"Maybe just once this is one of those 'internal' problems"

I had to kick a kid out of "reduced distraction" small-group testing today for being too distracting. This... this has defined my entire experience with the school system in one stunning metaphor.

Then and than

Both were the same word in OE: thanne (thaenne, thonne) (spelled with a "thorn", but don't you worry about that). So now, whenever you invariably mess than up, just smile and say you're not going to conform to the vagaries of Enlightenment Era scholars and instead prefer the true English way of using conjunctive particles. Similarly, you could also say you're doing it in solidarity with the Dutch, who apparently only use "dan" for both, but it's probably best not to bring the Dutch into this.

Name of the Day

Xzavier.

His race is "Mu", which I understand to mean he is descended from the proposed "Lost Continent" in the center of the Pacific Ocean whose remnants can be seen in the small islands of the Pacifc, with Hawaii and Easter Island being the Eastern borders and the Philippines the Western.

Of course, according to James Churchward, a leading writer in the realms of hypothetical continents existing before the historical accounts of present man of which there is no geographical, archaeological, or most especially written record, all mankind would in fact be descendants of the Muvites. As such, Xzavier's parents were clearly playing semantic games with the child's racial identification, which is absolutely ridiculous.

Idiomatic != Idiotic

Latin authors do not say "I march," they say iter facio, "I make a way/journey/trip/march" (the same iter as in reiterate, "to go that way again").

This is, of course, absolutely fatuens stupid, and I cannot for the life of me imagine a reason for it. I've even tried to find some article on why they might have done this, but I guess actual scholars have a lot more important things to think about than this. Luckily, however, I realize that if I need a model to explore the development of absolutely insane language constructions, I have no need to look further than my own dear English language.

As such, I can only laugh viciously at the thought of students in two thousand years studying English and trying to figure out why we use the phrase "was like" to mean "said."

Think about it, we totally do.

Fashion 100 years ago in London

Tattooing Is London’s Fashionable Craze, 1910

Interesting article, but I just want to highlight the fact that the author seems to be "The Argonaut" and that is awesome.

(Mis)spelling names!

This is kind of a fun article: Complaint Box | Brittney, Brittny, Brittneigh

It's about how a lovely name like Brittany has been mangled by the unwashed masses to the detriment of not only the poor children named Britney/etc., but to all the normal "Brittany"s, anybody else who is not their parents, and to language in general. I agree with the intentions of this article completely, but it would be remiss of me if I didn't say this fella was full of crap. The primary reason comes in his stunning, sweeping conclusion:

"Misspelling a child’s name won’t make Junior special, creative or unique. Y’s and I’s are not interchangeable..."

My complaint here is that Brittany is a corruption of the Latin (Greek originally? probably) Brittania, describing the islands off France, which later came to also describe the little French peninsula opposite/south of England. Maybe if I had a daughter I would name her Bretagne, because if I really felt a connection to the French-conquerors of my generally Anglo-Celto-Nordic identified ancestors (though the mingling of bloodlines here would make this a needless distinction given any serious study I imagine), why wouldn't I keep the French version of the name? At least they just flat-out changed it instead of committing Mr. Paul Schmitdberger's ultimate, highly Anglo sin of "interchanging y's and i's".

But really, stop giving your kids stupid names. Anglicizing words because we have different spelling conventions for consonant i's is one thing, but most of you are just making crap up and it makes you look at stupid as Mr. Schmitberger's inane little rant.

Reading a test

When reading a test I try to conform the paragraphs to some kind of metrical scheme.

Writing a final

Differences between writing a final paper and writing a final (test... to give):

Student: Stay up until 8AM, grab a nap before class; don't sleep because you're so amped up anyways; unless of course in your final read-through you forgot something, because then you're hosed
Teacher: Stay up until 3AM, you can always finish that last question before printing it up... and if not we just won't have that question will we?

Advantage: Teacher

Student: Print right before going to bed at 8AM; wake up, staple, and go. If you forget a small part, too late now right? And who cares if you get a B (or C?), you've done well the rest of the class right?
Teacher: You think the copier's going to work the day of or the night before the test? Day before printing/copying is a must; than look like a moron when you notice the embarrassing typo that you're not going to fix.

