The Professor and the Madman is a 2019 biographical drama film directed by Farhad Safinia (under the pseudonym P. B. Shemran), from a screenplay by Safinia and Todd Komarnicki based on the 1998 book The Surgeon of Crowthorne (published in the United States as The Professor and the Madman) by Simon Winchester.  It stars Mel Gibson, Sean Penn, Natalie Dormer, Eddie Marsan, Jennifer Ehle, Jeremy Irvine, David O'Hara, Ioan Gruffudd, Stephen Dillane, Laurence Fox, and Steve Coogan.  The film is about professor James Murray, who in 1879 became director of an Oxford University Press project, The New English Dictionary on Historical Principles (now known as the Oxford English Dictionary) and the man who became his friend and colleague, W. C. Minor, a doctor who submitted more than 10,000 entries while he was confined at Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum at Crowthorne after being found not guilty of murder due to insanity.  Shot in Dublin in 2016, the film became part of a legal battle between Gibson, Safinia, and Voltage Pictures, delaying its release until 2019 and resulting in the pair disowning the final product.  In London in 1872, William Chester Minor, a retired United States Army surgeon, is found not guilty by reason of insanity for killing an innocent stranger, George Merrett, and is sent to Broadmoor.  In Oxford, James Murray interviews for a position as editor of what will become the Oxford English Dictionary.  An autodidact, he left school at 14 and has no degree. Some Oxford University Press oversight committee members are contemptuous, but Freddie Furnivall describes their current "abject defeat", saying that the extraordinary Murray may be what they need.  When Max Müller haughtily asks for qualifications, Murray reels off the long list of ancient and modern languages in which he is proficient and on demand provides a definition—and probable origins—of the word "clever".  Over dinner with the committee, Murray hears opposing views. Müller insists that it capture English at its current "purest peak" and setting strict rules for correct speech.  Furnivall says that "all words are valid in the language.  Ancient or new, obsolete or robust on, foreign born or homegrown.  The book must inventory every word, every nuance, every twist of etymology and every possible illustrated citation from every English author.  All of it or nothing at all."  Murray has a solution to this daunting task:  Enlist volunteers from everywhere English is spoken.  He writes an appeal to English-speaking people around the world, asking them to send their contributions on slips of paper.  Booksellers, librarians and newsagents distribute it.  The slips pile up.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Professor_and_the_Madman_(film)   

Parker’s Restaurant in the Omni Parker house Hotel, 60 School Street in Boston, is the birthplace of   Boston Cream Pie, Parker House Rolls and Boston Scrod.  The Waterford crystal chandeliers and the ornate hand-carved woodwork of this Grand Dame restaurant serve as a reminder of the days when Charles Dickens, Ralph Waldo Emerson and other literary greats dined here as members of the “Saturday Club.”  Since the late 1800's, this venerable restaurant has built quite a prominent culinary legacy, from hiring arguably the first celebrity French Chef in America, Chef Anézin in 1865, to launching the culinary careers of Emeril Lagasse, Lydia Shire and Jasper White.  Two cultural icons spent time on the Parker House staff:  Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh served as a baker in the bakeshop from 1912-1913, and Malcolm X was a busboy in the early 1940's during the period of the Pearl Harbor invasion.  https://www.omnihotels.com/hotels/boston-parker-house/dining/parkers-restaurant  

Parker House rolls recipe and links to soups to go with the rolls  https://therecipecritic.com/parker-house-rolls/

 

