Words of the Day 2025-05-28

On this day (1936): Alan Turing submits “On Computable Numbers” for publication, in which he sets out the theoretical basis for modern computers.

Blue. From my OED app (and unusually poetic, even for the OED): /bluː / ▸ adjective ( bluer, bluest) 1 of a colour intermediate between green and violet, as of the sky or sea on a sunny day: the clear blue sky; a blue silk shirt; deep blue eyes. ▪ (of a person’s skin) having turned blue as a result of cold or breathing difficulties: Ashley went blue and I panicked. ▪ (of a bird or other animal) having blue markings: a blue jay. ▪ (of a cat, fox, or rabbit) having fur of a smoky grey colour: the blue fox. ▪ (of a ski run) of the second-lowest level of difficulty, as indicated by blue markers positioned along it. ▪ Physics denoting one of three colours of quark. 2 informal (of a person or mood) melancholy, sad, or depressed: he’s feeling blue. 3 informal (of a film, joke, or story) having sexual or pornographic content: a blue movie. 4 British English informal politically conservative: the successful blue candidate. ▸ noun 1 [mass noun] blue colour or pigment: she was dressed in blue; the dark blue of his eyes; [count noun] armchairs in pastel blues and greens. ▪ blue clothes or material: Susan wore blue. ▪ the blue ball in snooker, billiards, and similar games. ▪ another term for bluing ▪ (the blue) literary the sky or sea, or the unknown: far out upon the blue were many sails. 2 [usually with modifier] a small butterfly, the male of which is predominantly blue while the female is typically brown. Numerous genera in the family Lycaenidae. 3 British English a person who has represented Cambridge University (a Cambridge blue) or Oxford University (an Oxford blue) at a particular sport in a match between the two universities: a flyweight boxing blue. ▪ a distinction awarded to a Cambridge blue or an Oxford blue: Adrian’s brother won a rugby blue in December. 4 Australian and New Zealand English informal an argument or fight: did you have a blue or what?. [1940s: perhaps by association with phrases such as make the air blue, alluding to swearing] 5 Australian and New Zealand English informal a mistake: his tactical blue in saying the opposition wasn’t ready to govern. 6 Australian and New Zealand English informal a nickname for a red-headed person: only an Aussie could make a red-headed man ‘Blue.’. [1930s: of unknown origin] 7 British English informal a supporter of the Conservative Party. ▸ verb ( blues, bluing or blueing, blued) 1 make or become blue: [with object] the light dims, bluing the retina (blued as adjective) blued paper [no object] the day would haze, the air bluing with afternoon. ▪ [with object] heat (metal) so as to give it a greyish-blue finish: (blued as adjective) nickel-plated or blued hooks. 2 [with object] mainly historical wash (white clothes) with bluing: they blued the shirts and starched the uniforms. — ORIGIN Middle English: from Old French bleu, ultimately of Germanic origin and related to Old English blǣwen ‘blue’ and Old Norse blár ‘dark blue’ (see also blaeberry).” • The OED is generally up-to-date (there is an entry for deepfakes, for example). But no entry of “Blue states”?

“A rare blue ‘micromoon’ is rising at the end of May” [National Geographic]. “May’s full moon will come with a rare double designation: It’s both a blue moon and a micromoon. ‘A ‘blue moon’ doesn’t refer to color. It’s a calendrical term,’ says Seth McGowan, president of the Adirondack Sky Center in Tupper Lake, New York. There are actually two accepted definitions of a blue moon. The most widely known is a monthly blue moon, which is a second full moon in a calendar month. May’s event falls under this monthly definition. The secondary definition is a seasonal blue moon, which refers to the third full moon in an astronomical season that contains four full moons instead of the usual three. ‘This definition is older and comes from traditional almanac usage,’ says McGowan.” More: “So, why call it a blue moon if the moon doesn’t actually turn blue? The term likely evolved from older expressions used to describe something rare or absurd. One possible origin traces back to the medieval English phrase ‘the moon is blue,’ which referred to something absurd or unlikely.” And: “A micromoon occurs when a full moon coincides with apogee, the point at which the moon is farthest from Earth. …. Given the extra distance, a micromoon appears smaller and dimmer compared to a ‘normal’ full moon. The difference, however, is very subtle. Compared to a supermoon, a micromoon can appear roughly 10 to 15 percent smaller in apparent diameter.” • [musical interlude].

“Blue Octopus Found Near The Galápagos May Have Just Changed Deep-Sea Science” [Study Finds]. “Small enough to fit in the palm of a hand and vivid blue on top with a deep purple-to-maroon underside, the animal displays an unusual reversed color pattern that extends inside its body, a feature researchers think may help hide the glow of bioluminescent prey….Scientists revised the formal definition of the octopus family based on this one animal, and say the deep tropical Pacific likely holds many more undiscovered species.” And: “Because securing a second specimen of such a rare deep-sea animal is, as the authors put it, “near impossible,” researchers turned to a high-powered imaging technique more often associated with medical diagnostics. Using a micro-CT scanner at the Field Museum in Chicago, essentially an extremely detailed X-ray system that builds three-dimensional pictures of an object’s interior, the team mapped the octopus’s internal organs, reproductive system, and mouthparts without destroying the only known specimen.” • Technology!

