Tuesday, August 23, 2005

Afternoon's work

This afternoon I got 683 words done of a 1000 word encyclopedia article on the GULag due in mid-October. I also started digging one of the post holes (Ph.D. stands for post hole digger) for the gate. I got about 8" of the required 18" down when I broke through to a fire ant nest and a flood of the buggers poured out. I did not get stung, but I did cease digging for the day. I need to figure out a way to exterminate the critters before returning to that project. I also got an e-mail from Canada confirming that they had received my abstract this afternoon. Tomorrow I will finish up the encyclopedia article and send it off to the editor.

2 comments:

Frank said...

Quick question: why do you write gulag "GULag"? I mean, I know it's actually an acronym, but "gulag" is the general word. Is it an academic thing?

J. Otto Pohl said...

Well it is sort of an acronym. The G stands for the Russian word for main, the U the Russian word for administration and Lag is a shortening of lager. The Russians stole this last word from the Germans. But, GULag I take to stand for the actual adminstration. Gulag is a general word referring to the actual camps (ITLs)and colonies (ITKs). At anyrate the assigned topic was GULag so it was an editorial decision.