The English language, which arose from humble Anglo-Saxon roots to become the lingua franca of 600 million people worldwide and the dominant lexicon of international discourse, is dead. It succumbed last month at the age of 1,617 after a long illness. It is survived by an ignominiously diminished form of itself. The end came quietly on Aug. 21 on the letters page of The Washington Post. A reader castigated the newspaper for having written that Sasha Obama was the "youngest" daughter of the president and first lady, rather than their "younger" daughter. In so doing, however, the letter writer called the first couple the "Obama's." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/13/AR2010091304476.html
Sell Your Friends by Brad Stone
There were two obvious winners at the FIFA World Cup this summer. Spain took home the 13-pound, 18-carat-gold trophy for its achievement on the field. Nike won the branding championship, thanks largely to a three-minute commercial called "Write the Future," in which its stable of soccer endorsers fantasize about the glory or disgrace that might result from their play in the tournament. Hundreds of millions of people saw "Write the Future" on television. Before it blanketed traditional media, however, Nike launched the video on Facebook, the Web's dominant social network. The video started as an ad on the site. Then it was passed from friend to friend, often with comments and members recommending it. In the resulting discussions, the clip was played and commented on more than 9 million times by Facebook users—and helped Nike double its number of Facebook fans from 1.6 million to 3.1 million over a single weekend. Getting the ad onto Facebook cost a few million dollars, according to the companies. All that passing around was free. Davide Grasso, Nike's chief marketing officer, says Facebook "is the equivalent for us to what TV was for marketers back in the 1960s. It's an integral part of what we do now." http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39325170/ns/business-bloomberg_businessweek/
Grocery-store shopping carts are rife with germs, says Chuck Gerba, an environmental microbiologist at the University of Arizona who’s taken samples from shopping carts throughout the U.S. To avoid germs while grocery shopping, disinfect your shopping cart’s handle and child seat with a wipe, or sanitize your hands before and after you shop. Use products with the words “disinfect” or “sanitize” on them, because the Environmental Protection Agency has approved those terms, Gerba says. The next time you need to withdraw money or decide to use the self-checkout aisle at the grocery store, make sure you have travel-size hand sanitizer handy. Cell phones are covered with contaminants, and people rarely, if ever, clean them. If you’re kicking back in a hotel room, or watching basketball at a neighbor’s house, slip out a disinfectant wipe before using the remote. TV remotes are rarely cleaned and carry numerous germs, Gerba says. http://updatednews.ca/?p=27283
emanate or M-N-8 (EM-uh-nayt) verb tr., intr.: To emit or to come out. From Latin emanare (to flow out), from ex- (out of) + manare (to flow).
extenuate or X-10-U-8 (ik-STEN-yoo-ayt) verb tr. 1. To reduce or attempt to reduce the severity of (an error, an offense, etc.) by making partial excuses for it. 2. To lessen or to make light of. From Latin extenuare (to lessen), from ex- (out) + tenuare (to make thin), from tenuis (thin). Ultimately from the Indo-European root ten- (to stretch), which is also the source of tense, tenet, tendon, tent, tenor, tender, pretend, extend, tenure, tetanus, hypotenuse, pertinacious, and detente. A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg
Feedback to A.Word.A.Day
From: Don Williams Subject: Emanate As a university biology professor, "text speak" just drives me nuts, especially in emails from students. I recall my first abbreviated science term, though, was "N R G" for "energy" which a student used many years ago, well before cell phones and texting. I must admit, I have even used it from time to time, myself.
From: Henry Willis Subject: Acronyms, LEET, etc. My father, who once collected license plates, told me of a book he had heard of, but had not seen, written entirely in the telegraphic punning language of vanity license plates. And now, thanks to Google and Amazon, it's possible to locate it: PL8SPK, with a metallic cover that looks like a slightly rumpled plate. GR82CIT after all these years.
From: Bard Ermentrout Subject: Deify Def: 1. To make a god of. 2. To revere or idealize as a deity. I always liked the past tense of the word, deified, since it is palindromic!
From: Bob Doolittle Subject: X-10-U-8 Like myself, I'm sure many readers first encountered this word in Othello's final speech: "Speak of me as I am. Nothing extenuate, nor set down aught in malice." I wonder how the Bard would fare in the world of texting and tweeting: "2 B R not 2 B, that S the ?"
From: Ben Carnes Subject: Letter Words My sons both work in the computer industry and started doing tech support at a large insurance company. When they got one of those ridiculous calls like "The cupholder won't come out" or "I can't find the "any" (N-E) key", they referred to it as an eye-dee-ten-tee problem. When I asked them why that term, they wrote it out I-D-10-T. Strictly speaking, not a letter word, but a combination letter/number word.
From: Saranne Cessford Subject: elegy Def: A poem composed as a lament for the dead. We spent some years in Indonesia, and were intrigued by the way words found their way into Bahasa: It took me a while to recognise elpiji as LPG -- liquid petroleum gas.
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
According to the National Law Journal: In 1962, 11.5% of federal civil cases went to trial, compared with 6.1% in 1982, 1.8% in 2002 and 1.2% in 2009. So what’s happening? Two federal judges at a Federal Bar Association panel recently gave their takes on the phenomenon. Judge William Young of the District of Massachusetts, according to the NLJ story, feels the fault lies partly with federal judges themselves. Judge Brock Hornby of the District of Maine, on the other hand, said, according to the NLJ story, that “outside forces, not judges,” are causing the decline. “Whether we care or not, I don’t think there’s much we judges or anyone else can do about it,” Hornby, according to the story, listed nine reasons why he believes the number of civil trials has declined:
Lawyers have learned to measure which cases will be profitable.
Clients are far more sophisticated about how they use lawyers.
Companies are more skilled in risk management than they used to be.
Many causes of action and the bases for liability have matured, so litigants can more easily settle sexual harassment or asbestos cases, for example.
Congress hasn’t recently passed new laws creating liability for actions, such as the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990.
More lawyers and law firms use alternative dispute resolution and more contracts contain clauses requiring it.
Electronic discovery has significantly jacked the cost of litigation.
News and entertainment portray juries as irrational, unpredictable and out of control.
Disputes are increasingly international and more amenable to international arbitration.
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2010/09/21/why-have-federal-civil-jury-trials-basically-disappeared/?mod=djemlawblog_h
Banned and/or Challenged Books from the Radcliffe Publishing Course Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century See list--you have probably read or heard of most of them-- at: http://www.ala.org/ala/issuesadvocacy/banned/frequentlychallenged/challengedclassics/reasonsbanned/index.cfm
Steampunk art
Dr. Evermor's Forevertron is the largest scrap metal sculpture in the world, standing 50 ft. (15,2 m.) high and 120 ft. (36,5 m.) wide, and weighing 300 tons. It is housed in Dr. Evermore's Art Park on Highway 12, in the town of Sumpter, in Sauk County, Wisconsin. Built in the 1980s, it is steampunk art from before the term was coined. The sculpture incorporates two Thomas Edison dynamos from the 1880s, lightning rods, high-voltage components from 1920s power plants, scrap from the nearby Badger Army Ammunition Plant, and the decontamination chamber from the Apollo 11 spacecraft. Its fictional creator, Dr. Evermor, was born Tom Every in Brooklyn, Wisconsin and is a former demolition expert who spent decades collecting antique machinery for the sculpture and the surrounding fiction that justifies it. According to Every, Dr. Evermor is a Victorian inventor who designed the Forevertron to launch himself, "into the heavens on a magnetic lightning force beam." The Forevertron, despite its size and weight, was designed to be relocatable to a different site—the sculpture is built in sections that are connected by bolts and pins. In addition to the Forevertron itself, the sculpture includes a tea house gazebo from which Every says Queen Victoria and Prince Albert may observe the launching of Dr. Evermor; it also includes a giant telescope where sceptics may observe the ascent. Dr. Evermor's art park is home to scores of other sculptures, many of which relate to the Forevertron, such as the "Celestial Listening Ear" and the "Overlord Master Control Tower". Other large-scale sculptures include gigantic insects (the "Juicer Bug" and "Arachna Artie"), the "Epicurean" bellows-driven barbecue train, "The Dragon", and "The UFO". The most numerous sculptures are the "Bird Band and Orchestra" which includes nearly 70 birds ranging from the size of a child to twenty feet tall, all made from scrap industrial parts, geological survey markers, knives, loudspeakers, springs, and musical instruments, among other salvaged materials.
Tom Every says he takes pride in allowing the original materials to remain unaltered as much as possible, using their original forms in new juxtapositions to create his aesthetic. While he himself is not often available for tours of the art park, the site can generally be accessed from passing through the surplus store adjacent to it, Delaney's Surplus. Mr. Every also created much of the installation art for the House on the Rock, including the world's largest carousel. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forevertron
A baby zedonk, an unusual cross between a donkey and a zebra, is an eye-catching animal attracting attention from around the world. The animal, named Pippi, was born July 21 at the Chestatee Wildlife Preserve, near Dahlonega, Georgia. Her mother is "Sarah," a donkey, and the father is "Zeke," a zebra. Pippi has black-and-white-striped legs and a brown back. C.W. Wathen, the owner of the preserve, said she was named after Pippi Longstocking, the stripe-socked heroine created by children's author Astrid Lindgren.
http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/09/23/what.is.zedonk/?hpt=C2
I enjoyed the book On Rue Tatin, Living and Cooking in a French Town by Susan Herrmann Loomis that was lent to me by a muse reader. Tatin Street is named after a general in Napoleon's army, and has nothing to do with Tarte Tatin. A recipe for Braised Chicken in White Wine and Mustard almost word for word as found in the Loomis book is at: http://www.chow.com/recipes/11507-chicken-braised-in-white-wine-and-mustard A recipe for half the amount of The Rolls That Brought Us Together in the Loomis book, and very close in directions to make is at: http://cleverkaren.blogspot.com/2008/01/rolls-from-rue-tatin.html
Rue Tatin is in Louviers, a village in Normandy not far from artist Claude Monet's home and gardens in Giverny. Louviers is best known for the mammoth Gothic church that dominates the center of town, and the Loomis family lines in a leaning stone and stucco building across the street. With its crooked wooden timbers, wavy glass windows and tiny bell tower atop a slanted roof, it looks like a gigantic gingerbread house. See pictures and read more about former Seattleite Susan Herrmann Loomis at: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/pacificnw/2001/0603/cover.html
Coming to Shumaker charity sale in Toledo
Cruel and Unusual by Patricia Cornwell
Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
Robert Ludlum's The Paris Option by Robert Ludlum and Gayle Lynds
Sanctuary by Faye Kellerman
Shades of Red by Doris Mortman
Lawyers have learned to measure which cases will be profitable.
Clients are far more sophisticated about how they use lawyers.
Companies are more skilled in risk management than they used to be.
Many causes of action and the bases for liability have matured, so litigants can more easily settle sexual harassment or asbestos cases, for example.
Congress hasn’t recently passed new laws creating liability for actions, such as the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990.
More lawyers and law firms use alternative dispute resolution and more contracts contain clauses requiring it.
Electronic discovery has significantly jacked the cost of litigation.
News and entertainment portray juries as irrational, unpredictable and out of control.
Disputes are increasingly international and more amenable to international arbitration.
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2010/09/21/why-have-federal-civil-jury-trials-basically-disappeared/?mod=djemlawblog_h
Banned and/or Challenged Books from the Radcliffe Publishing Course Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century See list--you have probably read or heard of most of them-- at: http://www.ala.org/ala/issuesadvocacy/banned/frequentlychallenged/challengedclassics/reasonsbanned/index.cfm
Steampunk art
Dr. Evermor's Forevertron is the largest scrap metal sculpture in the world, standing 50 ft. (15,2 m.) high and 120 ft. (36,5 m.) wide, and weighing 300 tons. It is housed in Dr. Evermore's Art Park on Highway 12, in the town of Sumpter, in Sauk County, Wisconsin. Built in the 1980s, it is steampunk art from before the term was coined. The sculpture incorporates two Thomas Edison dynamos from the 1880s, lightning rods, high-voltage components from 1920s power plants, scrap from the nearby Badger Army Ammunition Plant, and the decontamination chamber from the Apollo 11 spacecraft. Its fictional creator, Dr. Evermor, was born Tom Every in Brooklyn, Wisconsin and is a former demolition expert who spent decades collecting antique machinery for the sculpture and the surrounding fiction that justifies it. According to Every, Dr. Evermor is a Victorian inventor who designed the Forevertron to launch himself, "into the heavens on a magnetic lightning force beam." The Forevertron, despite its size and weight, was designed to be relocatable to a different site—the sculpture is built in sections that are connected by bolts and pins. In addition to the Forevertron itself, the sculpture includes a tea house gazebo from which Every says Queen Victoria and Prince Albert may observe the launching of Dr. Evermor; it also includes a giant telescope where sceptics may observe the ascent. Dr. Evermor's art park is home to scores of other sculptures, many of which relate to the Forevertron, such as the "Celestial Listening Ear" and the "Overlord Master Control Tower". Other large-scale sculptures include gigantic insects (the "Juicer Bug" and "Arachna Artie"), the "Epicurean" bellows-driven barbecue train, "The Dragon", and "The UFO". The most numerous sculptures are the "Bird Band and Orchestra" which includes nearly 70 birds ranging from the size of a child to twenty feet tall, all made from scrap industrial parts, geological survey markers, knives, loudspeakers, springs, and musical instruments, among other salvaged materials.
Tom Every says he takes pride in allowing the original materials to remain unaltered as much as possible, using their original forms in new juxtapositions to create his aesthetic. While he himself is not often available for tours of the art park, the site can generally be accessed from passing through the surplus store adjacent to it, Delaney's Surplus. Mr. Every also created much of the installation art for the House on the Rock, including the world's largest carousel. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forevertron
A baby zedonk, an unusual cross between a donkey and a zebra, is an eye-catching animal attracting attention from around the world. The animal, named Pippi, was born July 21 at the Chestatee Wildlife Preserve, near Dahlonega, Georgia. Her mother is "Sarah," a donkey, and the father is "Zeke," a zebra. Pippi has black-and-white-striped legs and a brown back. C.W. Wathen, the owner of the preserve, said she was named after Pippi Longstocking, the stripe-socked heroine created by children's author Astrid Lindgren.
http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/09/23/what.is.zedonk/?hpt=C2
I enjoyed the book On Rue Tatin, Living and Cooking in a French Town by Susan Herrmann Loomis that was lent to me by a muse reader. Tatin Street is named after a general in Napoleon's army, and has nothing to do with Tarte Tatin. A recipe for Braised Chicken in White Wine and Mustard almost word for word as found in the Loomis book is at: http://www.chow.com/recipes/11507-chicken-braised-in-white-wine-and-mustard A recipe for half the amount of The Rolls That Brought Us Together in the Loomis book, and very close in directions to make is at: http://cleverkaren.blogspot.com/2008/01/rolls-from-rue-tatin.html
Rue Tatin is in Louviers, a village in Normandy not far from artist Claude Monet's home and gardens in Giverny. Louviers is best known for the mammoth Gothic church that dominates the center of town, and the Loomis family lines in a leaning stone and stucco building across the street. With its crooked wooden timbers, wavy glass windows and tiny bell tower atop a slanted roof, it looks like a gigantic gingerbread house. See pictures and read more about former Seattleite Susan Herrmann Loomis at: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/pacificnw/2001/0603/cover.html
Coming to Shumaker charity sale in Toledo
Cruel and Unusual by Patricia Cornwell
Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
Robert Ludlum's The Paris Option by Robert Ludlum and Gayle Lynds
Sanctuary by Faye Kellerman
Shades of Red by Doris Mortman
Monday, September 27, 2010
Reader responds to story about the sinking of the Titanic
My personal thought on the sinking of the Titanic has been that orders were given that worked against each other. The helm was ordered to be put hard over (and there may have been confusion about which way--both the 1953 movie and the 1997 movie took into account Tiller Orders and showed the helmsman spinning the wheel in what a layman would think the wrong direction--but according to Ms. Patton a seaman would conclude it was put over the wrong way), but the order was also given for full reverse on the engines. Titanic had a single small rudder that might have been able to turn the ship had the engines remained at full ahead, but reversing all three propellers while the ship is moving ahead quickly under its momentum would cause very turbulent flow locally at the rudder, which may well have rendered the rudder largely ineffective. To turn to the left quickly, the rudder should have been put hard over to the left, the left propeller stopped (not reversed), and the center and right engines left at full ahead to keep a smooth water flow over the rudder. Just my thoughts as an engineering student majoring in fluid dynamics. I have never heard anyone else discuss this point of the effect of reversing the engines.
David M. Grogan
On September 20, word broke that Powell's Books of Portland, Oregon had won a big First Amendment lawsuit at the Ninth Circuit. The Ninth Circuit on Monday shot down two Oregon laws that prohibit making sexually explicit literature available to minors. The court ruled the laws are unconstitutionally broad and infringe on free-speech rights. The lawsuit, brought by Powell’s Books and a host of others, challenged the 2007 legislation, arguing that what might have been “a well-intended effort to target sexual predators” puts parents, publishers, educators and others at risk of fines or jail time. http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2010/09/21/oregon-booksellers-once-again-free-to-peddle-judy-blume-without-fear/?mod=djemlawblog_h
Court opinion authored by Judge Margaret McKeown: http://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2010/09/20/09-35153.pdf
Austronesian language: the Maori alphabet has just 20 letters.
http://www.omniglot.com/writing/maori.htm
Austronesian language: the Hawaiian alphabet has just 12 letters.
http://www.alternative-hawaii.com/alpha.htm
Austronesian adjective
Of or relating to Austronesia or its peoples, languages, or cultures.
Austronesian noun
A family of languages that includes the Formosan, Indonesian, Malay, Melanesian, Micronesian, and Polynesian subfamilies. http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Austronesian
From Anu Garg: As a computer science grad student in 1994 when I started what would become Wordsmith.org, I had no idea that one day I'd be typing this. This month subscribership of A.Word.A.Day has crossed one million (from Italian millione "great thousand", from Latin mille "thousand"). It has been many years, much has changed, but I enjoy exploring words and sharing their stories with you as much as that first day. Number of subscribers: 1,000,749
Number of countries and territories represented: 217
If you are a high school teacher of the English language, or if you are simply someone who cares about the language, chances are textspeak--use of cutesy abbreviations often seen in cell phone messages--grates on your nerves. You especially don't want to see it in a formal setting, for example in a term paper or in a doctor's report. Imagine if your cardiologist emailed you the results of your test with the note: "C me 4 UR <3." Chances are you'd want to fire him for this cordial (from Latin cor: heart) note, no matter how good he may be in fixing problems of the heart. But is there really anything wrong with people using expressions such as "C U L8R" in a friendly email or text message? We may want to blame this on cell phones, but according to an upcoming British Library exhibit, Victorian poets were writing in this manner long before anyone dreamed of mobile devices. And let's not forget that the use of letters to represent words is sometimes used in formal contexts as well. "IOU" for "I Owe You" has been used on promissory notes going back to the 17th century. From Anu Garg
NOTE: Textspeak annoys people because it uses frequent rather than occasional abbreviations with an almost obligatory use of sarcasm or humor. Certain abbreviations are so common, you have to groan: LOL (laughing out loud) and IMHO (in my humble opinion), for instance.
