Dynamic Stall

The LHC was fired up today and it’s first successful test run went with only a small hiccup. Yay! Oh, for those of you not into physics the LHC is the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, Switzerland. It’s the world’s largest and highest-energy particle accelerator. It also takes the award for world’s most expensive scientific experiment according to Newsweek.

Here’s a pic of the scientists all agog. the LHC is trying to recreate the Big Bang in an effort to find the Higgs Boson so that we may understand why things have mass.

European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) scientists applaud at the Cern's control center.

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truculent • \TRUCK-yuh-lunt\ • adjective
1 : feeling or displaying ferocity : cruel, savage
2 : deadly, destructive
*3 : scathingly harsh : vitriolic
4 : aggressively self-assertive : belligerent

Example Sentence:
Babar’s dismal financial situation made her truculent and rather like a harpy.

Did you know?
“Truculent” derives from “truculentus,” a form of the Latin adjective “trux,” meaning “savage.” It has been used in English since the 16th century to describe people or things that are cruel and ferocious, such as tyrannical leaders or wars, and has also come to mean “deadly or destructive” (as in “a truculent disease”). In current use, however, it has lost much of its etymological fierceness. It now frequently serves to describe speech or writing that is notably harsh (as in “truculent criticism”) or a person who is notably self-assertive and surly (such as “a truculent schoolboy”). Some usage commentators have criticized these extended uses because they do not match the savagery of the word’s original sense, but they are well-established and perfectly standard.

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.

Spectacularly simple advice for the procrastinators, the overwhelmed, the underwhelmed, the unfocused, the distracted and the lazy in the world. Which seems to be me lately. This is going on post-its all over the house to remind me to use my time wisely.

“You can do so much in 10 minutes time. Ten minutes, once gone, are gone for good. Divide your life into 10-minute units and sacrifice as few of them as possible in meaningless activity.”
– Ingvar Kamprad, Founder of the furniture brand IKEA

For more spectacularly simple advice you know but may have forgotten, try reading Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff. I find it useful to crack it open every now again to refresh my memory on why I don’t need to spaz out.

Do you have any spectacularly simple advice?

folderol • \FAHL-duh-rahl\ • noun
*1 : a useless ornament or accessory : trifle
2 : nonsense

Example Sentence:
Barbara frequently is distracted by the unnecessary folderol of life. She often gets bogged down in relentless details instead of remembering something larger.

Did you know?
Hogwash. Claptrap. Hooey. Drivel. Malarkey. English is rife with words that mean “nonsense,” and “folderol” is one of the many. Though not the most common of the words for nonsense, it’s been around since 1820 and is still heard today. “Folderol” comes from “fol-de-rol” (or “fal-de-ral”), which used to be a nonsense refrain in songs, much like “tra-la-la.” The oldest recorded instance of someone “singing folderol” occurs in Irish dramatist George Farquhar’s 1701 play Sir Harry Wildair, in which a character sings, “Fal, al, deral!”

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.

favonian • \fuh-VOH-nee-un\ • adjective
: of or relating to the west wind : mild

Example Sentence: A favonian wind is blowing across the plains of Le Backwater (aka my back 40), an unwelcome sign of global warming because it should be boreal.

Did you know?
In Ode to the West Wind, poet Percy Bysshe Shelley called the “wild West Wind” the “breath of Autumn’s being.” But according to Greco-Roman tradition, the west wind was warm and usually gentle.

Its Latin name, Favonius, is the basis for the English adjective “favonian” and derives from roots that are akin to the Latin “fovēre,” meaning “to warm.”

“Zephyros,” a Greek name for the west wind, is the ultimate source of “zephyr,” meaning “a gentle breeze.”

In Greco-Roman tradition, it was the north wind, Boreas (aka Aquilo), who was the rude and blustery type.