Digital Commons Network^™

A Poem, Martin Gardner

Word Ways

This is an excerpt from Gardner's 1969 book Never Make Fun Of A Turtle, My Son.

What's In? - A Name! - Part Iii, Steve Kahan

Word Ways

In this installment of "What's In? - A Name!", five-letter names have been removed from forty words and the remaining letters have been presented in consolidated form. For example, 'can' would readmit NADIA to reconstruct caNADIAn, a perfectly fine response were proper nouns eligible as answers. (They are not!) To make matters a bit more interesting this time, the genders, while equally represented, have been mixed together, much like the dorms in many modern-day colleges. Your goal is to imbed the invisible names into their compressions in order to identity the original word. Happy hunting!

A Poem, Martin Gardner

Word Ways

This is an excerpt from Gardner's 1969 book Never Make Fun Of A Turtle, My Son.

"Put That In Your Pipe And Chew It!", Don Hauptman

Word Ways

In two previous Word Ways articles (August 2001 and May 2004), I quoted choice examples of amusing mixed metaphors I had collected. Since then, I've accumulated many new specimens. They're not difficult to find. Indeed, they leap off the page like a sore thumb!

Three Puzzle Games On Pelargoniums, Jeremiah Farrell, Karen Farrell

Word Ways

For these three puzzle-games we require the 16 word tokens ERN, GEM, GUS, IOS, LAG, LIP, MOA, NIM, NUL, OLE, OUR, PES, RAP, RIG, SAN, and UMP.

Puzzlemints, A. Anil

Word Ways

An assortment of logological riddles for your bemusement. A few are nonsenses but most are "serious" quizzes and research questions.

Bionym, John Holgate

Word Ways

The famous are fond of inventing catchy tiles for their biographies often based on an associated nickname or signature tune. A classical 'bionym' is one in which the subject's identity is cleverly hidden in the title itself and can be guessed without knowing the author - like 'Citizen Jane' (Jane Fonda) or 'Acts of Faith' (Adam Faith).

Odes From The Odd Topics Society, Howard G. Baetzhold

Word Ways

Butler's Odd Topics Society meets every now and then to discuss Odd Topics of any nature. Professor Baetzhold is the Poet Laureat Odd Topics Society.

Answers And Solutions

Word Ways

Answers and solutions to the puzzles contained in this issue.

Effects Of Plain Language Revision On Item Difficulty, Discrimination And Dif, Holly E. Baker

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Colorado assesses approximately 98% of students enrolled in grades 3-10 in the area of mathematics. In 2005, 69,872 English Language Learners (ELLs) in grades 3-10 participated in the state content area assessments. In 2007, 88,060 ELLs participated in the state content area assessments. With this dramatic growth in the ELL population in the state of Colorado and elsewhere in the nation, ensuring that ELLs have access to comprehensible materials on state assessments is of paramount importance. Accommodations provide access for students based on their individual needs. Likewise, assessment items designed and/or revised using the principles of plain language and universal …

Pondering With Pegg, Ed Pegg Jr.

Word Ways

From Oscar:
Carbon sulfide
Hot Club de Paris

Doggy Dog World!, Dick Wolfsie

Word Ways

The other day I was reading a novel and I saw the following sentence:
"If you think I'm going out with you anymore, you have another think coming."

Back Cover

Word Ways

Back cover of the issue.

Evaluating Online Health Information: Beyond Readability Formulas, Gondy Leroy, Stephen Helmreich, James Cowie, Trudi Miller '08, Wei Zheng '08

CGU Faculty Publications and Research

Although understanding health information is important, the texts provided are often difficult to understand. There are formulas to measure readability levels, but there is little understanding of how linguistic structures contribute to these difficulties. We are developing a toolkit of linguistic metrics that are validated with representative users and can be measured automatically. In this study, we provide an overview of our corpus and how readability differs by topic and source. We compare two documents for three groups of linguistic metrics. We report on a user study evaluating one of the differentiating metrics: the percentage of function words in a …

Communicating For Influence: Christian Proclamation From The Margins, Brian A. Ross

Doctor of Ministry

It is my opinion that North American Christianity needs to re-consider how it communicates to young adults about following after the person of Jesus Christ. The Church should seek to understand the present cultural milieu and the implications of influencing from below. Established Christianity formerly held a position of prestige and relative power. Due to cultural and epistemological shifts this is no longer the situation. The message of Christ is still relevant in the new millennium, but the standard approaches to communicating and thus influencing others in this new world are at times no longer relevant. Much of organized Christianity …

Front Cover, Publication Information

Word Ways

Front Cover, Publication Information, Table of Contents

Even More Consecutive Palindromic Triads, Steve Kahan

Word Ways

Here is the latest collection of consecutive palindromic triads, an already familiar challenge to the readership of Word Ways. For any tyros, we briefly recap the rules.

