Coulda been raddichio ad absurdum--the grocers' practice of charging a
ridiculous price for cabbage of a different color.

"root" wrote in message
...
Mark James Boyd wrote:
...
P.S. By the way, what does "reducio ad absurdum" mean? My wife said it
to me, but I don't speak Italian...can someone translate?
...

This is not Italian, this is Latin and should be spelled "reductio ad
absurdum"
(with a "t"). The litteral translation, as you can guess is "reducing to
nonsense",
a method often used in mathematical proofs which consist in assuming that
the
opposite of what you want to prove is true and deducing from that some
contradiction
(absurdity or "absurdum" in Latin).