grok (grok) verb tr.

Slang. To understand profoundly through intuition or empathy.

[Coined by Robert A. Heinlein in his Stranger in a Strange Land.]

"... Well, you have to grok your plants to get good results--get to know them as seeds and as seedlings and you'll really know them as mature plants." Cox, Jeff, Meet your experts in the Southeast!, Organic Gardening, 1 Apr 1997.

All fiction writers invent stories but some go so far as to invent words to help tell the tales. In his 1961 science-fiction novel Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert Anson Heinlein told the story of Valentine Michael Smith, an earthling raised by Martians on the red planet, and in the process helped us grok what it means to be human. This week's AWAD is about words that took birth in novels, stories, and poems and are now part of the English language. -Anu

Y2Rain has gone under the knife! For better or for worse, you will find that everything that you have come to know and love/hate ARE GONE!
So bear with us as we attempt to reconstruct this site into a DHTML masterpiece!

While you are waiting for this transformation, visit this site: Kroger Sucks!

If Microsoft made toasters...
Every time you bought a loaf of bread, you would have to buy a toaster. You wouldn't have to take the toaster, but you'd still have to pay for it anyway. Toaster'95 would weigh 15000 pounds (hence requiring a reinforced steel countertop), draw enough electricity to power a small city, take up 95% of the space in your kitchen, would claim to be the first toaster that lets you control how light or dark you want your toast to be, and would secretly interrogate your other appliances to find out who made them. Everyone would hate Microsoft toasters, but nonetheless would buy them since most of the good bread only works with their toasters.

If Apple made toasters...
It would do everything the Microsoft toaster does, but 5 years earlier.