Time Traveling with Words

Logophiles will love Merriam Webster's new Time Traveler website. It lets you find the first known use dates of words and terms. 

For example, wordie was first used in 1982.

I entered my birth year, 1957, and looked first for Sputnik. Sure enough, it was there. Along with many surprises, including:

• Asian flu
• cognitive dissonance
• doggie bag
• go-kart
• magic mushroom
• mainframe
• one-hit wonder
• Vietcong

Hat tip to kottke.org. Have fun time traveling!

P.S. The term "time travel" is not in the Merriam Webster dictionary, but is on wikipedia.

Leaf Peeping

2020 Photomicrography Competition

 A vinyl record, shot using Differential Interference Contrast at 20x Objective Lens Magnification.

Just when you thought it was safe to go online

Trick or Treat

Lila Ash ~ The New Yorker

Debates

 I remember past debates being much more civil and policy focused.

The Country of the Pointed Firs

"At last it was the time of late summer, when the house was cool and damp in the morning, and all the light seemed to come through green leaves; but at the first step out of doors the sunshine always laid a warm hand on my shoulder, and the clear, high sky seemed to lift quickly as I looked at it. There was no autumnal mist nor any August fog; instead of these, the sky and the hills, with every bush of bay and every fir-top, gained a deeper color and a sharper clearness. There was something shining in the air, and a kind of lustre on the pasture grass – a northern look that, except at this moment of the year, one must go far to seek. The sunshine of a northern summer was coming to its lovely end."

Sarah Orne Jewett, The Country of the Pointed Firs ~ 1896