A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg

slipstream  (SLIP-streem) noun  A stream of air (or another fluid) forced backwards by a propeller.  2. The area of reduced pressure behind a fast-moving object.  verb tr., intr.  3.  To follow behind a vehicle to take advantage of decreased wind resistance.

grok  (grok)  verb. tr.  To understand deeply and intuitively.   Coined by Robert A. Heinlein in his science-fiction novel Stranger in a Strange Land.  

waldo   (WAL-doh)  noun  A device for manipulating objects by remote control, for example, a remotely-operated arm.  After Waldo F. Jones, an inventor in a science-fiction story by Robert A. Heinlein.  

tardis  (TAR-dis)  noun  1.  A time machine.  2.  Something that is much bigger than it appears from the outside.   From TARDIS, a time machine in the British science-fiction TV series, Doctor Who.  

triffid  (TRIF-id, TRY-fid)  noun  An out-of-control plant that overruns everything around it.  Also, anything that behaves in this manner.  After triffids, a species of plants in the science-fiction novel, The Day of the Triffids, by John Wyndham.  From Latin tri- (three) + findere (to split).  

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From:  Christina Vasilevski  Subject:  slipstream  "Slipstream" is also the term for a new subgenre of fiction that incorporates elements of both literary and speculative writing.

From:  George M. Robinson  Subject:  slipstream  One more current definition for this word:  To slipstream is to seamlessly add later enhancements to a piece of computer software released earlier.

From:  Catherine Schaus  Subject:  grok  I most remember this word as it was used on a button for original era Star Trek fans:  I Grok Spock.

From:  Nick Wills-Johnson  Subject:  grok  Grok is also the name of the student magazine at Curtin Uni in Australia.

From:  M Henri Day  Subject:  grok  When I see this word, I can't help but be reminded of Pamela Jones's great website Groklaw, which she shut down on 20 August 2013, after a decade-long run in which she served the on-line community with explanations of related legal issues.

From:  Jennifer Perrine  Subject:  waldo  I first came across today's word ("waldo") in The Girl Who Was Plugged In, a novella written by James Tiptree, Jr.
From:  Susan Smolinsky  Subject:  tardis   What a perfect quotation for the word tardis:

"Councillor Susan Hinchcliffe said:  'It's a bit of a tardis -- once inside there's lots of corners to explore and enjoy.'"  Kathie Griffiths; New City Library Opens With A Flourish!; Telegraph and Argus (Bradford, UK); Dec 10, 2013.   Libraries are the ultimate TARDIS--There is much talk about what to call "new" libraries, as we try to convey the fact that libraries are so much more than just books to borrow--they provide computer access for so many people with no other means of getting online, many offer a free wifi connection 24/7, we provide downloaded FREE audiobooks and e-Books and even videos, we help build literacy skills--print and digital literacy in folks of all ages, we are community meeting spaces, offer kids programming for babies to teens, we offer book discussions and lectures for adults, more and more libraries are embracing the maker movement, turning the tide from being just consumers into creators--whether it is learning to program an arduino microcontroller or a robot to more traditional arts and crafts.  In Vermont we offer patrons free access to "Universal Classes", online continuing education classes on almost any topic imaginable!  No matter the size of the library, once inside you have access to a world of information, with a librarian ready to help guide you through Time and Relative Dimension in Space!  The Doctor knows about the power of libraries:  "You want weapons?  We're in a library!  Books!  The best weapons in the world!  This room's the greatest arsenal we could have--arm yourselves!" (Doctor Who, "Tooth and Claw")

How to But Great Olive Oil by Tom Mueller  There are 700+ different kinds of olives, which make thousands of different kinds of oil.  When you can’t taste the oil first, visit a vendor that performs stringent quality control in their production and selection of oils, such as Zingerman’s, Corti Brothers or Fairway Market.  When choosing bottled oil, prefer dark glass or other containers that protect against light, buy a quantity that you’ll use up quickly, and keep it well sealed in a cool, dark place.  Even an excellent oil can rapidly go rancid when left sitting under a half-bottle of air, or in a hot or brightly-lit conditions.  Phrases like “packed in Italy” or “bottled in Italy,” do not mean that the oil was made in Italy, much less that it was made from Italian olives.  Italy is one of the world’s major importers of olive oil, much of which originates in Spain, Greece, Tunisia and elsewhere, so don’t be taken in by Italian flags and scenes from the Tuscan countryside on the packaging.  Look for PDO and PGI certification.  PDO is the acronym for “Protected Designation of Origin” (“DOP” in Italian), a legal definition, similar to the Appellation d’origine contrôlée designation in French wines, for foods (including extra virgin olive oil) that are produced or processed in a specific region using traditional production methods.  (PGI, or “Protected Geographical Indication” (“IGP” in Italian) is a similar though less stringent designation.  Once you’ve bought your oil, store it in a place where it is protected from light, heat and oxygen, the three enemies of good oil, which speed spoilage.  And don’t hoard it!  Even great oils deteriorate with each passing day, and will all too soon become ordinary, even rancid, if not used quickly.  Find oils that scored well in recent, reputable olive oil contests at http://truthinoliveoil.com/great-oil/how-to-buy-great-olive-oil/

Disgruntled, Uncouth, and Inept by Alan Headbloom  There is a class of English words that exists mainly in the negative, where the positive form has been lost over time.  If you remove the negative prefixes (un- im- in- dis- de- non-) from the word, it will sound funny to native speakers—because today we only know these words in the negative.  Find examples of lost positives, their meanings and synonyms, at http://www.headbloom.com/index.php/resources/post/disgruntled_uncouth_and_inept/  Find a funny article by Jack Winter using lost positives in the July 25, 1994 issue of The New Yorker at http://www.newyorker.com/archive/1994/07/25/1994_07_25_082_TNY_CARDS_000367745

