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ROBERT E DUNN

SHAKESPEARE today

7/31/2021

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wordgenius.com
Here are 14 Shakespearean expressions he invented (he sure shook his spear):

  1. green-eyed monster
  2. heart of gold
  3. fair play
  4. wild goose chase
  5. forever and a day
  6. Lie low.
  7. It's all Greek to me.
  8. Good riddance.
  9. Break the ice.
  10. Kill with kindness.
  11. As good luck would have it.
  12. Love is blind.
  13. The game is afoot.
  14. Knock, knock, who's there?

my malapropism
Love is blond.

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helpers

7/31/2021

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Ace helpers for my blog
#1 Wikipedia contributors
#2 Wordgenius editors
#3 Quora experts
#4 my friends
#5 my students
#6 youtubers

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Shakespeare wife

7/30/2021

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According to Wikipedia, Shakespeare's marriage to Anne Hathaway in 1582 may have been officiated by John Frith, who in 1586 was accused of being a Catholic priest maintaining the façade of Protestantism.

Some surmise Shakespeare married in the city of Temple Grafton, not Stratford, for his wedding to have been performed as a Catholic sacrament, and that it may have been rushed because Anne was three months pregnant.
​
According to wordgenius.com, Shakespeare created new words, such as "swagger" and "bandit", when no existing terms would suffice.

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evaporation

7/29/2021

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Today's math problem for my brilliant student (13). If 1/3 of the water in a sewage treatment pond evaporates today Day 1 and 3/4 of what is left evaporates tomorrow Day 2, what fraction of the original remains at the end of Day 2?
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asshole

7/29/2021

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A motorcycle cop stops a driver for shooting through a red light. The driver is a real jerk, steps out of his car, comes striding toward the officer, and demands to know why he is being harassed by the Gestapo!

The officer calmly tells him of the red light violation.

The motorist instantly goes on a tirade, questioning the officer's ancestry, sexual orientation, etcetera, in rather explicit, offensive terms. [in my experience, 'faggot' is always a 'I want to fight you' word]

The tirade goes on and on without the officer saying anything.

When the officer finishes writing the ticket, he puts an "AH" in the lower right corner of the narrative portion of the ticket.

He then hands it to the violator for his signature.

The guy signs the ticket angrily, and when presented with his copy, points to the "AH" and demands to know what it stands for.

The officer says, “That’s so when we go to court, I'll remember that you're an asshole!"

Two months later they're in court. Because the violator has a bad driving record with a high number of points and is in danger of losing his license, he has hired a lawyer to represent him.

On the stand, the officer testifies to seeing the man run through the red light.

Under cross examination, the defense attorney asks, "Officer, is this a reasonable facsimile of the ticket that you issued to my client?"

“Yes, sir, that is the defendant's copy, his signature and mine, same number at the top."

Lawyer: "Officer, is there any particular marking or notation on this ticket you don't normally make?"

"Yes, sir, in the lower right corner of the narrative there is an 'AH' underlined."

"What does the 'AH' stand for, officer?"

"Aggressive and hostile, sir."

"Aggressive and hostile?"

"Yes, Sir!"

"Officer, are you sure it doesn't stand for asshole?"

"Well, sir, you know your client better than I do."

​
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miguel pro

7/25/2021

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photo courtesy of Wikipedia

Father Miguel Pro, SJ, was executed by firing squad on Nov 23, 1927, Mexico City, for being a priest.


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counting

7/22/2021

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Math trick I presented to my student today:

How many questions are there on a test if the numbered questions are 113 to 174? You must add one to account for the first question – subtraction will not give you the right answer. Here is the proof. Reduce the numbers to 1 to 5. If you subtract 5 – 1, you get 4, but there are 5 questions. You did not count number 1.

Consider an actual SAT question: On the last day of a one-week sale, customers numbered 149 through 201 were waited on. How many customers were waited on that day? Possible answers: 51, 52, 53, 152, 153. The correct answer here is 53, which is the result of (201-149) + 1 = 53. You must count customer 149.
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benson

7/20/2021

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Reproduced below are two quotes from Wikipedia. Robert H. Benson was one of three sons of the Archbishop of Canterbury and an Anglican priest who was received into the Church in 1903. He was ordained a Catholic priest in 1904. Last month, one of my students and I read his ghost story, "The Watcher." I slightly edited the Wikipedia quotes to fix grammar problems.

