Word lovers of the world, awaken, unite. The cancel culture Philistines are upon you. * * * The revolution has begun. Treasured tried-and-true words and phrases are becoming outdated detritus. Their twisted carcasses are blowing like lifeless litter in the streets of woke academics. Vernacular and idiomatic expressions are taking on sinister meanings. Life as …
Memory: A faculty for the repository and retrieval of data in the human brain that often provides comic entertainment for the heavenly theater. *** Trusting memory, at your age? The percentages are better by trusting a roll of the dice at a casino crap shoot than relying on memory to remember names. It happens often. …
The War of Independence was a one-sided matchup. England, population 6.4 million, a military of 2.4 million and an awesome armada, versus The Colonies, about 2.5 million farmers and colonists. No Las Vegas bookie would have bet on America. But God did. There’s a rebellious streak in youth. It’s a natural tendency. It thrives to …
Some idioms never die for good reason. This is one of those. * * * We sit here, four of us, jawboning about nothing much; no wives, no wireless and no worries. We’re just waiting until it’s time for the real thing. We have abandoned the tyranny of urgent, the tedium of tweets and the …
Homeopathic panaceas can go sideways on you. Be careful. *** Garlic, a harmless vegetable, right? Wrong. A vegetable, yes. Harmless? No. It’s lethal, a wrecker of marriages and a thorn in the side of friendships. Avoid it. We frequently walk our dogs together on the beach, at least we did until that day. That was …
“Small sorrows speak; great sorrows are silent.” Keillor *** Yesterday was Memorial Day, a day of remembrance for those who have fallen in military conflicts past, as well as honoring those who serve today. It was also six days into the week in which an unspeakable tragedy occurred in Uvalde, Texas. It was a more …
Even the moon gets full. * * * I’m staring at it with disgust, gorging myself with every byte, trying to choke it down. My brain feels like the man who ate fifty hotdogs in five minutes. At least he was able to time out. ‘Enough is enough’ were his final words. But still, it …
“What is truth?” we ask. Get ready, we’re about to find out. The Government is on it. * * * Look, give us the straight skinny, tell it like it is. We’re Americans, we can handle the truth. No misinformation, disinformation and other manipulative distortions that mask the truth. Oops. Did I just type ‘mask’? …
“He who ignores the Law of Probability challenges an adversary that is seldom beaten.” Ambrose Bierce * * * It’s a waste of time to watch paint dry or speculate on the numerical quotient of angels on the head of a pin. The same might be said of trying to compute the coefficient of probability …
Easter opens the door to Spring. Flowers are blooming, leaves are green, and pollen wakes up our slumbering allergies. Nature is coming alive again. For Christians, it’s a time of reflection and renewal in the vicarious reliving of the final days of Jesus’ life. The Jewish Festival of Passover was a time of high religious …