The sidereal month is the time the Moon takes to complete one full revolution around the Earth with respect to the background stars.  However, because the Earth is constantly moving along its orbit about the Sun, the Moon must travel slightly more than 360° to get from one new moon to the next.  Thus, the synodic month, or lunar month, is longer than the sidereal month.  A sidereal month lasts 27.322 days, while a synodic month lasts 29.531 days.  http://www.sumanasinc.com/webcontent/animations/content/sidereal.html

In his book Loose Cannons, Red Herrings, and Other Lost Metaphors, the late Robert Claiborne reminded us that metaphor "lies at the heart of language itself.  Daily, and quite unthinkingly, we use such expressions as the eyes of a potato, the head of a hammer, and the foot of a hill."  Claiborne further illustrated his point by revealing the literal origins of hundreds of inherently figurative words.  See if you can identify ten of those words after reading Claiborne's brief histories.  Richard Nordquist  Link to answers at http://grammar.about.com/od/quizzesfiguresofspeech/a/A-Quick-Quiz-On-Lost-Metaphors.htm

There is no universal agreement on the actual name of Presidents Day. There is no universal agreement on which presidents are being honored.  There is no agreement on something as simple as whether is an apostrophe in “presidents.”  Valerie Strauss  Read more and link to USA.gov's Web page on American Holidays at http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/02/16/why-presidents-day-is-slightly-strange/

Issue 1111  February 17, 2014  On this date in 1621, Myles Standish was appointed as first commander of Plymouth colony.  On this date in 1753, In Sweden February 17 was followed by March 1 as the country moved from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar.  On this date in 1933, the Blaine Act ended  Prohibition in the U.S.

Ten Tips for Avoiding Ethical Lapses When Using Social Media by Christina Vassiliou Harvey, Mac R. McCoy and Brook Sneath  "The authors cite primarily to the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct (RPC) and select ethics opinions from various states.  In addition to considering the general information in this article, you should carefully review the ethics rules and ethics opinions adopted by the specific jurisdiction(s) in which you are licensed and in which your law firm maintains an office."   http://www.americanbar.org/publications/blt/2014/01/03_harvey.html

In Trinidad, rising above the Northern Range Hills over Tunapuna, the red-roofed church tower of Mount St. Benedict Monastery is one of the most striking landmarks east of Port of Spain.  Benedictine monks established this community in 1912, and the monastery is the largest and oldest in the Caribbean.  Founded on the principles of self-sufficiency and hospitality to strangers, the monastery complex encompasses religious buildings, a farm, an apiary, a home for the aged, a rehabilitation center, a vocational school, and guesthouse.  Hiking and birding opportunities abound in the surrounding forest, and the monastery is famous for its yogurt, jams, and jellies filled with locally-grown fruit.  See wonderful pictures of tourist attractions at http://www.planetware.com/tourist-attractions/trinidad-and-tobago-tri.htm

Drumlin  An elongate hill, streamlined in the direction of ice flow and composed largely of glacial deposits  See beautiful pictures at http://www.landforms.eu/Lothian/drumlin.htm

Goblin Valley State Park is a state park in Utah.  Its eminent feature is its thousands of hoodoos and hoodoo rocks, which are formations of mushroom-shaped rock pinnacles, some as high as several meters. The distinct shape of these rocks comes from an erosion-resistant layer of rock atop softer sandstone.  The park lies within the San Rafael Desert southeast of the east limb of the San Rafael Swell and north of the Henry Mountains.  See pictures at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goblin_Valley_State_Park

Cassoulet is a traditional peasant dish originating in the south of France (supposedly Castelnaudry, but some say Carcassonne or Toulouse).  The dish is named after its traditional cooking vessel, the cassole, which is a large earthenware dish.  There are many variations, but all contain beans and meat.  Find chef Peter Shaw's modern take on the recipe at his Jan. 31, 2014 blog.   http://domainelaveronique.blogspot.com/

If you saw the 2011 film Midnight in Paris, you saw scenes of Musée Rodin.  The museum contains the largest collection of the sculptor’s works at two sites:  in Paris, at the Hôtel Biron, and in Meudon, site of his former home, atelier, and reserve collection.  Find more information  and a link to Rodin's collections in the world at http://www.musee-rodin.fr/en/musee-rodin

Why do some English words have the same singular and plural?  Examples are mostly animals - deer, fish, moose, sheep, swine, buffalo - but also aircraft, stone (weight), head (cattle).  Is it related to the Norman/ Saxon divide noted in Ivanhoe?   For those wanting the short answer - because many English words are not English words.  Plural forms obey the spelling rules attached to the language of origin.  Sheila Kirby  You are on the right track with your Ivanhoe example.  In forming plurals, much depends on how the word got into English, that is, which language we "borrowed" it from, which we did and do a lot.  If you look in a dictionary you will see that "deer" comes to us from the German "tier", a beast.  German does not form the plural by adding an "s" as English does, so one deer, two deer, etc. I'm not sure you are right about "fish", what about the parable of the loaves and fishes?  Fish comes from German too, fisch, and you can either stick to fish or use fishes, so that is a borrowed word where you can use either sort of plural.  Stephen Brown  http://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,,-197456,00.html

More on moose  The word "moose" came to us from Algonquian Indians.  Consequently its plural, instead of being "mooses" or "meese", is the same as the singular.  That is true of most Indian names whether of a tribe, such as the Winnebago and Potawatomi, or of an object such as papoose.  It is also true of many wildlife names not of Indian origin--for example:  deer, mink and grouse.  http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/natbltn/500-599/nb504.htm

