Brain Atrophy

at·ro·phy

/ˈatrəfē/

1. gradually decline in effectiveness or vigor due to underuse or neglect.

"her artistic skills atrophied from lack of use"

2.

(of body tissue or an organ) waste away, especially as a result of the degeneration of cells 

"without exercise, the muscles will atrophy"

"Thinking" in this day and age seems to have gone out of favor. Use it or lose it rules apply. Much too often we simply accept what we hear in our bubbles, victims of the gaslighting. It is sadly common to rely solely on your favorite foghorn to tell you what you should be thinking. 

A scientist would say you cannot get to a factual conclusion or realize a creative idea without rigor. The scientific method is an empirical method for acquiring knowledge through 1) careful observation 2) rigorous skepticism 3) hypothesis testing 4) Repeat. 

Well reasoned thinking takes time to allow your subconscious to weigh in and then, importantly, to verify, perhaps including a peer review. Outside the scientific community, such rigor is rare, very rare.

John Cleese is most noted for his role in the Monty Python franchise. If you are a member of my generation i.e. tending toward geriatric, you might be a warehouse of Python quotes:   

• "Tis only a flesh wound".
• “Brother Maynard – bring forth the holy hand grenade!”  
• “YES. WE’RE ALL INDIVIDUALS.” 
• "We’re destitute. I’ve got no option but to sell you all for scientific experiments.”
• “Jeez, The Inquisition. I didn't expect that."

What's your favourite?

But beyond his comedic talent, he’s also a thoughtful guy as evidenced by his talk at the Cannes International Festival of Creativity.

Cleese's talk makes the point that thinking requires discipline, patience and a mind open to truth free from, or at least acknowledging, your biases. Perhaps the biggest barrier to rigor is that it's hard and often leads us into the temptation of procrastination. Shop for that birthday present, those plants need watering,  … I've got too much to do, I need to sharpen my pencils and I'll do some thinking tomorrow. Yes, it is easier to do trivial things that are "urgent" rather than important things that are not urgent - like thinking.  And it's easier to do things we know we can do, rather than start on things that we're not so sure about. 

To reach a conclusion, gather facts from trusted sources (i.e. not social media). Weigh the evidence. Consider options. Decide in your mind what is true. Then .. review your conclusions and possible actions with someone you trust to be fair minded.

In these trying times, it is important not to leap to conclusions, rather take the difficult road of assessing, reassessing and verifying.  Don't let your brain be manipulated by misinformation. Think about it.

Homework. A thinking assignment.  Fact check the validity of the following statements. Choose only reputable sources of information. (You could take the lazy approach and ask ChatGPT or Gemini or Snopes.com)

1. Election fraud is rampant? 
2. He brandished a gun? 
3. The worst of the worst? 
4. Vaccines cause autism?  
5. Grocery prices are going down? 
6. Paper ballots are more accurate and are counted faster than voting machines? 
7. Foreign countries pay the tariffs? 
8. Prescription prices will be reduced by 2000%?  
9. Ukraine started the war? 
10. Epstein files are a hoax?  
11. Climate change is a "con job"? 
12. Minnesota pandemic fraud is the worst in the country?
13. Trump is exploiting the presidency for personal gain?

Appendix:  My answers to the homework questions.  Feel free to fact check these too.

