Pollution and Parliament

Is carbon dioxide a pollutant ?

I am old enough to remember the great smog and the 1953 flood.  There is nothing like a first-hand view of nature in the raw to make a person environmentally aware.  It was in the 1950s at the age of about 6 or 7 that I learned how coal was made out of vegetable matter in nature's own pressure cooker.  The origin of coal was so widely known that it was often called 'bottled sunshine'.

Hornswoggled with a Boondoggle

Etymology isn't a true science, but any etymologist worthy of the name needs to adopt scientific methods if he or she is to avoid falling into the trap of producing another piece of false etymology.

That's etymology, but if you mouth entomology, as many of your peers do, I had as lief an insect spoke my lines.  
(Hamlet  Act 3, Scene 2 - almost.)

I had as lief an insect spoke my lines

Hopefully You Will Get Smarter


Despite the wide use of sentences beginning with a word ending in -ly  and despite the acceptance of such usage by people who know how language is used in the real world: despite these facts there are still some people who throw up their hands in horror at such "abuse" of language.  Having been taught no doubt by repeaters of that Latin-based snobbery which was once peddled as English grammar, such people insist that -ly words are adverbs and as such they must, must, must - on pain of death - modify a verb.  "Where is the verb?", they cry.  That is woo of the first water.