Dog Latin, also known as Cod Latin, macaronic Latin, mock Latin, or Canis Latinicus,  refers to the creation of a phrase or jargon in imitation of Latin, often by "translating" English words (or those of other languages) into Latin by conjugating or declining them as if they were Latin words.  Unlike the similarly named language game Pig Latin (a form of playful spoken code), Dog Latin is more of a humorous device for invoking scholarly seriousness. Sometimes "dog Latin" can mean a poor-quality genuine attempt at writing Latin.  More often, correct Latin is mixed with English words for humorous effect or in an attempt to update Latin by providing words for modern items.  See examples at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_Latin

Succatash or succotash is a Native American dish made with corn and shell beans.  There are regional variations, and the succotash may be served as a stew or salad; warm or cold; and with many added ingredients, including tomatoes, bell peppers, and even meat.  The name most likely comes from the indigenous people from Narragansett (now Rhode Island) who referred to m'sickquatash—a word that may have meant either fragments/ broken pieces or boiled corn.  http://www.myrecipes.com/how-to/cooking-questions/what-is-succotash-00420000012892/

A gaping sinkhole collapsed part of the National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, Kentucky on February 12, 2014, damaging eight prized cars that plunged in a heap while the attraction geared to the classic American sports car was closed to visitors.  Six of the cars were owned by the museum and two — a 1993 ZR-1 Spyder and a 2009 ZR1 Blue Devil — were on loan from General Motors, said museum spokeswoman Katie Frassinelli.  The other cars damaged were a 1962 black Corvette, a 1984 PPG Pace Car, a 1992 White 1 Millionth Corvette, a 1993 Ruby Red 40th Anniversary Corvette, a 2001 Mallett Hammer Z06 Corvette and a 2009 white 1.5 Millionth Corvette.  The hole opened in part of the museum's domed section, and that area will remain closed.  That's an original part of the facility that was completed in 1994.  The fire department estimated the hole to be about 40 feet across and 25 to 30 feet deep.  Bowling Green sits in the midst of the state's largest karst region — the Western Pennyroyal area, where many of Kentucky's longest and deepest caves run underground.  A karst display distinctive surface features, including sinkholes.  Sinkholes are common in the area but usually don't occur inside buildings, Dettman said.  "It was unique for a lot of reasons," he said.  "One, it's full of Corvettes, and two that it was inside a structure."  Bruce Schreiner  http://www.kentucky.com/2014/02/12/3083407/collapse-at-national-corvette.html

Ironically, the day when we celebrate love may have much darker origins.  Ancient Romans celebrated the feast of Lupercalia on Feb. 13-15.  The feast involved animal sacrifices and whipping women, thought to make them more fertile, according to Noel Lenski, a historian at the University of Colorado-Boulder, in an interview with NPR.  But the first direct connection between St. Valentine's and the idea of love comes much later, in the poetry of Geoffrey Chaucer, says Andy Kelly, an English professor at the University of California-Los Angeles, who wrote the book “Chaucer and the Cult of St. Valentine.”  Jolie Lee 

Read about love, roses, chocolates, cards and Cupid at http://www.freep.com/article/20140214/FEATURES01/302140053/Valentine-s-Day-traditions-explained

Issue 1110  February 14, 2014  On this date in 1778, the United States flag was formally recognized by a foreign naval vessel for the first time, when French Admiral Toussaint-Guillaume Picquet de la Motte rendered a nine gun salute to USS Ranger, commanded by John Paul Jones.  On this date in 1876, Alexander Graham Bell applied for a patent for the telephone, as did Elisha Gray.

Christopher Latham Sholes (February 14, 1819–February 17, 1890) was an American inventor who invented the first practical typewriter and the QWERTY keyboard still in use today.  He was also a newspaper publisher and Wisconsin politician.  Typewriters had been invented as early as 1714 by Henry Mill and reinvented in various forms throughout the 1800s.  It was to be Sholes, however, who invented the first one to be commercially successful.  Sholes had moved to Milwaukee and became the editor of a newspaper.  Following a strike by compositors at his printing press, he tried building a machine for typesetting, but this was a  failure and he quickly abandoned the idea.  He arrived at the typewriter through a different route. His initial goal was to create a machine to number pages of a book, tickets, and so on.  He began work on this at Kleinsteubers machine shop in Milwaukee, together with a fellow printer Samuel W. Soule, and they patented a numbering machine on November 13, 1866.  Sholes and Soule showed their machine to Carlos Glidden, a lawyer and amateur inventor at the machine shop working on a mechanical plow, who wondered if the machine could not be made to produce letters and words as well.  Further inspiration came in July 1867, when Sholes came across a short note in Scientific American describing the "Pterotype", a prototype typewriter that had been invented by John Pratt.  From the description, Sholes decided that the Pterotype was too complex and set out to make his own machine, whose name he got from the article:  the typewriting machine, or typewriter.  For this project, Soule was again enlisted, and Glidden joined them as a third partner who provided the funds.  The Scientific American article (unillustrated) had figuratively used the phrase "literary piano"; the first model that the trio built had a keyboard literally resembling a piano.  It had black keys and white keys, laid out in two rows.  It did not contain keys for the numerals 0 or 1 because the letters O and I were deemed sufficient.  The first row was made of ivory and the second of ebony, the rest of the framework was wooden.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Latham_Sholes

