In a few days basil.CA enters its fifteenth year. I’m very pleased. Here’s a post from its first year:

I’m pushing middle age, and only this morning did it dawn on me that the words “perturb” and “turbulence” must share an etymological root. Yet somehow I am allowed to send emails to friends and colleagues and even my clients unsupervised. (For those few who haven’t been clued in yet: Both words derive from the Latin turba, meaning confusion and such.)  I am looking for a way to redeem myself and think that nothing less than coining and popularizing a new word will do.  This is our new word:  PERTURBULENT, as in, “Your mother needs to switch to ginger ale, because she’s becoming pretty … perturbulent.”  The word turns into a nifty noun, too: “Perturbulence is your mother’s middle name.” – 19 May ’02

The neologism never caught on, alas, though basil.CA has, among an esteemed elite. Thank you, dear readers.