You are batting 1%!

"You are batting 1%" is a baseball term, means hitting the ball very poorly, below average. The term is also used to mean you are performing extremely poorly in a situation where success is measured by a percentage, essentially indicating you are only achieving a very small fraction of desired results, similar to how in baseball, a "batting average" of 1% would be incredibly low and signify almost no hits at all. 

Some text was provided by AI-enabled search engine results.

Throwing a Fit

 I heard this term first when my son casually mentioned a couple of times "I had a fit" or "I threw a fit" when going over his day's events last night.  To "throw a fit" or "have a fit" means to become very shocked, angry, or worried. Other synonyms are: blow a fuse, blow one's stack, blow up, combust, go ballistic, lose one's temper.

Nybble

It amazes me that during all my years of studies and career as a computer scientist, I just came across the term nibble or nybble, meaning half a byte, or 4 bits.

In the Nick of Time

In the Nick of Time: just in time, just before it is too late, the last moment.

Being green

Today I learned an English term. Someone said in an email that someone is "too green". Considering the context of the message, it did not make sense to me. What did caring about environment and nature have to do with her message? So, I searched for the term. When you say someone is too green, it means they are inexperienced, new to their job, not able to navigate and handle issues as good as an experienced person would. It all makes sense now.

Mark Twain

I learned that Mark Twain was a pen name Samuel Clemens had chosen for himself!

Word of the day

Uxorious (adjective): someone who is foolishly and madly in love with his wife and is affectionatly submissive to her.

Hard to know if this word has a positive or negative connotation! ;-)

Curmudgeon

Today I learned the word "Curmudgeon", meaning a difficult or bad-temperred person.  One of its synonyms is cantankerous, which was also a new word to me.

Somnambulism!

Yes! There is such a word: Somnambulism, meaning sleep walking! Made of the two words somn (sleep) and ambul (walking), which just made me realize the word ambulance must has something to do with this ambul(ant) too! :-) It means a moving hospital!

Carnage

I saw the movie Carnage last night, which made me go look up its meaning .

Purport

Purport:

1. to present, especially deliberately, the appearance of being; profess or claim, often falsely: a document purporting to be official.
2. to convey to the mind as the meaning or thing intended; express or imply.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/purport

Credulity

Credulity: willingness to believe or trust too readily, especially without proper or adequate evidence; gullibility.

Wean

"Wean: 1. to accustom (a child or young animal) to food other than its mother's milk; cause to lose the need to suckle or turn to the mother for food.
2. to withdraw (a person, the affections, one's dependency, etc.) from some object, habit, form of enjoyment, or the like: The need to reduce had weaned us from rich desserts."

Reference:
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/wean

Paucity and snark

I just learned two words: paucity meaning smallness of quantity, scarcity, and snark meaning a mysterious imaginary animal! You may like the context in which I learned them even more. Well, most likely if you are a woman!

"So I'll keep it short and simple: It's not that women "overdo it" but that some men, like poorly cooked pork at a depressing state fair, are "underdone."

To our abundance, they bring paucity; to our enthusiasm, they bring flat-lined skepticism; to our light, they bring the fog of snark.

I'll take excess over scarcity every time. And I won't apologize for it, either."

from When Apologies Don't Work by Gina Barreca,

Reference:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/collections/201109/oops-dealing-mistakes/when-apologies-dont-work

Reef

Okay, I should have probably named this blog "one lesson a (working) day"!  I often times find it hard to update this blog during weekends and during my vacation, like this past week.  I know, that is no excuse and I am making up for the lost time and backdating the posts for make-up-lessons.

So, I am in Ocean City, Maryland.  Tonight is my last night here, and as I am typing these I am enjoying the sound of the Atlantic ocean's waves.  It will be appropriate to use lessons learned in this trip.  So many stores and things in this town were called "reef" this and "reef" that.  What does reef mean anyways?

Here is the meaning of reef.

The Skies

I am taking an astronomy class these days from 8am to 5pm!  I have learned enough today that I can write about them for at least a month on a daily basis.  However, now I am too tired to write about the more sophisticated lessons and historical stories of astronomy.  I just go over some interesting trivia!

The class started on a sad note:  that humans 40,000 years ago were much more familiar with the skies than we are.  Most people used the sky at least as their clock, map, and calendar. You could ask any random person to show you a particular star or constellation  on a dark sky, and that person could quickly do that.  It is hard to imagine a random person these days passes this test.  I myself cannot locate famous stars and planets naturally.  Can you?  I should work on that.

So, here are the trivia:

1) "Moon" is from the Greek word Metron meaning to measure!  As it was mainly used to measure different things in old times.
2) "Clock" is a German word meaning Bell, since traditional clocks were made of bells.  Remember these?
, and finally
3) Brahe was a Danish astronomer who became the first federally funded researcher.  He has funny stories.  Maybe  I tell you sometime.

Till then,
Good night!

Schadenfreude

Do you know what Schadenfreude means?  This is a German word that has entered English language meaning "pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others."  It appears to be closely related to experiencing feelings of envy and jealously, when emphathy is replaced by Schadenfreude.

I learned this from my friend Pedram who made a program about it for Radio College Park in Persian.  The link for that program and the related Scientific American article it was based on are listed under references.

Here are some suggestions for its English translation.  One listener suggested the word glee.  Among friends, we thought it is close to  "دل خنك شدن"  in Persian.

References:
http://www.radiocp.com/?p=249
http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=schadenfreude-why-the-news-corp-pho-2011-07-19

Kashk!

Today, I learned the answer to the question I had posted before.
The translation of the Farsi word pronounced kashk to English is whey.

Vesta, the word; Or maybe back to the rock!

So, what does Vesta mean anyways? The word does remind me of the Zoroastrian's Holy book, Avesta. Today, a good friend of mine confirmed my intuition. She said Vesta is a girl's name among Zoroastrians, derived from the word Avesta. Yet, I do not know its Persian meaning. Do you?

In English, Vesta is related to the name of a Roman Goddess of the hearth! Considering that fire is holy in Zoroastrianism, the connection to Avesta makes sense. So does the complete definition: the goddess of hearth is worshiped in a temple with a sacred fire that is kept burning by vestal virgins! Similarly, Zoroastrian temples in Iran have fireplaces that have been kept burning for hundreds of years! So, where do Romans come into the picture?! It is so interesting.

Back to the Vesta of the skies now! Vesta is the largest asteroid in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. As of Saturday (July 16, 2011), Dawn became the first spacecraft orbiting such a body. Look at its image only 9500 miles away from Vesta's surface!*

Compare it to the July 9th, 2011 image! It is amazing going for a ride on Dawn, millions of miles, all the way to the Vesta!

* http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/dawn/news/dawn20110718.html

Hiatus

Do you know what hiatus means? I did not till today, when I saw it in an email. Yes, English is my second language and there are many words I do not know and keep learning as time passes by. To see what it means and how it is pronounced click here.

What have you learned today?