Before 1911, Benson speculated about the year 2007. "
… the Anglican Church and other Protestant denominations have crumbled and disappeared under a rising tide of secularism and atheism, leaving an embattled Catholic Church as the sole champion of Christian truth. Nations are armed with weapons that can destroy a whole city from the air within minutes."

In 
The Dawn of All, published in 1911, he imagined, "a 1971 in which the Catholic Church has emerged victorious in England and worldwide after Germany and Austria have won the "Emperor War" of 1914. This book is also notable in its fairly accurate prediction of a global network of passenger air travel."

Prescient prognosticator?

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traditionalist

7/18/2021

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I'm not a traditionalist Catholic! I am a Catholic. No other descriptors are necessary. Those who do not accept tradition are dissenters, period. You don't want to be one.

Today, our priest commented on 1962 Mass restrictions. I will paraphrase. We are being purged, but the grapevine will produce better fruit when it is purged and suffers. Thus, God is allowing us to be purged to produce better fruit. In the 1300’s, speaking directly to St. Brigid of Sweden, Our Lord said, “If you have Me, you have no one to fear.”

We fear no one.
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remote rule

7/17/2021

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Proximate Rule of Faith (Magisterium) VS Remote Rule of Faith (Tradition)

Faith for Catholics is not only a simple trust in the gospel but also a belief in specific ideas. It means accepting certain truths about who God is, the nature of humanity, Christ and His life, and even the Church. When Catholics talk about the rule of faith, they are describing the way in which Christian truth is understood, expressed, and lived.

Catholics understand God's truth to be perfect, both in its pure essence (the remote rule of faith) as well as in the way Christians must understand that truth (the proximate rule of faith).

Father Ripperger, exorcist currently serving in the Denver Archdiocese, says we must follow the Remote Rule when the Proximate Rule fails, which is what is happening to us now.
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dongfang

7/17/2021

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Just finished reading, "Dongfang and the Festival of Lanterns," a title owned by one of my students. The story appears in Moonbeams, Dumplings & Dragon Boats, a treasury of Chinese Holiday Tales, Activities & Recipes from The Children's Museum, Boston, written by Nina Simonds and Leslie Swartz and illustrated by Meilo So, published by Gulliver Books Harcourt Inc. (2002).

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q

7/17/2021

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As you might have guessed, I like Latin.

It has many "qu" words: quoque, quemque, quemquam, quisquam, quid, quod, quotquot, quotiescumque, quattuor (four), and quinque (five), and more, and they make me euphoric, which derives from the Greek euphoros. Latin has the distinction of never changing.

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Last Common ancestor

7/17/2021

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A symbolic betrayal of human evolution, wrongly implying that evolution is linear and progressive. [Credit: Wikipedia]


​Without acknowledging the fact that many adherents to evolution ignore the soul, this mostly fine digital resource does state, "Theories of evolution provide a provisional explanation for the facts."

Wikipedia traces the beginnings of the science
:

"The search for a fossil that connected man and ape was unproductive until the Dutch paleontologist Eugene Dubois went to Indonesia. Between 1886 and 1895 Dubois discovered remains that he later described as 'an intermediate species between humans and monkeys'. He named the hominin Pithecanthropus erectus (erect ape-man), which has now been reclassified as Homo erectus.

"Homo sapiens emerged around 300,000 years ago, evolving from Homo erectus and migrating out of Arica, gradually replacing local populations of archaic humans. 

"The term missing link has fallen out of favor with biologists because it implies the evolutionary process is a linear phenomenon and that forms originate consecutively in a chain. Instead, last common ancestor is preferred since this does not have the connotation of linear evolution, as evolution is a branching process."

Biden's speeches are scripted by others. Quid, inquam, ego non capio. What I say, I do not understand. Homo means man. Sapiens means wise. He belongs to another branching process.

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Friendship

7/16/2021

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A man and his dog were walking along a road. The man was enjoying the scenery when it suddenly occurred to him that he was already dead. He remembered dying and that the dog walking beside him had been dead for years. He wondered where the road was leading them.

After a while, they came to a high, white stone wall along one side of the road. It looked like fine marble.

At the top of a long hill, there was a tall arch that glowed in the sunlight and a magnificent gate inside the arch that looked like mother-of-pearl. The street that led to this wondrous gate was pure gold.

He and the dog walked on the street toward the gate, and as he got closer, he saw a man at a desk to one side.

When he was close enough, he called out, "Excuse me, where are we?"

