The message forum is an ongoing dialogue between classmates. There are no items, topics, subtopics, etc.

Forums work when people participate - so don't be bashful! Click the "Post Message" button to add your entry to the forum.

Joseph D. McCarthy

I'm sorry Mike.  Did you mean "Muggle" and "AI" corrected you.  As far as I know most of us are "Muggles", and I don't think most of us are evil.  

Michael McLeod

whoa. you got me there. I have never encountered that word. "muggle"  - though I can see from the definition once I looked it up that there's certainly a need for it.

James Hamilton, M. D.

Mike McL.,

That word, "fungible", is being tossed around a lot recently in regard to exchanging different commodities for each other.

I suspect it could be related to the word fungi, organisms in the biological world, some of which are capable of changing their morphology during different phases of their life cycles and some that can cause mycotic infections.

Jim

Michael McLeod

sure doesn't sound like fun to me, Jim.

Mark Schweickart

Mike -- Regarding Joe's use of the word "Muggles," I would guess that he was using it in the Harry Potter sense, in which there are two types of people in this world -- those with magical powers, like the students and teachers at Hogwarts, and then there are the rest of us -- the non-magically-endowed, which J. K. Rowling has named "Muggles." Am I right, Joe?

Joseph D. McCarthy

Mr. Mark has won the coveted Bishop Watterson prize for being the most informed linguists.  The prize is a years subscription to the Eagle Review.  All joking aside, you hit it on the nail so to speak.

And Mike, wasn't Funk and Wagnells founded just SouthEast of Columbus (near Lockbourne)?  And are they still in business?

Inquiring minds want to know.

Janie Albright (Blank)

Joe and Mark, I loved all of Harry Potter! I got your reference immediately. 

Michael McLeod

ooooohhhhhhhh, i c.

Now it comes back to me and thanks Mark. But as you can see from above it has a dictionary usage in the world of ordinary human beings that Rowling appropriated towards her own ends. 

It's been decades since I read those books.

and I have a hard time remembering what happened yesterday.

Speaking of yesterday I just snapped off an incensed pompous-ass letter to the dispatch about a story that appeared on the sports page saying that the Bucks "exercised" some demons by beating Purdue.

Could be he was aware of the word's literary lineage and was just trying to be clever. 

Hey love the word usage chatter back and forth so thanks gang. 

Michael McLeod

Kinda sorta still on word usage. This being word usage of a different sort:

I'm just wondering if anybody else is as dorky around cell phones as I am.

I still catch myself holding it to my ear like an old school telephone receiver instead of holding it directly in front of me and speaking straight into the microphone at the bottom like Kirk does with his communicator when he has to say "beam me up, scotty."

James Hamilton, M. D.

Mike McL.,

Good point on the cellphone.

However, that allows people around you to hear voices from the receiver as well as your voice. That could be embarrassing in certain situations, like in a restaurant:

     "Hey, Doc, that abscess you lanced is still oozing."

Jim

Michael McLeod

Just so they don't hear the voices in my head. That would reallly freak them out.

Joseph D. McCarthy

       CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?

Michael McLeod

EH???

Michael McLeod

Some professional writer I turned out to be. I would have messed this up.

This is from the ny times.

Aas I was reading it I realized that in that last section I would have used "was" instead of the conditional "were."

I have a vague memory of learning about the conditional tense - I think that is what they call it - in an english class somewhere along the line. 

Seriously though: how many of you prissy types would have been smart enough to use that? If so my hat is off to you.

I mean I THINK I have said something like "Gee I wish I were better looking." I think I do have that usage in my vocabulary, if only subconsciously. But I'm perfectly capable of messing it up on the page and I wouldn't be surprised if somewhere along the line I have done so and was likely saved by some alert copy editor. God bless copy editors.

The famous blue-and-white Boeing 747 was somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean this week ferrying President Biden to Israel, which is in the middle of a war with Hamas, and the security folks were giving instructions to the traveling journalists about how to avoid, well, dying.

They handed out cheat-sheet pocket-size notecards with directions for how to respond if an air raid siren went off, indicating a possible strike by Hamas while we were on the ground. What to do if there were an attack while we were under the wing of Air Force One on the tarmac waiting for the president to disembark. What to do if there were an attack while we were in the motorcade heading into Tel Aviv. What to do if there were an attack at the hotel where Mr. Biden was to meet with Israeli officials.

Mark Schweickart

Mike -- Not to put too fine a point on it, but as an old English major, I think what you are referring to as "conditional tense" is actually known as "subjunctive mood." 

