Reading A Dark Knight in Aurora I came across this description of the “Ultraception symbol” that mass murderer James Holmes invented. The Ultraception takes the form of “a circle enclosing an infinity symbol (called a lemniscate) that touches both sides, with a seriffed numeral ‘1’ through the middle.”

The word lemniscate (which, I note in passing, WordPress spellcheck does not recognize) comes from the Latin for a ribbon, or decorated with ribbons, and it derives from a Greek word meaning the same. Now if you’re a mathematician, which I am not, you’ll know that lemniscate has a more technical meaning, referring to a figure-eight shaped curve whose equation in polar coordinates is ρ2=a2 cos 2θ or ρ2=a2 sin 2θ. I gather from the Internet that there are different kinds of lemniscates named after different mathematicians. But I don’t know anything about that. I just thought it interesting that there’s a word for the infinity symbol, which is basically a figure eight turned on its side. That’s something I didn’t know.

Words, words, words