A pundit is an initiate, learned person, savant or someone who has been admitted to membership in a scholarly field. The term originates from the Hindi term pandit, which in turn originates from the Sanskrit. Today it may be used in a scornful and derogatory manner; for instance, a conservative pundit or a liberal pundit. This means you disagree with the person's views and want to discount its value.

Ne'er-do-wells were originally known as "whip snappers" in the 17th century, after their habit of standing around on street corners all day, idly snapping whips to pass the time. The term was been based on the already-existing phrase, "snipper-snapper," also meaning a worthless young man, but in any case, "whip snapper" became "whippersnapper" fairly rapidly. http://www.word-detective.com/101797.html

A reverse merger is an alternative method for a private company to become publicly traded. It is synonymous with an IPO (Initial Public Offering), but less expensive and quicker. Typically, a private company is merged into a public shell stock, with the owners of the private company obtaining control of the new combined public entity. Also referred to as a Reverse Take Over (RTO). A shell stock (shell company) is a public company that no longer has any business operations. It retains its capital structure and public trading status with the intention to complete a reverse merger with a non-public company with an on-going business. This merger creates a new company that is both publicly trading and generating revenues. There are many reasons why a Shell Stock exists in the first place, but most commonly, they either lost the business due to a bankruptcy, or just sold or closed it. http://www.shellstockreview.com/ssr-Shell-Stock-Glossary.html

What is a good rhyming dictionary? What rhymes with pebble? How (and in what plays) did Shakespeare use pebble? http://www.rhymezone.com/r/rhyme.cgi?Word=pebble&typeofrhyme=perfect&org1=syl&org2=l

PEBBLE PEBBLE by Martha Esbin
Johnny went to Pebble Beach. He took a chance without advance reservations at the golf course. Pebble pebble.

Johnny went to Pebble Beach. He could have pranced! He could have danced! A canceled reservation meant he could play golf at Pebble pebble.

Johnny took his cell phone and called his friends. “Where do you think I am? Playing golf at Pebble Beach.”

Many a month has come and gone. Johnny’s tale spins on and on. Pebble pebble.

Note: Johnny is a nickname for a graduate of St. John’s Jesuit High School in Toledo. Written for architect and friend Paul Sullivan

Q: What happened to the Differential Car Co.? Do they still make rail cars anywhere?
A: The company known as Differential Steel Car Co., Differential Car Co., DIFCO, and Trinity DIFCO was founded in New York in 1915 and moved to Findlay in 1920. It was sold to Trinity Industries Inc., of Dallas, Texas, in the late 1990s. It was best known for building air-operated side-dump rail cars for ballast to maintain railways, and for "Larry cars" to move slate at mines. Trinity ran the plant along North Main Street until 2002, when it moved production to Dallas. Several DIFCO veterans built a plant on Ohio 12 between Findlay and Arcadia under the name JK Co. LLC, with John Kurtz, CEO; Joe Kurtz, president; and C. Leon Thornton, vice president. It is on the Norfolk Southern Railroad, just west of Memory Gardens Cemetery. JK Co. LLC, which has about 35 employees, produces air-operated side-dump cars on the DIFCO model. Joe Kurtz said the company is about to produce 10 new cars for a Canadian iron ore mine. Trinity Industries has large rail car construction and repair, rail car leasing and management, barge, energy, and construction divisions. -- Mark Donaldson, Hancock Historical Museum, Findlay; JK Co. LLC; Peter Mattiace.
Q: Why a salute of 21 guns?
A: Gun salutes started when early warriors demonstrated their peacefulness by rendering their weapons ineffective. This took one shot with firearms and cannons of the 14th century.
Warships fired seven-gun salutes, probably because of the number's astrological and Biblical significance. Land batteries, having more gunpowder, fired three guns for every shot fired afloat, hence their salute was 21 guns. The 21-gun salute became the highest honor a nation rendered. Varying customs among the maritime powers led to confusion in saluting and returning salutes. Great Britain, the dominant sea power in the 18th and 19th centuries, compelled weaker nations to salute first, and monarchies once received more guns than did republics. The United States joined an international agreement on 21-gun salutes in August 1875. In the early 1800s, the War Department had defined the "national salute" equal to the number of states in the Union, at that time 17. This salute was fired by all U.S. military installations at 1 p.m. on Independence Day. The president also received a salute equal to the number of states. In 1890, regulations designated the national salute as 21 guns. Today, 21 guns are fired in honor of a national flag, the sovereign or chief of state of a foreign nation, a member of a reigning royal family, and the president, ex-president and president-elect of the United States. It is also fired at noon of the day of their funerals. Salutes are also rendered to other domestic and foreign military and civilian leaders based on protocol. These salutes are always in odd numbers. -- U.S. Army http://www.thecourier.com/Opinion/columns/2011/Jan/JU/ar_JU_012411.asp?d=012411,2011,Jan,24&c=c_13