Q: Is there a law against "road rage"?
A: The Ohio State Highway Patrol says the term was created in the media to describe emotion-based reckless, aggressive and intimidating driving. There is no specific offense entitled "Road Rage" in Ohio, but the actions which are labeled "road rage" are specific offenses. Among these are menacing, reckless operation, impeding, and assault, to name a few.
Q: What is a "New York minute"?
A: Dictionary.com defines it as "an extremely short period of time."
The late comedian Johnny Carson once described it as the unmeasurable time between when the traffic light in front of you turns green and the New Yorker behind you hits his car's horn.
http://www.thecourier.com/Opinion/columns/2010/Sep/JU/ar_JU_092710.asp?d=092710,2010,Sep,27&c=c_13
My personal thought on the sinking of the Titanic has been that orders were given that worked against each other. The helm was ordered to be put hard over (and there may have been confusion about which way--both the 1953 movie and the 1997 movie took into account Tiller Orders and showed the helmsman spinning the wheel in what a layman would think the wrong direction--but according to Ms. Patton a seaman would conclude it was put over the wrong way), but the order was also given for full reverse on the engines. Titanic had a single small rudder that might have been able to turn the ship had the engines remained at full ahead, but reversing all three propellers while the ship is moving ahead quickly under its momentum would cause very turbulent flow locally at the rudder, which may well have rendered the rudder largely ineffective. To turn to the left quickly, the rudder should have been put hard over to the left, the left propeller stopped (not reversed), and the center and right engines left at full ahead to keep a smooth water flow over the rudder. Just my thoughts as an engineering student majoring in fluid dynamics. I have never heard anyone else discuss this point of the effect of reversing the engines.
David M. Grogan
On September 20, word broke that Powell's Books of Portland, Oregon had won a big First Amendment lawsuit at the Ninth Circuit. The Ninth Circuit on Monday shot down two Oregon laws that prohibit making sexually explicit literature available to minors. The court ruled the laws are unconstitutionally broad and infringe on free-speech rights. The lawsuit, brought by Powell’s Books and a host of others, challenged the 2007 legislation, arguing that what might have been “a well-intended effort to target sexual predators” puts parents, publishers, educators and others at risk of fines or jail time. http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2010/09/21/oregon-booksellers-once-again-free-to-peddle-judy-blume-without-fear/?mod=djemlawblog_h
Court opinion authored by Judge Margaret McKeown: http://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2010/09/20/09-35153.pdf
Austronesian language: the Maori alphabet has just 20 letters.
http://www.omniglot.com/writing/maori.htm
Austronesian language: the Hawaiian alphabet has just 12 letters.
http://www.alternative-hawaii.com/alpha.htm
Austronesian adjective
Of or relating to Austronesia or its peoples, languages, or cultures.
Austronesian noun
A family of languages that includes the Formosan, Indonesian, Malay, Melanesian, Micronesian, and Polynesian subfamilies. http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Austronesian
From Anu Garg: As a computer science grad student in 1994 when I started what would become Wordsmith.org, I had no idea that one day I'd be typing this. This month subscribership of A.Word.A.Day has crossed one million (from Italian millione "great thousand", from Latin mille "thousand"). It has been many years, much has changed, but I enjoy exploring words and sharing their stories with you as much as that first day. Number of subscribers: 1,000,749
Number of countries and territories represented: 217
If you are a high school teacher of the English language, or if you are simply someone who cares about the language, chances are textspeak--use of cutesy abbreviations often seen in cell phone messages--grates on your nerves. You especially don't want to see it in a formal setting, for example in a term paper or in a doctor's report. Imagine if your cardiologist emailed you the results of your test with the note: "C me 4 UR <3." Chances are you'd want to fire him for this cordial (from Latin cor: heart) note, no matter how good he may be in fixing problems of the heart. But is there really anything wrong with people using expressions such as "C U L8R" in a friendly email or text message? We may want to blame this on cell phones, but according to an upcoming British Library exhibit, Victorian poets were writing in this manner long before anyone dreamed of mobile devices. And let's not forget that the use of letters to represent words is sometimes used in formal contexts as well. "IOU" for "I Owe You" has been used on promissory notes going back to the 17th century. From Anu Garg
NOTE: Textspeak annoys people because it uses frequent rather than occasional abbreviations with an almost obligatory use of sarcasm or humor. Certain abbreviations are so common, you have to groan: LOL (laughing out loud) and IMHO (in my humble opinion), for instance.
Q: Is there a law against "road rage"?
A: The Ohio State Highway Patrol says the term was created in the media to describe emotion-based reckless, aggressive and intimidating driving. There is no specific offense entitled "Road Rage" in Ohio, but the actions which are labeled "road rage" are specific offenses. Among these are menacing, reckless operation, impeding, and assault, to name a few.
Q: What is a "New York minute"?
A: Dictionary.com defines it as "an extremely short period of time."
The late comedian Johnny Carson once described it as the unmeasurable time between when the traffic light in front of you turns green and the New Yorker behind you hits his car's horn.
http://www.thecourier.com/Opinion/columns/2010/Sep/JU/ar_JU_092710.asp?d=092710,2010,Sep,27&c=c_13
Friday, September 24, 2010
On September 23 the Federal Communications Commission approved the use of unlicensed airwaves in what it hopes will be a new market for high-speed Internet connections for smartphones, tablets and computers. The order, approved unanimously by the five-member commission, is a win for high-tech giants Dell, Microsoft and Google, which have lobbied for the use of the airwaves known as "white spaces." Those are parts of the broadcast spectrum that sit between television channels, and are valued as a potential home for amped-up versions of WiFi networks with longer ranges and stronger connections that can penetrate walls. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/23/AR2010092306236.html
Louise Patten, whose grandfather was the only surviving officer on the Titanic, reveals the truth about how it sank. 'Titanic was launched at a time when the world was moving from sailing ships to steam ships. My grandfather, like the other senior officers on Titanic, had started out on sailing ships. And on sailing ships, they steered by what is known as “Tiller Orders” which means that if you want to go one way, you push the tiller the other way. [So if you want to go left, you push right.] It sounds counter-intuitive now, but that is what Tiller Orders were. Whereas with “Rudder Orders’ which is what steam ships used, it is like driving a car. You steer the way you want to go. It gets more confusing because, even though Titanic was a steam ship, at that time on the North Atlantic they were still using Tiller Orders. Therefore Murdoch gave the command in Tiller Orders but Hitchins, in a panic, reverted to the Rudder Orders he had been trained in. They only had four minutes to change course and by the time Murdoch spotted Hitchins’ mistake and then tried to rectify it, it was too late.’ 'If Titanic had stood still,’ she demonstrates, 'she would have survived at least until the rescue ship came and no one need have died, but when they drove her 'Slow Ahead’, the pressure of the sea coming through her damaged hull forced the water over the bulkheads and flooded sequentially one watertight compartment after another – and that was why she sank so fast.’ Read more at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/booknews/8016751/The-truth-about-the-sinking-of-the-Titanic.html
What is net neutrality? It’s the idea that all Internet traffic should be treated equally. In theory, companies that handle Internet traffic, including Comcast and AT&T, would have to transmit Google Inc.’s YouTube videos at the same speed as movies from Netflix Inc. AT&T couldn’t give priority service to YouTube in exchange for payments at the expense of the video service’s rivals. Why do supporters say the government should impose net- neutrality rules? Advocates say that without rules, Internet-service providers may manage their networks to favor their own content or that of business partners, while blocking or slowing competing offerings.
That would undermine the Web’s premise of openness and opportunity, locking out new ventures and restricting the choices of users, the supporters say. See other questions and answers at: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-09-23/net-neutrality-dispute-on-internet-access-questions-and-answers.html
What are the names of the Seven Dwarfs?
Keeping track of all seven dwarfs is actually quite simple once you have mastered this simple mnemonic device: two S’s, two D’s, and three emotions. Two S’s: Sleepy and Sneezy; two D’s: Dopey and Doc; and three emotions: Happy, Bashful, and Grumpy.
http://www.essortment.com/all/sevendwarfsnam_rygj.htm
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is a 1937 American animated film based on Snow White, a German fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm. It was the first full-length cel-animated feature in motion picture history, as well as the first animated feature film produced in America, the first produced in full color, the first to be produced by Walt Disney, and the first in the Walt Disney Animated Classics canon. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs premiered at the Carthay Circle Theatre on December 21, 1937, and the film was released to theaters by RKO Radio Pictures on February 4, 1938. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was one of only two animated films to rank in the American Film Institute's list of the 100 greatest American films of all time in 1997 (the other being Disney's Fantasia), ranking number 49. It achieved a higher ranking (#34) in the list's 2007 update, this time being the only traditionally animated film on the list. The following year AFI would name the film as the greatest American animated film of all time and the best ever Walt Disney Animated Classics movie. In 1989, the film was added to the United States National Film Registry as being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_White_and_the_Seven_Dwarfs_(1937_film)
What are the Seven Virtues?
The canon of principal Christian virtues in the Middle Ages was made up of the three 'theological virtues' faith, hope and charity, and the four 'cardinal virtues', justice, prudence, fortitude and temperance. The cycle of seven virtues, sometimes paired with appropriate vices (not necessarily the seven Deadly Sins) was widely represented in medieval sculpture and fresco, often associated with the Last Judgment, like in the Scrovegni Chapel. See images at:
http://www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/html/g/giotto/padova/decorati/7_virtue/
What are the Seven Virtues of the Bushido Warrior?
gi, yuuki, jin, rei, makoto, meiyo and chuugi See English descriptions and images at: http://www.gdma.com.au/New%20Web/7_Virtues.htm
Pan grilling chicken under a weight is probably done elsewhere, but it's most associated with Italy and, if you believe the PR, specifically with Tuscany. The genius is in that weight — it has to be heavy so the chicken is pressed and practically flattened onto the hot, sizzling pan bottom. Crisp as a potato chip, the skin is a feast in itself. Greens bed down the bird nicely, but crushed potatoes, polenta or a garlic and olive oil-rubbed piece of thickly cut chewy bread also soak up every drop of that flavorful pan juice. If using bricks as weights, wrap them in a couple of layers of heavy-duty foil. They can be used again and again. If you don't have a cast-iron skillet, any heavy skillet will work, but don't use one with a nonstick surface. You want the good browned bits that form on the bottom of the pan to flavor the sauce.
As long as you use nonstick cookware with care, it is safe. Here is what you need to know: First and foremost is that the pan is no better than the metal to which the nonstick coating is applied. Look for pans with a base of thick aluminum, which is a good heat conductor. Use medium-high to low heat only; never use high heat because overheating breaks down the coating. This means a nonstick pan is not the one to use when you need a high-heat sear or quick sauté.
The Splendid Table September 22, 2010
Louise Patten, whose grandfather was the only surviving officer on the Titanic, reveals the truth about how it sank. 'Titanic was launched at a time when the world was moving from sailing ships to steam ships. My grandfather, like the other senior officers on Titanic, had started out on sailing ships. And on sailing ships, they steered by what is known as “Tiller Orders” which means that if you want to go one way, you push the tiller the other way. [So if you want to go left, you push right.] It sounds counter-intuitive now, but that is what Tiller Orders were. Whereas with “Rudder Orders’ which is what steam ships used, it is like driving a car. You steer the way you want to go. It gets more confusing because, even though Titanic was a steam ship, at that time on the North Atlantic they were still using Tiller Orders. Therefore Murdoch gave the command in Tiller Orders but Hitchins, in a panic, reverted to the Rudder Orders he had been trained in. They only had four minutes to change course and by the time Murdoch spotted Hitchins’ mistake and then tried to rectify it, it was too late.’ 'If Titanic had stood still,’ she demonstrates, 'she would have survived at least until the rescue ship came and no one need have died, but when they drove her 'Slow Ahead’, the pressure of the sea coming through her damaged hull forced the water over the bulkheads and flooded sequentially one watertight compartment after another – and that was why she sank so fast.’ Read more at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/booknews/8016751/The-truth-about-the-sinking-of-the-Titanic.html
What is net neutrality? It’s the idea that all Internet traffic should be treated equally. In theory, companies that handle Internet traffic, including Comcast and AT&T, would have to transmit Google Inc.’s YouTube videos at the same speed as movies from Netflix Inc. AT&T couldn’t give priority service to YouTube in exchange for payments at the expense of the video service’s rivals. Why do supporters say the government should impose net- neutrality rules? Advocates say that without rules, Internet-service providers may manage their networks to favor their own content or that of business partners, while blocking or slowing competing offerings.
That would undermine the Web’s premise of openness and opportunity, locking out new ventures and restricting the choices of users, the supporters say. See other questions and answers at: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-09-23/net-neutrality-dispute-on-internet-access-questions-and-answers.html
What are the names of the Seven Dwarfs?
Keeping track of all seven dwarfs is actually quite simple once you have mastered this simple mnemonic device: two S’s, two D’s, and three emotions. Two S’s: Sleepy and Sneezy; two D’s: Dopey and Doc; and three emotions: Happy, Bashful, and Grumpy.
http://www.essortment.com/all/sevendwarfsnam_rygj.htm
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is a 1937 American animated film based on Snow White, a German fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm. It was the first full-length cel-animated feature in motion picture history, as well as the first animated feature film produced in America, the first produced in full color, the first to be produced by Walt Disney, and the first in the Walt Disney Animated Classics canon. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs premiered at the Carthay Circle Theatre on December 21, 1937, and the film was released to theaters by RKO Radio Pictures on February 4, 1938. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was one of only two animated films to rank in the American Film Institute's list of the 100 greatest American films of all time in 1997 (the other being Disney's Fantasia), ranking number 49. It achieved a higher ranking (#34) in the list's 2007 update, this time being the only traditionally animated film on the list. The following year AFI would name the film as the greatest American animated film of all time and the best ever Walt Disney Animated Classics movie. In 1989, the film was added to the United States National Film Registry as being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_White_and_the_Seven_Dwarfs_(1937_film)
What are the Seven Virtues?
The canon of principal Christian virtues in the Middle Ages was made up of the three 'theological virtues' faith, hope and charity, and the four 'cardinal virtues', justice, prudence, fortitude and temperance. The cycle of seven virtues, sometimes paired with appropriate vices (not necessarily the seven Deadly Sins) was widely represented in medieval sculpture and fresco, often associated with the Last Judgment, like in the Scrovegni Chapel. See images at:
http://www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/html/g/giotto/padova/decorati/7_virtue/
What are the Seven Virtues of the Bushido Warrior?
gi, yuuki, jin, rei, makoto, meiyo and chuugi See English descriptions and images at: http://www.gdma.com.au/New%20Web/7_Virtues.htm
Pan grilling chicken under a weight is probably done elsewhere, but it's most associated with Italy and, if you believe the PR, specifically with Tuscany. The genius is in that weight — it has to be heavy so the chicken is pressed and practically flattened onto the hot, sizzling pan bottom. Crisp as a potato chip, the skin is a feast in itself. Greens bed down the bird nicely, but crushed potatoes, polenta or a garlic and olive oil-rubbed piece of thickly cut chewy bread also soak up every drop of that flavorful pan juice. If using bricks as weights, wrap them in a couple of layers of heavy-duty foil. They can be used again and again. If you don't have a cast-iron skillet, any heavy skillet will work, but don't use one with a nonstick surface. You want the good browned bits that form on the bottom of the pan to flavor the sauce.
As long as you use nonstick cookware with care, it is safe. Here is what you need to know: First and foremost is that the pan is no better than the metal to which the nonstick coating is applied. Look for pans with a base of thick aluminum, which is a good heat conductor. Use medium-high to low heat only; never use high heat because overheating breaks down the coating. This means a nonstick pan is not the one to use when you need a high-heat sear or quick sauté.
The Splendid Table September 22, 2010
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Reader responds to federal court system story: I just finished reading Jeff Shesol's Supreme Power. A fascinating tale well written about the problem of the Supreme Court in 1934-1936 versus the New Deal legislation. There is quite a thorough examination of the federal judiciary under the Constitution which culminated in FDR's attempt to "pack the Court". These were his words, not a pejorative as the idea came to be seen in later years. A careful description of the stance and thinking of each of the Justices on a bench with a 5 to 4 conservative to liberal split. Also an illuminating description of the political scene of supporters and opponents nationwide and in Congress.
