Panacea: (1) a remedy for all ills or difficulties. (2) the most overused word in Annapolis, Maryland.

This week as a slave/reporter for Capital News Service, I attended no fewer than four House of Delegates or State Senate hearings in the span of two days. At said hearings, those who are for or against a particular bill are called to give testimony as to why the legislators should vote yes or no.

The proponents of every bill have one thing in common–they love the word panacea. They all probably think they are being original and showing off their incredible vocabulary when pulling out the “p” word. But I hope that the delegates and senators are just as annoyed as I am when hearing it at every hearing.

It goes like this: “I know this bill is not a panacea, but it goes a long way towards…blah…blah…blah.” Every time. Without fail. For the love of Pete, learn a new word.

I do applaud the man at the hearing on eminent domain bills who pulled out “myriad.” “I know there are a myriad of bills on this, but what I have to say goes for all of them…” I note here that I originally wrote some smartass comment about him misusing the word, as for years I have known it only as an adjective making “a myriad of” an improper construction. But, shockingly I know, I can admit when I have erred and am happy to report that I learned something today.

According to Merriam-Webster: “As the entries here show, however, the noun is in fact the older form, dating to the 16th century. The noun myriad has appeared in the works of such writers as Milton (plural myriads) and Thoreau (a myriad of), and it continues to occur frequently in reputable English. There is no reason to avoid it.”

So despite covering five stories in three days–none of which I remotely cared about–I did actually have something productive come out of my week. Here’s to a repeat next week.

And it looks like I’m off the hook for Lindsey Jacobellis’ snowboard fall. I guess this means Lindsey and I can be friends again.

So to anyone who saw Lindsey Jacobellis fall at the end of the women’s snowboard cross finals last night, thus losing a gold medal, I apologize. It was my fault. All night I was cheering on Ms. Jacobellis–partly because of a cool name–and wanted nothing more than for her to win.

But when she was way out in front I got a little excited. I thought back to her prowess in the snowboard halfpipe, and started egging her on to do a sweet trick at the end to cap things off. And since I am such a charming fellow, Ms. Jacobellis couldn’t help but oblige my request (we’ll ignore the whole time difference/tape delay thing and assume that she hadn’t already fallen hours before I started watching.)

Then boom. She missed the landing. Ended up with silver. My bad.

In other news, there’s another newscast up–Feb. 16.

Not a particularly strong effort, but the panda story at the end might make you cry…