Advantage: Student

Student: Think about the paper a week before. Outline a little two days before. Look at your outline 12 hours before it's due; what were you thinking? Scratch all that and write from the heart, it's more sincere. Edit-as-you-go or spew-then-fix, either way you're really going to be writing this same paper 18 times and taking the best parts from each paper and trying to tie them into a coherent theme.
Test: Grab questions from test bank; modify as needed. Delete first and seventh question, those are stupid. Replace with the exact question you begin or end every class with (ex, "Which state of matter is the least dense?"). One bad question does not a bad test make, and you're kind of a hero for throwing out a freebie.

Advantage: Teacher

Student: You're being graded, but it's all done. Nothing you can do now. Go to bed.
Teacher: Try reading a book for 2 hours while being interrupted every 8 minutes. Take a deep breath as you check the clock when the last person leaves. What time is it? Grade-o-clock! Have fun!

Advantage: Student

Student: *snoring*
Teacher: Okay now time to do final grades

Advantage: Student

Student: -$$$$
Test: +$
Advantage: Teacher

Overall winner: Both at the same time!

Oh those Jesuits

A graffito scrawled high up on the inside of a bathroom door in a little used lavatory at the lowest level of Donnely Science: "Never go through life without an ambition"

I do not think it means what you think it means, or does it?

"Common sense isn't, but deliberate obfuscation isn't even less."

Involability of the Body

When the health assistant at the school was instructing us how to use an epipen on a student having a reaction, I knew it was a demo needle; as in there was no actual needle, just the shell. I knew she wasn't jabbing me with anything. I also knew that it was completely unintentional that she chose to use me as her example student because I specifically mentioned my lack of knowledge had a direct correlation with my fear of needles. It was proximity, not maliciousness. She was going through the same motions she had done every demonstration for every field trip meeting every year. There was nothing overtly aggressive about it. If anything it was lethargic, a meaningless motion repeated ad nauseum into which went little thought.

None of this, of course, was of any help when she held the tube of impending doom in her hand like a knife and jabbed it, as slowly as she did, which was actually very slowly, at my thigh. So when I say I jumped a foot in the air and nearly fell of the desk I was sitting upon, I say so with the full understanding that it was a purely instinctual reaction into which no person in that room could have until that moment given a thought to.

And yet, despite having been bitten rather recently, that was the scariest moment I've ever had in any school... ever.

Many might call that cowardice, but I have decided to view it as an adherence to the ancient notion of male inviolability of the body. According to her, many men, even the toughest men I might know, actually have a huge fear of needles. According to my model this makes complete sense, since only the toughest men would feel such a strong reaction to a violation of the body's integrity, and thus the tears of fear and the adrenaline that pumped through my system like a dam bursting after great floods are only further signs of my masculinity.

And now I know how to use an epipen!

Poem of the Every Few Days?

It is a little over a week since my last (and first) post about this, yet I have been going full hog on these poems. "Ode to the West Wind" is not what I would call "performance ready", but it is definitely memorized. I have some awkward pauses here and there when I am really over-thinking the words and what comes next, but I've found that by focusing on the meter the words flow naturally. Still, I need to be able to start everywhere.

However, I have also memorized (though I admit it's short[ish]) "Ozymandias" and would consider that "recitation ready" and I am quite a good way through "Porphyria's Lover", by Browning. It's a rather dark, Gothic poem so I didn't want to memorize it during the school year (in case I dropped my cheat sheet out of my pocket), but I figure having a "spring break" time limit would help motivate me to memorize it as quickly as possible. At this rate it's looking like a poem a week is very doable for me, though I have to worry a lot about size.