Since July, at least six suits have been filed in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California against websites and companies that create advertising technology, accusing them of installing online-tracking tools that are so surreptitious that they essentially hack into users' machines without their knowledge. All of the suits seek class-action status and accuse companies of violating the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and other laws against deceptive practices. In 2001 and 2003, courts ruled that websites could place small text files called "cookies" on machines. Cookies allow sites to remember users, so they don't have to log in user information on each visit. But they can also be used to track users across websites, compiling a profile of a user's browsing interests. The new lawsuits challenge the older rulings because modern tracking tools are more sophisticated than early cookies. In one of the lawsuits, filed last week in the Central District of California, three California residents sued Cable News Network, Travel Channel and others over alleged tracking of Web surfing on mobile phones using technology that the suit says is particularly difficult to delete. A spokesman for Scripps Networks Interactive Inc., which controls the Travel Channel, said the company doesn't comment on pending litigation. Time Warner Inc., which owns CNN, declined to comment. Another suit, filed earlier this month, accuses Fox Entertainment Group and the American idol.com website of using a new kind of cookie—known as a Flash cookie—that can "re-spawn" tracking files that users have deleted, without users' knowledge. News Corp., which owns Fox Entertainment Group as well as The Wall Street Journal, declined to comment on the litigation.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704416904575502261335698370.html
SISTER BAY, Wis.—Lars Johnson is proud of his restaurant's Swedish-meatball sandwich and pickled herring. But the signature offering at his Al Johnson's Swedish Restaurant isn't on the menu; it's the goats grazing on the grass-covered roof. Some patrons drive from afar to eat at the restaurant and see the goats that have been going up on Al Johnson's roof since 1973. The restaurant 14 years ago trademarked the right to put goats on a roof to attract customers to a business. "The restaurant is one of the top-grossing in Wisconsin, and I'm sure the goats have helped," says Mr. Johnson, who manages the family-owned restaurant. Last year, he discovered that Tiger Mountain Market in Rabun County, Ga., had been grazing goats on its grass roof since 2007. Putting goats on the roof wasn't illegal. The violation, Al Johnson's alleged in a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, was that Tiger Mountain used the animals to woo business. The suit declared: "Notwithstanding Al Johnson's Restaurant's prior, continuous and extensive use of the Goats on the Roof Trade Dress"—a type of trademark—"defendant Tiger Mountain Market opened a grocery store and gift shop in buildings with grass on the roofs and allows goats to climb on the roofs of its buildings." Al Johnson's "demanded that Defendant cease and desist such conduct, but Defendant has willfully continued to offer food services from buildings with goats on the roof," the suit continued. Earlier this year, Mr. Benson agreed to pay Al Johnson's a fee for the right to use roof goats as a marketing tool in Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Tennessee. Al Johnson's is on constant lookout for other cloven-hooved intellectual-property violations. Mr. Johnson says the restaurant's Milwaukee law firm has sent letters to other alleged offenders, such as a gift shop in Wisconsin with a fake goat on its roof. It removed the ersatz ungulate.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704285104575492650336813506.html
Parody was identified as a literary mode by Aristotle, and you can find examples in English from the time of Chaucer, but the practice really came into its own in the nineteenth century. The work still commonly regarded as the supreme achievement in the genre, Max Beerbohm’s “A Christmas Garland,” was published in 1912. A.Y. Campbell has parodied the 13th-century round "Sumer Is Icumen In" with "Plumber is icumen in; Bludie big tu-du." James Thurber published "A Visit From Saint Nicholas (In the Ernest Hemingway Manner)" in The New Yorker in 1927. Hardboiled crime-fiction is like catnip to parodists and screenwriters. There is S.J. Perlman's Raymond Chandler spoof, "Farewell, My Lovely Appetizer" and Woody Allen's "The Whore of Mensa." The New Yorker September 20, 2010
A parody ( also called send-up or spoof), in contemporary usage, is a work created to mock, comment on, or poke fun at an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation. ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parody
Parody music, or musical parody, involves changing or recycling existing (usually very well known) musical ideas or lyrics—or copying the peculiar style of a composer or artist, or even a general style of music. ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parody_(music)
Parody art Paintings frequently parodied: American Gothic, Mona Lisa, Mount Rushmore
The Satire/Parody Distinction in Copyright and Trademark Law—Can Satire Ever Be a Fair Use? Read this ABA SECTION OF LITIGATION, INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY LITIGATION COMMITTEE, ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION ONLINE at:
http://www.abanet.org/litigation/committees/intellectual/roundtables/0506_outline.pdf
See also: Copyright and Fair Use at: http://fairuse.stanford.edu/Copyright_and_Fair_Use_Overview/chapter9/9-a.html
The Spiceman Cometh Flavor guru Kevan Vetter influences the taste of many fine foods—like Doritos. Over the past decade, Vetter's chosen flavors have found their way into nearly every corner of the processed food chain, including Spicy Sweet Chili Doritos, Kashi Lemongrass Coconut Chicken frozen dinners, and Taco Bell's carne asada chalupa. Vetter, the executive chef at seasoning giant McCormick & Co. (MKC), joined the company in 1998 with the goal of enhancing its influence outside the supermarket. In his first Flavor Forecast, in 2000, he noted the rise of Latin American dishes and small plates. Vetter's flavors have a meaningful effect on McCormick's bottom line. "Within a matter of a couple of months, we'll get orders [for spices and flavors]," says Alan Wilson, chairman, president, and chief executive officer of McCormick. The company's share price has more than doubled in the decade since the 2000 forecast. Since 2005 between 13 and 18 percent of nonretail sales have come from new products launched in the three preceding years.
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_39/b4196080854097.htm?chan=magazine+channel_etc.
Since July, at least six suits have been filed in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California against websites and companies that create advertising technology, accusing them of installing online-tracking tools that are so surreptitious that they essentially hack into users' machines without their knowledge. All of the suits seek class-action status and accuse companies of violating the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and other laws against deceptive practices. In 2001 and 2003, courts ruled that websites could place small text files called "cookies" on machines. Cookies allow sites to remember users, so they don't have to log in user information on each visit. But they can also be used to track users across websites, compiling a profile of a user's browsing interests. The new lawsuits challenge the older rulings because modern tracking tools are more sophisticated than early cookies. In one of the lawsuits, filed last week in the Central District of California, three California residents sued Cable News Network, Travel Channel and others over alleged tracking of Web surfing on mobile phones using technology that the suit says is particularly difficult to delete. A spokesman for Scripps Networks Interactive Inc., which controls the Travel Channel, said the company doesn't comment on pending litigation. Time Warner Inc., which owns CNN, declined to comment. Another suit, filed earlier this month, accuses Fox Entertainment Group and the American idol.com website of using a new kind of cookie—known as a Flash cookie—that can "re-spawn" tracking files that users have deleted, without users' knowledge. News Corp., which owns Fox Entertainment Group as well as The Wall Street Journal, declined to comment on the litigation.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704416904575502261335698370.html
SISTER BAY, Wis.—Lars Johnson is proud of his restaurant's Swedish-meatball sandwich and pickled herring. But the signature offering at his Al Johnson's Swedish Restaurant isn't on the menu; it's the goats grazing on the grass-covered roof. Some patrons drive from afar to eat at the restaurant and see the goats that have been going up on Al Johnson's roof since 1973. The restaurant 14 years ago trademarked the right to put goats on a roof to attract customers to a business. "The restaurant is one of the top-grossing in Wisconsin, and I'm sure the goats have helped," says Mr. Johnson, who manages the family-owned restaurant. Last year, he discovered that Tiger Mountain Market in Rabun County, Ga., had been grazing goats on its grass roof since 2007. Putting goats on the roof wasn't illegal. The violation, Al Johnson's alleged in a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, was that Tiger Mountain used the animals to woo business. The suit declared: "Notwithstanding Al Johnson's Restaurant's prior, continuous and extensive use of the Goats on the Roof Trade Dress"—a type of trademark—"defendant Tiger Mountain Market opened a grocery store and gift shop in buildings with grass on the roofs and allows goats to climb on the roofs of its buildings." Al Johnson's "demanded that Defendant cease and desist such conduct, but Defendant has willfully continued to offer food services from buildings with goats on the roof," the suit continued. Earlier this year, Mr. Benson agreed to pay Al Johnson's a fee for the right to use roof goats as a marketing tool in Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Tennessee. Al Johnson's is on constant lookout for other cloven-hooved intellectual-property violations. Mr. Johnson says the restaurant's Milwaukee law firm has sent letters to other alleged offenders, such as a gift shop in Wisconsin with a fake goat on its roof. It removed the ersatz ungulate.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704285104575492650336813506.html
Parody was identified as a literary mode by Aristotle, and you can find examples in English from the time of Chaucer, but the practice really came into its own in the nineteenth century. The work still commonly regarded as the supreme achievement in the genre, Max Beerbohm’s “A Christmas Garland,” was published in 1912. A.Y. Campbell has parodied the 13th-century round "Sumer Is Icumen In" with "Plumber is icumen in; Bludie big tu-du." James Thurber published "A Visit From Saint Nicholas (In the Ernest Hemingway Manner)" in The New Yorker in 1927. Hardboiled crime-fiction is like catnip to parodists and screenwriters. There is S.J. Perlman's Raymond Chandler spoof, "Farewell, My Lovely Appetizer" and Woody Allen's "The Whore of Mensa." The New Yorker September 20, 2010
A parody ( also called send-up or spoof), in contemporary usage, is a work created to mock, comment on, or poke fun at an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation. ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parody
Parody music, or musical parody, involves changing or recycling existing (usually very well known) musical ideas or lyrics—or copying the peculiar style of a composer or artist, or even a general style of music. ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parody_(music)
Parody art Paintings frequently parodied: American Gothic, Mona Lisa, Mount Rushmore
The Satire/Parody Distinction in Copyright and Trademark Law—Can Satire Ever Be a Fair Use? Read this ABA SECTION OF LITIGATION, INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY LITIGATION COMMITTEE, ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION ONLINE at:
http://www.abanet.org/litigation/committees/intellectual/roundtables/0506_outline.pdf
See also: Copyright and Fair Use at: http://fairuse.stanford.edu/Copyright_and_Fair_Use_Overview/chapter9/9-a.html
The Spiceman Cometh Flavor guru Kevan Vetter influences the taste of many fine foods—like Doritos. Over the past decade, Vetter's chosen flavors have found their way into nearly every corner of the processed food chain, including Spicy Sweet Chili Doritos, Kashi Lemongrass Coconut Chicken frozen dinners, and Taco Bell's carne asada chalupa. Vetter, the executive chef at seasoning giant McCormick & Co. (MKC), joined the company in 1998 with the goal of enhancing its influence outside the supermarket. In his first Flavor Forecast, in 2000, he noted the rise of Latin American dishes and small plates. Vetter's flavors have a meaningful effect on McCormick's bottom line. "Within a matter of a couple of months, we'll get orders [for spices and flavors]," says Alan Wilson, chairman, president, and chief executive officer of McCormick. The company's share price has more than doubled in the decade since the 2000 forecast. Since 2005 between 13 and 18 percent of nonretail sales have come from new products launched in the three preceding years.
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_39/b4196080854097.htm?chan=magazine+channel_etc.
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
September 24 marks the anniversary of a groundbreaking American invention–a federal court system separate from the individual state courts. The Judiciary Act of 1789 was one of the first pieces of legislation enacted by the newly formed U.S. Congress. The law created a dual court system–federal and state–that existed in no other country at the time. The Constitution’s Article III was ratified in 1787, creating a Federal Judiciary that would feature the U.S. Supreme Court at its pinnacle. Left to Congress, however, was the job of fleshing out what the Constitution created.. See more at: http://www.uscourts.gov/News/NewsView/10-09-15/Anniversary_Marks_Creation_of_U_S_Federal_Court_System.aspx
Local television news has become a hotbed for pay-to-play promotions. The trend promises to continue and grow. TV news producers must fill an expanding news hole, particularly in the mornings, where many news programs have been extended from three to four, five and even six hours. And advertisers, fearful of being blocked by viewers with video recorders and mute buttons, don't mind paying for promotional appearances that make them more visible and credible. The practice goes way beyond Los Angeles and a product or two. Be warned if you are watching a self-proclaimed consumer advocate on local TV news pitching cars, electronics, travel and much more. There's a good chance that your friendly small-screen expert has taken cash to sell, sell, sell. http://articles.latimes.com/2010/sep/15/entertainment/la-et-onthemedia-20100915
Relativity is a famous lithograph print by the Dutch artist M. C. Escher, first printed in December 1953. It depicts a world in which the normal laws of gravity do not apply. The architectural structure seems to be the centre of an idyllic community, with most of its inhabitants casually going about their ordinary business, such as dining. There are windows and doorways leading to park-like outdoor settings. Yet all the figures are dressed in identical attire and have featureless bulb-shaped heads. Identical characters such as these can be found in many other Escher works. In the world of Relativity, there are actually three sources of gravity, each being orthogonal to the two others. Each inhabitant lives in one of the gravity wells, where normal physical laws apply. There are sixteen characters, spread between each gravity source. The apparent confusion of the lithograph print comes from the fact that the three gravity sources are depicted in the same space. See image at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativity_(M._C._Escher)
Paradise as an enclosed garden The tradition and style in the garden design of Persian gardens (Persian باغ ایرانی) has influenced the design of gardens from Andalusia to India and beyond. he gardens of the Alhambra show the influence of Persian Garden philosophy and style in a Moorish Palace scale from the era of Al-Andalus in Spain. The Taj Mahal is one of the largest Persian Garden interpretations in the world, from the era of the Mughal Empire in India. From the time of the Achaemenid Dynasty the idea of an earthly paradise spread through Persian literature and example to other cultures, both the Hellenistic gardens of the Seleucids and the Ptolemies in Alexandria. The Avestan word pairidaêza-, Old Persian *paridaida-, Median *paridaiza- (walled-around, i.e., a walled garden), was transliterated into Greek paradeisoi, then rendered into the Latin paradisus, and from there entered into European languages, e.g., French paradis, German Paradies, and English paradise. The word entered Semitic languages as well: Akkadian pardesu, Hebrew pardes, and Arabic firdaws. As the word expresses, such gardens would have been enclosed. The garden's purpose was, and is, to provide a place for protected relaxation in a variety of manners: spiritual, and leisurely (such as meetings with friends), essentially a paradise on earth. See more information plus images at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persian_gardens
There are no yams on the American dinner table. What we call yams are really just a variety of sweet potato. Sweet potatoes were actually born in Mexico, Central, and South America, as well as the West Indies. Their botanical name, Ipomoca batata, was derived from the American Indians of Louisiana who were growing them in native gardens as early as 1540. The Indians referred to sweet potatoes as batatas. In his first voyage to the West Indies Columbus discovered many new foods which he brought back to Spain. Sweet potatoes were among his ship's treasures. The Spanish relished them and began cultivating them immediately. Soon they were profitably exporting them to England where they were included in spice pies to be devoured at the court of Henry VIII. It was the Portuguese who carried sweet potatoes to Asia and Africa where they have become an important staple of the diet even today. There are two major varieties of sweet potatoes, the yellow, drier, more mealy kind with lighter beige colored skins, and the orange, more moist, sweeter ones with reddish skins that are usually called "yams." True yams, however, are nothing like the sweet potato, but are a tuber native to Africa, very starchy, not very sweet, and grow as large as 100 pounds. It was the Southerners, mainly from North Carolina, Georgia, and Louisiana, who adopted the name yams for the darker-skinned orange variety and made them an important part of their cuisine. http://www.vegparadise.com/highestperch11.html
Canola oil is pressed from the seeds of a special variety of Brassica napus, a plant in the mustard family closely related to bok choi and turnips. Brassica napus’s unfortunate common name is rapeseed (from rapum, Latin for “turnip”). Rapeseed typically contains high levels of erucic acid (which makes oils go rancid quickly, is toxic in large doses, and may cause cancer) and glucosinolate (which tastes so bitter and unpleasant that it’s undesirable even in animal feed). But in the 1950s and 1960s, Canadian scientists began developing strains of it with lower levels of the problematic chemicals. In 1974, a University of Manitoba professor named Baldur Steffanson introduced a rapeseed variety with extremely low erucic acid and glucosinolate content that was dubbed canola, for CANadian Oil, Low Acid. http://www.chow.com/food-news/53865/where-does-canola-oil-come-from/
The familiar sunflower has provided great examples of adaptation by hybrids. Loren H. Rieseberg of the University of British Columbia and colleagues have found that two widespread species, the common sunflower and prairie sunflower, have combined at least three times to give rise to three hybrid species: the sand sunflower, the desert sunflower, and the puzzle sunflower. Read about wholphin (dolphin-false killer whale), zorses (zebra-horse), beefalo (bison-beef cattle) and, of course, mules (donkey-horse) at: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/14/science/14creatures.html
Local television news has become a hotbed for pay-to-play promotions. The trend promises to continue and grow. TV news producers must fill an expanding news hole, particularly in the mornings, where many news programs have been extended from three to four, five and even six hours. And advertisers, fearful of being blocked by viewers with video recorders and mute buttons, don't mind paying for promotional appearances that make them more visible and credible. The practice goes way beyond Los Angeles and a product or two. Be warned if you are watching a self-proclaimed consumer advocate on local TV news pitching cars, electronics, travel and much more. There's a good chance that your friendly small-screen expert has taken cash to sell, sell, sell. http://articles.latimes.com/2010/sep/15/entertainment/la-et-onthemedia-20100915
Relativity is a famous lithograph print by the Dutch artist M. C. Escher, first printed in December 1953. It depicts a world in which the normal laws of gravity do not apply. The architectural structure seems to be the centre of an idyllic community, with most of its inhabitants casually going about their ordinary business, such as dining. There are windows and doorways leading to park-like outdoor settings. Yet all the figures are dressed in identical attire and have featureless bulb-shaped heads. Identical characters such as these can be found in many other Escher works. In the world of Relativity, there are actually three sources of gravity, each being orthogonal to the two others. Each inhabitant lives in one of the gravity wells, where normal physical laws apply. There are sixteen characters, spread between each gravity source. The apparent confusion of the lithograph print comes from the fact that the three gravity sources are depicted in the same space. See image at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativity_(M._C._Escher)
Paradise as an enclosed garden The tradition and style in the garden design of Persian gardens (Persian باغ ایرانی) has influenced the design of gardens from Andalusia to India and beyond. he gardens of the Alhambra show the influence of Persian Garden philosophy and style in a Moorish Palace scale from the era of Al-Andalus in Spain. The Taj Mahal is one of the largest Persian Garden interpretations in the world, from the era of the Mughal Empire in India. From the time of the Achaemenid Dynasty the idea of an earthly paradise spread through Persian literature and example to other cultures, both the Hellenistic gardens of the Seleucids and the Ptolemies in Alexandria. The Avestan word pairidaêza-, Old Persian *paridaida-, Median *paridaiza- (walled-around, i.e., a walled garden), was transliterated into Greek paradeisoi, then rendered into the Latin paradisus, and from there entered into European languages, e.g., French paradis, German Paradies, and English paradise. The word entered Semitic languages as well: Akkadian pardesu, Hebrew pardes, and Arabic firdaws. As the word expresses, such gardens would have been enclosed. The garden's purpose was, and is, to provide a place for protected relaxation in a variety of manners: spiritual, and leisurely (such as meetings with friends), essentially a paradise on earth. See more information plus images at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persian_gardens
There are no yams on the American dinner table. What we call yams are really just a variety of sweet potato. Sweet potatoes were actually born in Mexico, Central, and South America, as well as the West Indies. Their botanical name, Ipomoca batata, was derived from the American Indians of Louisiana who were growing them in native gardens as early as 1540. The Indians referred to sweet potatoes as batatas. In his first voyage to the West Indies Columbus discovered many new foods which he brought back to Spain. Sweet potatoes were among his ship's treasures. The Spanish relished them and began cultivating them immediately. Soon they were profitably exporting them to England where they were included in spice pies to be devoured at the court of Henry VIII. It was the Portuguese who carried sweet potatoes to Asia and Africa where they have become an important staple of the diet even today. There are two major varieties of sweet potatoes, the yellow, drier, more mealy kind with lighter beige colored skins, and the orange, more moist, sweeter ones with reddish skins that are usually called "yams." True yams, however, are nothing like the sweet potato, but are a tuber native to Africa, very starchy, not very sweet, and grow as large as 100 pounds. It was the Southerners, mainly from North Carolina, Georgia, and Louisiana, who adopted the name yams for the darker-skinned orange variety and made them an important part of their cuisine. http://www.vegparadise.com/highestperch11.html
Canola oil is pressed from the seeds of a special variety of Brassica napus, a plant in the mustard family closely related to bok choi and turnips. Brassica napus’s unfortunate common name is rapeseed (from rapum, Latin for “turnip”). Rapeseed typically contains high levels of erucic acid (which makes oils go rancid quickly, is toxic in large doses, and may cause cancer) and glucosinolate (which tastes so bitter and unpleasant that it’s undesirable even in animal feed). But in the 1950s and 1960s, Canadian scientists began developing strains of it with lower levels of the problematic chemicals. In 1974, a University of Manitoba professor named Baldur Steffanson introduced a rapeseed variety with extremely low erucic acid and glucosinolate content that was dubbed canola, for CANadian Oil, Low Acid. http://www.chow.com/food-news/53865/where-does-canola-oil-come-from/
The familiar sunflower has provided great examples of adaptation by hybrids. Loren H. Rieseberg of the University of British Columbia and colleagues have found that two widespread species, the common sunflower and prairie sunflower, have combined at least three times to give rise to three hybrid species: the sand sunflower, the desert sunflower, and the puzzle sunflower. Read about wholphin (dolphin-false killer whale), zorses (zebra-horse), beefalo (bison-beef cattle) and, of course, mules (donkey-horse) at: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/14/science/14creatures.html
Monday, September 20, 2010
BLS: Consumer Price Index- August 2010 "On a seasonally adjusted basis, the CPI-U increased 0.3 percent in August, the same increase as in July. The index for all items less food and energy was unchanged in August after rising 0.1 percent in July."
