A funny translation problem in the Hebrew localized OS [of the Nokia E71] showed up before I switched the phone over to English, which translates as:

“Keypad is locked. Press Unlock and then the function key to unlock.”

Of course, the softkey for “Unlock” wasn’t labeled “Unlock”, it was labeled “Open”. Hm.

Quincunx:  An arrangement of [typically five] objects in a square or rectangle, with one at each corner and one in the middle, like the five spots on dice (from the Latin for “five-twelfths”).

Now there’s a word I don’t remember ever seeing before, and certainly have never heard spoken (seen now in Nassim Taleb’s The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, in the context of Galton’s mechanical experiments on Gaussian curve formation). Quincunx. It sounds like a hiding place for Lord Voldemort.

Disemvowlmnt: The process of pruning a word of its vowels in order to cram an idea into the requisite 140 characters allowed in a Twitter post.

[word seen at @Quatrainman]

Patterfamilias: Saying something to your child and then realizing that you sound just like one of your own parents.

Exclave: A portion of a country which is separated from the main part and surrounded by politically alien territory.

But here’s the great part: “The same territory is an enclave in respect to the surrounding country and an exclave with respect to the country to which it is politically attached.”

(definition excerpted from Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, as referenced at Dictionary.com)

Lovely, isn’t it? Came up in the context of the territories of Liechtenstein:

While many of these Liechtensteinian fragments might be considered exclaves, most also border more than one other territory, and consequently only three can be considered enclaves…

[Strange Maps blog]

You read that right: 1880s. 1881, to be exact. That’s two years before my great-grandfather was born. That’s coincident with Laura Ingalls Wilders Little House childhood. That’s… well, that’s a long time ago.

[via Comic Book Resources — with thanks to Michael Danziger for the tip]

Dear Fifth Graders:

How do you do! I am the little book that you have made. I have many little stories. They are very interesting. I hope you will enjoy them. They may not be exactly like the works of the great authors, but they are your thoughts and word pictures and I am sure you will love them. Take good care of me and I will bring you many happy hours.

School No. 2

February 18, 1931

[From the wonderful single-topic site, Book of Short Stories.]

Puzzled over in Israel:

In Hebrew, the sign says, “Sokolov St.” In English, “Drayfus St.” (which likely means “Dreyfus”).

Thanks to Ami for the tip.

More on the theme:

Here’s the kanji (Chinese and Japanese character) for tree (ki, in Japanese):

Here’s the kanji for woods, hayashi (i.e., many trees):

And here’s the kanji for forest, mori (even more trees):

Now, here’s the kanji for power, chikara:

And the kanji for cooperate, kyo (i.e., even more power):

Cultural concepts run deep. I rest my case.

As mediated experiences overtake most of our waking hours, the power of a huge mass experience in real life rises in meaning. [from the CT2 blog]

The point Kevin makes is a good one. But… to be honest.. what entranced me was the use of the term mediated experiences. It’s a powerful term. Experience is so defined by the personal feelings and senses, and mediation is so defined by the intervention or removal from personal experience, that the combination just fascinates me.

I did a little poking around on line to get a sense of how mediated experience is used. I got as far as finding it to be an expression used in psychology to refer to a person’s [internal or external] filtering of life’s experiences. But that doesn’t quite convey the punch conveyed to me.

The best I could find was this definition in Spanish:

Mediated experience es una forma de experiencia indirecta. En el caso del arte, es la experiencia donde el artista se ha interpuesto “en medio” entre la experiencia y el que la experimenta.

My very rusty Spanish understands that as:

Mediated experience is a form of indirect experience. In the case of art, it is an experience wherein the artist has interjected the artistic medium itself into the experience and into what is being tested.

I’m not completely certain that I’ve grasped the full concept, but I am really drawn to what I see. A description of the influence that the medium itself (video, computer, television, telephone, news source, whatever) has upon how the information or event is experienced.

YES.