Tom roots out some new words and writes:

> Osteopornosis: A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit).

In the category of more than anyone would ever want to know, humans are one
of the few mammalian species that actually doesn't have a bone in its phallus.
When it does exist in a species, that bone is called the "baculum", which in
Latin means "little stick." Bacula come in a great variety of shapes and sizes
and are thought to play a significant role as a pre-mating isolating mechanism
in order to minimize the problems associated with indiscriminate species
hybridizations.

But perhaps more importantly, during that time when I taught graduate classes
in evolutionary biology, 20 years ago, I also played on the graduate student
intramural softball team. The team was named "Bacula." Clearly, no one in the
intramural leagues other than the team members knew what the name meant.

But, if you're really interested, you can purchase mammalian bacula on-line:

     http://www.skullsunlimited.com/baculums.html

Of similar interest perhaps, a UNIX back-up program is also called Bacula:

     http://www.sibbald.com/bacula/

although I suspect that the people who named this program didn't know what it
meant either.

Wirt Atmar

* To join/leave the list, search archives, change list settings, *
* etc., please visit http://raven.utc.edu/archives/hp3000-l.html *