Brought to you by the letter S

The Purpose of the Internet.

I would like to make one thing clear--the internet is not designed to be and certainly is not used as a source of reliable information. Its main use is to waste time--not a bad goal, but often disguised as "research." Not that I'm against using the internet for research, it's just that I find myself too easily distracted by the variety of interesting results given by a simple query like "frosted orange." There's a South African band called Frosted Orange with a song called "My Love is a Leopard". One member's last name is Frost, and another's is Orange, and since they were the original two, I'm betting that's how they came up with the name. There are also Frosted Orange moths in the UK. You can order some "frosted orange" evergreen azaleas to plant in your garden. And, of course, there are many "frosted orange..." food recipes.

Anyway. As I was saying, the internet is designed to waste time. My goal here is to do so in as interesting a way to me as possible. If you don't like it, go waste your time at some other site.

So, on to my idea of interesting topics:

First.
Words like schism and flaccid, which I always mispronounce and then self-correct (in my head, of course) . For those of you, who, like me, have difficulty remembering the proper pronunciation, it is SIZ'm and FLAK-sid (If you want more information, I recommend Charles Harrington Elster's Big Book of Beastly Mispronunciations).
Words like collinear--why is it spelled with two l's?

Second.
Interesting math problems. But I won't bore/frustrate you with those now. I'll sneak them in later when you're least expecting it.

Third--although perhaps this one should be first.
Small stupidities. For example, for the last week and a half, I have been thinking that Monday was the 22nd, but actually Wednesday is the 22nd. Now, you might not think that this is a big deal, but since I have a flight leaving on the 22nd and it is now Dec 17, picture me waiting in the Toronto airport for two days in a row for my flight--it could happen.
Large stupidities are just stupid. Although, if I don't know the people involved and if it doesn't reflect poorly on me, they are still amusing.
A favourite site of mine...
http://www.darwinawards.com/

Fourth...
to be continued.

posted by Steph @ 1:08 PM