Word of the Year!

I am dedicating this blog to the assistant pastor at The Quarry Church, Brenton Balvin. The editors of The New Oxford American Dictionary have chosen the word "podcast" as the word of the year for 2005...seriously!
"Podcast," defined as "a digital recording of a radio broadcast or similar program, made available on the Internet for downloading to a personal audio player," will be added to the next online update of the New Oxford American Dictionary, due in early 2006.
From the PRNewswire: "Only a year ago, podcasting was an arcane activity, the domain of a few techies and self-admitted 'geeks.' Now you can hear everything from NASCAR coverage to NPR's All Things Considered in downloadable audio files called 'podcasts.' Thousands of podcasts are available at the iTunes Music Store, and websites such as iPodder.com and Podcast.net track thousands more."
Among the runners up: bird flu (an often fatal flu virus of birds, esp. poultry, that is transmissible from them to humans, in whom it may also prove fatal), ICE (an entry stored in one's cellular phone that provides emergency contact information), persistent vegetative state (a condition in which a patient recovering from a coma retains reflex responses and may appear wakeful, but has no cognitive functions or other evidence of cerebral cortical activity), and trans fat (fat containing trans-fatty acids, considered unhealthier than other dietary fats).