When I Don't Blog ...

When I don't blog, people still end up coming to the blog.  This no longer surprises me. 

It used to surprise me -- a few years ago before I understood that a great deal of blog traffic is driven by searches. 

But, when I have been absent, or when I have blogged infrequently, I sometimes check to see what blog posts have been getting read.  Often, among the blog entries is the Castle is a Gem post.  I don't quite know why.  But this time, it appears my travels to, and photos from China are being found more than other posts.  This is great -- but I wonder how it happened.

Oh, and you will see another post which seems to show up quite frequently on the list.  That Dinosaur Attack WIN entry.

Anyway, I hope to get back to posting more regularly in the near future.  But meanwhile, some people still seem to be finding my words -- and photos -- here.

Glad to have them!

Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee

This is how the Internet works.  This is how marketing works.  This is how you find out about new stuff.

Last week, I was listening to NPR because I hadn't put the next CD of my current Great Course in the car, and I heard the very, very end of an interview with Jerry Seinfeld talking about his latest project: a web series called "Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee."  I thought to myself, "I should remember to check that out."

But I forgot.

Then Sunday I was checking the blogs I follow, and sure enough, one of them -- smacksy -- did her weekly Sunday post with links of things she wanted to share with her readers and, sure enough, CICGC was one of them.  Why did she mention it?  Because of the car Jerry and his guest, David Letterman, drove to get coffee.  But that doesn't matter.

So, yes, then I watched an episode.  And I will watch more.  I laughed.  I truly did.  Because, you see, when people are truly comedians -- when they are experts at finding humor in the situations of life -- it's far more enjoyable to watch two of them go out for coffee than it is to watch most TV sitcoms.  More enjoyable, and funnier.

And, while one or two of you will have heard about this series before, I am confident most of you have not. Mr. Seinfeld is already in his second season, folks, so it's not like this is brand new -- it's merely new to me.  And probably you.  So I am telling you about it.

And most of you will not click the link.  This is how the Internet works.

And then some of you will hear about it again.  And then you will watch it.  This is how marketing works.

Where in the World Were My Readers Last Week?

I just checked my most recent traffic for this blog.  There is a view which shows me the countries from which pageviews are made.  Check it out.

I have been to France once in my life, for two days.  Sherry and I really want to go -- Sherry needs to add Paris to the list of Fashion Capitals she's visited, and I've seen photos all my life of the beauty there.  But I am intrigued -- how does France have so many readers of a blog like this, with my varied topics?  Perhaps the French like anniversaries, and since we celebrated one last week, the blog got hits?  [The anniversary post got 100 views, so it's a correlation.  Not a proof, but a correlation.] Well, if you're from France, and you're reading this, put something in the Comments.  I'd love to hear from you. 

Latvia?  Well, Sherry has a friend in Latvia.  We have not heard from her in a very long time.  Perhaps there is a connection there?  Ilse, is that you?


You're all welcome, of course.  I am merely interested.  Have a great week, whereever you are in the world.

Dealing with my Split (Social) Personality

As I have written many times, I don't blog about work. (Here.)

But today I have a topic which touches a bit on my work life, so the wall between the two aspects of my life in social media will crumble a bit.  And that, as it turns out, is the point.

Which of these people am I?

 

OR

The guy on the left is a leader in part of the technology industry, but to read this blog, you'd never really know that. That's how I intended it. From the beginning, Snippets and Wisps was meant to be a place where I could write about the parts of my life which are not related to my job.

The guy on the right is a gamer, a sci-fi fan, a lover of Great Courses and movies.  And of course, the guy on the right is also this guy:

(I enjoy finding an opportunity to put a photo of my beautiful wife in this blog.)

Well, obviously, I am both of these people.  For various reasons, I have kept them separate when it comes to social media.  This blog and my Facebook account have been devoted to my personal life.  Meanwhile, the blog I write for work never talks about the movies I like, games I play, etc.  And rather than using Facebook, I use LinkedIn as the "social" means to connect with people for business purposes.

Then there is Twitter.  When I started using Twitter, I created @Steve_Will and decided to let that be the "non-work" me -- that's the Twitter ID I use to advertise Snippets and Wisps, and the ID I use to follow celebrities and a few friends.  (Very few of my friends use Twitter, as it turns out.  [Welcome to the Twitterverse, @MichaelHacker58.]) I use a different ID for information I want to share about technology/work topics.  As social media has grown, it's been harder to keep that separation, but I've done it pretty well so far. 

