I i

Of course, writers in English have from time to time independently used it (I mean it) as a noun, signaling the use by a determiner or adjective. There are also endless instances of ``an it,'' but here an is almost always the synonym of if, rather than the article. (You know -- ``an it please your worships,'' scrape, scrape.) Searching for ``the it'' in prose on the LION database, I find that all the modern instances either are instances of anacoluthon or really just mean ``the word it.'' I'm very happy about this, because if I don't find more occasions to use it, I'll never remember it (I mean the word anacoluthon, of course). A word pair that looks like ``the it'' occurs frequently in Old and Middle English, but the the is normally the word we now spell thee.

But poetry comes to the rescue. For example, A.R. Ammons published a poem in 1993 that mentions ``the it'' a number of times. He explains that `` `the it' is the indifference of all the differences.'' That sounds, encouragingly, somewhat -- let's say ``indifferently'' -- mathematical. In mathematics, terms are defined once. Everything else you can say about the thing defined, generally, either follows from the definition or is equivalent to the definition, if you've done your definition right. But Ammons also says that it (the it) is the finest issue of energy in which boulders and dead stars float. He says other things. The poem is called ``Garbage,'' and as the first lines make clear, the poem is self-referential (not to say self-obsessed).

James Broughton made good use of capitalization in ``Here's to It (A Metaphysical Drinking Song).'' His ``the It,'' also suffers from excessive definition, but at least the definitions rhyme. (E.g., ``It's a metaphysical hunting kit.'') The poem was apparently written in 1968. W.N. Herbert mentioned ``the it-iness'' of cities. Shouldn't that be ``it-ness''? It certainly makes better rhymes. Karl Jay Shapiro mentioned ``the it-ness'' of trees. Haven't any of these guys heard of the cooties?

When an IDA in NY takes title to a property as part of a project (exempting that property from property tax), the project developer and the IDA usually enter into a PILOT agreement under which the developer pays the IDA for basic services. (I don't know how or if that revenue stream eventually makes it into the police and fire budgets, which are the usual basic services named.) The developer also pays the special district taxes.

Prof. S. Chakravarty, of the Computer Science Department at UB, is coauthor of a book on IDDQ testing.

The IDE standard was based on a 16-bit bus (the IBM PC's ISA, originally); each drive with a built-in controller. It was largely replaced by Enhanced IDE (EIDE, q.v.), which is obsolete.

It's sponsored by Soros's OSI and its over two dozen member nations are basically all the former Warsaw Pact countries and their fragments (and Haiti). It's a fine do-gooder idea, and they even have a ``Karl Popper debate format'' -- ``a three-person format developed specifically for this program to encourage teamwork and cooperation.'' (Famous people should have the sense to trademark their names so this kind of thing doesn't happen to them after they're dead. Hmmm, seems back in 1999 or so Pablo Picasso's last surviving son licensed the family name to Citroën for some van, and Marina Picasso, one of the artist's granddaughters, sought a permanent injunction against the licencing. I'll have to look into how that turned out.)

I imagine it won't do much harm, and if Soros wants to spend his money on these games, well, it's his money (now). But logical thinking is not the problem. These nations regularly produce ten-year-old grand masters who whup our ass in chess, okay? And formal rhetorical skills are not exactly hallmarks of the leadership cadres of the triumphant democratic West, either.

The problem of contending religions has only ever been humanely solved by tolerance, and tolerance is not logical, and not clearly defensible on principles, unless the principles are cooked in advance. Tolerance is merely peaceable and reasonable. On perfectly sound principles, it may be irrational. In that case, sound leadership requires noble hypocrisy and fluent dissembling.

Making a successful civil polity is a bit like making wine. It requires many small ingredients, as Soros understands, and balance which no one can impose, and it is not easily accelerated. A complete list of necessary ingredients would be long indeed, but I would name three that are in obvious short supply in the many countries that have free speech, free elections, an independent judiciary, and long-term ``instability.''

1. General personal security
2. Confidence in the law
3. Good will

Oh, yeah -- that-all is opinion, my idea.

The word idem is normally used in English scholarly texts to compress and make obscure a sequence of citations in successive footnotes or endnotes, and it is conventionally understood to mean `the same as the source immediately preceding, where source is understood as being specified up to the part -- typically a page number or page range -- that is indicated to be different here.' This is normally described as ``the same as above.'' Things are confusing enough as it is. If it could also mean ``the same as below,'' you might combine it with op. cit. to make a formidable illogic puzzle. Idem is often abbreviated id.

In Spanish, the word is used more widely in ordinary speech. Spelled ídem, it can mean `the same.' That's the same as lo mismo, but not exactly the same as el mismo or la misma, which are better translated as `the same one' (male and female forms, resp.). There are even colloquial phrases like ``ídem de ídem'' (a slightly mock-serious phrase, so it seems to me, meaning `just what was said before').

``Serving to promote the technological, manufacturing, marketing and business progress of the disk drive manufacturing industry.''

this is the kind of rhetorical question that you can easily work into an ordinary, if somewhat belligerent, conversation.

``The glory of creation is in its infinite diversity.''
``And in the way our differences combine to create meaning and beauty.''

-- Dr. Miranda Jones and Mr. Spock, ``Is There in Truth No Beauty?,'' stardate 5630.8

The IDIC has become a very special symbol (and lifestyle) to Star Trek fans. Designed by the late Star Trek creator, Gene Roddenberry, the IDIC symbol was worn by Mr. Spock in TOS episode, ``Is There in Truth No Beauty?'' Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations represents a Vulcan belief that beauty, growth, progress--all result from the union of the unlike. Concord, as much as discord, requires the presence of at least two different notes. The brotherhood of man is an ideal based on learning to delight in our essential differences, as well as learning to recognize our similarities. The IDIC symbol is a union of a plain circle and triangle, uniting to produce the beautiful gemstone in the middle. The circle represents infinite, nature, woman, etc; the triangle can represent the finite, art, man, etc.

IDIC remains the simplest, purest, most powerful idea in Star Trek, an idea that has clear implications for our own times.

The ``first interracial kiss'' (or perhaps the first black-white) on TV took place on Star Trek. Somewhere on the web, once, I read a recollection by George Takei (``Sulu'') of the the humility with which GR offered him what was rare in that day and still today: a role played by someone who simply happened to be Asian. Many (and to some degree all) of the episodes were morality plays about tolerance. Originally, the `emotionless' `logical' Spock character was supposed to be a woman, but there was too much resistance. Mr. Spock was, however, the child of a mixed marriage (human-Vulcan). ``Human'' is one of those old-fashioned words they used on Star Trek. It meant `terran.' Looks like Mr. Spock took after his dad. [But in this picture he is holding his hand as if giving a Jewish priestly (kohen) benediction. And he needs a shave.]

If it seems quaint or petty that an interracial kiss on TV was once a big deal, then it may be that you can thank Roddenberry for some of your effortless sophistication. The real heroism of Star Trek was his social daring, taking altruistic risks in a market governed by almighty ratings. If only more directors would make movies and TV shows that honored their progressive beliefs rather than pandering to popular tastes, the world would be a better place -- because people would get off the couch and do something. Hmmm... make that ``honored their progressive beliefs and didn't pander to popular tastes.'' I think the other experiment has already been done.

(Speaking of altruism... that interracial kiss was originally scripted to involve Uhura and some other character, but when Shatner learned about it he lobbied to be the guy in the scene.)

I looked because of Der Streit der Fakultäten, Kant's most accessible and by far most amusing book (and his last, not counting posthumous stuff and stuff published for him by others during his last sickness). A fair translation of the title in context would be The Conflict of the [Academic] Disciplines. Somewhere in the three essays this book comprises (essays staking where the Philosophy Department's turf meets those of the Theology, Medicine, and Law Departments), he paraphrases some other discipline's protest as ``Sie heissen uns Idioten!'' [`You call us idiots!'] Presumably he meant that in the original sense. That's the trouble with learning too much: it makes your writing harder to understand.

The book is celebrated by Kantophiles as a heroic stand for freedom of speech in the academic context -- i.e., ``academic freedom.'' It does make a limited plea for freedom, but that is sadly modest, a reminder of the absolute monarchy under which it was written and eventually allowed (by one censor) to be published. This in 1798.

A ``nonce word'' is an invented word (like philosophunculist) with a sense that is obvious (from the putative etymology, say). The term ``nonce word'' does not cover the idiosyncratic, possibly idiolectical use of an ordinary word in an unusual but (by some) understandable sense. Perhaps we can say instead that Kant's Idiot is a nonce sense.

I plan to return to this entry at some point in time, and add some information.

Newsgroup and listserv usage.

Well if you don't know, I can't help you. I mean, what are you saying here? Could you be more specific? Your paratactics are getting on my nerves. Scram!

If you take a good look at the Milky Way (I won't say a good close look) from someplace within it but toward the edge (from earth, say), you'll notice that the very middle is not as bright as the edges. That's because of all the IDP.

A book described at the manual transmission entry contains this exchange:

How far is it to Fairfax?

Dunno.

Does this road go to Fairfax?

Dunno.

Say, you don't know much, do you?

Nope ... but I ain't lost.

I once lived in Fairfax County, Virginia, but what this reminds me of is an experience I had biking in rural France.

