Yes, there is!
The term is grawlix, and it looks to have been coined by Beetle Bailey cartoonist Mort Walker around 1964. Though it’s yet to gain admission to the Oxford English Dictionary, OED Editor-at-Large Jesse Sheidlower describes it as “undeniably useful, certainly a word, and one that I’d love to see used more.”
– From typography.com
Whenever you hear a scary story about some common food or ingredient being toxic, remember this fundamental principle of toxicology:
It’s the size of the dose that makes something poisonous.
I’m quoting from StatsBlog, which is run by the Statistical Assessment Service at George Mason University.
A recent sad story about a British woman illustrates the point about toxins.
Tragically, Dawn Page, who is now 52, was persuaded by a nutritionist to go on a detox diet that required consuming an extra four pints of water per day and reducing her salt intake. Within days, she began vomiting. Her nutritionist advised her to increase her water intake to six pints and cut back further on salt. Before a week had passed, Page suffered a massive epileptic fit because too much water and too little sodium in her blood (hyponatremia) caused her brain to swell. She now has permanent brain damage.
The point is not that drinking water will kill you. The point is that it’s the dose that counts.
– Photo by obo-bobolina on Flickr
You may not have noticed, but I’ve been spending a lot working adding cool technical features to this Web site:
If you’d like to receive an email every day I post to this blog, then click the link for “Get updates by email” link at the top of the sidebar to the right and follow the instructions.
If you prefer using an RSS feed reader, you can find a link for “Get updates by RSS” right under the email link.
If you don’t know what a feed reader is but you’re interested in knowing more, watch this great little video from Common Craft:
Also in the sidebar, I’ve included a little widget that lists my upcoming music gigs. If you click on the link, you’ll find more details on every show.
Plus, you can subscribe to the new shows widget as a separate RSS feed, but I’ll likely post about new shows in the main blog, too.
When you click on a headline, you go to a page with just one individual post and its comments. At the top of those pages, you’ll now find links for emailing and printing posts.
Under each post on its individual page, you’ll find five or so other links that may or may not be related to the post above, depending on if the posting robot had its coffee or not.
I hope these features are useful to you.
The girls taught us all how to play a card game called Baloney!
An entire deck of cards is dealt, and play goes around the table starting with player one being ace, player two being two, etc., through king and then back to ace. Each player places from one to four cards face down on the stack and says, for example, “Two aces.”
If no one challenges, play continues to the left. But if another player thinks it’s a lie, that player shouts, “Baloney!”
If the cards are not what the person claimed, the person who played those cards picks up the entire discard pile. If the cards are what the player said, then the challenger picks up the discard pile.
First person to discard his entire hand wins.
I’ve installed the new blog software and a great, sturdy, customizable new theme. I’m very happy with the bones of this new theme, but you know I’m going to have to tweak the colors, layout and side pages.
I especially love the theme developer’s commitment to beautiful typography on the Web. That counts double for me when I choose a theme.
Let me know what you think and what should be added.
BTW, this marks the end of my experiments with Twitter and Tumblr. I can’t do everything!
All my favoritesSubscribe to our e-mail newsletter to receive updates.
© 2012 Jon Swerens. All Rights Reserved.
Powered by WordPress. Designed by 
