You’re in a business meeting. Is it bad manners to take out your phone to send or read a text? A new study suggests that how you feel about mid-meeting texting differs depending on your age and sex. Grant and Martha offer book recommendations for...
Train conductors sometimes refer to the caboose as the crummy. The name may derive from the idea of crew workers leaving crumbs and other garbage all over the back of that last car. Gandy dancers are railroad maintenance workers whose synchronized...
bank walkaway n.— «Banks are quietly declining to take possession of properties at the end of the foreclosure process, most often because the cost of the ordeal—from legal fees to maintenance—exceeds the diminishing value of the real estate. The so...
geek strap n.— «“I myself use a ‘geek strap,’” Ambelang said. “It’s good preventative maintenance for keeping your clothes intact.” A “geek strap,” as Ambelang calls it, is a lower-leg guard specifically designed to prevent shredded pant legs. Mike...
drop table n.— «It’s a short trip for the wheels but a big step in the railroad company’s ability to perform repairs and maintenance on more than 200 locomotives and rail cars that it owns and leases. The engine house drop table, as it is called...
transclusion n.— «These components are then included by reference within documents, which is a practice often called “transclusion.” Transclusion does away with reuse via copy-and-paste, an insidious practice that results in a spiraling loss of...