The Pharmaceutical Industry Discovers the Letter "Q"

The pharmaceutical industry uses computers to generate possible or suggested names for new drugs, and has been doing so for a long time.

The computers are programmed with algorithms so as to respect some of the laws or constraints of English--for example, permitted sequences of letters.

For a long time, it seems, the computers were not allowed to use the letter q in any proposed drug names. In English, the letter q is almost always followed by u (the exceptions are merely a couple of words which come from other languages).

Now, however, that seems to have changed, and we are seeing drug names with q in them:

Rinvoq. Here that final q evidently could be a k or ck.

Cibinqo. Here, although no u follows the q, evidently the pronunciation is just as if the word in fact ended in quo.

Kisqali. Same comment as above.

Qulipta. Evidently this is to be pronounced with the initial syllable being "kew".

Uqora. Here, as with Cobinqo, we evidently need to pretend that there's a qu rather than just q.

It's anybody's guess why the pharmaceutical industry has started using such weird names. Maybe all the good ones have been used already.

Copyright © 2023.

Some Thoughts (Humorous) on American Sports: Team Names, etc.

I was thinking about the names of sports teams. You know, they usually are connected in some way to the city where the team is resident, e.g., Detroit Pistons (referring to the auto industry, with its cars which have--or at least always had--piston engines), the Houston Oilers (there is a lot of oil around Houston). Here are a few new ones that I'm suggesting.

Flushing (Queens, NY) Toilets

Barking (Surrey, U.K.) Dogs

Alaska Glaciers

Maine Lobsters 

Los Vegas Roulette Wheels 

Charleston Chews 

Boston Baked Beans

Seattle Airliners

Wisconsin Dairymen (There is a Wisconsin team known as the Green Bay Packers. I have no idea--and my excuse is that I am not a native of this part of the world--whether there is or ever was any packing going on in Green Bay.)

Some other thoughts related to sports:

I like to say--jokingly, of course--that (Chicago) Cubs grow up to be (Chicago) Bears.

If the (Chicago) White Sox got mixed up in the laundry with the (Boston) Red Sox, you'd get the Pink Sox.

Polo is played on horseback, right? Then I guess sea horses are used for water polo.

There was a basketball player called Meadowlark Lemon. There is a baseball player named Darryl Strawberry. So--although they were on different teams and even different sports--we've had a strawberry and a lemon. Makes me wonder what other fruits[*] there might be…….

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* I strongly want it understood that the use of the word "fruit," though acknowledged as a slang term for a gay person, is in no way meant here to imply any derogatory comment on LGBTQ people.

Copyright (c) 2023

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