Throughout history, societies have had numbers they consider special. For example,
in ancient Rome the
number 7 was auspicious, in Maya civilisation the number 13 was
sacred, in modern-day Japan people give three, five, or seven gifts for
luck, and in China the number 8 is considered lucky and 4 is avoided whenever
possible. In Western cultures
the number 13 is often considered unlucky, hence the term triskaidekaphobia, fear of the number 13. Controlled
experiments with numbers date back to 1933 when the researcher
Dietz asked Dutch people to name the first number to come to mind between 0 and
99. The number 7 was mentioned most, as it was in various later replicas
of the study in other countries. The number 7 also came out on top in
studies that asked people to name their favourite number. In an online
poll by Alex Bellos, a
columnist for The Guardian,
more than 30,000 people from all over the world submitted numbers, with 7 the
most popular. All numbers under 100 were
submitted at least once and nearly half of the numbers under 1,000. Marketing researchers King
and Janiszewski investigated number preference in a different way. They showed undergraduate students random
numbers and asked them to say quickly whether they liked the number, disliked
it, or felt neutral. The number 100 had
the highest proportion of people liking it (70%) and the lowest proportion of
people disliking it (5%). The numbers 1
to 20 were liked by 9% more people than the higher numbers; the numbers that
are the result of rote-learned multiplication tables (i.e.
2 × 2 to 10 × 10) were liked by 15% more people than the remaining
numbers. The researchers concluded that
number fluency predicts number preference:
hence multiplication table numbers are preferred over prime numbers.
The closely related field of letter-preference research dates back to
the 1950s. In 1985, Belgian psychologist Nuttin reported the
unexpected finding that people tend to disproportionately prefer, unknowingly,
the letters of their own name. The name-letter effect has
been replicated in dozens of follow-up studies in different languages, cultures and alphabets, no matter whether participants
selected their preferred letter from a random pair, or picked the top six of
all letters in the alphabet, or rated each individual letter. Nuttin predicted that because the driving force
behind the name-letter effect is an unconscious preference for anything
connected to the self, there would also be a birthday-number
effect.
Thousands Once Spoke His Language in the Amazon. Now, He’s the Only One. bAmadeo García García speaks
Taushiro. A mystery to linguists and
anthropologists alike, the language was spoken by a tribe that vanished into
the jungles of the Amazon basin in Peru generations ago, hoping to save itself
from the invaders whose weapons and diseases had brought it to the brink of
extinction. A bend on the “wild river,”
as they called it, sheltered the two brothers and the other 15 remaining
members of their tribe The clan
protected its tiny settlement with a ring of deep pits, expertly hidden by a
thin cover of leaves and sticks They
kept packs of attack dogs to stop outsiders from coming near. In the last
century, at least 37 languages have disappeared in Peru alone, lost in the
steady clash and churn of national expansion, migration, urbanization and the
pursuit of natural resources.
Forty-seven languages remain here in Peru, scholars estimate, and nearly
half are at risk of disappearing. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/26/world/americas/peru-amazon-the-end.html
Easy parfait:
The night before, layer jam, chopped pistachios and yogurt in jars. Cover and put in fridge. * Roasted nuts: Coat any kind of nut in extra virgin olive
oil (use one tsp. for every 2 cups) and put on rimmed baking sheet. Sprinkle with kosher salt and bake at 350
degrees until golden, 10 to 15 minutes.
* Mirepoix: Allegedly named
after Duc de Lévis-Mirepoix, this "holy
trinity" of finely diced onion, carrot and celery is the basis of many
French dishes. Martha Stewart Living
magazine January/February 2018
Gaston Pierre de Lévis, known as the duc de Lévis-Mirepoix (Gaston-Charles-Pierre-François
de Lévis; 1699–1757), maréchal
de France (1757) and Ambassador of Louis XV, was a member of a family established
in Languedoc as Seigneurs of Mirepoix, Ariège since the 11th century. The chef de cuisine to
Lévis, Duke of Mirepoix established the sautéed three vegetables that served as
a basis for his culinary art, as a mirepoix in honor of his patron. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaston_Pierre_de_L%C3%A9vis
"Charlestonians never sweat. We sometimes dew up like hydrangea bushes or
well-tended lawns." "San Francisco is a city that requires a fine pair
of legs, a city of cliffs misnamed as
hills, honeycombed with a fine webbing of showy houses that cling to
the slanted streets with the fierceness of abalones." "Don't
be afraid to make a mistake. You learn by making mistakes. You get better by making
mistakes." "People
change. That's one of the nice parts
about growing up." South of Broad, a novel by Pat Conroy
