On the use of "roil"

This week I have heard more than one newscast state that the Catholic church is "roiling" in scandal. I find this usage odd. I think the only other time I've seen this word is in cookbooks, as in "bring to a roiling boil." However, CNN uses it as such, "As the priest abuse scandal continues to roil Europe, a growing chorus of American Catholics pressed the Vatican to adopt the same reforms that the U.S. Catholic Church did in 2002..."

Being the savvy sort of bitch that I am, I checked it out on Merriam-Webster, but I didn't find it particularly informative. No etymology was listed. I would expect to hear that the Catholic church is, perhaps, embroiled, in a scandal, but why is it roiling? And even though embroil and roil seem like they share a morpheme, that doesn't really make sense because then you would have em+b+roil, which is clearly bullshit.

So what is up with roil? I still have no clue, but now I'm going to be watching the news for other instances of this weird-ass verb.

Almost a Disaster

Today's photo is from Amazon. I don't understand why people need "stadium style nachos" at home, but there you have it. Where do people even put these things? I guess if you live in a big house you have space for weird nacho machine/holder things.

First day of school. Forgot my map and schedule. Got lost. Magically made it to both classes on time, but not before seriously considering giving up and hiding in a bathroom to cry over my failure. Sects and Violence is held in the college of forest studies building, so there are signs about recycling and Arbor Day all over. The professor seems a bit self-possessed, but I think if I do the reading, I should be fine. We watched a movie about the People's Temple cult, which I was fascinated by. The class is 2.5 hours long though, which is pretty harsh.

Phonetics went quite well. Our teacher is a really nice grad student who studies sociophonetics. I didn't know that was even a discipline, but if phonetics were to interest me, I think that would be the topic. We formed a little contingent of morphology-lovers at my table. We may start a war.

I am not sure why this article from the Christian Science Monitor presents such surprise that men and women are having friendships just as they would have friends within their own gender. I mean, I've been doing that for a while now and I don't think it's a big deal. Although I do think it's good that some schools are allowing men and women to room together now. Really it's their own choice and for people like me who can never seem to live with girls well, it would be much better.