concerned calculations that were being done at Los Alamos for the H-bomb project.

  I particularly remember one of the programmers who was really beautiful and well endowed. She would come into my office with the results of the daily computation. Large sheets of paper were filled with numbers. She would unfold them in front of her low-cut Spanish blouse and ask, ``How do they look?'' and I would exclaim, ``They look marvelous!'' to the entertainment of Fermi and others in the office at the time.

1. One of the early Celt inhabitants of southern England.
2. An inhabitant of England or Wales. J.R.R. Tolkien wrote (in an essay published in Angles and Britons; for details see the beauty entry) that this lamentable usage was introduced around the time that Scotland was united with England and Wales under a common king. (That was James VI of Scotland, who became James I of England. Depending on your perspective, you might prefer ``reunited'' above. In any case, things didn't work out very well with the Stewarts.) Note that the famous triple-scepter symbolized not rule over England, Wales, and Scotland, but over England (and Wales), Scotland, and Ireland. My impression is that over time, this second sense has been superseded by a third:
3. An inhabitant of Britain.

1. A sort of junior (grade-school) Girl Scouts (GSA). So called after the color of their uniforms. Cf. Cub Scouts (CSA).
2. Pieces of a dense, chewy chocolate cake. So called after the color. The term seems to exist in a no-man's land between mass or uncountable nouns and count nouns. Any piece of brownie cake is a brownie, so you can cut a brownie in two and have two brownies, with no very sophisticated tools.

   This is not how Democritus came up with the concept of atoms.

   You know, there are certain kinds of flatworms that regenerate into two complete animals when cut in half. When my mother was a little girl growing up in Germany, pasta was not so common there. She remembers the first time she was introduced to it. She asked her father if they were worms. She wasn't assured by the negative answer (and after all, her father was a lawyer), so she then asked whether, when they were alive, they had been worms.

   My mother did not belong to the Nazi brownies (the JM) because she is Jewish.
   Very thin spaghetti is called vermicelli, which is Italian for `small worms.'
   Our Diet of Worms entry isn't very informative.

   There's a TV news report that first aired in the sixties, I think, on the annual ``Spaghetti Harvest Festival'' in Italy. The festival took place on April 1.

   Later, when I was a little boy growing up in the US, my elementary school asked her to contribute a baked good to sell for some worthy fund-raising. My mother is a good cook, but she decided to try something new to her (when in Rome, etc.), so she made brownies. They were probably chewy at first, the way all cement is chewy before it sets. (I've never eaten cement; I'm extrapolating from the properties of the brownies.) She was never again asked to bake anything for a school bake sale, which is just as well. Back in those days, working mothers were kind of unusual, so there wasn't much understanding of how difficult it is to balance work and bake sales. I actually like brownies that are tooth-challenging.

   I attended Columbus Elementary School. The school system in my town was integrated by closing the school and dispersing the students to other schools. Eventually they tore the school down and put up a bunch of duplexes.

   ``Goodbye, Columbus'' was a Broadway hit when I was in fifth grade.