If ``roleplayer'' were a term used in hockey, I suppose it would be a synonym for ``hit man.''

The term ``roleplayer'' is in widespread use in South Africa, both in and out of sports. There it apparently means ``someone with a role to play.''

Pain is difficult or impossible to measure. On the other hand, it's not hard to detect. In fact, if you just pay close-enough attention to your body, you will realize that you are in some discomfort right now. In fact, it's getting worse. Be careful how you move that. Ow! (Insights are free; solutions cost.) If there's a physical activity that you want to engage in only because it's good for you, disturbing aches and better-be-careful pains will make themselves felt naturally beforehand. Ignore that and go to the gym anyway.

What's that? You say none of this sounds familiar? Wait a sec-- how old are you? Ah, that's your problem right there! See, the nervous system doesn't approach full maturity until about age 30. You could be in excruciating, debilitating pain right now and not even realize it, because the pain-recognition part of your nervous system isn't ``up'' yet. Be patient; it'll come.

The initialism RLL is much more common. The catchy ROLL acronym doesn't seem to be in regular use anywhere other than Notre Dame. (BTW, I liked the old homepage better.) The separate programs and courses in the ROLL department are indicated by RO-prefixed codes like ROFR (French), and ROIT (Italian). Too bad they don't teach Romanian -- RORO would've been cute. Then again, they don't always use the two-letter ISO-639 codes: the Spanish program is ROSP and the Program in Portuguese & Brazilian Studies is ROPO.

Mick Jagger was born on July 26, 1943. He matriculated at the London School of Economics, and he didn't drop out until he was sure that the music thing was going to work out.

Sometimes originality of expression consists in choice of context.

1 Sestertius	= 10 Quadrantes
1 Aureus	= 10 Sestertii

and

1 Denarius	= 10 Asses
(after about 150 BCE: 16 asses)

related by

1 As		= 4 Quadrantes

In the King James version (KJV) Bible translation, denarius is translated `penny.' The abbreviation for pence was d in the old nondecimal system used in Britain well into the twentieth century

For more, see Roman Coins of the Early Empire.

Another Rome is remembered for throwing Christians to the lions.

See as well Ronco.

Popeil was the 1993 Ig-Nobel laureate for Consumer Engineering. In 1995 he did an autobiography with the help of Jefferson Graham, the television columnist for USA Today and co-author of Life Is a Contact Sport (with Ken Kragen). The book is called The Salesman of the Century. He had an unhappy childhood.

I see minivans from Ronco C&E Inc. on campus all the time, and I keep wondering, why doesn't my phone have niftier features, like an automatic polygraph of my caller based on voice-tremble analysis, and a half-duplex 130 dB horn for direct-marketers?

The word ``system'' that supplies the final s in the acronym might serve a phonemic purpose. Japanese does not have a final t sound, so English words that end in t tend to have borrowed forms that end in ta, te, or (most commonly) to. However, a word can end in tsu, and the u will be essentially inaudible, so ROPITS (as ropitsu) is pronounceable in Japanese. (Moreover, for the use of ``Ropits'' in Japanese, the fact that the name ends in s poses no confusion or inconvenience in forming plurals, since Japanese doesn't use plural inflections.) Of course, none of the sounds of Japanese is quite the same as the corresponding ones in English. ROPITS, as pronounced by a Japanese speaker, would sound to an American like ``raw peats.''

There're some obviously relevant irrelevancies under La Rocca. I wrote it for you, so go and read.

Rorschach was Swiss. Projective personality tests like these are occasionally called ``psychoanalytic tests.'' However, when Freud (``the father of Psychoanalysis'') said that ``the Swiss will save us,'' he had in mind Jung. In any case, he eventually changed his mind. If he could have seen the future, he might have said ``the Americans will assimilate us.''

During widespread French strikes in Spring 2006, many flights were delayed. In one instance on March 3, passengers on a Jet2 flight were delayed in Chambéry in the Alps. (Jet2 is a Yorkshire-based budget airline; the flight was destined for the Leeds-Bradford airport.) It was reported that the British passengers chanted ``Rosbifs want to go home'' while they were prevented from boarding their plane.

The delay, as also the diversion of another flight, was caused by 50 students staging a sit-in on the runway to protest CPE (q.v.). There were police present, but they did nothing to prevent the action, and 100 passengers were prevented from boarding Jet2's 737. (As to the presence of police -- I don't know about France, but from personal experience I can tell you that in 1972 at the old Newark airport, you could rustle up 50 uniformed cops and 50 plainclothesmen in about five minutes.)