"Ode to the West Wind" was very difficult and it's still not very clean because it takes so much longer to run through any time I want to practice it. I don't like a lot of smaller poems, and my migration to "Porphyria's Lover"-length poems, which is shorter than "Ode" but longer than the rest, is about where I feel comfortable, but I don't know if it is as utilitarian. The difficulty is exponential, not linear, and people are not likely to want to hear a longer poem. The shorter ones have been moderately well-received because they are said and then done, and some have some fun couplets that I can whip out for the situation ("My Name is Ozymandias King of Kings / Look on my works ye might and despair") without having to recite the full poem (one reason why I'm doing this). There is also a considerable benefit to quantity over quality (length, not goodness), because people don't want to hear the same poem over and over (or twice, most of the time). In this case I really shouldn't be memorizing longer ones.

But then I stop and realize nobody's listening to me. This is possibly the third most narcissistic undertaking I have ever initiated; I'm just going to memorize whatever I like and be done with it.

After "Porphyria's Lover" I think I'll begin memorizing as much of the "Odyssey" as I can.

I can start my own list of "funny test answers"

"How can a person have a trait in their genes but not express (show) it?"

Answer: Daily Double

"If one of there (sic) parents sleeps with a lot of people."

In a completely unrelated incident another student gave an all-too-appropriate response to this answer.

"Oh, there's a whole new bar and it's lower than ever, and I'm gonna make it look good when I go sailing over it."

Semicolonoscopy (ie: takin' a look at the semicolon)

The semicolon is a spectacular bit of punctuation invited by the Italian printer Aldus Manutius, who also invented italics. Unfortunately, while italics are easy to use (for titles, when you want to show that you're saying the word in a loud/strained voice but feel that all caps makes you look childish, or when something is in lingua alia), people are afraid of the semicolon. It's probably the fault of Microsoft Office, since that stupid little paperclip suggests it at the most bizarre times and everybody finds it easiest to just ignore the semicolon rules and never use them.

Wikipedia has a great article on semicolons that breaks down its various uses, but I'm not quite sure I personally am comfortable with all of them. Using it for sentences which are also separated by an adverbial word/phrase (like their "however" example) seems unnecessary to me; without the "however" the sentence becomes "I like to eat crocodiles; I don't like to be eaten by them." With "however" included (which was included before the second clause and separated by a comma), the second sentence stands on its own, opposing the original. The clause "I don't like to be eaten by them" doesn't really stand on its own; it has no emotive force. It relies on the previous sentence for its impact, and as such a semicolon would link it to the original without putting it in opposition to it; it is a subordinate clause that happens to be a full sentence.

This idea of "subordinate clauses that are full sentences" is one I haven't run into anywhere, but I will also admit I haven't looked very hard. However, it's useful to me because it's something we do, verbally, all the time. Think about some time you've said something and then, without using a linking adverb or coordinating conjunction, you've tacked something on the end. "You are going to regret this; you don't know it yet." If you wanted it to be concessive, you would conjoin those with "but", or if you wanted it to be a threat throw in a good 'ol "and"; both of these words are logical conjunctions with meanings of their own more than just generically conjoining sentences, and that is the beauty of the semicolon!

The semicolon is a pause; it provides for a generic, almost completely emotion-free conjunction between a sentence and some other clause. "And", "but", "or", and all those other conjunctions rely on some synchronocity between the two clauses; if they were logical statements the truth value would depend on both, or at least both would have to be addressed (see what I did there?). With a semicolon, the second sentence is a clarifier, a way to add a little extra to your previous thought without creating any truth-value attachments or associations. In short:

1. You have just said something that needs a little clarification
2. The best way to add this little extra "something" would be with a full clause
3. It has no reciprocity with the previous statement; maybe it is even a little redundant, but it has no concessive or additive value, and thus no need for a conjuction or connecting adverb; it's only there to clarify the previous sentence.

In this case, a semicolon is your best friend; it's like a period that saves you a trip to the "shift" key. If you still aren't sure about it, just think about it as you speak throughout the day; you will be surprised by the number of times a semicolon would apply, and please don't take my increasing abuse of semicolons as the article developed as a model of appropriate semicolonization. I really, really have just been waiting this entire article to make that pun.

