Monthly Archives: April 2013

English is confusing. Pronunciations aren’t consistent, spellings are a crapshoot, synonyms run rampant.

And today, we’ve got three words that sound very similar, but mean very different things:

torrid

torpid

turgid

I get these three mixed up. Maybe you do, too.

Let’s see if we can explain.

torrid – hot, burning, passionate

“Torrid” means hot in a literal sense, like fire. It also means hot like a passionate love affair. Either way, it’s intense.

Like this:

Next up: only one letter off, but very different.

torpid – sluggish, apathetic

“Torpid” means sleepy, lazy, I-don’t-care. Now, what picture could I use…?

Ah yes.

Nobody does torpid like Garfield.

And our final word:

turgid – swollen, inflated, pompous

Again, this can mean literally swollen, like a bug bite. But it can also refer to style. A book can be turgid if it has a self-important, pretentious, inflated kind of writing.

And who’s more self-important, inflated, turgid than the Wizard of Oz?

So: torrid, torpid, and turgid.

Any questions?

As writers, we feel precision is a good thing. Say what you mean! Pick exactly the right word! Don’t be vague!

But precision can be dangerous.

I was at a tech presentation recently. Someone in the audience asked the expert his opinion on a particular new technology. The questioner didn’t know much about it, so he wondered what the expert thought of it.

“What do you want to know about it?” said the expert. “Performance? Flexibility? Useability? Compatibility?”

What the questioner tried to explain, and what the expert never quite understood, is that he didn’t have a specific question about it. What he had was a huge gap in his knowledge about this new technology, which he quite reasonably hoped the expert could fill. But “tell me about this” is vague, and the expert demanded precision. And so their communication died.

Or maybe I’m talking to someone who wants to send me a file, and they ask if they can “download” it to me. Now, download means to pull a file from elsewhere to your own computer, so sending a file out is technically not downloading. Thus the precise answer to his question is very simple: no, you can’t download it to me. But obviously, the precise answer is not the correct answer. The correct answer is to disregard precision, guess the real meaning, and say “Yes, you can send it to me.”

Both my examples have been about computers, and that’s no coincidence. Computers are exquisitely precise, but they don’t do well with vagueness (although they’re getting better rapidly). Vagueness is largely a human virtue: the ability to think about something in a meaningful way, without tying it down to specific details.

But people who are good with computers often think like computers: good at precision, not so good at vagueness. They may be great at handling known unknowns, where the problem is well-defined, but they’re not so good at unknown unknowns, where the problem is that we don’t know what our problems are.

Naturally, there are plenty of people – in IT and elsewhere – who can walk in both worlds, using precision or vagueness appropriately as the situation demands. Because balance, of course, is the key. Too much vagueness is just as bad as too much precision. The great astronomer Carl Sagan was a master of this: his mind was precise enough to get a PhD in astrophysics, but flexible enough to explain the stars to the average person on TV.

Actually, Carl Sagan just rocked in general. If you haven’t seen Contact, check it out sometime.

Anyway. Yes. Precision, vagueness. (Crap, how do I end this? I don’t have a conclusion.)

Uh, yay for communicating!

oh man that was lame

um, uh

STOP READING IT’S OVER

Yes, that kid is me. Yes, the plants are marijuana.

No, I was not enslaved by the Caracas-based drug cartel Los Estornudadores from 1989 to 1993.

As it turns out, the stuff grows wild in the fields of Kansas, where one of my relatives used to have a farm. We were actually pulling it up, trying to get rid of it.

And yes, I was at the forefront of early-90’s fashion, thank you for asking. Anyone can harvest drugs in their spare time, but it takes a special kind of person to wear a neon iguana in public.

The Cube, a personal 3D printer from 3D Systems, Inc.

3D printing is here to stay. Personal 3D printers are already available for non-outrageous prices. And like so many technologies, they’re only going to get better – and cheaper. Already, the low-end models give you 200-micron precision and 16 colors, while the high-end models are printing parts for F-18 fighter jets. Plastics are here; other materials, like metal, are coming.

I don’t have one yet, but I’m sure I’ll buy one when the price goes down a little. But what could you make with a 3D printer?

Here are seventeen ideas off the top of my head:

1. The best Halloween costume ever, custom-designed and perfectly fitted to your body.
2. 3D fractals! Ben, are you listening? 😀
3. Picture frames, exactly the size and shape you need.
4. Jewelry of all kinds: bracelets, necklaces, even rings. Any style you can imagine.
5. A voodoo doll that looks just like the person you want to, er, vent your frustration on. Disbelief in the voodoo is handy for removing ethical complications!
6. Action figures of underappreciated characters.
7. Refrigerator magnets. Go wild.
8. Personalized Christmas ornaments.
9. Miniature replicas of famous places like Westminster Abbey or the Arc de Triomphe, or not-so-famous places (like your own house!).
10. Sculptures: no longer limited by sculpting ability.
11. Trippy, psychedelic juggling balls. (Glow-in-the-dark printing materials are already available!)
12. Paper clips shaped like Cthulhic tentacles.
13. One word: cosplay. (Or is that two words?)
14. Custom PC cases sweet enough to put Alienware out of business.
15. N-sided dice for your D&D sessions.
16. Bookends! A dragon’s-head bookend for the fantasy shelf, a sandworm bookend to complement your sci fi collection, a bust of Ada Lovelace for your programming section. For those of us who still have non-digital books. 🙂
17. Wedding centerpieces that look like Ambassador Kosh. Because why would you not do this.

So tell me – what would you make with a 3D printer?

Image source: Erik Jacobs, New York Times. Image found here.

The photo above is a real place. Someone really lives in that house on the rock. You can see it on Google Maps, just off the coast of Rhode Island.

It’s called Clingstone. There’s a full gallery of photos if you want to look inside.

I don’t know about you, but for me, Clingstone – the house, the island, the photo, the very idea of it – is captivating.

I’ve written before about my fascination with remote places, but this is a little different. After all, Clingstone isn’t really remote; it sits just a few hundred feet offshore, surrounded by other islands and the city of Newport.

But it’s a place you could go to be alone, and some days, that sounds pretty good.

I was reading somewhere about the difference between introverts and extroverts. For extroverts, being around people is a way to recharge. They draw energy from social interaction. For introverts, it’s the opposite. Interaction costs energy.

If someone invites me to a get-together after work, I hesitate. It’s not that I don’t like people. It’s just that spending time with them is…expensive, even when it’s “free.”

Part of the reason Betsy and I are so happy together, is that spending time with each other is very inexpensive, in terms of energy. We’ve often remarked that when we’re together, we both feel like we’re alone. Not that we don’t talk, or enjoy each other’s company – quite the opposite. But rather, as introverts, the work it takes to be with each other is near zero.

I’m more introverted than she is. I could be alone, totally alone, for a week or so before I’d start to get lonely. For her, I think it’s more like a couple days. But I know people who’d be perfectly happy with months of solitude, and I know people who wouldn’t make it an hour.

What kind of person are you? How long would you want to be alone someplace like Clingstone?