The World's Foremost Authority

One of my old army buddies used to claim that he was "the world's foremost authority". When he did that with somebody who wasn't in on the joke, they would inevitably ask, "The world's foremost authority on what?" My friend would reply, "I'm the world's foremost authority on being the world's foremost authority." For some reason it doesn't sound as funny now as it did then, I guess you had to know the guy. He was a lot like the character "Winchester" in the MASH series on TV. It doesn't take much to make a GI laugh, especially when he's been drinking.

The world's foremost authority on the English language is supposed to be the Oxford Dictionary, which is published by Oxford University in England. In the US we generally regard the Merriam Webster's Dictionary as the world's foremost authority, but I think that, in the event they would contradict each other, most scholars would go with the Oxford. I've never seen the Oxford, but my Webster's says that they add new words when they start regularly turning up in newspapers and magazines. I suppose they must pay people to sit around reading newspapers and magazines all day and make a note of any new words they come across. Then these guys must meet once a year and discuss their findings. I wonder how you get a job like that, you must have to know somebody.

There is an outfit in the Upper Peninsula called "The Unicorn Hunters", I think they work out of Lake Superior State University, that claims to have the authority to ban the use of words and phrases for "misuse, overuse, and downright uselessness". People send them nominations and they meet once a year to vote on them. I must be out of the loop because, when the list is published, I usually have never heard of most of these banned words and phrases that are supposedly being misused and overused.

I gave up the semi colon shortly after I went on the internet. Some writers use it a lot, but I decided that I didn't need it. A semi colon seems to be something that can't make up its mind if it's a period or a comma, and there's enough uncertainty in the world today as it is. Either make it a period or make it a comma and be done with it! I still use the full colon occasionally when it seems appropriate, although you're right that a comma would work almost as well.

Maybe you can help me understand this speed of light thing. I like the idea that it's absolute and constant, because few things are nowadays and it seems like something ought to be. The part I don't understand is how somebody can turn on a light 10 miles away, somebody else can turn on a light 100 miles away, and both lights get here at the same time. Well, on that scale you wouldn't notice the difference anyway, but what about all those stars that are thousands of light years away? If a light year is the distance light travels in a year, one star is 10,000 light years away, another star is 20,000 light years away, and the light from both stars get to Earth at the same time, it would seem to contradict the whole meaning of a light year. What am I missing here?

I don't know if our lone commentator will return to us or not. I left her a message on the Ipernity site repeating my invitation for her to join us, but I only go there on the weekends so I don't know whether or not she responded. She seemed to be interested in our work here at the institute, but maybe she was just being polite. My contacts on Ipernity are always polite to each other, nothing wrong with that, but Susie indicated that she was looking for something a bit more challenging, which is why I recommended the institute to her in the first place.