I was on a language-related mission: I biked to the town of Condom to buy condoms, just so I could say I had done so. (I have done so.) You cannot imagine my chagrin, when after 25 km that I recall to have been all uphill, I whipped out my pocket dictionary and did not find this word. A protective amnesia has settled over the period when I learned the necessary vocable (preservatif). I do recall that it involved pantomime.

On the way back, after I got lost, I received directions in sign language. For example:

English:

You are very far from Chateau de Bonas.

Universal sign language:

Repeat ``Chateau de Bonas?'' wide-eyed, slap forehead once.

I also encountered nasty little bicycle-chasing dogs, and also ruminants. The ruminants did not give very energetic chase, but they acted like they had never seen a bicycle before. Many of them trotted up to their fences to get a better look. French cows seem to be a different breed than American cows -- either more nearsighted, or more intellectually active (or both, conforming to stereotype as well as recent research on humans). The fences looked too flimsy to detain any seriously intrigued bovine. This concern became more acute over the last dozen km, which I had to walk on account of a flat tire, pushing the borrowed old cast-iron three-speed beside me, in the rain, in the dark (all uphill again!).

Because the road was narrow and I had no lights, after it got dark (I got back to Chateau de Bonas long after dinner) I would push over to the side of the road whenever I heard a car coming. Sometimes the car was one of those Peugeot Rattletrappes (I think Rattletrap is French for a `three-cylinder, two-stroke, zero-muffler engine,' but maybe it means `corrugated-tin roof resonator.') These were so loud and slow that I usually spent five minutes waiting for them to appear. For another Peugeot achievement in technologie hybride (that'd be moto/automobile-merdiquée hybrids), see the differential entry.

Back in the 40's or 50's, Vance Packard wrote an interesting popular report on studies of animal intelligence, issued under a couple of titles, one of which was Animal IQ. I understand that why dogs bark is an open and active research question. Presumably, why cows low is similarly unknown, but I suspect that they lack the intelligence to engage in very interesting communication. For evidence, read about ``hardware disease'' at the cow magnet entry. (Reports from England in 2006, however, assert the existence of distinguishable local ``accents'' in cow mooing, including something identified as a ``Somerset drawl.'')

Probably the most famous rule is

``i before e except after c.''

``i before e except after c, or when pronounced as a.''

The latter rule takes care of neighbor, their, the heir/hierarchy confusion, and deity, for which a special mnemonic is given below. Some special cases are still left over (e.g., height), and while it is best simply to memorize many of these, some others are best regarded simply as diphthongs not covered by the rule (e.g., science, although words like conscience are trickier cases).

For more English spelling help, see this 28-rule list.

There is a similar, much less severe problem in German. Words with ``ie'' are pronounced in some cases, depending on the accent and the consonants following, like words with ``i.'' English speakers are taught to choose between ``ei'' and ``ie'' spellings according to the (English) sound of the second letter (d.h., ``ei'' for ``long i,'' ``ie'' for ``long e''). These spellings, which obviously represent literal transcription of diphthongs in earlier pronunciations, have an interesting history, because the old pronunciations they represent arose among German-speaking settlers in the ``east.''

Here's the Irish page of an X.500 directory.

Indo-European is the official language family of the Stammtisch Beau Fleuve. Nevertheless, we concede that Chinese is a major world language. Unix curses have also been uttered.

The WWW Virtual Library has an Industrial Engineering index.

In Spanish, however, IE is Ingeniería Electrónica, which stands for `Electronic Engineering.' We`re everywhere!

LookSmart has a short page of IE links.

Of course, I'm just kidding. Everybody realizes that the only reason the acronym appears in two languages is to assuage British resentment of French cultural success. Look, in the twentieth century Britain was forced to give up a world-wide empire that extended to every inhabited continent, whereas France lost a much smaller area mostly restricted to Africa and Asia. And no amount of ``European plane'' window-dressing can disguise the fact that final assembly of Airbuses is in Toulouse. High fashion too takes off from the runways of Paris, not London, and no one eats ``British cuisine.'' Finally, France has completely outclassed England in the competition that matters most -- outrageous idiot intellectuals. The glory days of Karl Marx at the British Museum are long past. What can England answer to Sartre, Foucault, Derrida, Lacan? Benny Hill? Freud's granddaughter hosted an interview programme on the Beeb whose lame attempt to epater le bourgoise was using a bed for a couch. Oh, it's crushingly hard to be British these days, when your long-time rival is so triumphant.

Interestingly, whereas Electrical Engineering degree programs in the US are accredited by an organization (ABET) separate from the IEEE, in Britain the IEE handles the job.

(Not to be confused with Interface Engineering Inc., Consulting Engineers.)

IERAL has a team of professional economists (I'm translating somewhat slavishly from this page) dedicated full time to research. The research is meant to contribute to the realization of a prosperous nation with a social configuration that offers equality of opportunity to its inhabitants and with an economy that is integrated, dynamic, and efficient that will assure a continuous improvement in the quality of life of all Argentines.

In other words, they're a think tank that will always be in opposition to the Peronist government. [Stop the servers, this just in: the conservatives won the Argentine presidency in November 2015! But the main Peronist party still holds a majority in both houses of Congress. Okay, back to your regularly scheduled entry.] This stuff is very easy to translate even if you have limited business experience. I suppose that the reason it feels like back-translation is that Latin American economists study in the US or at least from textbooks written in English.

They style themselves ``el IERAL.'' (There's ample freedom to use or omit definite articles with proper nouns in Spanish. To take a nonacronymic example where the article would be surprising in English, the country of Peru is frequently ``el Perú'' in Spanish.)

I haven't seen where, if at all, they explain the name of the parent organization, Fundación Mediterránea. Since this nonprofit was founded in the city of Córdoba, Argentina, on the initiative of 34 businesses from the province of Córdoba (in the difficult year of 1977), I suspect they mean mediterránea in the sense of `the middle of the land.' I notice also that they emphasize that they seek `a competitive, productive, and federal Argentina' (my emphasis in my translation). Since its founding, Argentina has experienced a struggle between centripetal (unitarist, bonaerense) and centrifugal (federal) forces.

Don't believe me? Okay, it's in charge of deciding when to make time jump, as explained at the UTC entry. They also have a longer official name: International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service.

Subsequent amplification may be conveniently performed at this frequency. This has the advantage that the frequency range of signal to be amplified is fractionally small (i.e., a small fraction of the IF). Within this narrow band, it is easy to achieve linear, frequency-independent amplification.

IF is not the final frequency because after amplification, the desired signal is extracted as deviations (AM, FM, or long story) away from a pure IF signal.

For information on the use of punctuated forms of the abbreviation, read the attributive noun entry.

If information is nonnegative, then it probably won't hurt much to visit the ABC entry.

The comedian who smashes watermelons with a mallet on cable TV has complained that the ``brightness'' knob on most sets does not seem to work properly. (He should talk.) This is why.

The IFBB was founded in 1946 by Ben Weider and his brother Joe. In January 1998, then-President of the IOC Juan Antonio Samaranch welcomed the IFBB ``into the Olympic family.'' (That doesn't mean it gets to be even so much as a demonstration sport at any Olympics. Cf. WBF.)

Bodybuilders have always been at the cutting edge (that's a pun, son) of chemical progress. Wayne DeMilia, who headed the IFBB pro division from 1980 until 2004 and oversaw such limited testing as was conducted, said in 2005 that ``everybody in bodybuilding takes drugs.''

``The problem, as the media is finding out now, is that testing runs two to three steps behind people coming up with new drugs and masking agents,'' he said. In addition, he noted that there are no effective tests for growth hormone or insulin, and masking agents for diuretics have grown more effective. Possibly most important, except for a few years in the mid-1990's, the IFFB didn't conduct off-season random testing of the bodybuilders. As the Olympics and such mainstream sports as football and baseball have learned [SBF is echoing news reports here; the SBF content-injector doubts that mainstream sports have learned very much], announced tests on the day of competition are unlikely to catch anyone who has been alerted. ``Let's be honest,'' DeMilia said, ``They're taking stuff that can't be detected.''

Ben Weider, CM, CQ, SBStJ, PhD, is still president of the IFBB as of this writing (2006). He is also a historian by inclination and publication, so the following is mildly amusing. In a 1999 interview (and elsewhere) he rhapsodizes: ``Getting bodybuilding recognised by the IOC was almost like making an impossible dream become reality. ... As Churchill said during the Second World War, it was a struggle of `blood, sweat and tears,' and a lot of perseverance.'' Of course, ``Blood, Sweat, and Tears'' is just the name of a rock band; everyone knows that WSC's famous phrase was ``blood, toil, tears, and sweat.'' It's evident that Weider wanted to include the toil concept, so it's amusing that the president (of an activity that is practically distilled toil) remembered only the bodily fluids.

The national organizations that are members of IFED are generally called academies. The British academy doesn't belong to IFED, but it's BAAD.

Maybe IFED could hire K-Fed as a goodwill ambassador. He's got a nice smile, and like the UN goodwill ambassadors his celebrity is mostly expired, and I hear he's available cheap.

You think I'm kidding, that nothing could be as bad as dread Physical Chemistry? This article, written from a pedagogical point of view, uses words like fear and loathing, and urges that the courses be made easier so the students will show up in class (I exaggerate only a little).

