Gris's Journal

I'm such a geek (No, really!)

I just finished reading this story in Yahoo!News (which I'm going to link and reproduce in full here, as it's short, and probably won't stay there long):

Gondolas left high and dry in Venice

"VENICE, Italy (Reuters) - Gondolas are running aground and hotel docks hang in midair as Italy's lagoon city Venice, more commonly awash at high tide, dries out because of good weather and an unusual combination of planetary influences.

Only the Grand Canal, Venice's biggest and most famous waterway, can still take water traffic, and the falling canal levels have given rise to terms such as "ghost town" and "desert" in local papers.

"The phenomenon is due to low pressure, that is, the good weather that coincides with the syzygy, the alignment of the moon, earth and sun," said Venice's tides office.

The new moon this week has helped push water levels to their lowest point in more than a decade, nearly 80 cm (2.5 feet) below sea level, it said. The lowest fall on record was 1.21 metres below sea level in 1934.

The city assured tourists that water levels would soon start rising again, restoring the romantic look they expect, and reminded Venetians they could check the water level at the city's Internet site www.comune.venezia.it. "

Now, interesting as it is, do you know what enthused me particularly about this article?

Go on, take a moment to ponder.

Right. (This *is* about how much of a geek I am, after all.)

It's the first time I've ever seen the word syzygy used outside of a dictionary, and I was delighted to see it. If you're as much of an übergeek as I am, and thought "Ooh, that would be a killer Scrabble word!"-- don't bother. I looked that up, too, and discovered that Scrabble tiles stingily limit you to two Y's in play per game. (Of course, if you're even MORE of a geek than I am-- perish the thought-- then you already knew that.)

Posted by gris at January 13, 2005 04:26 PM