runetooth

since latin and greek have weaseled their way into our scientific and academic lexicon, it’s always rather amusing to come across some high tech device with an earthy name of germanic origin. we place calls and send emails with our blackberrys. we use the kenning-like firewire to transfer our yodeling mp3s to and from our computing devices. we use a thunderbolt interface to do whatever that particular interface is supposed to do. but my favourite of all is the bluetooth standard.

because of its rune-like logo, i always suspected that bluetooth referred to something germanic but it wasn’t until recently that i got the full story »

The word Bluetooth is an anglicised version of the Scandinavian Blåtand, the epithet of the tenth-century King Harald I of Denmark…who united dissonant Danish tribes into a single kingdom. The implication is that Bluetooth does the same with communications protocols, uniting them into one universal standard.

bluetooth does for wireless technology standards what harald bluetooth of denmark did for the local danish tribes in the year 960? how delightfully esoteric.

yak skiing

i was reading through the kindle version of my favourite extreme sports magazine looking for an exciting new pastime to take up (because honestly, naked dodge ball, tejo, and ninja star golf are getting a little boring) when i came across a listing for the little-understood sport of yak skiing. 

In the Indian hill resort of Manali, Tibetan Peter Dorje runs an operation dedicated to the most implausible extreme sport in the world: yak skiing…

Pete heads to a high slope with the yaks, trailing out a rope behind him. You wait below, wearing your skis and holding a bucket of pony nuts. When Pete reaches the top, he ties a large pulley to a tree, loops the rope through it and onto a stamping, snorting yak.

Now it’s your turn—and this is the important part. First tie yourself onto the other end of the rope, then shake the bucket of nuts and quickly put it down. The yak charges down the mountain after the nuts, pulling you up it at rocket speed. If you forget yourself in the excitement and shake the bucket too soon, you’ll be flattened by two hairy tons of behemoth. Or as Pete says, “Never shake the bucket of nuts before you’re tied to the yak rope.”

we don’t really have yaks (or mountains for that matter) in massachusetts so i may have to substitute in a skittish goat.  i will let you know how i fare and how many up-slope daffies that i wind up doing. my goat’s name is alphonse. i caught him eating a used kleenex™ once and since then we no longer eat spaghetti lady-and-the-tramp-style the way we once did.

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source: time asia magazine (2005)

here is a chart that i made, trying my darndest to represent the win-loss-draw relationship between the four teams in each of the eight world cup groups. if there were only three teams per group, this type of visualisation would be relatively straight forward. with four teams (and two spatial dimensions), things get a little dicey and the visualisation turns into a topological math problem. in the end, i wound up with this shield design based on a solution to a similar problem by john venn. i hope it is not overly confusing.

the kafka of nafka

guess which of your homeys is now a card carrying member of the north american fighter kite association! hint: it’s raynor “kite daddy” ganan, that’s who.

while feverishly popular in countries like india, pakistan, and afghanistan, the noble art of severing your opponent’s kite line by deftly manœuvering 300 feet of string encrusted with glass powder attached to your own kite is only now becoming a minor fad in boston, massachusetts.

on windy days, you can find me training in danehy park and i will take all comers. but—fair warning—i lace my kite string with titanium carbide razors, ¼ carat diamonds from pawned patriots super bowl rings, and the ground-up vertebræ of my vanquished foes.

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here is another highly destructive world sport that we can play on days with no wind.

of foil, foggage and especially foxes

i’ve always been enamored with the culture and tradition of fox hunting despite my moral aversion to animals spelled with the letter x. this is why my parents got me harry harewood’s (what a name!) charmingly illustrated a dictionary of sports (1835). perhaps there is no category more rife with f-wordery than field sports. consider: forestry, fishing, falconry, feaguing, ferreting, and of course fox hunting. here are a few more. 

far · an appellation given to any part of a horse’s right side
fencing · the nobelest branch of gymnastics
feræ naturæ · beasts and birds of a wild nature
foggage (in the forest law) · rank grass not eaten up in summer
foil · a hare when she runs the same ground she has run before is said to run the foil
forked tails · a name given to salmon in the fourth year of its growth
forms · applied to a hare when she squats in any place
fox · [here are highlights from the 6-page entry on foxes]

• the fox has a very significant eye, by which it expresses the passions of love, hatred, fear, &c.
• foxes near the sea-coast will eat crabs, shrimps, or shell-fish. in france and italy, they commit sad havoc in the vineyards by feeding on the grapes.
• crows, magpies, and other birds, who consider the fox as their common enemy, often by their tones of anger point out his retreat, and will even follow him with their screams to a considerable distance.
• the first year the fox is called a cub, the second a fox, and the third an old fox.
• when deprived of liberty, the fox pines, and actually dies of chagrin.