Todays Word

 A.Word.A.Day

with Anu Garg

arithmomania

PRONUNCIATION:

(uh-rith-muh-MAY-nee-uh) 

MEANING:

noun: An obsessive preoccupation with numbers, calculations, and counting.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Greek arithmo- (number) + -mania (excessive enthusiasm or craze). Earliest documented use: 1892.

NOTES:

If you go for a bicycle ride and can’t help but determine the distance, time traveled, average speed, elevation gain, and more, chances are you have arithmomania. If you feel it necessary to count the number of steps in a staircase as you go up or down, chances are you have arithmomania. If you count the number of floors in buildings as you walk through a downtown area, arithmomania.

I only count the number of words in a dictionary.

Count von Count, a vampire Muppet on Sesame Street, has arithmomania. He counts run-of-the-mill things such as those mentioned above, but also bats in his castle. Apparently all vampires have arithmomania. One way to stop them is to spill grain around them. They have no choice but to count the grains, allowing you to escape.

Todays Thought

If only I could so live and so serve the world that after me there should never again be birds in cages. 

-Isak Dinesen (pen name of Karen Blixen), author (17 Apr 1885-1962)

Todays Thought

The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread. 

-Anatole France, novelist, essayist, Nobel laureate (16 Apr 1844-1924)

Mathematician Answers Geometry Questions From Twitter | Tech Support | W...

Todays Word

 

neophilia

PRONUNCIATION:

(nee-uh-FIL-ee-uh) 

MEANING:

noun: The love of what’s new or novel.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Greek neo- (new) + -philia (love). Earliest documented use: 1899. The opposite is neophobia.

USAGE:

“Neophilia is at the root of the growing problem of hazardous waste in the US and other developed countries. More than 100 million mobile phones were discarded in the US last year, along with tens of millions of computers.”
Neophiliac; New Scientist (London, UK); Jun 10, 2006.

Meatballs - SNL

Why do some people always get lost?

 Why do some people always get lost?

Experience may matter more than innate ability when it comes to sense of direction.

BOB HOLMES, KNOWABLE MAGAZINE - 4/14/2024, 3:55 AM

Like many of the researchers who study how people find their way from place to place, David Uttal is a poor navigator. “When I was 13 years old, I got lost on a Boy Scout hike, and I was lost for two and a half days,” recalls the Northwestern University cognitive scientist. And he’s still bad at finding his way around.

The world is full of people like Uttal—and their opposites, the folks who always seem to know exactly where they are and how to get where they want to go. Scientists sometimes measure navigational ability by asking someone to point toward an out-of-sight location—or, more challenging, to imagine they are someplace else and point in the direction of a third location—and it’s immediately obvious that some people are better at it than others...