25 Nov, 2009
The rather mundane word, bracket, has a sexier history than you might expect.
A word that changes its meaning can be either an example of melioration, where the word takes on a more favorable connotation (see the recent post on paradise which changed its meaning from an orchard to the heavenly garden of God) or deterioration where it takes on a more negative association.
So how will we describe the change in the Spanish word, bragueta (from which English borrowed bracket), which was initially a word for codpiece but became used for the object that holds up a shelf?
And how did a codpiece become something that holds up shelves? With very little imagination at all: bracket describes an architectural member that stands out at right angles from the wall and often supports a shelf or beam. Lets say no more or we shall find ourselves deeply in the realm of double entendre.
So is the transformation of bracket from a codpiece to a piece of hardware for erecting shelves an example of the word taking on more favourable or less favourable connotations? Is it melioration or deterioration?
Changing from a term for something that is sexy, if perhaps nowadays a little vulgar, to a term for something mundane but certainly more respectable is neither more favourable nor more negative. One minute you are the very epitomy of renaissance manhood the next you are a piece of hardware for holding up a kitchen shelf. Sounds very much more like middle-agedness.
1 Nov, 2009
The Australian reported on the annual Shonky Awards this week. The Shonkys are handed out to companies for making dodgy claims about their products.
Poor L’Oreal was given a Shonky for claiming that Nutrileum, a substance said to be in its conditioner, actually does any good. When I went to L’Oreal’s website to investigate I came to a very graphical section named the Magic of Research which really gave the game away don’t you think?
But perhaps it is a little unfair to single them out. There are quite a few shampoos out there using imaginative copy to persuade prospective customers to trust their hair to a particular chemical treatment.
How many tautologies can you get onto one label?
One website suggested:
The word “organics” in the title will annoy true organic lovers since many of the ingredients on the label are three and four syllables long — a good indication that they’re not entirely organic.
No it indicates nothing of the sort – organic chemical names can be wonderfully long!
Say no more…
Only to be used by vulgar, vulcanologists in Venezuala with vasectomies vying to be venereal with voluptuous virgins in the vicinity of the vestry on Valentine’s Day.
1 Nov, 2009
We are now in the countdown to the Copenhagen Conference on Climate Change so you will need to intimately understand what a megawatt is and how it is used. It may not become the scientific buzz-word that its cousin megabyte did, but if you want to properly participate in the greenhouse debate, you need to throw megawatt into your conversation every now and then and even megawatt hours.
A megawatt (abbreviated to MW) is a metric unit of power. It is made up of mega – the Greek word designated to mean one million – and watt, named after James Watt (1736-1819) the British Engineer who “invented” the modern steam engine and in doing so is credited with creating the industrial revolution.
A watt is the metric measurement of power that replaced horsepower (a much more tangible measure). A horse (we assume a standard working horse of the 18th century) when harnessed to a machine will lift 550 pounds at the rate of 1 foot per second. This is one horsepower, as defined by James Watt.
The watt is the basic metric measure of power and is defined in reference to other metric measures. The watt is equal to a power rate of one joule of work per second of time. In electrical terms, one watt is the power produced by a current of one ampere flowing through an electric potential of one volt. At this point we move on.
So back to the megawatt! It is therefore equal to one million watts, which for reference is equivalent to about 1340 horsepower (if that helps).
In the energy industry the MW is used to describe the capacity of power generating plants or the usage level of the power. One megawatt is enough to power approximately 800 residential homes.
Australia has a total power capacity of over 53,000 MW.
According to ANSTO three-quarters of Australia’s electricity comes from coal, 14 per cent from natural gas, eight per cent from renewable sources (mainly hydroelectric, wind power and bioenergy) and one per cent from oil.
The Snowy Mountains Hydro-electric Scheme has a capacity of about 3756 MW.
At the close of 2008, there were 50 wind farms in Australia, with a total of 756 operating turbines. The total operating wind capacity was 1,300 MW meeting 1.3% of Australia’s energy demand.
In May of this year, Australia’s Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, announced plans to build the world’s largest solar power station with a capacity of 1000 MW.
But one more thing you need to know: the metric unit of energy, especially electrical energy, is the megawatt hour (MW h). This is a measure of how much energy is produced (or consumed). The megawatt tells you the capacity of a plant and the megawatt hour tells you have how long it was running and therefore how much energy it produced.
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