Monday, July 30, 2012

Feedback to A.Word.A.Day
From:  Craig Nielsen  Subject:  Short Words
A confident person doesn't need big words ... "If it is to be, it is up to me."
From:  Creede Lambard  Subject:  Fey (and short words in general)
Where I used to work we would play a game called "One Pulse Words" where the goal of the game was to just use words with no more than one 'pulse' to them.  It would drive some of the folks we worked with nuts when we used these words of just one pulse, on and on and on.  Try it and see if you can send that clod in the next cube up the wall.
From:  Rhonda Hudson   Subject:  The power of word
Thanks for the words. I forward them to my 86-year-old father, a retired professor, and it has brought our relationship to a place it never has been in the past.  The power of words!
From:  Jim Ellis  Subject:  adverbs
Adverbs have a central place in the study of Criminal Law.  When enacting criminal statutes, legislatures must select which mental state the prosecution must prove in order to obtain a conviction.  The Model Penal Code establishes a taxonomy of adverbs for this task: "purposely", "knowingly", "recklessly", or "negligently".  (The higher in that list a particular law is, the heavier the burden that the prosecution must bear in individual cases.)  As a result, first year law students find, often to their surprise, that the selection and interpretation of adverbs are crucial topics in their studies.

Foundation and Earth is a Locus Award nominated science fiction novel by Isaac Asimov, the fifth novel of the Foundation series and chronologically the last in the series.  It was published in 1986, four years after the first sequel to the Foundation trilogy, which is titled Foundation's Edge.  Foundation and Earth takes place only some 500 years into the 1,000-year Seldon Plan.  As detailed by his wife in It's Been a Good Life, Asimov intended to write a sequel, but his attempts were fruitless.  He did not know what to do next.  This is why he wrote the prequels (Prelude to Foundation and Forward the Foundation) instead.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundation_and_Earth

Google and Boolean Logic
AND*
The and operator will reduce the volume of "hits" by requiring that more than one keyword is found in a record. 
OR
The or operator will increase the number of hits by requiring that one or both of the keywords is found in the record.  Google generates synonyms and applies “or” for every word automatically, but to control which synonyms are included use “OR” (in all caps).
NOT**
The not operator will decrease the number of "hits" by requiring that one and only one keyword is found in a record, and not returning those records that contain the second keyword.  Google automatically excludes most articles and common words. 
Other search tips and tricks for Google:
Phrase searching with quotation marks when small words are important.  Exact term searching with the plus sign when you don’t want Google to use synonyms.  Fill-in-the-blank searching using the asterisk.  http://learningcenter.berklee.edu/downloads/forums/2010_06_29-google_ninja_doc.pdf
*  Because AND is Google's default you don't need to use it at all.
** Instead of NOT, you may use a space followed by the minus sign.

"The Star-Spangled Banner" is the national anthem of the United States of America.  The lyrics come from "Defence of Fort McHenry", a poem written in 1814 by the 35-year-old lawyer and amateur poet, Francis Scott Key, after witnessing the bombardment of Fort McHenry by the British Royal Navy ships in Chesapeake Bay during the Battle of Fort McHenry in the War of 1812.  The poem was set to the tune of a popular British song written by John Stafford Smith for the Anacreontic Society, a men's social club in London.  "The Anacreontic Song" (or "To Anacreon in Heaven"), with various lyrics, was already popular in the United States.  "The Star-Spangled Banner" was recognized for official use by the Navy in 1889, and by President Woodrow Wilson in 1916, and was made the national anthem by a congressional resolution on March 3, 1931 (46 Stat. 1508, codified at 36 U.S.C. § 301), which was signed by President Herbert Hoover. 

