The 'What the fuck!' thread

[footfootfoot]

Originally Posted by jimhelm

ok, but how are you going to pronounce it? like bouquet? or Boca?

It's a Japanese word, so I'd guess Bo-keh, like meh?

[Elspode]

It's Bow-Kah. Spanish for "mouth". Yes, the city is named "Rat Mouth" in Spanish.

[xoxoxoBruce]

According to Wiki, usually BOH-kay, or sometimes BOH-kə, but I still don't know how to pronounce a rotated e.

[footfootfoot]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

According to Wiki, usually BOH-kay, or sometimes BOH-kə, but I still don't know how to pronounce a rotated e.

It's pronounced like the a in about.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Unless you're Canadian.

[jimhelm]

[jimhelm]

interesting read

I first learned about "bo-ke" or boke in 1995, from Carl Weese, who learned about it from our mutual friend the oracular and extreme Oren Grad, who holds eight Master's degrees, three Ph.D.s, and an M.D., and who evidently taught himself Japanese so he could read Japanese photo magazines. (Perhaps I exaggerate these facts, but only slightly.) I then commissioned and published three articles about it in the March/April 1997 issue of Photo Techniques back when I was editor — one each by John Kennerdell, who is an American ex-pat living in Bangkok, Oren himself, and Harold Merklinger, a high-ranking research scientist in the Canadian defense establishment. It's one of the few issues of that magazine that sold out. My own contribution was...er, a letter. I decided that people too readily mispronounced "boke," so I added an "h" to the word in our articles, and voilá, "bokeh" was born. A Google search for the word "bokeh" just now resulted in approximately 13,300 hits. Seems the idea's gotten around.

Actually, to be precise, what I had noticed was not just that people mispronounced the word as it was commonly spelled, but that they had a tendency to ridicule it, making lame jokes about it as if it rhymed with "smoke" or "toke" or "joke." Actually, even spelled boke, it is properly pronounced with bo as in bone and ke as in Kenneth, with equal stress on either syllable. It is a Japanese word meaning, roughly, "fuzzy," and it is used to describe old people with cobwebs in their heads among several other things — including the out-of-focus areas of photographs, which, I'm told, might more specifically be referred to as "boke-aji."

and here's some more tasty knowledge about how it happens

[Gravdigr]

the oracular and extreme Oren Grad, who holds eight Master's degrees, three Ph.D.s, and an M.D., and who evidently taught himself Japanese so he could read Japanese photo magazines.

Holy higher education, Batman!

[Ibby]

Only a WTF in a metaphysical sense. Mostly just a holy shit deep, philosophy and shit picture.

[ZenGum]

Commits the fallacy of composition though.

A physicist is a carefully arranged bunch of atoms trying to understand atoms.

Which is still pretty mind blowing.

[Gravdigr]

I left this pic larger, cuz, I want you to read the big yellow sign dead center (almost) of the explosion.



Shouldn't that read "Entering Vehicle Out of Control Zone"?

[ZenGum]

Holy $#!&!!!

What a moment, and what a picture to catch it.

One of the most important skills in life is being able to recognise those very rare moments when it suddenly becomes absolutely necessary to pull the big red emergency handle NOW!

[footfootfoot]

Originally Posted by ZenGum

Commits the fallacy of composition though.

A physicist is a carefully arranged bunch of atoms trying to understand atoms.

Which is still pretty mind blowing.

Ahh, the fallacy of composition. Trips them up every time!

[ZenGum]

Silly physicists, they're soooo reductionistic!

[footfootfoot]

I was thinking about this idea this morning. Studying atoms in order to understand life is like studying bricks to understand houses when what is of deeper significance is who built the house.

Studying DNA seems, to me, a more compelling subject and of greater purpose.

cf The cosmic Serpent, DNA and the origins of knowledge.