Week 5

Word of the Week

This week's word is brandishing.  According to yourdictionary.com, to brandish means: to wave, shake, or exhibit in a menacing, or exultant way.  It was used in the lead of an article on boston.com. A New Hampshire farmer who is serving a three-year sentence for brandishing a gun at a trespasser who would not leave his property is hoping for an early release.

I found the word interesting because when I came across the article, I wanted to know exactly what the farmer did to deserve a three-year sentence.  He obviously didn't shoot the trespasser, and brandishing has a sort of whimsical sound to it.

Yourdictionary.com and dictionary.com both say that brandish comes from the Old French word brandir, from brand, sword.


Catch of the Week

In an article in jacksonville.com about a third of Jacksonville's Blockbusters closing down, I found this passage to be confusing:

"The store locations are scattered around the area, from Yulee to the Westside to East Arlington. Of those, five began the sales Friday. Those locations have ceased renting DVDs, are selling off their stock and are to close March 13. Another two began going out of business sales in January and are to be closed this month. Yet another two closed around the end of 2010."

Because the passage lists the stores that have closed down in 2011, and then goes back to the stores that closed in 2010, it was hard for me to conceptualize the sequence of events, and at first I thought it was a mistake.  I would have put the fact that two stores closed at the end of 2010 at the beginning of the paragraph.


Headline Challenge

While I was scanning headlines in Google News a couple days ago, a headline on msncb.com caught my attention because it said that torture was being used on protesters in Egypt.  I bookmarked it immediately to use for the headline challenge because only the first two paragraphs had to do with torturing protesters, and the rest of the story was about something completely different.  Also, the little bit of information the article included seemed incomplete and vague.

When I went back to the article to write my journal entry, something funny happened.  MSNBC did the work for me.  Someone changed the headline to "Egypt protesters vow massive demonstrations" and completely edited out the part about torture.


Passage of the Week

There are tons of articles about the Egypt's President Murabak resigning that have been written and are being written right now.  However, I found the lead in this particle article on voanews.com particularly inspiring.

"The resignation of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak electrified the tens of thousands of people in Cairo's Tahrir Square. People danced, cheered and shed tears of joy as the central demand of their 18 days of protest was met and nearly 30 years of a presidency came to an end.

"It's over. The nation ended the regime." The words were chanted by young and old, men, women and the children they brought to celebrate the profound change Egypt has undergone."


At this point, there have been so many lives affected by the turmoil in Egypt.  It's just nice to see the desired outcome achieved as a result of so much determination and strife.  The whole article is great, I just didn't want to copy and paste the entire thing!