Mnemonics For Number Sequences, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

One of the most frequently-occurring uses for a mnemonic is to remember a sequence of integers. As always, the question is one of efficiency versus memorability: how much must the original integer sequence be expanded? The obvious solution to the problem, that of letting the number of letters in a word stand for the integer (with ten letters for the digit zero) is extremely inefficient, representing a five-fold inflation.

All The Perfumes Of Arabia, Leonard R. N. Ashley

Word Ways

Politics and economics have recently brought into sharp focus the Arabic languages, but there was a time when contact between different civilizations was more civilized and when Arabic had an immense effect on the humanities and sciences in the western world. That is why academics and judges and ministers, etc., still wear robes derived from Arab dress. Here we suggest Arabic's influence on western languages.

Seven And Thirteen, Dave Morice

Word Ways

As the superstitious know for a fact and the substitous deny as mere superstition, the numbers 7 and 13 influence our lives far more than any other number lower than a googol. They are the Yin-Yang of Fortune, the Comedy and Tragedy of Kismet, the Abbott and Costello of Fate, the Sweet and Sour Sauce of Destiny.

Simon Says, Simon Nightingale

Word Ways

This begins a yearly column from Simon Nightingale and his wife Bridget. Dr. Nightingale is a second generation metagrobologist (His father Bill had started their collection of over 1000 puzzles many years ago.). The answer to this rebus appears in Answers and Solutions.

Wmu International News November 2008, Haenicke Institute For Global Education

WMU International News

In this issue:

WMU joins Internationalization Laboratory of the American Council on Education

Japan university awards honorary doctorate to WMU emeritus physics professor

Fall activities feature flags, apples, Halloween and Chicago

Quenching the Middle East’s thirst for water is desired outcome for WMU geoscience researchers

New innovative summer program in Egypt

International lady Broncos share tips for succeeding on the field and in the classroom

Love of linguistics leads to ESL career for Ila Baker

Examining The Effects Of Linguistic Accommodations On The Colorado Student Assessment Program—Mathematics, Marisol Enriquez

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act changed assessment for English Language Learners (ELLs). Under the law, states must validly assess ELLs' English Language Proficiency (ELP) and content knowledge. The law shed light on the achievement of ELLs while also creating challenges for states in validating state assessment and accountability systems. Test accommodations are used for ELLs to reduce threats to test score validity and measure academic achievement as accurately and fairly as possible. Since ELLs are working towards proficiency in English, they face linguistic and socio-cultural barriers under the confines of large scale assessment. A limited body of research …

Why Protect Private Arms Possesion - Nine Theories Of The Second Amendment, Michael Steven Green

Notre Dame Law Review

No abstract provided.

Wrl Newsletter November 2008, Maryke Barber

WRL Newsletters

No abstract provided.

Educational Motivation In Heritage Speakers Of Spanish, Benoit B. Berho

Doctor of Education (EdD)

This study examined the themes associated with the lack of motivation for school in middle school students, specifically among Heritage Speakers of Spanish. The researcher used two methods to examine student and parent attitudes and beliefs about school and education, as attitudes and beliefs are strongly linked to motivation. The researcher did face-to-face interviews of Mexican parents with direct questions about education and school, and asked middle school students of Mexican descent to read the first part of a short selection about a Mexican immigrant boy in school, then complete the story using their imagination. The researcher compiled the parents' …

Raids, Rights And Reform: The Postville Case And The Immigration Crisis, Erik Camayd-Freixas Ph.D.

DePaul Journal for Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Missouri V. Holland And Historical Textualism , Michael D. Ramsey

Missouri Law Review

This essay does not undertake to say what the Holland rule should be today; instead, it advances a methodology to determine the Constitution's original meaning on the matter. Its approach, for want of a better phrase, I will call "historical textualism." In brief, historical textualism finds constitutional meaning in the specific words of the Constitution's text as they were situated and understood in the context in which they were written. Applying that approach, I find full support for Holland's conclusion in the Constitution's original meaning. That conclusion differs from other studies which have relied on "originalist" analysis to find subject …

Review Essay: Take Five: Borges Y Cortázar, Siglo Xxi, Pablo A.J. Brescia

World Languages Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Book Review: The Boat Is Full: Swiss Asylum Denied, Richard Hacken

Swiss American Historical Society Review

Das Boot ist voll (sometimes translated as "The Lifeboat is Full"), directed by Markus Imhoof, is a notable accomplishment in Swiss cinema of the late 20th century. It received the Silver Berlin Bear for Outstanding Single Achievement in 1981 at the Berlin International Film Festival, and the following year it was nominated for an Academy A ward in the category of Best Foreign Film. These honors presumably sprang not merely from recognition of Imhoof' s courage in recalibrating the past, in putting an alternate face on the Holocaust, and in documenting Swiss refugee policies during the Second World War. These …