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Showing posts with label latin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label latin. Show all posts

Friday, February 2, 2007

Happy Groundhog's (marmota monax) Day



The common groundhog (marmota monax, other wise known as the woodchuck or whistlepig) is a small furry woodland creature that is the largest rodent in the squirrel family. According to popular culture (popular in a small town in Pennsylvania who's name I can't spell) if the woodpig comes out of his burrow and sees his shadow on the first cross-quarter day of the new year, then he gets scared and the whislechuck's rapid withdrawal back into his burrow creates a butterfly effect that determines the weather for the next 6 weeks. If the groundchuck does not see his shadow then he stays out of his burrow altering the very sensitive initial conditions of the complex, chaotic system of weather on this planet, there by altering the course of the weather and PROMOTING GLOBAL WARMING!!!!!

As a side note: In Spanish the word for groundhog is marmota (similar to the latin), but in Argentina they also use "marmota" as a slang term for "stupid" or "idiot". I have two friends who's birthdays fall on Feb. 2 and I told them about the holiday in the US (I didn't know that "marmota" was slang for "idiot" yet) so when I told them, the translation came across as "Idiot's Day". They then explained the slang to me and we all laughed that their birthdays were on "Idiot's Day" ("El dia de la marmota" -- "Groundhog's day").

Thursday, December 7, 2006

Wikipedia is Punny!

So I wanted to excuse myself from doing an induction proof on my Analysis homework by using the Latin phrase, ad infinitum, meaning "to infinity." Just to make sure I knew what it meant, I Googled it and that brought me to the wonderful Wiki-world. As it so happens, Wikipedia wanted to make sure that I wasn't instead, looking for the musical group which happens to be named "Ad Infinitum." Here's what Wiki had to say, "This article is about the Latin phrase, you may have been looking for: Ad infinitum, the short lived British musical group..." (embolding added).
Tricksy open-source people, I wonder if they wrote that on purpose...