Visiting Shtetl-Optimized always brings out the neologista in me. Reading tonight led me to the following idea for a useful phrase:
Front of the envelope calculation A calculation so simple that you don’t even need to use the back of the envelope to carry it out.
Hmm. I’ve heard this expression before. The problem is that it isn’t clear whether the front has postage data on it or not. In the former case, there really isn’t much room, and in the other there is more room than on the back (which often has the inconvenience of folds etc).
Actually, I’m more likely to do a “front of the envelope calculation” than a back of …
If I have an envelope sitting next to me it’s likely to be face up, and I don’t bother flipping it over until I start running out of places to write.
and then there’s this, in nature:
“Entanglement of single-atom quantum bits at a distance”