The passengers were eventually able to leave for their destination, Leeds-Bradford airport, and arrived 90 minutes late. You have to give the French a lot of credit: if this had happened in the US, the flight would have been delayed three days while TSA personnel checked the tarmac for explosives and nail clippers.

It's slightly unusual when strikers sit while those they inconvenience chant in protest, but that's not why this was in the news. It was in the news because of Philip Meeson, the CEO of Jet2. Meeson was angry at French labor action that had caused repeated delays and cancelations. The previous week, there had been a strike of traffic controllers in sympathy with the students. On his company's website, Meeson asked ``What exactly are you striking about? Or just in case you don't understand that, `pouvez-vous nous expliquer pourquoi exactement êtes-vous en grève?' '' Well one might ask, since government leaders had virtually conceded that they would have to withdraw the proposed rather minor reforms. The question may have been rhetorical, but it got an answer that was calm and mad. A spokesman for the CGT, which represents the controllers, explained: ``It is easy for them to ask some people to go back to work but if people in France do not agree with the government it is a very good reason to strike.''

This little exchange was not very newsworthy either, of course. The thing that made news was a cartoon that Meeson posted, showing a frog blocking a runway with a placard reading ``I am lazy.'' The word ``frog'' is a pejorative reference to Frenchmen. It's normally perceived as less complimentary than ``rosbif,'' in part, perhaps, because it is not a reference to cuisine.

Sualocin and Rotanev have achieved recognition in our Backward Spelling Hall of Shame. It would be useful to add that Niccolò Cacciatore was the inspiration for Chicken Cacciatore, if it were true. Cacciatore, of course, has the same Latin roots as the English word catch.

                R O T A S
                O P E R A
                T E N E T
                A R E P O
                S A T O R

• Walter O. Moeller: The Mithraic Origin and Meanings of the ROTAS-SATOR Square (Leiden: Brill, 1973).
• John Ferguson: The Religions of the Roman Empire (Cornell U.P., 1970), p.168.
• Edith Kovach in ``The Clearing House Column'' of Classical Outlook, issue of December/January 85-86.

A fundamental problem is the meaning of AREPO.

This has been discussed from time to time on the classics mailing list. We serve a condensation of that discussion.

There is no connection with SATOR.

Cf. German ILLAB.

On September 22, 1996, Bob Dent became the first of more than half a dozen people ultimately killed under ROTTI. Kevin Andrews, a member of Australia's House of Representatives, had already announced in August 1996 his intention to overturn ROTII by federal legislation. The bill passed the House overwhelmingly, and was passed by the Senate on March 24 of the following year, 38-34. It took effect on March 27, when the Governor-General, Sir William Deane, gave it royal assent.

We could easily include in this glossary a good compact summary of all the arguments for and against euthanasia, along with an evaluation of them which would meet with general approbation. Will we include this? Over my dead body! However, it is worth observing that argument over Kevin Andrews's bill was framed in terms of two issues. The straightforward one was, of course, the question of whether a right to choose to die exists (and where in law that is stated or somehow implied). The other issue was that of the territories' sovereignty. The situation is interesting. The Australian Constitution has language approximately equivalent to the Tenth Amendment of the US Constitution, that powers not explicitly granted the national government are reserved by the states. Under current interpretation in Australia, those powers include the right to legislate on (and legalize) euthanasia. Thus, for the Australian government to overturn a state euthanasia law would require a constitutional amendment. In contrast, the sovereignty granted the three territories is a matter of ordinary legislation. Hence, any act of a territorial legislature can be overturned by a simple act of the national legislature, effectively amending the terms of the acts establishing territorial self-government. The Andrews bill made euthanasia illegal in all three territories. In 1994 and 1995, the legislature of the Australian Capital Territory had considered and rejected bills legalizing euthanasia.

There's a Wikipedia entry for ROV which, as of this writing (late 2006), implies that all ROV's are tethered vehicles. Mostly they are, but there have been untethered (``free-diving'') ROV's since at least 1984. The tether is an inconvenience, since it must be a bit longer than the maximum operating depth of the ROV. Tethers are prone to tangle and break, so that there has to be a tether management system. This often is a spool separate from the platform or mother ship, part of a garage or ``top hat'' that is immersed and isolates the ROV from surface waves.