BLS: Real Earnings - August 2010 "Real average hourly earnings for all employees was unchanged from July to August, seasonally adjusted. This result stems from a 0.3 percent increase in average hourly earnings, which was offset by a 0.3 percent increase in the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U). Real average weekly earnings was about unchanged over the month."
Banned Books Week 2010 will be held September 25 through October 2. “Think for Yourself and Let Others Do the Same” is the slogan for this year’s campaign. This year’s slogan is borrowed from the Facebook group, “Un-Ban Gilbert Grape! Censorship is Wrong!” According to Andy Lange, one of the group’s leaders, the slogan is a shortened version of Voltaire’s quote, “Think for yourself and let others enjoy the privilege of doing so too.” http://www.oif.ala.org/oif/?p=903
Top ten most frequently challenged books of 2009 out of 460 challenges as reported to the American Library Association's Office of Intellectual Freedom: http://www.ala.org/ala/issuesadvocacy/banned/frequentlychallenged/21stcenturychallenged/2009/index.cfm
Eat, Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
Yoga, in Sanskrit can be translated as "union." Originally, it comes from the root word yuj (to yoke), to attach yourself to the task at hand with ox-like discipline.
Sanskrit is an ancient language in India, extinct except for prayer and religious study.
In Bali, there are only four names given to the majority of children regardless of gender: Wayan, Made, Nyoman and Ketut. If you have a fifth child, you start the name cycle over--the fifth child would known as something like "Wayan to the Second Power."
Bali, a Delaware-sized island in Indonesia, has seven unpredictable volcanoes.
Balinese are taught that a person needs four virtues in order to be safe and happy: intelligence, friendship, strength and poetry.
The 2010 edition of the Consumer Action Handbook, published by the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA), Office of Citizen Services provides hundreds of links to online resources at the federal and state government levels. See at:
http://www.consumeraction.gov/pdfs/2010_Consumer_Action_Handbook.pdf
Late last year Florida judge Nelson Bailey checked into Good Samaritan Medical Center for surgery to treat his diverticulitis which was causing him abdominal pain. After the surgery the pain not only persisted, it got worse, according to the Palm Beach Post. When Bailey complained to his doctor, he was sent for a CT scan but the metal marker on the sponge was reportedly misidentified in the test results. Bailey had several more CT scans when the pain did not subside, and again the marker was misidentified. Finally doctors identified the sponge and in March he underwent another surgery, this time at the Cleveland Clinic in Weston, where doctors removed the foot long by foot wide sponge. http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/09/15/1825945/judge-to-sue-after-surgical-sponge.html
Toledo will always be "the city of glass." Brian Kennedy, new director of The Toledo Museum of Art, from remarks at the Glass Pavilion September 16, 2010
Explore the world's best 100 countries according to Newsweek The study used health, education, economy and politics to come up with the rankings. http://www.newsweek.com/2010/08/15/interactive-infographic-of-the-worlds-best-countries.html
How to Prepare Leeks: Leeks need some fiddling with before you start cooking. They hang on to the sand they grown in with tenacity. You eat only the stalk's white section. Trim away roots and green portions. (I freeze the tops for stocks). To thoroughly wash leeks, make a slit down its length to the center, then flush it clean under cold running water. If you are sautéing them, dry the leeks by rolling the stalks up in paper towels and gently squeezing out excess moisture. Doing something as easy as boiling together sliced leeks and red skin potatoes in broth gives you the beginning of French leek and potato soup (just puree with a little cream), or warm leek and potato salad by dressing with oil and vinegar. The Splendid Table September 15, 2010
Q: Who came up with "Script Ohio" at football games?
A: Script Ohio was first performed by the Ohio State University marching band on Oct. 10, 1936, under the direction of Eugene J. Weigel. The first instrument used to dot the "i" was an E-flat cornet. Four games later, the job was given to a tuba player for a more dramatic effect. -- The Ohio State University Libraries.
Q: Is Genoa, Ohio, named after the city in Italy?
A: Yes. The first white settlers came to then-Stony Station in 1835. It was renamed for the Italian city in 1857 and incorporated in 1868. The village has about 2,200 people. But the places are pronounced differently. Locals call their village "Jen-NO-ah," but others generally pronounce the Italian city "JEN-ah-wah." -- Village of Genoa, Peter Mattiace.
Q: Are any of the Andrews sisters living?
A: Patty Andrews is 92. LaVerne died in 1957 at age 55 and Maxene died in 1995 at 79. http://www.thecourier.com/Opinion/columns/2010/Sep/JU/ar_JU_092010.asp?d=092010,2010,Sep,20&c=c_13
BLS: Real Earnings - August 2010 "Real average hourly earnings for all employees was unchanged from July to August, seasonally adjusted. This result stems from a 0.3 percent increase in average hourly earnings, which was offset by a 0.3 percent increase in the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U). Real average weekly earnings was about unchanged over the month."
Banned Books Week 2010 will be held September 25 through October 2. “Think for Yourself and Let Others Do the Same” is the slogan for this year’s campaign. This year’s slogan is borrowed from the Facebook group, “Un-Ban Gilbert Grape! Censorship is Wrong!” According to Andy Lange, one of the group’s leaders, the slogan is a shortened version of Voltaire’s quote, “Think for yourself and let others enjoy the privilege of doing so too.” http://www.oif.ala.org/oif/?p=903
Top ten most frequently challenged books of 2009 out of 460 challenges as reported to the American Library Association's Office of Intellectual Freedom: http://www.ala.org/ala/issuesadvocacy/banned/frequentlychallenged/21stcenturychallenged/2009/index.cfm
Eat, Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
Yoga, in Sanskrit can be translated as "union." Originally, it comes from the root word yuj (to yoke), to attach yourself to the task at hand with ox-like discipline.
Sanskrit is an ancient language in India, extinct except for prayer and religious study.
In Bali, there are only four names given to the majority of children regardless of gender: Wayan, Made, Nyoman and Ketut. If you have a fifth child, you start the name cycle over--the fifth child would known as something like "Wayan to the Second Power."
Bali, a Delaware-sized island in Indonesia, has seven unpredictable volcanoes.
Balinese are taught that a person needs four virtues in order to be safe and happy: intelligence, friendship, strength and poetry.
The 2010 edition of the Consumer Action Handbook, published by the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA), Office of Citizen Services provides hundreds of links to online resources at the federal and state government levels. See at:
http://www.consumeraction.gov/pdfs/2010_Consumer_Action_Handbook.pdf
Late last year Florida judge Nelson Bailey checked into Good Samaritan Medical Center for surgery to treat his diverticulitis which was causing him abdominal pain. After the surgery the pain not only persisted, it got worse, according to the Palm Beach Post. When Bailey complained to his doctor, he was sent for a CT scan but the metal marker on the sponge was reportedly misidentified in the test results. Bailey had several more CT scans when the pain did not subside, and again the marker was misidentified. Finally doctors identified the sponge and in March he underwent another surgery, this time at the Cleveland Clinic in Weston, where doctors removed the foot long by foot wide sponge. http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/09/15/1825945/judge-to-sue-after-surgical-sponge.html
Toledo will always be "the city of glass." Brian Kennedy, new director of The Toledo Museum of Art, from remarks at the Glass Pavilion September 16, 2010
Explore the world's best 100 countries according to Newsweek The study used health, education, economy and politics to come up with the rankings. http://www.newsweek.com/2010/08/15/interactive-infographic-of-the-worlds-best-countries.html
How to Prepare Leeks: Leeks need some fiddling with before you start cooking. They hang on to the sand they grown in with tenacity. You eat only the stalk's white section. Trim away roots and green portions. (I freeze the tops for stocks). To thoroughly wash leeks, make a slit down its length to the center, then flush it clean under cold running water. If you are sautéing them, dry the leeks by rolling the stalks up in paper towels and gently squeezing out excess moisture. Doing something as easy as boiling together sliced leeks and red skin potatoes in broth gives you the beginning of French leek and potato soup (just puree with a little cream), or warm leek and potato salad by dressing with oil and vinegar. The Splendid Table September 15, 2010
Q: Who came up with "Script Ohio" at football games?
A: Script Ohio was first performed by the Ohio State University marching band on Oct. 10, 1936, under the direction of Eugene J. Weigel. The first instrument used to dot the "i" was an E-flat cornet. Four games later, the job was given to a tuba player for a more dramatic effect. -- The Ohio State University Libraries.
Q: Is Genoa, Ohio, named after the city in Italy?
A: Yes. The first white settlers came to then-Stony Station in 1835. It was renamed for the Italian city in 1857 and incorporated in 1868. The village has about 2,200 people. But the places are pronounced differently. Locals call their village "Jen-NO-ah," but others generally pronounce the Italian city "JEN-ah-wah." -- Village of Genoa, Peter Mattiace.
Q: Are any of the Andrews sisters living?
A: Patty Andrews is 92. LaVerne died in 1957 at age 55 and Maxene died in 1995 at 79. http://www.thecourier.com/Opinion/columns/2010/Sep/JU/ar_JU_092010.asp?d=092010,2010,Sep,20&c=c_13
Friday, September 17, 2010
MacArthur and IMLS Announce Plans to Create 30 New Learning Labs at Libraries and Museums Across the Country on September 16 In support of President Obama's "Educate to Innovate" call to action, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) today announced plans to create 30 new youth learning labs in libraries and museums across the country. Inspired by an innovative new teen space at the Chicago Public Library called YOUmedia and innovations in science and technology centers, these labs will help young people become makers and creators of content, rather than just consumers of it. These labs will be based on new research about how young people learn today. "Our success as a nation depends on strengthening America's role as the world's engine of discovery and innovation," said President Obama. "I applaud the John D. Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, and their partners, for lending their resources, expertise, and their enthusiasm to the task of strengthening America's leadership in the 21st century by improving education in science, technology, engineering and math." http://www.imls.gov/news/2010/091610.shtm
The violent history of our nearest celestial neighbour has been laid bare by the most detailed map of moon craters ever produced. Scientists used instruments aboard Nasa's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter to scan the surface of the moon for impact craters measuring at least 20km wide. Pictures sent back by the spacecraft revealed 5,185 large craters caused by lumps of space rock thumping into the lunar surface over the past few billion years. Some regions of the moon are so pocked with craters they have reached what planetary scientists call "saturation equilibrium", where each additional crater wipes out an older one, so the number of craters remains the same. The moon is thought to have formed 4.5 billion years ago, when a heavenly body the size of Mars struck Earth and dislodged an enormous cloud of debris that ultimately condensed into our planet's natural satellite. See map and more information at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/sep/17/map-moon-craters
Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
Strings of beads called japa malas have been used for centuries in India to helpt devout Hindus and Buddhists stay focused during meditation. Medieval Crusaders admired the technique and brought the idea back to Europe as rosary.
Every word in Italian is a singing sparrow, a magic trick, a truffle. Ciao! is an abbreviation of a phrase used by medieval Venetians as an intimate salutation: Somo il suo schiavo! meaning "I am your slave!"
The poet and philosopher Rumi once advised his students to write down the three things they most wanted in life. If any items clash on the list, Rumi warned, you are destined for unhappiness. Better to live a life of single-pointed focus.
In the sixteenth century, some Italian intellectuals decided that the Italian peninsula needed an Italian language. They reached back to the Florentine poet Dante Alighieri who shocked the literate world in 1321 by not writing Divine Comedy in Latin. Essentially, the Italian we speak today is Dantean.
In Italy, we are the masters of il bel far niente, "the beauty of doing nothing."
In Italian there is a seldom-used tense called passato remoto, the remote past--for example, ancient history.
In his 1964 masterwork, The Italians, Luigi Barzini tried to answer the question of why Italians have produced the greatest artistic, political and scientific minds of the ages, but have never become a major world power. to be continued
"Pod people" is: a nickname given to an alien species and a doom metal band from Canberra, Australia that formed in 1991.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&defl=en&q=define:Pod+People&sa=X&ei=CXSOTIevG8-inQeB-ojaCw&sqi=2&ved=0CBIQkAE
Note that this is a nickname used in certain workplaces for people placed in pods.
U.S. News and Best Lawyers have joined to rank nearly 9,000 firms in 81 practice areas in 171 metropolitan areas and 7 states. See 2010 rankings at: http://bestlawfirms.usnews.com/Default.aspx
Feedback to A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg
From: Gene Racicot Subject: Spinning
Victoria, BC, Canada has a series of monuments themed on the Coast Salish spindles.
From: Susan Karcz Subject: spinning & weaving words
Fun theme! One of my favorite quirks of English is illustrated by two weaving terms: weaver (male) and webster (female). This pattern is also seen in baker (male) and baxter (female) and in brewer (male) and brewster (female).
From: Curtis Brown Subject: subtile Def: Subtle: delicate; fine; not obvious; skillful.
Subtile to subtle suffered the same fate as happened in the change from stabile to stable, and probably in future from labile to lable. It is an unavoidable frequent-use trend in all languages (also known as the lazy-lips syndrome).
From: Gene Throwe Subject: This Weeks Theme
I am so excited that this week we explored the wonderful world of spinning! The spinning, dying, knitting, and crocheting of yarn has seen a wonderful resurgence in the past several years. Just like the Arts and Crafts period over a hundred years ago, some people want to preserve some of the lost arts such as these. Unlike the Arts and Crafts Movement, Many of us embrace modern technology to make fiber arts easily accessible. Ravelry.com is a wonderful source for those looking for information on spinning, dying, knitting, and crocheting. What is interesting is that many spinners and dyers are actually men, and these fields are no longer the domain of women only. T here are some men's fiber arts groups around the country, like DC Men Knit that I lead. Again, thank you so much for highlighting such a wonderful hobby/art!
From: Ariannah Armstrong Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--spinster
I was instantly fascinated with this word. I am married, but this year in January, on the eve of our wedding anniversary, I took up spinning with spindles, and it's been the start of a hobby which I know I will love for years to come. As a result, one of the common jokes in our household is that I am happily married and a spinster at the same time :)
TANGY AVOCADO & ORANGE SALAD
Combines orange segments & diced avocado with torn red leaf lettuce.
INGREDIENTS:
for 4 people - 1 orange, 1 avacado, one small head red leaf lettuce, salt & pepper.
FUSTINI'S DRESSING IDEA SUGGESTIONS
persian lime & jalapeño blood orange & pomegranate chipotle & sicilian lemon
OPTIONAL IDEAS:
1. Make the same amount - divide in half for 2 people - top with a piece of your favorite grilled fish
2. Add sliced almonds
Ann Arbor Grand Opening Celebration Saturday. September 18, 2010
FUSTINI'S OILS & VINEGARS
Ann Arbor's Kerrytown Shops
407 North 5th Avenue 2nd Floor (734) 213-1110 WWW.FUSTINIS.COM
The violent history of our nearest celestial neighbour has been laid bare by the most detailed map of moon craters ever produced. Scientists used instruments aboard Nasa's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter to scan the surface of the moon for impact craters measuring at least 20km wide. Pictures sent back by the spacecraft revealed 5,185 large craters caused by lumps of space rock thumping into the lunar surface over the past few billion years. Some regions of the moon are so pocked with craters they have reached what planetary scientists call "saturation equilibrium", where each additional crater wipes out an older one, so the number of craters remains the same. The moon is thought to have formed 4.5 billion years ago, when a heavenly body the size of Mars struck Earth and dislodged an enormous cloud of debris that ultimately condensed into our planet's natural satellite. See map and more information at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/sep/17/map-moon-craters
Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
Strings of beads called japa malas have been used for centuries in India to helpt devout Hindus and Buddhists stay focused during meditation. Medieval Crusaders admired the technique and brought the idea back to Europe as rosary.
Every word in Italian is a singing sparrow, a magic trick, a truffle. Ciao! is an abbreviation of a phrase used by medieval Venetians as an intimate salutation: Somo il suo schiavo! meaning "I am your slave!"
The poet and philosopher Rumi once advised his students to write down the three things they most wanted in life. If any items clash on the list, Rumi warned, you are destined for unhappiness. Better to live a life of single-pointed focus.
In the sixteenth century, some Italian intellectuals decided that the Italian peninsula needed an Italian language. They reached back to the Florentine poet Dante Alighieri who shocked the literate world in 1321 by not writing Divine Comedy in Latin. Essentially, the Italian we speak today is Dantean.
In Italy, we are the masters of il bel far niente, "the beauty of doing nothing."
In Italian there is a seldom-used tense called passato remoto, the remote past--for example, ancient history.
In his 1964 masterwork, The Italians, Luigi Barzini tried to answer the question of why Italians have produced the greatest artistic, political and scientific minds of the ages, but have never become a major world power. to be continued
"Pod people" is: a nickname given to an alien species and a doom metal band from Canberra, Australia that formed in 1991.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&defl=en&q=define:Pod+People&sa=X&ei=CXSOTIevG8-inQeB-ojaCw&sqi=2&ved=0CBIQkAE
Note that this is a nickname used in certain workplaces for people placed in pods.
U.S. News and Best Lawyers have joined to rank nearly 9,000 firms in 81 practice areas in 171 metropolitan areas and 7 states. See 2010 rankings at: http://bestlawfirms.usnews.com/Default.aspx
Feedback to A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg
From: Gene Racicot Subject: Spinning
Victoria, BC, Canada has a series of monuments themed on the Coast Salish spindles.
From: Susan Karcz Subject: spinning & weaving words
Fun theme! One of my favorite quirks of English is illustrated by two weaving terms: weaver (male) and webster (female). This pattern is also seen in baker (male) and baxter (female) and in brewer (male) and brewster (female).
From: Curtis Brown Subject: subtile Def: Subtle: delicate; fine; not obvious; skillful.
Subtile to subtle suffered the same fate as happened in the change from stabile to stable, and probably in future from labile to lable. It is an unavoidable frequent-use trend in all languages (also known as the lazy-lips syndrome).