Fun fact: semicolons may also be used as a serial comma for lists of lists. Thank you, Wikipedia, because that is awesome and I will now go out of my way to make lists of lists to use this newfound knowledge.

"Semicolon." Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 1 April 2010. Web. 3 April 2004.

"Going full hog"

I'm not sure I can fully support this metaphor.

Testing Violation: Choked to Death

So today during the short break between sessions I got a cough drop. The room was hot and dry, and I didn't want to keep distracting the students with my coughing (because at that point I felt like breathing too loudly would have been anathema). However I forgot to take into account my general stupidity and halfway through finishing my coughdrop forgot about it and swllowed it.

Now I am writing this so it means I lived, but during that half a second where I was unsure if my epiglottis was going to close in time to save my life the only thing that ran through my mind was, "if I die this is totally going to be a testing violation." I guess my mind figured there'd be plenty of time for the flashbacks and the lights and all that other "dying" nonsense after we addressed our immediate concerns.

Even as the coughdrop slid down my trachea, though, and I could feel the burning hot wintery freshness enveloping every sinus cavity from the back of my throat to my ears, I could not help but imagine the stir this would have cause at every school around the country during MSA orientation meetings.

Administrator: "And remember, no staff member is allowed to have any mints or cough drops or anything of the like during testing."

Teacher A: "Why?"

Administrator: "Actually this has been a problem in the past at some schools and it's easier just to bring a water bottle instead of worrying about cough drops. If the students see it or if-"

Teacher B: "I heard somebody died during a test from choking on a cough drop."

Teacher A: "No way."

Administrator: "I'm going to ask that we just follow the rules..."

Teacher B: "Okay, but I'm pretty sure that's what it is."

Teacher A (grumbling): "That's stupid."

Well teacher A, you are right. It was stupid, but to any administrators out there reading this thinking, "maybe we should ban cough drops from the testing room" know this: had I cut off my air supply and was struggling to take the last few breaths of air I would ever breathe, I would have immediately thrown the "Assistance Needed" sign under the door, asked for an administrator, waited for one to arrive, and then died in the hallway where I would not disturb any testing. Had I been provided a sword I would have gladly fallen upon it to save the need for emergency crews to rush into the school with their noise and flashing vehicles in the hopes of saving my life.

Semper Excelsior, Viventes Damnantes

I made connections!

Today we had the students in my reading class draw pictures of two vocabulary words. One is "prestigious" and one student asked if he could draw a picture of the "Prestige" award from "his video game." The teacher said "WHAT?!" but I asked what the reward was from.

"Modern Warfare: 2" he said.

"What's the Prestige award?" I asked.

"It's what you get for *insert middle school babbling about how awesome he was and how ____ still needed 8 points to get Prestige."

"So what does the reward do?"

"People gotta respect you!"

"How does that relate to the vocabulary word we have?"

"It doesn't, I just thought they sounded the same."

"What's the definition of prestigious"

*he pulls out vocab worksheet*

"Prestigious means... deserving of respect. HEY! Wait..."

"So the 'Prestige' reward just means you are..."

"Prestigious! People gotta respect me!"

"Right!"

"I gotta tell my friends on xbox live! *continue inane chatter*

That's when the teacher and I high-fived.

Achievement unlocked: "PEDAGOGTACULAR!"

MSA Preparation

This message was displayed on every TV Monday to prepare students for the MSA.

The first thing was get a good night's sleep blah blah blah, but then came the real treat: "Solve all family/friend problems before coming into school tomorrow."

Now the part of me that still has faith in humanity believes, 99%, that what they meant to say was "Don't come in tomorrow worried about and/or distracted by family/friend problems," since we did have a lot of nutty behavior/fights/etc. last week, but apparently that was too circumspect. Maybe it didn't have the finality that just solving the problems would have, the assurance that these problems wouldn't mysteriously resurface over the 2.5 hr testing block, or maybe even that our school is that committed to improving the lives of our students (through edict if need be). Whatever the reason, all I know is that no matter how we do on the MSAs, at least our student body is free of the interpersonal problems that once plagued their lives.

