From prick, courtesy of skipvia:
“His top contenders are said to include Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. Less traditional choices mentioned include former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge, an abortion-rights supporter, and Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman, the Democratic vice presidential prick in 2000 who now is an independent.”
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gxVW-aUPQsPkU0JKEleSPNCyxSsAD92L2HJ80
I spent some time poking around in the database this week, in anticipation of adding stats showing frequently favorited words and lists. The most favorited list is, happily, gangerh‘s sweet tooth fairy.
The most favorited word is… a disappointment. The second-most is mellifluous, and the bronze goes to loquacious. I had to go all the way to 16th place, interrobang, to find something that wasn’t a retread from the hot 100.
Don’t hold your breath, but these kind of stats will start showing up on the site, someday. Perhaps after one of you suggests a good way to sieve out the interesting stuff.
Also look forward to the ability to add private notes to words, which I worked on recently in Vacationland after bestiary suggested it. That will launch in the next few weeks. I’m hoping this makes Wordie a little more friendly to SAT-prep and ESL users. While us chatty cathys are more visible, the silent majority of Wordies are using the site for vocabulary lists. I’m going to try to add a few small features, starting with notes, to facilitate that kind of educational use. Suggestions to that end are welcome in the comments.
The Regional Assembly of Text is a gift store dedicated to text, replete with old filing cabinets and typewriters, chalkboards, quilted letters, journals, stationary, and other ephemera. And they host a monthly letter writing club, with tea and cookies.
That there is a place where such a store can make ends meet makes me want to move to Vancouver post haste. That and the free heroin.
Thanks to Magnolia and her beautiful sidekick, Arlo, for the link.
Telescopic Text is the most delightful use of hypertext I’ve seen in eons. Just keep clicking. When you’re done, reload and repeat in a different order. So simple, so pleasing, and so happily reminiscent of a recent conversation which took place on, of all words, teeth. It’ll make you want a nice cuppa, even if it is the middle of August and roasting.
Make sure to telescope the byline, too, and eventually you’ll end up at the lovely line-drawn site of the guy responsible for it, Joe Davis.
Mil gracias to Steve for the link.
Here’s another do-good-while-wasting-time word site: givevaccines.org. Like freerice.com it’s a multiple-choice game, which presents you with a word and four possible meanings. Every time you guess the correct meaning, .01ml of vaccine is donated to the GAVI Alliance, a non-profit dedicated to making vaccines available to the world’s poorest countries.
It’s not quite as elegant as freerice, which has a broader assortment of English words. But Givevaccines has a unique option: in addition to “English words” there’s a “medical terms” category. Not being a doctor I’d never heard of most of these, but I enjoyed guessing meanings based on the root and learning some new words in the process.
Thanks to quotato, who was the first to find givevaccines, and to Dr. Sam Rabinowitz, the creator of the site, who wrote to enlist our help. If any Wordies want to either create new questions or proof existing ones, send contributions to contact@givevaccines.org.
Not that I don’t love lists like this, but we’ve all long wanted more ways to sort through and view the river of comments on the front page. So I just added a page listing the most active threads of the past 24 hours, as dreamed up by Prolagus a few weeks ago.
They’re listed in order of the number of comments on the item (words, lists, and profiles), and show excerpts of the three most recent comments.
This needs some work–I’d like to add different ways to sort, make it look nicer, and include comments on tags, which I forgot. But better half baked than nothing, and this way you guys can tell me where it should go.
Though before I revisit this, I’ll add a most commented on list to the front page, which is a fantastic idea (thanks pterodactyl!).
I just added this same post on comments, in case people would rather discuss refinements to this in situ.
A million thanks to whichbe for teaching us all how to flip our fonts, and to Reverse Fad Productions (great name) for being an enabler.
Upside-down and chained_bear’s little gift to Prolagus just made my evening.