democracy comes to the dictionary

Have you seen this?

If there's an archive, someday some future etymologist/sociologist is going to have a field day. Someone is probably drafting a thesis proposal as I type.

Meanwhile, the rest of us can enjoy. My current favorite? This one, submitted by Jonathan Keith Sheriff:

genderflex (verb) : "genderflex \jen'-der-fleks\ vi 1: to temporarily use communication behaviors typical of the other gender in order to increase potential for influence."
Research has shown that those who adhere too rigidly to stereotypical gender roles are at increased risk for social pathologies: women become dependent and self-deprecating; men become arrogant and domineering—the solution is to genderflex! (my sentence) —judith c tingley, genderflex: men & women speaking..., 1994
Submitted by: jonathan keith sheriff from California on Oct. 26, 2005 18:33

zeros and ones

Sometimes existing structures change themselves to work better. This is good.

MSN, for example, seems to have self-improved quite by accident. (It will surprise no one to hear that I'm not sure they could have done it on purpose). For an assortment of reasons I have been using the actual MSN client of late, and not always Trillian, a multi-service client by Cerulean Studios. I like Trillian, but some things work better in the original.

When someone is Away or Idle, MSN says, "[user's name] may not respond because he or she appears to be offline (or away from the computer or whatever)". In use, this comes out thus: "Mary may not respond because he or she appears to be offline."

I like this.

Who says Mary is female, or uses "she"? The computer doesn't know, care, or discriminate. Yay for that.

Sometimes binary code is the fairest of them all. I knew I liked computers for a reason.

repentance

I grew up knowing that Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah were high holy days before I knew anything about what that meant. In my half-Jewish town, we got those days off from school, two for Rosh Hashanah and one for Yom Kippur. It made a mess of the beginning of the school year, what with Labour Day and then these other two interruptions following right on the heels of the summer, but really it was a long-life lesson in honouring things that are bigger than work, stronger than routine, important enough to be ritual, to be sacred.

It wasn't until I was much older that I understood what was happening, understood the question of the book of life and God's writing one's fate...and it wasn't until years after that that I understood the value of a time for asking forgiveness.

See, you have better odds of being forgiven during these ten days, but I don't believe those odds have to do with God or the threat of a bad write-up. For me, those improved odds are because everyone is contemplating their own failures, their own atonements, their own humanity, their own need to be forgiven.

May I know the difference between asking for forgiveness and relinquishing self-respect. May I know for what I need to ask forgiveness. May I find forgiveness when I am asked.

blessed be.