The BBC brings us news from the English market town of Waltham Abbey:
The enticing smell of tinned sardines proved key to luring two tiny four-week-old kittens from a labyrinth of drains where they had been trapped for two days.Related reading
Because they seem to be everywhere.
Inflect, a transitive verb, is from the Latin inflectere, to bend. The Oxford English Dictionary gives its earliest meaning (early 1400s): “to bend inwards; to bend into a curve or angle; hence, simply, to bend, to curve.” By the late 1500s, the word had taken on figurative senses: “to bend, incline, dispose.” By the late 1600s, the word had acquired a meaning in grammar: “to vary the termination (of a word) in order to express different grammatical relations.” By the early 1700s, the word had found a place in optics: “to bend in or deflect (rays of light) in passing the edge of an opaque body or through a narrow aperture; to diffract.” By the early 1800s, the word was used with reference to the voice and to music: “to modulate (the voice); spec. in Music, to flatten or sharpen (a note) by a chromatic semitone.”
All of which (thanks, OED ) is getting us closer to inflection point. For that we need the noun inflection, which, like inflect, takes on figurative, grammatical, optical, and musical meanings. But since the early 1700s, inflection has also meant something in geometry:
Change of curvature from convex to concave at a particular point on a curve; the point at which this takes place is called a point of inflection (or shortly an inflection).That’s as much of the OED definition as is relevant here. A more readable definition, from Merriam-Webster: “a point on a curve that separates an arc concave upward from one concave downward and vice versa.”
The OED entry for inflection — apparently in need of updating — doesn’t account for the non-mathematical meaning of inflection point. For that we need M-W: “a moment when significant change occurs or may occur : turning point.”
So that’s an inflection point. I like the way a turning in space has turned into a turning in time. A curious difference between mathematical and non-mathematical inflection points: the one marks a fact; the other marks a fact or a possibility.
Google’s Ngram Viewer shows a marked rise in the use of inflection point beginning in 1948. A symptom of Cold War tension? In American English, the Ngram Viewer shows 1963 as the term’s peak year. In British English, it’s 1989. Perhaps Vietnam and Margaret Thatcher had something to do with that.
Is inflection point overused? I think that in many instances, crossroads or moment of decision might better apply. When I read this sort of nonsense — “There has been a strategic inflection point that we’ve all gone through as society” — I begin to think that the term has lost a clear meaning. We may be approaching an inflection point in the use of inflection point. We may even be at a crossroads. But I doubt it.
Handwriting and a wax seal as indices of character:
Charlotte Brontë, Villette (1853).
Remember when girls really flipped for guys with great handwriting? And great seals? Me neither.
Related reading
All OCA Charlotte Brontë posts (Pinboard)
Here, from Geographic Insights, is a map of Illinois showing vaccination rates by congressional district as of June 6:
[COVID-19 Vaccine Rollout Across U.S. Congressional Districts. From the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies and the Center for Geographic Analysis.]
The ungainly pale-green area to the east is Illinois-15, the congressional district represented by Mary Miller. Geographic Insights shows us having the lowest rate of vaccination in the state: 40.62% initiated, 29.65% completed.
When I step into my friendly neighborhood multinational retailer, where more and more people now do without a mask, and where many people have never worn a mask, I remind myself that I live in a place where I can pretty much assume that seven of every ten people I see are unvaccinated. Which, yes, is pathetic.
Who would want to move to Illinois-15? I know: COVID. We’re great hosts!
[Thanks to Elaine for finding the site.]
Charlotte Brontë, Villette (1853).
Related reading
All OCA Charlotte Brontë posts (Pinboard)
A pangram from the dowdy world, in today’s New York Times Spelling Bee.
A handful of pay phone posts
A Blue Dahlia pay phone : A Henry pay phone : A Naked City pay phone : A subway pay phone, 1932 : Chicago pay phones : “If your coin was not returned”
[Pay phone is dowdier than payphone.]
When I saw the credit for today’s Newsday Saturday crossword — Stella Zawistowki — I knew I was in for a difficult time. Stella! It was only when I got 1-A, ten letters, “It’ll let you in,” late in the game, that I felt confident that I’d finish this puzzle. It let me in.
Some clue-and-answer pairs I especially liked:
9-D, four letters, “Reason for a dryer discount.” Why a dryer? The alliteration is pleasant.
12-D, ten letters, “Move all around.” Lovely.
15-A, ten letters, “Practice delayed infuriation.” A great (risqué?) way to clue the answer.
22-D, eleven letters, “Destination of some Scandinavian ferries.” Five letters of this answer took me forever. What? What?
41-A, six letters, “Big name in the oil business.” Okay, but which kind?
45-A, five letters, “Helps with fencing.” A good clue for a common answer.
51-D, three letters, “Macaroni, as in ‘Yankee Doodle.’” The answer makes me think of a scene in a film.
53-A, four letters, “Zoom, perhaps.” Of our time.
56-A, ten letters, “Recycled paper from long ago.” A good example of a clue that defamiliarizes its answer. You’re thinking of something in a green bin maybe?
No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.
I was showing a movie in class, something I never liked to do. I preferred to show movies outside of class, all at once, the way they’re almost always meant to be shown. This movie was a documentary about wages and employment. Of the two computers in my office for movie projection, I picked the older one, heavy white plastic, with two switches, like light switches, sticking up from the keyboard.
After starting the movie, I took a seat in a back corner of the classroom. And who came in and sat next to me? One of my worst students. He had appeared on a reality-TV show and had been mocked on social media for his Dunning–Kruger witlessness. In class he liked to lean forward and glare at me.
And then in came John Wayne, wearing an enormous corduroy cap. He took the first seat in my row of desks, blocking the view of the two or three of us behind him. The bad student began talking to Wayne about hunting. Then bad student stood up, walked up to Wayne’s desk, and continued to talk as the movie ran. I told bad student that if he didn’t stop talking and sit down, I’d have to ask him to leave. He kept talking, I asked him to leave, and he did.
Related reading
All OCA teaching dreams (Pinboard)
[My (pre-streaming) strategy with movies: get one or two time slots when nearly everyone was free, and reserve a classroom. I would cancel one class in exchange for students’ willingness to show up, and I would lend the videotape (!) or DVD to the one or two students who had to miss. There was always something strange and wonderful about watching a movie at night in a nearly empty building. The bad student in this dream is real. John Wayne, too, is real, but he was never in one of my classes. This is the twenty-second teaching-related dream I’ve had since I retired. In all but one, something has gone wrong.]
“Joe Flynn from McHale’s Navy is in this episode of That Girl.”
“Win win!”
“How do you punctuate ‘win win’?”
“I don’t know — I wasn’t talking with punctuation.”
Related reading
All OCA domestic comedy posts (Pinboard)
[National 4-H Club News, April 1941. Click for a larger, stickier view.]
To every thing there is a reason, not to mention a time and a place. I was looking for an advertisement that touted gum as an aid to concentration. I found this one.
“Try it yourself around the house, when reading, studying, driving or doing any number of other things”: what a pleasantly lackluster pitch.
