Disappearing words, and other word stuff

The wind chill was -17 degrees last night. And yet I'm still blogging! Watta guy, huh? Okay, let's get to the words.

First off, a missing word. Recently, the IRS did something that lots of people do: they disappeared a word. Here's what they said: "The best bet: file sooner than later." Whither "rather"? I always say "sooner rather than later", don't you? This dropping of words is becoming widespread. Another regular offender is the loss of the word "of", as in "I'm going to look at a couple houses." Whither "of"? "Couple houses" just doesn't sound right to me. C'mon, it's a "couple of houses." No?

Moving along, I have a question. Has the term "polar vortex" been disappeared?" Last year, weather reports were littered with mention of the polar vortex. Personally, I think it scared a lot of numbskull Americans and the powers-that-be decided en masse to kill it. "Arctic blast" is now the preferred term (as it was before the introduction of "polar vortex"). Seriously, listen to your weather cast. Whither the polar vortex?

The next one comes from a friend who lives in Ireland. In an email to me, she said: "This might take a little time. The Irish use the term, 'to put something on the long finger'. [Name] always puts things on the long finger." I've never heard that phrase before so I trotted over to phrases.org.uk to check it out. Here's what I found:

Ruth (at the link) provides this explanation: 

"Someone asked about this last year: its an Irish expression meaning 'to postpone indefinitely', and I think comes from the custom of wearing a ring on the index finger of your left hand if you are not enagaged or married, on the second (long) finger if you are engaged, on the third (ring)finger if married, and on the little finger if entirely disinclined. Hope this helps." Sounds right.

One last thing. I get crazy when people pronounce the word "height" as "hithe". Yeesh. Last night I heard the zillionth person on TV use this pronunciation and as always, it made me think of dyslexia. People with this syndrome reverse letters and confuse their words. I assume "ght" is the problem here. It's a spelling that is apparently difficult for those who are dyslexic. This made me wonder if they'd pronounce "draught" as "drafth", if given the opportunity. I think they would, though I suspect they'd say blight as blight, rather than blythe. If this is true, it's not a hard and fast rule that dyslexics will have problems with "ght". It only happens with certain words, though of course that's just an opinion on my part. (I hope a dyslexic reader will happen upon this post and enlighten me in the comments.)

That is all. You may return to your wind-chilled life now, as will I. Have no fear; baseball spring training is only about two months away. I know it doesn't seem like it, but we're making progress.

Absent blogger checks in

Aw, ya miss me, doncha? I had to put the blog aside for a few days because I had a breakthrough. No, not on the book I'm currently working on ("The Worlds") but on a book of short stories. This is a collection that will be called "Ink".

I love several of the short stories I've written for the book -- but I want them packaged in a certain way. The book is five (or six, I'm not sure yet) short stories that live within a larger short story (I refuse to call it a "novella", which sounds like an ice cream concoction). The inner stories all relate to the larger story within which they live; they play a vital role, each in its own way.

The breakthrough was the addition of a final short story that ties it all together. As usual, the idea came to me while I was watching TV. (Someone should do a study on the volume of creative ideas that pop up while one watches TV; am I alone in this? Happens all the time.)

So now I'm diving back into this book of stories, trying to polish those that are written as I work on the final tale. It's going to be a sparkling collection. At least, that's my goal.

Okay, you may now return to the gloom that descended upon you this morning when you learned that Mitt Romney won't be running for president. Darn!

Hey kids, let's redefine marriage

Despite the headline, I don't really want to "redefine marriage". I want to kill it. I say we toss marriage in the dumpster and treat it like a plague from olden times. 

Seriously, with all these puffy old conservative gits saying we have to pass a constitutional amendment to limit marriage to opposite-sex couples (it sure sounds messy when you say it that way, doesn't it?), I figure the term "marriage" is permanently ruined. It stinks of wingnut.

So let's create a new deal. We'll "join with" others, and these others will be whoever the hell we want to join with -- singles, groups, kids and grandparents, whatever. Let's do this as a time-framed contract where you enter into a joining for five years, one year, 20 years -- whatever works for the two (or three or nine) of you. And at the end of the contract, the joining goes poof. No strings attached.

This way people could avoid divorce and courtrooms. You sign up for five years, you get five years and that's that. You can re-up at the conclusion if that is your (and your partner's or partners') wish(es). Neat and clean.