At one time in America, there was a distinction between short sauce and long sauce.  The Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE) contains a 1859 quote that details this distinction, with short sauce as radishes, potatoes, turnips, onions, and pumpkins and long sauce as beets, carrots, and parsnips.  And we find info about this long/short sauce distinction mentioned in theOxford English Dictionary (OED) as well.  But, DARE also has a quote from 1825 that also names round sauce (or “sarse”) as an option.  Round sauce remained undefined, though DARE does have an entry for round squash, also called round sauce squash, round white squash, orwhite round squash, all of which refer to summer squash (and especially pattypan squash.  Garden truck is an American term for “garden vegetables”.  These are not, in case you were wondering, vegetables grown in the bed of a pickup (which I have seen).  The use of truck here is much older, harkening back to its original sense as a verb meaning “to give in exchange for”.  Following from the verb, truck the noun comes to mean the “action or practice of trucking; trading by exchange of commodities” and then comes to denote the things being traded.  This is why we can (still) run across a saying such as to have no truck with someone to mean that you “don’t want to have anything to do with them” (a saying that’s been around since at least 1625).  http://homewords99.wordpress.com/2012/05/26/vegetables/  Homewords is a blog about words, history and culture written by Allison Burkette

January 31, 2014  "Librarians have suffered enough", according to Lemony Snicket, who is setting up a new annual US prize "honouring a librarian who has faced adversity with integrity and dignity intact".  Snicket, the pen name of American author Daniel Handler, is the chronicler of the "travails" of orphans Violet, Klaus and Sonny in the multi-million-selling A Series of Unfortunate Events books.  He is, he said in his announcement, often "falsely accused of crimes and sought by his enemies as well as the police", and he believes that, "in much the same spirit, librarians have suffered enough" and thus deserve to be rewarded.  Together with the American Library Association, he is therefore setting up a new $3,000 (£1,800) award, The Lemony Snicket Prize for Noble Librarians Faced With Adversity.  "The Snicket prize will remind readers everywhere of the joyous importance of librarians and the trouble that is all too frequently unleashed upon them," said Snicket, who is funding the prize from his own "disreputable gains".  One way in which librarians have been challenged in the US over the last year is through attempts to ban books:  late in 2013, the Kids' Right to Read Project reported 49 censorship attempts in 29 states, a 53% increase in activity on 2012.  One incident involved a vote to ban Stephen Chbosky's The Perks of Being a Wallflower from middle-school classroom libraries.  With support from Judy Blume, and two months of negotiations, the book was reinstated.  In 2006, the Katy Intermediate School District in Texas placed Snicket's books in "restricted use" – meaning children were not allowed to check out any of his work from school libraries. Snicket's books, which have won numerous children's awards and been nominated for such prizes as the Children's Choice and Nickelodeon Kids' Choice awards, was restricted on grounds of excessive "violence and horror".  Snicket's new Noble Librarians prize will be judged by members of the American Library Association, including at least one member from its Intellectual Freedom Committee.  Candidates – who must describe an "adverse incident" they faced and "their response, result and resources utilised" – need to be nominated by 1 May this year.  Alison Flood  http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jan/31/lemony-snicket-prize-librarians-book-bans

Feb. 7, 2014  Mamoru Samuragochi’s original claim to fame lay in composing video game soundtracks.  The recording of his first symphony, subtitled “Hiroshima” and lasting well over an hour, sold more than 100,000 copies in Japan after its 2011 premiere.  He was said to be deaf.  This week, his professional identity was exploded when a music teacher named Takashi Niigaki revealed that for the past 18 years he had in fact been writing Samuragochi’s putative works.  And by the way, Samuragochi wasn’t deaf at all.  Samuragochi’s CDs are being pulled from the shelves of Japanese record stores; his publisher is ceasing printing his scores.  The issue even touches the Olympic Games; Daisuke Takahashi, the men’s ice skating bronze medalist in 2010, is skating his short program to music that was supposed to be by Samuragochi.  He has often been asked over the last couple of days whether he will change his program.  Fraud, and plagiarism, and copyright violation, and intellectual property rights, represent a conglomerate of hot-button topics in the digital universe.  Artistic fraud, of course, is not a phenomenon of the digital age; far from it.  Forgeries have been a staple and scourge of the visual-arts world throughout art history, from Han van Meegeren’s Vermeers to Courbet’s imitators back to the time when Michelangelo allegedly made a statue of Cupid and buried it to artificially age it so it would look like an actual Roman or Greek artifact, which would mean he could sell it for more money.  The trope of a man asking someone else to write music in his name is not new, either.  A famous predecessor of Samuragochi is Franz von Walsegg, an Austrian nobleman who used to commission works from composers and pass them off as his own (Mozart’s final Requiem being the most famous example).  Between these examples lies a key difference that gets obscured in the dust-cloud of cries of “fraud” and “cheating” and “inauthenticity” that has risen up around the story, as it always rises up when such topics come up today.  It’s one thing to paint or write or compose something and pass it off as the work of an established, famous artist, like the fake Jackson Pollocks the Knoedler gallery sold to well-heeled buyers. That’s fraud.  It’s another thing to create a work of art that is destined to enter the world under false premises, like the Mozart Requiem.  There’s a qualitative difference.  One is real art under an assumed name.  And one is a counterfeit.  You can debate this point; you can say that some forgeries are better than others, or that forgeries represent a valid artistic statement of their own.  The fact remains that Van Meegeren’s counterfeit “Vermeers” make us chuckle today, while Mozart’s Requiem moves us profoundly, and von Walsegg’s name is nearly forgotten.  Anne Midgette 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/style/wp/2014/02/07/samuragochis-scurrilous-symphony-between-fraud-and-collaboration/?tid=hpModule_ef3e52c4-8691-11e2-9d71-f0feafdd1394&hpid=z11