“Did Trump pick the right blue for the Reflecting Pool? We asked a pool guy” [WaPo]. “Last Thursday in a Washington courtroom, U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols spent the afternoon trying to parse just how blue ‘American Flag Blue’ could be. This is the shade that President Trump has selected for the fresh paint currently being applied to the Reflecting Pool, the aqueous link between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument. Lawyers for the Cultural Landscape Foundation, an education and advocacy organization seeking to halt work on the Reflecting Pool, argued that their client had suffered an ‘aesthetic injury’ from the paint job, and that the government did not undertake required federal reviews.” Frankly, a lot of liberal reaction to Trump comes under the heading of “aesthetic injury.” More: “Let’s start with what it is not, which is aquamarine, another shade in the panoply of blues on the Pantone scale. That was the color that the president initially wanted for the Reflecting Pool — ‘like in the Bahamas,’ he said — and the color of an AI-generated image he has posted on Truth Social of himself lounging in it, as if it were a Boca resort on Constitution Avenue…. No, American Flag Blue, which Trump has said a contractor encouraged him to use, is more like a dark navy. It’s technically called Old Glory Blue, according to the flag color code. It’s darker than Nautical Blue, but more vibrant than Navy Peony; less saturated than International Klein Blue but more chromatic than Poseidon. ‘When it’s finished, it’ll be beautiful. It’ll be blue water, dark blue,’ the president said on Thursday. ‘American flag blue, can’t do better than that.’” • Aqua?!

Dad Joke of the Day: Why are fish so easy to weigh? Because they have scales.

Garden. From my OED app: “/ˈɡɑːdn / ▸ noun 1 a piece of ground adjoining a house, in which grass, flowers, and shrubs may be grown: they brought us tomatoes from their garden; children love playing in the garden [as modifier] a garden gate. ▪ (gardens) ornamental grounds laid out for public enjoyment and recreation: botanical gardens. ▪ [in names] British English a street or square: Burlington Gardens. 2 [in names] North American English a large public hall: Madison Square Garden. ▸ verb [no object] cultivate or work in a garden: she wrote books, kept journals, and gardened. – ORIGIN Middle English: from Old Northern French gardin, variant of Old French jardin, of Germanic origin; related to yard.

“Peter H. Raven obituary: visionary botanist who transformed our understanding of plant diversity” [Nature]. “He taught at Stanford University in California before assuming leadership of the Missouri Botanical Garden in St Louis in 1971, at age 35.” Before the rot set in, I suppose. More: “[D]uring his 39-year tenure, Raven redefined what botanical gardens could be, cementing their crucial roles in documenting biodiversity, advocating for conservation, training the next generation of scientists and educating the public about the essential part plants play in their everyday lives. While at the institute, Raven authored his seminal paper on how butterflies and plants evolved together, cowritten with Paul Ehrlich. The paper advanced the idea that different species can shape each other’s evolutionary trajectories. A decade later, his account of how the evolution and dispersal of flowering plants is linked to plate tectonics and Earth’s geological history, co-authored with Daniel Axelrod, shaped the field of biogeography.” • A good life!

“Chinese team finds ‘garden-like’ ecosystem blooming in deepest ocean trenches” [South China Morning Post]. “Scientists have discovered a thriving and previously unknown ecosystem in the planet’s deepest ocean trenches, feeding on organic debris from above. At those depths the pressure is enough to crush a submarine, and combined with perpetual darkness and temperatures near freezing, it makes the deepest reaches of the oceans among the least explored places on Earth. Until now, researchers believed that only a few anemones, sponges or bacteria could survive under such conditions. But an international research team supported by China’s crewed submersible the Fendouzhe, or Striver, has uncovered an unexpectedly rich community living on rocks in trenches deeper than 9km (5.6 miles).” • SCMP doesn’t describe the garden. Nor does the original, at least not in words I can understand. From the Abstract: “Deep-sea hard substrates host faunal novelties and distinct evolutionary lineages…. Here, we report a deep hard-substrate fauna (9000 to 10,898 meters), comprising 32 species of six protist and metazoan phyla, most millimeter-sized and new to science…. We show that the filamentous organisms dominating these assemblages are heterotrophic foraminiferans, challenging the earlier chemolithoautotrophic hypothesis. Large-scale seafloor imaging and sampling suggest that similar protistan-dominated sessile communities thrive in seven hadal regions around Oceania. These faunas open new perspectives on biodiversity at the deepest ocean depths and unveil widespread, but previously unrecognized, carbon hotspots in global hadal trenches.” • But do they have opposable thumbs?