MSA Testing

"Stop. Wait. Close your eyes. Hold this moment in your mind and never let go. When you are a few years older and you're voting, check to see if the candidates support standardized testing. Then when you walk into the voting both, close your eyes again and remember this moment."

Bureaucracy and Physics

"Bureaucracy is like a pulley. If you have a box that's too heavy for you to lift, you hook it up to a pulley. This makes it possible for you to lift, but it doesn't give you 'free energy.' If you want to make it half as easy, you're going to pull twice as far. You sacrifice distance for force, so you get the same amount of energy to raise the box the same distance. This is generally a great idea, but there is a lot of cost involved. You need to buy the ropes, the pulley, find some way to attach the rope to the box, not to mention setting it up and making sure everything is working because if one part gives out the whole effort is wasted. It takes way more care and maintenance than just lifting a box yourself, so you wouldn't set up a pulley for every single system, but these costs are proportionally less if you have a ton of boxes to lift or have to lift a box you can't on your own. A pulley also provides a lot of middle class jobs so people will be happy. But I think I've left the analogy at that point."

I was very proud of this.

According to Whom?

Orianthi's "According to Him" is a generally good pop song about the reaction of a woman to a "disparate event" in the way two men in her life judge her. The song is a rant directed at her current partner (inferred from the line where she says he is making her "decide" and by the rather large list of complaints against her made by him that she has gathered). What I think is the best about this song, though, is that way it can be used as a good way of introducing a major problem faced in interpreting historical evidence: sorting facts out of a biased report.

The song begins with a long list of complaints that vary in their intensity:

"According to you
I'm stupid,
I'm useless,
I can't do anything right.
According to you
I'm difficult,
hard to please,
forever changing my mind.
I'm a mess in a dress,
can't show up on time,
even if it would save my life.
According to you. According to you."

As it stands, we have a damning indictment of her current significant other (whom we will refer to as "Octavian" for no important or sensible reason). "Stupid" and "useless" are not nice things to say to people. We don't know if this is abusive or simply things said in frustration or during an argument. We don't know if this was a response to something she said that could have been equally as hurtful, or simply reflects a pattern of anger and bullying, the latter of which seems to be the message relayed by our female protagonist.

However, I have my doubts. The main reason is that there is clearly some reason for her to stick around. We don't know what these are, but the evidence for them is manifest in several places where she says Octavian is "making her decide", asking "what [have] I got to lose [by going to boy #2]?" and "Why can't you see me through his eyes?"

These are all pleas or bargains for him to see her the way this new guy (heretofore known as Escamillo) does. These revealing statements undermine the meanness she is implying about Octavian. The song is also clearly addressed to Octavian, which wouldn't make sense if she really was ready to leave him (or if she was ready to leave him maybe she's not as ready as she thinks). The problem with this theory, which is what Orianthi herself says is the situation ("it connects with a lot of people as it's about leaving a bad situation and moving on to a better one", Orianthi 'According to You' -- Video Premiere), is that she clearly was not leaving this "bad situation." It took the intervention of Escamillo to trigger this change. What is called for then is an evaluation of Escamillo's motivations and role in triggering this change of heart.

According to Escamillo, Orianthi is "beautiful, incredible, he can't get me out of his head." He also says she's "funny, irresistible, [and] everything he ever wanted." In fact according to Oranithi "everything is opposite" compared to her interactions with Octavian, and she doesn't "feel like stopping it."

This last line should signal red flags for anybody paying close attention to her language here, and it should also trigger red flags to Octavian. One might first off wonder in what context Escamillo would be giving such compliments to Orianthi. Anybody can find anybody else funny, but Escamillo is not a good friend becoming love interest. A good friend might even say someone is "beautiful," and if his motives were pure and he was becoming interested in her as more than friends he could innocently not "get her out of his head;" we can't control our emotions.

This escalation in emotion reaches a point for me, though, when he describes her as "irresistible", and in this context not being able to "get her out of his head" takes on a more erotic context. I would not say it is manifestly sexual, but there is definitely an emotional betrayal going on here. Her insistence at the end that she "doesn't feel like stopping it" also heavily implies that there is in fact something going on which might or might not need stopping.