Well, the wall I've built over the past several years between these two parts of my social life is showing signs of cracking.  I am receiving more and more Facebook "friend" requests from people who only know "of" me.  They have heard of me through work, and they might even be friends of people who are Facebook friends of mine, but they are not friends of mine.  To this point, I generally just leave their requests alone.  And perhaps I will continue to do that.  And my personal Twitter account has many followers who are clearly finding me because of my job, so I just let them know that they should probably be following the other ID.  But I've begun to feel a bit constrained by this.  If someone is following me expecting news about the operating system I represent, what will they think getting directed here, to this blog?  Do they really want to know what music or Great Course I am listening to?  Worse, if I express a political or religious view, will people get angry or upset with my company or our products?  These give me some pause.  And the situation is about to compound on itself, I think.

Soon, my work organization will be using Facebook for a "Big Thing." I am heavily involved in that "Big Thing" and I am personally very passionate about it.  I am pretty sure this particular business use of Facebook will cause my Facebook presence to become even more visible to customers, business partners and so on.

So I am reevaluating my social presence.  Professionally, I need to be active in social media, and I cannot have the things I do for personal expression negatively affect that part of my job.  At the same time, I really enjoy blogging here, and while Facebook does have its issues, I definitely like it for keeping in touch with most of my family and most of my good friends.

If any of my readers have some experience keeping personal and professional life separate in this age of social media, I would be happy to hear your stories and advice.

But I have to admit, no matter how well I am able to manage these two sides of my social networking life, I am always going to envy how this guy does it.

.

Nathan Fillion is amazing. I'm just sayin'.

Dominion Fever

Ahh, gentle readers.  You will have noticed a pattern in my behavior over the years.  That pattern is this: I will find a game, I will like it, something will allow me to spend more than a passing few moments on it, and I will be hooked.

It's happened with video games (like the Link/Zelda games,) with board games (Ticket to Ride, anyone?) with computer games (Get behind me, Civilization!) and of course with card games (Magic, I have strayed from you for too long!)

Well, over the recent past, the game which is consuming me is Dominion.

I wrote about this game once before, so please go read that entry if you want to get a feel for the game.

The point of this post is to lay a third thing down as a distraction from writing blogs.  Dominion has become a once-a-week (or more) game I play over the lunch hour with two of the Dudes.  It has become a game I invite the Dudes over to play, just because I am itching for another game.  And, oh my oh my, it's a game which is now available to play on-line!  For absolutely no money at all, you can play the base set of cards with your friends, or you can choose a solo game which allows you to play against one, two or three AI bots.

Like the computer version of the "Ticket to Ride" game before it, having access to an on-line version of Dominion has been wonderful, and awful.  I can play a game in 5-10 minutes.  And I do.  Over and over.  While I cannot write a blog while watching The West Wing or Battlestar Galactica, I most certainly can play a few seconds of Dominion while the action on the TV show switches from one scene to another.

So far, I have refused to pay money for any of the add-on sets on-line.  I'm holding off because I really don't want to spoil the anticipation I feel when I consider how much fun it will be to play the game IRL (In Real Life) with the Dudes.  I have already experienced a lessening of a desire to play "Ticket to Ride: Europe" IRL, now that I have (over-)played the computer version.  I do not want that to happen to Dominion.

So, folks, chalk this up as the third thing which helped me go silent for a while here.  What a fun game!

OK.  That's four blog posts written now.  I think I owe myself another episode of The West Wing.  Or two.  And some Dominion.

Waylaid by Learning

Yesterday I put some of the blame for my recent dearth of posts on a TV show.  Today, I am going to add "learning" to the list of things which distracted me.

You see, of all the blog entries I had been writing in recent months, it was the "Knowledge Series" which was taking more of my attention than anything else in Snippets and Wisps.  If you'll recall, the Knowledge Series started as a way for me to synthesize many of the things I had learned while listening to many Great Courses (from The Teaching Company.)

Well, two things happened related to Great Courses and Learning in general which sidetracked me.

First, at around Christmas time, I completed two courses which were both, roughly, on the topic of Psychology.  These were the first courses I had taken on this topic since an Intro to Psych course back at Luther.  They were excellent.  But I haven't yet written "reviews" of them for Snippets & Wisps.  I didn't write the first review because I wanted to have heard both courses before I wrote either review, so that I could compare, contrast and synthesize.  I didn't write the second review because, hey, it was Christmas break, and I don't push myself to blog while on vacation.