Do you realize that, if they had hurried up and founded it in 1901, they could be celebrating their centennial this year, instead of this awkward bis-jubilee next year. That would be cool. The ``and Institutions'' was not part of the official name until after 1976 sometime. It didn't just happen to be left unrepresented in the acronym.

Cf. ICLC.

You know, I'm a poet too. There aren't any certification tests for poet. I'm a five-star black-belt poet with an iron cross, eagle ring, six olive clusters, and three large coconuts, and my poems can crush your poems without breaking a sweat.

On second thought, I think that another high-level conference is just the thing that will bring lasting peace. But only if the joint closing statement is carefully crafted to paper over the unresolvable differences.

AFLAC!!!!

IFPI is affiliated with RIAA.

``A nongovernmental organization in official relations with WHO,'' who have this information sheet for the IFRHO.

IFRT used to be the IFC.

``An Online Teaching And Reference Institute
of N U M E R I C A L Systematic Philosophy
Ideometry. A Natural Science
Tables of Prime Factors In Ideo-Quinary Numerals

You get the idea. If you poke around, you can read about ``Computer Aided Philosophy.''

An IGC met in Turin in 1996.

The idea for an IGFET was patented in Britain in 1935. The first commercially successful IGFET's were Si MOSFET's, which became available in the later sixties (nMOS ROM and SRAM) once cleanrooms became clean enough to keep sodium out of the oxide.

A special case is the non-denial denial.

Okay, here's the information you've been waiting for: what's the weather like in Changchun? Thanks to a job posting, we can say that it is ``normally sunny, dry and clear'' but
Winter c. -25 to -10 °C
Summer c. 16 - 28 °C

Take a sweater.

For more information, see this posting on the Classics list.

Alfred Nobel's first great technical achievement was the invention of dynamite, a manageable form of nitroglycerine.

``I HOP'' may also express the idea that ``I am hopping [mad]!'' Today I ate at the local IHOP for the last time. I was served late, I had to ask three times for my drink, my order was taken and forgotten, then apparently taken incorrectly, and the food was unsatisfactory. At least I didn't have to wait five minutes to be cashed out, as happened on an earlier occasion.

You're probably thinking I should stop complaining and just get a life, but stop a moment and think: I am I really the sort of glossarist who would bore you with the petty irritations of my life if there were not some important larger point to be made? Would I just blather on about such stuff? What do you think?

Wrong! There is a bigger point here, and I'll make it eventually.

Once while waiting too long to be seated, I looked at the seating chart and noticed a management notice to the effect that employees caught hanging out at a certain nearby table would be dismissed. I guess management was never there when I was. For reasons beyond my ken, employees at that IHOP are particularly prone to haunting the place when they're off duty. Scratch that, generalize; they're particularly prone to being off-duty when they're there. The second-to-last time I ever go there, as I was beginning my meal, my waitress asked if there was anything I would want, as she was going on break. An off-duty co-worker sitting nearby razzed her, saying ``you just took a break!'' You probably think I'm making this stuff up. Your fall-back opinion is that it serves me right for going more than once. I guess I just thought it had to be a fluke, and another fluke, and... Really poor service is rarely a fluke; it's a management failure. Today among the off-duty personnel at nearby tables, I overheard one waitress complaining that the other day she figured out that she had only earned 4.5% in tips. I was tempted to tell her that that was probably right. (I actually checked discreetly to see who it was. She wasn't anyone who had ever waited on me, though of course I'd seen her around.) In the future if I want service this poor I can go to Denny's -- it's closer.

I can't say that all big restaurant chains have shabby service. Indeed, over the long run you imagine none can. But in the highly competitive restaurant business, chains exhibit the effects of management failure in interesting ways. To contrast, consider the restaurants in my area that are not franchises of some chain. They go out of business at an extraordinary rate, as I suggest at the pork rinds entry. But more to the point, on an individual basis they decline quickly. The suddenness is expressed in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman (1949):

Willy was a salesman. And for a salesman, there is no rock bottom to the life. He don't put a bolt to a nut, he don't tell you the law or give you medicine. He's a man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine. And when they start not smiling back -- that's an earthquake. And then you get yourself a couple of spots on your hat, and you're finished.

Most retailing is like that; it doesn't matter whether the salesman travels to the customers like Willy, or puts up a sign and waits for the customers to come to him. What matters is that when you're being paid for a commodity, you're often competing on the basis of customer service. Restaurants -- prepared-food retailers -- can compete by offering unusual cuisine (don't tell me they can offer food that everyone likes more) or low price, or convenient location or speed. But it's not called ``food-service'' for nothing.

Oops! You made a mistake: you came here before I finished the entry. Say ``my bad'' and come back in five months.

• Centre for Metropolitan History (CMH)
• Centre of Contemporary British History (CCBH; earlier ICBH)
• Victoria County History (VCH)

Look, I know the following is disordered, but it might help you to figure things out until I do.

That briefly is the usual practice with ruling houses. A definite outlier is the House of Reuss, which has had a number of lines (e.g., younger and older Reuss-Plauen lines, and Reuss-Lobenstein) as well as extinctions. One is reminded of Candide's adoptive family and their precious quarterings. The Reuss Younger Line, is a dynasty that ruled a German principality from 1806 (founded with Napoleon's Confederation of the Rhine) until 1918 (defeat of the German Empire). All the males of that house were named Heinrich, but they each got a serial number that was unique enough (counting restarted each century). Hence, the first member of the family to reign in the principality was already Heinrich XLII. If some later ruler of the principality had had the same number, then presumably he would have been Heinrich XLII the Second, or Heinrich XLII II, not to be confused with his cousin Heinrich XLIV.

This is a real entry, and not something concocted by Monty Python. All males of the House of Reuss have been named Heinrich since Heinrich I von Weida. Read some of the messy details here. The Reuss Elder Line followed the same numbering practice (and ruled a smaller principality that existed from 1778 to 1918), but was less fecund. Both comprised archipelagos of territory in Thuringia. They had the unimaginative names of Fürstentum Reuß <fooere> Linie, where <fooere> took the values ältere and jungere, resp. (`Principality of the Reuss <Foo> Line,' <Foo> `Elder' and `Younger'). The lines were also distinguished as Reuß-Greiz (elder) and Reuß-Gera (younger). There were a number of lines in the Reuss house, and a few extinctions.

The weird numbering of the Reusses (set aside the use of a single given name for all males) approximates the usual practice of assigning numbers to nonrulers. In the line of a common family, a ``Jr.'' is used to distinguish the son when a father and son have the same given names; II and III are used to designate bearers of a name in the second and third generations when three generations bear the same name. For an instance of 2.0, see the downtown Holland entry. The Romans used many given names that simply stated birth order. In this connection, see Septimus; for a related idea, read about Jefferson Finis Davis. You may not want to be reminded of Bush 41 or Bush 43.

Most names in English are specifically male or female, but it sometimes happens that a parent and child of opposite sex share a name. For example, I know a father and daughter Gene and Jeanne, though I don't know how they spell their names. Dale and Dana would be clearer-cut cases. Anyway, I've never encountered Jr. or II used in such a case, and it would seem odd to me, but you never know.

It occurred to me to write this entry when I learned of a Douglas MacArthur II who was the nephew of General Douglas MacArthur. There wasn't any remarriage involved. Captain Arthur MacArthur III and Mary McCalla MacArthur had a son in 1909 and named him Douglas Arthur MacArthur or something after Arthur's younger brother Douglas (who did not have a middle name Arthur), and this Douglas was known as Douglas MacArthur II. So far as I can tell without working too hard, Gen. Douglas MacArthur had one son, by his second wife, in 1938, and Douglas MacArthur II did not have a son.

Using IIAR too frequently can make you seem self-centered and dismissive of others' contributions. Therefore, be sure to also consider ``If You Are Wrong.''

I think the Beatles had a relevant song.

You don't have to refrigerate ammonia. It keeps.

In the foreword to their Sphere Packings, Lattices and Groups (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1988), J. H. Conway and N. J. A.  Sloane wrote:

At one point while working on this book we even considered adopting a special abbreviation for ``It is a remarkable fact that,'' since this phrase seemed to occur so often.

For a greater example of prescience, see the entry for ``Likes romantic walks on the beach.''

And for all you militantly descriptivist lexicographers out there, no, I've never seen the abbreviation given above, in either form, in use anywhere else... yet.

1. IIC's funded and accountable to outside parties, with staffs and members, ultimately selected by outsiders, whose interests do not conflict with the goal of a thorough investigation and an accurate and complete report.
2. Real IIC's.

IIII, VIIII, XIIII, XXXX, LXXXX, CXXXX, DCCCC, MCCCC were fairly standard in (Roman) Republican times. In early Imperial times, subtractive forms became increasingly common -- not just IX for nine but XIIX for eighteen, etc. There was evidently a long period during which both subtractive and additive forms were common. For an analysis of the epigraphic evidence see B. E. Thomasson ``Zu den Notis Numeralium in Lateinischen Inschriften,'' Opuscula Romana 3.1961, 169-178, in particular the table on p. 171.

