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Stop Applauding the Forced Apology

There is no such thing as a sincere statement made with a boot on the neck, and we have built a culture that pretends otherwise.Watch what happens now when someone steps out of line. A demand goes up for a statement. The statement arrives, in the approved shape, full of the approved words, and a crowd gathers to judge whether the sorrow inside it looks real enough to accept. We have a name for that performance when a dictator stages it. We call it a show trial. What we have not admitted is that we run a softer version of the same machine every week, on our phones, for sport.

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Dictum Meum Pactum

My word is my bond: “Dictum Meum Pactum!”

Meaning, that by just giving my word you can be assured that the promise of action I have just made will be kept.

Originating from the London Stock Exchange since the early 1800s where financial bargains and trades were made with no written pledges, no documents, and no contracts. Reputation was collateral in 19th Century England. Trust was built up and your bank of trust guaranteed you trading opportunities.

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Hello, Am I Still Wanted? Yes?! Great! Goodbye!

I have been publishing new authors and playwrights online for over 15 years.  I have made a lot of great friends and it is a delight when one of the authors I originally published finds great success.  Saying “Yes” is hard.  Saying “No” is easy.  I always say “Yes” to a person of great talent and promise even if they later disappoint.

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WordPrescience.com is now WordPunk.com!

Owning domain names is one of the few, joyous, pleasures of life.  You have an idea.  You try to congeal that notion into a memorable .com domain — and you always try to then give those ideas a good home.  Today, I am both sad and delighted to share some news with you about my WordPrescience.com domain.

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Panopticonic Defines Salon Magazine

We know “Panopticonic” is not really a word.  “Panopticonic” is really a “word” I invented for my Boles Network Blog by the same name.  When I started the Panopticonic blog, “Panopticonic” appeared nowhere on the internet and that word failed to return any results in a Google search.  I do so love it so, though, when I get a Google Alert in my Inbox showing me that — “Panopticonic” — is being colloquially employed as a “real world” in a real publication like Salon Magazine.

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The Definition of WordPunk

Creating ideas and words can help bring home a brand and emboss meaning in the atmosphere of the internet.  When we started this WordPunk blog on August 11, 2007, we were hosted on TypePad and the word — “WordPunk” — really had no divine meaning or intended purpose.

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See the Word Be the Word

If you’re a word lover, then you’ll go bonkers for the fun and learning you can have with Visual Thesaurus.  Just type in your word and you’ll be presented with an associative visual mapping.  In the example below, I keyed in “duplicitous” as my base word.  The various branches extend the meaning and history of the word with other words.  Hover over any of the words in the Visual Thesaurus interactive box and you’ll be presented with extended definitions.



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