Thursday, 31 January 2002

And another thing... Most Australian readers will know of the Macquarie Dictionary; their website includes the Concise Dictionary and other features such as the "Book of Slang", a "Weekly Word". As well as being able to search for words, the online dictionary does something the paper one will not do: allow you to add words. Like a web search engine, you can suggest content for the dictionary, with a simple web form. Here's a new phrase: Googlewhacking -- "an offbeat pursuit of bored Web surfers -- is increasing in popularity and spawning its own legion of enthusiasts. The game starts by typing two unrelated words, such as colonoscopy and cockatiel, into Google's search bar, with the goal of obtaining a single result. The challenge is to find two words so disparate that only one match will occur among Google's 3 billion indexed Web pages. The idea originated with Gary Stock, who tracks the trend on his Web site." There's also official rules. "I woke up this morning with a nasty scullion toenail. Yech! I called my foot doctor, who I thought was a counter-cultural type, but he turned out to be a recidivist establishmentarian—a real podiatric troglodyte. So I flew up to Davos in New York to consult my ayatollah pal. Since he’s always on the move—this guy is one peripatetic theocrat!—I couldn’t find him at first. But I eventually spotted him at the dessert table with Bill Gates and Alan Greenspan. As this threesome munched on plutocratic strudel, Greenspan recommended a remedy that he says he swears by: rototiller vivisection. " 4:53:52 PM

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