Revision history of Revisionist history

Won’t someone please think of the motorists!

Peter Cushing / Star Wars

Costuming difficulties resulted in an endearing piece of trivia about Star Wars. He was presented with ill-fitting riding boots for the Moff Tarkin role and they pinched his feet so much that he was given permission by George Lucas to play the role wearing his slippers. The camera operators filmed him above the knees or standing behind the table of the conference room set.

I’ve been looking to buy a replacement DVD drive for my Xbox (the original one is effectively dead, a common problem). I attempted to buy one on Kijiji (a Craigslist competitor with a horrible name). Unfortunately, it looks like I’ve been stiffed; it’s been two weeks since I paid and I haven’t heard anything from the seller after repeated requests. So, I’m doing what I can to respond: I’ve already reported him to Paypal and Kijiji, and I’m posting his information to earn him some negative Google-karma.

The seller contacted me using the email address murdercityknight@hotmail.com. The display name was “d g”. The emails were tagged with IP addresses of 70.67.143.59 and 207.216.255.121. He gave me a Paypal address of 1610@live.ca; Paypal reported his name to be Jeffrey March. Google knows a bit about him too; it sounds like he’s also going by the names David Poreba and Dave Gilchrist and uses the email/paypal addresses davegilch@hotmail.com and superspeed@live.ca. He claimed he relocated to Vancouver, which matches the IPs and the other information on the message boards. Nothing in our email conversation seemed particularly suspicious; he knew appropriate details about the product in question.

I only lost $35, so the damage isn’t too bad. I hope everyone else who deals be more fortunate. Keyword goodness: thief liar steal ripoff fraud scam.

When does a word become a word?

Today Laura described something as “strambotic”. I blinked when I heard this. I have a pretty big vocabulary but Laura does, on occasion, use an English word that I’m not familiar with. This is pretty rare though, so I was curious to see if this was one of those times.

So I asked her to Google it.

Results 1 - 10 of about 180 for strambotic.

Did you mean: estrambotica.

Note the lack of definition link for “strambotic.” Given this Googlethority I claim that “strambotic” is not a valid English word.

Now, could it be?

• As I originally suspected, Laura was transliterating a valid Spanish word “estrambotica” (it means “pompous”) into English. The rules for doing this include “drop the leading “e” before an “s”" and “drop the last letter if it’s an “a” or “o”". It works a surprising amount of the time… which is why its failures are notable (and often humorous).
• It’s not a raw invention; “estrambotica” a valid Spanish word with a defined and accepted meaning. There’s a pretty good chance that there’s similar words in Portuguese, Italian, and French.
• There’s other cases (180 according to Google) of people using it. There’s a demand.
• I’ve heard it said that dictionaries describe a language but do not define it. (Note that this is different than what elementary school would have you believe, and doesn’t necessarily apply for regulated languages like French). That is, once a word becomes “official” by entering the common speech, it is included in dictionaries… not the other way around. Thus, “strambotic” isn’t invalid just because it doesn’t have a dictionary entry.

I guess “valid” or “invalid” isn’t applicable for English words. What’s really important to ask is “will people understand what I mean when I use it?” Since “strambotic” isn’t common and isn’t easy to look up, the answer is “no”, and thus you probably shouldn’t use it… at least not yet.

Semen in espionage

When the British Secret Intelligence Service (SSB) discovered that semen made a good invisible ink, Sir George Mansfield Smith-Cumming noted of his agents that “Every man carries his own stylo”.

The Phantom of the Opera Sequel

On February 16, 2007 Andrew Lloyd Webber announced that he is working on [The Phantom of the Opera's] sequel. The sequel is called The Phantom of Manhattan and is adapted from the novel of the same name, published in 1999, written by Frederick Forsyth.

However, according to a report published in the Daily Mail newspaper, a bizarre mishap has delayed the sequel; Lloyd Webber’s cat, Otto, a rare-breed Turkish Van, clambered onto the digital Clavinova piano and managed to delete the entire score for Phantom of Manhattan. Lloyd Webber was unable to recover any of it from the instrument.

First the Library of Alexandria burns, and now this.

Just for the heck of it. From History of Aqua regia (one of the few substances that can dissolve gold):

When Germany invaded Denmark in World War II, the Hungarian chemist George de Hevesy dissolved the gold Nobel Prizes of Max von Laue and James Franck into aqua regia to prevent the Nazis from stealing them. He placed the resulting solution on a shelf in his laboratory at the Niels Bohr Institute. It was subsequently ignored by the Nazis who thought the jar—one of perhaps hundreds on the shelving—contained common chemicals. After the war, de Hevesy returned to find the solution undisturbed and precipitated the gold out of the acid. The gold was returned to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the Nobel Foundation presented new medals to Laue and Franck.

…at least, not for the parade.

Downtown construction has cancelled the annual parade that brings out thousands of people every winter. The Calgary Downtown Association, which organizes the Santa Claus parade, said Tuesday that construction and road closures made it impossible to keep the tradition going this year.

It’s just as well, as the reindeer are all off in the oilpatch, and the elves are busy framing houses in Airdrie.

You’d think this would be an Onion story, but it’s legit:
new battlefield clothing includes built-in tourniquets (via Engadget).

Next up: underwear that doubles as a bodybag.