Welcome to the 131st Today’s Podcast. November 1st marked the one year anniversary of Today’s Podcast. This year my goal is to produce over 200 shows. Much closer to my promise of a daily show.

Today’s word is serendipity. I was reminded of this word by a recent interview with Yvon Chouinard on NPR’s Day to Day. No podcasts for Day to Day yet. But NPR does offer some podcasts.

Only a few days before the interview I was in Boston for StartUpSchool. I stayed with some friends, one of whom is getting his Ph.D.. at MIT. His field of expertise is environmental policy so I was picking his brain on the subject of U.S. foreign oil dependency and its relation to synthetic clothing. Jim was explaining to me that synthetic clothing could be made form natural polymers but at this time that process is more expensive.

Stick with me I am getting to the serendipity part.

In an off hand remark I asked Jim if he thought Patagonia would be a leader in bringing non-petroleum based synthetics to consumers in the next 50 to 100 years. He asked me if I thought Patagonia would be around in 100 years. I said I figured they would be. He didn’t. So we made a informal bet.

Back to Yvon Chouinard. He is the founder of Patagonia and he was on the radio promoting his new book “Let My People Go Surfing : The Education of a Reluctant Businessman.” During the interview he mentions he expects Patagonia to be in business 100 years from now. There is the serendipity.

Serendipity is a noun that describes the act of making fortuitous discoveries. The act of finding something useful when you weren’t looking for it.

I wasn’t looking for evidence supporting my theory or my position in the wager but just listening to the radio I stumbled upon some useful evidence.

The word serendipity was given to us by Horace Walpole in a letter of January 28, 1754. He coined the word from the title of a Persian fairy tale- “The Three Princes of Serendip.” Serendip is the ancient Persian name for Sri Lanka. Walpole wrote the following describing the story, “As their highnesses traveled, they were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of …” That is serendipity.

Last year serendipity is was listed by, Todays Translation, as one of the ten hardest English words to translate. So to the English-as-a-second-language listeners and readers I hope I have helped.

UPDATE: Jim just dropped me an email letting me know there are now corn based fibers used in socks. Japan will be the test market for these new socks.

Today’s word, copacetic, is a favorite of mine. Although I too often forget to use it.

Copacetic is an adjective meaning completely or entirely satisfactory. I think its connotation is much more positive then satisfactory. For example if a boss told me my work was satisfactory I would be concerned it wasn’t very good, that it was barely above unsatisfactory. But if they described the situation or my projects as copacetic I would be much happier.

The etymology of copacetic is murky at best. Bartelby, Merriam-Webster and Dictionary.com all list the etymology as unknown. Word-detective.comand Etymonline.com both take a stab at the etymology noting it emerged in America around the end of the 19th century. Both sources suggest it has its roots in America’s African American culture.

While putting together yesterday’s podcast on zoetrope I came across today’s word- heliotrope.

Heliotrope is a noun with several definitions. One is a purple or violet color. Another heliotrope is a surveying tool for civil engineers and map makers. It allows them to focus a beam of sunlight and signal a fellow surveyor up to twenty miles away. Using the heliotrope’s signaling the engineers can triangulate locations. These heliotropes are not used anymore. A heliotrope is any member of the Heliotropium genus or plants. Heliotrope can also be used to describe anything that turns toward the sun.
I don’t know if this happens to anyone else but I find as soon as I learn a new word I see and hear it in use much more frequently then I did before I took the time to learn the definition. After choosing heliotrope for today’s Today’s Podcast I noticed G.B Trudeau used heliotropic in Sunday’s Doonesbury comic to describe a Zonker’s sunbathing skills. I love when

Heliotrope like so many other words is derived from Greek. As we learned in an earlier podcast trope means turn. Combine that with helio meaning sun and you have something that turns towards the sun. Just like Zonker.

Zoetrope in motion

Originally uploaded by tempo.


On a recommendation from Michael Geohegan I watched the Francis Ford Coppola movie the Conversation. Great movie.

Frequent listeners of this podcast know I enjoy reading the credits. Well the credits for the Conversation include the name of Coppola’s production company Zoetrope. What a beautiful word. And a great name for a movie company.

A Zoetrope is a primitive movie toy that spins to animate a series of images. It is hard to describe so I recommend checking out the photos. But basically it is a cylinder with narrow, evenly spaced vertical slits. A series of images, very often images of a horse galloping, appears on the inside of the cylinder. When the viewer spins the cylinder and looks through the slots they see the images in rapid succession. This spinning animates the images.

The zoetrope, originally called the “daedalum” or “daedatelum,” was invented in the first half of 19th century by George Horner. But it was promoted in the US by William F. Lincoln as a “zoetrope.” The first half of the 19th century saw a great many inventions designed to create moving images including the thaumatrope, the zoetrope, praxinoscope, the phenakistoscope and flip books. Thomas Edison studied many of these devices while developing kinetoscope, the precursor to modern movies.

Interestingly, Wikipedia, mentions Edison created the kinetoscope so that people would listen to phonographs. History sure is interesting. America’s most prolific inventor develops movies as an aside just so people will listen to more audio recordings.

The name zoetrope was created by combining two greek words- “zoe” and “trope.” Zoe means life and trope means turn or wheel. So the zoetrope is the wheel of life. Or maybe a turning wheel that gives life to images. Zoe is also the root of the word zoo.

If you want to make you own persistence of vision project there are a couple sites that will help you make you own zoetrope. HowToons.org, an educational site with great cartoons describing how to create various toys that demonstrate interesting scientific properties. Brightbytes.com has a great collection of persistence of vision toys including- the thaumatrope, the zoetrope, praxinoscope, the phenakistoscope and flip books.

Today’s word, Potemkin, is an entertaining political term. I have seen it on Boingboing.net many times. Recently it appeared in a post about the governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Grigori Aleksandrovich Potemkin was an 18th century Russian military officer and politician. Who was rumored to have built fake villages along the banks of the Dnieper river in order to impress Empress Catherine II. Potemkin, who had recently conquered the area, wanted to impress Catherine II by demonstrating the value of the area he had captured by showing off a wonderful village.

Today the term potemkin village or just potemkin is used to describe a staged, deceptive or hollow event. Particularly hollow or deceptive political maneuverings.

That brings us to the governator. According to SFGate.com this past May the governor went out to San Jose and filled in a pot hole to demonstrate to the citizens of California the state’s increased spending on transportation projects. As you probably guessed the pot hole was dug by a city crew only a few hours earlier. While it may not be a lie is sure is dirty.

Another BoingBoing post using potemkin directs our attention to stickers you can put on your SUV to make them look like you have been off-roading.

In Potemkin’s defense modern scholars doubt he had a village built. It is more likely he had the villages spruced up a bit and may have passed off a few unfinished projects as finished.

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