shadow-boxing

With the confirmation that the United States and Israel collaborated on the complex and aggressive computer virus, Stuxnet, that lamed Iran’s nuclear programme, the command and control of war-fighting limned a clear picture, which is coming into sharper focus.

Nontraditional threats, at least the ones that are being paraded publicly, demand a new keenness of response and watchfulness. What is being lent to this quiver—this arsenal, however, sometimes seems like a bag full of equivocations and though not a personal vendetta something to prove, full of hubris and machismo. The legions of drones and agile units at one’s disposal are something outside the purview of checks and balances (only the Congress retaining the power to raise armies but falling below the threshold of expense and native blood) and are not unlike the braggadocio of Iraq and others designed to intimidate their neighbours, regardless of what fangs were behind the threat. America’s behaviour is approaching the limits of might conceded or vested in any democratic government and are a deflection of that same threat, reinterpreted as courtly intrigues (though one may meet their end without dignity or ceremony, carried out from above like a bolt from Zeus) and was former only found in Shakespearian characters and comic book super-villains.

dialect continua or oh rosamunde, we’ll have a barrel of fun

Though still rather persistently disheartening, the myths of formative language years (that the brains of juveniles are plastic enough to easily pick up a new language but adults become too set and rigid) or that bi-lingual exposure results in a poorer language arts skills in both tongues have been debunked.

I’d be happy to attribute my dithering German abilities to shyness and laziness rather than some physical and developmental limitations, and I am finding that when trying to delve deeper than the gist of a article or a conversation, being able to more than follow but to repeat, report and better participate, I get very muddled with the prefixes—those inseparable parts of words (er-, ver-, ent-, ab- and so on) that are more transformative, nuanced than their English counterparts. When I come across a new word (usually in writing and usually something that that I’d just elide over when heard) I try some techniques, memory-hacks, to make the meaning stickier. Ent- as a part of speech can be especially tricky to puzzle out sometimes, for example, but usually connotes to me a casting out or taking off or a loss. The similarly-sounding Ente is a canard, a more concrete concept, and encountering an unfamiliar word, I try to imagine a deprived duck doing whatever root-word Ent- is modifying. It can be jarring to hear and drive some people crazy when things are too mixed, but I also am finding that intentional Code-Switching (Kodewechsel) is also helpful—specifically when all hope seems lost trying to remember a word encountered constantly that still needs to be looked up. It’s rather heavy-handed and nonsensical, but one can plop down a stubborn word into a familiar jingle or marketing phrase and then never forget it again: like “Alive with Vergnügen” or “Sippe of the Cave Bear” or “the committee for Truth and Versöhnung.” Eventually, I think it does stay without the need of employing such silly tricks.

bootstrap or birthright

For a land built for the most part on immigration, it seems sometimes like an arcane technicality that only natural born United States citizens can hold the office of presidency. I found the Birther hysteria undignified and distracting, although I didn't much appreciate California's bid a few years ago to amend the US Constitution so that a cyborg could become president. Turning the tables a bit, Reuters' examined the birth certificate of another contender in the election, illustrating that though a generation removed, the issue invited controversy and interpretation in the other camp as well. The candidate's father was born in Mexico, and once upon a time, sought the nomination of his political party to vie against Richard Nixon as a more moderate choice. The campaign was short-lived but demanded a definition of what a natural citizen is exactly, his parents both Americans. At the time, most judges and experts agreed with his reading. It does not seem, however, that being born outside of US territory was quite accidental, since religious colonies of dissidents were founded there to protest another very special type of non-traditional marriage that the US federal government was against and the family only, it seems, returned to America because of the Mexican Revolution.

halcyon or build your vocabulary

I suppose proper, soothing words for the most part cannot be easily copy-written, which has lead to an overflowing of creativity and confusing ingenuity with naming commercial pharmaceuticals. The talented and entertaining Whovian and blogger Bob Canada has an amusing list of drug names that could pass as SAT-grade vocabulary words. My favourite is:
Cataflam
interjection.
Something the early Jerry Lewis used to bleat out in his movies. "Oy, Mr. Lady, please stop with the hitting and the hurting and the cataflam!"
 It's funny because I don't know what any of these medicines are. What alternative definitions would you come up with for the products in your life?