witness mark n.— «The laminations can be designed to accommodate flipping, or alternation as noted above, to average out asymmetries. The design should incorporate a “witness mark” so that the pattern of alternation is evident.» —by Alexander Wu...
tuple n.— «A tuple is neither an exotic fungus nor an adults-only entertainment. Defined with misleading simplicity as “a series of typed values,” the tuple can be to distributed computing what a base pair is to a molecule of DNA: Tuples carry...
kaleidic adj.— «Shackle argued that we live in a “kaleidic society, interspersing its moments or intervals of order, assurance and beauty with sudden disintegration and a cascade into a new pattern.”» —“Nobody Expects the Spanish Inquisition—or Do...
blood and thunder n.— «We hear about the horrors of fishnet burn, a fishscale pattern some skaters get when they fall down on the track while wearing fishnet stockings. I’ve also heard about a practice drill called “blood and thunder,” in which...
food shed n.— «Noting that “(t)he premise of this method of adjusting exposure estimates is that varia tion in the pattern of distribution of the commodity across the population does not lead to significant differences in exposure for substantial...
handprinting n.— «The “Similarity” portion of SET comes from the realization that many of the files being shared contain pieces of identical data. Examples include music files that differ only in terms of tags, movies or movie trailers that are...