Showing posts with label Stephen Hawking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Stephen Hawking. Show all posts

Wednesday, November 22, 2017

Rillet – Wordplay Wednesday™ 11/22/17



Streaming … Time … Water … Life  

Some days stream along slowly and pleasantly, while others sweep you along on a torrent of flood waters … kinda like how time passes.

RILLET ( rilสนit) n. – a tiny rill; brooklet. [WW #139]

Uh-huh. So I sorta get “brooklet”—but what’s a “rill”? And what does a tiny one look like?

Well, isn’t just a stream—it’s a “small stream.”

The dictionary is full of definitions like this to confuse and compound the English language. Since rillet’s mommy-word is just two entries above, you’re not left scratching your head.  

Often however, looking up A word, you must waste your time rifling through the 1,000+ pages to a completely different letter section, for a definitive meaning, or decide not to bother. Do they know TIME is our most precious commodity?!

Timemay seem to trickle like a rillet while waiting for Happy Hour—but don’t look now—nearly a year’s worth of Happy Hours have gushed away, in a fleeting torrent.  

Beyond that, all I can say, is I hope the rillet of venom, hate, and vilification of human contact that is penetrating the news doesn’t turn in to a delusional flood that destroys human contact altogether. May as well turn the Earth over to the AIs at that point.

Word Challenge: RILLET. On a bright note … it takes a rillet to join a stream that fills a river on its way to the ocean. Start your week of writing with a noodling rillet.

Write first for yourself … only then can you write for others. (L.Rochelle) 

                       




E-N-D

Thursday, May 4, 2017

Wordplay Wednesday™ May 3, 2017 – Indurate



(Day late and a dollar short … traveling does that to you.)
Avoid this Like the Plague … 

In the 1960s and ‘70s, we were idealistic in our rose-colored glasses with heart. Forty years later, there is still hope and idealism, but it is encased in a superficial crust. We have become …

INDURATE (inสนdลo rฤtสน) vt. – 1) to make hard; harden; 2) to make callous, unfeeling, or stubborn; 3) to cause to be firmly established; vi. – to become indurated; adj. – hardened. [WW #110]

We have become a society of indurated people, who continue to indurate our offspring, perpetuating intolerance, violence, and debauchery.

Cynical attitude? As much as I am a perpetual optimist, I’m indurated in my own way—hardened against the people of the world who find it necessary or pleasurable to prey on others.

As long as the majority rules with indurated, heavy-handed insolence, atrocities will continue and we will proceed on a path to self-destruction.

Ready for Mars? (NASA / JPL / USGS)
Stephen Hawking is likely right—we should leave Earth within the next 100 years, to survive. Not just due to overpopulation and destruction of Earth, but as the Roman Empire demonstrated, “Following the death of Theodosius I, the last emperor to rule a united Roman Empire, the dominion of the empire was gradually eroded by abuses of power, civil wars, barbarian migrations and invasions, military reforms and economic depression.” Sound familiar?

Our current actions reveal, if the attitudes of leaders don’t transform to a STRONG regard for basic moral and political right and wrong, without hobbling our individual rights, we will continue to create debased, indurated societies.

Word Challenge: INDURATE. Consider how we might reverse our unfeeling, callous and corrupt society, as you fit indurate into your week of hopeful writings.

Write first for yourself … only then can you write for others. (L.Rochelle)  

 
                

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