“Iris 1.0” [MJ Tsai (via Tyler Hall (Mastodon)]. “The first version, from November 2020, was called AntiPhoto. The name was a mood. I had tens of thousands of photos and videos scattered across drives and old phone backups, and Apple Photos wanted me to live inside its library, on its terms. I didn’t want a walled garden. I wanted something that could point at a messy folder and just make sense of it.” And; “Somewhere along the way, “your library” turned into “an account someone else owns.” That’s not the future we want. Iris reads from the folders or Apple Photos library you already have, builds a fast and intelligent library on your Mac, and leaves the originals exactly where you put them. No cloud. No accounts. Your memories are yours.” • [applause]. And “walled yard” wouldn’t sound the same.

“Did 3I/ATLAS Deliver Extrasolar Life to Our Backyard?” [Avi Loeb]. “’[E]xtrasolar life could be even more resilient to extreme conditions. Call it ‘survival of the fittest’ in interstellar space. In addition to natural origins, there is the possibility of directed panspermia, whereby an interstellar gardener seeded 3I/ATLAS on a fertilization mission targeting the habitable planets in the Solar System. This would explain the rare alignment between the trajectory of 3I/ATLAS and the orbital plane of the habitable planets around the Sun, as well as the sunward jet with large fragments that plowed through the solar radiation and wind. Whether the seeds of extrasolar life reach a fertile ground in the Solar System remains to be seen.” • Something to look forward to!

Fortune: “Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on people.” — W. C. Fields

Catastrophe. From my OED app: “/kəˈtastrəfi / ▸ noun 1 an event causing great and usually sudden damage or suffering; a disaster: an environmental catastrophe the bush fires were the latest in a growing list of catastrophes [mass noun] inaction will only bring us closer to catastrophethe tax would be a catastrophe for the industry. 2 the denouement of a drama, especially a classical tragedy. – ORIGIN mid 16th century (in the sense ‘denouement’): from Latin catastropha, from Greek katastrophē ‘overturning, sudden turn’, from kata- ‘down’ + strophē ‘turning’ (from strephein ‘to turn’).

“Ebola needs swift response to prevent catastrophe - DR Congo governor” [BBC]. “This outbreak is the 17th to have emerged in DR Congo since Ebola was discovered in 1976. It is only the third worldwide of the rare Bundibugyo species of Ebola, which has not been seen in over a decade. There are currently no vaccines or medications that target Bundibugyo, but vaccines are currently in development. Last week, the WHO said it could take up to nine months for a vaccine to be ready.” • 17 seems like rather a lot. As with so many other Jackpot-related events, there is no denouement.

“Trump’s Sweet Vengeance” [Tina Brown, Fresh Hell]. “Every liberal commentator now bangs on about an assured mid-term shellacking for the POTUS party over rising gas prices, thanks to the Trump-created catastrophe of the Strait of Hormuz closure and the universally unpopular Iran war. I suspect they and the polls are wrong again. It’s not just the creeping success of Republican redistricting creating more seats than Democratic efforts to do the same. Trump has found a diabolical way to separate his personal charisma from the destruction he perpetrates and the corruption he normalizes. He’s the angel of sabotage, freed from the shackles of his own malign deeds by the Supreme Court, the GOP’s moral turpitude, and the universal glint of greed from the Wall Street honchos, Silicon Valley bros, and Palm Beach plutocrats who see that the presidency is open for business.” • More than a “glint,” I would say.

“Catastrophe” [Samuel Becket (1982)] (For Vaclav Havel). “The 1982 play Catastrophe… strays into Harold Pinter territory as an Orson Welles-style director and his flunky rearrange the limbs of the puppet-like protagonist. It is cunning, but for Beckett, unusually literal.” From Waiting for Godot I’m primed to think of Becket as very dry but hilarious slapstick. That seems not to be the case here:

[(Female assistant)] A: [Timidly.] What if he were to … were to … raise his head … an instant … show his face … just an instant.

[(Director)] D: For God’s sake! What next? Raise his head? Where do you think we are? In Patagonia? Raise his head? For God’s sake! [Pause.] Good. There’s our catastrophe. In the bag. Once more and I’m off.

[(Female assistant)] A: [To [Luke, in charge of the lighting] L.] Once more and he’s off.

[Fade-up of light on [Protagonist] P’s body. Pause. Fade-up of general light.]

[(Director)] D: Stop! [Pause.] Now … let ‘em have it. [Fade-out of general light. Pause. Fade-out of light on body. Light on head alone. Long pause.] Terrific! He’ll have them on their feet. I can hear it from here.

[Pause. Distant storm of applause. [Protagonist] P raises his head, fixes the audience. The applause falters, dies.

Long pause.

• So “catastrophe” in both senses 1 and 2, and the joke is on the Directpr?