Indiana  state senator Vaneta Becker has proposed a law punishing anybody who changes the lyrics to The Star-Spangled Banner.  She wants to impose a fine of $25 (£16) on singers who dare to improvise, extemporise or undermine the United States' national anthem.  Senator Becker, a Republican, is furious about parodies of The Star-Spangled Banner, including a "disrespectful" satirical version one of her constituents heard at a sporting event.  "I don't think the national anthem is something we ought to be joking around with," she said.  "Singing our national anthem is a sign of gratitude to those who have served our country."  Becker's national anthem bill would introduce "performance standards" at state-sponsored events, with singers signing a contract before they warble the tune.  Schools would also be forced to maintain audio recordings of every single performance of the anthem, in case anyone complained.  "I don't think it would be very difficult for schools," Becker said.  "You could record it on a cellphone."  For the tin-eared among us, Becker wants to be clear:  "It's not like we're going after anyone's ability to sing," she told the LA Times.  "We just want them to respect the words and the tune as it was originally intended and we normally sing it."  Though she would excuse some flats and sharps, Becker would crack down on performances such as Steven Tyler's in 2001, when he changed the line "home of the brave" to "home of the Indianapolis 500".  It's unclear how the senator would react to Jimi Hendrix's famous reinvention, or the version in Puccini's Madame Butterfly.  http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/jan/05/us-national-anthem

Massachusetts has a decades-old law imposing a fine of up to $100 for playing or singing "The Star-Spangled Banner" "as dance music, as an exit march or as a part of a medley of any kind."  Michigan has a similar law, passed in 1931, prohibiting anyone from singing or playing the national anthem in any public place except in its entirety and "without embellishment.''  http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/nationnow/2012/01/indiana-lawmaker-proposes-fine-for-butchering-the-national-anthem-.html 

15 Spectacular Libraries in Europe by Jill Harness   The libraries are ornate; an exception is the Delft University of Technology Library with a massive skylight in the ceiling that becomes a steel cone and an eco-friendly grass-covered roof.  See pictures at:  http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/124742 

The Olympic Hymn, officially known as the Olympic Anthem, is played when the Olympic Flag is raised.  It is a musical piece composed by Spyridon Samaras with words written from a poem of the Greek poet and writer Kostis Palamas.  Both the poet and the composer were the choice of Demetrius Vikelas, a Greek Pro-European and the first President of the IOC.  The anthem was performed for the first time for the ceremony of opening of the 1896 Athens Olympic Games but wasn't declared the official hymn by the IOC until 1957.  In the following years every hosting nation commissioned the composition of a specific Olympic hymn for their own edition of the Games.  This happened up until the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome.  In the US, Leo Arnaud's "Bugler's Dream" is often considered to be the "Olympic theme".  Written in 1958 for Arnaud's Charge Suite, it is this piece, more than any of the fanfares or Olympic themes, that Americans recognize as the Olympic theme, a connection which began when ABC television used it in broadcasts for the 1964 Olympics, and was continued in subsequent years by ABC and NBC.   For the Games of the XX Olympiad Munich 1972 the German composer and arranger Herbert Rehbein (15 April 1922 – 28 July 1979) created an Olympic Fanfare that was used as the TV signature tune of the German Olympic Centre (Deutsches Olympia-Zentrum, DOZ) as well as prelude to the medal ceremonies.  John Williams composed the "Olympic Fanfare and Theme" for the 1984 Olympic Games, which were held in Los Angeles.  In 1996, an alternate version of "Olympic Fanfare and Theme" was released on the album Summon the Heroes for the Atlanta Olympic Games.  In this arrangement, the first part of the piece was replaced with Arnaud's "Bugler's Dream."  "Olympic Fanfare and Theme" (not including the familiar part by Arnaud) was awarded a Grammy in 1985.  The Williams theme was used during the closing ceremony of the 2010 Olympic Games in Vancouver, as the nations' flagbearers entered BC Place Stadium surrounding the Olympic Flame.  Another piece by Williams, "The Olympic Spirit", was written for the 1988 Olympics in Seoul and the corresponding NBC broadcast.  Williams also wrote the official theme of the 1996 Atlanta summer games, "Summon the Heroes", and the 2002 Salt Lake City winter games, "Call of the Champions  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympic_symbols

No comments: