Words that don't exist, but should

There should be a word for...

• ... sorrow caused by the good fortune of another.
• ... the feeling of vertigo caused by jumping from a high place... in a video game.

Can you QWOP and chew gum at the same time?

 

One of the information processing tasks that our brains take care of for us automatically every day is how to walk correctly.  It turns out that this is an enormously complicated task, requiring visual, touch, and proprioceptive information to be recieved, analyzed, and reacted to on very short timescales, all of which happens automatically after about the first year of life.

Abberant Blog Neglection

Well.

It has been in excess of a fortnight since I blogged anything at all.  The start of school always hits me hard, even though there's very little work involved, and the way that this semester has shaken out it's been starting for three weeks now.

But rest assured, I have not been idle!  I am even now considering the beginnings of two reviews.  The first is of a comic/comix biography of Niels Bohr, and the second is of none other than Cryptonomicon, which I only just this morning finished, having been reading it since October or so.  Crypto will take some serious digestion, but I will give it my best shot.  I actually found a plot hole, but it concerns something surprising that happens in the last five pages of the book, so I don't think I'll mention it.

The Lesser Vowel Shift

Ten years ago this summer I spent a few days in Italy with a high school group.  One night we, and several related groups, were having a banquet/party at a charming little restaurant out in the country.