John Jackson

I think this whole situation can only be sorted out by sentence diagramming.

Joseph D. McCarthy

In other news.  Friday I receive the second shot (Medical, not booze) so that I will once again be on the road.

On October 11th I received my flu shot, hope I didn't get the shot to early.  On October 27th I am scheduled for my Covid update/booster.  The following week, Thursday Nov. 2nd, I plan on leaving about 3:00 A.M. to drive towards Portland,OR.  If all goes well (no snow in the higher elevations) I plan on having a LATE lunch in the Portland area.  A few stops and check into the motel in Clackamas, OR (suburbs of Portland).  

Along the way I will be driving most of the time on I-5 North.  I will pass Mt. Shasta around 9:00A.M. with hopes of seeing snow at the top; generally Mt. Shasta has snow year round.  Then on through Yreka, CA and Ashland, OR.  Thus stretch inludes the highest point / elevation along I-5, and the most worry for snow at this time of year.  In 2018 I purchased a set of chains for the vehicle; they are still in their unopened container so I will take them with me.  The rest of the drive towards Portland is mostly up and down and around mountains until Eugene, OR.

Oh for the great open road, and the CD's I purchased in Columbus at Half Price Stores.

Janie Albright (Blank)

https://www.grammarly.com/blog/sentence-diagramming/

James Hamilton, M. D.

For you wordsmiths out there and relevant to Post #13268:

Medical term of significance to our generation - ​​​​​​presbycusis.

Jim

Michael McLeod

That sounds like a disease only protestants would get jim so why bother us about it? 

In the meantime, great headline in nytimes story about trying to rid florida of caimans, reptiles who resemble alligators but are not native to the sunshine state:

See You Later, Not-An-Alligator!

Joseph Gentilini

Joe McC - have a great trip.  Take some pictures.  Sounds wonderful.  joe

Joseph D. McCarthy

Joe in response to your request, O fortunately will not be able to send pictures for several reasons.

  1.   I am not in the same class as Nina Osborn (Rossi), James Hamilton, Robert Berkemer, Mark Schweickart, or even David Mitchell and Lawrence Foster.

  2.   This summer while in Columbus I gave my Ashi Pentax Spotmatic of fifty some years, with all the various lenses, to my ex-Sisiter-In-Law for my nephew.

  3.   I did say I was leaving about 3:00 A.M. and would arrive in the Portland area for a late lunch.  A little dark for most pictures on the interesting spots without night vision.  Short break for a question for car nuts.  Which cars had Night Vision as an option?

  4.  Did I say I'm not in the same class as others?

On another subject.  For the past three or four trips to Portland I enjoyed stoppping at a Cracker Barrel in a suburb of Portland.  Looking it up recently I learned that all three of the Cracker Barrel locations have shut down.  Guess I'll have to live with my other choices.

Joe

Michael McLeod

For a change of pace:

One of my favorite poems

she traveled a lot, hence the mention of losing rivers, etc.

I love the voice of calm resignation. 

the absence of self-pity, even the hint of playfulness

the quiet rhythm of the words.

Though it is about the inevitability of loss it doesn't depress me. 

when I read it out loud to myself, as I have on many an occasion over the years, always on a whim rather than coupled with any mood or recent experience,  I naturally slip into a soothing tone. 

I love the rhyme of "vaster" and "master." It always comes as a kind of pleasant surprise somehow no matter how many times I read the poem.   I love the title, too. 

It's the only poem I have ever regularly read to myself out loud. which may sound silly but doesn't feel that way and no I don't do it in public. 

It just brings me peace.

I never have quite figured out the last line. Except that maybe she's saying that the art of writing and the art of living are, for her, intertwined. They are different facets of the same pursuit. Which would explain the title. 

Mary Margaret Clark (Schultheis)

IC's third graders sing the Star-Spangled Banner 🇺🇸 every morning after The Pledge of Allegiance and morning prayer 🙏. They really enjoyed learning the history of the lyrics. Thank you third grade for sharing.>p>

https://fb.watch/nVj2f3Gdiq/?mibextid=cr9u03
 

Mark Schweickart

Mike -- I would venture to guess that the parenthetical "Write it" is probably not a comment about the art of writing, but perhaps is rather a more self-deprecating "you guessed it" sort of comment since she had already ended four stanza's with the about-to-be-repeated "disaster." 

Or am I being too obvious and you meant something else triggered your art-of-writing comment?