(As the example suggests, the group-I elements are transition metals -- group IB in the most common traditional namings, or group 11 in the IUPAC numbering. Also as the naming and examples suggest, the group-III and -VI elements are main-group elements in the p-block: groups IIIA and VIA in the traditional American scheme, IIIB and VIB in the traditional European scheme, and 13 and 16 according to IUPAC. It's a lot easier to add obvious comments about the notation than to go and learn anything about the actual semiconductors.)

IIM was created in 1963. As an entertainment input to those who would never think of learning about this organization and having a cynical chuckle or curl of the lip, I present their self-description. IIM is

a non-profit research and social action organization, dedicated to promoting an ever-deepening understanding of cultural pluralism, intercultural relations and social change. Its scope is local, national as well as international.

Although harmonius [sic] ethnic relations and cultural diversity are generally recognized as desirable, little is understood about the transformative possibilities they offer our pluralistic world.

iim is committed to exploring these possibilities in order to meet contemporary economic, ecological, social and civilizational challenges. These can only be met by a sincere search for wisdom and insight from each and every culture, through dialogue, understanding and cooperation.

The philosophy and practices of iim find their roots in the non-institutional and community sectors of our societies. The Institute's spirit has been one of engaging itself in a dynamic interaction between the public and private or the formal and informal sectors, without compromising its identity as a community organization.

A major motivation to study II-VI semiconductors is their broad range of bandgaps (from 0 in HgTe to wide in CdTe) and the demonstrated possibility of making MBE- and MOCVD-grown heterostructures as in the III-V system. (VCSEL's are popular structures.) They also have interesting magnetic properties [Dilute Magnetic Semiconductors are generally II-VI materials with low Mn (or Fe) concentration]. A variety of technological challenges, though, have so far prevented the practical fabrication of electronic and electro-optic devices out of II-VI semiconductors. These include difficulties in doping, instabilities in the epitaxial growth process, and rapid micromechanical degradation of optical devices during use (2.5-hour laser lifetimes were reported at an 8/95 II-VI conference in Edinborough).

There was an unofficial II-VI homepage, which is supposed to have moved to this new location, but I can't reach it.

A friend of mine (Dan) works for II-VI Incorporated, so I've put a link in. See?

Cleveland Crystals serves a list of properties.

There's a low-traffic UK-based mailing list for II-VI researchers called semiconductors-2-6.

German words with the root Kolleg- are often faux amis of English words with a cognate root. The English word colleague does correspond to the German Kollege (female form Kollegin), but Kollege also means `counterpart, opposite number': interior ministers of different countries, though they might hardly be ``colleagues,'' are conventionally Kollegen (yup: the plural form).

German Kolleg usually refers either to a course of lectures or specifically to a Roman Catholic theological college. On the edge of similarity is the use of Kollegs or Kollegien (alternative plurals) for special secondary schools to prepare adults for university admission. I don't know much about them, but it sounds like an honest description of a junior college. Kollegialität is not exactly `collegiality' now but either `friendliness' or `loyalty to one's co-workers.'

Normally, Ike is the nickname of someone named Isaac.

There's a business hagiography by Bertil Torekull, Leading by Design: The IKEA Story {tr. Joan Tate} (New York: HarperBusiness, 1999). According to Appendix C, IKEA was registered as a firm 1941-1943. In 1941, Mr. Kamprad turned 15. That sounds about right. IK's cousin is quoted on his early years:

... He caught fish and crayfish and was adventurous and bold, stuffing the crayfish he'd just caught down the back of his long johns. He was like that.

The Villanova University Law School provides some links to state government web sites for Illinois. USACityLink.com has a page with mostly city and town links.

iGuide is ``Your Guide to Israeli Internet.'' (I think by ``your'' they mean mine, but I don't object if you, dear reader, use it as well. Consider it yet another generous service of the Stammtisch Beau Fleuve.) Sponsored by NetVision.

A very useful feature, given the varying ways in which Jewish names are transliterated across different alphabets, is the phonetic-match name email address lookup provided at IBM Israel's Electronic phonebook.

Here's the Israeli page of an X.500 directory.

You can see the Wailing Wall here, from the safety of your ergonomic chair.

Is the organization name pronounced ``I'll go''? They've been trying to march in New York City's annual Saint Patrick's Day parade since at least 1991. The Ancient Order of Hibernians, which organizes the parade, denied them permission to march that year (as every year since), but they participated anyway as invited guests of then-mayor David Dinkins. They and he were pelted with nasty words and beer cans. I often wonder about these situations: is there a place where protesters who didn't plan ahead can exchange their empty bottles for acceptable aluminum projectiles, or are they reduced to relying on their verbal creativity?

During WWII, domestic car manufacture was halted so production capacity could be devoted to war materiel, and gasoline and rubber were rationed (see also Jeep). Ford then sold its building on the northeast corner of West 54th Street and Broadway in Manhattan to the ILGWU. You can see a picture of the building on page B25 of the July 7, 2000, New York Times (first page of the Weekend Section), illustrating David W. Dunlap's article ``Street of Automotive Dreams'' (a mile and a half of Broadway, centered approximately on Columbus Circle).

The six-story Ford building was built in 1917 to designs of Albert Kahn, one of the foremost American architects of the century. It has a red-tiled hip roof, so you think you're in a lazy Mediterranean villa, get loose and careless, wander out onto Broadway and get flattened by a delivery van. Then again, maybe not. The building runs half a block along Broadway; UNITE has a twenty-foot-by-ten-foot elevator. Talk about feeling guilty for not using the stairs. The ground floor, which used to be a showroom, is occupied by UNITE-owned Amalgamated Bank.

On the northwest corner of the same intersection, mostly facing W 54th, there used to be a REO showroom. Now it's a deli.

Set a half a block back from Broadway, the old Automobile Club (ACA) building (1910) and its annex span the block from 54th to 55th. There was parking for about 1000 cars, and amenities included accommodations for chauffeurs and Turkish baths. Now the buildings house the Labor Department (NYSDOL) and the Hearst Corporation. Like a lot of Auto Clubs around the country, the one in New York became a local affiliate of the AAA and changed its name to reflect its diminished territorial ambitions (``Automobile Club of New York''). You know, New York is the ``Empire State.'' The Auto Club is falling down by having its headquarters in Garden City. New Jersey is the Garden State. In two hundred years, New York hasn't invaded Vermont. Oh, wait, there's something here. They also have a travel agency at 1881 Broadway (NW corner with 62nd Street), upstairs from the Bank of New York. That building used to house the Martin Cadillac showroom. Since property values drove the last dealership to Eleventh Avenue in 1985 (gee, that's 15 years ago already), that little AAA travel agency may be the last toehold of auto business on old Auto Row.

Gary's dad was in the furniture business for a while. When a new furniture store set up near his store, his son worried that that'd steal business. Gary's dad said that to the contrary, they wanted the furniture stores clustered together. It's better for business. Another thing, in the big fire, I guess the competition burned down too. People can make surprising jokes at their own misfortune, but it may be hard to remember them afterwards. I'm just typing here, it may come to me. Hmm. It'll have to be in a later revision.

A guy I sat next to on a plane was reading internal literature from his company, Discount Auto Parts. When he went to the bathroom, I learned that they don't worry about having stores in nearby towns. There's a synergetic effect: putting a new DAP store moderately near an old one actually increases business at the old store. Studies Show that. But maybe people go to the old store because they see ads for DAP and go to the one they already know. Maybe this steals business from the new store. Evolutionary biology is all about this kind of thinking, but this isn't an evolutionary biology entry, is it? No, I didn't think so.

Now Gary lives close to Mishawaka. (So do I, but to mention that here would interrupt the flow of the definition narrative, so I don't. Sharp glossarists like me don't miss a trick.) Mishawaka-area auto dealers are concentrated on a stretch of Grape Road where the speed limit is 40 MPH, and on the same road there are competing auto parts stores across the street from each other. In Elkhart, the auto dealerships are on Bypass Road. If you want to select a car, you wait until the dealers go home and then visit the dealers' lots with Rob, who knows more about the cars and isn't working on commission. If you don't know Rob, I guess you're out of luck, huh? When you've chosen a car (test-drive any former friend's model) you order on the internet, and the local dealer that wins the bid hates you. That's why the auto lots are protected by guards. At Bypass Road, after waiting politely for Rob to pause in his discussion of options, the guard asked if we knew where she could buy that yellow police tape for cordoning off restricted areas. Must've been for another job.

We're talking Indiana, here, okay? If you want to know where the dealers are out of state, try 11th Ave. in NYC or North Avenue in Westfield, NJ. This should be obvious. If Mishawaka were in Japan, it would be Mishakawa, and there would probably be other differences as well.

There's a computer type font named Mishawaka, too.

Have you ever noticed how, when you buy a package of two or four chicken breast halves, they're all from the same side? They ``spoon'' better that way (here I suppose it would be enough to say they stack better), but it means that it takes two chickens to make one package of two chicken-breast halves.

Here is the mythical genealogy, specifically the paternal line, that explains some of the names:

1. Zeus
2. Dardanus
3. Erichthonius
4. Tros
5. Ilos
6. Laomedon
7. Priam

The region of Troy is called Dardania (see 2 above) and the legendary founder of the city is Ilos (5). The city is called after him or Troia after his father (4). Priam and his children have starring roles in the Iliad and in a variety of other works. A separate genealogy concerns another son of Tros, named Assaracus. The paternal line here goes

4. Tros
5. Assaracus
6. Capys
7. Anchises
8. Aeneas
9. Ascanius

The legendary mother of Aeneas, incidentally, was Venus. Aeneas is the star of Virgil's great epic which we call the Aeneid. I guess you could have figured that out yourself.

