HOT TOPICS

That promised heatwave has arrived.  Alexa says its 90 degrees, our outdoor thermometer reads 100 degrees and the actual temperature is 89 degrees.

Our in-house temperature is shown as 79 degrees, and that is with two air conditioning units blasting away.

When I was a teen-ager, I worked in the exercise area of the New Bedford, Massachusetts YMCA, where the temperature was always in the upper nineties.  I liked that hot environment then, but now I have become sissified and would rather that every place should maintain a constant 75 degrees.

Words

In just two pages of "The American Language" by Mencken, I found these tough words:

contumacious = stubbornly or willfully disobedient to authority (apply it to today's politics) 

incommode = (verb) inconvenience (someone)

engaud = to lend a false glamor to

chatelaine = a woman in charge of a large house or a set of short chains attached to a woman's belt, used for carrying keys.

Camrose = a city in central Alberta, Canada.

(But what the hell is a camrose?)

 There is a town in Wales called Camrose and there are wild roses growing along the town's Stoney Creek that are called camroses.

Mencken enjoyed tossing out unfamiliar words. They make us think.

Microscopic Creations

Marc Miskin and colleagues at Cornell have developed nanobots.  These are microscopic robots that can walk around inside your body.  

Someday, these creations will be able to travel through your body and issue medication directly on troublesome tumors and such.

Think about that for a while.

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