Where Does The Term 'Gubernatorial' Come From? Why don't we say gubernator instead of governor? "Because, if you go back to where this
word came from, in the original Latin, it's from the verb, gubernare and gubernator,
one who governs," Lisa McLendon, who teaches at the University of Kansas
School of Journalism, says. Then,
"governor, with the 'v,' came into English from French in about the 14th
century," she says. "French
had taken the Latin and they swapped the 'b' for a 'v.' " English speakers went back to the
"b" about 400 years later, but just for gubernatorial. And, there's the split. Interestingly, this is mainly a U.S. usage,
says McLendon, "Most other varieties of English spoken throughout the world
do not use gubernatorial." Acacia
Squires https://www.npr.org/2019/11/15/779603330/where-does-the-term-gubernatorial-come-from
"Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will
never hurt me." Don't believe it
for a minute! Michael Bedford American Organist magazine November 2019
Erik Thorvaldsson, (about 950–1003 AD) known as Erik the Red, is
remembered in medieval and Icelandic saga sources as having founded the first
Norse settlement in Greenland. Erik
the Red’s father was banished from Norway for the crime of manslaughter. He sailed west from Norway with his family and
settled in northwestern Iceland. The
Icelanders later sentenced Erik to exile for three years due to “some killings”
he committed around the year 982. After
being sentenced to exile, Erik sailed to a somewhat mysterious and little-known
land. He rounded the southern tip of the
island (later known as Cape Farewell) and sailed up the western coast. He eventually reached a part of the coast
that, for the most part, seemed ice-free and consequently had conditions that
promised growth and future prosperity.
When Erik returned to Iceland after his exile had expired, he is said to
have brought with him stories of “Greenland”. Erik deliberately gave the land a more
appealing name than “Iceland” in order to lure potential settlers. One group of immigrants which
arrived in 1002 brought with it an epidemic that ravaged the colony, killing
many of its leading citizens, including Erik himself. Nevertheless, the colony rebounded and
survived until the Little Ice Age in the 15th century. In addition to an increasingly colder climate,
conflict with Inuits moving into Norse territories, drop in value of walrus
ivory, the colony’s abandonment by Norway and other “unfortunate” circumstances
became other factors in its decline.
Red herrings are misleading
clues designed to trick you into drawing an incorrect conclusion, and they're a
popular ploy among storytellers of all stripes.
If you've seen or read the Harry Potter series—and
really, who hasn’t?—then you may recall some of the many instances where J.K.
Rowling employed this literary device. That
endearing plot twist about the nature of Snape's character, for example, is
likely one of the longest-running red
herrings ever written. Sometimes they
aren't even subtle. Agatha Christie's
murder mystery And Then There Were None directly mentions red herring in reference to a
character's death, and a statue of a
red herring appears in Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events.
Perhaps most blatantly, a character in
the cartoon A Pup Named Scooby-Doo who
was constantly being blamed for myriad crimes was named—you guessed it—Red
Herring. But where does this literary
device come from, and why is it named after a fish? For a bit of background: herring are naturally
a silvery hue, but they turn reddish-brown when they're smoked. Long before refrigerators were invented, this
was done to preserve the fish for months at a time. The actual origin of the figurative sense of
the phrase can be traced back to the early 1800s. Around this time, English journalist William
Cobbett wrote a presumably fictional story about how he had used red herring as
a boy to throw hounds off the scent of a hare. He elaborated on this anecdote and used it to
criticize some of his fellow journalists. "He used the story as a metaphor to decry
the press, which had allowed itself to be misled by false information about a
supposed defeat of Napoleon," British etymologist and writer Michael
Quinion writes in a blog. "This
caused them to take their attention off important domestic matters." Emily Petsko
http://mentalfloss.com/article/562812/where-did-phrase-red-herring-originate
A red herring is a
prominently placed clue that leads nowhere, used as misdirection in order to
fool viewers into falling for a “twist”. A McGuffin is slightly different from a red herring, in that a
MacGuffin is integral to advancing the plot, through character motivation, and
yet its significance is never revealed to the viewers. Chekhov’s gun
may be the opposite of a red herring. It
follows what is known as the “Law of Conservation of Detail”. Basically, a gun (or any other detail) that is
shown in the beginning of the narrative, has great significance later on. https://lostblg.wordpress.com/2006/04/19/red-herrings-macguffins-and-chekhovs-gun/
What did a meal taste like
nearly 4,000 years ago in ancient Babylonia?
Pretty good, according to a team of international scholars that has
deciphered and is re-creating what are considered to be the world's
oldest-known culinary recipes. The
recipes were inscribed on ancient Babylonian tablets that researchers have
known about since early in the 20th century, but that were not properly
translated until the end of the century.
The tablets are part of the Yale Babylonian Collection at the Yale
Peabody Museum. Three of the tablets
date back to the Old Babylonian period, no later than 1730 B.C., according to
Harvard University Assyriologist and cuneiform scholar Gojko Barjamovic, who put together the
interdisciplinary team that is reviving these ancient recipes in the
kitchen. A fourth tablet was produced
about 1,000 years later. All four
tablets are from the Mesopotamian region, in what is today Turkey, Syria, Iran
and Iraq. Read more and see picture at https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/11/16/779930201/eat-like-the-ancient-babylonians-researchers-cook-up-nearly-4-000-year-old-recip
A Hollywood studio
executive once suggested that Julia Roberts should play African-American
activist Harriet Tubman in a biopic. In a recent Q&A, screenwriter
Gregory Allen Howard opened up about the 26-year journey to getting the
"Harriet" biopic to the big screen.
"I wanted to turn Harriet Tubman's life, which I'd studied in
college, into an action-adventure movie. The climate in Hollywood, however, was very
different back then," Howard said. "I
was told how one studio head said in a meeting, 'This script is fantastic. Let's get Julia Roberts to play Harriet
Tubman.'" Howard said when someone
suggested Roberts could not play the role, the executive responded, "It
was so long ago. No one is going to know
the difference.'" British actress Cynthia Erivo got the role of the
legendary abolitionist and freedom fighter in "Harriet." Faith Karimi
https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/20/entertainment/julia-roberts-harriet-tubman-trnd/index.html
LeBron James completed his triple-double
collection on November 19, 2019. With 25
points, 11 rebounds and 10 assists in a 112-107
win over the Oklahoma City Thunder, the Los Angeles Lakers superstar became the first
player in league history to log a triple-double against all 30 NBA teams,
according to the Elias Sports Bureau.
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY The
truth isn't always beauty, but the hunger for it is. - Nadine Gordimer,
novelist, Nobel laureate (20 Nov 1923-2014)
WORD OF THE DAY Nuremberg defense noun (American spelling) (ethics, international law, idiomatic) An explanation offered as an excuse for behaving in a criminal or wrongful manner, claiming that acted in this way because one
was ordered by others (particularly superiors) to do so. (US law, by extension) An explanation offered as a defense to criminal or wrongful behavior, claiming that one is justified in not obeying a governmental order or a domestic law because
the order or law is itself unlawful. The trials of major war criminals by the
International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg, Bavaria, Germany, after World War II began on November 20,
1945, lasting till October 1, 1946.
Wiktionary
http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com Issue 2184
November 20, 2019
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