Each of the Homeric epics is divided into 24 books, although there is some question when this division was imposed. They're probably divided into 24 books because the Greek alphabet had 24 letters. The Aeneid is divided into 12 books, the first six modeled on the Iliad and the second six modeled on the Odyssey. The Aeneid begins with the words arma virumque cano, `arms and the man I sing.' One of the earliest plays (1894) of George Bernard Shaw was entitled ``Arms and the Man.''

Regarding that ``the'' there... (Say that out loud.) There is no definite article in Latin, so whether one should occur between the ``arms and'' and the ``man'' in English is a matter for the translator's judgment. (As the old saying goes, ``a translation is a commentary.'') Normally, new characters in a story are introduced with the indefinite article. (E.g., ``a priest, a minister, and a rabbi enter a bar.'') This is not a hard-and-fast rule, however. In many cases, the introduction of a character or situation implies others that no longer require an introductory indefinite article. (``The bartender says, `what is this, a joke'?'') There are other situations where one uses the definite article with the first mention of a subject. This usage carries the implication that you are already there or you already know this. It can have various effects on the reader, producing a sense of falling into an unfamiliar situation in medias res, for example, or a sense that the subject spoken of is so important or well-known as not to require introduction. For the Aeneid's opening halfline, many translations use ``the man'' or an equivalent expression. I happen to prefer that version.

One of the most recognizable scenes in Western art is Aeneas carrying his lame father on his shoulder through the burning ruins of defeated Troy, holding the hand of his son Ascanius.

Romance languages derive the forms of their nouns from the Latin accusative or ablative singular form (final ems became silent in Vulgar Latin, decreasing the difference between accusative and ablative). Hence, in Spanish the epic is known by the title La Ilíada (that's right stress: on the second i) and in French as L'Iliade. Other languages followed the cultural lead of France: Iliad in English, Iliade in German, etc. The philhellenic movement and classical philology of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries led German scholars to prefer a direct transliteration of the original Greek names over the traditional Latin and Romance forms. Thus Ilias is now common in Germany, while Iliade is clearly antiquated. (A similar tendency exists among English classicists, though it has had a variable impact. For example, classicists often use Herakles for Hercules, but that usage has not become common. On the other hand, the Greek name Athena seems to have almost completely supplanted the Latin Minerva in common usage, as Odysseus has Ulysses to a lesser extent.)

Writing in the classics list CLASSICS-L, Alice P. Radin recalls Herbert M. Howe thundering out the orthographic mnemonic:

The Iliad is not ill, nor is the Odyssey odd!

She has added that deities don't diet (but see ie entry), and solicited mnemonic help for the prophecy/prophesy dichotomy.

Actually, the Odyssey is odd. For that matter, there's probably an Otto somewhere in Ottawa.

The Homer and the Papyri website has

1. Up-to-date lists of papyri pertinent to the Iliad and the Odyssey.
2. A repertoire of variant readings contained in these papyri.

A little reflection shows us that if what we are maintaining is false, then anything implied by what we are maintaining is false. I must, however, admit that I know a learned man who professed himself unable to give unhesitating assent to this contention.

I trust that the stupidity of Stebbing's contention is obvious to most people, whether or not they use words like contrapositive or converse. Nevertheless, an example may be amusing: the proposition ``animals with four legs are dogs'' implies that cats are dogs and that dogs are dogs. Since cats are not dogs, dogs are not dogs either.

Stebbing, according to the back cover of this book, lectured in symbolic logic at Columbia University in 1931-32, and was the author of A Modern Introduction to Logic. There's a profile picture of her on the back cover, showing that she at one time suffered from either nausea or some other dyspepsia. She was also at one time Director of Moral Science Studies at Girton and Newnham Colleges, Cambridge, and she was President of the Aristotelian Society, and also of the Mind Association.

According to the same materials, from 1933 she was Professor of Philosophy at the University of London. This prompts me to rush to the defense of my good buddies in philosophy. Apart from phenomenologists, ``political philosophers,'' postmodern ``philosophers,'' philosophers of science, Kantians, Hegelians, other continental philosophers, analytic philosophers, philosophers of language, and a small number of other exceptions, most philosophers are intelligent. The stupid quote at the beginning of this entry is not representative of the kinds of mistake that philosophers generally make.

It's good they're only going for plain old excellence. You know the old saying -- ``better excellence is the enemy of good excellence.''

You know, when you think about it, excellent isn't an absolute adjective. Indeed, when you get right down to it, excellence is a very subjective thing. One man's ``fair'' is another man's ``excellent.'' This is a liberating thought, because it allows you to flatter with a clear conscience, i.e. without shame, or shamelessly, as the expression goes.

These thoughts are no reflection on ILRT, about which I know very little. Indeed, I've practically never heard of this internationally known center of excellence.

There's a Puerto Rican & Latino Studies Institute at the University of Connecticut, and there are plenty of Institutes Of Latin American Studies, such as The Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies at UT Austin (LLILAS).

If I hadn't been on the ILS mailing list, I would have remained blissfully unaware of the following important event: the premiere on January 23, 2002, of American Family: the first drama series on broadcast television to feature a Latino cast.

American Family was created by Academy Award-nominated director Gregory Nava (El Norte, Selena). ``The series is about an American Family living in Los Angeles that happens to be Latino,'' says Nava. ``I wanted to create a show that will make the audience laugh and cry as it chronicles the daily struggles and triumphs of a family. American Family is about everyone's family.''

I have somewhat mixed feelings about this. On one hand I suppose it is overdue. If you don't watch Univisión you might have the weird idea that the Los Angeles area is as Anglophone as whitebread 90210. On the other hand, the real problem with television is not that it fails to represent the real world accurately, but that it accounts for so much of peoples' limited understanding of the world that its knowledge lacunae become theirs. Of course, no one watches PBS, so the program is a nonevent.

A system for landing instruments, if the instruments are appropriately equipped aircraft.

1. Butterfly,
2. Backstroke,
3. Breaststroke, and
4. Freestyle.

This is the standard order. In the three-stroke medley, the butterfly part is eliminated. Each stroke (i.e., each style of swimming) is done for an integer number of laps. Freestyle must not be any of the previous strokes, but since it's a race, anyone who would repeat one of the earlier strokes could as easily be disqualified for drugging, since ordinary stupidity alone could not explain such a choice.

In a medley relay (in swimming), each of the different strokes is performed by a different swimmer. The order of the strokes is different then. If it turns out that there's an abbreviation for medley relay, then we'll make an entry for it and explain the order there. If it weren't for the Olympics, we would probably not be motivated to improve ourselves by acquiring this athletic knowledge. What we really need now is a ``muscular Christianity'' entry, but at least we have an entry for the word medley.

Amazing but true: in the state of Indiana, there is no automobile inspection. Not annual, not biennial, never. It's illegal to operate an unsafe vehicle, of course, but it'll have to be pretty bad before they stop you.

(Honesty compels me to admit that most IM-ing occurs in a guilt-free haze of unreflection. A shame culture without the shame.)

``Send an instant comment to me / Initial it -- with loving care!'' is a lyric from the Yes song ``I've Seen All Good People.'' (It seems to be about speed chess.)

In most of the longer entries of this glossary, you could usually insert BTW somewhere along about the beginning of the second paragraph, and IMAO at the end.

Oh-wait-a-second... That wasn't an I, that was a lower-case el. They weren't being frank about their opinions, they were laughing!

All video purchase links at IMDb point to <Amazon.com>. This might owe something to the fact that Amazon owns the IMDB. Other places to search for videos are

1. Facets.com
2. Reel.com
3. MoviesUnlimited.com

According to research published in Desirable Men, ``[o]ut of 20 activities listed that people typically do on dates, movies ranked as the most likely type of date to be cancelled. These results were ranked the same for both men and women.''

The last comment reminds me of research that shows men reporting significantly different frequencies of whatever with their wives than women report having with their husbands.

Most of the vehicle mass is in fuel, so if fuel can be manufactured on the Moon, it becomes attractive to start from there, and IMLEO becomes smaller and less critical.

Here's something on angel.

``I might steal your diamonds but, I'll bring you back some pearls.'' -- Fake pearls.

The whole eighteen cubits: He was named Titus Flavius Vespasianus at birth. (Titus was frequently abbreviated T.) On accession his title became Imperator Titus Flavius Vespasianus Caesar, and in August 69 C.E. he became Imperator Caesar Vespasianus Augustus. The next year he accreted ``pontifex maximus'' and ``pater patriae,'' and by the time he died he was Imperator Caesar Vespasianus Augustus, Pontifex Maximus, Tribuniciae potestatis X, Imperator XX, Pater Patriae, Consul IX. Of course, his pals just called him Max.

I really hope that the word imp is derived from this title abbreviation, but I fear it may not be, so I haven't dared to look it up. You'll just have to trust me on the etymology, and reason that it must be correct, since I wouldn't mislead you on a matter of this importance.