Feedback to the Great Molasses Flood  There was an interesting article in Scientific American recently that referred to the Great Molasses Flood.  The people were killed mostly because molasses is so viscous (compared, for example, to water) that they could not move in it and were trapped below the surface.   I remember from my engineering background that the Reynolds number is the ratio of the inertial forces to the viscous forces.  Protozoa and such critters have a Reynolds number in water similar to the Reynolds number of humans in molasses, and it was an interesting article on what techniques microscopic creatures use to be able to move through water.  Thanks, David

Reynolds number explained by NASA  http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/BGH/reynolds.html

Shirley Temple Black (April 23, 1928-February 10, 2014) made her first movie appearances in “Baby Burlesks,” a series of one-reel shorts that parodied movies and movie stars of the day.  In her autobiography, “Child Star,” Mrs. Black wrote that she once asked for an accounting of her investments. She said she discovered that, of more than $3 million she had made since childhood, only $44,000 remained in her name.  Half her earnings had gone to her parents and much of the rest paid the living expenses of other family members and a dozen household workers, she said.  Her father had ignored a court order and had failed to deposit money in her trust account.  She became interested in world affairs and turned down acting offers, until her return in “Shirley Temple's Storybook” on NBC-TV in 1958.  Ms. Temple Black’s last foray into television was in January 1965, when she shot a situation comedy pilot, “Go Fight City Hall,” in which she played a social worker.  It was made on the 20th Century-Fox lot.  Her first day on the set, there was a banner and party in the commissary.  “If there had not been a Shirley Temple, there would not be a 20th Century-Fox,” a spokesman said.  Claudia Levy  See much more plus list of her films from 1932-1949 at http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/shirley-temple-black-actress-and-diplomat-dies-at-85/2014/02/11/03b99f88-930c-11e3-83b9-1f024193bb84_story.html?hpid=z1

Issue 1109  February 12, 2014  On this date in 1914, the first stone of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. was put in place.  

Feb. 7, 2014  Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev doesn't like the name Kazakhstan.

"Kazakhstan has the 'stan' ending like many other nations of Central Asia.  At the same time, foreigners take an interest in Mongolia, the population of which makes up only two million, but its name does not end in '-stan,'" he told onlookers while visiting a school in Atyrau, according to his official website.  "Perhaps, eventually it is necessary to consider an issue of changing the name of our country into the 'Kazakh Nation', but first of all, it should necessarily be discussed with people."  (His proposed name would be rendered as "Kazakh Eli" in English.)   And Nazarbayev does have a point about his country's name.  There are seven countries in Central Asia with the suffix "-stan": Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.  The suffix comes from the Persian root istan, or "land"—hence the "land of the Uzbeks," "land of the Kazakhs," and so forth.  Pakistan bucks the trend somewhat: Its name means "land of the pure."  This isn't a Central Asian quirk. English and other Germanic languages frequently use "-land" in a similar manner.  The name "England", for example, means "land of the Angles," the Anglo-Saxon tribe that populated the early medieval British Isles.  The Scots call their country "Alba" in Scottish Gaelic, but use "Scotland" in English.  Germany's name in German is "Deutschland."  Europe alone has Finland, Poland, Iceland, Greenland, Ireland, and the Netherlands; Africa has Swaziland; Asia has Thailand; Oceania has New Zealand.  There's even the U.S. state of Maryland.  The difference for Kazakhstan and its neighbors is the cultural and geopolitical context.  There's a certain stigma associated with the suffix "-stan."  Apartheid South Africa's segregated black-majority enclaves, for example, became known as "bantustans," a term that came to connote artificial, ethnically defined statelets.  In the U.S., people broadly uses the suffix "-stan" to give a generic Oriental vibe to fictional Middle Eastern countries, as with 24's sinister Islamic Republic of Kamistan or Team America:  World Police's Derkaderkastan, or to indicate backwardness and instability, with names like Doonesbury's Berzerkistan or The Onion's Ethniklashistan and Nukehavistan.  Matt Ford  http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/02/kazakhstans-president-is-tired-of-his-countrys-name-ending-in-stan/283676/

Find information on countries in Central Asia with names in ending with the suffix "stan" at http://www.worldatlas.com/aatlas/infopage/stan.htm

The Great Molasses Flood was not simply a disaster (twenty-one killed, 150 injured) that occurred in 1919 when a tank in Boston collapsed, but rather a saga that spanned a decade, from the construction of the tank in 1915 through the conclusion of a huge civil lawsuit in 1925.  Beyond its role in the commercial distillation of rum, certainly its most important contribution to the colonial economy, molasses was a staple among families.  A cheap sugar substitute, molasses is a by-product extracted during the sugar refining process.  Sugar cane is crushed to remove the juice, which is then boiled to extract sugar.  The remaining syrup, after the sugar has been crystallized, becomes known as “first molasses,” the sweetest variety. The leftover syrup from the second boiling is called second molasses—less sweet and cheaper—and the syrup remaining after the third extraction of sugar from sugar cane is known as “blackstrap molasses,” a dark, bittersweet, unpleasant-tasting liquid that was used in the production of industrial alcohol by USIA and other companies.  Colonists not only used molasses to produce their own beer and rum, they considered it a vital part of their diet. New Englanders made baked beans, brown bread, and pumpkin pie with it.  The German communities in Pennsylvania used molasses in shoofly pie and pandowdy, a baked apple-and-spice dish.  In colonial Carolina, molasses went by the name of "long sugar" and was said to “serve all the purposes of sugar, both in eating and drinking.”  Historian John J. McCusker, in his comprehensive 1989 study of the molasses trade and rum production in the thirteen American colonies, points out that in the town of Colchester, Connecticut, at least one Thanksgiving celebration had to be delayed until additional molasses could be procured.  In the mid-1700s, each colonist was consuming about three quarts of molasses per year.  Read Dark Tide:  The Great Molasses Flood of 1919 by Stephen Puleo at http://www.scribd.com/doc/190099648/Dark-Tide-the-Great-Boston-Molasses-Flo-Stephen-Puleo

Quotes and paraphrases from Brunswick Gardens by Anne Perry 

The earth consumes the light.  The water gives it back.  I miss the sea, but when I was at sea I missed the smell of damp earth and the colors of autumn.   Perhaps you can have everything, but not all at once.  That's what memories are for.

