sambarnes's definitions

Louis Braille

He blinded himself at the age of 3 by stabbing his eye out with an awl. He invented what we now know as braille for both writing and musical notation when he was fifteen. He was a talented church organist, and became a professor at the paris school for the blind. Two years after his death the braille code was adopted by France for teaching the blind. Braille was the first system that allowed blind people to read quickly and easily, and the first system ever to allow blind people to write. In the 50s his body was moved to the pantheon alongside other heroes of France. The United States treasury has issued a commemorative coin honoring him, and he has schools, and even an asteroid named after him.

What's the moral of the story? Contrary to what your mom always told you, playing with sharp metal objects isn't just good fun, it may just make you famous!

Louis Braille was blind.

by sambarnes April 2, 2009

cynophagy

(noun) The act or practice of eating dog flesh. Generally considered taboo in most western countries, cynophagy is accepted in eastern and south-east Asia.

I went to a Korean place last night, and I ordered something that turned out to be dog. Cynophagy seems OK to me, it tasted great with rice and pepper sauce.

by sambarnes February 28, 2008

Judas shuffle

(Catholicism) The act of leaving Mass early, typically between receiving communion and the concluding rite, without a justifiable reason for doing so. The Judas shuffle is named after Judas Iscariot, who left the Last Supper (the first Mass/Divine Liturgy) early in order to summon the guards to arrest Jesus.

My brother did the Judas shuffle because he wanted to watch the football game.

by sambarnes February 28, 2008

minipope

The leader of an autonomous Eastern Catholic church, usually a patriarch such as the Maronite patriarch of Antioch. Some churches are led by a major archbishop. Minipopes have a large degree of freedom to safeguard the traditions and theological emphases of their particular church, but they still recognize the authority of the bishop of Rome, who is the patriarch of the Latin church. Many minipopes, like the churches they head, have a counterpart in the Eastern Orthodox or Oriental Orthodox communions. A notable exception is the Maronite Patriarch, who, along with the whole Maronite church, never split with Rome. Some churches, like the Russian Catholic church, do not have a minipope, or even a hierarchy.

The Maronite minipope wrote an apostolic letter to the church.

by sambarnes February 29, 2008

sightling

A somewhat derogatory name for someone who can see well, used by blind people. This term implies that the person so named takes his vision, and the activities that it enables him to do, for granted.

A sightling thinks nothing of hopping in his car on a Saturday morning and taking a quick trip to the grocery store to buy some milk. The same task, for a blind person, takes at least a day of advanced planning, and possibly involves a long bus ride, hours of waiting, or a large cab fair.

A sightling thinks nothing of jogging across the middle of a street during a lull in traffic to get to the Wallgreens on the other side. A blind person must wait at the intersection, listening for a favorable traffic flow pattern for him to cross. This waiting and listening may take as long as an hour at a single corner, and may involve several light cycles before paralell traffic is heavy enough to ensure the person safe passage.

A sightling can drive less than two minutes to a salon or barber shop for a haircut. A blind person, assuming they know the location of a salon or barber shop, must hike the three miles to get their.

A sightling can drive his car to pick up a bag of dog food for his lazy, overfed, understimulated dog. A blind person must walk a mile to the pet store, and pick up a 10 kg bag of dog food, and carry it back to his house for his hard working dog guide, which he couldn't take along to the pet store because he couldn't carry the food in one hand and handle the dog in the other.

The sightlings at Apple won't spend an hour programming a simple screen reader for the iPod.

by sambarnes April 12, 2008

presbylutheranism

full name: the western branch of American reform Presbylutheranism. The protestant denomination which the Simpsons as well as most other Springfieldianites belong to. The term is employed by Catholics to poke fun at the tendency of protestant denominations to multiply exponentially, and to highlight these denominations' homogeneity compared to the ancient tradition of the Apostolic Churches both Western and Eastern.

I attend St. Basil's, but all my friends are protestant... I don't know what denomination, presbylutheranism, I guess, they all look the same to me.

by sambarnes February 11, 2008

crackistan

a neighborhood or area where drug dealers and their customers congregate. Typically this is located in the inner city.

be careful. The bus station you are getting off at is in the middle of crackistan.

by sambarnes March 2, 2008