From: Gene Throwe Subject: This Weeks Theme
I am so excited that this week we explored the wonderful world of spinning! The spinning, dying, knitting, and crocheting of yarn has seen a wonderful resurgence in the past several years. Just like the Arts and Crafts period over a hundred years ago, some people want to preserve some of the lost arts such as these. Unlike the Arts and Crafts Movement, Many of us embrace modern technology to make fiber arts easily accessible. Ravelry.com is a wonderful source for those looking for information on spinning, dying, knitting, and crocheting. What is interesting is that many spinners and dyers are actually men, and these fields are no longer the domain of women only. T here are some men's fiber arts groups around the country, like DC Men Knit that I lead. Again, thank you so much for highlighting such a wonderful hobby/art!
From: Ariannah Armstrong Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--spinster
I was instantly fascinated with this word. I am married, but this year in January, on the eve of our wedding anniversary, I took up spinning with spindles, and it's been the start of a hobby which I know I will love for years to come. As a result, one of the common jokes in our household is that I am happily married and a spinster at the same time :)
TANGY AVOCADO & ORANGE SALAD
Combines orange segments & diced avocado with torn red leaf lettuce.
INGREDIENTS:
for 4 people - 1 orange, 1 avacado, one small head red leaf lettuce, salt & pepper.
FUSTINI'S DRESSING IDEA SUGGESTIONS
persian lime & jalapeño blood orange & pomegranate chipotle & sicilian lemon
OPTIONAL IDEAS:
1. Make the same amount - divide in half for 2 people - top with a piece of your favorite grilled fish
2. Add sliced almonds
Ann Arbor Grand Opening Celebration Saturday. September 18, 2010
FUSTINI'S OILS & VINEGARS
Ann Arbor's Kerrytown Shops
407 North 5th Avenue 2nd Floor (734) 213-1110 WWW.FUSTINIS.COM
Thursday, September 16, 2010
With big food brands souring on high fructose corn syrup, the nation's corn-refining giants are seeking federal clearance to change the name of one of the most ubiquitous ingredients on grocery labels. The Corn Refiners Association, which includes commodity processing giants such as Archer-Daniels-Midland Co. and Cargill Inc., said it filed a petition September 14 with the Food and Drug Administration for permission to switch the name of high fructose corn syrup to "corn sugar." Corn refiners want to rename high-fructose corn syrup—used in myriad packaged foods— as 'corn sugar.' "We hope to erase consumer confusion," said Audrae Erickson, president of the Washington, D.C., trade group, which has been waging a two-year campaign to dispel the growing perception among some consumers that the corn industry's sweetener isn't as natural as sugar. Including food products, corn-derived sweeteners command roughly half of the caloric sweetener market in the U.S. The other half consists of sugar. Many scientists say there isn't much nutritional difference between high fructose corn syrup and sugar, and dentists say both can be bad for your teeth. But the sugar industry has made inroads with some consumers by labeling their corn-derived competition as an artificial sweetener because a lot of processing is involved in making high fructose corn syrup. The FDA requires that the names of food products be truthful and not misleading. While it's rare for the FDA to consider requests to change the name of a food, it has signed off on allowing prune marketers to call their product a dried plum, and for makers of rapeseed oil to market it as canola oil.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704285104575491993421624842.html
The word "pizza" is thought to have come from the Latin word pinsa, meaning flatbread (although there is much debate about the origin of the word). A legend suggests that Roman soldiers gained a taste for Jewish Matzoth while stationed in Roman occupied Palestine and developed a similar food after returning home. However a recent archeological discovery has found a preserved Bronze Age pizza in the Veneto region. By the Middle Ages these early pizzas started to take on a more modern look and taste. The peasantry of the time used what few ingredients they could get their hands on to produce the modern pizza dough and topped it with olive oil and herbs. The introduction of the Indian Water Buffalo gave pizza another dimension with the production of mozzarella cheese. Even today, the use of fresh mozzarella di buffalo in Italian pizza cannot be substituted. The introduction of tomatoes to Italian cuisine in the 18th and early 19th centuries finally gave us the true modern Italian pizza. Even though tomatoes reached Italy by the 1530's it was widely thought that they were poisonous and were grown only for decoration. http://www.lifeinitaly.com/food/pizza-history.asp
New York City goes by many names, but the Big Apple is the most kenspeckled. Actually, the widespread use of the nickname began in the 1970s as part of an official tourism campaign. Before that, John Joseph Fitz Gerald, a turf racing writer for the New York Morning Telegraph in the 1920s, used the name in his column. While in New Orleans, he heard stable hands refer to New York as “the big apple that all horsemen aspired to race at.” Soon writers began using the term to refer to New York in other contexts. A popular song and dance in the 1930s used the expression. The corner of West 54th Street and Broadway, where Fitz Gerald lived, was officially designated “Big Apple Corner.” The most populous city in the U.S. also goes by the name Gotham, which was first used by Washington Irving in an 1807 issue of his literary magazine about the legends of an English village named Gotham. http://hotword.dictionary.com/?p=1807 Enjoy quotes, words and puzzles at dictionary.com.
ken as a noun
cognizance, ken (range of what one can know or understand) "beyond my ken"
sight, ken (the range of vision) "out of sight of land"
http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=ken
kenspeckle (alteration of kenspeck) as adjective
easily recognized, distinctive, conspicuous.
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/kenspeckle
Several cities popularly claim to be the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world. Differences in opinion can result from different definitions of "city" as well as "continuously inhabited". See list of countries arranged by regions at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_time_of_continuous_habitation
Happy Birthday, Dutch by Bill Ott
Elmore Leonard’s friends call him Dutch. Many of his fans do, too, and while using a nickname presumes a degree of familiarity to which those of us who only know Leonard through his books aren’t entitled, we can’t help ourselves. We feel like we know him Leonard’s fans tend to stay the course; his 44th book, Djibouti, will be published in October, and I’m confident I’m not alone among his devotees in being able to say that I’ve read them all. So while I would never drop “Dutch” into cocktail conversation, I’m not above referring to him that way in those one-on-one conversations I imagine us having. On October 11, Leonard will celebrate his 85th birthday. He has been a professional writer for 60 of those 85 years. He came up the old-fashioned way, through the pulps. While working for a Detroit advertising agency in the 1950s, Leonard wrote western stories. In 1961, he tried writing full-time but was forced to take freelance advertising jobs to pay the bills. (Along with 44 published books, Leonard has accumulated more than 100 rejections in his writing life—but none lately.)
http://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/columns/rousing-reads/happy-birthday-dutch
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704285104575491993421624842.html
The word "pizza" is thought to have come from the Latin word pinsa, meaning flatbread (although there is much debate about the origin of the word). A legend suggests that Roman soldiers gained a taste for Jewish Matzoth while stationed in Roman occupied Palestine and developed a similar food after returning home. However a recent archeological discovery has found a preserved Bronze Age pizza in the Veneto region. By the Middle Ages these early pizzas started to take on a more modern look and taste. The peasantry of the time used what few ingredients they could get their hands on to produce the modern pizza dough and topped it with olive oil and herbs. The introduction of the Indian Water Buffalo gave pizza another dimension with the production of mozzarella cheese. Even today, the use of fresh mozzarella di buffalo in Italian pizza cannot be substituted. The introduction of tomatoes to Italian cuisine in the 18th and early 19th centuries finally gave us the true modern Italian pizza. Even though tomatoes reached Italy by the 1530's it was widely thought that they were poisonous and were grown only for decoration. http://www.lifeinitaly.com/food/pizza-history.asp
New York City goes by many names, but the Big Apple is the most kenspeckled. Actually, the widespread use of the nickname began in the 1970s as part of an official tourism campaign. Before that, John Joseph Fitz Gerald, a turf racing writer for the New York Morning Telegraph in the 1920s, used the name in his column. While in New Orleans, he heard stable hands refer to New York as “the big apple that all horsemen aspired to race at.” Soon writers began using the term to refer to New York in other contexts. A popular song and dance in the 1930s used the expression. The corner of West 54th Street and Broadway, where Fitz Gerald lived, was officially designated “Big Apple Corner.” The most populous city in the U.S. also goes by the name Gotham, which was first used by Washington Irving in an 1807 issue of his literary magazine about the legends of an English village named Gotham. http://hotword.dictionary.com/?p=1807 Enjoy quotes, words and puzzles at dictionary.com.
ken as a noun
cognizance, ken (range of what one can know or understand) "beyond my ken"
sight, ken (the range of vision) "out of sight of land"
http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=ken
kenspeckle (alteration of kenspeck) as adjective
easily recognized, distinctive, conspicuous.
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/kenspeckle
Several cities popularly claim to be the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world. Differences in opinion can result from different definitions of "city" as well as "continuously inhabited". See list of countries arranged by regions at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_time_of_continuous_habitation
Happy Birthday, Dutch by Bill Ott
Elmore Leonard’s friends call him Dutch. Many of his fans do, too, and while using a nickname presumes a degree of familiarity to which those of us who only know Leonard through his books aren’t entitled, we can’t help ourselves. We feel like we know him Leonard’s fans tend to stay the course; his 44th book, Djibouti, will be published in October, and I’m confident I’m not alone among his devotees in being able to say that I’ve read them all. So while I would never drop “Dutch” into cocktail conversation, I’m not above referring to him that way in those one-on-one conversations I imagine us having. On October 11, Leonard will celebrate his 85th birthday. He has been a professional writer for 60 of those 85 years. He came up the old-fashioned way, through the pulps. While working for a Detroit advertising agency in the 1950s, Leonard wrote western stories. In 1961, he tried writing full-time but was forced to take freelance advertising jobs to pay the bills. (Along with 44 published books, Leonard has accumulated more than 100 rejections in his writing life—but none lately.)
http://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/columns/rousing-reads/happy-birthday-dutch
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Yellowstone National Park has one of the world's largest petrified forests, trees which were long ago buried by ash and soil and transformed from wood to mineral materials. This ash and other volcanic debris, are believed to have come from the park area itself. This is largely due to the fact that Yellowstone is actually a massive caldera of a supervolcano. There are 290 waterfalls of at least 15 feet (4.6 m) in the park, the highest being the Lower Falls of the Yellowstone River at 308 feet (94 m). Three deep canyons are located in the park, cut through the volcanic tuff of the Yellowstone Plateau by rivers over the last 640,000 years. The Lewis River flows through Lewis Canyon in the south, and the Yellowstone River has carved two colorful canyons, the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone and the Black Canyon of the Yellowstone in its journey north. Yellowstone is at the northeastern end of the Snake River Plain, a great U-shaped arc through the mountains that extends from Boise, Idaho some 400 miles (640 km) to the west. This feature traces the route of the North American Plate over the last 17 million years as it was transported by plate tectonics across a stationary mantle hotspot. The landscape of present-day Yellowstone National Park is the most recent manifestation of this hotspot below the crust of the Earth. The Yellowstone Caldera is the largest volcanic system in North America. It has been termed a "supervolcano" because the caldera was formed by exceptionally large explosive eruptions. The current caldera was created by a cataclysmic eruption that occurred 640,000 years ago, which released 240 cubic miles (1,000 km³) of ash, rock and pyroclastic materials. Between 630,000 and 700,000 years ago, Yellowstone Caldera was nearly filled in with periodic eruptions of rhyolitic lavas such as those that can be seen at Obsidian Cliffs and basaltic lavas which can be viewed at Sheepeater Cliff. Lava strata are most easily seen at the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, where the Yellowstone River continues to carve into the ancient lava flows. The canyon is a classic V-shaped valley, indicative of river-type erosion rather than erosion caused by glaciation. The most famous geyser in the park, and perhaps the world, is Old Faithful Geyser, located in Upper Geyser Basin. Castle Geyser, Lion Geyser and Beehive Geyser are in the same basin. The park contains the largest active geyser in the world—Steamboat Geyser in the Norris Geyser Basin. There are 300 geysers in Yellowstone and a total of at least 10,000 geothermal features altogether. Half the geothermal features and two-thirds of the world's geysers are concentrated in Yellowstone.
THE ACT OF DEDICATION
AN ACT to set apart a certain tract of land lying near the headwaters of the Yellowstone River as a public park. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the tract of land in the Territories of Montana and Wyoming .... is hereby reserved and withdrawn from settlement, occupancy, or sale under the laws of the United States, and dedicated and set apart as a public park or pleasuring ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people; and all persons who shall locate, or settle upon, or occupy the same or any part thereof, except as hereinafter provided, shall be considered trespassers and removed there from...
Approved March 1, 1872.
Signed by:
JAMES G. BLAINE, Speaker of the House.
SCHUYLER COLFAX, Vice-President of the United States and President of the Senate.
ULYSSES S. GRANT, President of the United States.
See more information plus pictures at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellowstone_National_Park
Christian Carmack Sanderson (1882 – 1966) was a teacher, fiddler, square dance caller, poet, and noted local historian in southeastern Pennsylvania, United States, in the early to mid-20th century. He corresponded with a wide range of notable people of his time and was a remarkable collector of historical memorabilia (which are the basis of the collections on display in the Christian C. Sanderson Museum). Sanderson lived the latter part of his life in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania and was friends with the Wyeth family there (including artists N.C., Andrew and Jamie). Chris Sanderson is the subject of a biography written by his friend Thomas R. Thompson. and a documentary film by Karen Kuder. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_C._Sanderson
The Christian C. Sanderson Museum, or simply Sanderson Museum, is a museum of historical artifacts in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, United States. The items in the museum were collected over many years by Christian C. Sanderson (1882-1966), a teacher, musician, poet, actor, writer, traveler, radio commentator and local historian. The Sanderson Museum was founded in 1967 by his friend and Brandywine artist Andrew Wyeth. The museum contains part of the bandage put on Abraham Lincoln after he was assassinated. The museum also houses the pocket book Jennie Wade was carrying when she was killed at the battle of Gettysburg, and a number of autographs including those of Sitting Bull, Shirley Temple, Helen Keller and Basil Rathbone. The Sanderson's archives contain close to 80 letters to Sanderson from Civil War veterans. As Mr. Sanderson was a great friend of the Wyeth family, the museum has a number of works from N.C., Andrew and Jamie on display. The Museum is located at 1755 Creek Road (Old Rte 100 North) in the heart of Chadds Ford and is open Saturdays and Sundays from 12 Noon-4 PM, from March through November. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_C._Sanderson_Museum
See 829 front pages from 76 countries at Newseum, "Washington D.C's most interactive museum" http://www.newseum.org/todaysfrontpages/flash/
One of the better known health benefits of honey is that it is able to help treat sore throats. Thanks to its antimicrobial properties, honey not only soothes throats but can also kill certain bacteria that causes the infection. Professional singers commonly use honey to soothe their throats before performances. For thousands of years, honey has been recognized as one of the most natural home remedies to treat a wide range of ailments and complaints including yeast infection , athlete foot , and arthritis pain. Its antiseptic properties inhibits the growth of certain bacteria and helps keep external wounds clean and free from infection. The glucose in honey is absorbed by the body quickly and gives an immediate energy boost, while the fructose is absorbed more slowly providing sustained energy. It is known that honey has also been found to keep levels of blood sugar fairly constant compared to other types of sugar. So, to experience these health benefits of honey, here are a few tips for you:
1. Next time before you go for a workout, take a spoon of honey to enable you to go for the extra mile.
2. If you are feeling low and lethargic in the morning, instead of reaching out for a can of carbonated energy drink , try honey. Spread it on hot toast or replace the sugar in your tea with it for a refreshing surge of energy.
http://www.benefits-of-honey.com/health-benefits-of-honey.html
Q: How long should you wait to exercise after you have eaten? Not strenuous exercise, just stretching and brisk walking. When should you stop exercising before going to bed?
A: Dr. Jason Chang, medical director of the Blanchard Valley Sleep Disorders Center, Findlay, walks us through it: "The time it takes to digest a meal can vary greatly depending on the individual and on the type of meal consumed. "You may be fine to begin a light exercise 30 minutes after a small or moderate meal. For heavier meals, you should wait 90 minutes to begin exercising. "This is because, during that time, the blood that your muscles need when you exercise is going to your digestive tract to process your meal. "Try to exercise at least three to six hours before bedtime. This will ensure the beneficial effects of exercise, such as increasing alertness and metabolism, don't interfere with your sleep. "Some people find the late afternoon to be the most optimal time for exercise because it will allow your body plenty of time to cool down before bed, as a drop in body temperature helps to promote sleep onset. "Most importantly, you should develop an exercise schedule that you can stick to so it becomes part of your daily life."
http://www.thecourier.com/Opinion/columns/2010/Sep/JU/ar_JU_091310.asp?d=091310,2010,Sep,13&c=c_13
THE ACT OF DEDICATION
AN ACT to set apart a certain tract of land lying near the headwaters of the Yellowstone River as a public park. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the tract of land in the Territories of Montana and Wyoming .... is hereby reserved and withdrawn from settlement, occupancy, or sale under the laws of the United States, and dedicated and set apart as a public park or pleasuring ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people; and all persons who shall locate, or settle upon, or occupy the same or any part thereof, except as hereinafter provided, shall be considered trespassers and removed there from...
Approved March 1, 1872.
Signed by:
JAMES G. BLAINE, Speaker of the House.
SCHUYLER COLFAX, Vice-President of the United States and President of the Senate.
ULYSSES S. GRANT, President of the United States.
See more information plus pictures at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellowstone_National_Park
Christian Carmack Sanderson (1882 – 1966) was a teacher, fiddler, square dance caller, poet, and noted local historian in southeastern Pennsylvania, United States, in the early to mid-20th century. He corresponded with a wide range of notable people of his time and was a remarkable collector of historical memorabilia (which are the basis of the collections on display in the Christian C. Sanderson Museum). Sanderson lived the latter part of his life in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania and was friends with the Wyeth family there (including artists N.C., Andrew and Jamie). Chris Sanderson is the subject of a biography written by his friend Thomas R. Thompson. and a documentary film by Karen Kuder. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_C._Sanderson
The Christian C. Sanderson Museum, or simply Sanderson Museum, is a museum of historical artifacts in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, United States. The items in the museum were collected over many years by Christian C. Sanderson (1882-1966), a teacher, musician, poet, actor, writer, traveler, radio commentator and local historian. The Sanderson Museum was founded in 1967 by his friend and Brandywine artist Andrew Wyeth. The museum contains part of the bandage put on Abraham Lincoln after he was assassinated. The museum also houses the pocket book Jennie Wade was carrying when she was killed at the battle of Gettysburg, and a number of autographs including those of Sitting Bull, Shirley Temple, Helen Keller and Basil Rathbone. The Sanderson's archives contain close to 80 letters to Sanderson from Civil War veterans. As Mr. Sanderson was a great friend of the Wyeth family, the museum has a number of works from N.C., Andrew and Jamie on display. The Museum is located at 1755 Creek Road (Old Rte 100 North) in the heart of Chadds Ford and is open Saturdays and Sundays from 12 Noon-4 PM, from March through November. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_C._Sanderson_Museum
See 829 front pages from 76 countries at Newseum, "Washington D.C's most interactive museum" http://www.newseum.org/todaysfrontpages/flash/
One of the better known health benefits of honey is that it is able to help treat sore throats. Thanks to its antimicrobial properties, honey not only soothes throats but can also kill certain bacteria that causes the infection. Professional singers commonly use honey to soothe their throats before performances. For thousands of years, honey has been recognized as one of the most natural home remedies to treat a wide range of ailments and complaints including yeast infection , athlete foot , and arthritis pain. Its antiseptic properties inhibits the growth of certain bacteria and helps keep external wounds clean and free from infection. The glucose in honey is absorbed by the body quickly and gives an immediate energy boost, while the fructose is absorbed more slowly providing sustained energy. It is known that honey has also been found to keep levels of blood sugar fairly constant compared to other types of sugar. So, to experience these health benefits of honey, here are a few tips for you:
1. Next time before you go for a workout, take a spoon of honey to enable you to go for the extra mile.
2. If you are feeling low and lethargic in the morning, instead of reaching out for a can of carbonated energy drink , try honey. Spread it on hot toast or replace the sugar in your tea with it for a refreshing surge of energy.
http://www.benefits-of-honey.com/health-benefits-of-honey.html
Q: How long should you wait to exercise after you have eaten? Not strenuous exercise, just stretching and brisk walking. When should you stop exercising before going to bed?
