Q: What does the wonderful word tetrapiloctomy mean? No conferring now.

A: ??

Saturday 19 August, 2006
Congratulations to Bilo. He got the answer (with a little prompting). It is “splitting a hair four ways”.

Tetrapiloctomy is the activity of super-pedants. I count myself merely as a baseline pedant.

Technorati Tags: word, tetrapiloctomy

I’ve only just come across Correlating, a Baha’i blog with the aim of exploring some of the possible connections between sociological knowledge about communities, religion, culture, and so on, with the Baha’i Faith. It’s a new blog, but there’s already some interesting material here, so have a read.

Technorati Tags: Baha’i, blog, communities, religion, culture

Friday 18 August, 2006 When our daughter was born, Erica and I both wanted her to have a Welsh name (Erica is Welsh, and my Scottish roots had been reflected in the boy’s names). After discussing various names, we agreed on “Angharad“, a name that comes from the ancient Welsh tales of the Mabinogion. It means “more love” and is related to the Welsh word “cariad” meaning “one who is loved”. She nicknamed herself “Hari”, since most English people mangle the word “Angharad” when they try to say it.

Erica and I took Hari and Doug out to dinner last night at the excellent Wellington, a pub-turned restaurant in Welwyn, last night, to celebrate Hari’s MSc by research. The dinner did not do anything for my diet!

Needless to say, young Jakey came with us.

This young man started crawling yesterday, by the way, and today has realized that he can crawl towards people and things that he wants to reach. Babies develop very quickly at this age - almost every day brings a new accomplishment or two, and we can see things “clicking” in his mind, as he puts one new skill and another together to achieve something he couldn’t do yesterday.

Hari’s research is something to do with T-Tauri stars. Don’t ask! She’s now pursuing the research for her PhD.

I blame too much StarTrek during her teenage years.

Technorati Tags: T-Tauri stars