1.  Where's the evidence?  Voting by non-citizens is illegal and extremely rare. You must be forced to believe that voting by undocumented immigrants is rampant to justify and accept proposed voter suppression actions. The way to stay in power is to define those who vote for the other party as illegitimate voters. see Brennan Center
2.  Where's the evidence?   Demonstrably false. Believe your eyes.  (I would include a video links, but I can't bear it and I'm positive you have seen them.)
3.  Where's the evidence?  ~5% of those arrested have been charged with violent offenses. 73% have NO convictions. Those arrested include citizens, amnesty seekers and green card holders scooped up without warrants.  see Cato Institute
4.  Where's the evidence?  Ask a pediatrician. Decades of research says no. It's an urban myth.  see Johns Hopkins 
5.  Where's the evidence?  Really? Believe your pocketbook.
6. Where's the evidence?   Proven false. Apply common sense.  see Brennan Center
7.  Where's the evidence?  Not. Bone up on your economics knowledge. You are the payer.
8.  Where's the evidence?  Evidence of untruth is embedded in the statement. I taught math - not possible. Prices could increase by 2000%, but 100% is a hard cap on decrease. Check you 2026 health insurance premiums.
9.  Where's the evidence?   Yet another gaslight.  Russia annexed Crimea in 2012 and invaded Ukraine in 2022. see BBC
10.  Where's the evidence?  Not worth a response. I'll let you research that one. You should be able to find data on this pretty easily.
11.  Where's the evidence?  Ask any scientist. (see NASA)  Of course, if you distrust all science, you are beyond the pale.
12. Where's the evidence?  It's in the public domain and it's not an excuse, and yes, fraud occurred in Minnesota during the pandemic food distribution programs (~$250 million). Prosecutors have charged 98 individuals in Minnesota with 65 convictions. Feeding our Future mastermind Aimee Bock and others were convicted in 2025 for stealing $47 million.  For the record, Minnesota is small potatoes compared to other states and the fraud claims are being used as pretext for the "Minnesota surge".  Sampling from around the country ...  Source: Fox News
1. New York - Medicare/Medicaid fraud to the tune of $10.6 billion
2. Arizona - $2.5 billion Medicaid fraud surrounding addiction treatment
3. Georgia - $463 million for submittal for unneeded lab tests
4. California - $490 million on false Covid-19 related billings
5. Illinois - $300 million in fraudulent Medicare/Medicaid billings
6. Unemployment insurance fraud. GAO says 11-15% of the $1 trillion (do the math) in unemployment claims were fraudulent. Compared to other states, Minnesota is a low outlier with an estimated 1% fraudulent claims. (see GAO data)
13. Where's the evidence?  "All told, Mr. Trump has profited from his return to the presidency by an amount of money equal to 16,822 times the median U.S. household income."  $1,408,500,000  as reported by NY Times (or CNN if you run into a paywall)

And that's not the half-of-it. Grifter in Chief.

$300M+ from seized Venezuelan oil tankers stashed in personal Qatar account; $400M Ballroom contributions; 

25% of Nvidia chip sales to China; 

 “Golden” share of US Steel; $1B participation fee to Board of Peace; $230M lawsuits agains DOJ; $500M crypto deals with UAE  (see Guardian) ...

It's hard to be optimistic these days.

Copyright © 2026  Dave Hoplin 

Word Nerd

If you are a lexicographer or linguist or an etymologist or a philologist you should hang up now and get back to your chores of defining and citing. I am a rank amateur on this topic,  but then again that has never stopped me from weighing in before. 

Outside the group of professional word nerds, I am perhaps one of the few laymen to have read not 1, but 2 books about the creation of a dictionary, word nerd I am. The first, The Professor and the Madman is about the creation of The Oxford English Dictionary - or OED to we crossword aficionados. The second is Unabridged:The Thrill of (and the Threat to) the Modern Dictionary,  covering the evolution from Noah Webster’s first “American English” dictionary through the Merriam-Webster incarnations. Reading these books made it clear to me I could barely strive to be a third-rate hobby horse lexicographer. The true believers are unbelievably anal over words.

Samuel Johnson's Dictionary

I also possess a copy of Samuel Johnson's 1755 Dictionary, "the work that defined the English language".  He spent 9 years creating it. It defined the dictionary format that remains in place to this day: word, part of speech, pronunciation, etymology, definition(s), quotation(s).

e.g. lexicographer noun [French] A writer of dictionaries, a harmless drudge, that busies himself in tracing the original and detailing the signification of words. "Commentators and lexicographers acquainted with the Syriac language, have given these hints in their writings on scripture. Watt's Improvement of the Mind.

Some of Johnson's definitions have altered over time.

e.g. nice adj [nese Saxon, soft] Accurate in judgment to minute exactness It is often used to express a culpable delicacy. Nor be so nice in taste myself to know, if what I swallowed be thrush or no. Perseus

Some biases may have slipped in

e.g. tory noun [a cant term, derived I suppose, from an Irish word signifying a savage.] One who adheres to the antient constitution of the state and the apostolical hierarchy of the church of England, opposed to whig. The knight is more tory in the country than the town, because it more advances his interests. Addison.

oats noun [Saxon] A grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.

serendipity, coined in 1754 did not make it into Johnson's dictionary.  It is termed one of the 10 most difficult English words to translate. Julius Comroe said, “Serendipity is looking in a haystack for a needle and discovering a farmer’s daughter.”  Other words in the top ten include plenipotentiary, gobbledegook, poppycock, whimsy, spam, and kitsch. 

