ARE WE RESPONSIBLE??

We are told that older folks like us  are the source of many of the world’s problems today. But are we really responsible? I got an e-mail recently which asked  that question.  The sender considered  that we are not responsible for  removing the following: The melody out of music, The pride out of appearance, The courtesy out of driving, The romance out of love, The commitment out of marriage, The responsibility out of parenthood,  The togetherness out of the family, The learning out of education,  The service out of patriotism, The Golden Rule from rulers, The nativity scene out of cities, The civility out of behavior, The refinement out of language, The dedication out of employment, The prudence out of spending, The ambition out of achievement or God out of government and school. Certainly not as far as I am concerned!

          Group Selfie Anyone?

English teachers understand that language is dynamic and that it changes and evolves over time. Old words become archaic and fall by the wayside, others are modified.                

And people develop their own regional jargon. On a trip to Australia, after I asked for direction from a local in Sydney he replied for a minute or two. I thanked him and we moved on although we had understood only a few words!

People create words when they find nothing suitable in the lexicon. My mother used to talk of the half-season, the first warm days of spring when you encounter people still wearing their winter jackets while others show off in shorts. Very appropriate I always thought.

The English language has over a million words. And the number continues to increase. Many become part of the language landscape gradually, and some of them quickly fall out of usage. Case in point, in 2006 the verb pluto (meaning devalue, as in: I was plutoed when I lost my job) became popular after the planet lost its status, but the word itself seems to have lost its status nowadays.

The Oxford English Dictionary regularly publishes a list of new words to be included in its latest edition. Some of these words may have been in common usage for some time but they thus become formally confirmed.  Their official word of the year for 2013 is selfie which we all know means a self-picture, sometimes with one or more people. But the word knows no bound. There is helfie, a picture of one’s hair; belfie, a picture of one’s posterior; shelfie, a picture of one’s books; etc.    

Other new words that caught my attention include shvitz, a sauna or steam bath; cyberespionage and cyberspying whose meanings are clear. But there are also some phrasal verbs: gin someone up, which means arouse strong feelings in someone; death glare, a hostile look directed at a particular person; food coma, which refers to the lethargy we have all experienced after eating lots of food.     Teenagers seem to favor certain words at certain times. Awesome is now the word which applies to almost anything and anyone. But, let’s not forget that cool is still very much in usage, even as a verb. One day when I asked my granddaughter if a certain top would look good on me, she replied, Try it on and I’ll coolify it. Says it all, don't you think?

Spin has many meanings. While we are all familiar with spin the bottle, being a spin doctor is a latter-day definition which describes what politicians caught in possible career-ending dilemmas become. But the most creative use of a spin can be found on applications for dating services when no-longer-quite-as-young people find all sorts of ways of avoiding terms like chubby or balding, preferring things like warmly hugable. Perfect for a selfie!

         

Changing Memory

I don’t know about you, but I find that many people in their middle years seem to enjoy nothing better than living in the past. Their retrograde memory takes them through a rosy nostalgic distortion of the good old days, or at least what they consider to have been the good old days. To them, everything was better in nineteen-forgotten. Somehow crime did not exist, family life was perfect, people were more polite, and so on.

And then there are those with a selective memory. They remember only those things they want to remember. For some it’s some past hurt they have nurtured for decades because they hope to, some day, be vindicated. What’s the use? As far as I am concerned, a selective memory can be put to better use by rejoicing in reliving happy events, while throwing the hard facts of pain and heartbreak out the window. After all, do we really need to overload our memory bank with what is best left forgotten?

Someone said that a clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory. While it may have been said in jest, there is some truth to that statement. As the years pile on, happy are those who disregard the less-than-perfect aspects of the past to concentrate on the present. After all, we cannot go back to change history, and ruing what we may have done and might do differently today is a waste of precious energy. For me, there is much too much living on which to concentrate at this very moment.

 

 

 

Technology’s  Wonder

I don’t know about you, but I’m always impressed when I read about some new technological discoveries. And when you think about it, the inventions we have seen since the dawn of the century are not only amazing but coming along so rapidly they are dizzying.

          Technology keeps on keeping on. New advances now making full use of the brain are the wonder of our age as they help the disabled. Case in point, the theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, who has suffered from ALS for decades, has been able to continue his work despite his ever-increasing physical limitations. At one point, keyboards were adapted to obey his voice commands, but these days Hawking writes using his brain. A chip in his eyeglasses makes it possible for him to pick up radio waves from his mind and transfer them to his laptop so he can type mentally. Amazing or what?

          And other disabled people who have a chip inserted in the brain and then connected to a laptop are able to mentally operate a wheelchair and household appliances, surf the net, write e-mails, even if they are totally paralyzed. The implanted chip is a sort of brain pacemaker about the size of a dime. What a welcome advance for so many paraplegics.

          And for us who are no longer as young as we used to be and who may fear dementia in the future, technology may have a welcome solution. Researchers are working on the possibility of inserting a chip/pacemaker in the brain of people with memory problems that would upload memory. That technology is more than mind-boggling, and when you consider the number of seniors who suffer from dementia, it would amazingly redefine the golden years for an awful lot of people.  

          And who knows what other advances we’ll see in the next few years. Hoorah for our technological age!