Unfortunately, that put me "behind" in writing Great Course reviews.  This would have been OK, except, well, I started another course and it forced me into a second detour.

Second, I started listening to  "Philosophy of Science."  Oh. My. Word.

Many of the things I was writing about in the Knowledge Series are directly related to the material in this Great Course.  And it's 36 lectures long!

I simply could not make myself continue the Knowledge Series without first having some of this new material in my head.  And I could not force myself to go back and review the Psychology courses -- when I write my reviews, I always return to the course books so that I can do justice to the material in the course, and so that it gets better "set" in my memory.  No, I could not go back to another course -- not while the Philosophy of Science was filling my brain.

So, you see, I was unwilling to continue to put my collected thoughts together while they were in the process of being updated by new information.

I am currently on lecture 35 of that Great Course, though (at the time of this writing, not at the time of your reading) so I anticipate I will be able to move on to some of the next points I need to make in the Knowledge Series soon. Perhaps by this weekend.

I must admit, of the "excuses" I'm giving for my blogging dry spell, this one feels least like an excuse, and more like a reason.  It's also quite satisfying.  Putting off talking while you're learning something?  I think that's generally a good idea, if I do say so myself.

Returning

I took a month off.  From blogging.  Here, at least.  Did you notice?

I hadn't intended to, but it happened.  Then, over this past weekend I wrote a nice long explanatory post about how it happened and why.

Now I cannot find that post. I'll take it as a sign: who cares?

There were a couple of points in the post, but they will appear as I write other things.  Meanwhile, it's time to write a few things down.

But I won't leave without a picture.

I Ask You: Echoes from the Past

Many of you might never have noticed, but shortly after I created this blog, I created a companion blog called "Echoes of Snippets."  The intent of the companion blog is to capture the posts from this blog which deserve to be reprinted -- which are worthy of echoing.

I recently noticed that I have not added a new "Echo" for more than a year.  So now, I am considering my options.  And I thought I'd ask for your help.

What do you think? 

Do any of you remember reading anything on "Snippets and Wisps" in the past couple of years which struck you as worth a second read?

I will make one selection, so you don't need to suggest it - the entry for Maya will definitely be in Echoes. 

I welcome any suggestions, nominations or thoughts.

Stats as of March 25

The numbers are so -- even -- maybe I should have stopped right there?

What I've Been Writing

[Warning to the reader: This is a very strange entry today.  Too many thoughts.  But it's how my Muse was pulling me late last night.]

Slow days in "Snippets and Wisps" lately.


I have written a lot lately.  Just not here.  My material has mostly been:

1. Stuff for work (but I don't blog about work [not here in SnW, anyway].)
2. Discussions, Essays and Devotional material about Christianity and Faith (and you've seen a portion of that here)

... but primarily I've been writing ...

3. The Dungeons and Dragons campaign my groups are playing.

So, the work stuff is right out.  And I can't very well put that DnD stuff in the blog, can I?  I mean, my players don't all read this, but some of them do.  No spoilers here.  [Just a teaser.]

So, if you see a few faith-based entries here in the days to come, just realize that it's about the only thing I've been writing which even remotely fits into this blog.

I can hear some of you now:

"Wait, Steve, does that mean that some of what you publish here has been used somewhere else?  Some of the things I read on 'Snippets and Wisps' were not solely for your 'SnW' audience?"

To which I reply, emphatically:

"Oh.  My.  Yes."

In fact, I try very hard not to write the same thing twice, but I often think the same thing multiple times, so it's not hard to imagine that I might write about the same thing multiple times.  But, if I've written it once, I try to use it again, if the topic needs to be addressed again.  I do it at work:  All.  The.  Time.  [Are we all tired of that rampant idiom yet?  So.  Over.  Used.]   I suppose "SnW' is the writing venue where I do the least re-use of material, but I certainly re-use when it makes sense.

For example, these days when I get into an extended "conversation" with someone on Facebook, I often think "This would make a great blog someday."  So I try to capture it for later re-use here.

The thing is, long discussions on Facebook are most often about religion and/or politics.  So if I re-use my thoughts from fb here, they will almost certainly get into one or both of those topics.  [For example, I would gladly join a group of "Liberal Christians Opposed to Rick Santorum" but according to his 2008 interview, he wouldn't believe we existed.]  And once I get started down that road, this blog could just turn into another politics blog, and there are too many of those around, don't you agree? 

