Often compared to Scottish literary legend Robert Burns, Robert Tannahill was born around 1774 in Paisley in the county of Renfrewshire.  He grew up in a weaving shop and would later be given the name of the ‘weaver poet’, turning as he did to an apprenticeship with his father at the early age of 12 years.  From childhood, Tannahill was considered to have a delicate constitution and was known for the injury to his right leg that caused him to limp throughout his life.  The Scottish airs that he wrote and for which R.A. Smith composed the music, such as The Braes of Balquhidder, have become classics that are reproduced and sung for special occasions.  The Burns club in Paisley he helped create also meets each winter to this very day in the old cottage where Tannahill used to compose his poems.  https://mypoeticside.com/poets/robert-tannahill-poems  See also http://www.roberttannahillfederation.com/1.html 

Cosplay, a portmanteau of "costume play", is an activity and performance art in which participants called cosplayers wear costumes and fashion accessories to represent a specific character.  Cosplayers often interact to create a subculture, and a broader use of the term "cosplay" applies to any costumed role-playing in venues apart from the stage.  Any entity that lends itself to dramatic interpretation may be taken up as a subject.  Favorite sources include anime, cartoons, comic books, manga, television series, and video games.  Cosplay grew out of the practice of fan costuming at science fiction conventions, beginning with Morojo's "futuristicostumes" created for the 1st World Science Fiction Convention held in New York City in 1939.  The Japanese term "cosplay" (コスプレ, kosupure) was coined in 1984.  A rapid growth in the number of people cosplaying as a hobby since the 1990s has made the phenomenon a significant aspect of popular culture in Japan, as well as in other parts of East Asia and in the Western world.  Cosplay events are common features of fan conventions, and today there are many dedicated conventions and competitions, as well as social networks, websites, and other forms of media centered on cosplay activities.  See graphics at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosplay 

The word ‘hippopotamus’ means ‘river horse’, and is often shortened to ‘hippo’.  Hippos have numerous collective nouns, and a group of hippos is often referred to as a crash, bloat, herd, pod or dale.  Find facts on this herbivorous mammal at https://jabulanisafari.com/the-hippopotamus/  See also https://www.conservationafrica.net/blog/weird-and-wonderful-collective-nouns/  

Antoine Marie Jean-Baptiste Roger, comte de Saint-Exupéry, simply known as de Saint-Exupéry (1900–1944), was a French writer, poet, aristocrat, journalist and pioneering aviator.  He became a laureate of several of France's highest literary awards and also won the United States National Book Award.  He is best remembered for his novella The Little Prince (Le Petit Prince) and for his lyrical aviation writings, including Wind, Sand and Stars and Night Flight.  Saint-Exupéry was a successful commercial pilot before World War II, working airmail routes in Europe, Africa, and South America.  He joined the French Air Force at the start of the war, flying reconnaissance missions until France's armistice with Germany in 1940.  Saint-Exupéry spent 28 months in America, during which he wrote three of his most important works, then joined the Free French Air Force in North Africa—although he was far past the maximum age for such pilots and in declining health.  He disappeared and is believed to have died while on a reconnaissance mission from Corsica over the Mediterranean on 31 July 1944.  His 1939 philosophical memoir Terre des hommes (titled Wind, Sand and Stars in English) became the name of an international humanitarian group; it was also used as the central theme of Expo 67 in Montreal, Quebec.  His birthplace of Lyon also named its main airport after him.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoine_de_Saint-Exup%C3%A9ry 

Ligaments and tendons are both made up of fibrous connective tissue, but that’s about where the similarity ends.  Ligaments appear as crisscross bands that attach bone to bone and help stabilize joints.  Tendons, located at each end of a muscle, attach muscle to bone.  Tendons are found throughout the body, from the head and neck all the way down to the feet.  The Achilles tendon is the largest tendon in the body.  It attaches the calf muscle to the heel bone.  The rotator cuff tendons help your shoulder rotate forward and backward.  https://www.healthline.com/health/ligament-vs-tendon 

The story of matter begins with two competing ideas.  On one side, Aristotle believed that all matter was infinitely divisible—you could cut a chunk of matter in half endlessly, never encountering a piece too small to be further divided.  But some Greek thinkers, like the philosophers Democritus and Leucippus, had another idea.  They believed that matter was, as Stephen Hawking later put it in A Brief History of Time, “inherently grainy.”  Everything could be broken down into smaller and smaller parts, resulting in a universe composed of tiny, individual particles.  The dispute remained unsettled for centuries, until in 1803 chemist and physicist John Dalton pioneered the development of modern atomic theory.  His work laid the foundation for further discoveries and evolution of atomic theory, and in 1911, physicist Ernest Rutherford discovered that atoms do indeed have an internal structure.  When Caltech physicist Murray Gell-Mann predicted the existence of an even smaller set of particles in 1964, he playfully dubbed them quarks.  There’s a rich tradition of whimsical naming in the world of physics, as is the case with “the God particle,” “flavor,” and “charm.”  Luckily, Gell-Mann had a bit of a literary bent:  “In one of my occasional perusals of Finnegans Wake, by James Joyce, I came across the word ‘quark.’”  The line was:  Three quarks for Muster Mark! Sure he hasn’t got much of a bark  And sure any he has it’s all beside the mark.  But quark didn’t sound quite like the kwork that was ringing in Gell-Mann’s head.  The physicist took a little creative license, and reimagined the line as a call for drinks at the bar:  Three quarts for Muster Mark!  With this adjustment, writes Gell-Mann, pronouncing the word like kwork “would not be totally unjustified.”  The reference to the number three was fitting as well, since “the recipe for making a neutron or proton out of quarks is, roughly speaking, ‘Take three quarks.’”  So, should we be saying quark or kwork?  The dispute over the nature of matter that began with Aristotle may be settled, but this is one debate that hasn’t yet been put to bed—in a survey, 76 percent of Science Diction readers who voted said they’re sticking with quark, and 24 percent are with Gell-Mann, and say kwork.  Johanna Mayer  See graphics at https://www.sciencefriday.com/articles/the-origin-of-the-word-quark/ 

“Over 800 Courses & Expert Professors Across Multiple Categories”  Search for courses at https://www.thegreatcourses.com/  Thank you, Muse reader! 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2404  August 16, 2021