notable nicenesses

• niceness (UNIX n.): inverse process priority.

  a job with a high niceness is very kind to the users of your system (i.e., it runs at low priority), while a job with little niceness utilises more of the CPU



• TPTB (internet n.): The Powers That Be. You can hear the conspiratorial hiss.


• skeuomorph (pej. design n.): an object which retains the look and metaphors of its predecessors even though it does not need to:
  


• cultural fluency (culture war n.): Mandatory ideological re-education on campus (see also sensitivity training). Very useful, not as guide to actually ethical conduct, but as primer on what inadvertent words are likely to incite a mob.


• stemwinder (US n.): A rousing speech, especially by a politician.


• spavined (posh adj.): bony, particularly of horses; wasted.


• neuclidean(maths adj.): noneuclidean for impatient people.


• landsat (science n.): The oldest satellite mapping project: 45 years of continuous imagery.


• interocular trauma test (stats n.): drawing conclusions about significance from blindingly obvious graphs or stats that... hit you between the eyes.


• couvade (anthropology n.): rituals conducted by the father during gestation.


• Couvade syndrome (): psychosomatic disorder; sympathetic pregnancy; weight gain, altered hormones, morning sickness, labour pains have been reported.


• mumbo-jumbological (adj.): pretentiously pseudo-scientific. I use it for cosmetics marketing, architectural theory, . One of Ian Fleming's.


• VUZ (GDR adj.): vor unserer Zeitrechnung; Communist euphemism for BCE.


• knugen (Swedish n.): Intentional misspelling of "kungen", king, to tease Gustav XVI's dyslexia.


• jazzy chass (50s Las Vegas n.): A winner who is still greedy


• pigeon (50s Las Vegas n.): a loser who throws more money at it