sambarnes's definitions

repooperation

The process of recovering from a colonoscopy.

My dad came home from his colonoscopy, and now he's in repooperation

by sambarnes February 29, 2008

melolatry

An overzealous customer loyalty to Apple or their products such as the iMac, iPhone, or iPod. from greek melon (apple) and latria (worship) analogous to idolatry. One who engages in melolatry is called a melolator, or iJerk if they are particularly vocal about their distaste for Windows and its users. Not everyone who preferres mac over windows is a melolator, however.

With Apple's slick marketing campaigns and stylish hardware, it's easy to fall into melolatry if you're not careful.

by sambarnes January 2, 2010

ecclesiastical spanking

Noun. A public rebuke by the Pope or a bishop of a disobedient churchman or group, sometimes, but not always involving an excommunication. The act is primarily medicinal, in that it seeks to bring about the return of the errant party to orthodoxy, rather than simply to shun them.

The pope's public rebuke of the illicit and schismatic consecrations constituted an ecclesiastical spanking.

The bishop issued an ecclesiastical spanking by condemning the heterodox ideology espoused by the members of the parish.

by sambarnes January 11, 2009

cynophile

(noun) a dog fancier. Cynophiles often participate in dog shows and dog sports. They may prefer owning purebred dogs who have a pedigree, rather than adopting mongrels from shelters, but this is by no means always true. They may be annoyingly obsessive about their dogs, spending exorbitant amounts of money on them, or may simply consider dogs ideal companions.

My friend is a real cynophile; he takes his dog to compete in conformation shows, the kind they show on Animal Planet.

by sambarnes February 28, 2008

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

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