What's in a Name, Wikipedia

Wikipedia is based on two words, the Hawaiian word Wiki, meaning quick and encyclopedia, with pedia being the Greek term for knowledge: “quick knowledge.”

Happy Friday

Joy is the wine that fills the cup of happiness.

I fill my cup every time I enjoy a Happy Friday!

Wordology, Denote and Connote

The difference between denotation and connotation is easy to confuse, because they describe related concepts. Both denotation and connotation stem from the Latin word notāre, meaning 'to note'.

The denotation of a word or phrase is its explicit, direct meaning.

The connotation of a word or phrase is an associated, secondary meaning. It can be something suggested or implied by a word or thing, rather than being explicitly named or described.

For example, the words home and house have similar denotations or primary meanings: a home is “a shelter that is the usual residence of a person, family, or household,” and a house is “a building in which people live.” However,  both of these words carry different secondary meanings, or connotations. A home connotes a sense of belonging and comfort and house conveys little more than a structure.

One way to remember the difference between the terms is to take a hint from the prefix: 'con' comes from Latin and means 'together; with'. The connotation of a word works together with its denotation or explicit meaning.

Windows 10 Quick Tips

To quickly get at your settings menu, hold down the Windows key and touch the letter i.

Hold down the Windows key and touch the letter x to open a system context menu, where you can use the arrow keys to highlight any of the entries, then press enter to launch the activity without using your mouse or trackpad.

Olympic Trivia

American John Heaton won the silver medal for the Skeleton (like a head first luge) in the 1928 games.  He came back 20 years later for the 1948 games and won another silver medal in the Skeleton. He retains the record for the longest span between winning two Olympic medals for the same event. Incidentally, he also won the bronze medal in the two-man bobsled at the 1932 Lake Placid Winter Games.

Figure skating debuted in the 1908 Summer Games in London. The other warm weather events were held in April and the figure skating was held at the end of October, which made the London Games the longest in modern Olympics history.

Figure skating returned, along with ice hockey, in the 1920 Summer Games in Antwerp and both events were held in April along with the warm weather sports. Canada was the winner of the first Olympic ice hockey gold medal.

The Winter Olympic Games debuted in 1924 in Chamonix, France. The Winter Games included skiing, bobsledding, and curling, along with figure skating and ice hockey.

Wordology, Picosecond

Computers are becoming faster than ever and scientists are working on devices that are a thousand times faster than current technology. Current computer memory performs at nanosecond speed, or one billionth of a second. A picosecond, one trillionth of a second, is about the time it would take for a beam of light, traveling at 186,000 miles per second, to pass through two pieces of paper.

Water and Ice

Seventy percent of the Earth's surface is water. Of this, 98% is salt water, leaving 2% as fresh water. Of that two percent that is fresh, about 90% is frozen. This frozen water is locked up in the Arctic and Antarctic ice sheets, and glaciers on the Alps, etc. I think the chance of us running out of water soon are slim.

Manhattan Border War

There is a small part of Manhattan that is physically part of the Bronx borough to the north. It is the neighborhood of Marble Hill. The two boroughs have been playing tug of war over this former island neighborhood for over a century.

The quarrel started with the building of the Harlem Ship Canal, which cut right through Manhattan's northernmost neighborhood, turning Marble Hill into an island. During 1914 the canal was filled in, making Marble Hill now physically part of the Bronx, but still legally part of Manhattan.

Medical Robots

The first robot-assisted surgery was performed during 1983. There were 1,000 robot-assisted surgeries performed in 2000 and by 2014, there were 570,000 robot-assisted surgeries. The list of robot types and surgeries performed are too numerous to list here. Incidentally, all robot systems are projected to triple during the next five years.