Forgotten New York
Before it was Tribeca, it was the Lower West
Side, and it
had a lot of cast-iron lamps. See
pictures at http://forgotten-ny.com/2000/09/the-lamps-of-pre-beca/ Prior to being named Tribeca, the area was known as
Washington Market. Washington Market
served as New York's main food market beginning in the mid-nineteenth century
after New York City's piers moved to the Hudson River. Amidst the unfavorable conditions of the
market were some of New York City's most historic buildings, including a few of
the world's first cast-iron structures.
The neighborhood was also home to numerous warehouses and loft buildings
that suited its use as a commercial center.
Many of these buildings were constructed in the Italianate or Romanesque
Revival styles. The neighborhood began
to see a turnaround in the 1970s when the area attracted artists who were
looking to get away from the changing nature of SoHo. Artists embraced the warehouses and lofts
that the former Washington Market offered and took up residence there. At this time the neighborhood also got a new
name - TriBeCa - an acronym for Triangle Below Canal. http://www.nypap.org/content/tribeca-historic-districts
Edwin
Markham (born Charles Edward Anson Markham 1852–1940)
was an American poet. From 1923 to 1931
he was Poet Laureate of Oregon. In 1922, Markham's poem "Lincoln, the Man of the
People" was selected from 250 entries to be read at the dedication of the Lincoln Memorial. The author himself read the poem. Later that year, Markham was filmed reciting
the poem by Lee De Forest in
his Phonofilm sound-on-film process. As recounted by literary biographer William
R. Nash, "'['b]etween publications, Markham lectured and wrote in other
genres, including essays and nonfiction prose.
He also gave much of his time to organizations such as the Poetry
Society of America, which he established in 1910. Markham also wrote a number of epigrams, of which the best known is Outwitted. See pictures and bibliography at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_Markham Edwin Markham was born in Oregon, spent the
early part of his career in California, moved to Staten Island in 1901, and
remained on the island until his death in 1940.
He was a prolific letter writer and had correspondence with many
important figures of his time, including Ambrose Bierce, Jack London, Carl Sandburg,
Herbert Hoover, Amy Lowell, and Theodore and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Markham is best known for his spirited
protest against the exploitation of poor laborers in "The Man with the
Hoe", inspired by Jean-Francois Millet's painting of the same title. Published in the San Francisco Examiner in
1899, almost overnight it became a literary sensation. The response was astounding. It became the single most commercially
successful poem ever published.
Translated into forty languages, including Arabic and Japanese, it was
read worldwide and remains anthologized today.
Link to the digital collection at http://wagnercollections.omeka.net/markham Find the epigram Outwitted and the poem The
Man with the Hoe at http://www.theotherpages.org/poems/mark01.html
epigram noun 1.
a witty, often paradoxical remark, concisely expressed 2.
a short, pungent, and often satirical poem, especially one having a witty an
ingenious ending Several authors are noted for their epigrams, including Mark Twain and Oscar Wilde. Two other words are similar: an epigraph is usually an
inscription, as on a statue; an epitaph can be such an inscription or it can be a brief literary note commemorating a dead person.
A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg
captcha (KAP-chuh) noun A
test used to make sure that a human is using a system, not a computer program.
The test typically involves reading distorted text. An acronym of Completely Automated
Public Turing Test to tell Computers and Humans Apart. The Turing test is named after Alan Turing, a
mathematician and computer scientist, who proposed that a computer could be
considered intelligent if, while interacting with a human and a computer,
someone could not tell which is which. A
captcha is a kind of reverse Turing test.
Earliest documented use: 2001.
crowdsource (KROUD-sohrs)
verb. tr. To enlist the services
of a large number of people outside the company, for little or no pay, to
accomplish a task. A blend of crowd +
outsource. Earliest documented use:
2006. While crowdsourcing is
typically associated with the online world, it has been around for a long time. One of the best examples of offline
crowdsourcing is in lexicography. The Oxford
English Dictionary, for example, was produced in large part by the
contributions of the general public who sent in quotations for words. You too can take part in it at http://public.oed.com/appeals/
google (GOOG-uhl)
verb. tr., intr. To search for
information online using a search engine, especially Google. From the search engine Google. Earliest documented use: 1998.
Google, the search engine,
was named after googol, a word coined by a nine-year-old boy. A googol is the number one followed by
hundred zeros. Larry Page and Sergey
Brin used an alteration of the word googol to name their search engine, Google,
and later Larry suggested its verb form:
“We plan to have a much bigger index than our current 24 million pages
soon. ... Have fun and keep googling!”
Larry Page; Google Friends Mailing List; Jul 8, 1998. Interestingly, the verb google has been
around for more than a hundred years, though in a different sense. In a game of cricket, to google is to throw a
googly, a ball that changes direction mid-air.
Feedback to A.Word.A.Day
From: C.L.
Shockley Subject: captcha
I worked for National Braille Press for awhile and have many friends who
are blind or visually impaired. Captcha
prevents them from interacting in many situations. They can’t see the spot to get audio, and
they can’t read the screen (because it’s a picture, their assistive technology
doesn’t read it). We need to find a
better solution to the problem of spam comments, rather than a discriminatory
system.
From: Diane-Marie Campbell Subject: crowdsource Like many others, I became aware that the OED
was crowdsourced by reading Simon Winchester’s wonderful The Surgeon of Crowthorne. Another favourite and relatively early
example is Ganong’s
Review of Medical Physiology now in its 24th edition, which is one of
the most widely read texts on this subject.
Ganong
once offered, after lecturing medical students, 25¢ for each error they could
find in his book. It was said he was mobbed after the lecture and nearly went
broke paying them off but Ganong has kept its position as the standard, and not
merely the standard textbook, for undergraduate medical physiology.
From: Ian Page Subject: googly
I think you will find that cricket balls break when they bounce, not in
mid-air. And while most spin right from
a right-handed bowler, a googly is released from the back (pinky-side) of the
hand, and so surprisingly bounces left.
FBS v. FCS Division
I (D-I) is the highest level of
intercollegiate athletics sanctioned by the National
Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) in the United States. D-I schools include the major collegiate
athletic powers, with larger budgets, more elaborate facilities, and more athletic scholarships than
Divisions II and III as well as many smaller schools committed to the highest
level of intercollegiate competition. This
level was once called the University Division of the NCAA, in contrast to the
lower level College Division; this terminology was replaced with numeric divisions
(I, II, III) in 1973. In football only, Division I was further
subdivided in 1978 into Division I-A (the principal football schools) and Division I-AA. In
2006, Division I-A and I-AA were renamed "Football Bowl Subdivision"
(FBS) and "Football Championship Subdivision" (FCS),
respectively. FBS teams are allowed a
maximum of 85 scholarships per year; FCS teams are limited to 60. FBS teams also have to meet minimum attendance
requirements (average 15,000 people in actual or paid attendance per home
game), while FCS teams do not need to meet minimum attendance requirements. Another difference is post season play. Since 1978, FCS teams have played in a college
football playoff system to determine a NCAA sanctioned national champion; the
FBS teams play in bowl games where various polls rank the number one team after
the conclusion of the bowl games. Starting with the 2014 postseason, a four-team
playoff called the College Football
Playoff, replaced the previous one game championship format. Even so, Division I FBS football is still the
only NCAA sport in which a yearly champion is not determined by an
NCAA-sanctioned championship event.
http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com Issue 1242
January 12, 2015 On this date in 1628, Charles Perrault, French author, was
born. On this date in 1959, the Caves of Nerja were rediscovered in Spain. See http://www.thenerjacaves.com/
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