Plus, to be fair, politics doesn't interest me enough to think about it often.  [Games do.]  And my belief in Christianity, while it does interest me quite a bit, is among the least-read topics when I post here.  [But when I mention "Castle" or "X-Men" or put up a great photo of one of the beautiful women in my life, I get more traffic. Go figure!]

So, all this is to explain why there has been a relative dearth of material here lately.  And it might continue.

But hey, it could change!  I am very motivated to make people happy.  I love knowing I have an audience.  I'd be happy to write about specific topics, if requested (and appropriate.)  I've solicited topics from readers before and gotten the proverbial crickets chirping in response.  So, I reissue the offer.  If you really wish I'd write about one of my many topics, drop me a line or write a comment.

And now, just to prove my point [well, one of my many points] I will put in a photo of Stana Katic as Detective Kate Beckett and Nathan Fillion as (the "ruggedly handsome") Richard Castle.  My hit rate will quadruple.

[I am two episodes behind on watching this wonderful TV show, by the way.  Why?  Three consecutive weeks of Dungeons and Dragons.  Fantastic.  Gotta love it.  And thank goodness for "On Demand" viewing so I can catch up.]


So, that's all for today.  Maybe, after seeing "Gone with the Wind" and "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider" this past weekend it's about time for another edition of Movie Micro-Reviews.  That's always good for a quick blog.  [Teaser: One of these movies is much, much better than the other.  And we all know which one that is.  So really, it's not much of a teaser, is it?]

Secret Asian Man: Filter bubbles

I will not violate copyright rules, but I want to comment on this comic and blog entry.  So please read it and come back.

Secret Asian Man: Filter bubbles

SAM has this one so right!

We all, every single one of us, have unique filters we use to view this world. This is not a political statement. It's not even a critical statement. It's human psychology.  It's part of how we deal with living.

But in the past decade, technology has allowed us to create even more overt filters.  I remember hearing about the personalized, automated portal technology -- Yahoo was trumpeting it a long time ago ("long time" in technology terms) -- and I was glad to know I would be more likely to get news about games I might like (for example) but I was also worried I might not see news & views which would challenge me to reconsider my positions.

But, like anyone, I enjoy reading things which support my opinions, so if I "like" something on Facebook (for example) I am sure to see more of similarly-minded news/views.  And, because I tend to "like" things which are more on the "liberal" or "left" side of politics, I am now being sent e-mails and shown articles & opinions on other "left" topics.   As it happens, there are quite a few of these I don't agree with.  But now I have to take overt action if I do not want to see them.

Technology is not the single direct cause of the increase in polarized opinions. 

But it's an enabler!


[Thanks, Tak Toyoshima, creator of Secret Asian Man.]

Tweety Night

Twitter is called (in social media circles) a tool for micro-blogging.

With that in mind, here are my microblogs since my last real "Snippets and Wisps" blog entry.

That top one -- What do you think?  I mean, maybe you don't listen to as much Christmas music as I do, but think about it ....

If a music artist has a Christmas CD, what is one song you are almost guaranteed to find on their (first) Christmas CD?  "Silent Night."  And when it's there, doesn't it always seem they do an extraspecial job making it beautiful?

Of course, some credit must go to the song itself.  "Stille Nacht" is a masterpiece.

NaBloPoMo No

I suspect that no one has noticed but ....

NaBloPoMo -- National Blog Posting Month -- is November.

I participated in writing daily blog postings each day in November in 2009 and 2010.

But not this year.

Three basic reasons:

1. I have been busier this year than in previous Novembers, largely because of work.  (But I don't blog about work, at least not here in Snippets & Wisps.)  This has left me precious little time for relaxation and creativity.  Despite what it might sometimes appear, this blog does take both time and creativity. {Self-Deprecating Compliment Fishing Alert!}
2. My creative efforts this fall have been devoted to other things, most notably a Dungeons & Dragons quest-based campaign I've been writing and running and using my cool tablet to draw maps for.  {Sentence-Ending Preposition Alert!}
3. I truly like to blog with positivity.  There has been some less-than-positive mind-mud clogging up my creative gears of late.  When I sit down to blog, I get all serious.  Serious is not inherently bad -- some of my best Advice and Small Sermon writing is serious -- but when clogged with negaslimeocity, my "serious" comes out negative.  {Invented Word Alert!}  So rather than write negative, I choose not to write.

I ought to point out that there is one reason which is categorically not the reason I am skipping NaBloPoMo this year.

That non-reason?

• It's for girls.