People in Hispanic countries use cassavas (also called manioc, mandioca, yucca, yuca, yucca root, yuca root, Brazilian arrowroot) much like those of us in the U.S. use potatoes  Some of the tubers are sweet even when eaten raw; others are bitter.  In the case of the Agavaceae, most times the bitterness seems to be in the skin, so peeling the tuber before using or cooking should greatly reduce the bitterness (which is due to its prussic acid content).  Fresh tubers can be hard to peel; nuking it for a minute or so may make it easier, just as it does with winter squash.  The fresh tubers don't have a long shelf life, so use within a couple of days of purchase.  The flowers, especially the young ones of must Yucca species are tender and sweet when eaten raw.  You can even stuff them with a savory vegetable/bread crumb stuffing and steam or bake them.

Melissa Kaplan  http://www.anapsid.org/resources/yucca.html

Pickle-ball® is a game for the whole family.  So it’s only fitting that it was invented by a family, too.  The game got its start back in 1965, in Bainbridge Island, just a short ferry ride away from Seattle, WA.  When Congressmen Joel Pritchard, William Bell and Barney McCallum came home from a game of golf one day to find their kids bored and restless, they set out to create a game that would engage them through the lazy days of summer.  They wanted to create a game that would be challenging, but still accessible.  They handed the kids ping-pong paddles and a wiffle ball, and lowered the net on their badminton court.

http://pickleball.com/pages/history

Jordan almond--a high-quality almond of a variety grown chiefly in southeastern Spain.  late Middle English:  jordan apparently from French or Spanish jardin 'garden'.   http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/jordan-almond

January 18, 2014  MagicBands.  They’re a new technology for Disney World, and the program officially opened up about a month ago.  Beneath the surface of the rubber wristband is a sophisticated RFID tag.  These bands, which are individually coded to each visitor, allow Disney to track individuals wherever they go in the parks and resorts with long-range RFID readers.  You check into FASTPASS rides with your band, you purchase food by swiping your band and you use it as a key to your hotel room.  The bands are even uniquely colored and monogrammed with your family members’ names so that they won’t get switched up.  Why?  Because they don’t want their database to get confused and think that you, a 45-year-old man, rode the teacups instead of your little son Timmy.  Disney tracfks everything you do, everything you buy, everything you eat, everything you ride, everywhere you go in the park.  “Meat space” (coined by William Gibson in Neuromancer) is a term for the physical world where our bodies (meat) move around and do meat-like things (for example, eat, jog or go clubbin’).  The interesting thing about the term is it’s a play on “cyber space” — meat space is an internet-first way of viewing the world.  And that internet-first way of seeing the world is what’s driving these changes at Disney, casinos, insurance companies, etc.  We’ve been “cookie-ing” people online and tracking their browsing habits for years, and in that contained environment, businesses have seen the value of acting on personal transactional data.  But now businesses are taking this approach and applying it to meat space.  We now know this is Google’s end game.  Self-driving cars, Google Glass and the purchase of Nest — Google is dying to get out of your computer and all up in your life.  With Nest, Google won’t just know how you like your air to feel.  It’ll know when you’re at work and when you’re at home.  It gets pieces in a data puzzle that is your entire observable life.  Loyalty cards (those things you swipe at the grocery store) were the first salvos into this real-world data gathering.  Now, department stores are doing a lo-fi version of MagicBands by tracking the hardware ID on your cell phone’s Wi-Fi card as you wander the store.  John Foreman  http://gigaom.com/2014/01/18/you-dont-want-your-privacy-disney-and-the-meat-space-data-race/

hIssue 1108  February 10, 2014  On this date in 1763, the Treaty of Paris ended the French and Indian War, and France ceded Quebec to Great Britain.       

The globe artichoke is a member of the thistle branch of the Aster or Daisy family, Asteraceae.  The edible part of the plant is its immature flower.  The Jerusalem artichoke differs from the globe artichoke in every detail.  Noah Webster, in his Compendious Dictionary of the English Language (1806), defined artichoke as "a garden vegetable, a sunflower."  He did not include any place-names, so it is not listed under Jerusalem.  The latter word, as applied to this vegetable, may be an English corruption (mistranslation-plus-mispronunciation) of the Italian name for sunflower, girasole.  The "Jerusalem artichoke" is also known as a "sunchoke," clearly a union of the first syllable of sunflower with the second of artichoke.  The scientific name for the Jerusalem artichoke is Helianthus tuberosus, Latin for "sunflower with a lumpy root."  It is a member of the Sunflower branch of the family Asteraceae.  

http://lewis-clark.org/content/content-article.asp?ArticleID=1925

If you want your writing to have professional polish, resist the urge to hyphenate prefixes.  In American English, words with prefixes are generally made solid {codefendant, nonstatutory, pretrial}.  Modern usage omits most hyphens after prefixes even when it results in a doubled letter {misspell, posttrial, preemption, reelection}.  But there are several exceptions.  Use a hyphen in the following circumstances: 
(1)  When there may be an ambiguity in meaning or a miscue that could cause confusion {re-lease when you mean "leasing again," not "letting go"; or re-sign when you mean "to sign again," not "to quit"}. 
(2)  When the main word is a proper noun {non-Darwinian, un-American, pre-Christmas} or a numeral {pre-1960};
(3)  When the prefix is part of a noun phrase {non-air-conditioned tent, pre-third-quarter earnings, pro-free-trade};
(4)  When the solid form might lead the reader to mistake the syllables {anti-inflammatory, co-obligor, non-insider, post-sentencing, pro-life}; and
(5)  With the prefixes self- {self-serving}, all- {all-consuming}, ex- {ex-president}, and quasi- {quasi-contract}.  Garner's Usage Tip of the Day  http://www.lawprose.org/blog/?p=2522  Thanks, Jeff.

