Moving Day

The WordChemist blog has a new home! The new incarnation of WordChemist resides at http://wordchemist.com/scienceblog/. I am shifting the focus of the blog to scientific topics, including the role of science in society, under-reported scientific developments, and areas where several threads of scientific inquiry converge. Visit my main website, http://wordchemist.com for news items and a sampling of articles that I have published.

Silver Spring Transit Center goes off the rails

And there it sits. Remember the 2008 groundbreaking, followed by months of relocating utility lines and dealing with polluted soil? Remember how glad we all were when this thing finally started taking shape? Well, we are still waiting for completion, and we will wait for quite a while longer. The lawyers and engineers are trying to decide whose set of specs they were supposed to be following. The builder says they followed the specs they were given. Metro says that the concrete is too thin in some places, too thick in others. One side wants to patch up the bad places and move forward. The other side wants to rip the whole thing down and start over. They have spent about $100 million on this already. About the only good thing you can say about this gargantuan hunk of concrete is that it provided some people with employment during the depth of the crash these last few years. That's small comfort to the thousands of commuters who have to walk all the way around the construction site every day just to get to their bus stops.

Well, heck. Here is a photo I took on December 9. If it looks like not a lot has changed since my last posting in August, you're right. Apparently, a subcontractor was cutting corners, and the thickness of the concrete was not up to industry standards at several places on the top level. Completion of the transit center has been delayed "indefinitely". Here are a couple of links to articles in the Washington Post:

Silver Spring Transit Hub Gets Another Delay (Jan. 10)

Silver Spring Transit Center Delayed Indefinitely (Jan. 13)

Silver Spring Transit Center, work still in progress

It's been quite a while since my last batch of photos of the Silver Spring Transit Center project. Here's an update (5 photos, taken panorama style, panning left to right).

I just realized that it's been over a year since I've updated my blog. (Bad blogger!) Just to maintain continuity, I'm posting an oldie but goodie, with some updates and a spelling correction (I'll let you find it on your own).

Editing has been a big part of my livelihood for about 15 years now. Certain words and phrases have the power to trigger my gag reflex. Many of those words and phrases appear with distressing frequency in business communications. As a cry for mercy, I am sharing links to three blog posts (one of them mine) as a guide to words and phrases that you must NEVER EVER EVER EVER USE! I'M NOT KIDDING! DON'T MAKE ME DO A GLOBAL SEARCH AND REPLACE ON YOUR DOCUMENT!! (whew, I got a little carried away there for a moment)

http://www.ragan.com/Main/Articles/42556.aspx
http://www.ragan.com/Main/Articles/43415.aspx

http://wordchemist.blogspot.com/2009/09/controlled-verbiage-act.html
Sunday, September 27, 2009
The Controlled Verbiage Act
by Nancy McGuire

I'm a word person, and it bothers me when words are misused, over-used, used to obscure the speaker's intent, or otherwise abused. Here in the United States, we have a Controlled Substances Act, which classifies various drugs according to their medical uses and potential for addictiveness or abuse. Perhaps we need a Controlled Verbiage Act to regulate the use of certain words with a high potential for abuse.

The lowest level of enforcement would be reserved for words that are often misused, but you more or less know what the speaker meant. Examples would be the interchangeable use of "lay" and "lie", "effect" and "affect", "flaunt" and "flout". These are the Schedule IV words. They may be used by lay people without a prescription, but word processing programs should come equipped with directions for usage and warnings of the potential side effects when these words are not used as directed.

Moving on up the list, we have the Schedule III words. These can be used to convey a thought, but they have a high potential for overuse, even addiction. In addition, their misuse may do damage to the rest of the language by setting precedents for sloppiness and fuzzy thinking. Business writing is rife with Schedule III words and phrases. "At the end of the day", "at this point in time", "capturing value", you know the genre. Language-damaging words include such "verbed" nouns as "resulted", "impacted", and the abominable "architected". Throw in such commonly used, but unhelpful, words as "utilize". These words should be kept behind the counter at the editor's shop, and those wishing to use them should present some form of identification and sign a statement that these words are being used in a satirical fashion, as dialogue in a work of fiction or a stage play, as a direct quotation in a news story or documentary, or in professionally-written linguistic performance art.

Schedule II words have legitimate linguistic uses, but they are almost universally misused when placed in the hands of amateurs. These words include "enormity", "comprise", "quantum", and other impressive-sounding but poorly understood terms. When these words are misused, the reader can be left wondering whether the author meant to say that the new shopping mall is a disgrace and an abomination, or merely that it is very large.

Schedule I words have no use other than to demean, disgrace, or belittle other people or to suggest acts of violence or subjugation. You know what these words are. I'm not going to repeat them here.

Living in a state of blessedness

Over the last several weeks, some pretty terrible things have happened in my life -- the rapid decline and death of my mother, my sister's luggage taking an unscheduled trip to Dallas, coming home to water damage in my apartment (which somehow emerged unscathed from the earthquake and storms). What I remember most, though, is the overwhelming outpouring of kindness, concern, and help from so many friends.

At Landsun Homes in Carlsbad NM where Mom was staying, the hospice staff, nurses, aides, and housekeeper constantly looked in on us and were so diligent in keeping Mom comfortable in her last weeks. They also took care of my sister and me. Trays of cookies, fruit, coffee, and tea, would magically appear as we sat by Mom's bedside. One of the health care aides took our laundry home with her, washed and folded it, and brought it back to us the next day. Before and after our trip to Carlsbad, one of Mom's friends hosted us in her house in Roswell, fed us, and even slept on her couch so that one of us could be in the guest room and one in her bedroom. The Landsun Homes chaplain drove 70 miles to Roswell to be at Mom's memorial service, even though it was the same day as the monthly group remembrance service at Landsun, and a family member of his had just gone into hospice care that week. The choir director at Mom's church in Roswell put out the word, and more than 40 choir members took time out of their work day (and during the choir's summer break) to do a quick rehearsal before the memorial service and sing a very difficult anthem that was one of Mom's favorites. My employer sent flowers (and hasn't complained about my taking almost 3 weeks off work). The minister, funeral home director, cemetery staff, and the company that makes the headstones all walked us through the process with so much kindness and efficiency. A friend of ours picked up the tab for dinner and drinks for a whole table full of us on Saturday. Two of my friends drove 10 hours from Mesa, Arizona, to be at the memorial service and spend some time with us afterward. High school classmates whom I have not seen in over 20 years showed up to pay their respects and spend some time with us.

I got back home last night around midnight, and the woman at the front desk (who knows all about who is who in the condo) stopped me and let me know that my upstairs neighbor's AC unit had leaked water into my apartment but that my friends had mopped up and moved some of my computer peripherals to safety. One of those friends had been caring for my plants while I was gone. Three of them came in on Sunday to put meals in my fridge and a huge bouquet of flowers on my table, and they discovered the leak. They had alerted the front office so that the leak could be fixed immediately. Nothing was damaged that cannot be replaced, and once things dry out completely, the maintenance folks will make the drywall repairs, and I will see if my printer and scanner still work.

Because of the constant support of our whole network of friends and family, my sister and I had the time and energy we needed to cope with Mom's last days and death. We were close before, but during this time we really depended on each other to do what we needed to do and keep each other company. There is a concept in Ethical Culture called the Ethical Manifold, which describes the interconnected nature of all people and things, and the unique part that each of us plays in shaping the world. If this isn't an illustration of the Ethical Manifold at its best, I don't know what is.

News from the Silver Spring Transit Center

The big hole in the ground now has what appears to be a forest of rebar sticking out in one area. Dare we hope for actual construction before the two-year anniversary in September?