So the question is what is going on that needs stopping? A good friend complimenting her and hoping for it to become something more? This would be I think the interpretation Orianthi is hoping us to believe. He is clearly "making her decide", but if Octavian really was as bad as she says and Escamillo clearly so great, wherein would be the problem?

It is clear that there is something tying her to him, as we addressed before, and the best place to compare her relationship with Octavian is to contrast his invectives against Escamillo's compliments. Other than humor (he says she sucks at telling jokes, Escamillo says she's funny), the compliments provide nothing to say Octavian's invectives are wrong. In fact anything Octavian is quoted as saying according to her are things that will tend to come up in a relationship. Escamillo's, however, are all things that one would expect from a burgeoning infatuation. Even going back to the comparison of humor, Octavian is never quoted as saying she's not funny, only that she gives away the endings of jokes. Taken out of context this might seem like he's saying she's not funny, but in context he is only talking about jokes and this statement may have been qualified by a thousand other ways she is funny (or has a good sense of humor).

What is clear under any interpretation is that she wants this relationship to be over. Instead of ending it she is doing everything she can to transfer the "blame" of the ending onto Octavian. With this implications of her cheating (physically or emotionally) with Escamillo, with the out-of-context way she addresses Octavian's invectives in comparison to Escamillo's non-contradictory (vis-a-vis the invective) compliments, and with the fact that there is clearly something tying her to Octavian (something enough to create the relationship they've developed that would have lasted long enough for Octavian to move out of the star-struck infatuation phase and develop these complaints), I have trouble taking Orianthi's interpretation of events at face value. I have no idea if Octavian is a good or bad person (he surely could have addressed his issues in a way that was more constructive, though on the other hand who knows if he did before frustration/invective set in, especially if she brought up her emotional relationship with Escamillo during these compliments [ex. "Well Escamillo doesn't think that's a problem!" "Well Escamillo doesn't see how hard it is to take you anywhere because you're always late!"]), and I have no desire to make such an interpretation (because as you demonstrated repeatedly we have too little context to decide).

What I do feel comfortable saying is that relying on personal testimony, especially in such an emotionally charged context, makes it impossible to determine the true nature of events. From what I have seen, however, any case where somebody feels the need to assign blame, especially to a third person audience (the listeners), there is some blame of their own they're trying to cover up or divert from.

Orianthi, I am unconvinced of your innocence in the breakdown of your relationship with Octavian. Thank you.

Giving a Test

I think giving a test is the second worst feeling after taking a test, possibly moreso. Taking a test means a temporarily stressful end to a block of learning. It is a concluding act that quantifies the time and effort you put into something, multiplied by some arbitrary factor as determined by prior knowledge and the teacher's (in)ability to adequately assess learning. Giving a test is instead a beacon of stress to come, and while it will still quantify your prior efforts as a teacher, the worst part is that any arbitrary modifier discovered (after averaging the scores and weighting them by each student's prior effort, time, and knowledge) are also a quantification of your ability to adequately assess learning.

Swoopstake

In an indiscriminate manner

Ex: "Will you take all of these cupcakes swoopstake?"

Shakespeare: "Of your dear father's death, is 't writ in your revenge, / That, swoopstake, you will draw both friend and foe, / Winner and Loser?"

Burt Bacharach's influence will never die

This happened February 2nd, but I am missing school something fierce. Fimbulvetr has canceled school yet again for Tuesday, so here's a flashback:

Note confiscated from an 8th grade boy: "what do you do when you fall in love?" Truly, reading that aloud to the class would have been cruel and unusual punishment.

Team x or Team y?