Pat Conroy, born in Atlanta in 1945, was the first of seven children of a young Marine officer from Chicago and a Southern beauty from Alabama, to whom Pat often credits for his love of language. The Conroys moved frequently to military bases throughout the South, and Conroy eventually attended The Citadel, a military college in Charleston, South Carolina. Conroy often joked that a military school was an unconventional choice for someone who dreamed of being a writer, but, in fact, he found a number of deeply supportive faculty there, and Conroy's first book, The Boo (1970), is a tribute to Lt. Col. Thomas Nugent Courvoisie, who served as a mentor to many Citadel cadets. Following graduation, Conroy taught English and psychology at Beaufort High School, his alma mater, and in 1969 he took a job teaching underprivileged children in a one-room schoolhouse on Daufuskie, a small island about three miles off the South Carolina mainland. After just a year of teaching on Daufuskie, Conroy was fired for his unconventional teaching practices, including his refusal to allow corporal punishment of his students, and for his clashes with the school's administration. Conroy's fifth novel and ninth book, South of Broad (2009) uses James Joyce's Ulysses as a loose model, and follows its aptly named protagonist, Leopold Bloom King, as he makes his way though Charleston and, later, San Francisco. Despite Conroy's nod to Joyce, the novel is generally viewed as "quintessentially Conroy" in its fast-moving plotline and lyrical descriptions of Charleston. Just a year later, Conroy released My Reading Life (2010), a collection of essays that celebrate the books that have most influenced him, and tantalizingly offers fascinating glimpses into the daily life of a writer. In 2013, Conroy published The Death of Santini. Subtitled "The Story of a Father and His Son," the memoir details the impact that the publication of The Great Santini had on Conroy's father, who, when faced with that novel's portrait of him, underwent a radical reinvention, becoming a "kinder, gentler" Santini. In 2014, Pat Conroy assumed the mantle of editor at large for Story River Books, his original southern fiction imprint at the University of South Carolina Press. Story River Press was launched in 2015. Conroy died on March 4, 2016 and is buried in a small cemetery on St. Helena Island near the Penn Center, where as a teenager he first met Martin Luther King and where he was honored in 2011 for his dedication to social justice. Read much more and see pictures at http://www.patconroy.com/about.php
On January 16th, 2018 around 8:10 p.m. EST, a
brilliant, green fireball crackled across southern Michigan skies. Eyewitnesses described it
as brighter than the full Moon with sparks and an orange tail. At least 77 observers reported hearing
explosive sounds as the meteoroid broke apart overhead. The American Meteor Society (AMS), a
clearinghouse for meteor sightings, has received 657 reports of the fireball
with some as far away as Iowa and southern Ontario. The fireball
traveled relatively slowly at around 45,000 km (28,000 miles) per hour. That sounds fast, but it's more than 4½ times
slower than a typical summertime Perseid. While fireballs are relatively
common, ones that drop meteorites are rare, and it's rarer still for someone to
find those black treasures. But by using
Doppler weather radar data and seismic traces, meteorite hunters were able to
pinpoint the strewn field, the name for the
ground footprint where the space rocks might have fallen. Lately of the asteroid belt, these
interplanetary fragments now call the Township of Hamburg, Michigan, home. A preliminary analysis indicates it's
possibly an L6 chondrite, a common stony meteorite type. The
"L" stands for low iron and "6" (on a scale from 3 to 7,
from least to most altered by heat) indicates that the meteorite was strongly
heated, so it likely originated from a larger asteroid. Samples are on their way now to the Chicago
Field Museum for more detailed analysis.
Bob King See graphics at http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-news/observing-news/michigan-fireball/
Ed Moses, who formed the “Cool School” of
artists including Ed Ruscha, Robert Irwin, Larry Bell,
Edward Kienholz, John Altoon, Ken Price and Billy Al
Bengston died January 17, 2018 at the age of 91. Architect
Frank Gehry, one of Moses’ closest friends, met the painter when he was just
starting out. “He opened a lot of doors
for me, doors of thinking, to a way of looking at life, of thinking about work
and creativity and freedom and expressing oneself—taking chances,” Gehry said. “He was the first person that was in that
world that sort of took me under his wing. He was very supportive. “I think he influenced others by his sense of
freedom, his personality, his willingness to step into the unknown. He epitomized that." "I think of him as my north star.” Moses
captured critical attention in 1961 with graphite drawings of repetitive
patterns of roses inspired by Mexican tablecloths. His “Cubist Paintings” of the mid-1970s
resemble exquisitely woven lengths of silky fabric. In relatively earthy works made in 1987, the
paths of fat, juicy squiggles emulate snails' trails. Expanding his reach in the 1990s, Moses
combined passages of explosive energy and soulful introspection in vast
mural-like compositions. Deborah Vankin
and Suzanne Muchnik Read more and see
pictures at
http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com Issue 1830
January 22, 1018 On this date in 1980,
John Williams led the Boston Pops
Orchestra in the premiere performance of his own Overture to “The Cowboys.” This concert overture was based on material
from Williams’ score for a John Wayne film entitled “The Cowboys.” Composers Datebook
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