Just setting the record straight.

Favorite Foto Friday - Dresses, Daughters, Wife and Landmark 1000

I have two great photos to share today -- Sherry designed a dress for Leah and another for Sarah in her first year as an Apparel Design student.  Here, they model them.  What beautiful women!




And, to make this blog entry a bit more special, it is my thousandth!  That's right!  1000 entries have been posted to Snippets and Wisps since it moved here to blogger.com.

Many "Blogs of Note" have been named, and then fallen into disuse, while I've been writing snippets, wisps reviews and the occasional advice or small sermon. I've really enjoyed talking about games, books, learning, and of course my family in my own little corner of the blogosphere.  I think I'll keep doing it!

And, because I just can't get enough of them, here are a couple more photos of these girls and their outfits.  And another photo of something Sherry didn't design, but she made and altered for Marisa - for Renaissance Festival.  Wow.

Six months of nothing?

Not that I am saying my blog should be one of Blogger's Blogs of Note, but honestly, if a particular blog has not been updated since January 4, why is it a Blog of Note on July 6?

That's six months of NOT blogging.

I check out the Blogs of Note occasionally, to see if I can find other cool blogs.  I've found several that way.

But if I'm going to check out a Blog of Note, I want to know that the blogger responsible for it is at least actively blogging!

Later, they can fizzle out, or leave blogger.com for greener pastures, or whatever.  But on the day they are named to the Blogs of Note list, they need to be active so they can post something like

"OMG! I just saw the traffic to my blog spike so high, I thought I was being spammed!

But I'm today's new blog in the Blogs of Note.

I'd like to thank the Academy ..."

OK, that's out of my system.  You can all go back to what you were doing. 

Move along.

There's nothing to see here.

Really.

I mean it.

Still here?

Why?

You think by sticking around I'll give you something, don't you?

Well, aren't you persistent?

OK, then how about this?

Surprising Statistics

I was curious to know what sort of posts drove people to my blog.  Well, blogger.com has some of those stats, and I found some statistics which surprised me.

My most viewed posts:

#5 - 39 pageviews - Review: Babel 17

#4 - 41 pageviews - What Influence Reviews? Shall I see "Sucker Punch?"

#3 - 48 pageviews - Netflix TV Does It Again - Big Bang Theory

#2 - 49 pageviews - Catcher in the Rye -- Yeah It's a Classic but ...

In every case up to now, I can imagine that the reason for the high number of hits -- hits from outside my circle of friends and family -- would be specific searches for specific topics mentioned in the title. Someone searches for "Babel 17" and gets to me, for example.

But now we get to the single most viewed post ever in Snippets & Wisps. And it's first by a LONG way.

#1 - 202 pageviews (1) - My Life's Soundtrack - Part 1 - Secular List 1

This one is shocking, to me. Yes, I talk about a few songs in here -- songs that people might search for. But to have it get viewed four times more than the #2 post? Strange.

Hmmm, after this analysis, maybe I should do another post like that!

networkedblogs.com sends most of my traffic to me - 1185
google.com is next on the list with less than half of that - 493

And I have had 33 pageviews from Iran, and 34 from Malaysia. 

OK, well at least I found it interesting.

You all go about your day and have a good one, K?

Springing into Travel

Already this year, I have traveled to Chicago and Wisconsin for work.  Next week, I travel to Prague (I hear good things -- I hope I get to see some of it) and shortly after that, I travel to Orlando, then Minneapolis (I know, not much of a trip, but I don't even get to go home between the two), then a couple weeks and I'm off to Milan.  And just a couple of weeks after I return from that, we head to California.

Something about traveling causes stress long before I actually hit the road.  And when the number of planned trips increases, the preparatory stress increases exponentially.  I think it's because each trip generates a long mental list in my head (things to do before I go, reservations which must be made, things to take, etc.) and having multiple lists generates a meta-list -- check the "Prague list," then check the "Orlando list," then ... oh wait, the "Orlando list" needs to have some of the "Minneapolis list" on it!

I am sorely tempted to try my new "vacation blog" plan.  What's that, you ask?

The charter for Snippets & Wisps contains the phrase "I post every weekday when I'm not on vacation" but I have noticed that readership drops when I go on vacation (makes sense) but doesn't pick up again for a while after (also makes sense, but it wasn't obvious to me when I made the charter.  Live and learn.)  


Some of my favorite blogs (or "columns" to use the old print term, for those blogs which really started out as on-line versions of print media) don't go silent when the authors are on vacation.  Instead, they "re-print" entries from the past.