If one is going to suffer the inconvenience of a tether, one might as well have its benefits. Hence, tethers are used not only for command, control, and sensor data communication (usually via fiber-optic cable), but also for electric power supply. Some shorter tethers include hydraulic power lines. There seems to be a lot of variety in the designs.

It is difficult to avoid a tether because variations in water temperature and salinity bend radio waves, making wireless communication usually difficult and sometimes impossible. Thus, the anticipated next step beyond the tethered ROV for deep-water use is not the untethered ROV but the AUV (for autonomous underwater vehicle). The AUV is a robot, so it avoids the need for a cable carrying real-time control information by not using real-time control information. Acoustic beacons are part of the mix of navigation tools expected to be used for AUV's, but apparently the data rate for acoustic communication is not considered high enough to permit their use for untethered ROV's.

Vehicles built only for sensing and observation have generally always been able to function at greater depths than those with work devices (i.e., manipulators or similar equipment). As of 2006, the greatest claimed operating depths for the latter are around 23,000 feet, and for observation-only devices the maximum seems to be 33,000 feet. The specs for rental vehicles are not as impressive. You've probably experienced something like this yourself.

ROV's were originally developed for the US Navy, which uses them for ordnance recovery from the ocean floor as well as mine-sweeping and other applications they prefer not to discuss. What one might call the killer application, however, is for off-shore oil exploration and production, including construction, maintenance, and repair of oil platforms and pipelines. For work below 3000 feet (~900m), the only alternatives are very, very long needlenose pliers or else a manned submarine. Hey, I didn't say ``practical alternatives.''

The oil industry began using ROV's starting in the mid-1970's. The collapse of the oil market in the early to mid-1980's almost destroyed the ROV industry. In 1994, an estimated 175 were in use world-wide. From information in scattered newspaper articles from 1983 to 1994, I gather that the prices of new low-end ROV's (submarine video cameras, basically) stayed around half a million dollars, while the high-end ROV's added capabilities and cost, increasing from a million to about 2.5 million dollars. In 1993 the daily rental of a small manned sub cost about $24k, while that for an ROV was $2k. Rental costs roughly tracked new-ROV prices: in 1994 daily rental of the largest ROV's cost 5-8 thousand dollars. The rental companies provide round-the-clock crews -- typically two teams of three people.

Technology currently limits off-shore oil drilling to be not too far off shore. That is, in water above the continental shelves. Thus, even though the deepest wells are over 30,000 feet deep, they are in water only a few thousand feet deep. Back in 1998 I heard on the radio that a well had been drilled in 5500 feet of water. I'm not sure if it was a ``dry'' well. The promising well announced by Chevron at the end of 2005 is over 37,000 feet deep, but it's in a mere 3500 feet of water. The Marco Polo platform (also in the Gulf of Mexico) operates in over 4300 feet of water.

The Department of Defense has an Information Analysis Center (IAC) for manufacturing technology (MTIAC) which keeps a Rapid Prototyping Directory and has a ``State of the Art Review.''

Different kinds affect different photorecetors. The more common kinds affect the rods, leading to loss of night vision and to tunnel vision (loss of peripheral vision). In some kinds of RP, the cones are affected, so color vision is lost.

The state's area is 19,847 sq. km. Its population was 3,631,000 by the census of 1987, estimated at 4,010,000 for 1997. The capital is Mainz. In Mainz, in 1450, Johannes Gutenberg invented a movable-type printing press.

However you translate it, it was the first Gaullist party, q.v.

Cf. FUDGE and GURPS.

Oh yeah, I forgot about cars. Tachometers are normally marked off in thousands of RPM. Of course, the appropriate SI unit for engine speed is hertz (Hz); 3000 RPM is 50 Hz. If cooks must be forced to use liters, no, better cubic decimeters, why shouldn't drivers have to use hertz for engine speed? And how can they get away with k.p.h. instead of m/s?!?! See cps.

The first RPR was created by Charles de Gaulle in 1946, in response to the creation of the Fourth Republic. De Gaulle wanted a strong presidency, but French sentiment was against him at the time; the French took as a lesson from the Vichy regime that a strong presidency meant dictatorship. The original RPR faltered, going out of existence in 1955, while de Gaulle went into formal retirement and wrote his war memoirs. France is on what -- it's fifth republic now? Something happened around 1960.