Dromes, Phones and Graphs

Early in September in this year of quadrennial madness, I had written to Dr. H.K. Wombat at his retreat in the Alpujarras in Spain for his prediction of the outcome of the Reagan-Mondale contest. Weeks elapsed without an answer, and I supposed that the worthy marsupial had either gone walkabout or was again engaged in the matters of international intrigue which had taken him to Spain in the first place

\u27Or\u27 Son Visits The Escorial

I wended my way down the walk to The Wombat\u27s winter wickiup overlooking the Wrapahammock River. It had stormed the night before and the landscape was covered with what Iranians (the whilom Persians) call barf, but when we English-speakers more sensibly refer to as snow. The Wombat\u27s chatelaine, Pocahontas-like in a feather chaplet, purringly raised the weighty woolen blanket serving as a door to admit me. Gazing on her feline svelteness and chrysoberyl eyes I reflected that my friend must be a secret Encratite or Hieracite not have married this direction descendant of the Marquis de Carabas\u27 right bower

Ultracold polarized Fermi gas at intermediate temperatures

We consider non-zero temperature properties of the polarized two-component Fermi gas. We point out that stable polarized paired states which are more stable than their phase separated counterparts with unpolarized superfluid region can exist below the critical temperature. We also solve the system behavior in a trap using the local density approximation and find gradually increasing polarization in the center of the system as the temperature is increased. However, in the strongly interacting region the central polarization increases most rapidly close to the mean-field critical temperature, which is known to be substantially higher than the critical temperature for superfluidity. This indicates that most of the phase separation occurs in the fluctuation region prior to superfluidity and that the polarization in the actual superfluid is modest.Comment: Final published versio

Word-Crossed Characters

It was with great anticipation that I entered Dr. H. K. Wombat\u27s study through the door held open for me by his attractive housekeeper. I found the learned marsupial seated behind his desk, a scalret beret on his head and a recent newspaper in his hand. Glancing at me, he signaled me to sit in the comfortable Louis Quinze fauteuil where he is accustomed to seat his guests. Finishing his reading, he tossed the open paper down, and as it fell open across his desk I could not help noting that the article he had been reading dealt with the status of women in Sweden

Mama, Me Shemighvinianebia

Wombat, Wombat, Wombat! muttered I, handing the list back to the amiable beast in question

Ronald Reagan and the Fateful L

The 1980 presidential race was going to be close, they said -- too close to call. To obtain a logological view of the outcome, I paid a visit in September to my friend Dr. H. K. Wombat, an ologist in everything having to do with words and tongues. The diminutive authority received me in his study, the Marsupium, seated behind a wide desk piled high with Pauly-Wissowa, Du Cange and other arcane volumes. His tiny, sharp eyes belied the bluntness of his face. I knew that he had no mental fur except upon his chin

Medes in the Marsupium

The ancient world had to deal with its Media, that savage land whence came barbarians to ravage the neighboring empires. We, in turn, have our Media with their unstories celebrating sweat-freaks charged with carrying or propelling balls of differing sizes and shapes from an improbable point of departure to an even more improbable destination, detailing drug busts of jet-setters and car makers, and chronicling the concubinages, miscarriages, and splits of movie and TV facemakers distinguished primarily by busts of another kind. Therefore on a recent warm and oppressive afternoon in an attempt to escape for a time the attacks of the modern Medes I availed myself of a standing invitation from Dr. H.K. Wombat to visit him in his study, The marsupium, to discuss amphibologies

A Comber Comes a Cropper

It was along toward the autumn of the year that I found Dr. Wombat, the learned logothere, lying reading under the spreading cover of a beech, a picnic basket at his side. Surveying his classic pose I remarked that he should be reading Virgil\u27s Eclogues

Gypsy Hobby Gry

As I dismounted from my mule in the courtyard in front of the low two-storeyed gray-stone farmhouse, the windowless door opened and out stepped a besmocked Dr. Wombat. Greeting me and my mule with equal cordiality, he ushered the latter into a spacious room on the ground floor and me to a cozy parlor on the second where Mlle, de Carabas was roasting chestnuts. Soon we were all seated before the grateful fire, drinking eggnog, and exchanging news. The masia was about twenty miles inside Spain from Port d\u27Oo

Beyond Malayalam?

We wordsters owe a debt of gratitude to the thousands of indefatigable delvers in the mines of language who bring out the ore which we smelt to fashion our tools and toys. Let me illustrate this by singling out an important and fascinating book by C. F. and F. M. Voegelin, a husband and wife team of linguisticians, called Classification and Index of the World\u27s Languages in the Foundations of Linguistics Series under the editorship of Prof. Charles F. Hockett of Cornell University, a contributor to Word Ways, distinguished linguistician, composer, poet, and doughty marshal of the hosts of the Hockettites in their jihad against the Chomskyites