Johnson's dictionary (2 volumes) sold for £4 10s, several months wages for a laborer at the time and suffered poor sales. The following year Johnson issued an abridgment, excluding the quotations. It sold 1000 copies a year for 30 years and most English households acquired one.

Johnson's dictionary was definitive until it was superceded (not a typo, English spelling) by the Oxford English Dictionary which was published in installments between 1884-1928. 

OED

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is the gold standard when it comes to English dictionaries. Its publication began in 1884 with fascicles issued periodically, the first covering A-B. It was a crowd-sourced document, long before the term crowd-sourced existed. In 1928 it was issued in 10 volumes. The chief editor for most of the project, Sir James Murray, enlisted a number of scholars and dozens of amateur philologists as volunteers. Enter the book The Professor and the Madman, A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary by Simon Winchester.  Turns out, the most prolific contributor of definitions, quotes and word origins was William Chester Minor, a retired US Army surgeon, who just happened to be confined in the Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum in Berkshire, England, this fact only discovered when the editors sought to honor him. Dr. Minor had submitted more than 10,000 entries. [Incidentally, this book was made into a movie in 2019 starring Mel Gibson and Sean Penn]

from Wikipedia

The 20-volume OED2 (1989) was republished in 1991 as a compact edition (ISBN 978-0-19-861258-2). The format was re-sized to one-third of original linear dimensions, a nine-up ("9-up") format requiring a stronger magnifying glass (included), but allowing publication of a single-volume dictionary. The edition released in 1991 includes definitions of 500,000 words, in 290,000 main entries, with 137,000 pronunciations, 249,300 etymologies, 577,000 cross-references, and 2,412,000 illustrative quotations. 

If you include scientific terms, slang, obsolete words the total number of words in the English language is well over a million, perhaps nearer 2 million. The average American's vocabulary consists of 20-35 thousand words with "active vocabulary" (i.e. used regularly) of around 10,000 words and a "passive" (i.e. recognized words) double that. 

Merriam Webster

Unabridged by Stefan Fatsis  tells the story of the American dictionaries from Noah Webster's original "American English" dictionary and its acquisition by the Merriam company, resulting in a 150 years of Merriam-Webster editions and the eventual obsolescence of print dictionaries killed by the internet.

Blue Back Speller

In the early 1800's, Noah Webster became a household name because of his 120 page Blue Back Speller which made its way into schoolrooms across the country. His speller introduced the concept of phonics and emphasized the use of syllables (e.g., a-bom-i-na-tion).  The speller was not just word lists. Webster was a bit of a moralist so it included moral lessons, fables and reading exercises. 

He then set to work on an "American" dictionary.  So .. plow not plough; theater not theatre; jail not gaol,  His dictionary contained 70,000 words. He created his final entry - zygomatic - in 1828, I suspect with a sigh of relief. Webster's Dictionary pushed Noah into the immortal category. The name Webster became synonymous with dictionary forever more,

Noah Webster died in 1843. In 1844, George & Charles Merriam purchased the rights to the Webster and set about creating an affordable (and profitable) dictionary. Their first offering sold for $10.50, a significant expenditure in the 1840's but it launched a company that was the dominant dictionary publisher for 150 years. Their 12 editions of the American Collegiate Dictionary has had sales second only to the Bible.

Fatsis' 'Unabridged' documents the history of Merriam-Webster (and to a lesser degree OED and other dictionary publishers). The process of producing a dictionary is a meticulous one, with lexicographers researching thousands of words, their origins and citations from wide ranging sources taking upwards of 10 years to complete. Fatsis documents this process in excruciating but interesting detail.  There's a chapter devoted solely to slurs. And another on pronouns ('You' is plural. 'Thou' is singular. You are .. is proper usage.  'They' is is fine.) 

All words are not "dictionary worthy" so editors constantly debate in/out. Before computers, every candidate word, its derivation and proposed definition was captured on a 3x5 card called a slip - maybe a million of them. So, what's your verdict? In or out? Smashmouth, GOAT, sheeple, nothingburger, dog whistle, absquatulate? 

It is said that a dictionary, with each edition, presents a window into the culture of the times. One example of this is Merriam-Webster Webster’s annual Word of the Year (WOTY) contest where each year word professionals gather to nominate candidates and vote to determine the word that is most reflective of the past year. A lexicographers' academy awards.

