By telling tales about stardust, I hope we can remind ourselves that we live in an interconnected and beautiful world, full of rare and precious elements. It is our duty to treat it, and each other, with care and respect.”
— Astrophysicist Sanjana Curtis
Category: Crit
Examination, interpretation, appreciation.
Words To Bring Back: “Perfervid”
– Definition: adj. intense and impassioned – Used in a sentence: The perfervid activists had trouble with their blood pressure. – Why: There is something attractive about a three-syllable word replacing a three-word phrase. (Maybe it’s the concisifier in me.)
Word to Bring Back: “Prig”
– Definition: noun a self-righteously moralistic person who behaves as if superior to others. – Used in a sentence: Scratch a prig, find a hypocrite. – Why: To name a thing is to control it — either by voting it…
Private Fame
TO AN AMATEUR SKYWATCHER (in the original sense of that first word), the beginning of the month is quite special; it’s when the new issue of Astronomy arrives. Among that magazine’s many excellent features and fixtures is “Ask Astro,” where…
Words to Bring Back: “Shambolic”
– Definition: adj.; chiefly British chaotic, disorganized, or mismanaged. – Used in a sentence: Our political and cultural landscapes have become shambolic as all get-out. – Why: Because we need a more polite (and adjectival) descriptor than… those in current…
Word to Bring Back: “Amphitryon”
– Definition: (French) n. person with whom or at whose expense one dines – Used in a sentence: My father is a well-known and gracious amphitryon. – Why: Aside from its capitalized Greek origin (Amphitryon was, according to Sophocles, a…
Some people use the word ‘God’ the way white supremacists use the word ‘patriot.'”
— me
Words To Bring Back: “Daresay”
– Definition: v., archaic used to indicate that one believes something is probable. – Used in a sentence: I daresay we need to get out the vote this November, or all will be lost. – Why: You could always and…
IF YOU CAN’T EXPLAIN IT simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”
— Albert Einstein
Pithyism #20-20
EVERYTHING IS EASY — IN HINDSIGHT.
THE AX EXISTED FOR 1.4 million years before anyone thought to put a handle on it.”
— James Williams
Re-Vision
LOVE adv. A DEDICATED SERIES OF related kindnesses and decisions.