"Rose Pipe" Didn't Make the Cut

The American Heritage Student Dictionary suggests that parents help kids "maintain and enhance" their vocabulary over the summer. In fact, they've made a list of words they think middle schoolers (grades 6-8) should know.

Any thoughts? (One writer's reaction.)

I like words, and I think kids should know how to use more of them. But I can't remember ever learning a word and using it because it was on some list. In fact, when I was 13, that may have been a strike against an otherwise fine word. I did spend a lot of time digging through my parents' lovely, old-fashioned, two-volume dictionary, though. Why? As I read, I found words that I needed to know.

How about a list of words parents should know?

Instead of confronting pressing national problems, our president lands airplanes while Rome burns.

Senator Jim Jeffords (Ind., Vermont) recently gave a speech that neatly summarizes why so many of us are, shall we say, less than satisfied with President Bush. And he's not even a Democrat.

(link via Ruminate This.)

I have a recurrent feeling these days, that I'm living in the wrong trouser-leg of time.

And, going even farther, SF author Charles Stross commented the other day on why he's less than satisfied with the 21st century.

(crossposted on Byzantium's Shores.)