To take a simple example, if the input signal is proportional to sin(2πƒ₁t)+sin(2πƒ₂t) and the output signal is the square of the input, then the output is proportional to (sin(2πƒ₁t))² + 2sin(2πƒ₁t)sin(2πƒ₂t) + (sin(2πƒ₂t))². The second term is a second-order intermodulation term, which by a trigonometric product rule can be written as cos(2πƒ_-t) - cos(2πƒ₊t), with ƒ₊ = ƒ₁ + ƒ₂ and ƒ_- = |ƒ₁ - ƒ₂| the sum and difference frequencies, respectively.

In fact, the past-participle adjective was used as early as 1601 in a botanical context (Philemon Holland's translation of Pliny's Historia Naturalis) with the sense of ``forcefully pressed into (or against).'' That adjective has continued in widespread botanical and medical use, and is probably most widely known from the expression ``impacted tooth.'' It is not necessary or even common to add the English past-participle suffix -ed to a word that happens to be constructed on the basis of a Latin participle, and in fact the original form of the adjective impacted (attested as early as 1563) was impacte or impact. It seems that this was misunderstood as short for a hypothesized form impacted, and that there the trouble began. Perhaps if the word had been impactate, none of this would have gotten started. Holland should have known better.

In due course the verb impact was back-constructed from the misconstructed word impacted, and the verb was nouned to give the word we started out talking about two paragraphs ago. The scientific noun impact early on came to be used figuratively, as a colorful synonym of effect that implied a sudden or forceful cause.

Now that this history has been explained, we can get to the point of this entry, the casus belly-ache-us, so to speak. And that is, that people started using the verb impact, which was created to mean ``press into,'' in the new sense of ``have an impact on'' -- have a sudden, forceful effect on. This was popular business-speak in the 1990's, and I am pleased not to be hearing it any more. Adding new meanings to a word is legitimate and natural, but it is objectionable when the meaning is already well expressed by an old expression similar to the new one, as ``have an impact on'' expressed the new sense of ``impact.'' In its favor one might argue that the new expression is more compact, but in this case something else is going on: the new meaning of impact is impacting the old meaning of impact (in both senses). When a new sense is added to a word that has an older, still-active sense, the new sense ought to be sufficiently different from the old one that the context will generally make clear which sense is meant. Otherwise, the effect of adding a new meaning will primarily be to degrade the precision of the word. The only saving grace, if that's what it is, is that the new verb has the initial stress of a noun.

Anyway, the subtitle of the book explains the crisis that impended: ``Too Many Jobs, Too Few People.'' The authors' research uncovered the fact that the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) was predicting that by 2010 there would be 167 million jobs chasing 157 million qualified workers. My research in 2011 determined that, according to the BLS, total nonfarm employment (which is as much as the BLS tracks) in the US had peaked around 138.0 million in January 2008, and bottomed out around 129.3 in January 2010, less than a million below the lowest figure for 2003. But by May 2011, it had soared back up to a brief maximum of 131 million (prelim.).

In one chapter, Edna O'Brien compares the Ireland of her youth and of the present (the interview was conducted in 1984): ``Ireland is very different now, a much more secular land, where, ironically, both the love of literature and the repudiation of literature are on the wane.'' Irony, like humor generally, is not to be explained. Therefore, we must simply disagree that this coincidence is ironic. She continues: ``Ireland is becoming as materialistic and as callow as the rest of the world.'' Ireland was also becoming one of the economic tigers of the EU, so perhaps now it has the prosperity to be less materalistic. Want makes hunger, you know. The notion of becoming callow is an interesting one, however, since callowness is immaturity or lack of experience. If you want irony, growing into callowness would be it.

Earlier in the interview, Roth raised the issue of writing from exiles of various sorts. Edna O'Brien made her home in London and wrote about Ireland. Ireland could boast, if that's the word, of exporting many great writers, among them Becket and Joyce. O'Brien: ``But you have to go if you find your roots too threatening, too impinging. Joyce said that Ireland is the sow that eats its farrow. He was referring to its attitude toward its writers--it savages them. It is no accident that our two greatest illustrissimi, himself and Mr. Beckett, left and stayed away, though they never lost their particular Irish consciousness. In my own case, I do not think that I would have written anything if I had stayed. I feel I would have been watched, would have been judged (even more!), and would have lost that priceless commodity called freedom.'' (I thought the ancient name for Ireland was Hibernia. Now I think I had that wrong; it must have been Claustrophobia.)

This writing-from-exile trope is a recurring one in interviews with O'Brien. (See, for example, this Salon.com Lit Chat item from 1995.) Naturally, the Roth interview included some discussion of the issues of exile and freedom facing Eastern European writers. I'll touch on that somewhere later. The Eastern European experience under communism is also fodder for the head topic of this entry.

Oh yes, and for your convenience, documents saved by the new release cannot be opened by the old one. So there's something the old version can't do.

Literally, the phrase im Quadrat means `in the square.' (The im is the standard contraction of in dem. I think one only encounters the uncontracted form, as indem, when dem functions pronominally.)

The reason for this entry is to explain a pun. Ritter Sport, a line of chocolate bars made by Alfred Ritter GmbH & Co. KG. They make a big deal of the square thing. One of their mottoes is ``Qualität im Quadrat.'' Which means, as you now understand, both `quality in the square' and `quality squared.' The German motto appears on the mostly-English packaging in the US, but they also used to include the nearly literal translation ``Quality in a square.'' Later they switched to ``Quality. Chocolate. Squared.'' Eh. At least it doesn't kill the frog, as I just did.

Has a good list of high-interest links.

Related interest:
• Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA).
• Middle East Newsline
• Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA).

Minoru is the given name, I believe, of Mr. Minoru Toyoda. The Toyoda family founded and controls Toyota and the associated keiretsu. (More on that at the Jabba entry.) The stupendously innovative ``idea of a global IMRA research and development network ... was championed by Mr. Minoru Toyoda, the Honorary Advisor to the All Aisin Group. Aisin is Japan's largest, and one of the world's top ten manufacturers of automotive related components.'' Somehow Aisin Seiki scraped up the funds, and the facility at Nice was the first one founded. Sites were added in Germany and the U.K., and the lot became IMRA Europe S.A. There's an IMRA America, Inc. -- it describes itself as ``a globally active company dedicated to the leading edge in ultrafast and short-pulsed fiber laser technology for commercial and research applications.''

What may not be apparent is that the term ``monitor'' does not refer to the fact that the earth is being monitored. What ultimately is being monitored is compliance with the terms of the comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty (CTBT), article IV (``Verification'') of which established the IMS. Thus, ``monitoring'' includes (article IV [section B], paragraph 16) radionuclide, hydroacoustic, and infrasound monitoring as well as seismic monitoring, and may include such things as electromagnetic pulse (EMP) monitoring, as appropriate (article IV [section A], paragraph 11). The IMS is supervised and coordinated by the Technical Secretariat instituted by that treaty (Article II, Section D). The data gathered by the IMS is made publicly available by the International Data Centre (IDC).

A table of the stations comprising the IMS is on-line, but we were just desperate to add entries, so a fine selection of the three-, four-, five- and yes, even six-letter acronyms designating these stations are scattered among these pages. We also serve the list in alphabetical order.

According to this page, IMTA was created by a presidential decree on August 7, 1986, as an agency separated out of the then Secretaría de Agricultura y Recursos Hidráulicos, `Secretariat of Agriculture and Water Resources,' (SARH). In a presidential decree of December 28, 1994, IMTA was absorbed into the then Secretaría de Medio Ambiente, Recursos Naturales y Pesca, `Secretariat of Environment, Natural Resources and Fisheries' (Semarnap). Persuant to a presidential decree of October 30, 2001, IMTA is now (2004) a public agency operating separately from the federal government, coordinated by the Secretaría de Medio Ambiente y Recursos Naturales, `Secretariat of Environment and Natural Resources.' (Semarnat). Whatever is unclear to you in the above explanation is probably unclear to me too.

At the time of the Apollo missions, the IMU, also called an inertial platform, had a gyroscope but no accelerometers: it measured only orientation. A New York Times article about Apollo 9 (on March 4, 1969; page 14) explained that the Apollo capsule's on-board computer took three kinds of navigational inputs: data from ground radar radioed up to the spacecraft, IMU data, and star and landmark sightings made by an astronaut with an electronic sextant. Actually, the way it worked was that the orientation of a star was typed into the console and the capsule reoriented itself. There was an ``alignment optical telescope'' (AOT) fixed to the spacecraft and oriented to view whatever the capsule was oriented to. The lunar module did not have an AOT.

The famous Apollo 13 crisis began 56 hours after liftoff when one of the two service-module oxygen tanks ruptured, and the second tank began leaking slowly. The leaking gas cooled on expansion into the vacuum, and the cooled gas condensed into a cloud many miles wide. This cloud surrounding the spacecraft was thin enough to see through, but just like earth's atmosphere it scattered sunlight and made it impossible to see any stars ... with one exception. As a desperation measure (much of what was done during the Apollo 13 mission fell under that rubric), the IMU was calibrated by sighting on the Sun.

