Some years ago at a large meeting each person was asked to write a single word on her nametag — a term that somehow captured a key facet of her persona.

There were many not-unexpected choices: MOM for instance, occurred several times. So did adjectives like HAPPY. And there were some less predictable words: BARITONE sticks in my mind for one colleague whom I only knew as a computer scientist.

I thought for a while about labeling myself BOOKISH, or CODER, or some such. But then felicity struck, and I suddenly wrote META on my tag.

Why? Well, it was different ... it was Latinate ... it had a bunch of anagrams (TAME, MEAT, TEAM, MATE) ... it suggested something a bit beyond or outside the box ... and it reminded me of the old saying, "Anything you can do, I can do meta!"

(see DoMeta (8 May 1999) & MetaHominidae (7 February 2000))

TopicPersonalHistory - 2001-11-14

(correlates: TeamWork, EssenceOfEducation, TheWidows, ...)