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AWADmail Issue 728

Sponsor’s Message: “Old’s Cool” sums up our philosophy of life in a neat little turn of phrase - even though our real motto is “Shamalamading dong the doo dang dee.” But that’s another story. Even though it’s kind of too late (what else is new?), we’re offering this week’s Email of the Week winner, Sally Chetwynd (see below), as well as all fathers, grandfathers, and family men everywhere 20% off -- through midnight tonight -- just be sure to use coupon code “SHOP4POP”.

From: Chris Handley (chris redheron.com)
Subject: Your choice of ‘Trump’ words

Even though I am not a USAn, I nevertheless share the world’s concern over who gets to lead you guys. I also have two USAn sons (both naturalised, obviously), and I remember saying to them some time ago that Trump winning the presidency would bring a whole new meaning to the phrase “God Save America.”

Naked bigotry deserves to be called by whoever can do it and by whatever means they have. The wider the message is disseminated the better about what he stands for.

One of my biggest regrets in life is that I did not voice my opposition to the Apartheid government in SA while I still lived there.

From: Anu Garg (words at wordsmith.org)
Subject: Interesting stories from the Net

Period. Full Stop. Point. Whatever It’s Called, It’s Going Out of Style
The New York Times
WebCite

What 12 of the Harry Potter spells from the Movies Translate to in English
Metro
WebCite

It’s Official: The ‘Internet’ is Over
The New York Times
WebCite

From: Richard W. Burris (r_w_burris comcast.net)
Subject: Claude Shannon

I recently watched a “Great Courses” course on information theory. The multitude of Shannon’s insights blew me away. He was one of the people who adapted the thermodynamic concept of entropy to measure information. After leaving Bell Labs, he taught at MIT. According to the course, each week, his graduate students were treated to the new discovery he had made that week. Another factoid mentioned is that he had lunch with Alan Turing at Princeton early in the war!

I was an undergraduate in physics in 1956 to 1960. I took several philosophy courses about symbolic logic. In the first one, we were told about Shannon and introduced to Boolean algebra. I remember an exam question -- to define a 10-bit adder, then use B.A. to simplify it. The point was that, at that time, components were the largest expense and algebraic simplification of the equation was of great economic importance. How many NAND and NOR gates are in the laptop I am using to type this?

I came to the University of Maryland in 1960 for graduate school and most of the summer jobs available for technically inclined students were indeed as calculators -- at the Census Bureau and the Naval Observatory, which published updated celestial navigation tables periodically. Fortunately, I got a summer job at the Bureau of Standards (now NIST), which got my name included in a publication in a peer-reviewed physics journal.

How much the world has changed and how much of that was brought about by Shannon and Turing!

From: Shripad Garge (smgarge gmail.com)
Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--ingenuous

Ah! Claude Shannon! Do you know that he was the first recipient of the Claude E. Shannon award? Frankly, I would never have thought that someone can be a recipient of the award named after the very same person. Don’t know anyone else.

From: Jill Sidders (jill.sidders virgin.net)
Subject: Specious

When I was a little girl I asked my dear father the meaning of the word “sophistry” which I had come across somewhere. He told me to look it up in a dictionary, implanting in me a really useful habit. I have never forgotten the definition: a specious but fallacious argument.

From: Sally Chetwynd (brasscastlearts gmail.com)
Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--feisty

I have thought for some time that “feisty” is related to “fice”, a somewhat archaic term for a small, tough dog. Abraham Lincoln wrote of a fice in one of his rare poems (he only wrote half a dozen or so), a ballad about a bear hunt. The men and the pack of dogs chase down a bear that has been raiding neighborhood farms, and the short-legged fice gets left behind. The fice catches up with the rest of them about the time the cornered bear gets killed. It bounds in and attacks the dead bear, as if claiming the kill for his own.

From: Helen Pringle (justicegd aol.com)
Subject: Feisty

The words “feist” and “cur” have survived to be the names of actual breeds of dog in present day, recognized by breeders and kennel clubs. From Wiki:

Still the source term remains useful as a veiled insult for those so inclined.

From: Tom Freeman (tgcgt75 yahoo.com)
Subject: Officious

Caught on video... Marv Levy, former Head Coach of the Buffalo Bills, calling an official “an over-officious jerk”. One of the great NFL Films sound bites.

From: Dharam Khalsa (dharamkk2 gmail.com)
Subject: Anagrams of this week’s words

Here is my anagram for the theme “Words that have changed”:

From: Anu Garg (words at wordsmith.org)
Subject: Limericks

There are so many voters ingenuous,
whose grasp of reality’s tenuous.
He’ll play the buffoon;
he’ll promise the moon.
If they vote him in, friend, it’s the end of us.
-Zelda Dvoretzky, Haifa, Israel (zeldahaifa gmail.com)

The bachelor, cunning and specious,
Was fickle as he was capricious.
He flirted with ease,
While the ladies he’d tease,
Though they found his behavior egregious.
-Judith Marks-White, Westport, Connecticut (joodth snet.net)

“The diff’rence between his and her mind?
Of the two, I find his a much worse kind,”
the analyst said.
“Unless I’ve misread,
this man is most certainly purblind.”
-Anne Thomas, Sedona, Arizona (antom earthlink.net)

Said Joseph to Mary, “Our sonny
Did something at temple not funny.
The merchants are feisty,
They’re yelling, ‘Oh Christ, he
Turned over our tables of money!’”
-Steve Benko, New York, New York (stevebenko1 gmail.com)

“For using big words like ‘officious,’
Said Tony, “You’ll sleep with the fishes.
You Mexican judges
All carry such grudges
The Donald and I think you’re vicious.”
-Steve Benko, New York, New York (stevebenko1 gmail.com)

From: Phil Graham (pgraham1946 cox.net)
Subject: Mangled mots

“You fell in der vat at der distillery, Otto. Yah, ingenuous.”

Our ocean liner steteroom was specious.

Teen invents braille printer that may cost only $300 purblind person.

Muhammad Ali’s punches came so feisty was a blur.

Wanting to be caught, the two bass begged the angler, “Officious.”