Every NASA space shuttle has three IMU's in the nose cone, each the size of a breadbox. The shuttle can fly and land with just one, but you know -- redundancy. The agency's safety rules specify an early but not immediate end to a flight if one of the three fails. There have been IMU problems on at least five flights, but they mostly came late in the flight and had little or no effect on the flight schedule. In late November 1991, the No. 2 IMU aboard Atlantis, turned off early in the mission to conserve power, started giving faulty velocity readings some hours after being reactivated, and the mission was cut short by three days. In June 1991 and in April 1993, Columbia missions were delayed by an IMU malfunction.

If you hope to join this organization, there is one important question that you must ask yourself:

Am I a country?

The name of the inch comes from the Anglo-Saxon word ynce. This was a very early borrowing of the classical Latin word uncia. Both words meant `twelfth' (fractional part, not ordinal number) in general, and `inch' (twelfth part of a foot) specifically. In post-classical Latin, uncia also came to have the specific meaning of a twelfth of a pound. A twelfth of a troy or apothecaries' pound is still called an ounce (ultimately from uncia, of course, but via French) or something similar in various European languages. The sense of ounce was extended slightly to mean a subdivision of a pound or of a volume that weighs a pound, so we have the avoirdupois ounce, which happens to be a sixteenth part of an avoirdupois pound, and the fluid ounce.

Although German has Unze in the (now largely disused) sense of `ounce,' it seems that no Germanic language besides English borrowed uncia as a unit of length. It is typical that English reborrowed uncia and has two derived words. Since Romance languages developed from post-classical Latin, it was slightly harder for them to borrow uncia in the earlier sense. They typically use the word for thumb or a word derived from it. (E.g., in Spanish pulgar is `thumb' and pulgada is `inch.' In Italian and French the word for thumb also means `inch,' though in Italian one can also use dito `digit' for `inch.') The classical Latin word pulex (`flea') gave rise to similar-sounding words (e.g., Spanish pulga) for flea. The English word puce is derived from the French word for flea.

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Here's the Indian page of an X.500 directory.

``accessIndiana'' is the state's official website. USACityLink.com has a page with mostly city and town links for the state.

Here's a page of legal and legislative information served by the Indiana University School of Law -- Bloomington.

In 1868, Heinrich Schliemann tried to become a citizen of Indiana (a ``Hoosier'') so that he would be able to divorce Ekaterina.

Indium is a soft metal at room temperature. This makes it especially useful in putting together waveguides. A typical waveguide system is composed of mostly straight lengths of copper waveguide, each length with a flange soldered to each end. The flanges have screw holes in standard locations, and the units are screwed together flange-to-flange. If you need a really good seal -- to maintain a vacuum or a particular gas at some determined pressure, say -- you probably need a sealant between the flanges. Indium does the trick: loop some indium wire on the face of one of the flanges and screw it tight. Of particular importance is the fact that indium, because it is a metal, conducts electricity. Hence, there is not a large impedance discontinuity at the join. (Indium is not a very good conductor, but the seal is thin and broad, so it conducts well enough.)

Learn other stuff at its entry in WebElements and its entry at Chemicool.

Anyway, it's always interesting to see what the exceptions to the natural gender assignments are. With ``natural gender'' in the usual sense (male/female grammatical gender), it seems that an enormously common exception is construing children as neuter. With animate/inanimate gender, I don't know enough examples to say what is common, but I can mention that in Basque, tables are construed animate, and I've heard that in Ojibwey (in some spelling; what used to be called Chippewa), stones are animate. I'll have to check into all of this stuff later. Right now I just wanted to get the entry in so I could quote the late Stanislaw Lem (d. April 5, 2006).

In the prologue to his Wysoki Zamek (1975), he ruminates on memory. Michael Kandel's translation from the Polish (Highcastle: A Remembrance, 1995) has this at page vi:

  I really don't know when it was that I first experienced the surprise that I existed, surprise accompanied by a touch of fear that I could just as easily have not existed, or been a stick, or a dandelion, or a goat's leg, or a snail. Or even a stone. ...

I guess now I need to explain one or another of the anthropic principles. Knowledge is inconveniently interconnected and never-ending.

Next page, Lem writes that ``For a while I firmly believed that my soul--or rather, my consciousness--was located four or five centimeters inside my face, behind the nose and a little below the eyes. I have no idea why.'' Could it be that he has a Japanese soul? I can't say I've studied this matter adequately, but in the US certainly and, I think, in the West generally, the gesture to indicate oneself is a closing of the fingers of one hand into a fist with the thumb pointing at one's chest or belly, typically acompanied by a slight motion of the hand or thumb towards the body. In Japan, the gesture is pointing with an extended index finger at one's nose.

Lattice constant is 6.058 Å.

1. Encyclopedia USA: The Encyclopedia of the United States of America Past & Present
   It's a fifty-volume dictionary of American biography, bulked up with entries for items that are, to varying degrees, not people: the Agricultural Adjustment Act, the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, Fort Abraham Lincoln, and Agriculture - Machinery. The first volumes were issued in 1983, and the project petered out the 1990's after 29 regular volumes and three supplementary volumes. For more detail, see Encyclopedia USA.

This is an equal-opportunity disengenuousness, because no scientific evidence is ever conclusive beyond a metaphysical doubt.

I found that bit of hippogriff dander on p. 121 of Dorothea E. Olkowski's Postmodern Philosophy and the Scientific Turn (Indianapolis Univ. Pr.), and I had an urge to share.

The initialism I.S.S. is now sometimes used to refer to the system before consolidation. I don't know what the practice was at the time. I suppose I could find out.

The same issue of Esquire, Bruce McCall takes a whack at Golf.

Okay, then, let's inject some interestingness. German uses a total calque of independent: unabhängig -- literally `not hanging off.' Wow!

Very important for heavily inflected languages is lemmatized entries. That is, entries for different forms of a word given together under a base form of the word as headword. This sort of intelligent lemmatization was expected in the traditional indices verborum. In other languages like, well, mostly in English, intelligent lemmatization has to do mainly with distinguishing homographs.

Indie is also a kind of rock music, related to grunge and goth, descended from punk, but all the categories are mixed up these days. NIN is an indie band. There's an indie music newsgroup: <rec.music.industrial>.

Indigenous is ultimately from the Latin indigena, `native [person].' This was constructed from indi- + gignere. The prefix indi- or indu- was an ancient (even for Latin) combining form of the preposition in. The heavily contracted gignere, in the passive, means `to be born.'

Indigent is ultimately from the past partiple (which provides the -nt) of Latin indigere, `to lack.' This was constructed from indi- (also) + egere, `to want.'

Get your tickets now.

Typical speeds for tectonic plate movements are in the range of 1-10 cm per year. The most rapid collision, of the Indian Ocean plate thrusting against the Eurasian plate, is estimated at as much as 20 cm/y, and is raising the Himalayas on the order of 1 cm/y. Thumbnails and children grow at comparable rates. Something to think about the next time someone says ``geological time scales.''

My first flights, age 18 months, were in little propeller planes over the Andes, crossing the cordillera between Argentina and Chile. One time when we encountered an especially bad patch of turbulence, my mother pretended that we were on an amusement park ride -- Uuu-up!!! Doownnn! Wheee!!! The other passengers stared with wide eyes set in green faces. I have one word for those of you reading this now who were along with us for that ride: Chill. If we die, we die. If we live, the baby froths with drooly joy instead of bawling in terror.

In origin, the word comes from Latin meaning `nonspeaking,' hence a very young child. Very quickly, the meaning in Old French was extended to include a boy or youth, hence the military term infantry (unmounted soldiers).

The earliest recorded Middle English use is consistent with this contemporary Old French usage, and in England today, some schools for the early primary grades are called Infants' Schools. Nevertheless, the semantic field of infant has generally shrunk back toward its original sense.

It's called financial infidelity for a reason. Really, it's the same kind of lying as sexual infidelity. It hurts and makes people angry on a lot of the same levels, and that's because it's a broken trust.

My instant reaction was that this made sexual infidelity seem a whole lot less serious. Plus which, only one spouse gets screwed.

Among French-speakers, informations is a faux ami. The French word information functions both uncountably, as in English, and countably, primarily with the sense `piece of information.' Given the sense of the countable use, the plural is very similar in meaning to the uncountable use. E.g., ``ces informations sont confidentielles'' means `this information is confidential.' However, it seems that the plural tends to be used in the sense of `news items.'

This situation in German is similar to that in French, with singular form Information and regularly-formed plural Informationen. The word is regarded as having been borrowed into German directly from Latin rather than from French; the first extant instances (I like to say that) date from the fifteenth century.

The plural (informaciones) occurs in Spanish, but the singular (información) is usually understood as uncountable. For whatever reason, the erroneous use of informations in English by people more comfortable in Spanish doesn't seem very common to me, and I know a lot more people whose native language is Spanish than whose native language is French.

I'm not going to research the situation in Russian, but I will mention that a Russian-speaking friend just sent me an email that included the phrase ``another info.'' (It could be due to one of his other languages, but those don't have as much absorbed Latin.)

Their homepage is very focused to advertising and support, with little PR (i.e., little of interest that isn't closely related to their products).

None of this is even remotely like Alexander's solution of the knotty Gordian problem.

Properties interpolate between those of InAs and of GaAs.

