October 24, 2015 It is
easy to take internet access for granted in the developed world. But getting online in many developing
countries is still tough or impossible due to a permutation of poverty,
government neglect or infrastructure challenges. One of the near-term solutions may be the
effective splintering of the internet into bite-sized chunks. If people can’t have all of it at once, maybe
they can get it in more easily deliverable pieces. It is a trend that offers hope of improved
access, but the so-called Splinternet will also create challenges for
regulators in countries where governments keep a close eye on communications
for reasons of security or social standards.
One of the pioneers is LibraryBox, an open-source hardware and software
project put together by Jason Griffey, a fellow at Harvard University’s Berkman
Center for Internet and Society. The box
is a low-powered Wi-Fi router that can be run from a solar panel, battery or
even a bicycle charger. Users can copy
material from the internet, including entire websites, on to an attachable USB
stick, then broadcast it to nearby users.
Peter Nowak
Read more at http://www.thenational.ae/business/technology/librarybox-offers-users-a-chunk-of-the-splinternet
Our Most Popular Thanksgiving
Potato Recipes http://cooking.nytimes.com/68861692/1830240-our-most-popular-thanksgiving-potato-recipes
Dr Anne Toner
believes she has identified the earliest use of the ellipsis in English drama,
pinning it down to a 1588 edition of the Roman dramatist Terence’s play,
Andria, which had been translated into English by Maurice Kyffin and printed by
Thomas East, and in which hyphens, rather than dots, mark incomplete utterances
by the play’s characters. Dr Toner believes this 1588 edition of
Roman dramatist Terence’s Andria is the first time the ellipsis appeared in
print in English. Although there are
instances of ellipses occurring in letters around the same time, this is the
earliest printed version found by Toner following her chronological research
into the earliest dramas in print.
“This was a brilliant innovation,” she writes in Ellipsis
in English Literature: Signs of Omission, a history of the use of dots,
dashes and asterisks to mark a silence of some kind, published by Cambridge
University Press. “There is no play
printed before Kyffin’s Andria and listed in WW Greg’s Bibliography of English
Printed Drama that marks unfinished sentences in this way. This is not to say that these were the first
ellipses in English print. There are
appearances of the mark earlier in the 1580s. Henry Woudhuysen has identified
dashes in letters printed in 1580 and 1585, where in both cases the mark occurs
as part of an informal, conversational style.”
But drama was “especially important” in the evolution of the ellipsis, according to Toner, being
the literary form “that is connected in the most concentrated way with speech
as it is spoken”. And after its
appearance in the 1588 Andria, the punctuation mark quickly caught on. “It’s interesting to think about whose idea
it was to use what turned out to be a very useful resource … was it the
translator of the Terence play, or the printer? By the 18th century, said Toner, it “becomes
very common in print, and blanking starts to be used as a means of avoiding
libel laws”, with series of dots starting to be seen in English works, as well
as hyphens and dashes, to mark an ellipsis.
Alison Flood http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/oct/20/unfinished-story-how-the-ellipsis-arrived-in-english-literature
History of semaphore flags Optical
“telegraphs”
or signaling devices have been traced back to ancient times (using
torches) and were the fastest systems to convey messages over long
distances. These “telegraphs” could have
since been in the form of torches, smoke signals and eventually semaphore
towers. Semaphore
towers used
large blades/paddles to convey messages.
Messages were decoded based on the fixed positions of these arms and
could transmit signals up to 150 miles in two minutes using multiple
towers. The semaphore
tower/semaphore line design
was first thought up by Robert Hooke in 1684 and submitted to the Royal Society. The system was not implemented though due to
military concerns. However, this did
lead to Claude Chappe
developing the first visual telegraph in 1792--eventually covering much of
France via 556 stations. These visual
messaging systems eventually led to semaphore flags. These flags were used in the same way that
the arms were used on the semaphore towers--different fixed positions mean
different messages. Semaphore flags were
primarily used for naval applications to communicate message between boats. Today these flags have become smaller and are
usually mounted to small dowels or poles to allow them to be seen easier. Maritime use flags are red and yellow (or the OSCAR) flag and while in land use, the flags are blue and
white (or the PAPA) flag. Even
though they are not in use much anymore, they still serve for some boats and
ships. There were two critical downfalls
of all the systems: They had no secrecy.
