mass Q How did mass get mixed up with mass? In my family when I was growing up, "mass" meant the Roman Catholic worship service. When I finally escaped to the public university, it meant a collection of people, usually attuned to some common purpose, as in "mass march" or "revolution of the masses." It occurred to me that maybe that's what the Roman Catholic Church once also meant by "mass" but that it had made the counterrevolutionary mistake of becoming rich and powerful and certainly the mistake of losing touch with the masses. At least the masses of my contemporaries who wanted nothing more than birth control more effective than what celibate priests called "rhythm." We never could - and, despite being much less concerned now, still cannot figure out - what rhythm they had in mind. Then I went to physics class and learned that mass was well defined in a way independently of people. Like the proportionality constant relating inertia and velocity or force and acceleration. Like kinetic energy divided by velocity squared. Like, my gosh, energy divided by the holy grail squared, the speed of light squared. Finally mass meant something, so I genuflected and awakened by sleepless lover (see sensible). C 2000 000821 ... Q awakened MY sleepless lover (see sensible) 000821 ... kx21 What is its origin? 020114 ... kx21 Inertia of Soul... 020114 ... kidnappedjesus mass-casualty-response 031008 ... Bardolph Let's not play the guessing game with relatives. 040211 what's it to you? who go blather from