Author: Rev. Joe Dirt

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Word of the Day – Barratry

  • Noun: Barratry
    1. the purchase or sale of office or preferment in church or state
    2. an unlawful act or fraudulent breach of duty by a master of a ship or by the mariners to the injury of the owner of the ship or cargo
    3. the persistent incitement of litigation
  • Synonyms:
    1. contravention
    2. dereliction
    3. disregard
    4. infraction
    5. infringement
    6. noncompliance
    7. offense
    8. violation
  • Usage:
    1. “But Captain Krausa listened quietly, then answered with real poetry–he accused the Losian of every crime from barratry to  mopery and dopery in the spaceways.”
  • Encountered:
    1. While reading Robert A. Heinlein’s Citizen of the Galaxy.

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Quote of the Day – Charles Dickens

“An idea, like a ghost, must be spoken to a little before it will explain itself.” ~~ Charles Dickens

 

 

 

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Word of the Day – Sophistry

  • Noun:  Sophistry
    1. subtly deceptive reasoning or argumentation
    2. sophism
  • Synonyms:
    1.  paralogy
    2. paralogism
    3. false logic
    4. fallacious reasoning
    5. flaw in the argument
    6. inconclusive reasoning
    7. reasoning in a circle
    8. begging the question
  • Usage:
    1. “Privately, he knew that this was sophistry and so did any other Member competent to judge the matter.”
  • Encountered:
    1. While reading Robert A. Heinlein’s Methuselah’s Children.

To see more Words of the Day, visit this link: Words of the Day

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Word of the Day – Liminal

  • Adjective: Liminal
    1. of, relating to, or situated at a sensory threshold : barely perceptible or capable of eliciting a response liminal visual stimuli
    2. of, relating to, or being an intermediate state, phase, or condition : in-between, transitional … in the liminal state between life and death.
  • Synonyms:
    1. transitional
    2. changeover
    3. interim
    4. changing
    5. fluid
    6. in flux
    7. unsettled
    8. intermediate
    9. indistinguishable
    10. inappreciable
    11. imperceptible
  • Usage:
    1. “… and one I’m actually quite good at, hovering in the liminal space between sensitivity and paranoia.”
  • Encountered:
    1. Reading the essay Not Grumpy Cat in Ross Gay’s The Book of Delights: Essays

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Quote of the Day — Albert Einstein

“It is the same with people as it is with riding a bike. Only when moving can one comfortably maintain one’s balance.” ~~  Albert Einstein

 

 

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Quote of the Day — Jane Goodall

“The greatest danger to our future is apathy.” ~~ Jane Goodall

 

 

 

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Quote of the Day — Mark Twain

“The funniest things are the forbidden” ~~ Mark Twain

 

 

 

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Quote of the Day — Nathaniel Branden

“Persons of high self-esteem are not driven to make themselves superior to others; they do not seek to prove their value by measuring themselves against a comparative standard. Their joy is being who they are, not in being better than someone else.” ~~ Nathaniel Branden

 

 

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Word of the Day – Exogamy

  • Noun: Exogamy

    1. marriage outside of a specific group especially as required by custom or law
  • Synonyms:
    1. marriage
    2. wedlock
    3. spousal
    4. relationship
    5. intermarriage
    6. matrimony
    7. union
  • Usage:
    1. “’Most societies,’ she went on, ‘practice both exogamy and endogamy–a man must marry outside his family but inside his nation, race, religion, or some large group, and you Free Traders are no exception; you must cross to another moiety but you can’t marry fraki.'”
  • Encountered:
    1. While reading Robert A. Heinlein’s Citizen of the Galaxy.

To see more Words of the Day, visit this link: Words of the Day

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Ernest Hemingway on Buddhism

Not really… but the following quote from Ernest Hemingway’s short story A Clean, Well-Lighted Place made  me wonder.  Nada is Spanish for nothing.  In my mind I was making a connection with the Buddhist concept of no-self or emptiness and of the concept of suffering.   In actuality Hemingway’s character was speaking of the anxiety or the despair of loneliness (suffering?). But it did give me pause.  In any event, I just love the pattern and sentiments of this excerpt.

 “What did he fear? It was not a fear or dread, It was a nothing that he knew too well. It was all a nothing and a man was a nothing too. It was only that and light was all it needed and a certain cleanness and order. Some lived in it and never felt it but he knew it all was nada y pues nada y nada y pues nada. Our nada who art in nada, nada be thy name thy kingdom nada thy will be nada in nada as it is in nada. Give us this nada our daily nada and nada us our nada as we nada our nadas and nada us not in to nada but deliver us from nada; pues nada. Hail nothing full of nothing, nothing is with thee.”

Om mani padme hum