November 2, 2012  It’s Time to Stop Using the ‘Fire in a Crowded Theater’ Quote by Trevor Timm   Oliver Wendell Holmes made the analogy during a controversial Supreme Court case that was overturned more than 40 years ago.  But those who quote Holmes might want to actually read the case where the phrase originated before using it as their main defense.  If they did, they'd realize it was never binding law, and the underlying case, U.S. v. Schenck, is not only one of the most odious free speech decisions in the Court's history, but was overturned over 40 years ago.  First, it's important to note U.S. v. Schenck had nothing to do with fires or theaters or false statements.  Instead, the Court was deciding whether Charles Schenck, the Secretary of the Socialist Party of America, could be convicted under the Espionage Act for writing and distributing a pamphlet that expressed his opposition to the draft during World War I.  Even Justice Holmes may have quickly realized the gravity of his opinions in Schneck and its companion cases.  Later in the same term, Holmes suddenly dissented in a similar case, Abrams vs. United States, which sent Russian immigrants to jail under the Espionage Act.  It would become the first in a long string of dissents Holmes and fellow Justice Louis Brandeis would write in defense of free speech that collectively laid the groundwork for Court decisions in the 1960s and 1970s that shaped the First Amendment jurisprudence of today.  In what would become his second most famous phrase, Holmes wrote in Abrams that the marketplace of ideas offered the best solution for tamping down offensive speech:  "The ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas--that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out."  https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-time-to-stop-using-the-fire-in-a-crowded-theater-quote/264449/ 

“His nibs” or “her nibs” is an informal expression used to refer to a “person in authority, especially one who is self-important,” according to The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language.  The dictionary speculates that the word “nibs” may be an alteration of the word “nob,” chiefly British slang for a “person of wealth or social standing.”  The word “nob,” which American Heritage suggests might be a variant of “knob,” is also slang for the human head.  In cribbage, a jack is known as either “His Nibs” or “His Nobs.”  In fact, the first citation for “his nibs,” from 1846, in the Oxford English Dictionary may be a reference to cribbage, though the second citation, from 1877, clearly refers to a person in authority.  https://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2006/12/her-nibs-miss-georgia-gibbs.html 

“A poor short sermon, our homiletics teacher told us, is much to be preferred to a poor long sermon.”  “If you’re Irish, you can do anything you want with metaphors.”  “You mean you can’t live happily ever after, unless you forgive?  No way.”  Irish Cream, a Nuala Anne McGrail novel by Andrew M. Greeley 

The story of St. Columba:  A modern copyright battle in sixth century Ireland by Ruth Suehle   I've long been under the impression that copyright began with the Statute of Anne in 1710, as is generally taught.  But have you ever heard of Saint Columba (521-597)?  If not, the story is going to sound pretty familiar compared to modern copyright battles.  St. Columba (sometimes Columbkill, Columcille, Calum Cille, or other variations) was known for constant study and prayer--really, really constant.  He is said to have written 300 books, by hand of course, continuing to transcribe up to the night before he died.  St. Finian of Clonary Abbey and Columba got into a disagreement over a psalter.  Columba borrowed the manuscript from Finian--possibly without permission--and secretly copied it with the intention of keeping it for his own use.  But Finian said no, that this was theft--illegal copying!  He demanded that Columba hand over the copy he had made.  Finian took the matter to King Diarmait mac Cerbhiall, the High King of Ireland, for arbitration.  Believing he had done nothing wrong in his attempt to spread the word of the church, Columba agreed.  Finian's argument was simple:  My book.  You can't copy it.  He felt that if anyone was going to copy it that it should be done through certain procedures and certainly not in secret under his own roof.  Columba's response was not all that different from those in favor of less restriction in digital duplication--that the book had not suffered by his copying.  "It is not right," he said, "that the divine words in that book should perish, or that I or any other should be hindered from writing them or reading them or spreading them among the tribes."  In his closing address, he told the court that those who owned the knowledge through books were obligated to spread the knowledge by copying and sharing them.  He felt that to not share knowledge was a far greater offense than to copy a book that lost nothing by being copied.  But the king ruled in Finian's favor, famously saying, "To every cow belongs its calf; to every book its copy."  In other words, every copy of a book belonged to the owner of the original book.  https://opensource.com/law/11/6/story-st-columba-modern-copyright-battle-sixth-century-ireland 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2321  February 3, 2021