Corrections to the blogosphere, the consensus, and the world

Monday, December 21, 2015

Age; Hope springs e.


I yield to nobody in my contempt for scientology, but it’s unfair to call it “a pseudo-religious cult”.  It’s a bona fide religion, unanimously certified as such by the High Court  (Church of the New Faith v. Commissioner Of Pay-roll Tax). As the court said, “Charlatanism is a necessary price of religious freedom, and if a self-proclaimed teacher persuades others to believe in a religion which he propounds, lack of sincerity or integrity on his part is not incompatible with the religious character of the beliefs, practices and observances accepted by his followers.“  One inquiry found “its theories to be fantastic and impossible, its principles perverted and ill-founded, and its techniques debased and harmful [and]…… it employs techniques which further its real purpose of securing domination over and mental enslavement of its adherents”. If that’s not a religion, what is?

Friday, December 11, 2015

Nugging


AUSTRALIAN surfer Owen Wright has been taken to hospital after a heavy wipe-out while practising for the Pipeline Masters.The world No. 5 returned to his hotel room after taking multiple waves to the head, but woke up later struggling to breathe and was visibly disoriented.
“He got a nug, then a big wide set came and he got three or four on the head,” fellow Australian Matt Wilkinson, who watched it unfold, told stabmag.com.
Nug?  Never heard of it.

Googling,

In the game DragonAge Nugs are animals that populate the underground locations of Thedas. They are small, hairless, nearly blind creatures with pointed snouts for digging.[1]They resemble a cross between a rabbit and a pig, or a naked mole rat or anaardvark.

or in Urban Dictionary,

Nugn. 
1. A high quality bud of marijuana.
2. The Dank.
3. See ganja.
Gayle packed her last nug into the bowl and smoked it on the way to work.

Ah, here we are - in Wictionary's Glossary of Surfing:

nug[edit]

Slang for a good wave (Golden Nugget)
They don't give any OED-style dated quotes, but I'd conclude that it's a fairly recent term, and one that hasn't yet fought its way out of a patois.  Which is odd - NUG is a short simple sayable word, and you'd think the Anglo-Saxons would have seized on it for some basic concept or object; a large turnip, or a horse's scrotum, or your relationship to your mother-in-law's goddaughter.

By comparison, 'nuffy' was practically 'antidisestablishmentarianism'.

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