A: Dr. Jason Chang, medical director of the Blanchard Valley Sleep Disorders Center, Findlay, walks us through it: "The time it takes to digest a meal can vary greatly depending on the individual and on the type of meal consumed. "You may be fine to begin a light exercise 30 minutes after a small or moderate meal. For heavier meals, you should wait 90 minutes to begin exercising. "This is because, during that time, the blood that your muscles need when you exercise is going to your digestive tract to process your meal. "Try to exercise at least three to six hours before bedtime. This will ensure the beneficial effects of exercise, such as increasing alertness and metabolism, don't interfere with your sleep. "Some people find the late afternoon to be the most optimal time for exercise because it will allow your body plenty of time to cool down before bed, as a drop in body temperature helps to promote sleep onset. "Most importantly, you should develop an exercise schedule that you can stick to so it becomes part of your daily life."
http://www.thecourier.com/Opinion/columns/2010/Sep/JU/ar_JU_091310.asp?d=091310,2010,Sep,13&c=c_13
Monday, September 13, 2010
American actor Kevin McCarthy, who starred as a terror-stricken small-town doctor in the acclaimed 1956 science fiction film "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," died on September 11 at age 96, U.S. media reported. McCarthy appeared in numerous U.S. stage, film and television productions and was nominated for an Academy Award for the movie version of Arthur Miller's play "Death of a Salesman." But he earned his most recognition with his memorable performance as a doctor who tries in vain to warn fellow townsfolk about alien "pod people" in "Invasion of the Body Snatchers." The low-budget film was selected in 2008 by the American Film Institute as one of the top 10 science fiction films of all time and was chosen for inclusion in the U.S. Library of Congress National Film Registry for its importance.
http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory?id=11620391
In the practice of what they call desert-road archaeology, John Coleman Darnell and his wife Deborah found pottery and ruins in Egypt where soldiers, merchants and other travelers camped in the time of the pharaohs. On a limestone cliff at a crossroads, they came upon a tableau of scenes and symbols, some of the earliest documentation of Egyptian history. Elsewhere, they discovered inscriptions considered to be one of the first examples of alphabetic writing. The explorations of the Theban Desert Road Survey, a Yale University project co-directed by the Darnells, called attention to the previously underappreciated significance of caravan routes and oasis settlements in Egyptian antiquity. Zahi Hawass, secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, said the archaeologists had uncovered extensive remains of a settlement—apparently an administrative, economic and military center—that flourished more than 3,500 years ago in the western desert 110 miles west of Luxor and 300 miles south of Cairo. No such urban center so early in history had ever been found in the forbidding desert. The 218-acre site is at Kharga Oasis, a string of well-watered areas in a 60-mile-long north-south depression in the limestone plateau that spreads across the desert. The oasis is at the terminus of the ancient Girga Road from Thebes and its intersection with other roads from the north and the south. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/07/science/07archeo.html
Americans did not start calling the president’s wife the “First Lady” until some time in the middle of the 19th century. Some people say Zachary Taylor was the first to use the term in his 1849 eulogy on the death of Dolley Madison. Others maintain that Harriet Lane, niece of President James Buchanan and official hostess for the only bachelor president, was the first “First Lady.” In 1860, Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Monthly described her as, “The Lady of the White House, and by courtesy, the First Lady of the Land.” By the 1870s, newspapers all over the country used the term in their coverage of the activities of Lucy Webb Hayes, one of the busiest and best-loved hostesses ever to preside over the White House. The First Ladies National Historic Site in Canton, Ohio, centered on the home of Ida Saxton McKinley and the City National Bank Building, which serves as the Education and Research Center, provides long overdue recognition of the contributions of all the women who have held the title. The home of First Lady Ida Saxton McKinley is at the center of the First Ladies National Historic Site. The First Ladies National Historic Site is a unit of the National Park System. The Saxton McKinley House is located at 331 S. Market Ave., Canton, OH. The Education and Research Center is located at 205 S. Market Ave. Both the Saxton House and Education and Research Center are open only for guided tours. http://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/presidents/first_ladies_nhs.html
The next time you find yourself in Canton, Ohio, make a stop at the National First Ladies’ Library, home of the Abigail Fillmore Library Room. This room replicates the first permanent White House library, established by Millard and Abigail Fillmore in 1850. Although the library remained mostly intact for more than 50 years, just a few of the original volumes can be found in the White House today. In 2004, the National First Ladies’ Library began working with the Library of Congress and the Bibliographic Society of America to reconstruct the original Fillmore collection.
http://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/columns/librarians-library/first-first-library
Find hours open, current exhibits and more at: http://www.firstladies.org/
The “World Giving Index”, the largest study ever carried out into charitable behaviour across the globe, which ranked the UK the eighth most charitable nation in the world, has found that happier people are more likely to give money to charity than those who are wealthy. The “World Giving Index” used a Gallup survey on the charitable behaviour of people in 153 countries representing 95% of the world’s population. The survey asked people whether they had given money to charity in the last month and to rank how happy they are with life on a scale of one to ten or all countries the Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) compared the strength of the relationship between giving with both a nation’s GDP and the happiness of its population. CAF found that the link between happiness and giving is stronger than the link between wealth and giving. See table of top-giving 18 countries plus a link to the report itself at: http://www.cafonline.org/Default.aspx?page=19479
The Zeroll Ice Cream Scoop is a design classic. It was invented by Sherman Kelly of Toledo, Ohio in the early Thirties. The idea came to him after a vacation in West Palm Beach Florida. He noticed the blisters on the hand of a woman selling ice cream, caused by the bad design of her scoop. He developed a revolutionary non-mechanical scoop, made of cast aluminum - but with a twist! Inside the handle was a fluid. This fluid was warmed by the heat from the user's hand, thereby defrosting the scoop. This made the ice cream easier to serve. It also had another major advantage. As the Zeroll rolled the ice cream into a ball, instead of squeezing it, the user could could get up to 20% more servings per gallon. Sherman patented his scoop in 1933. He went on to found Zeroll in 1935 to manufacture his new invention. Constructed from the finest alloys, the Zeroll ice cream scoop has gone on to become the industry standard. Not only is the Zeroll scoop practical, but it's a thing of beauty as well. This was recognized when the New York Museum of Modern Art put it on display.
http://www.kitchengadgetgourmet.com/articles/The-Story-of-the-Zeroll-Ice-Cream-Scoop.html
Bed bugs are parasites that preferentially feed on humans. If people aren't available, they instead will feed on other warm-blooded animals, including birds, rodents, bats, and pets. Bed bugs have been documented as pests since the 17th century. They were introduced into our country by the early colonists. Bed bugs were common in the United States prior to World War II, after which time widespread use of synthetic insecticides such as DDT greatly reduced their numbers. Improvements in household and personal cleanliness as well as increased regulation of the used furniture market also likely contributed to their reduced pest status. In the past decade, bed bugs have begun making a comeback across the United States, although they are not considered to be a major pest. International travel and commerce are thought to facilitate the spread of these insect hitchhikers, because eggs, young, and adult bed bugs are readily transported in luggage, clothing, bedding, and furniture. Bed bugs can infest airplanes, ships, trains, and buses. Bed bugs are most frequently found in dwellings with a high rate of occupant turnover, such as hotels, motels, hostels, dormitories, shelters, apartment complexes, tenements, and prisons. Such infestations usually are not a reflection of poor hygiene or bad housekeeping. A thorough inspection of the premises to locate bed bugs and their harborage sites is necessary so that cleaning efforts and insecticide treatments can be focused. Inspection efforts should concentrate on the mattress, box springs, and bed frame, as well as crack and crevices that the bed bugs may hide in during the day or when digesting a blood meal. The latter sites include window and door frames, floor cracks, carpet tack boards, baseboards, electrical boxes, furniture, pictures, wall hangings, drapery pleats, loosened wallpaper, cracks in plaster, and ceiling moldings. Determine whether birds or rodents are nesting on or near the house. In hotels, apartments, and other multiple-type dwellings, it is advisable to also inspect adjoining units since bed bugs can travel long distances. Sanitation measures include frequently vacuuming the mattress and premises, laundering bedding and clothing in hot water, and cleaning and sanitizing dwellings. After vacuuming, immediately place the vacuum cleaner bag in a plastic bag, seal tightly, and discard in a container outdoors-this prevents captured bed bugs from escaping into the home. A stiff brush can be used to scrub the mattress seams to dislodge bed bugs and eggs. Discarding the mattress is another option, although a new mattress can quickly become infested if bed bugs are still on the premises. Steam cleaning of mattresses generally is not recommended because it is difficult to get rid of excess moisture, which can lead to problems with mold, mildew, house dust mites, etc. Repair cracks in plaster and glue down loosened wallpaper to eliminate bed bug harborage sites. Remove and destroy wild animal roosts and nests when possible.
http://ohioline.osu.edu/hyg-fact/2000/2105.html
The Agriculture Marketing Service (AMS) of the U.S. Department of Agriculture works to maintain a current listing of farmers markets throughout the United States. Market information is provided to AMS from various sources including state market representatives, market managers, and consumers. The farmers market database is updated on a regular basis. http://apps.ams.usda.gov/FarmersMarkets/
Quote Writing is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as the headlights, but you make the whole trip that way. E.L. Doctorow, writer (b. 1931)
http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory?id=11620391
In the practice of what they call desert-road archaeology, John Coleman Darnell and his wife Deborah found pottery and ruins in Egypt where soldiers, merchants and other travelers camped in the time of the pharaohs. On a limestone cliff at a crossroads, they came upon a tableau of scenes and symbols, some of the earliest documentation of Egyptian history. Elsewhere, they discovered inscriptions considered to be one of the first examples of alphabetic writing. The explorations of the Theban Desert Road Survey, a Yale University project co-directed by the Darnells, called attention to the previously underappreciated significance of caravan routes and oasis settlements in Egyptian antiquity. Zahi Hawass, secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, said the archaeologists had uncovered extensive remains of a settlement—apparently an administrative, economic and military center—that flourished more than 3,500 years ago in the western desert 110 miles west of Luxor and 300 miles south of Cairo. No such urban center so early in history had ever been found in the forbidding desert. The 218-acre site is at Kharga Oasis, a string of well-watered areas in a 60-mile-long north-south depression in the limestone plateau that spreads across the desert. The oasis is at the terminus of the ancient Girga Road from Thebes and its intersection with other roads from the north and the south. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/07/science/07archeo.html
Americans did not start calling the president’s wife the “First Lady” until some time in the middle of the 19th century. Some people say Zachary Taylor was the first to use the term in his 1849 eulogy on the death of Dolley Madison. Others maintain that Harriet Lane, niece of President James Buchanan and official hostess for the only bachelor president, was the first “First Lady.” In 1860, Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Monthly described her as, “The Lady of the White House, and by courtesy, the First Lady of the Land.” By the 1870s, newspapers all over the country used the term in their coverage of the activities of Lucy Webb Hayes, one of the busiest and best-loved hostesses ever to preside over the White House. The First Ladies National Historic Site in Canton, Ohio, centered on the home of Ida Saxton McKinley and the City National Bank Building, which serves as the Education and Research Center, provides long overdue recognition of the contributions of all the women who have held the title. The home of First Lady Ida Saxton McKinley is at the center of the First Ladies National Historic Site. The First Ladies National Historic Site is a unit of the National Park System. The Saxton McKinley House is located at 331 S. Market Ave., Canton, OH. The Education and Research Center is located at 205 S. Market Ave. Both the Saxton House and Education and Research Center are open only for guided tours. http://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/presidents/first_ladies_nhs.html
The next time you find yourself in Canton, Ohio, make a stop at the National First Ladies’ Library, home of the Abigail Fillmore Library Room. This room replicates the first permanent White House library, established by Millard and Abigail Fillmore in 1850. Although the library remained mostly intact for more than 50 years, just a few of the original volumes can be found in the White House today. In 2004, the National First Ladies’ Library began working with the Library of Congress and the Bibliographic Society of America to reconstruct the original Fillmore collection.
http://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/columns/librarians-library/first-first-library
Find hours open, current exhibits and more at: http://www.firstladies.org/
The “World Giving Index”, the largest study ever carried out into charitable behaviour across the globe, which ranked the UK the eighth most charitable nation in the world, has found that happier people are more likely to give money to charity than those who are wealthy. The “World Giving Index” used a Gallup survey on the charitable behaviour of people in 153 countries representing 95% of the world’s population. The survey asked people whether they had given money to charity in the last month and to rank how happy they are with life on a scale of one to ten or all countries the Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) compared the strength of the relationship between giving with both a nation’s GDP and the happiness of its population. CAF found that the link between happiness and giving is stronger than the link between wealth and giving. See table of top-giving 18 countries plus a link to the report itself at: http://www.cafonline.org/Default.aspx?page=19479
The Zeroll Ice Cream Scoop is a design classic. It was invented by Sherman Kelly of Toledo, Ohio in the early Thirties. The idea came to him after a vacation in West Palm Beach Florida. He noticed the blisters on the hand of a woman selling ice cream, caused by the bad design of her scoop. He developed a revolutionary non-mechanical scoop, made of cast aluminum - but with a twist! Inside the handle was a fluid. This fluid was warmed by the heat from the user's hand, thereby defrosting the scoop. This made the ice cream easier to serve. It also had another major advantage. As the Zeroll rolled the ice cream into a ball, instead of squeezing it, the user could could get up to 20% more servings per gallon. Sherman patented his scoop in 1933. He went on to found Zeroll in 1935 to manufacture his new invention. Constructed from the finest alloys, the Zeroll ice cream scoop has gone on to become the industry standard. Not only is the Zeroll scoop practical, but it's a thing of beauty as well. This was recognized when the New York Museum of Modern Art put it on display.
http://www.kitchengadgetgourmet.com/articles/The-Story-of-the-Zeroll-Ice-Cream-Scoop.html
Bed bugs are parasites that preferentially feed on humans. If people aren't available, they instead will feed on other warm-blooded animals, including birds, rodents, bats, and pets. Bed bugs have been documented as pests since the 17th century. They were introduced into our country by the early colonists. Bed bugs were common in the United States prior to World War II, after which time widespread use of synthetic insecticides such as DDT greatly reduced their numbers. Improvements in household and personal cleanliness as well as increased regulation of the used furniture market also likely contributed to their reduced pest status. In the past decade, bed bugs have begun making a comeback across the United States, although they are not considered to be a major pest. International travel and commerce are thought to facilitate the spread of these insect hitchhikers, because eggs, young, and adult bed bugs are readily transported in luggage, clothing, bedding, and furniture. Bed bugs can infest airplanes, ships, trains, and buses. Bed bugs are most frequently found in dwellings with a high rate of occupant turnover, such as hotels, motels, hostels, dormitories, shelters, apartment complexes, tenements, and prisons. Such infestations usually are not a reflection of poor hygiene or bad housekeeping. A thorough inspection of the premises to locate bed bugs and their harborage sites is necessary so that cleaning efforts and insecticide treatments can be focused. Inspection efforts should concentrate on the mattress, box springs, and bed frame, as well as crack and crevices that the bed bugs may hide in during the day or when digesting a blood meal. The latter sites include window and door frames, floor cracks, carpet tack boards, baseboards, electrical boxes, furniture, pictures, wall hangings, drapery pleats, loosened wallpaper, cracks in plaster, and ceiling moldings. Determine whether birds or rodents are nesting on or near the house. In hotels, apartments, and other multiple-type dwellings, it is advisable to also inspect adjoining units since bed bugs can travel long distances. Sanitation measures include frequently vacuuming the mattress and premises, laundering bedding and clothing in hot water, and cleaning and sanitizing dwellings. After vacuuming, immediately place the vacuum cleaner bag in a plastic bag, seal tightly, and discard in a container outdoors-this prevents captured bed bugs from escaping into the home. A stiff brush can be used to scrub the mattress seams to dislodge bed bugs and eggs. Discarding the mattress is another option, although a new mattress can quickly become infested if bed bugs are still on the premises. Steam cleaning of mattresses generally is not recommended because it is difficult to get rid of excess moisture, which can lead to problems with mold, mildew, house dust mites, etc. Repair cracks in plaster and glue down loosened wallpaper to eliminate bed bug harborage sites. Remove and destroy wild animal roosts and nests when possible.
http://ohioline.osu.edu/hyg-fact/2000/2105.html
The Agriculture Marketing Service (AMS) of the U.S. Department of Agriculture works to maintain a current listing of farmers markets throughout the United States. Market information is provided to AMS from various sources including state market representatives, market managers, and consumers. The farmers market database is updated on a regular basis. http://apps.ams.usda.gov/FarmersMarkets/
Quote Writing is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as the headlights, but you make the whole trip that way. E.L. Doctorow, writer (b. 1931)
Friday, September 10, 2010
Muse reader responds to Book Addicts with her own cinquain
Book addicts are never bored. They
have the world at their fingertips,
so to speak. They can laugh, cry, learn,
grow, travel, escape, imagine,
experience—all in mind’s eye.
Aconcagua is the highest mountain in the Americas at 6,962 m (22,841 ft), and the highest mountain outside Asia. It is located in the Andes mountain range, in the Argentine province of Mendoza. The summit is located about 5 kilometres from San Juan Province and 15 kilometres from the international border with Chile and about 50 miles northeast of the Chilean capital of Santiago. It lies 112 kilometres (70 mi) west by north of the city of Mendoza. Aconcagua is the highest peak in both the Western and Southern Hemispheres. It is one of the Seven Summits. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aconcagua
The Seven Summits are the highest mountains of each of the seven continents. See map, table and information at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Summits
New Zealand is part of the largely submerged continent of Zealandia, which stretches from the north of New Caledonia to the south of New Zealand's subantartic islands. 93% of Zealandia is underwater. New Zealand is an island nation. The three main islands which make up New Zealand are the North Island, the South Island, and Stewart Island, but a number of smaller offshore islands are also included:
The Chatham Islands
The Kermadec Islands
Campbell Island
The Antipodes Islands
The Bounty Islands
The Auckland Islands http://history-nz.org/today.html
The Plow That Broke the Plains (1936) is a short documentary film which shows what happened to the Great Plains region of the United States and Canada when uncontrolled agricultural farming led to the Dust Bowl. It was written and directed by Pare Lorentz.