Here are the winners from 2003-2025.  

From Wikipedia

How's your memory of the past 25 years?  I suspect these words might send you into flashback mode.

Merriam-Webster was the last print version American dictionary standing. Gone are Funk & Wagenalls, Random House, American Heritage, …  I imagine you have one gathering dust on a shelf

Google and AI 

When is the last time you looked up a word in your Merriam-Webster print dictionary? I can’t remember either. How often do you look up a word online or from the built in dictionary in Kindle? Most every day I suspect. Print dictionaries have collided with the iceberg that is Google and have disappeared beneath the internet waves. But dictionary “editions” continue to be released with online updates made rapidly and without fanfare. 

In the 1990's Alta Vista, Excite, Ask.com and Dictionary.com made their appearances and swept away print dictionaries. And then Google arrived and swept them away. 

The new age of word management is a super computer job. In the age of social media, bloggers :-) and non-traditional media, it is a challenge to identify new words that are worthy of being added to the canon and to deliver updated editions in a timely manner  Firstly, there are so many being generated by non-traditional publishers - like me. An analysis of the 5.2 million digitized Google books found 52% of the English lexicon therein was “dark matter”, that is undocumented. 

Lexicography now depends on compute power. Not just Google search to identify where and how many usages of a word but the creation of "corpora",  collections of utterances used in descriptive analysis of the language. aggregating categories of writings from various sources - press, religion, popular fiction, memoirs, general fiction, adventure and western lit, romance, humor etc into a 'corpus'.  The Corpus of ContemporaryAmerican English (COCA) contains over a billion words. So let loose supercomputers and turn lexicographers into programmers to discover new words and debate the case for inclusion in the dictionary. Here's where human editors enter the scene. The criteria for this is a bit fuzzy, based largely on whether the 'new' word is in general use. Take 'kakistocracy' for example - instances of this word increased 13,700%. Or 'thobber'.

And AI.  Ask Gemini to define a word in the style of Merriam-Webster, or OED.  The result is pretty good. Could AI generate a new dictionary edition overnight? Likely, if people are OK with "good enough", a concept abhorrent to the professional lexicographers.

Someone, certainly a linguist, said "language is like the great white shark. It must keep moving or it dies." 

Postscript

For those of you who managed to get this far, how many words did you look up in this read?  Or did you just skip over the obscure words?  A side goal in writing this was to push you to open your dictionary.

Copyright © 2026  Dave Hoplin

In These Times: A Graphic Novel

In these times everyone needs comfort and would welcome a hand to hold.

Joan Armatrading lyrics

Chapter 1. Climate

2024 West Coast USA 2025

Chapter 2 Health Care

Green World .. Mostly

Chapter 3 Aging

Brain network peaks @ 32

Chapter 4 Wars and Rumors of War

Oh, and Nigeria, and Greenland and ...

Chapter 5 Mass Shootings since Sandy Hook

The last 12 years 

Chapter 6 Cost of Living

Don't believe the upside down chart

Chapter 7  Gerrymandering

Election corruption

Chapter 8 Immigration

Everyone (except Native Americans) in the US has immigrant ancestors 

Chapter 9 Vanity

Gilding the lily

Chapter 10 Cruelty

600,000 preventable deaths - and counting

Chapter 11 Irrational Exuberance

AI.  Wait for it. Pop

Chapter 12 Transparency

Oy!

Chapter 13 Social Media

Don’t knee jerk react to what you read/view.
Verify. Verify. Verify. 
And don’t be a spreader.

Epilog

Copyright © 2026  Dave Hoplin 

Deep Thoughts Vol 12

My monthly compilation of musings, thoughts, observations, quirky facts, trivia, attempts at humor, quotes, some seriousness and some nonsense.

 A lot to think about of late

Modest thinker that I am

Blessed are they who want what they have.

"Rage Bait" is the word of the year.

The country’s moral compass is spinning wildly.

The EPA has removed all references to human caused climate change from its website.

Why are so many women’s volleyball coaches bald men?

Women’s sports should have male cheerleaders.

70 percent of Americans say they no longer believe in the American dream.

It appears the only thing that can stop authoritarian power is Republican voters.

Odi timidos electos

Does the lion gnawing on the wildebeest have the same happiness as a human at the Thanksgiving table?

Your New Year’s Day headache is likely from the diuretic effect of ethanol, which can lead to shrinkage of brain tissue.