The particular alloy composition in InGaAs that lattice matches InP is In_0.53Ga_0.47As, for which

Effective mass m^* = 0.041 m₀
density = 5.5 g/cc
longitudinal sound velocity = 4.74 km/s
Deformation-potential constant E_i for acoustic-phonon interaction = 9.2 eV
Transverse elastic constant c₁₂ = 39.56 GPa
Piezoelectric constant h₁₄ = 254 MV/m
Lattice constant a = 5.862 Å
LO phonon energy = 34.5 meV
Static dielectric constant = 13.88
Optical dielectric constant = 11.34

Properties interpolate between those of InP and of GaP.

I remember a conversation with a Polish colleague once, in which he was trying to get me to pronounce a Polish word that contained an en with an acute accent. This was evidently a palatalized en. I pronounced it that way, and he kept saying that I almost had it, but that palatalized en wasn't quite right. He was never able to explain how to correct it in a way I could understand, and I wasn't able to hear the difference. Looking into it now I think it may have been that Polish dentals t and d, as well as n, are articulated more nearly dentally (tongue against upper front teeth) than they are in English or Spanish (tongue just a little bit further back, against the gum).

In any case, I think that in Spanish there is really no difference between nie and ñe (in any dialect I am familiar with), but that historical spelling counts for something.

For a more interesting and possibly nonexistent INIS, see FEMIS.

Inklings is a clever name. On one hand, an inkling is a perceived clue or suspicion, but the word can be seen as a play on ink and the gentilicial ending -ling (hence meaning something like a printer's devil or more loosely anyone associated with writing).

The Inklings Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to the Lives, Thought, and Writings of C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, Owen Barfield, and Their Friends, by Colin Duriez and David Porter, was published in 2001 (St. Loius, Mo.: Chalice Pr.). Our library owns a copy but it's out, and I'm not going to trouble anyone with a recall just to satisfy your idle curiousity. But I will try to work up an Apostles entry. We do already have a Bloomsbury entry.

The usual normal modes of a system are defined to describe deviations from equilibrium. In that case, the total configurational energy of a system with many degrees of freedom is expanded in increasing powers of a configuration-coordinate vector.
[More precisely, in powers of u = r - r_e , which measures the deviations u_i (of particles labeled by i) from their equilibrium coordinates r_ei.]

The zero-order term is a not-very interesting constant. The first-order term is the dot product of the configuration coordinate deviation vector u with a constant matrix the represents a generalized restoring force. In equilibrium, the restoring forces vanish.

The lowest-order term that does not usually vanish is the second-order term, a constant matrix dotted with two copies of u. This constant matrix is called the dynamical matrix. Its eigenvectors are the normal modes. If the second-order approximation is correct, then it is possible to excite individual modes of the system independently. The frequency of oscillation of these excited modes (eigenvectors) is given by their corresponding eigenvalues, which in terms of the preceding description, for a system of particles of identical mass m, are mw²/2, where w (read ``omega,'' please) are the eigenmode frequencies. If the particles have varying masses, or the coordinates are not chosen as orthogonal Cartesian position coordinates, or the system consists of more complicated fundamental objects (extended objects with internal angular momentum, say), then a direct analysis of the potential energy function alone is not exactly appropriate. Instead one uses a Hamiltonian or Lagrangian formulation, and through equivalent steps arrives at a dynamical matrix whose eigenvectors again describe independent modes of harmonic oscillation and whose eigenvalues are the squared frequencies.

To be continued after dinner. (Not the most recent dinner.)

All the contractions mentioned are for singular or uncountable nouns. There are no corresponding in contractions for feminine gender or plural number, that I am aware of, but I've been surprised once already today, so you never know. (The preposition in governs only an accusative or dative object, depending on the sense.)

The notion of innateness is an important one in philosophy, and the connection between philosophy and adult beverages goes back a long, long way. Socrates drank himself to death, and the great philosopher W.C. Fields is believed to have reasoned, ``Everybody's got to believe in something. I believe I'll have another beer.''

Jà only seems to have been definitively replaced by déjà in the twentieth century; the earlier word is attested at the beginning of the twelfth century; that little parasite on the a appeared in the eighteenth century. (The word is ultimately from the Latin iam. For details, see the entry for jà in the TLF.) The twelfth century is the time when Old French emerges in literature, and pas seems to have solidified its grammaticalization into a negative auxiliary not too long before, so the proposed expression is antiqued back at least nine centuries. (I'm not sure, but I think the conjugated form vu is not anachronistic.)

Do not confuse this conference with the Northwest Conference on Philosophy (at the University of Portland in 2006 [58th annual meeting]).

As the voice for private schools in Indiana, INPEA makes sure we are at the forefront of all topics affecting non-public education.

I guess they just couldn't think of a better way to avoid an acronym that would be pronounced ``I pee.'' It doesn't seem to faze the intellectual property people. I would have preferred ``INdiana Private independent Or Denominational educational association.'' (Well, I didn't saaaay that I would have ``recommended'' it. I'm not that foolish.)

Clicking on the Resources item under the Services menu, the only ``resources'' listed is a printable standard form: ``Request for Waiver of Penalty for Loss of Instructional Day.'' It seems that a filing is necessary only if lost time is not recovered by rescheduling. It is also clear (see this ``state issue'') that a penalty is not assessed so long as the school corporation offers ``at least 180 student instructional days.'' There's a penalty not just for whole lost days but also for the loss of more than 120 minutes in a single day due to delay or early dismissal. Presumably this means school days shortened to contain less than three hours (grades 1-6) or four hours (grades 7-12) of instructional time, since a ``student instructional day'' consists of a minimum of five and six hours of instructional time in the respective cases. (It would reasonable, given the number of days in a year and hours in a day, to limit homework to a maximum of 43 and 42 hours per day, respectively, but this has not been done. It's probably too difficult to coordinate the different classes.)

Penalties are assessed as a pro rata reduction in the amount of tuition support provided by the state [Kind of a big deal the ``Choice'' (voucher) schools.] State accreditation also depends on meeting state minimums. There is an automatic waiver (for penalty and accreditation purposes) for days shortened by less than 120 minutes due to utility failure or weather, if the lost time is made up somehow, but there is no place on the form to request a waiver of penalty for the loss of, say, 110 minutes due to something else. I guess if there's a fender-bender in front of the school that delays the start by fifteen minutes, you should cancel two hours so you have a chance to escape penalties. (Just one idea!)

Anyway, it doesn't look good for a loss-of-instructional-day waiver to be the only, and therefore the featured, resource -- even during this monstrous winter (December 2013 through May 2014).

The INS has a reputation for poor customer service, though I just phoned them and on just the second try they humored me with only mild contempt (of course, I'm not a ferinner). Among the many hypotheses to explain why they treat foreigners so shabbily, one that hadn't occurred to me before is simply institutional: they're part of the Justice Department (DOJ)! Most of their intradepartmental colleagues (see DOJ org chart) organize their entire thinking in terms of good guys and bad guys, while INS deals with ``us and them.'' The confusion is irresistible.

Lattice constant is 6.479 Å.

The guide is apparently compiled from phone interviews with students at 300-odd colleges deemed worth profiling. They're vague on the interview methodology, but here's a clue to help you judge its accuracy. The clue is from their entry for the University of Notre Dame, which begins with this paragraph:

Not far off the interstate in South Bend, Indiana, a statue of a bearded man in flowing robes stands atop the library of the University of Notre Dame. ``Touchdown Jesus,'' as he is known to students, is representative of all that Notre Dame stands for--Catholic ethics, a rigorous education, and football.

Set aside a few minor flaws in this sentence -- the campus of Notre Dame is outside, not in, South Bend; the university has a number of libraries, though Hesburgh Library (the one with Touchdown Jesus) is the largest; the robe looks tightly wrapped and hangs vertically, so if ``flowing'' means anything, then this one isn't. But apart from the minor errors there is this boner: Touchdown Jesus is not a statue that ``stands atop the library,'' it is a part of a mosaic that covers most of the front of the building above the second floor. The building faces south toward the sacred football stadium, and Touchdown Jesus's line of sight is along the center of the field, from goalpost to goalpost. His arms are raised so it looks as if he is about to make the hand signal that football referees make for a touchdown.

I imagine a staffer at Yale was told that Touchdown Jesus is ``on'' the library and imagined the rest. It suggests the kind of misunderstanding that can occur in phone-it-in ekphrasis. I suppose one might argue that a zebra Jesus is somehow ``representative of ... rigorous education.''

The Insider's, or Not-so-far-outsider's, Guide to Colleges is written in the standard stilted style of undergraduates. Still, though better-written than the average freshman paper, it is filled with authentic-sounding local-informant quotes. So if you want to build up a taxonomy of undergraduate errors across the academisphere, this corpus has the advantage that you might at least be able to stomach it. Notes toward that taxonomy project:

1. Nearest-noun concord: ``During the winter, going to the hockey games are a MUST!''
2. Mixed idiom: ``a last-ditch resort.'' (Save me a rut.)
3. Ill-considered qualifier: ``We're not just a bunch of NYU rejects.'' (CUNY turned us down too!)

1. Widely well regarded
2. crap.

``Be a man!'' said I. ``You are scared out of your wits! What good is religion if it collapses under calamity? Think of what earthquakes and floods, wars and volcanoes, have done before to men! Did you think God had exempted Weybridge? He is not an insurance agent.''