On Sun, 9 Nov 2003, David Silberstein wrote: > [tangent] > > I have the notion that "pararectal" ought to be prefixed before > all examples of science and technology as portrayed in the movies and > television. So, for example, Lara Croft is pararectal archeologist. > > The more the science/tech deviates from reality, or from sane > speculation, the more prefixes we add to the term, to indicate that it > came from further up the descending colon. So while, say, Trek's > "warp drive" is merely pararectal, the way the universal translator > *immediately* recognizes languages is hyperpararectal technology, and > the bogon-particle-du-jour is superhyperpararectal particle physics. I think about these sorts of classification on occasion and find them difficult. There may be a lot of particle species out there, I can imagine how a universal translator might work, and I suspect a warp drive violates causality, and there may be a lot of particle species out there, so I would tend to reverse the order you present, depending on what the bogon does for a living. In order of increasing unlikelihood, I would put: Santa Claus, one's neighbor's major religion, astrology. But what do I know. I do think this kind of back-of-the-envelope estimate would be good for tests of grad students in some field of study which probably doesn't exist but should, and which I guess you've named. > > [/tangent]