Janus words have opposite or contradictory meanings.  From the Latin Janus, the Roman god of gates and doorways and of beginnings and endings, the god who faces both ways.  Also known as antilogy, contronym, contranym, autantonym, auto-antonym, or contradictanym.  http://grammar.about.com/od/il/g/Januswordterm.htm

The title of oldest public university in the United States is claimed by three universities: the University of Georgia, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and The College of William & Mary.  Each has a distinct basis for the claim, with Georgia being the first to receive a charter to function as public university, North Carolina being the first to open to the public, and William & Mary having the oldest founding date of any currently public university.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldest_public_university_in_the_United_States

First university in the United States is a status asserted by more than one U.S. university.  In the U.S. there is no official definition of what entitles an institution to be considered a university versus a college, and the common understanding of "university" has evolved over time.  Harvard University, founded in 1636, claims itself to be "the oldest institution of higher education in the United States".  The claim of being "the first university" has been made on its behalf by others.  The University of Pennsylvania considers itself to be America's first university, a title it claims on its website and in other published materials.  The university has published a book about being the first university in America, and its website contains numerous instances of the phrase "America's First University."  The College of William and Mary's website states, "The College of William and Mary was the first college to become a university (1779).  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_university_in_the_United_States

kith:  one’s friends, acquaintances, and relations  Old English cȳth, of Germanic origin; related to couth.  The original senses were 'knowledge,' 'one's native land,' and 'friends and neighbors'.    The phrase kith and kin originally denoted one's country and relatives; later one's friends and relatives.  http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/kith

The Congressional Budget Office's analyses of the health care legislation considered during the 111th Congress began in early 2009 and continued past the enactment of the Affordable Care Act (which consists of P.L. 111-148 as amended by P.L. 111-152) in March 2010.   

http://www.cbo.gov/latest/Health-Care/Affordable-Care-Act

Analysis of the CBO report on ACA at LA Times http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-cbo-20140204,0,3106578.story#axzz2sY55PjvZ and Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/cbo-botched-health-care-law-rollout-will-reduce-signups-by-1-million-people/2014/02/04/c78577d0-8dac-11e3-98ab-fe5228217bd1_story.html

The Olympic symbols are icons, flags and symbols used by the International Olympic Committee to promote the Olympic Games.  The Olympic Movement is very protective of its symbols; as many jurisdictions have given the movement exclusive rights to any interlocking arrangement of five rings, and usage of the word "Olympic".  They have taken action against numerous groups seen to have violated this trademark.  See images and read about mottos, anthems, medals, salutes and flags (Antwerp, Oslo, Seoul and Singapore) at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympic_symbols#Oslo_flag

Some 5,000 cups of Greek yogurt from Team USA sponsor Chobani isn't getting to Sochi because of a customs dispute with Russia.  U.S. halfpipe skier Aaron Blunck said Friday that to traveling athletes, getting food from home is part of feeling fit and healthy.  But teammate Lyman Currier said part of being an elite athlete is dealing with the unexpected.  "We all have different routines before competing but I think that part of the sport is adapting," he said.  The  U.S. Ski Team is not staying in the athletes' village in Krasnaya Polyana in the mountains above Sochi.  The Americans have their own place, with their own food and private chefs.  U.S. Alpine skiers Steven Nyman and Marco Sullivan said they were fine without yogurt.  "Our setup's pretty good.  I can get my Greek yogurt when I get back home," Nyman said.  Russian authorities say the U.S. Department of Agriculture has refused to provide a certificate that is required for dairy products under its customs rules.  "American officials know what the requirements are, and I do not understand why they stood to the side and waited until the situation reached this point," said Alexei Alexeyenko, an official at the Russian Federal Service for Veterinary and Phytosanitary Surveillance.  "This question can be resolved very quickly."  U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer this week implored the Russians to let the shipment through and said export trade rules should have nothing to do with it, since the yogurt isn't for sale and is to be eaten only by U.S. citizens in Sochi.  U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul said Friday the trade dispute goes back four years and that he's been working on it ever since he arrived as ambassador in 2012.  Karl Ritter  http://www.seattlepi.com/news/world/article/Yogurt-spat-throws-off-routines-of-Sochi-Olympians-5213605.php

Issue 1107  February 7, 2014  On this date in 1497, the bonfire of the vanities occurs in which supporters of Girolamo Savonarola burned thousands of objects like cosmetics, art, and books in Florence, Italy.