"This is Heaven, sir," the man answered.

"Wow! Would you happen to have some water?" the man asked.

"Of course, sir. Come right in, and I'll have some ice water brought right up." The man gestured, and the gate began to open.

"Can my friend come in, too?" the traveler asked, gesturing toward his dog.

"I'm sorry, sir, but we do not accept pets."

The man thought a moment and then turned back toward the road and continued on his way.

After another long walk, and at the top of another long hill, he came to a dirt road leading through a single farm gate that looked as if it had never been closed. There was no fence.

As he approached the gate, he saw a man inside, leaning against a tree and reading a book.

"Excuse me!" he called to the man. "Do you have any water?"

"Yeah, sure, there's a pump over there, come on in."

"How about my friend here?" the traveler asked, gesturing to the dog.

"There should be a bowl by the pump," said the man.

They went through the gate, and sure enough, there was a hand pump with a bowl beside it.

The traveler filled the water bowl and took a long drink himself.

When their thirst was quenched, he and the dog walked back toward the man who was standing by the tree.

"What do you call this place?" the traveler asked.

"This is Heaven," he answered.

"Well, that's confusing," the traveler said. "The man down the road said that was Heaven, too."

"Oh, you mean the place with the gold street and mother-of-pearl gate? That's Hell."

"Doesn't it make you mad for them to use your name like that?"

"No, we're just happy that they take the folks who would leave their best friend behind."


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useful idiot

7/14/2021

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Quote from Urban Dictionary (a lexicon whose vulgarity makes me laugh and one I do not recommend for children)…If you have never heard the term “useful idiot”, it was the attitude held by Vladimir Lenin towards communist sympathizers in the West (America).

While Lenin and the Soviets held them in utter contempt, they also viewed them as tools for dispensing communist propaganda 
to other countries, thus infecting foreign cultures with their totalitarian tripe. After their mission was complete, they were no longer “useful.”

It's a term the [sic] refers to brainwashed American Marxists who blindly support any ideology that gets themselves out of real work and causes others to pay their way.
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children

7/12/2021

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church pun

7/9/2021

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Mary's three

7/8/2021

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At the foot of the cross stood the three Mary's. Mary of Clopas is explicitly mentioned only in John 19:25, where she is among the women present at the crucifixion of Jesus: Now there stood by the cross of Jesus His mother, and His mother’s sister, Mary of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. Below is a Caravaggio painting of Mary of Clopas with hands raised.

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separation of church and state

7/5/2021

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The idea of "separation of church and state" is not spelled out in the Constitution, nor in the Declaration of Independence. It's never spelled out. The claim is that a separation is implied in the Bill of Rights. However, all the 1st Amendment says is, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..."

In fact, the United States recognizes the Vatican as a city state, established by the Lateran Treaty (1929). 
Italy's anti-Jewish laws of 1938 prohibited marriages between Jews and non-Jews, including Catholics. The Vatican viewed this as a violation of a concordat between Italy and the Vatican, which gave the Church the sole right to regulate marriages involving Catholics. [Wikipedia]

Government may not influence the Catholic Church. On the other hand, t
he Church may influence government at will, and ought to, especially on morals. American Catholics like me have no interest in a theocracy but deeply desire that a Catholic culture suffuse every street. Truth is irresistible.
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capodanno

7/4/2021

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Called and Chosen, is a 2017) film about Father Vincent Capodanno, MM, US Navy  chaplain who received the Congressional Medal of Honor, posthumously. Written and directed by James C. Kelty, the movie features reenacted scenes with James Hutson portraying Vince and interviews with marines who survived Vince's last day bringing absolution to his men on the battlefield. He died Vietnam, September 4, 1967, age 38.
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reading list - short

7/3/2021

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In June, my student (boy, 13) and I read the following short stories:
  1. “To Build a Fire” adventure by American Jack London
  2. “Hearts and Hands” romantic with plot twist by American O Henry
  3. “The Gift of the Magi” romantic with plot twist by American O Henry
  4. “The Ten Labors of Hercules” mythic adventure by Greek Theocritus
  5. “Harrison Bergeron” science fiction by American Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
  6. “The Cask of Amontillado” gothic by American Edgar Allen Poe
  7. “The Watcher” ghost by Englishman Robert H. Benson

Next is “Button, Button” fantasy by American Richard Matheson.
​
A lovely Librivox recording of "The Watcher" (allegory) is here...
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green

7/1/2021

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