Is Our Children Learning?

From this week's News of the Weird:

The museum at Cherepovets, Russia (about 400 miles north of Moscow), recently introduced a collection of items actually used by students for successfully cheating in school, including a pair of women's panties on which logarithms and math formulas had been written upside down in black ink. Also on display: a sports jacket with (according to a September dispatch in the Chronicle of Higher Education) "enough secret mechanisms to keep a cardshark flush for decades" and a jeans skirt with 70 numbered pockets for cheat sheets. [Chronicle of Higher Education, 9-16-05]

No, no, no! What, precisely, does a Master's of Education make one a "master" of? "Cardshark"?! What the bloody shit is a "cardshark"!?! Do you suppose the writer meant "cardsharp," which has the benefit of being an actual word, or do you think he really meant "cardshark"--like "poolshark," which is a pun and makes sense--and he's trying to put a new term into the lexicon?

Ahem: "In historical linguistics, etymology is the study of the origins of words. Some words have been derived from other languages, possibly in a changed form (the source words are called "etymons"). The etymology of the term "card sharp" is debated. A popular theory is that it comes from the German word Scharper, which in one sense means swindler. Another theory, which is likely fake etymology, is that card sharp is a degenerate form of card shark, which itself is an analogy to the term pool shark. In actuality, the reverse is probably true: card sharp is the original term, and card shark is a back formation."

Thank you, Wikipedia.

A cardsharp, or cardsharper, engages in cardsharping--a form of sleight of hand--to win at cards. In other words, he's a cheat. A poolshark uses superior skill to take money from gullible opponents. To me, there appears to be a large difference.

To the Chronicle of Higher Education (I suppose anything above grade five IS pretty high...), there is apparently no difference, just as there is apparently no difference between an editor and a bungler. Perhaps the Chronicle sees "sharks" everywhere. Maybe we can get in on the ground floor of this linguistic movement: I can see a future where every word has some "shark" reference in it. Like in the military, we could call riflemen "sharkshooters," or Jews could call crazy Goyim "mesharkkah." I believe Bush should get John Sharklisharkvili out of retirement to be the head of the National Sharkurity Agency, and that people would be truly sharked to find out that the ice caps of Antsharktica are melting due to global warming. The rising sea levels mean only one thing: a return to Noah's Shark.

Do you get it, Chronicle of Higher Education, or do you need this demonstration to continue? Words have meaning, clearly, which is the last thing I thought I would have to teach to a bunch of fucking teachers!