The Toledo Museum of Art (TMA) and the Toledo-Lucas County Public Library have partnered together for ToddlerTime Tours, a multi-sensory experience designed to develop visual and textual literacy in children ages 18 to 36 months.  ToddlerTime, which will have its first tour in February, is the latest in the museum’s efforts to encourage visual literacy.  What is visual literacy?  The museum defines visual literacy as “the ability to derive meaning from images of everything that we see.”  It is the ability for someone to look at something — a piece of art, a sculpture, a billboard, or even the pictures that come across Facebook and Twitter– and understand what it is he or she is looking at.  The museum’s director, Brian Kennedy, has been a champion of visual literacy since joining TMA in 2010.  He has stated that visual literacy is the key sensory literacy and that it must be taught.  In the museum’s view, we live in a world that has, rather quickly, become “supersaturated” with images due to digital media and the Internet.   “The Lucas County Children’s Library had a very interesting workshop where they gave children picture books written in a foreign language, and they were asked to interpret the stories just from the pictures,” said Kathy Danko-McGhee, TMA’s Emma Leah Bippus director of education and head of visual literacy.  “The children were able to read the stories through the pictures.  It is important that children learn to read well, but visual literacy enhances textual literacy.  The same skills are used.”  ToddlerTime Tours is a free, monthly program in two parts that begins either at the Maumee Branch or Main Library and then resumes at the museum the following week.  At the library, toddlers and their parents will enjoy a librarian-led story hour themed around a work in the museum’s collection.  A week later at the museum, they will participate in a hand-on, docent-led tour that focuses on that work. Children will be given a bag of manipulatives, objects such as feathers, fabrics, color swatches and bells that match the work of art.  “The docent will ask questions like ‘Where is this color in the painting?’ or ‘What does this material feel like?’ The docent will also have a word list designed to broaden the children’s vocabulary and help their reading comprehension.  Before they leave, parents will be given a take-home activity so that their educational experience continues at home as a family,” said Danko-McGhee.  To encourage visual literacy from the earliest ages, TMA began hosting its free 30-minute Baby Tours on a monthly basis in 2012.  In this program, designed by Danko-McGhee, parents may bring their infants up to 18 months for a docent-guided tour of some of the museum’s most visually stimulating art where babies often respond by staring, smiling or reaching for the art.  Parents attending the Baby Tours are sent home with The Art of Seeing Art for Babies, a board book that presents some of the concepts found in the adult brochure at their most basic level.  For families with young children, TMA offers tote bags known as Gallery Gear which can be checked out for a hour and are filled with visual literacy resources and hands-on objects related to notable pieces of art in the collection.  In 2013, the museum released The Art of Seeing Art: A, B & See, a book that pairs letters of the alphabet with objects found in TMA artwork.  The book is available in the museum store and reference library.  Finally, as the center for visual literacy in Northwest Ohio, TMA is scheduled to host the 2014 International Visual Literacy Association Conference on Nov. 5-8.  Usually held at an institution of higher learning, this is the first year the conference will be held at a museum.  The event is open to professors, K-12 teachers, students and working artists.  Kevin Moore    http://www.toledofreepress.com/2014/01/30/toledo-museum-of-art-expands-visual-literacy-campaign-to-toddlers/

A foot in poetry usually contains one stressed syllable and at least one unstressed syllable. The standard types of feet in English poetry are the iamb, trochee, dactyl, anapest, spondee, and pyrrhic (two unstressed syllables).  http://www.poetryfoundation.org/learning/glossary-terms?category=rhythm-and-meter

The types of line lengths in poetry are:

One foot:  Monometer

Two feet:  Dimeter

Three feet:  Trimeter

Four feet:  Tetrameter

Five feet:  Pentameter

Six feet:  Hexameter

Seven feet:  Heptameter

Eight feet:  Octameter  https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/570/03/

Meter in Poetry and Verse, A Study Guide by Michael J. Cummings

Meter is determined by the type of foot and the number of feet in a line.  Thus, a line with three iambic feet is known as iambic trimeter.  A line with six dactylic feet is known as dactylic hexameter.  Read much more at http://www.cummingsstudyguides.net/xmeter.html

The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe is made up of 18 stanzas of six lines each.  Generally, the meter is trochaic octameter – eight trochaic feet per line, each foot having one stressed syllable followed by one unstressed syllable.  Poe based the structure of "The Raven" on the complicated rhyme and rhythm of Elizabeth Barrett's poem "Lady Geraldine's Courtship"  Read more at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Raven

The story of Super Bowl XLVIII, the Seattle Seahawks' 43-8 drubbing of Peyton Manning and the Denver Broncos by Kevin Clark  A review of the game film shows that Manning's struggles were destined from the start.  Seattle's strategy focused on containing Denver's vaunted short passing game, exposing the Broncos as a team with surprisingly few tricks in their offensive bag.  The Seahawks gladly let Manning break the Super Bowl record for completions.  He connected on 34 of his 49 passes.  The hulking Seattle defense held those passes to an average of 8.2 yards per completion, the third-worst mark in Super Bowl history, according to Stats LLC.  The plan was simple:  Let Manning have his short passes, but make sure they stay short.  See analysis at http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304851104579361111580572276?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702304851104579361111580572276.html

"The Lego Movie," opening February 7, 2014, is far more inventive and satirical than you might expect.  Made with a conscious resistance to the pitfall of toy-based movies, it's imbued with a childlike playfulness and a subversive mockery of corporate control.  The concept that co-writers and co-directors Phil Lord, 36, and Chris Miller, 38, came up with was to capture the experience of playing in a deep box of the interlocking plastic bricks.  In a world composed of Legos, following the rules, or the instructions, is a way of life. Workers happily sing the anthem "Everything Is Awesome," and are pacified by bland state-controlled entertainment, like the TV show "Where Are My Pants?"   Jake Coyle  http://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/article/Lego-Movie-built-to-be-a-better-toy-film-5202760.php

Charlie Chaplin's unpublished 1948 novella, "Footlights," served as the inspiration for his 1952 film, “Limelight.”  On Feb. 4, 2014, Cinetica di Bologna released the reconstructed manuscript.  This begins a series of events to celebrate 100 years since Chaplin first appeared on film.  http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/03/unpublished-chaplin-novella-to-be-released/

Issue 1106  February 5, 2014  On this date in 1919, Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, and D.W. Griffith launched United Artists.