If you want to protect kids, a couple (or trio or whatever) can take out a contract for 20 or 25 years. Got that? I don't want to hear a woman's voice yelling "Won't someone please think of the children?!" We can do it in a way that protects kids just like dumb old marriage used to.

If everyone starts joining instead of marrying, marriage will die out. It will be seen as a tired thing that old farts used to do. That would be fine with me. So I say let the gits have their goddamned marriage amendment. We'll just move on to something new. And this time it'll be something that works for everyone.

PS: The "historic" snowstorm dropped about...an inch of snow. I've still got power and I don't even have to shovel the sidewalk. (Not that I ever do that, of course. I'm just saying.)

Lotsa snow on the way

My area is about to get two feet of snow. And I'm told I should feel happy about this because some areas are getting three feet. Whatever.

Undoubtedly, I'll lose power. This is what happens when you live in the woods. So if you don't see me here for a bit, have no fear. I shall return! Stronger, finer, taller and with longer hair.

See you soon.

Why religious people fear death

I always wondered about this. Over the years, I've seen many friends and relatives die. One thing I've noticed is that religious people become terribly fearful as death approaches. This always seemed odd to me. If they expect to die and go to heaven, shouldn't they look forward to dying?

On the other hand, dying atheists that I've known, though they weren't thrilled to be dying, accepted death. It wasn't the scariest thing ever for them. It was just death, which they always knew was coming. They wanted their lives to continue but they didn't fear death itself.

But why were the religious people so frightened? I wondered endlessly about this and ended up attributing their fear to the idiotic melodrama they think will take place after they die. The approach of death meant they were going to be judged. And this terrified them...or so I thought.

Recently I began reading Greta Christina's book, "Comforting thoughts about death that have nothing to do with god". In it, she offers another explanation for the fear that religious people experience when death is nigh.

It's because they thought they'd live forever. Immortality, heaven, it was all theirs -- or so their priests told them. Christina's idea is that religion hides death behind a curtain. "Don't think about that. Here, watch this shiny thing: I'm going to transform wine into blood, right before your eyes! Abracadabra. Poof!" Essentially, they've been taught that since they're religious, they don't have to think about death. It's all just an illusion, you see. Religious people are special. Death can't harm them because Jeebus wants them to have eternal life. And so a life passes without reflecting on the inevitability of death.

But the real-life effect of this insidious belief system is that religious people never confront their fears about death. Why would they? They're going to live forever.

So when death comes calling, they freak out. They don't understand the basics, like the fact that people couldn't exist without death. Evolution produced us, and it is a mechanism for change that works through successive generations. The very concept of "generations" requires death. If nothing died, there would be no new generation for evolution to work through. And without that, we wouldn't be here.

It's nice to finally have a satisfying explanation for the rabid fear of death seen among religious people -- and here I'm referring to Christians, as I don't really know people who believe in other faiths. Obviously Muslims seem to think of death as a joy. But note that in neither case are the actual lives of believers helped by their religious concept of death.

Forget the fairytales. We live, we die, and it's okay. Read Greta Christina's book (it's only $2.99 for the Kindle version) if you want to get lots of other helpful tips about death, with an atheist slant.

Death, it's just natural. No boogeymen are involved.

Just wow

Came across this today: 

University of Colorado Boulder researchers will update NASA officials next week on a revolutionary space telescope concept selected by the agency for study last June that could provide images up to 1,000 times sharper than the Hubble Space Telescope.

Just wow. I guess we'll have to consider our current spectacular Hubble pix "low-rez" images. That's so weird. This new telescope sounds fabulous. A thousand times sharper than the Hubble! I can't wait to see the high-resolution photos. Maybe we'll see aliens waving back at us.

University of Colorado Boulder researchers will update NASA officials next week on a revolutionary space telescope concept selected by the agency for study last June that could provide images up to 1,000 times sharper than the Hubble Space Telescope.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-01-space-telescope-concept-image-higher.html#jCp

Quick thing

I often enjoy hearing the words of local news reporters. The news anchors read copy that is written for them by someone else, but the reporters in the field write their own stuff. This is where the hilarity ensues.

Case in point. Two nights ago I was watching the news when a reporter told the tale of a mother and son who were both dealing drugs, though neither knew what the other was doing. They only found out when they were both arrested on the same day.

The reporter ended the story with this absurd sentence:

"Two family members, unbeknownst to one another, swimming in the same sour sea."

Hahaha.