Too true and too sad, Mr. Stales, but when a situation or circumstance becomes too sad one would think that we would stop calling it "ironic" and call it something else. Personally I resist to the teeth any act that would make me seem Politically Correct, yet I think that someone of words should generate a word that would replace "idiot savant", it is in-apt and mean.
Bye the bye, earlier in this thread the word mycterisum was batted about. I wonder if its origin and meaning could be traced to the word mysterium. The word means "one thousand" and is used by numerologists in need of that particular number to complete a task. It's usage presumably dates back to the early Catholic Church when numbers were more magical and, more so than today, politics elected the pope. One method of disposing of a bad Pope was to connect his name to the number 666, the mark of the beast. Using a conversion scale like A=1, B=2, etc., they then added, subtracted, divided, and multiplied in an attempt to prove his Holiness a beast. One Pope who was considered especially bad, had a name that math-ed out poorly. Try as they might the best the numerologists could do was 1666. But damnit the Pope was bad nonetheless, so they invented the mysterium, subtracted it, and the Pope was disgraced.
Milum.
