MEANWHILE, many newsgroups generate more heat than light, and Netropolitan has come across a marvellous new word to describe drivel on the Net. As John Pike, director of space policy and “cyberstrategy projects” at the Federation of American 51¶¯Âþs says, there are lots of “factinos” careering around out there.
A factino is to a fact what a neutrino is to a neutron: a neutron is solid and weighty, while the billions of neutrinos that whiz through the Earth every day rarely interact with other matter.
“A factino,” says Pike, “is a proposition with no content (or very little, the point being in controversy) and little relevance to anything else – the smallest possible unit of ‘facticity’.”
