WORDS

Graduation Day

Today I finished Lecture 36 of the Great Courses "Secret Lives of Words: English Words and Their Origins," presented by Professor Anne Curzan, PhD.

This has been a very interesting adventure into "Words."

Professor Curzan said that she strives to help people "learn and enjoy language." And she meets her goal. IMHO

She left us with one final word to ponder over:  FOMO (Fear of Missing Out). You will not suffer FOMO in regards to words and their usage if you take Anne's course.  I highly recommend it.

WORDLE

I think it does a disservice to all folks addicted to Wordle when the solution is given out by unscrupulous rascals before some people have even started doing that day's puzzle. How about giving the solutions on the next day instead?

Rascal?

Ambrose Bierce wrote: 

rascality = n. "Stupidity militant.  The activity of a clouded intellect."

Who is a rascal?

Meriam Webster says:  A rascal is "a mean or dishonest person" or "a mischievous person."

Look around at the rascals who get into politics.  Some may start with good intentions, but once in office:  "Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely." I forget who wrote that, but it seems to be true based on what I see and hear.

Cell Phones

What the devil was the world like before cell phones?  Some young folks have never even seen a telephone booth.  

During WWI, a record was held by a switchboard operator who could arrange a long distance call telephone matchup with the proper parties in a little over a minute.  Today, it only takes an eleven-year-old child less than 20 seconds to be connected visually by ZOOM (or such) to their friend vacationing in Europe.

Is that a good thing?

Anyway, I was just surprised when my daughter was able to call me on my broken cell phone. I still can't call out and Google and all other APPs are not working.

Because I have to now do my Wordling via my big PC screen, the APP considers me a new player. 

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