Today’s Podcast

Today we have three f-words. Don’t worry, this is a family friendly podcast. The three words are:

• Fathom
• Furlong
• Fortnight

These are all units of measurement.

Fathom is a sailor’s term for describing the depth of water. A fathom is six feet deep or 1.8 meters. Not living near an ocean I never hear anyone use the term, but I do hear a variation fathomless. Fathomless means too deep to be measures or understood. For example the fathomless world of Search Engine Optimization

Fathom comes from the old English fathme. Fathme means “outstretched arms.” Presumably outstretched arms are about six feet wide- one fathom.


Furlong comes from the Old English furh meaning furrow and lang meaning long. A furlong is a distance of 220 yards, 660 feet or about 201 meters. Eight furlongs equals a mile and 5 equals about a kilometer. As the etymology suggests it comes from the length of a furrow, a long shallow trench plowed for farming. Originally furlong referred to the length of one furrow in one acre.
Prior to researching furlong I had only heard the term in the context of the sport of kings- horse racing. In horse racing are used to describe distances less then a mile. Remember a furlong is an 1/8 of a mile.

A fortnight is a period of two weeks or 14 days. I thought it came from a mutation of a fort, as in a military fort. But as it turns out fortnight is also from Old English. It comes from feowertyne niht meaning 14 nights. When your boss asks you to get a project done by next week tell them it will take more like fortnight.

A sennight is one week, 7days.
Today’s Podcast needs a new name. Please help me by sending me you name change suggestions.

Wheat rows photo courtesy of Will Simpson at PalousePhotography.org

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Today’s we have a rather obscure technical term from the world of geography. Antipodal is a word I came across in a BBC article. The article is about a replica of the U.K.’s famous stonehenge. This new henge is antipodal to the original. Which is to say it is on the opposite side of the Earth.

Antipodal points also called antipodes are points on the surface of a sphere that are diametrically opposed. So if you could tunnel straight through the center of the earth you would emerge at the antipode of where you started. For example the Antipode Islands of New Zealand are so named because they are roughly on the other side of the world from the Crown of England.

After learning this word I decided to figure out what is the antipode of my new home in Cincinnati. For this I turned to a new piece of free software, Google Earth. Google Earth is amazing. It is a digital map of the entire Earth. You pick any place on earth and zoom in on it. As you zoom in the software displays ever more detailed satellite photos of the area. Depending on the area the photos maybe be so detailed you can see your car parked in front of your house. Add to this the amazing topographic detail that displays 3d hills and mountains; animation that lets you tilt your view so you can appreciate the topography and the ability, and this is this coolest, to “fly” from one location to another. I can’t praise Google Earth enough. It can be downloaded from earth.google.com. Sorry it is Windows only.
So I used Google Earth to find my house by using my address. I noted the latitude and longitude. Then I switched the north for south and subtracted 180 from my longitude. This spun the globe and displayed my antipode. Sadly it is an uninteresting spot in the middle of the South Pacific.

Antipode comes to us by way of the Greek anti meaning opposite or opposed and pod meaning feet.
I have a little house keeping today. I need a little help. I am considering renaming Today’s Podcast. I think the name is too vague and confusing. The name doesn’t really describe the content of the shows and it can be confusing talking about today’s Today’s Podcast. Or even tomorrow’s Today’s Podcast.

Please help me by emailing me your suggestions. My email address is scott at todays podcast.com.

UPDATE: Gerry of Vancouver BC. corrected my methodology. I first stated you could switch East for West but that only works if you are 90 degrees east or west. The correct method is to subtract 180 degrees from longitude. Thanks Gerry.

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Today we have a request from Will Simpson. The word is Canonical and it came up in a recent episode of the Gillmor Gang.
In this clip Jon Udell used canonical to describe a standard permanent link.
Two side notes: This Gillmor Gang, from July 2nd 2005, is very interesting. They discuss some of the emerging issues with podcasting and audio blogging. For example how do you properly site an audio clip you play in you podcast. Unlike a text entry I can’t very easily give you a link back to the entire Gillmor Gang episode.
I would also like to praise John Udell. He does some great screencasts of interesting Internet phenomena. Tune in later this week for more on screencasts.

Back to canonical. It is an interesting word with a rich history and many definitions that vary based on the context. They include:

• Appearing in a Biblical canon.
• Related to canon law- the laws of the Roman Catholic and/or Anglican churches.
• Conforming to orthodox or recognized rules.
• In math canonical refers to the standard form or the simplest form.
• In linguistics it is the simplest form possible without loss of generality. Opposite of nonstandard.
• Pertaining to or resembling a musical or literary canon.
• Authoritative.
• Standard.

This is a seemingly diverse group of definitions but in short canonical is an adjective that means standard, generally accepted, essential or a significant part of the history. If you decide to do a little more research on canonical and it’s root canon at Wikipedia be prepared for a lot of disambiguation pages.

Obviously a word this rich has rich etymology too. It made it way from the ancient Greek kanon to the Old English and Old French to the Middle English to modern English. The Greek kanon means rule or rod.

Will, thank you for the great suggestion. Will has an a wonderful portfolio of photographs available at PalousePhotography.com. My favorite is the “Palouse Morning on Linville Road.” Check out last weeks post to learn about the Palouse.

Will also reminded me “there is a popular Linux distro, Ubuntu, available from [a] philanthropic organization called Canonical -Canonical.com/ which is doing great work.”

I would now like to welcome all the new iTunes subscribers. I hope you are enjoying Today’s Podcast and podcasting in general. Please tell you friends about podcasting.

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Today’s word was suggested by Brian over at the Mostly Trivial podcast. The word is ombudsman, and Brian found it in recent post at Slashdot.org.

An ombudsman is person who acts as an mediator between an organization and its public or constituency. They are often charged with investigating complaints.

The ombudsman in the Slashdot post is a blogger who writes on video games. You can read his posts at vgombud.blogspot.com.

You can subscribe to the Mostly Trivial podcast at MostlyTrival.com

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My Odeo Channel

Today’s word is redundant. It is an adjective with several related definitions. It means extra, profuse, superfluous, no longer needed or duplicate. For example describing Adam Curry as a married husband is redundant. If he is married we know he is a husband.

The term redundant is also used to describe backup systems that take over when the primary system fails. Redundant servers is one way major internet companies like Google, Amazon and Microsoft ensure you can always reach their sites.

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