Category Archives: Word of the Day

From Wikipedia: The serial comma (also known as the Oxford comma or Harvard comma, and sometimes referred to as the series comma) is the comma used immediately before a coordinating conjunction (usually and or or, and sometimes nor) preceding the … Continue reading →

From the Haint Blue Flickr Pool (which has lots of pictures): Commonly found on houses in the American South, Haint Blue is a paint color used on porch ceilings and door and window trim. Tradition holds that it orginated in … Continue reading →

From Wikipedia: Rabbit starvation, also referred to as protein poisoning or mal de caribou, is a form of acute malnutrition caused by excess consumption of any lean meat (e.g., rabbit) coupled with a lack of other sources of nutrients usually … Continue reading →

From Wikipedia: Major non-NATO ally (MNNA) is a designation given by the United States government to close allies who have strategic working relationships with US armed forces but are not members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. While the MNNA … Continue reading →

Via Sebastian: It’s a common theme on Scott Adams blog, the notion that many companies, in order to avoid competing on price, creating buying structures that are impossible to understand, thus hiding true cost. I immediately thought of a company … Continue reading →

From Seth Roberts, who named it after his friend Carl Willat. Willat Effect Experiments With Tea: The Willat Effect is the hedonic change caused by side-by-side comparison of similar things. Your hedonic response to the things compared (e.g., two or … Continue reading →

I was typing “estimate” and wrote “estimage.” That should totally be a word, in my estimage. Previous WOTD – Triffin Dilemma

Wikipedia – A micromort is a unit of risk measuring a one-in-a-million probability of death (from micro- and mortality). Micromorts can be used to measure riskiness of various day-to-day activities. A microprobability is a one-in-a million chance of some event; … Continue reading →