Words Of The Day

The words of the day for April 23rd are:

Sardonic: Disdainfully or skeptically humorous, derisively mocking.

Brouhaha: Hubbub, uproar.

Rae said that I should change the picture for my profile because the current one is sardonic. I said I didn't think it was sardonic, and then she said I didn't know what sardonic meant. So there you go. I say there's no way my picture is disdainfully humorous or derisively mocking. I think it's rather fetching, in fact.

Brouhaha is a word for the day because it's cool that brouhaha is actually a word.

Podcasts

I've added a list of podcast links to my blog over there on the right. These are real winners. I listened to the Nature podcast this morning. This afternoon I'm planning to cure cancer and discover a few distant habitable planets.

If you're not familiar, Nature is "the international weekly journal of science." It's kind of a big deal. Rich mahogany, the whole nine yards.

One ranking system for journals is the impact factor, which is a measure of how often papers from a given journal have been cited. Most of the journals in my field have impact factors in the range of 0.5 to 3.0. The impact factor for Nature is 31.2 (and will certainly go up now that their podcast is on my blog.)

A word of warning--the NPR podcast list is overwhelmingly long and may lead to a loss of productivity, or in extreme cases, a total work shutdown.

April Showers

Rejection Letter Rejection Letter

Should I start sending these?

Know Your PGA Tour Professional Nicknames

Here's a game for everyone. See if you can match the PGA Tour Professional with his nickname. Correct or partially-correct entries (submitted as comments) will receive a variety of praises from yours truly. Google is not allowed--honor system in effect.

Nicknames:
a. Lefty
b. The Black Night
c. The King
d. The Golden Bear
e. Tiger*
f. Lumpy
g. The Walrus
h. The Shark
i. Chi Chi

PGA Tour Professional:
1. Craig Stadler
2. Greg Norman
3. Tim Herron
4. Gary Player
5. Juan Rodriguez
6. Phil Mickelson
7. Jack Nicklaus
8. Eldrick Woods
9. Arnold Palmer

* Tiger is no longer a nickname, he legally changed his name. So for this entry, the game is "Know Your PGA Tour Professional Original Legal Names."

Zach Johnson Wins Masters

Zach Johnson was the man this weekend, shooting a 69 on Sunday to win the Masters by two strokes over Tiger Woods, Rory Sabbatini, and Ratief Goosen. The media like to refer to Zach as "The Unheralded Zach Johnson." Back in 2002, he was playing the Hooters Tour, and now he has a lifetime ticket to Augusta.

Zach gave much of the credit for his victory to Jesus. Here he is holding hands with playing competitor Vaughn Taylor as they walk up the 18th fairway.

Photo credits: AP Photo/David J. Phillip