Oubliette, this word popped up on two sites in one day so I had to include it in a podcast.

Oubliette, as you can probably tell from the sound of oubliette is a French noun. An oubliette is a dungeon or cave with only an opening at the top. A hole in the ground could be an oubliette. A trap door in the floor may lead to an oubliette.

Of the two pages that brought oubliette to my attention, the first, at kinkless.com, used oubliette on its 404- page-not-found error page. I clicked on a broken link and was served this creative and polite prose:

Oubliette

You have fallen into a hole. You find yourself in a small stone room. The only exit appears to be the hole which you fell through, now far above you in the ceiling. There is straw scattered on the cold, cobbled floor. The darkness of this cell seems to swallow up the thin shaft of light falling from above.

A voice from the shadows says “404″. However, before you scream in terror or allow a soul destroying malaise to settle upon you like the dust of ages (what? it already has?), let me hand you a ladder. You see, I’ve rejigged this site and now the walls and doors and such are in all different places.

Kinkless.com hosts a “Getting Things Done” to do list manager. The second page is closely related, it is an article by Merlin Mann hosted at 43folders.com, a site dedicated to the “Getting Things Done” way of organizing and managing your life. The article “Dr. Contextlove or: “How I stopped worrying and learned to love iCal” describes Mr. Mann’s particular technique for using the Kinkless GTD system to organize his time and tasks. Oubliette is used by Mann to describe where the task he forgets to complete end up; in a dark hole with only one way out.

Oubliette comes from the French verb oublier meaning “to forget.” As in,”put him in oubliette and forget about him.”

According to Wikipedia, and oubliette is also

“used to refer to ice formations over lakes or other large bodies of water. As ice crystals formed, and air was introduced in the movement of the tides, tunnels would form under the ice.”

Today, March 1st, 2006, the one millionth English article was published at Wikipedia by Ewan Macdonald.

From the Jordanhill Railway Station article:

The Jordanhill Railway Station is a suburban railway station in the Jordanhill area on the west side of Glasgow, Scotland. The station (code “JOR”), which is governed by Transport Scotland and managed by First ScotRail, lies on the Argyle Line and the North Clyde Line. It is located near the Jordanhill Campus of the University of Strathclyde and the Jordanhill School and sits atop Crow Road, an important western thoroughfare in Glasgow and the main route to the Clyde Tunnel. The station is five stops and eleven minutes journey time from Central Glasgow.

Congratulations! Wikipedia is clearly the most comprehensive English language encyclopedia. Putting questions about accuracy aside it is probably the deepest and widest research collection ever assembled in any language.

Happy Mardi Gras! Today I would take a little time to discuss Mardi Gras, Ash Wednesday, Carnival and Lent.

Lent is the forty day Christian fasting season leading up to Easter. Christians, particularly Catholics, mark the period by giving up meat or some pleasure or comfort.

Carnival is the two week celebration leading up to Lent. The most famous Carnival is celebrated in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. I am sure you have seen the photos of revelers. The last day, the culmination of Carnival is Mardi Gras.

Since Lent is a time of fasting and going without, people live it up big for the two weeks leading up to Lent. Mardi Gras is the last day to enjoy favored foods it tend so it is a day for fattening up for the long wait till Easter. Mardi Gras translates literally from the French as “Tuesday Fat.” The following day, Ash Wednesday, is the first day of Lent.

Ash Wednesday gets its name from the ashes with which the priest blesses worshipers. On Ash Wednesday Christians, again particularly Catholics, can be seen with their foreheads marked with this ash.

I heard Felicity Huffman use the word equanimity on NPR’s All Things Considered. Felicity Huffman plays Lynette on Desperate Housewives and recently received an Oscar nomination for her staring role in Transamerica- the story of a man who becomes a woman then discovers she has a teenage son.

The interview focuses on motherhood as it applies in the movie and in Desperate Housewives. Huffman uses equanimity to summarize one of the characteristics she observes in other mothers and aspires to posses herself.

Equanimity is a calmness or evenness of mind; a balanced impartiality.

As you may have guessed it is related the word equal and comes from the latin aequanimitas- a combination of aequus, meaning even or equal and animus, meaning mind.

It is no wonder the characteristic Huffman praises just before equanimity is balance. In fact she is almost being redundant.

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.