"Hey," I thought recently, "I could do the same thing.  After all, I have several years worth of blog material, but many people have only been reading me since I started publishing to Facebook.  Maybe some old posts would be worth re-printing ... errrr ... re-posting."


So, I had begun poking around my old stuff to see what I might re-run.  On vacation.  And now....


Instead of vacation, I am thinking about using it to fill in when I will be traveling.  Why?  Traveling takes so much time!  Connection to the internet can be so unpredictable while on the road.  And, very importantly, I sometimes have absolutely nothing in my travel days except work, and since I don't blog about work (here) there is often nothing to say.


This is all a preface to this final warning, dear readers.  You might feel a bit of deja vu soon.  If you visit Snippets & Wisps and you think you've read something before, you just might be right.


Or else I'm getting repetitive.


And saying something again.


More than once.


Too.

Week in Reviews

Let's review.

As it happens, as this week begins, I have just finished reading a novel, completed a Great Course, and neared the end of a video game.

That means the topics for this week's Snippets & Wisps are pretty well decided. It's a week of reviews.

Will I also post the next part of my serial?

That's hard to say. Should I?

One of the struggles I have with posting the serial is that part of me would really like to have the whole thing written before I post any of it. I want to ensure that the language remains consistent, that I can do a good job of hinting early what will happen late, that the whole ties together. Another part of me, the part that has won my internal battles so far, sees a tremendous challenge in putting myself deep into the maze and seeing if I can find a satisfactory way out.

Quote - Heinlein - Without Evidence

"When a man makes up his mind without evidence, no evidence disproving his opinion will change his mind."
Robert Heinlein

I found this quote in a letter Heinlein wrote. I found the letter in the great blog Letters of Note. I read the blog via Networked Blogs.

This statement is true on several levels. While not all of them are thoroughly negative, in the case which caused Heinlein to say it, he certainly intended it as criticism.

Can you imagine having someone write a book, about you, without talking to you? And then having people believe it, just because it was written?

Oh, wait, that's the way the blogging world, and indeed much of the Internet, works. And it's how the paparazzi make their livings.

"Silly" Knowledge - Understanding begets Learning

When it comes to words -- their meanings, and their proper use -- I care. I enjoy learning words, and using them properly. I don't study them; I don't go out of my way to find new words. I like to encounter them in my reading -- in the wild, in their natural habitats, as it were -- and then relish them as they become part of my vocabulary.

If you've read my blog for a while, you know that I don't want to be a pedant -- making an excessive or inappropriate display of learning -- but I sometimes comment when people use words incorrectly (see "thence," "sojourn," "beg the question," "solution") or use non-words when there are perfectly good words for the concepts they are trying to get across ("doable," "mentee.")

I suppose I have an internal desire for there to be "right" and "wrong" in various areas of life, and for some reason, proper use of words is among those.

Well, my current Great Course is "The Story of Human Language" by Dr. John McWhorter, and it is teaching me that "right" and "wrong" is far more variable than I once thought. The course has already taught me quite a bit, but the word which inspired me to write is the word "Silly."

Why "Silly?" Because McWhorter uses it as a clear example of how a word can change its meaning from one thing to something completely different.

Here is a quote from English in 1400, spelled as it was a the time.

"Cely art thou, hooli virgyne marie"

which would be spelled today as

"Silly are you, holy virgin Mary."

Between 1400 and today, "Silly" actually transformed several times. The word "Cely/Silly" meant something completely different in 1400. It meant "Blessed" and then "Innocent." Either meaning might have been used here to describe the mother of Jesus, and this quote was probably a transitional use. From its "blessed" meaning, it moved to "innocent" and was further modified to mean "deserving of compassion" by the time Shakespeare used it in 1591 in The Two Gentlemen of Verona:

"I take your offer and will live with you,/Provided that you do no outrages/On silly women or poor passengers."

Its current meaning is an evolution which followed this long, convoluted, but strangely logical line of changing usage.

Oh, language changes in many other ways, as I am learning, but this specific example has taught me that I should not be so caught up in "right" or "wrong." I am not sure I can move past my "prescriptivist" tendencies to an acceptance of true "descriptivism" when it comes to word meanings, but I have a deeper appreciation for how seeming "misuse" of a word might actually be a step in the development of the language.

Yet there is a part of me that will still be sad when "comprise" completes its change to mean its opposite.

Silly me!