Friday, April 24, 2015

Silent Generation is a label for people born from the mid-1920s to the early 1940s.  The name was originally applied to people in North America but has also been applied to those in Western Europe, Australia and South America.  In the United States, the generation was comparatively small because the financial insecurity of the 1920s and 1930s caused people to have fewer children.  The "Silents" are called that because many focused on their careers rather than on activism, and people in it were largely encouraged to conform with social norms.  Time Magazine coined the name in a 1951 article entitled The Younger Generation, and the name has stuck ever since.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Generation  
NOTE that babies born in the mid-1920s to the early 1940s were originally called depression babies. 

Since its introduction in the early 20th century, the film industry’s contributions to the English language have been manifold.  Some terms, along with the concepts they described, were fleeting.  Take Smell-O-Vision, the olfactory movie-going experience in which plot-related scents were pumped into the theater during screenings; it made its debut and last appearance in the same 1960s film.  However other terms born in cinema have stuck around to this day, and some have even broadened their applications beyond the lexicon of film.  When English speakers first started attending “the pictures” in the nineteen-teens, movie screens were coated with reflective metallic paint, resulting in a silver surface to better display the projected images.  By the 1920s, the term silver screen moved beyond the literal realm and into metaphorical territory to apply to cinema in general. This type of sense broadening in which something associated with an object or concept takes on the name of that thing is called metonymy.  http://blog.dictionary.com/silver-screen-terms/

Metaphor and metonymy are similar in various aspects but the major difference is that if a metaphor substitutes a concept with another, a metonymy selects a related term.  So, if metaphor is for substitution, metonymy is for association.  For example, the sentence ‘he is a tiger in class’ is a metaphor.  Here the word tiger is used in substitution for displaying an attribute of character of the person.  The sentence ‘the tiger called his students to the meeting room’ is a metonymy.  Here there is no substitution; instead the person is associated with a tiger for his nature.  So metonymy is a figure of speech.  It is used in rhetoric where a thing is not referred by its name but with the associated word.  A metaphor is an expression.  This expression shows the similarity between two things on some aspects.  http://www.differencebetween.net/language/difference-between-metaphor-and-metonymy/

Shirred eggs, also known as baked eggs, are eggs that have been baked in a flat-bottomed dish.  Shirred eggs are considered a simple and reliable dish that can be easily varied and expanded upon.  An alternative way of cooking is to crack the eggs into individual ramekins, and cook them in a water bath, creating the French dish eggs en cocotte.  Traditionally they have been cooked in a dish called a shirrer, from which the dish gets its name, but the name now applies regardless of the type of dish in which they are baked.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shirred_eggs  How To Make Baked (Shirred) Eggs (and suggested toppings) at http://whatscookingamerica.net/Eggs/BakedEgg.htm  See also Shirred Eggs with Mushrooms and Swiss Chard at http://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/shirred-eggs-with-mushrooms-and-swiss-chard

2015 Toledo Museum of Art Exhibitions
The American Civil War:  Through Artists’ Eyes  April 3-July 5, Galleries 28 & 29   This exhibition depicts major events of the American Civil War as seen through the eyes of the artist.  Commemorating the 150th anniversary of the end of the war, The American Civil War features approximately 50 objects drawn from the Toledo Museum of Art collection and local institutions and collections, including a monumental painting of the Battle of Cold Harbor by Gilbert Gaul that depicts Battery H, an artillery unit that included many soldiers from Northwest Ohio.
Gifts on Paper from The Apollo Society  April 10-May 31, Gallery 6   This installation contains all 10 works on paper given during the group’s history.  Objects—done in charcoal, ink, oil, photography, lithography, etching and wood engraving—include Paul Colin’s Art Deco portfolio Le tumulte noir (The Black Craze) featuring a young Josephine Baker; the 1570 seminal treatise Four Books of Architecture by Andrea Palladio and the monumental, meticulously drawn Clear, Wondrous, Ancient, Strange showing the four ancient cypresses growing at the foot of Dengwei Mountain in China.

Anyone who's ever learned music probably remembers reaching a point when they just played without "thinking" about the notes.  It turns out that a little bit of disconnect goes a long way in learning motor tasks, according to a study published online April 6, 2015 in the journal Nature Neuroscience.  The findings could lend insight into why children learn some tasks faster than adults, and could point toward ways to help adults learn faster and to make classrooms more conducive to learning, according to the authors.  Not surprisingly, motor and visual modules did a lot of talking to each other, as slow sight-reading eventually became speed-playing.  Subjects recruited other regions of the brain to work out the problem too.  That was true for fast learners and slow learners, according to the study.  But what appeared to set the fast learners apart from the slow learners was how soon they let go of those other parts of the brain, particularly areas that have to do with strategies and problem solving.  Any athlete will tell you this:  If you’re competent at something and you start thinking about it, especially at a detailed level, you’re just dead in the water," said UC Santa Barbara systems neuroscientist Scott Grafton, who has puzzled over motor learning for two decades.  "Golfers talk about this all the time.  It’s OK for practice, but not for performance conditions.”  Geoffrey Mohan  http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-brain-stop-thinking-start-learning-20150405-story.html

International Astronomy Day  April 25, 2015
Astronomy Day began in California in 1973.  Doug Berger, then president of the Astronomical Association of Northern California (AANC), decided that rather than trying to entice people to travel long distances to visit observatory open houses, the AANC would set up telescopes at sites more easily accessible.  Astronomy Day now goes by the name of International Astronomy Day as events take places throughout the planet.  http://www.sbau.org/astro_day/default.htm

As the model for Norman Rockwell's "Rosie the Riveter," Mary Doyle Keefe became the symbol of American women working on the home front during World War II.  The 92-year-old died April 21, 2015 in Simsbury, Connecticut.  As a 19-year-old telephone operator, Keefe posed for the famous painting that would become the cover of the Saturday Evening Post on May 29, 1943.  See the model pictured in 2002 next to the magazine cover.  "Rosie the Riveter" is often confused with another popular image from the same era.  The poster shows a woman flexing her arm under the slogan "We Can Do It."  It was part of a nationwide campaign to sell war bonds, but is not the same character.


http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1288  April 24, 2015  On this date in 1800, the United States Library of Congress was established when President John Adams signed legislation to appropriate $5,000 USD to purchase "such books as may be necessary for the use of Congress".  On this date in 1907, Hersheypark, founded by Milton S. Hershey for the exclusive use of his employees, was opened.

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