Lorentz worked on the film with composer Virgil Thomson, who shared Lorentz' enthusiasm for folk music and incorporated many folk melodies, along with other popular and religious music, into the soundtrack. The film was narrated by the American baritone Thomas Hardie Chalmers. The film was sponsored by the United States government (Resettlement Administration) to raise awareness about the New Deal and was intended to cost $6,000 or less; it eventually cost over $19,000 and Lorentz, turning in many receipts written on various scraps of paper, had many of his reimbursements denied and paid for much of the film himself. Lorentz later faced criticism for appearing to blame westward bound settlers for the ecological crisis by having eroded the soil of the Plains with unrestrained farming (and one of his photographers, Arthur Rothstein, was criticized for moving a skull from one location to another in the Dust Bowl to shoot it and for other stagings in the film), but the film nonetheless succeeded in driving home the message of the severity of the problem caused by the misuse of land. In 1999, The Plow That Broke the Plains was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". The Plow exists in at least three versions. The original includes an epilogue detailing the activities of the Resettlement Administration. The most common version today on DVD omits this final chapter. Finally, another contemporary version places the scrolling Prologue text before the opening credits. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Plow_That_Broke_the_Plains
Before tomato sauce and pasta (first recorded in 1827), there was a dish called Spaghettini with garlic, parsley and olive oil. Tips from Lynne: In a simple recipe like this one, the ingredients are everything. Buy the best imported pasta you can (brands like Rustichella, Latini, Setaro, Spinosi and, at more reasonable prices, De Cecco, Del Verde, Geraldo & Nola and Molisana), good olive oil (Moustere Grove from New Zealand, De Verde from Sicily, and the Tuscan Laudemio oils are all excellent but pricey). There is the option of Spectrum's Spanish blend oil which is pretty good. And you'll want nice plump cloves of garlic; at this time of year they're fresh and very fine. When a recipe calls for a “generous pot of salted water,” think a 6-quart pot for a pound or less of pasta. To prevent sticking, you want plenty of room for the pasta to move about in the briskly boiling water. The water should be salted so it tastes like the sea, and don't bother with olive oil in the water. Pasta sticks when it's cooked in too little water. Always set aside some pasta cooking water to thin out a sauce if needed. As a reminder, set a one cup size measuring cup in your colander to scoop out the water just before draining the pasta in the colander. Stir into the pan as you warm up the sauté. The starch and salt thicken and season simple sautés like this one. The Splendid Table September 8, 2010
Feedback to A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg
From: Cal Audrain Subject: faux Def: Artificial; fake; false.
Faux is used in architecture to describe materials that are fabricated and painted to look like more expensive materials, typically walls painted to look like they are made of real stone. At the Art Institute of Chicago, when the Grand Staircase was built 100 years ago, the work was never completed according to the plans. Parts of the stairs were made from real marble, parts were made of concrete and plaster and then painted to look like the marble. Likewise, the surrounding walls of brick were plastered and painted and an arcade with columns that was to surround the second floor was finished on only the West side and the egg and cart moulding faded into a plaster blob. The most interesting part was that the bottom five feet of one wall was actually covered with marble, but then, when the plastered walls were painted as faux marble, they also painted the real marble so you would not see the difference. You can visit today and see if you can tell which is real and which is faux.
From: Thierry Larrivée Subject: Fait accompli Def: A thing accomplished: a done deal.
Under "MEANING:" you write: "noun: A thing accomplished: a done deal."
Well, it's literally right, but we (French speakers) usually use this expression to describe an action that has been completed BEFORE those affected by it can say anything about it or change it." or instance "Tu m'as mis devant le fait accompli." (You put me in front of the accomplished fact). It's somehow a reprimand. I guess it's an important "nuance"... Strange enough, I have a bottle of "Fait accompli" (Westbrook Wine Farm, in the Sierra Nevada Foothills of eastern Madera County, CA) and was wondering, last night, why they had chosen this name. I went on their website and could see they had made the same "nuance mistake"...
From: Lynne Glasscoe Subject: agent provocateur Def: Someone employed to encourage or provoke suspects into doing something illegal so they can be arrested or discredited.
"Stanislav Beranek was critical over the creation of the role of agent provocateur, who will seek to provoke artificial situations in which someone will accept a bribe." Cillian O'Donoghue; New Pandur Purchase Inquiry Launched; The Prague Post (Czech Republic); Jul 21, 2010. I was amused that the usage for agent provacateur was gleaned from an article in a Czech journal written by what appears to be an Irishman. What does this tell us? That other nationalities using the English language are more comfortable with its nuances?
Book addicts are never bored. They
have the world at their fingertips,
so to speak. They can laugh, cry, learn,
grow, travel, escape, imagine,
experience—all in mind’s eye.
Aconcagua is the highest mountain in the Americas at 6,962 m (22,841 ft), and the highest mountain outside Asia. It is located in the Andes mountain range, in the Argentine province of Mendoza. The summit is located about 5 kilometres from San Juan Province and 15 kilometres from the international border with Chile and about 50 miles northeast of the Chilean capital of Santiago. It lies 112 kilometres (70 mi) west by north of the city of Mendoza. Aconcagua is the highest peak in both the Western and Southern Hemispheres. It is one of the Seven Summits. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aconcagua
The Seven Summits are the highest mountains of each of the seven continents. See map, table and information at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Summits
New Zealand is part of the largely submerged continent of Zealandia, which stretches from the north of New Caledonia to the south of New Zealand's subantartic islands. 93% of Zealandia is underwater. New Zealand is an island nation. The three main islands which make up New Zealand are the North Island, the South Island, and Stewart Island, but a number of smaller offshore islands are also included:
The Chatham Islands
The Kermadec Islands
Campbell Island
The Antipodes Islands
The Bounty Islands
The Auckland Islands http://history-nz.org/today.html
The Plow That Broke the Plains (1936) is a short documentary film which shows what happened to the Great Plains region of the United States and Canada when uncontrolled agricultural farming led to the Dust Bowl. It was written and directed by Pare Lorentz.
Lorentz worked on the film with composer Virgil Thomson, who shared Lorentz' enthusiasm for folk music and incorporated many folk melodies, along with other popular and religious music, into the soundtrack. The film was narrated by the American baritone Thomas Hardie Chalmers. The film was sponsored by the United States government (Resettlement Administration) to raise awareness about the New Deal and was intended to cost $6,000 or less; it eventually cost over $19,000 and Lorentz, turning in many receipts written on various scraps of paper, had many of his reimbursements denied and paid for much of the film himself. Lorentz later faced criticism for appearing to blame westward bound settlers for the ecological crisis by having eroded the soil of the Plains with unrestrained farming (and one of his photographers, Arthur Rothstein, was criticized for moving a skull from one location to another in the Dust Bowl to shoot it and for other stagings in the film), but the film nonetheless succeeded in driving home the message of the severity of the problem caused by the misuse of land. In 1999, The Plow That Broke the Plains was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". The Plow exists in at least three versions. The original includes an epilogue detailing the activities of the Resettlement Administration. The most common version today on DVD omits this final chapter. Finally, another contemporary version places the scrolling Prologue text before the opening credits. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Plow_That_Broke_the_Plains
Before tomato sauce and pasta (first recorded in 1827), there was a dish called Spaghettini with garlic, parsley and olive oil. Tips from Lynne: In a simple recipe like this one, the ingredients are everything. Buy the best imported pasta you can (brands like Rustichella, Latini, Setaro, Spinosi and, at more reasonable prices, De Cecco, Del Verde, Geraldo & Nola and Molisana), good olive oil (Moustere Grove from New Zealand, De Verde from Sicily, and the Tuscan Laudemio oils are all excellent but pricey). There is the option of Spectrum's Spanish blend oil which is pretty good. And you'll want nice plump cloves of garlic; at this time of year they're fresh and very fine. When a recipe calls for a “generous pot of salted water,” think a 6-quart pot for a pound or less of pasta. To prevent sticking, you want plenty of room for the pasta to move about in the briskly boiling water. The water should be salted so it tastes like the sea, and don't bother with olive oil in the water. Pasta sticks when it's cooked in too little water. Always set aside some pasta cooking water to thin out a sauce if needed. As a reminder, set a one cup size measuring cup in your colander to scoop out the water just before draining the pasta in the colander. Stir into the pan as you warm up the sauté. The starch and salt thicken and season simple sautés like this one. The Splendid Table September 8, 2010
Feedback to A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg
From: Cal Audrain Subject: faux Def: Artificial; fake; false.
Faux is used in architecture to describe materials that are fabricated and painted to look like more expensive materials, typically walls painted to look like they are made of real stone. At the Art Institute of Chicago, when the Grand Staircase was built 100 years ago, the work was never completed according to the plans. Parts of the stairs were made from real marble, parts were made of concrete and plaster and then painted to look like the marble. Likewise, the surrounding walls of brick were plastered and painted and an arcade with columns that was to surround the second floor was finished on only the West side and the egg and cart moulding faded into a plaster blob. The most interesting part was that the bottom five feet of one wall was actually covered with marble, but then, when the plastered walls were painted as faux marble, they also painted the real marble so you would not see the difference. You can visit today and see if you can tell which is real and which is faux.
From: Thierry Larrivée Subject: Fait accompli Def: A thing accomplished: a done deal.
Under "MEANING:" you write: "noun: A thing accomplished: a done deal."
Well, it's literally right, but we (French speakers) usually use this expression to describe an action that has been completed BEFORE those affected by it can say anything about it or change it." or instance "Tu m'as mis devant le fait accompli." (You put me in front of the accomplished fact). It's somehow a reprimand. I guess it's an important "nuance"... Strange enough, I have a bottle of "Fait accompli" (Westbrook Wine Farm, in the Sierra Nevada Foothills of eastern Madera County, CA) and was wondering, last night, why they had chosen this name. I went on their website and could see they had made the same "nuance mistake"...
From: Lynne Glasscoe Subject: agent provocateur Def: Someone employed to encourage or provoke suspects into doing something illegal so they can be arrested or discredited.
"Stanislav Beranek was critical over the creation of the role of agent provocateur, who will seek to provoke artificial situations in which someone will accept a bribe." Cillian O'Donoghue; New Pandur Purchase Inquiry Launched; The Prague Post (Czech Republic); Jul 21, 2010. I was amused that the usage for agent provacateur was gleaned from an article in a Czech journal written by what appears to be an Irishman. What does this tell us? That other nationalities using the English language are more comfortable with its nuances?
Thursday, September 9, 2010
The powerful earthquake that smashed buildings, cracked roads and twisted rail lines around the New Zealand city of Christchurch also ripped a new fault line in the Earth's surface, a geologist has said. At least 500 buildings, including 90 in the downtown area, have been designated as destroyed by the 7.1-magnitude quake that struck at 4:35 a.m. September 3 near the South Island city of 400,000 people. Most other buildings sustained only minor damage. See images at: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100905/ap_on_re_as/as_new_zealand_earthquake
2010 significant earthquakes http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eqinthenews/
BOOK ADDICTS by Martha Esbin (a cinquain with five eight-syllable lines.)
Book addicts fear having no books,
take extra books on trips in case
they run out, store books on the floor,
have books in each room of the house,
make up reading lists for themselves.
Win an Academy Award and you’re likely to live longer than had you been a runner-up.
Interview for medical school on a rainy day, and your chances of being selected could fall. Such are some of the surprising findings of Dr. Donald A. Redelmeier, a physician-researcher and perhaps the leading debunker of preconceived notions in the medical world. Academy Award winners live an average of three years longer than the runners-up. A potential explanation for the longevity of Academy Award winners could be an added measure of scrutiny, a public expectation of healthier living. In the Canadian Medical Association Journal in December, Dr. Redelmeier examined University of Toronto medical school admission interview reports from 2004 to 2009. After correlating the interview scores with weather archives, he determined that candidates who interviewed on foul-weather days received ratings lower than candidates who visited on sunny days. In many cases, the difference was significant enough to influence acceptance. Dr. Redelmeier was the first to study cellphones and automobile crashes. A paper he published in The New England Journal of Medicine in 1997 concluded that talking on a cellphone while driving was as dangerous as driving while intoxicated. His collaborator, Robert Tibshirani, a statistician at Stanford University, said the paper “is likely to dwarf all of my other work in statistics, in terms of its direct impact on public health.” In preparation for a recent interview in his modest office in the sprawling hospital complex, Dr. Redelmeier had written on an index card some of his homespun philosophies. “Life is a marathon, not a sprint,” he read, adding, “A great deal of mischief occurs when people are in a rush.” Another Redelmeier philosophical pearl is “Do not get trapped into prior thoughts. It’s perfectly O.K. to change your mind as you learn more.” http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/31/science/31profile.html
There are hundreds of sign languages. Wherever there are communities of deaf people, you'll find them communicating with a unique vocabulary and grammar. Even within a single country, you can encounter regional variations and dialects -- like any spoken language, you're bound to find people in different regions who communicate the same concept in different ways. It may seem strange to those who don't speak sign language, but countries that share a common spoken language do not necessarily share a common sign language. American Sign Language (ASL or Ameslan) and British Sign Language (BSL) evolved independently of one another, so it would be very difficult, or even impossible, for an American deaf person to communicate with an English deaf person. However, many of the signs in ASL were adapted from French Sign Language (LSF). So a speaker of ASL in France could potentially communicate clearly with deaf people there, even though the spoken languages are completely different.
http://people.howstuffworks.com/sign-language.htm
Why B-Schools Have an Edifice Complex
Yale School of Management is planning a glittering $180 million structure designed by Lord Norman Foster, who built London’s “Gherkin” tower. The new building, scheduled to open in 2013, will help the school keep pace with its rivals, said Dean Sharon Oster. “You can’t be in a dump if everyone else is in a spectacular building,” Oster said. “The better the experience people have, the better they feel about the place, the more likely it will be that they would support it at some point,” said Robert Dolan, dean of the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, in Ann Arbor, which opened a 270,000-square feet (25,084 square meter), $145 million building in 2009. Since the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania opened its 324,000-square foot, $140 million Jon M. Huntsman Hall in 2002, rival business schools have scrambled to keep up. The University of Chicago opened its $125 million Harper Center in 2004, while Michigan’s building debuted last year. Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Business, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, will open new facilities this year, and Stanford Graduate School of Business, near Palo Alto, California, will follow in 2011.
Along with Yale, Columbia Business School in New York and Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, in Evanston, Illinois, are also planning new buildings.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-08-25/harvard-business-school-drives-yale-and-mit-s-edifice-complex.html
Each morning sees some task begun, each evening sees it close;
Something attempted, something done, has earned a night's repose.
The Village Blacksmith by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) American poet
2010 significant earthquakes http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eqinthenews/
BOOK ADDICTS by Martha Esbin (a cinquain with five eight-syllable lines.)
Book addicts fear having no books,
take extra books on trips in case
they run out, store books on the floor,
have books in each room of the house,
make up reading lists for themselves.
Win an Academy Award and you’re likely to live longer than had you been a runner-up.
Interview for medical school on a rainy day, and your chances of being selected could fall. Such are some of the surprising findings of Dr. Donald A. Redelmeier, a physician-researcher and perhaps the leading debunker of preconceived notions in the medical world. Academy Award winners live an average of three years longer than the runners-up. A potential explanation for the longevity of Academy Award winners could be an added measure of scrutiny, a public expectation of healthier living. In the Canadian Medical Association Journal in December, Dr. Redelmeier examined University of Toronto medical school admission interview reports from 2004 to 2009. After correlating the interview scores with weather archives, he determined that candidates who interviewed on foul-weather days received ratings lower than candidates who visited on sunny days. In many cases, the difference was significant enough to influence acceptance. Dr. Redelmeier was the first to study cellphones and automobile crashes. A paper he published in The New England Journal of Medicine in 1997 concluded that talking on a cellphone while driving was as dangerous as driving while intoxicated. His collaborator, Robert Tibshirani, a statistician at Stanford University, said the paper “is likely to dwarf all of my other work in statistics, in terms of its direct impact on public health.” In preparation for a recent interview in his modest office in the sprawling hospital complex, Dr. Redelmeier had written on an index card some of his homespun philosophies. “Life is a marathon, not a sprint,” he read, adding, “A great deal of mischief occurs when people are in a rush.” Another Redelmeier philosophical pearl is “Do not get trapped into prior thoughts. It’s perfectly O.K. to change your mind as you learn more.” http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/31/science/31profile.html
There are hundreds of sign languages. Wherever there are communities of deaf people, you'll find them communicating with a unique vocabulary and grammar. Even within a single country, you can encounter regional variations and dialects -- like any spoken language, you're bound to find people in different regions who communicate the same concept in different ways. It may seem strange to those who don't speak sign language, but countries that share a common spoken language do not necessarily share a common sign language. American Sign Language (ASL or Ameslan) and British Sign Language (BSL) evolved independently of one another, so it would be very difficult, or even impossible, for an American deaf person to communicate with an English deaf person. However, many of the signs in ASL were adapted from French Sign Language (LSF). So a speaker of ASL in France could potentially communicate clearly with deaf people there, even though the spoken languages are completely different.
http://people.howstuffworks.com/sign-language.htm
Why B-Schools Have an Edifice Complex
Yale School of Management is planning a glittering $180 million structure designed by Lord Norman Foster, who built London’s “Gherkin” tower. The new building, scheduled to open in 2013, will help the school keep pace with its rivals, said Dean Sharon Oster. “You can’t be in a dump if everyone else is in a spectacular building,” Oster said. “The better the experience people have, the better they feel about the place, the more likely it will be that they would support it at some point,” said Robert Dolan, dean of the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, in Ann Arbor, which opened a 270,000-square feet (25,084 square meter), $145 million building in 2009. Since the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania opened its 324,000-square foot, $140 million Jon M. Huntsman Hall in 2002, rival business schools have scrambled to keep up. The University of Chicago opened its $125 million Harper Center in 2004, while Michigan’s building debuted last year. Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Business, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, will open new facilities this year, and Stanford Graduate School of Business, near Palo Alto, California, will follow in 2011.
Along with Yale, Columbia Business School in New York and Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, in Evanston, Illinois, are also planning new buildings.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-08-25/harvard-business-school-drives-yale-and-mit-s-edifice-complex.html
Each morning sees some task begun, each evening sees it close;
Something attempted, something done, has earned a night's repose.
