In a college linguistics course, I first encountered the work of the Institute for Propaganda Analysis (IPA), a pre-World War II organization — we’d probably call it a think tank, nowadays — which (per Wikipedia):
…formed with the general concern that increased amounts of propaganda were decreasing the public’s ability to develop their own critical thoughts. [...]

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I’ve always liked punctuation; some would say I like it a little too much. For my junior-college newspaper, I wrote an opinion column called something melodramatic and “clever” like “The Outspeaker.” [...checking yearbook... yeah, that was it, all right] I was convinced that the only thing anyone would notice about the column was the eloquence [...]

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I was scouting around recently looking for information on the word “gnomic.” It seemed apropos for a comment I wanted to make on somebody else’s blog, and I thought I gnew knew what it meant, but wasn’t 100% positive.
One of the more thorough resources I located on this subject was the “Love to Know 1911″ [...]

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Longfellow says, in “My Lost Youth”:
A boy’s will is the wind’s will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.
Adds Grace Paley:
I was a fantastic student until ten, and then my mind began to wander.
Today’s been a day for lack of focus (by necessity, not choice) and wandering around in brief, staccato bursts of [...]

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