At least once a year, the nerds have their moment in the spotlight:
An intense, oddly compelling spectacle of smart kids, the Scripps National Spelling Bee pitted 293 fourth through eighth graders against one another in a tense three-day competition.
Kavya Shivashankar of Olathe won it all on Laodicean, which means halfhearted in respect to religion or politics.
Actually, I think when it's capitalized, the word refers to the early Christians of Laodicea; when it's used in the more general adjectival sense, I think it should probably be lowercase. And I'm not sure about the word's use in a political (as opposed to religious) sense, or at least I haven't heard it used that way. It's usually used to describe people in a religion (not those outside a religion) who become lukewarm about practicing that religion or proselytizing it. (Hot and cold are both good, but lukewarm sucks, so get outta here, Jesus said in his smackdown of the Laodiceans in Revelations. ((I paraphrase for the benefit of bloggers.)) ) People join a church for many reasons, but they usually go into politics only for the purpose of getting something done politically. It's unlikely they would stay in politics if they become indifferent to it.
But I digress. This was a spelling bee, not an etymology bee. But wouldn't it be fun if the comeptition were expanded a bit, and the kids had to answer questions about the words instead of just spelling them? "So, Kavya, can you tell us the difference between laodicean impulses and outright apostasy? How close from one to the other can we get before we have to acknowledge that the end times are near? You have 15 seconds."
OK, quick, close your eyes and spell "Shivashankar."
