Dictionary Highlights: Day 56

clay eater - a poor, uneducated person from a rural area.

clem - to starve

Clintonomics - the economic policies set forth by President Bill Clinton.

and another portmanteau makes it into the dictionary!

Clotho - the Fate who spins the thread of life.

Coca-colonize - to bring (a foreign country) under the influence of U.S. trade, popular culture, and attitudes.

My kind of colonization

Dictionary Highlights: Day 55

chyme - the semifluid mass into which food is converted by gastric secretion and which passes from the stomach into the small intestine.

circular file - a wastebasket.

Crice -

1.Also, Kirke. Also called Aeaea. Classical Mythology. the enchantress represented by Homer as turning the companions of Odysseus into swine by means of a magic drink.

2.a dangerously or irresistibly fascinating woman.

cisco - any of several whitefishes of the genus Coregonus, of the Great Lakes and smaller lakes of eastern North America.

circle jerk - mutual masturbation among three or more persons. Also applied analogically as stated by Urban Dictionary: When a bunch of blowhards - usually politicians - get together for a debate but usually end up agreeing with each other's viewpoints to the point of redundancy, stroking each other's egos. Basically, it's what happens when the choir preaches to itself.

Dictionary Highlights: Day 54

chlorosis - an abnormally yellow color of plant tissues, resulting from partial failure to develop chlorophyll, caused by a nutrient deficiencyor the activities of a pathogen.

2. Also called greensickness. Pathology. a benign type of iron-deficiency anemia in adolescent girls, marked by a pale yellow-green complexion.

Two completely unrelated definitions for the same word.

chocolate soldier -a nonfighting soldier; a serviceman not assigned to combat duty.

cholent - a stewed or baked dish, esp. of meat and beans, served on the Sabbath but cooked the day before or overnight over a slow fire.

I like to make mine with bacon, for irony.

chow-chow -1. a Chinese mixed fruit preserve.

2. a relish of chopped mixed pickles in mustard sauce.

christcross-row - The alphabet

and for one that isn't in the dictionary, but should be:

Chocolate Rain - A horrible and annoying song that became an internet meme because the artist looks like a teenager and has a deep voice. Get over it.

Dictionary Highlights: Day 51

cheese - (slang) to stop; desist.

chilblain - an inflammation of the hands and feet caused by exposure to cold and moisture.

chiller-diller - a frightening or suspenseful story or film; melodrama.

Chinese Chess - a Chinese game, resembling chess, played on a board consisting of two halves, each eight squares by four, with a strip separating them: pieces representing the military of ancient China are placed on the intersections of the lines and the game is won when a general is checkmated

Chinese copy - an exact copy, including all errors.

Genesis and the Big Bang

How old is the universe? Six thousand years? Fourteen billion years? Neither? Both?

Those of you who know my theology know that I hold to Old Earth or Progressive Creationism. I take the creation days to be eras, since the sun does not appear until Day 4, and since Genesis 1 does not give an ending to Day 7.

Dr. Gerald Schroeder has a different idea, however. As an Orthodox Jew, he is committed to the authority of the Talmud, whose authors unanimously agree that "day" means "24 hour period." So he has to either discount Scripture or discount science, right? In an article harmonizing the literal reading of Genesis 1 with the observed age of the universe, he uses time dilation to show how one observer can measure an event as taking 144 hours, while another can measure the same event as taking 14 billion years.

The issue I hold with this interpretation was brought up by the Karaite Jewish scholar Shawn Lichaa. The 3500 year old dialect of Hebrew in which the Pentateuch was written is a lost language. We don't know for sure the exact meaning of every word or its usage, except in the context of other areas of the Bible in which it is used. In the Biblical contexts in which it is used, "yom" always means day, but we don't really know if it had any secondary meanings, or what those meanings were.

The following 50 minute video gives a detailed account of Schroeder's case. It gives a lot of insight into both the nature of relativity and the history of the Talmudists' interpretation of Genesis 1.

Dictionary Highlights: Day 50

cess - luck (usually used in the expression bad cess to): Bad cess to them!

chai - (French) a shed or other aboveground building where a winemaker stores wine in casks.

chairbed - a chair that can be opened out to form a bed.

champagne - (initial capital letter) the sparkling, dry, white table wine from the region of Champagne in France.

champaign - level, open country; plain.

champers - British slang for Champagne

Dictionary Highlights: Day 48

centillion - a cardinal number represented in the U.S. by 1 followed by 303 zeros, and in Great Britain by 1 followed by 600 zeros.

This would lead to confusion if this number was ever actually used

ceratoid - hornlike; horny.

I can only imagine an English professor using this. "Honey, I'm feeling very ceratoid right now"

cerebrate - to use the mind; think or think about.

Dance to the music. Oh, yeah.

Cerenkov Radiation - radiation produced by a particle passing through a medium at a speed greater than that of light through the medium.

I guessed that this effect was impossible for a particle with mass to accomplish. I guessed wrong.