The library at Stony Stratford, on the outskirts of Milton Keynes, looks like the aftermath of a crime, its shell-shocked staff presiding over an expanse of emptied shelves. Only a few days ago they held 16,000 volumes. Now, after a campaign on Facebook, there are none. Every library user was urged to pick their full entitlement of 15 books, take them away and keep them for a week. The idea was to empty the shelves by closing time on January 15: in fact with 24 hours to go, the last sad bundle of self-help and practical mechanics books was stamped out. Robert Gifford, chair of Stony Stratford town council, planned to collect his books when he got home from work in London, but left it too late. The empty shelves, as the library users want to demonstrate, represent the gaping void in their community if Milton Keynes council gets its way. Stony Stratford, an ancient Buckinghamshire market town famous only for its claim that the two pubs, the Cock and the Bull, are the origin of the phrase "a cock and bull story", was one of the communities incorporated in the new town in 1967. The Liberal Democrat council, made a unitary authority in 1997, now faces budget cuts of £25m and is consulting on closing at least two of 10 outlying branch libraries. Stony Stratford council got wind in December and wrote to all 6,000 residents – not entirely disinterestedly, as the council meets in the library, like many other groups in the town. "In theory the closure is only out for consultation," Gifford said, "but if we sit back it will be too late. One man stopped me in the street and said, 'The library is the one place where you find five-year-olds and 90-year-olds together, and it's where young people learn to be proper citizens'. It's crazy even to consider closing it." http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jan/14/stony-stratford-library-shelves-protest

If you make it here, you make it anywhere. The celebrated lyrics by Fred Ebb are from 1977: "If I can make it there / I'll make it anywhere / It's up to you, New York, New York." But in 1959, the New York Times quoted actress Julie Newmar (born 1933) saying the words above—prefaced by "That's why I came to New York." (Newmar introduced another well-known expression in 1964, when her robot character Rhoda, in the television show My Living Doll, used the catchphrase "That does not compute." Her most famous role was as Catwoman in the Batman TV series.)
I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. The French philosopher Voltaire is widely credited for what may be the most celebrated quotation about freedom of speech. Bartlett's lists it under his name, calling it a paraphrase from his letter to a M. le Riche, February 6, 1770—but that attribution was based on a misreading. The quote does not appear in Voltaire's letter to François-Louis-Henri Leriche of that date, nor anywhere else in Voltaire's works. The real writer was Evelyn Beatrice Hall (1868–1919), English author of The Friends of Voltaire, a book she published in 1906 under the pseudonym S. G. Tallentyre. The illustrious line is Hall's own characterization of Voltaire's attitude. Discussing a book by one of his friends, she explains that even though he had thought the work rather light, he rose to its defense when it was censored.
Iron curtain This term became basic to world politics after Winston Churchill used it in a 1946 speech, referring to the political divide between the Soviet Union and the nations it dominated, on the one hand, and the rest of the world, on the other. But Ethel Snowden (1881–1951), an English suffragette, used it in this sense much earlier, in her 1920 book Through Bolshevik Russia: "We were behind the ‘iron curtain’ at last!" See other misattributed quotations at: http://www.yalealumnimagazine.com/issues/2011_01/anon4651.html