I saw Carmen today, which was very nice, but my first comment to Beth when the play ended was "Team Jose or Team Escamillo?" While this was said in jest (how could anybody not appreciate the endlessly tragic!love of Team Jose?), it made me realize "Team x or Team y" has entered into common vernacular now as a way of representing two sides of an αγων. I can think, off hand, of a million and one precedents for this (Team Achilles, Team Odysseus; Team Virtus, Team Disciplina; etc.) but the representation of these as organized groups with the rigid connotations and obligations of teammates is clearly a reflection of the dramatization that is endemic of any meme coming from a 12-16 year old demographic and a linguistic reflection of a deeper desire in culture to create dichotomies that extend beyond their original focus (Greek and Barbarian, Masculine and Effeminate). This is also reflected best, I think, in this overthought definition at urban dictionary for Team Jacob:


From www.urbandictionary.com heading "Team Jacob", definition #4 by pnayxkay, Jan. 5, 2010

In addition to other definitions, this group of Twilight partisans is also attracted to romantic relationships that begin with close friendships and turn into something more.

In contrast with the intense and potentially dangerous passion that has found favor with Team Edward, Team Jacob is comfortable with the idea of "being with the one who's best for you," rather than "being with the one you can't live without."

This way of thinking stems from Jacob's uplifting friendship and devotion to a depressed Bella in her greatest time of need during the second installment, New Moon.

For these reasons, Team Jacob tends to value qualities like friendship, loyalty, stability, honesty, and a sense of humor.

Team Jacob 1: Can you believe Bella rejected Jacob as soon as Edward came back at the end of New Moon? It's as if everything Jacob's done for her meant nothing.

Team Jacob 2: I can't understand it either. She obviously prefers a suicidal and paternalistic boyfriend over an easy-going and devoted one.

Team Jacob 1: I agree. Jacob makes her laugh, he doesn't underestimate her like Edward does, and their families get along so well. Plus, he's incredibly cut. Team Jacob all the way!

Confusion

If I "confuse x" then I have made x confused, ie difficult to discern.

When x is a person (confuse Steven), it makes the person unable to discern things (The entrance of my evil twin confused Steven; he could not tell which was his real friend).

When x is an object , I have made the object difficult to be discerned. The thing is I can't think of this ever taking a singular object. You always have to cause confusion between two things. So I can confuse papers (by mixing them around), and I can confuse the desk (supposedly with another desk, or a chair that happens to be shaped like a desk), but in general you cannot confuse a thing without having another (possibly implied) direct object with which you are confusing it.

Confuse means different things when used with people and objects. That's neat.

Cleave is its own antonym.

Snowpocalypse

As the second Fimbelvetr sets in, I thought I should comment on the irony that several days after deciding I should in fact keep a log of the events of my career in education, that career should be brought to a sudden and snow-covered end by the coming of Ragnarok, signaled by the endless winters. What other explanation could there be, I ask, for a record breaking snowfall to be shortly followed by a snowfall that any other year would be called "ridiculous"? None other explanation is what. To be fair, however, Mount St. Mary's had a half day today and my sister even drove to her riding lesson. Upon informing her that I had off all week from both Loyola and Howard County (not officially, but practically), she just smiled and said "not for the little school that could". So congratulations, Mt. St. Mary's College. You made sure that despite probably every single school in Maryland being shut down today, somebody was going to learn something no matter how many metric tonnes of snow they had to tunnel through.

Legit

Shortened for "legitimate" with broader meaning. While it can refer to something real, or more specifically not fake/phony (or bootleg) (1), it can also denote "rightness", either moral, legal, or otherwise. In this sense it is similar to αριστος (2). It can also refer to something that is simply true (3).

1. "No, that's legit gold."
2. "Or how about I take my shit back and I don't beat you?" "That's legit."
3. "We were all late from gym, legit!"

Bootleg

A term derived from the English "bootleg" which originally referred to something (usually an alcoholic drink) hidden down the leg of a boot. Later referred to "alcoholic products sold or transported illegally" and eventually any illegally sold or obtained good.

In current slang it is a term linguistically opposite to "legit". By association with the poor quality of "knockoffs", it refers to anything poorly made (1). By extension, and through its relationship with legit, it can also refer to something unfair (2).

1. "You made this test? And it has typos? Man that's bootleg."
2. "I told you to start your drill ten minutes ago; now you can finish it at lunch detention." "Man, that's bootleg!"