Boa Sr, who lived through the 2004 tsunami, the Japanese occupation and diseases brought by British settlers, was the last native of the island chain who was fluent in Bo.

Taking its name from a now-extinct tribe, Bo is one of the 10 Great Andamanese languages, which are thought to date back to pre-Neolithic human settlement of southeast Asia.

via Ancient tribal language becomes extinct as last speaker dies | World news | guardian.co.uk.

<From Greek a = not, monokeros = unicorn (mono = one, keros = horn), ism = belief>

Since I cannot deny with absolute certainty that there are no gods, I decided to go with amonokerism to explain my beliefs.

a large family of imitative words expressing disgust or aversion, ew takes its place, alongside ugh, ough, auh, yah, pew, faugh, and many more, on the list of words which have attempted to tackle the age-old problem of how to represent in print what are essentially inarticulate sounds. Even within the scope of this one entry, many different opinions prevail as to how one should spell ew, as the variants section shows: we have found examples of euuw, euuww, euw, euww, ew, and eww, plus instances in which even more “u”s or “w”s (or both) are pressed into service: as many as 6 “u”s or 16 “w”s have been sighted.

Hanging out with my friend Karen the other morning, we watched amazed as a riot of robins descended on a mountain ash tree in her backyard. Snow in the low 20s was skttering down and 50 or so robins, plus the inevitable extras, the starlings, and this highly orchestrated riot of feasting on the few remain berries went on for maybe half an hour. Karen thought of trying to take a photo but didn’t want to move for fear of breaking up the party. Today, Cory Doctorow posted on Rick Leider’s photography of birds, beautiful images of cloud-boxing aerial acrobats.

A bunch of NASA and university scientists have for the first time for sure detected methane in the atmosphere of Mars, according to Science Daily:

This discovery indicates the planet is either biologically or geologically active…. “Methane is quickly destroyed in the Martian atmosphere in a variety of ways, so our discovery of substantial plumes of methane in the northern hemisphere of Mars in 2003 indicates some ongoing process is releasing the gas,” said Michael Mumma of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md…. If microscopic Martian life is producing the methane, it likely resides far below the surface where it is warm enough for liquid water to exist. Liquid water is necessary for all known forms of life, as are energy sources and a supply of carbon.

Speaking of life altering ecology, the idea has recently been floated that growing crop plants with shiny leaves might reduce planetary warming by reflecting solar energy.

Scientists discovered the “magnetosphere,” a layer of ions and electrons surrounding the earth described by one physicist as a “warm plasma cloak,” and a study suggested that the Milky Way is traveling through space 100,000 miles per hour faster than previously thought, meaning it will collide with the galaxy Andromeda far sooner than predicted. “The galaxies will be dramatically stirred up,” said Gerry Gilmore of the Institute of Astronomy at Cambridge University, “but they are very squidgy, so they will stick together and eventually all the stars will die out, and it will become one huge, dead galaxy.”

“Squidgy” is Brit English for “soft and squishy” and “maybe a bit fat,” according to the Urban Dictionary. But in the case of colliding galaxies, I think it may mean “zorch strokin’, fast and bulbous.” Just a guess.

In any case, another delightful union to look forward to.

LSSU has been creating annual lists of Banished Words since 1976. Many times imitated, they claim to be the first and, heck, I believe them. I like the LSSU Banished Word site as an amateur linguist and you might, too, as you can add your comments to the list of words.

Among this year’s banished words is “organic.” John Gomila, New Orleans, Louisiana, for instance, writes that “The possibility of a food item being inorganic, i.e., not being composed of carbon atoms, is nil.” Amen; it’s like the difference between “all natural” and “man made,” as if humans weren’t natural.

Another is “sweet” as an exclamation of approval or concord; way over used and, I admit, I’m guilty. Shall I banish myself to Canada?

“Decimate” makes the 2008 list, as well it should. It’s never used correctly; in the vernacular usage, people say “decimate” when they mean “total destruction.” But a quick scan of the word’s formation clearly reveals that it means “one in ten.” To destroy one in ten of something is not “total.” Sweet. Let truthiness in semantics reign supreme.

I was delighted to see “webinar” on the list, as I’m constantly bombarded with emailed offers to take expensive webinars that promise to teach me all sorts of little niche aspects of Web marketing. Thing is, this is a self-perpetuating marketing scheme and what I’ve learned from webinars is that if you want to make money on the Web, you should offer webinars.

Check out the LSSU Banished Word list here.

I found this sign on a section of Flickzzz called Very Weird Signs. Probably not entirely work safe. More advice for dealing with animals:

The comments on the source post raise doubts as to the legitimacy of some of the signs portrayed there (i.e., they’re a bunch of damn fakes; who was it that said there are lies, damn lies, and Photoshop?), but that doesn’t detract from the irrepressible creativity of the collection.

see more crazy cat pics

Walking back from Mariner’s Market in Cannon Beach, Oregon; twilight; a group of Youths (oh, yes, cap-Y boys) sitting outside of the pizza place downstairs from our room. And one says,

Where are we going to find midgets at this hour? The whole day is ruined!”

Overheard while standing in line at Penguin Ed’s BBQ in Fayetteville, Arkansas:

Little boy: Mama, what’s a chicken dinner?

Mama (exasperated drawl): It’s chicken meat on a plate!”

Overheard on a Pullman Transit bus:

If wheel chairs could float I’d break both my legs.”

Bits and pieces of a rant (or maybe just an anecdote, but judging from the listeners’ expressions, I’d say more of a rant) heard at the Whoop ‘em Up Hollow Cafe in Waitsburg, Wash.

I’ll run you off this goddamn job with a goddamn ax….
Swift Tracy chased me off with an ax.
Swift is a lot more important than me. Do you understand?
And I understood my Dad.”

At L’Ecole Winery, near Walla Walla, Wash., a group of young men dressed like designers, cut in front of two lovely women (who were not dressed like designers, or even in designer clothing) to get a few drops of wine sooner rather than later:

We’ll just crowd in front of these people. They look like the salt of the earth.”

the word was coined in 2005 by a group of four women in San Francisco; it notes that “The choice reflects an ongoing shift in environmental and ecological awareness over the last several years. Lexicographers at Oxford University Press have observed that this social transformation is having a noticeable effect on the English language.”

The word previously appeared in Puck in my review of Barbara Kingsolver’s book, Animal, Vegetable, Mineral. You’ll find Quinion’s tracings of the word here.