A few weeks ago a someone asked me if I believed in the Rapture. I didn’t know exactly what she meant so that is today’s word.

Rapture- A noun. Refering to a state of euphoria or overwhelming emotion. A mystical experience that imparts divine knowledge.

In the Christian faith, the meaning I suspect my interrogator was interested in, the rapture is when god brings the faithful up to heaven and then smites the non-believers who are left behind. It is an very popular word and concept with the hard core fundamentalists who believe god picks and chooses the good and the bad. Oddly, the word rapture does not appear in the Bible.

Rapture was also a number one hit by Blondie in 1980. The first #1 rap song.

Today’s word is enigma. It is noun meaning puzzle or something that cannot be understood or explained. Such as “Dawn Miceli’s infatuation with Adam Curry is an enigma.”

Enigma was also the name for the WWII era encryption machine used by the Germans to secure their military communications. The Enigma machine and cryptography were the subject of Neal Stephenson’s excellent novel Cryptonomicon. If you are interested in WWII history or cryptography I strongly recommend Stephenson’s book.

I choose enigma for today’s word after coming across an updated version of the Enigma machine. It is a PDF file that does the same encoding and decoding as the original Enigma machines. You can find the PDF and a thorough explanation at mckoss.com.

Now I must give credit to hackaday.com/. Phil Torrone of Engadget fame is runs great site with daily hacks including this PDF Enigma.

Paper Enigma Machine @ www.hackaday.com

Thanks to Sean at Microsoft for telling me about onelook.com. “Onelook indexes over 5 millions words from over 900 dictionaries. The cool thing is that it include specialty dictionaries (e.g. technical, medical, scientific, etc.).”

Today’s word was requested by fellow podcaster Nicole Simon. You can find her podcast, Useful Sounds at useful-sounds.de

Nicole requested the word ubiquitous. It is an adjective meaning widespread, widely available or being everywhere at once.

I usually hear ubiquitous used to describe a new technology. For example in 10 years wifi will be ubiquitous.

The example Nicole sent is from a recent CNN article on podcasting. It reads:

In the end, if MP3 players become so ubiquitous that we are invaded by
ear-bud-wearing podcasting people, they will probably be too
pre-occupied with choosing from all these programming options to
screech and point at those not connected to the mothership.

Nicole requested this word for a very interesting reason. She wanted to hear how it was pronounced. Nicole, as you might guess from her domain name, lives in Germany and she reminded me that for many listeners podcasting is about learning a new language and that this podcast is very educational.

Thank you Nicole I appreciate the suggested word and the feedback.

When I am uncertain how to pronounce a word I look it up at merriamwebster.com. They offer an audio recording of each word. And unlike some online dictionaries it is free and cross-platform.

Today’s word is redacted. You often read it or hear it in the news when they are talking about an official record or transcript. It means to edit or adapt for publication. This usually means the sensitive parts have been removed or obscured. Like with a black magic marker.

Two sites that offer great example of redacted documents are The Smoking Gun and The Memory Hole.

The Smoking gun offers a few juicy official documents a week. Documents like the new Homeland Security nominee’s bankruptcy fillings, Bill Gate’s mug shot from 1977 or all 57 pages of Kobe Bryant’s police interview. The Kobe Bryant interview is not appropriate reading for minors.

The Memory Hole, in their own words, “exists to preserve and spread material that is in danger of being lost, is hard to find, or is not widely known.” Their redacted documents are not very juicy and often frightening. Like a recent one that shows John Ashcroft’s Justice Department Censoring a Supreme Court opinion. The opinion basically warned of the danger of using homeland security as shield to protect a government’s abuse of power.

Today Larry Bird Turns 48. Today also marks the 63rd anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The bombing brought the US completely and unequivocally into World War II.

Here is what then President Franklin D. Roosevelt had to say:

Yesterday, December 7, 1941—a date which will live in infamy—the United States of American was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.

-President Franklin D. Roosevelt

Although the U.S. had been supporting the allies it was not officially involved in the war up until the 7th. The bombing of Pearl Harbor lead the U.S. to declare war on Japan, Germany and Italy all in the same week, this week, 63 years ago.