I decided on today’s word after reading a thought provoking article at Wired.com. The article is titled The Blind Fragging the Blind and its about video games for blind gamers. I was surprised by the nature of the games. The games are very sophisticated including a purely audio version of the first person shooter Quake and of all things, a driving game. BSCGames.com offers many games designed for the blind and visually impaired. They also offer several sound trailers if you want to learn what an all audio gaming experience sounds like.

So today term is echo location. It is a technique that uses sound instead of sight to determine the location and in some cases the size of objects. Echolocation is used by some animals including bats and dolphins although they us sound frequencies that can not be heard by human ears.

Human echolocation is used by some blind people.

We have all probably walked through a large empty room and heard the sound of our foot steps echo off the distant walls. Even with our eyes closed we would know we were in a large room and as we approached a wall we would notice the changing sounds of the echos. This is echolocation.

I imagine video games designed for blind and visually impaired players take advantage of the echo location phenomenon to orient the player in his or her environment.

Today’s word was suggested by Garrick over at The First Crack Podcast “heavily caffeinated public radio”. The word is troglodyte and Garrick came across the word at The Trend Junkie. The Trend Junkie is a podcast that covers trends in marketing, technology and media. I have only listened to one of Garrick’s First Crack Podcasts but it very interesting. It was recorded at a bar and on top of that it was about the Stapleton development in Denver- only a few blocks from my home. Also check out his site for a cool podcasting button. A real physical button.

Back to the word. A troglodyte is a person who lives in a cave. It has also come to mean a person who dislikes or afraid of technology like a luddite. The word evolved from the Greek trogle meaning a hole and dyein meaning to enter.

Today we have a quote. I think you, the listener prefer the words and definitions, but I like to through in a few quotes.

This quote is from Michel Eyguem de Montaigne. A French 16th century Renaissance philosopher who does not have an entry at Wikipedia. There are lots of reference materials out there for anyone who want to be the first to write the wiki entry.

The quote is:

I came across today’s word on Dean’s site hannotte.net. The word is fugue and Dean is a listener who let me know googolplex may not be the largest named number. Skewes’ numbers and Graham’s number maybe larger. But as Dean poined out the idea of the largest named finite number is silly. A named number could be defined as the largest named number plus one.

Back to a Fugue. In psychology it is a rare disorder in which a person suffers a memory lapse and then flees their home or job. The person may then assume a new identity completely forgetting their previous life. Fugues usually occur during times of extreme stress and rarely last more than a month.

More commonly a Fugue is a specifc type of musical composition. Now I usually research several sources for each podcast and then summarize what I think are the key elements. But I know so little about music I will quote the wikipedia definition.

A fugue is a type of piece written in counterpoint for several independent musical voices. A fugue begins with its subject (a brief musical theme) stated by one of the voices playing alone. A second voice then enters and plays the subject, while the first voice continues on with a contrapuntal accompaniment. Then the remaining voices similarly enter one by one. The remainder of the fugue further develops the material using all of the voices.

I did compare that definition against several others and it seems complete to me. But the study of music is not my forte.

Fugue comes from the Latin fuga which means flight and fugere meaning to flee.

You can listen to Johann Sebastian Bach’s C-minor fugue from the Well Tempered Clavier I, in 3 voices courtesy of wikipedia.

This past Sunday I needed some kirsch for a dinner I was making and as I headed to the store I remembered the blue laws.

A blue law is a law that curtails activities that can occur on Sunday. The term is also used to describe any law that has its roots in a puritanical desire to legislate morality.

This weekend it meant I couldn’t buy Kirsch at a liquor store on Sunday. It is against the law to sell alcohol in my home state of Colorado. Mind you I can go to a bar and get a drink.

In fact about half the US states and several provinces in Canada ban the sale of alcohol on Sunday. Other blue laws include bans on the sale of alcohol on election day, restrictions on how late alcohol can be served or sold (in Colorado you can’t buy alcohol after 1:00 am at a bar or a store), restrictions also curtail who can sell certain types of alcohol, (in Colorado you can only buy liquor at a liquor store nowhere else, but you can buy beer at a grocery store as long as it is only 3.2% alcohol)

Not all blue laws relate to the sale of alcohol, many prohibited any business being conducted on Sunday. Today, at least in the US, most are related to alcohol sales.

I was unable to find an authoritative etymology of the term but it first appeared in the late 18th century to refer to various religiously motivated laws enacted by the Puritans.