Vocabulary: Lean Horse Edition

From the last hundred pages or so of The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman:

obtruncate: to deprive of a limb (makes sense).
indissoluble: perpetual or incapable of being dissolved or destroyed. I love double negatives within words.
oedematous: of or pertaining to the edema (obviously). Edema: interstitial cellular fluid.
sententious: given to pithy or moralizing sayings.
ratiocination: the process of logical reasoning.
aposiopetic: (aposiopesis) breaking off a sentence in the middle, as if unable to proceed
parallelogramical: parallelogram-shaped (clearly; I just liked the word).
radix: the base of a numerical system, or the root of a plant (interesting).
jactitation: a boast that causes harm to another, also extreme restlessness in bed?
delectation: enjoyment (knew it).
saturnine: sluggish, melancholy, or bitter in temperament.
farthingal: hoops used to expand women’s skirts at the time of the book.
palfry: (palfrey) a woman’s saddle, smaller and softer.
placket-hole: the hole that goes into a pocket (!).
concupiscence: sexual lust, or more generally, passion.
windlass: a sort of crank-based lifting machine (no idea).
geniture: birth.
costive: constipated, slow to act, or stingy (very versatile word!).
impuissance: (impuissant) weak, feeble.
captious: of a disposition to point out faults, or ensnaring and perplexing when referring to argument.
farrago: a mixture or medley.
pannier: a basket or bag (i.e. breadbasket), or again hoops to expand skirts.
basilicon: an ointment made of wax, pitch, resin, and oil or lard.
ecliptic, trine, and sextil: all terms to do with astrological positions.
argute: shrewd or subtle (I assume it has roots in the hundred-eyed god Argus).

Every thing in this world is big with jest,–and has wit in it, and instruction too,–if we can but find it out.

Lawrence Sterne, Tristram Shandy

I’m so controversial!

My watch. Took a picture to show some people. Isn’t it a beautiful little object?

A winner is you!

To suggest that the first cause, the great unknown which is responsible for something existing rather than nothing, is a being capable of designing the universe and talking to a million people simultaneously, is a total abdication of the responsibility to find an explanation. It is a dreadful exhibition of self-indulgent, thought-denying skyhookery.

Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

Been reading Jeff Smith’s new comic, RASL. It’s starting out pretty scattershot, but I have a lot of faith in him after Bone. If he makes this into something anywhere near as epic as that, it’s going to be amazing.

With luck this first part is just a prologue to the real conflict, as the first few issues of Bone were. Not that it hasn’t been good so far.

Looks like the AT&T/4chan dispute is on hold for now.

I dare you to surpass my savings.

Nae pen… pen!! Nae pen… pen!!

Gadzooks

It never occurred to me that the above oath, so benign and absurd in sound, is actually a corruption of “God’s hooks,” a euphemism for the nails in the cross. Gadzooks indeed!

Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act on them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity. It is the mere Abracadabra of the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of Jesus.

Thomas Jefferson

Love this guy taking apart homeopathy. Get in the sack!

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Sunset – “Your Eyes Are Mirrors,”
The Glowing City

Wow, this album is great. It’s one of these seamless song-into-song-into-song albums, and the sound is constantly changing, yet remaining identifiable throughout. Bill Baird is the name of the guy behind it, a sort of all-in-one musician with talented friends, not unlike The Microphones’ Phil Elverum (though the music is very different).

More info and buying links here.

Why we must ration health care

Why we must ration health care

A very convincing article by Peter Singer describing the need for health care rationing, although “rationing” is a term which should probably be avoided in debate situations, for obvious reasons.

Essentially, we are already rationing health care by way of cost, and the objections that life has no set value, while true in some ways, are not good policy guides. After all, the million spent to extend one person’s life a year may have extended ten people’s lives by ten years each, if only the money was better spent.

He also gets into the definition of the Quality Adjusted Life Year, or QALY, a unit (life extended by one year, adjusted for quality of said life) for evaluating the efficiency of treatments. At some point, he says (and rightly, I believe), we have to say we are willing to pay no more than X for a QALY, otherwise we end up with… well, the system we’ve got, where costs are astronomical, while expectations and outcomes are no better than countries which spend a fraction as much.

This is going to be a major talking point in the coming years, I’m sure, because if health care really changes, it’s going to need to take some of this into account.

A commenter at Metafilter does bring up a good point, though:
“Regardless of how effective government-run health care might be, it’s not for our society. It’s for societies that pay for things.”