Thursday, January 27, 2011

Word Mole for Blackberry

Nearly two years ago I was addicted to the game Word Challenge on Facebook. However, eventually I had to stop. Word Challenge word list was disappointingly, and inconsistently prude and also had questionable "words" on their list. I became frustrated and stopped. I'm reaching a similar point now with Word Mole for my Blackberry.

It's the only game I have on my phone, and after a year of not bothering to even try it, over the last week I've been playing it as constantly as my phone will allow (it's a horrible drain on the phone's battery. Like Word Challenge, Word Mole has done a little censoring. For instance, you can't make the word "fuck." But then there are other words that are mysteriously not on the Word Mole list, like fanged, snivel, and puce. This is especially frustrating when you're just a few points away from making it to the next level, or seconds from the game being over, only to discover that a perfectly good word like prattled isn't accepted. It's almost enough to make me want to quit playing, however my curiosity has been piqued. While I still yearn for an amazing score, I'm far more interested in seeing which words somehow didn't make the cut.

The following is a list of words that Word Mole doesn't accept (and I'm sure I'll find many more).

Hewn
Prattled
Roil
Peed
Cud
Pip
Shim
Twist
Quire
Dun
Fisted
Glam
Piddle
Linty
Fuck
Caul
Puce
Pock
Fanged
Toke
Toked
Snivel
Sot
Ibex
Minty
Ribaldry
Tusk
Scrotum
Snivel
Fatted

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

The League of Extraordinary Sneezers

The Highstakes World of Competitive Sneezing

The wikipedia entry for sneeze has this to say under epidemiology:

The speed of human sternal release has been the source of much speculation, with the most conservative estimates placing it around 150 kilometers/hour (42 meters/second) or roughly 95 mph (135 feet/second), and the highest estimates -such as the JFK Health World Museum in Barrington, Illinois- which propose a speed as fast as 85% of the speed of sound, corresponding to approximately 1045 kilometers per hour (290 meters/second) or roughly 650 mph (950 feet/second).

On a relative scale of sneezing I feel that mine have a surprising amount of force behind them. Plenty of people have small, mousy sneezes. The muscles of their face barely engage, it's more like a weak nasal hiccup. A strong sneeze can contract a surprising number of muscles: the face, neck, abdominal, lower-back, and even sphincter.

While over the last 24 hours I've transitioned to my usual winter sport (wheezy coughing), in the days preceding this one I feel I have taken my sneezing to glorious new heights. At last I feel I am a true athlete of the sneeze; a finely tuned sneezing machine. From the moment the tingling begins in my nasal cavity my muscles from the waist up go on high alert, ready. You have to be careful not tense your muscles or attempt to stifle the sneeze. This can lead to popping a blood vessel, involuntary urination, or it could even force air into the eustachian tube causing a rupture of the eardrum. You can also pull muscles that are unused to the fast-twitch fiber contraction. To prevent abdominal strains due to sneezing you may want to do planks or a few fast sets of situps every other day, along with several minutes of stretching, so your muscles will always have the strength and elasticity necessary to get the job done.

But, while I feel ready to join the high stakes world of competitive sneezing, there are still some barriers to forming this league. First we need to develop judging criteria. For instance, judges might give style points on a scale of 1-10 for the categories facial expression and audio. But those are both subjective measures, and I believe far more weight should be placed on objective sneeze accomplishments. In particular, the force or speed of the sneeze. However, first the league would need determine a measuring method. Here are a few I'm considering:


1) A speed gun, like those used by highway patrol or baseball scouts.
Pros: Intuitive design
Cons: The particulates that make up a sneeze may not be large enough to register.

2) High-speed camera images of sneeze particulate against a backdrop
Pros: Tried and True.
Cons: The website explaining this technique is a distressing red color.

3)Portable Doppler or Wind Meter
Pros: Fancy, high-tech sounding.
Cons: Does portable doppler even exist? Also, wind meters may not be able register the fastest sneeze, or the volume of the sneeze may be too low to measure.

Tuesday, January 4, 2011