QOF's Interesting Word of the Day
Degauss: To demagnetise, remove unwanted magnetism from (something).
Why it's interesting: When you get bored at work and start messing around with your VDU controls, Degauss is the little picture of the magnet with a line through it. The word originally comes from Gauss, the name of a German scientist who did something with electro-magnetism. To degauss originally referred to protecting a ship from magnetic mines by putting a electrically charged cable (a degaussing belt) around its hull. I just think it's weird that this life-saving bit of kit has somehow given way to a button that makes your screen go ping and jump around.
If you enjoyed that Word, why not reload to see another one? Or even go here to see the whole list?
Where did all this come from then?
I studied English Language and Literature at Sheffield University for three years (1999-2002) and during that time I wrote many, many words, some of which were quite good. I thought it would be shame if no-one saw the words anymore, so below are links for some my undergraduate essays. They all received Firsts or 2:1s so you can copy them with equanimity. Speaking of which, here is a note of citation…
A note on citation
It doesn’t bother me much if you ‘borrow’ my ideas or even my words and don’t cite me. If you want to mention it in a footnote, this website will tell you the right way to do it. But remember – if you just cut’n’paste the whole thing then you’re only cheating yourself (not to mention your teachers, professors, fellow students and examining bodies). And more importantly, the frogs will hunt you down and kill you.
WARNING: END OF QUALITY CONTROL!
Everything beyond this point was done in my own time, for my own twisted interest, and has never been marked or otherwise assessed as being any good. So watch yourself :-)
This here is a brief analysis of government spending by department and taking into account GDP and inflation and things like that. It's in the form of a Powerpoint show, which you can download and save or view in your browser. If you do the latter you might want to make it full screen (press F11 now) because some of the graphs are quite fiddly.