You are ingesting micro-plastics every time you brush your teeth. Some are probably in your brain.

Tipping is beginning to look like defense spending. Increase, increase but no need to justify.

If the (economic) system in place before 1975 had stayed in place, the bottom 90% of Americans would have had almost $80 trillion more in 2023 than they did.  2025 RAND study

Thems whats gots keeps.

Prolonged participation in ‘shooter games’ can rewire brain structures muting empathy triggers.

The rename to Department of War is apt. The US bombed 7 different countries in 2025, not counting oceans.

Curious that the countries America attacks (Iraq, Venezuela, Nigeria) are all oil rich. If I were Norway, I'd be worried.

Whatever it is that you produce - a baby, a book, a theory, it is a piece of the magic of creation, something that you do not fully understand.  Freeman Dyson

Costco sells 100 million miles of TP each year. That’s 200 round trips to the moon. Let that visual sink in.

A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of.  Jane Austen

The 3 ages of man. Youth, Maturity and … You Look Great.    Calvin Tomkins

I am able to say that while I am not ruggedly well, I am not ill enough to excite an undertaker. Samuel Clemens

The only wish Montaigne held for old age was a mind free from dementia.

Falls are the scourge of old age. I can testify.

Losing friends and family is another.

In my little home town (pop ~300) there were 3 grocery stores, 4 gas stations, 2 implement dealers, a restaurant, a tavern, a bank, a barbershop, a hardware store, a lumber yard, a creamery, a train depot, a trucking company, a butcher shop, a blacksmith, a hatchery, a grain elevator, a clinic, a telephone company, a fire hall, a post office, a school and 3 churches - 6 if you count the nearby country churches. None survived to see the 21st century - except the bank and the churches.

Forty million Americans have stopped attending church in the past 25 years.

Can you name a solo artist singer who hasn’t produced a Christmas Album? Didn’t think so.

The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) is being dismantled due to its “climate alarmism”.  NCAR is the foremost climate and weather research organization in the world.

Where did all the personal data that Elon Musk’s DOGE extracted from government databases end up?

Deluding the people is a serious offense anywhere in China.

Scammers absconded with $333M from bitcoin ATM’s in 2025 .. minor compared to the $2.5B lost to hacks.

The 119 page Epstein grand jury document has been released completely redacted.

If there is to be a world cataclysm, it will probably be set off by skim milk, Melba toast, and mineral oil on salad.  A.J. Liebling

If high and outside were a strike, J.J. McCarthy would be a Hall of Fame quarterback.            (Re-purposed baseball joke.)

PWHL referees are inept and inconsistent at the same time exhibiting a home team bias. 

60 minutes is now a weak imitation of 20-20.

Apparently we are going to war again  - over oil again.

"They stole our oil."  Translation: American oil companies exploited a sovereign nation's natural resources for decades for enormous profit until that country took it back, paying the oil companies billions in compensation.

With the Venezuelan "exercise" our president has legitimized other powers <fill in the blanks> to execute their own imperialist adventures. And the odds of a Peace Prize have taken a deep nosedive.

In software, as in many endeavors, the first 90% of the task takes 90% of the time and the last 10% takes the other 90%

Of course, let’s build battleships. Completely unnecessary vanity spending. Battleships were obsolete before WWII ended, essentially floating artillery platforms. I don’t think we expect the Marines to storm Iwo Jima again. The last ship to ship battle was Surigao Strait in 1944. All of the last to be built WWII Iowa class battleships, including my father’s USS New Jersey, now serve the country as museums. Today, we have B1 bombers, missiles and drone swarms. 

Obeying the law takes too long.  DJT

Being poor is not a crime nor a reason to be hated.

The most surprising development of 2025 to me is the meekness of the Supreme Court. Second place goes to the ghosted Congress.

If you read more than two books last year you read more than half the US population. Gasp.

Ireland had no - zero - gun killings in 2025. Ireland!

When we visited Norway we mentioned to our Norwegian relatives that in Minnesota there was a tradition of serving lutefisk around Christmas and wondered if they did also. They were aghast. Why would we eat lye soaked cod? We have refrigerators.

There are things that we know we know. There are things that we know we don't know. There are things that we don't know we don't know.   Donald Rumsfeld

Stoicism is a highly overrated virtue.

The lilac reminds us that life is brief. Bloom where you’re planted.

Elvis has been dead for 47 years.

Copyright © 2026  Dave Hoplin