serial monogamy

The custom or practice of having one mate at a time. Each relationship may be serious and committed, or not. The term is used in contrast with strict "monogamy", which can imply just one partner over a lifetime.

Not to be confused with cereal monogamy.
People who remarry (and who have exclusive relationships, and who don't cheat) are practicing serial monogamy.
by Grinning Cat January 19, 2015
mugGet the serial monogamy mug.

slut

A person who enjoys sex like a man but will be shamed or ridiculed for it because they're a woman.

See also: double standard, hypocrisy
That definition comes from a bumper sticker by sexologist Dr. Jill McDevitt, www.thesexologist.org

Also consider that there's no masculine equivalent to this common use of "slut". Men are instead admired for wanting and having lots of sex!
by Grinning Cat November 06, 2013
mugGet the slut mug.

bokeh

The specific quality of the blur in out-of-focus areas of the picture; "the way the lens renders out-of-focus points of light." Small highlights, especially, in the blurry areas of a photo can be rendered dramatically differently by different lenses (or "faux bokeh" photoshopping techniques).

Some examples of different types of bokeh are at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokeh
The bokeh produced by a mirror lens renders out-of-focus points of light as little rings! Cool!
by Grinning Cat March 06, 2010
mugGet the bokeh mug.

Thinkering

Getting down on one knee, curling one's wrist to one's chin, and looking up, mimicking the pose of Auguste Rodin's classic sculpture "The Thinker".

(Created by Dave Silverman, reported by Staks Rosch, "Thinkering: The atheist answer to Tebowing", Dec. 30, 2011, examiner.com)
In response to the fundamentalist craze of Tebowing, American Atheists President Dave Silverman has come up with an atheist version called "Thinkering."
Someone commented that the pose looked too similar to Tebowing, to which Silverman responded: "That's the point. The difference is we don't bow our heads in blind submission, rather we consider and conclude for ourselves."
by Grinning Cat March 10, 2012
mugGet the Thinkering mug.

voting machine

A device that records the choices of voters in an election. It can take several forms:

---
1. (Becoming less and less common in the U.S.)

A mechanical device, where the voter flips small levers next to the candidates' names to indicate their choices, then pulls a big lever to record the votes. Very difficult to tamper with.

---
2. (Very common in the U.S.)

A direct-recording electronic (DRE) machine. May print vote totals on paper, but there is no way for a voter to verify that his/her votes were accurately recorded.

Unlike mechanical voting machines, DRE machines are EXTREMELY VULNERABLE TO FRAUD. In addition to outright tampering with the records, malware can be used to steal a percentage of votes, reassigning them to the rigged candidate. The purported verification mechanisms -- logs, audit trails, "snapshots" of individual voters' choices -- can be manipulated to leave no evidence, corresponding perfectly to the rigged results.

---
3. (The way to use technology for elections we can have confidence in)

An electronic machine that lets the voter make choices (preventing overvotes and highlighting undervotes), then PRINTS AN ACTUAL FILLED-OUT PAPER BALLOT, which the voter can review and either discard (and start over) or cast.

THE PAPER BALLOT IS THE OFFICIAL RECORD OF THE VOTE. (Voters could also choose to fill in a blank ballot by hand.)

Ballots can be quickly counted by optical scanning technology. Importantly, ballots can be RECOUNTED, by hand if necessary.

Counts from the voting machines need not be trusted as anything more than quick estimates or "exit polls". This system makes it difficult to commit the large-scale fraud so easy to do invisibly with paperless DRE machines.

---
A number of Diebold electronic voting machines have been in the news, first for criminally incompetent software and database design, leaving vote records wide open to undetectable tampering, more recently for vulnerability to "computer virus" style malware that can spread from machine to machine through the data cards used to collect voting data.

Making such electronic voting machines widespread is the perfect way to lay the groundwork for large-scale, invisible voter fraud.

There's plenty of information on this on the Web. A good place to start: the Coalition for Voting Integrity, www.coalitionforvotingintegrity.org .
by Grinning Cat April 18, 2008
mugGet the voting machine mug.

endorphin walrus

Someone who's intensely, happily sated, such as after great food or sex, to the point that they can't do anything more than flop around.

(As used by Elsa Moriarty in cracked.com's "The 6 Most Counterproductive PSAs of All Time")
"You're spent after most anything fun, from sex to exercise to an intense round of Mega Man 2. That satisfied, post-coital and -foodal period is one of the best parts of the experience -- when every desire has been sated, and you're so happy you can do nothing but flop around like an endorphin walrus."
by Grinning Cat March 07, 2012
mugGet the endorphin walrus mug.

pencing

(v.) present participle of pence: avoiding a direct answer to a question, as exemplified by Indiana Governor Mike Pence in his interview on "This Week" on March 29, 2015, about the broad "religious freedom" bill he signed.
Examples of pencing:

George Stephanopoulos: "Yes or no: If a florist in Indiana refuses to serve a gay couple at their wedding, is that legal now in Indiana?"

Mike Pence: "George, this is where this debate has gone."

"Is that true or not?"

"George, look, the issue here is that, y'know..."

"Yes or no: should it be legal to discriminate against gays and lesbians?"

"George, you're following the mantra of the last week online, and you're trying to make the issue about something else."
by Grinning Cat April 01, 2015
mugGet the pencing mug.