New Delhi, May 2 -- Memory prices have been going "parabolic," a big investment bank wrote this past week. I gripped my TI-84 graphing calculator in outrage. My email inbox has turned into a parabo-looza, with misuse of that term up sixfold from last year. Ironic? Maybe. Parabolic? Not on my watch.

Parabolas are U-shaped, and not necessarily steep or upward opening. Show me a standard algebra function that opens with a tiny, negative number followed by an x squared, like y = -0.05x², and I'll turn it into a fat frown, not a heart-racing gain, and tell you we've just gone parabolic. And Wall Street had better not get me started on "exponential"-my TI trigger finger is itchy.

But yes, memory prices are up a lot. D.A. Davidson this pa...