The Village Blacksmith by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) American poet
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
The first observance of Labor Day is believed to have been a parade of 10,000 workers on Sept. 5, 1882, in New York City. By 1893, more than half the states were observing a "Labor Day" on one day or another, and Congress passed a bill to establish a federal holiday in 1894. President Grover Cleveland signed the bill soon afterward, designating the first Monday in September as Labor Day. .As of May 2010, there are 154.4 million people 16 and older in the nation's labor force. See more statistics at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/graphic/2010/09/02/GR2010090204284.html
Carbon is a remarkable little atom. When it’s arranged in sheets, it’s soft as pencil lead. Arrange it in crystals, and it’s hard as diamonds. On September 4, 1985, three scientists trying to figure out the structure of a carbon molecule known as C60 began playing around with toothpicks and jellybeans. One of them began sticking his jellybean atoms together in the shape of alternating pentagons and hexagons. Interestingly, his structure began to curve into a ball. To the scientists, the sphere created this arrangement of candy and sticks looked an awful lot like the geodesic dome built by visionary architect R. Buckminster Fuller in 1967 for the world’s fair in Montreal. As it turned out, the jellybean model of C60 was correct, and the molecule discovered was named “buckminsterfullerene” after its inspiration.
http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2010/09/happy-25th-birthday-to-the-buckyball/#ixzz0ye38QglS
The Month Poem (one of over 70 versions)
30 days hath September,
April, June, and November.
All the rest have 31
but February’s the shortest one.
With 28 days most of the time,
until Leap Year gives us 29. http://www.leapyearday.com/30Days.htm
When choosing fats, olive oil is a healthy choice. Olive oil contains monounsaturated fat, a healthier type of fat that can lower your risk of heart disease by reducing the total and low-density lipoprotein (LDL, or "bad") cholesterol levels in your blood. According to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), consuming about 2 tablespoons (23 grams) of olive oil a day may reduce your risk of heart disease. You can get the most benefit by substituting olive oil for saturated fats rather than just adding more olive oil to your diet. All types of olive oil contain monounsaturated fat, but "extra-virgin" or "virgin" olive oils are the least processed forms, so they're the most heart healthy. Those types contain the highest levels of polyphenols, a powerful antioxidant that also can promote heart health.
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/food-and-nutrition/AN01037
People have used olive oil for centuries for personal care. It is a great skin moisturizer, in part because it contains linoleic acid, a compound not made by the body, but which prevents water from evaporating. According to Leslie Baumann, M.D., author of The Skin Type Solution, consuming olives and olive oil can promote healthy skin, as can applying it directly as a moisturizer. You can also add a bit of olive oil to a warm bath for a good healthy soak. Olive oil can also provide a safe and natural lubricant for a close shave. As a soothing aftershave, rub in an extra teaspoon of the stuff after rinsing off. Similarly, olive oil can soothe chapped lips. To polish wood, use two parts olive oil mixed with one part lemon juice.
http://www.thedailygreen.com/green-homes/latest/olive-oil-benefits-uses-460609
Richard Dawkins is a retired professor at Oxford University and he introduced the word meme in his 1976 book, "The Selfish Gene." He defined it as a unit of cultural transmission, a new kind of replicator that follows the rules of Darwin's natural selection. Anything that's copied, anything that's imitated, so something like a tune that you hear whistled, clothes fashions or shoe fashions or hat fashions. These things spread through the population like a measles epidemic, and then they may jump to another population; they may decay. The whole thing looks very like the spread of a virus. He wanted a word that was sort of a monosyllable, a bit like gene, and had some kind of connection with the idea of imitation. Dawkins asked a classical scholar, who produced a word mimeme as a unit of imitation and he abbreviated it to meme.
http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=129535048
Recommended author: Khaled Hosseini, author of two novels
The Kite Runner (ISBN 1-59448-000-1) is the story of a young boy, Amir, struggling to establish a closer rapport with his father and coping with memories of a haunting childhood event. The novel is set in Afghanistan, from the fall of the monarchy until the collapse of the Taliban regime, and in the San Francisco Bay Area, specifically in Fremont, California. Its many themes include ethnic tensions between the Hazara and the Pashtun in Afghanistan, and the immigrant experiences of Amir and his father in the United States. The novel was the number three best seller for 2005 in the United States, according to Nielsen BookScan. The Kite Runner was also produced as an audiobook read by the author. The Kite Runner has been adapted into a film of the same name released in December, 2007. Hosseini made a guest appearance towards the end of the movie as a bystander when Amir buys a kite which he later flies with Sohrab. Hosseini's second novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns (ISBN 1-59448-950-5), the story of two women of Afghanistan, Mariam and Laila, whose lives become entwined, was released by Riverhead Books on May 22, 2007, simultaneous with the Simon & Schuster audiobook. Movie rights have been acquired by producer Scott Rudin and Columbia Pictures.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khaled_Hosseini
http://www.unhcr.org/45d574692.html?gclid=CPuTmtHw4aMCFcEz5wodMBW7aA
Carbon is a remarkable little atom. When it’s arranged in sheets, it’s soft as pencil lead. Arrange it in crystals, and it’s hard as diamonds. On September 4, 1985, three scientists trying to figure out the structure of a carbon molecule known as C60 began playing around with toothpicks and jellybeans. One of them began sticking his jellybean atoms together in the shape of alternating pentagons and hexagons. Interestingly, his structure began to curve into a ball. To the scientists, the sphere created this arrangement of candy and sticks looked an awful lot like the geodesic dome built by visionary architect R. Buckminster Fuller in 1967 for the world’s fair in Montreal. As it turned out, the jellybean model of C60 was correct, and the molecule discovered was named “buckminsterfullerene” after its inspiration.
http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2010/09/happy-25th-birthday-to-the-buckyball/#ixzz0ye38QglS
The Month Poem (one of over 70 versions)
30 days hath September,
April, June, and November.
All the rest have 31
but February’s the shortest one.
With 28 days most of the time,
until Leap Year gives us 29. http://www.leapyearday.com/30Days.htm
When choosing fats, olive oil is a healthy choice. Olive oil contains monounsaturated fat, a healthier type of fat that can lower your risk of heart disease by reducing the total and low-density lipoprotein (LDL, or "bad") cholesterol levels in your blood. According to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), consuming about 2 tablespoons (23 grams) of olive oil a day may reduce your risk of heart disease. You can get the most benefit by substituting olive oil for saturated fats rather than just adding more olive oil to your diet. All types of olive oil contain monounsaturated fat, but "extra-virgin" or "virgin" olive oils are the least processed forms, so they're the most heart healthy. Those types contain the highest levels of polyphenols, a powerful antioxidant that also can promote heart health.
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/food-and-nutrition/AN01037
People have used olive oil for centuries for personal care. It is a great skin moisturizer, in part because it contains linoleic acid, a compound not made by the body, but which prevents water from evaporating. According to Leslie Baumann, M.D., author of The Skin Type Solution, consuming olives and olive oil can promote healthy skin, as can applying it directly as a moisturizer. You can also add a bit of olive oil to a warm bath for a good healthy soak. Olive oil can also provide a safe and natural lubricant for a close shave. As a soothing aftershave, rub in an extra teaspoon of the stuff after rinsing off. Similarly, olive oil can soothe chapped lips. To polish wood, use two parts olive oil mixed with one part lemon juice.
http://www.thedailygreen.com/green-homes/latest/olive-oil-benefits-uses-460609
Richard Dawkins is a retired professor at Oxford University and he introduced the word meme in his 1976 book, "The Selfish Gene." He defined it as a unit of cultural transmission, a new kind of replicator that follows the rules of Darwin's natural selection. Anything that's copied, anything that's imitated, so something like a tune that you hear whistled, clothes fashions or shoe fashions or hat fashions. These things spread through the population like a measles epidemic, and then they may jump to another population; they may decay. The whole thing looks very like the spread of a virus. He wanted a word that was sort of a monosyllable, a bit like gene, and had some kind of connection with the idea of imitation. Dawkins asked a classical scholar, who produced a word mimeme as a unit of imitation and he abbreviated it to meme.
http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=129535048
Recommended author: Khaled Hosseini, author of two novels
The Kite Runner (ISBN 1-59448-000-1) is the story of a young boy, Amir, struggling to establish a closer rapport with his father and coping with memories of a haunting childhood event. The novel is set in Afghanistan, from the fall of the monarchy until the collapse of the Taliban regime, and in the San Francisco Bay Area, specifically in Fremont, California. Its many themes include ethnic tensions between the Hazara and the Pashtun in Afghanistan, and the immigrant experiences of Amir and his father in the United States. The novel was the number three best seller for 2005 in the United States, according to Nielsen BookScan. The Kite Runner was also produced as an audiobook read by the author. The Kite Runner has been adapted into a film of the same name released in December, 2007. Hosseini made a guest appearance towards the end of the movie as a bystander when Amir buys a kite which he later flies with Sohrab. Hosseini's second novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns (ISBN 1-59448-950-5), the story of two women of Afghanistan, Mariam and Laila, whose lives become entwined, was released by Riverhead Books on May 22, 2007, simultaneous with the Simon & Schuster audiobook. Movie rights have been acquired by producer Scott Rudin and Columbia Pictures.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khaled_Hosseini
http://www.unhcr.org/45d574692.html?gclid=CPuTmtHw4aMCFcEz5wodMBW7aA
Friday, September 3, 2010
Warnings, observations and forecasts from the National Weather Service of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration http://www.weather.gov/
Frequently asked questions from the Hurricane Research Division
http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/tcfaqHED.html
When Paul Brachfeld took over as inspector general of the National Archives, guardian of the country's most beloved treasures, he discovered the American people were being stolen blind. The Wright brothers' 1903 Flying Machine patent application? Gone. A copy of the Dec. 8, 1941, "Day of Infamy" speech autographed by Franklin Roosevelt and tied with a purple ribbon? Gone. Target maps of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, war telegrams written by Abraham Lincoln, and a scabbard and belt given to Harry Truman? Gone, gone and gone. The Archival Recovery Team, is asking the American people to help find what rightfully belongs to them. They published a pamphlet on how to recognize a historical federal document, and whom to call if you find one. The Wright brothers' patent — lost or stolen in the 1980s — was May's featured missing item on the National Archives' Facebook page. "We have taken theft out of the shadows," Brachfeld said, recalling the days when embarrassing losses were kept secret. "If it's gone, we want it back. And if it's stolen, we will do our best to send whoever took it to jail." http://www.statesman.com/news/nation/national-archives-team-hunts-americas-stolen-treasures-873400.html
Indo-European languages: Centum http://www.danshort.com/ie/iecentum.htm
Indo-European languages: Satum http://www.danshort.com/ie/iesatem.htm
Check images at Google for many representations of the Indo-European language tree.
park (n.) mid-13c., "enclosed preserve for beasts of the chase," from O.Fr. parc, probably ultimately from W.Gmc. *parruk "enclosed tract of land" (cf. O.E. pearruc, root of paddock (2), O.H.G. pfarrih "fencing about, enclosure," Ger. pferch "fold for sheep," Du. park). Internal evidence suggests the W.Gmc. word is pre-4c. and originally meant the fencing, not the place enclosed. Welsh parc, Gael. pairc are from English. As a surname, Parker "keeper of a park" is attested in English from mid-12c. Meaning "enclosed lot in or near a town, for public recreation" is first attested 1660s, originally in reference to London; the sense evolution is via royal parks in the original, hunting sense being overrun by the growth of London and being opened to the public. Applied to sporting fields in Amer.Eng. from 1867. New York's Park Avenue as an adj. meaning "luxurious and fashionable" (1956) was preceded in the same sense by London's Park Lane (1880).
park (v.) 1812, "to arrange military vehicles in a park," from park (n.) in a limited sense of "enclosure for military vehicles" (attested from 1683). General non-military meaning "to put (a vehicle) in a certain place" is first recorded 1844. Parking lot is from 1924; parking ticket first attested 1947; park-and-ride is from 1966. The transmission gear (n.) is attested from 1963.
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=park
The essays in the Federalist Papers, published under the pseudonym of "Publius," are only the most famous example of the outpouring of anonymous political writing that occurred during the ratification of the Constitution. John Jay, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton shared the pen name "Publius" when they wrote the Federalist Papers. Alexander Hamilton wrote several newspaper essays using a variety of pen names taken from characters from ancient Rome. Benjamin Austin, a Baptist minister and author of some of the Federalist Papers, wrote under the pseudonym "Candidus." Benjamin Franklin often wrote under pseudonyms, including "Silence Dogood," "the Busy-Body," "Obadiah Plainman," "Robin Good-fellow," and of course, "Poor Richard." Franklin frequently used the name "Richard Saunders," the same pseudonym as he had used when he wrote "Poor Richard's Almanack," which was first published in 1732.
John Adams, our second president, often used the pseudonym "Novanglus" when he wrote, but he was published frequently by the Boston Gazette under the name "Clarendan." John Leland, a Baptist minister and American patriot, wrote under the pseudonym of "Jack Nipps." John Carroll, the first bishop (of Baltimore), used the alias "Pacificus" for his documents. http://www.magic-city-news.com/Editor_s_Desk_34/A_Climate_of_Fear_34683468.shtml
Sam Hill is an American English slang phrase, a euphemism or minced oath for "the devil" or "hell" personified (as in, "What in the Sam Hill is that?"). Etymologist Michael Quinion and others date the expression back to the late 1830s; they and others[ consider the expression to have been a simple bowdlerization, with, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, an unknown origin. According to Quinion: an article in the New England Magazine in December 1889 entitled "Two Centuries and a Half in Guilford, Connecticut" mentioned that, “Between 1727 and 1752 Mr. Sam. Hill represented Guilford in forty-three out of forty-nine sessions of the Legislature, and when he was gathered to his fathers, his son Nathaniel reigned in his stead” and a footnote queried whether this might be the source of the "popular Connecticut adjuration to ‘Give ‘em Sam Hill’?" H. L. Mencken suggested that the "Sam" in the phrase derives from Samiel, the name of the Devil in Der Freischütz, an opera by Carl Maria von Weber that was performed in New York in 1825. http://www.answers.com/topic/sam-hill
Amusing place names
Boring, OR and Irrigon, OR
Normal, IL and Oblong, IL
Eighty Eight, KY and Eighty Four, PA
Zero, IA and Zero, MT
Frequently asked questions from the Hurricane Research Division
http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/tcfaqHED.html
When Paul Brachfeld took over as inspector general of the National Archives, guardian of the country's most beloved treasures, he discovered the American people were being stolen blind. The Wright brothers' 1903 Flying Machine patent application? Gone. A copy of the Dec. 8, 1941, "Day of Infamy" speech autographed by Franklin Roosevelt and tied with a purple ribbon? Gone. Target maps of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, war telegrams written by Abraham Lincoln, and a scabbard and belt given to Harry Truman? Gone, gone and gone. The Archival Recovery Team, is asking the American people to help find what rightfully belongs to them. They published a pamphlet on how to recognize a historical federal document, and whom to call if you find one. The Wright brothers' patent — lost or stolen in the 1980s — was May's featured missing item on the National Archives' Facebook page. "We have taken theft out of the shadows," Brachfeld said, recalling the days when embarrassing losses were kept secret. "If it's gone, we want it back. And if it's stolen, we will do our best to send whoever took it to jail." http://www.statesman.com/news/nation/national-archives-team-hunts-americas-stolen-treasures-873400.html
Indo-European languages: Centum http://www.danshort.com/ie/iecentum.htm
Indo-European languages: Satum http://www.danshort.com/ie/iesatem.htm
Check images at Google for many representations of the Indo-European language tree.
park (n.) mid-13c., "enclosed preserve for beasts of the chase," from O.Fr. parc, probably ultimately from W.Gmc. *parruk "enclosed tract of land" (cf. O.E. pearruc, root of paddock (2), O.H.G. pfarrih "fencing about, enclosure," Ger. pferch "fold for sheep," Du. park). Internal evidence suggests the W.Gmc. word is pre-4c. and originally meant the fencing, not the place enclosed. Welsh parc, Gael. pairc are from English. As a surname, Parker "keeper of a park" is attested in English from mid-12c. Meaning "enclosed lot in or near a town, for public recreation" is first attested 1660s, originally in reference to London; the sense evolution is via royal parks in the original, hunting sense being overrun by the growth of London and being opened to the public. Applied to sporting fields in Amer.Eng. from 1867. New York's Park Avenue as an adj. meaning "luxurious and fashionable" (1956) was preceded in the same sense by London's Park Lane (1880).
park (v.) 1812, "to arrange military vehicles in a park," from park (n.) in a limited sense of "enclosure for military vehicles" (attested from 1683). General non-military meaning "to put (a vehicle) in a certain place" is first recorded 1844. Parking lot is from 1924; parking ticket first attested 1947; park-and-ride is from 1966. The transmission gear (n.) is attested from 1963.
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=park
The essays in the Federalist Papers, published under the pseudonym of "Publius," are only the most famous example of the outpouring of anonymous political writing that occurred during the ratification of the Constitution. John Jay, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton shared the pen name "Publius" when they wrote the Federalist Papers. Alexander Hamilton wrote several newspaper essays using a variety of pen names taken from characters from ancient Rome. Benjamin Austin, a Baptist minister and author of some of the Federalist Papers, wrote under the pseudonym "Candidus." Benjamin Franklin often wrote under pseudonyms, including "Silence Dogood," "the Busy-Body," "Obadiah Plainman," "Robin Good-fellow," and of course, "Poor Richard." Franklin frequently used the name "Richard Saunders," the same pseudonym as he had used when he wrote "Poor Richard's Almanack," which was first published in 1732.
John Adams, our second president, often used the pseudonym "Novanglus" when he wrote, but he was published frequently by the Boston Gazette under the name "Clarendan." John Leland, a Baptist minister and American patriot, wrote under the pseudonym of "Jack Nipps." John Carroll, the first bishop (of Baltimore), used the alias "Pacificus" for his documents. http://www.magic-city-news.com/Editor_s_Desk_34/A_Climate_of_Fear_34683468.shtml
Sam Hill is an American English slang phrase, a euphemism or minced oath for "the devil" or "hell" personified (as in, "What in the Sam Hill is that?"). Etymologist Michael Quinion and others date the expression back to the late 1830s; they and others[ consider the expression to have been a simple bowdlerization, with, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, an unknown origin. According to Quinion: an article in the New England Magazine in December 1889 entitled "Two Centuries and a Half in Guilford, Connecticut" mentioned that, “Between 1727 and 1752 Mr. Sam. Hill represented Guilford in forty-three out of forty-nine sessions of the Legislature, and when he was gathered to his fathers, his son Nathaniel reigned in his stead” and a footnote queried whether this might be the source of the "popular Connecticut adjuration to ‘Give ‘em Sam Hill’?" H. L. Mencken suggested that the "Sam" in the phrase derives from Samiel, the name of the Devil in Der Freischütz, an opera by Carl Maria von Weber that was performed in New York in 1825. http://www.answers.com/topic/sam-hill
Amusing place names
Boring, OR and Irrigon, OR
Normal, IL and Oblong, IL
Eighty Eight, KY and Eighty Four, PA
Zero, IA and Zero, MT
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