Everyone within visual distances could
see the message and therefore react to it. They were practically invisible at night time
and during heavy fog and rain. Both of
these reasons lead to the electrical
telegraph and Morse Code, both “invented” by Samuel F.B. Morse. So, the next thing you
know, we went to electrical telegraphs, pony express, telephone, radio,
television, computers, fax machines, satellite televisions, cellular phones and
the internet. See pictures of positions
representing the alphabet at https://flagexpressions.wordpress.com/2010/03/23/history-behind-semaphore-flags/
adhere, cohere These words have related meanings, as is suggested by their common
Latin root (here, from haerere), which implies sticking or clinging together. One object adheres to another through
the use of glue; a person adheres to a belief, a cause, a religion, or a political party.
Cohere suggests the sticking
together of items already present and the logical or natural
connection of ideas and objects
Jicama is an underground vegetable that can be eaten raw or
cooked. Great served with lime juice and
can be used as a "cracker" for dips or with a topping, or used in
stir fry. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcKbALW6gUY
7:59
How
to Prepare Jicama
Jicama
is related to the sweet potato and is a crunchy juicy root vegetable similar to
water chestnut. In this video,
Nutritionist Karen Roth shares the health benefits of jicama and how to prepare
it.
Andrew Luck Book Club--the Indianapolis Colts quarterback is the NFL’s unofficial librarian as he
constantly recommends books to his teammates by Kevin Clark It’s possible no group of players in
the league is more dependent on one individual than the other 52 members of the
Indianapolis roster. They’ve even come
to depend on Luck when choosing what books to read. “He’s always saying ‘I read this great book,’
” said backup quarterback Matt Hasselbeck.
“He’s recommended books on concrete architecture, Rob Lowe’s
autobiography or ‘Mountains Beyond Mountains,’” a 2003 account of a doctor
working to fight tuberculosis. In the
same way that Oprah Winfrey has become known for vaulting books she likes to
popularity across the country, Luck can make his favorite reads become the talk
of the Colts locker room. Some of the
books he recommends are for inspiration, players say, if a teammate is going
through a tough time. Others are passed
on simply because Luck enjoyed leafing through them. “He’s a voracious reader and he likes talking
about it,” said center Khaled Holmes, a beneficiary of Luck’s penchant for
recommending his favorite titles. Luck
recently completed “The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and
Disappeared,” by Swedish author Jonas Jonasson, a novel about a man’s
adventures after bailing on his own birthday party. Luck felt so good about it he immediately
gave his copy to Holmes. “He just read
it and he thought it was really funny,” Holmes said. In the NFL, where locker-room chatter usually
centers on videogames or hip-hop music, Luck has forged a reputation as the
Colts’ very own librarian. Luck gets
many recommendations from his mother, Kathy, and the best ones, or titles that
will appeal to specific players, get passed on to his teammates. Luck's passion for literature means
conversations in the Colts locker room often veer into unexpected
territory. Before a training camp
practice in August, when players say chitchat is at its highest, Luck asked a
group of teammates what, exactly, they knew about the Napoleonic wars. “That was a first,” said Hasselbeck. Luck, who majored in architectural design at
Stanford, and Holmes, who took classes in the classics at Southern California,
have ongoing discussions about Homer and other classic writers.
See pictures at http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-andrew-luck-book-club-1446675595
http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com Issue 1375
November 9, 2015 On this date in
1620, Pilgrims aboard
the Mayflower sighted land at Cape Cod, Massachusetts. On this date in 1664, Henry Wharton, English librarian and author,
was born.
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