The Getty Research Institute has released the Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names (TGN)^® as Linked Open Data.  Following the release of the Art & Architecture Thesaurus (AAT)^® in February 2014, TGN is now the second of the four Getty vocabularies to be made entirely free to download, share, and modify.  Both data sets are available for download at vocab.getty.edu under an Open Data Commons Attribution License (ODC BY 1.0).  The Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names is a resource of over 2,000,000 names of current and historical places, including cities, archaeological sites, nations, and physical features.  It focuses mainly on places relevant to art, architecture, archaeology, art conservation, and related fields.  TGN links to the three other Getty vocabularies—the Union List of Artist Names, the Art & Architecture Thesaurus, and the Cultural Objects Name Authority.  http://www.bespacific.com/getty-thesaurus-geographic-names-released-linked-open-data/

The big tree that has branched out from the root "capere," has given us many familiar words that you probably did not know were related:  "captain," "capture," "receive/reception," "deceive/deception," and "conceive/conception, "accept," "except," and "participate" are some of its many far-flung fruits.  http://www.vocabulary.com/lists/272114#view=definitions&word=capacity  Find 179 words using cap-, cip-, capt-, cept-, ceive, -ceipt, -ceit, -cipient (Latin: catch, seize, take, take hold of, receive, contain, hold; caught, taken prisoner) at http://wordinfo.info/unit/368/ip:27

Howard Lutnick, the chief executive of Cantor Fitzgerald, one of the world’s largest financial-services firms, still cries when he talks about it.  Not long after the planes struck the twin towers, killing 658 of his co-workers and friends, including his brother, one of the first things on Lutnick’s mind was passwords.  This may seem callous, but it was not.  Like virtually everyone else caught up in the events that day, Lutnick, who had taken the morning off to escort his son, Kyle, to his first day of kindergarten, was in shock.  But he was also the one person most responsible for ensuring the viability of his company.  The biggest threat to that survival became apparent almost immediately:  No one knew the passwords for hundreds of accounts and files that were needed to get back online in time for the reopening of the bond markets.  Cantor Fitzgerald did have extensive contingency plans in place, including a requirement that all employees tell their work passwords to four nearby colleagues.  But now a large majority of the firm’s 960 New York employees were dead.  “We were thinking of a major fire,” Lutnick said.  “No one in those days had ever thought of an entire four-to-six-block radius being destroyed.”  The attacks also knocked out one of the company’s main backup servers, which were housed, at what until that day seemed like a safe distance away, under 2 World Trade Center.  Hours after the attacks, Microsoft dispatched more than 30 security experts to an improvised Cantor Fitzgerald command center in Rochelle Park, N.J., roughly 20 miles from the rubble.  Many of the missing passwords would prove to be relatively secure — the “JHx6fT!9” type that the company’s I.T. department implored everyone to choose.  To crack those, the Microsoft technicians performed “brute force” attacks, using fast computers to begin with “a” then work through every possible letter and number combination before ending at “ZZZZZZZ.”  But even with the fastest computers, brute-force attacks, working through trillions of combinations, could take days.  Wall Street was not going to wait.  Read extensive article by Ian Urbina at http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/19/magazine/the-secret-life-of-passwords.html?hpw&rref=magazine&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well

A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg

gemeinschaft  (guh-MYN-shaft)  noun  Social relations based on personal ties, affection, kinship, etc.  From German Gemeinschaft (community), from gemein (common) + -schaft (-ship). Earliest documented use:  1937.  The counterpart of Gemeinschaft (community) is Gesellschaft (society), that is, social relation marked by impersonal ties, such as duty to society or to an organization.

leitmotif or leitmotiv  (LYT-mo-teef)  noun   A recurrent theme in a piece of music or literature, situation, etc.  From German Leitmotiv (lead motif), from leit- (leading) + Motiv (motive).  Ultimately from the Indo-European root leit- (to go forth, to die), which also gave us lead, load, lode, and livelihood.  Earliest documented use:  1937.  

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From:  William Scoble  Subject:  gemeinschaft   It would have been helpful had you mentioned, in the differentiation of Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft that the latter means "society" as you say, mainly in the business sense, most often used after the name of a company.

Tabula.  A Gemeinschaft sculpture by the Centre of Attention (2011) from The Centre of Attention   Tabula can be played.  A number of objects are displayed on a base.  Taking turns, players re-arrange one object per move to improve the tabletop installation.  The game ends when no further improvement is possible.  See 3:09 video at http://vimeo.com/29526302  See also Die Gemeinschaft (Community) by Ferdinand Lackner at https://www.flickr.com/photos/sergeysmirnov/7893796952/

Firth is the word in the Lowland Scots language and in English used to denote various coastal waters in Scotland and England.  In mainland Scotland it is used to describe a large sea bay, or even a strait. In the Northern Isles it more usually refers to a smaller inlet.  It is linguistically cognate to fjord (both from Proto-Germanic *ferþuz) which has a more constrained sense in English.  Bodies of water named "firths" tend to be more common on the east coast, or in the southwest of the country, although the Firth of Lorn is an exception to this. The Highland coast contains numerous estuaries, straits, and inlets of a similar kind, but not called "firth" (e.g., the Minch and Loch Torridon); instead, these are often called sea lochs.  Find graphics and lists of firths in Scotland and outside Scottish waters at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firth

pep  noun  "vigor, energy," 1912, shortened form of pepper (n.), which was used in the figurative sense of "spirit, energy" from at least 1847.  Pep rally is attested from 1945; pep talk from 1926.  To pep (something) up is from 1925.  http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=pep  Palindromes with p at beginning and end make words with any vowel:  pap, pep, pip, pop, pup.

Noah Wyle has more fun than he ever did as an “ER” doc playing the rumpled eccentric at the heart of this likable, if mild-mannered, new TNT series.  He’s The Librarian, and in the first of many nods to the fantasy genre, he explains “there’s only ever one, and when he dies another one takes his place.”  Wyle channels a little Indiana Jones here, a little Doctor Who there as he embarks on quests to save the world armed only with smarts and a kickass reference collection.  He’s actually been playing this role since 2004, when he starred in the first of a three-movie “Librarian” series on TNT.  His Flynn Carsen is a little brusque, very excitable and prone to bookish witticisms such as “They’re like adjectives:  They travel in pairs.”  Flynn operates out of a magical, gargantuan library in which all of the world’s supernatural stuff is housed, so it won’t fall into the wrong hands.  He’s aided by staff, including overseer Jane Curtin, caretaker John Larroquette and, best of all, Bob Newhart, a deceased former Librarian who still holds court in the reflection of a mirror.  Sara Stewart 

http://nypost.com/2014/12/05/noah-wyle-returns-to-librarian-role-in-new-tnt-series/  Check your local listings for the new 10-episode series. 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1227  December 8, 2014  On this date in 1660, a woman (either Margaret Hughes or Anne Marshall) appeared on an English public stage for the first time, in the role of Desdemona in a production of Shakespeare's play Othello.  On this date in 1813, Beethoven's Seventh Symphony premiered.