The power of "Merkin"

So, for years I've been telling people that my favorite curse word was the word "merkin." I was 20 years old when an old English teacher in Syracuse, NY delighted in the idea of explaining what the word meant. As part of the explanation, he said that the word was being removed from the dictionary because it was out of date and had no relevance to the modern era. Today, you'd be lucky to find the word "merkin" in any typical abridged dictionary.

So what does the word mean:

Merkin -- (mer-KIN) pubic hair piece.

That's correct. The merkin is a vaginal toupee. The word was created during the 18th Century, during the Victorian Age for reasons I'd rather not explain. Adding to all of this is the fact that merkin isn't really a curse word. Rather, it's word that -- given its definition -- has all the hallmarks of a curse word.

So, why am I writing about this word? Well, I'm actually on a crusade to spare its death. You see, here in the Internet age, the human community is quickly forging this massive wealth of useless and near-useless information. To help us sort out the volume of data floating out there in the ether-ware, software engineers have come up with the idea of "tagging" information. When blogging, for example, we are encouraged to add "labels" or "tags" to the diary entries, so the search engines can help filter and sort our musings. I've learned that the more information you place in the tag, the broader your audience becomes. So, when I tag my work, I put in my name, my profession, the name of my school and some relevant words pertinent to the discussion I've created in the blog.

I've also decided to create a digital thumb print. I've decided to include the word "merkin" in the tag line of EVERY blog post I put on the Internet. I'm doing this to streamline the search process when it comes time for me to look for some of my own old postings. Further, I'm encouraging my students to do the same.

In time, the word "merkin" will become a brand that will belong to me, my friends and my students.

How cool is that?

[where: 02809]

RWU School of Architecture Models

So, I read in the Providence Journal today that the Roger Williams University School of Architecture was hosting an exhibit of some restored building models. Because I love architecture, I ran over to the school and walked through the exhibit with my Flip Video Ultra camera and took some shots. Although, I shot nearly 8 minutes of video, I decided to simply produce one one-minute video of the Portsmouth, RI windmill.

If you don't know the Portsmouth, RI windmill, it's a regional icon.

And here's the Old North Church:



[Where: 02809]

Thanks to YouTube, Professors Are Finding New Audiences

Forget Lonelygirl15, YouTube's 2006 online video phenom. Professors are the latest YouTube stars. The popularity of their appearances on YouTube and other video-sharing sites may end up opening up the classroom and making teaching—which once took place behind closed doors—a more public art.

read more | digg story

Skybus air travel

So, on the advice of my father, I bought a ticket on Skybus, a new discount airliner serving sporadic routes around the country. According to Hoovers.Com, Skybus is based in Columbus, Ohio. The company started air service last May and currently serves upwards of 10 cities.

This week, I flew non-stop from Portsmouth, NH to (supposedly) Saint Augustine, Florida... but, because of very dense ground fog in Saint Augustine, the airliner re-routed to Orlando, Florida, which is 107 miles further south. When we arrived there, Skybus put my fellow passengers on buses and drove them NORTH to Saint Augustine. I opted out of the bus ride understanding that that ride would have been longer than the plane flight south. Instead, I rented a car and made the drive with two other passengers.

About the Skybus formula: This is another upstart carrier working on the Southwest Airline model. Basically, Skybus connects several second- and third-tier cities together with a fleet of identical airplanes. In this case, Skybus is using the Airbus A-319, which is very similar to Boeing's 737.

Warning: This is NOT a hub and spoke airliner like United, Delta or American. This means, you should NOT count on flying to Columbus, Ohio and connecting on a companion flight to another destination. Instead, this is a point-A to point-B network, which means you cannot count on connection traffic.

About buying tickets: You go online to www.skybus.com and look at the calendar and book a flight. Each date on the calendar has a ticket price on it, so you can play your roundtrip flight based on how much you want to spend on the ticket. I bought my roundtrip ticket for $130 or so. Of course, everything else is extra. I had to pay $5 to have my bag checked. And, once on board the jet, you have to pay for food, beverages, AND they actually sell airliner trinkets.

About my experience: I drove up from Rhode Island to board a flight at Pease Airbase in Portsmouth, NH. I was surprised to find that Pease is VERY small: It's a building and a windsock just off I-95. Because of the size, PARKING IS FREE. Once inside the terminal, you wander forward to a kiaos, which looks like an ATM machine and it issues you a ticket. It also asks if you want to check a bag.. and charges you for that. When I checked my bag, I handed it off to another airline company, they placed it on a rolling system and it rolled off into the guts of the building.

My flight had 96 passengers on it. Most were families... and military folk. When we loaded onto the plane without seat assignments, we had to walk across the runway and climb the stairs inside the jetliner. Inside, because the plane can hold upwards of 130 people (I estimate), we took off with plenty of space inside.

The flight from Portsmouth, NH departed at 6:15 p.m. and was scheduled to land ontime in Saint Augustine, Florida at 9:05 p.m..

In fact, had we landed at the appropriate airport, I would have given this trip high marks. It was cheap, easy, relatively professional, and lacked the troubles related to Northeastern airport visits. Peases Airport is very EASY; Logan Airport is very HARD.

About the fog problem: To save money, Skybus flies from one tiny airport to the next because the landing fees are much less expensive. The trouble is, these airports have less sophisticated technologies. Had we been flying to Jacksonville, Florida, that airport has the technology to allow a commercial airliner to land in "zero visibility." Saint Augustine (which is another aiport with a building and a windsock just off I-95) does NOT have that same capability. When the pilot saw the visibility problems, he made the correct decision: He opted to land in a safer environment.

So, there you go. An evaluation of Skybus.

[where: 02809]

2010 Ford Mustang GT spied, sporting GT500 wheels?

Jalopnik was the first to bring you pictures of a heavily camouflaged 2010 Ford Mustang and now they're going up-powered. They're the first to bring pictures of a similarly camouflaged 2010 Ford Mustang GT...and it appears to be sporting GT500 wheels.

read more | digg story