People will retain certain habits through changing circumstances. For example, if they once enjoyed sitting on their porch in the country, they may find themselves drawn to sitting on the steps by the sidewalk outside their low-income housing complex. The scenery has changed, but the behavior remains. Consistency in behavior tempers destabilization with an assuring…
What do we lose when we learn a new language? Flip sides of the same coin: The ability to completely ignore those around us speaking in that language. Resistance against misinterpreting random sounds as speech. On the 2nd point, an expanding phonetic library necessarily diminishes the open space into which it expands, such that, within…
The initial visit to a foreign country understandably presents generous opportunity for neurogenesis, as the visitor is potentially confronted with an abundance of new circumstances that their existing neural network is ill-equipped to process. So it was for me during my initial trip to Russia, which represented the first time I was immersed in an…
It wasn’t until several months after my final return from Russia, an event marking the end of a string of short-duration business trips to Moscow and Irkutsk, that the novelty of having traveled to those destinations began to wear off; as it did, the possibility grew that the impressions I was forming of my visits…
Why use a word in place of its numerous synonyms? Word choice is largely dictated by common usage as well as the willingness of the writer/speaker to diverge from convention and choose a lesser-used word at the possible risk of drawing a portion of the audience’s attention away from the point or message being conveyed….
Geographical features are influenced not only by the processes that form them, but also by the structures on or near them, and the activity, whether present-day or historical, in their environs. The presence of castle ruins gives the surrounding landscape a majesty it wouldn’t otherwise have. Yes, there is an implication of the supernatural here,…
Given two paths, of equal length, between where one is and where one wishes to be, the path that can offer the traveler the perception of making comparatively superior progress toward their final destination goal is the path that will more often than not be chosen. It was an episode of introspection, in which I…
Employed skillfully, the metaphor is a powerful communication device. What better way to examine its effects than by visual metaphor? Suppose, modestly, that individual H is seeking to regale individual S with a captivatingly told account of an experience the former has had. Let the truth of the experience be a point centered within a…
I found myself outdoors, among a small group of fellow onlookers, watching an unbelievable sight slowly unfold in the black, wintry night sky. Two planets, identical to the Earth in composition and much nearer to us than is the moon, were on a collision course with each other. They approached with the grace of a…
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