Definition: 1: marked by or suggestive of flashy vulgarity or crudeness   2: marked by a careless unconventionality : rakish
Quotation:
For the museum, founded in 1917 and guarded by two 18-inch guns from a World War I dreadnought, there is something — well, raffish — in the staging of an exhibition about the glamorous, gadget-wielding, womanizing, devil-may-care [...]

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Google, in its never-ending quest to assimilate all information and make it easily searchable and accessible (not to mention profitable), is adding Google Health to its host of applications. Ostensibly, the platform is meant to demystify the ins and outs of medicine schedules, prescriptions, and patient records. Some people might balk at the [...]

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I came across this Map of US Obesity Trends while perusing the xkcd blag. Very scary stuff. As of 2006, there are 21 states where at least a quarter of the population is obese. That’s a lot of fatties! We have McDonald’s, Lord of the Rings movie marathons, Dancing with the [...]

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Definition: 1: the quality or state of being faithless or disloyal : treachery  2: an act or an instance of disloyalty
Etymology: Latin perfidia, from perfidus faithless, from per- detrimental to + fides faith
Quotation:
When the facts started surfacing in the ’60s, his sole comment was two dry lines about the duke in his diary: “Secret papers [...]

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Definition: 1: lacking nutritive value  2: devoid of significance or interest : dull   3: juvenile, puerile
Eymology: Latin jejunus empty of food, hungry, meager
Quotation:
Reaching for easy irony by jumbling together events large and small, Perlstein piles up jejune incongruities, like: “The month of March came in like a lamb with Frank Sinatra sweeping the Grammy [...]

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(Yes, that guy at the end of the commercial is Robert Vaughn. You may know him from such films as Pootie Tang and Escape to Witch Mountain)
Definition: 1 : a resolving of specific cases of conscience, duty, or conduct through interpretation of ethical principles or religious doctrine 2: specious argument : [...]

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Definition: noun 1: a verbal noun in Latin that expresses generalized or uncompleted action 2: any of several linguistic forms analogous to the Latin gerund in languages other than Latin; especially : the English verbal noun ending in -ing that has the function of a substantive and at the same time shows the verbal [...]

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