A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg A picture is
worth a thousand words, they say, but in the case of the artist Leah Palmer
Preiss’s illustrations it’s worth a million, or more. As in previous years, I gave her five words
and she used the gramarye of her colors to make a painting illustrating each
word as listed below. Leah has completed
painting words from all 26 letters of the alphabet. See http://www.leahpalmerpreiss.com/
gramarye (GRAM-uh-ree)
noun Occult learning; magic.
quacksalver (KWAK-sal-vuhr) noun A
quack: one pretending to have skills or
knowledge, especially in medicine.
viridity (vi-RID-i-tee) noun
1. The quality or state of being
green. 2. Youthful innocence.
yobbery (YOB-uh-ree) noun Rowdy, destructive behavior by the
youth. From yob (a rowdy youth), coined
by reversing the spelling of the word boy.
xenophile (ZEN-uh-fyl, ZEE-nuh-) noun
One who is attracted to foreign things or people.
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From: Alex McCrae Subject: gramarye
For me, the entire gamut of the visual arts has that aspect of gramarye,
or magic . . . creating something of aesthetic import from a blank canvas, or a
mere chunk of inert stone thru the mysterious alchemy and amalgam of artistic
skill and free-flowing imagination.
Essentially creating something out of nothing. Illustrator Preiss has magically conjured up
this delightful, wonder-filled arabesque image of the ancient sorcerer
seemingly contemplating his sacred text and curious symbols . . .
From: Cynthia
Becker Subject:
quacksalver The quacksalver post sent us to the living
room to examine the 1885 print we inherited.
It is a 1700s village scene with a crowd gathered around a man promoting
a small vial of elixir. Now we have a
title for him!
From: Andrew
Pressburger Subject:
quacksalver A noted archetype of
the quacksalver, or in this case quick seller, is the notorious mountebank Dr.
Dulcamara in Donizetti’s comic opera L’elisir d’amore
(The Elixir of Love). In Donizetti’s
original version, Dulcamara introduces himself as Dr. Encyclopaedia, who offers
a potion named after the tragic lover “Isolda”.
When Santa Claus arrives on Christmas
Eve, he fills the
stockings with small treats and gifts.
While there is no definitive account that completely explains this
tradition, several legends may help to illustrate how the custom of hanging
Christmas stockings arose. In
the first legend, St. Nicholas of Myra, believed to be the inspiration for
Santa Claus, is traveling through a small village when he learns of the plight
of a merchant and his daughters. In one
popular version of the story, the once wealthy merchant has fallen on difficult
times and is worried for the future of his three beautiful daughters. Upon hearing of this predicament, St.
Nicholas set forth to secretly help the proud merchant, knowing he would not
accept an outright gift of charity.
Riding his majestic white horse by the merchant's house one night, St.
Nicholas tossed three bags of gold coins down the home's chimney. The bags were fortuitously captured in the
girls' stockings, which had been hung by the fireplace mantle to dry. When the gold coins were discovered the next
morning, the merchant and his daughters rejoiced. After tellings of the account spread,
children began hanging their stockings by the fireplace, in hopes that they too
would receive gifts from St. Nicholas. Another
explanation for the tradition of Christmas stockings may be found in Dutch
lore. In Holland, 'Sinterklaas' arrives
on a ship from Spain with his assistant 'Zwarte Piet' or Black Pete. Upon disembarking, they travel the country
with Sinterklaas upon his noble white steed and Zwarte Piet riding a mule. Dutch children would leave treats of carrots
and hay in their clogs, or wooden shoes, for the horse and mule and Sinterklaas
would in turn fill the shoes with small gifts for the children after the horse
and mule had enjoyed the treats. When
Dutch settlers immigrated to America, they brought many of their traditions
with them. Over time, Sinterklaas came
to be known as Santa Claus, and it is quite possible that wooden clogs were
eventually replaced by stockings. http://www.altogetherchristmas.com/traditions/stockings.html
Not what I have, but what I do, is my kingdom.
Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer,
essayist, historian and teacher See more
Carlyle quotes at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/t/thomas_carlyle.html
Harris
Lee Wittels (April 20, 1984–February 19, 2015) was an American comedian,
actor, writer, producer, and musician.
He is best known for having been a writer for The Sarah Silverman Program, a
writer and executive producer for Parks and Recreation, and a recurring
guest on Comedy Bang! Bang! In 2010, Wittels coined the phrase
"humblebrag" on Twitter. He wrote for
Grantland on the subject of notable "humblebrags", the act of
boasting about one's life and then downplaying it. The popularity of the feed led to a
book, Humblebrag: The Art of False Modesty, published in
2012. Humblebrag was designated the
"most useful" word of 2011 by the American
Dialect Society. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harris_Wittels
NPR’s Book Concierge: Our Guide To 2015’s Great Reads Use filter to explore some 260 titles picked by NPR
staff and critics at http://apps.npr.org/best-books-2015/
It’s been months since the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet was announced as the winner of the 2015 Nobel Peace Prize, but in the
intervening weeks they’ve been laureates in name only. Ever since the first Nobel prizes were
awarded in 1901, they have been conferred on December 10. The first ceremony took place five years to
the day after Nobel died, and it has since become what the Nobel Committee calls an
“established tradition.”
December 7, 2015 In the
three decades that Tom Hanks has been a leading man in Hollywood, his
appearance has changed dramatically. His
hair has gone from dark shaggy curls to buzz cuts to salt-and-pepper gray, he’s
undergone stark fluctuations in weight for different roles, and he’s
transformed from a baby-faced twenty-something into a twinkly-eyed almost 60. Yet Hanks has always retained an essential Tom Hanksiness. What is it,
anyway, that makes people look like themselves?
That’s the question at the heart of a body of research in which computer
scientists are using machines to assess huge photo databases of human faces,
then reconstructing 3-D simulations of that person’s likeness. The technique involves algorithms designed to
map 49 points on a person’s face, then chart how those points change depending
on facial expression. The end result is
an uncanny representation of the person, and not just that: These models can be
animated in a ventriloquist-like manner, so that likenesses of people look as
though they’re saying the words coming out of someone
else’s mouth—all the while
retaining their own mannerisms and expressions. “One of the applications is in augmented
reality and virtual reality,” said Ira Kemelmacher-Shlizerman, an assistant
professor of computer engineering at the University of Washington, and one of
the authors of a paper that
is set to be presented at the International Conference on Computer Vision this
month. “We’re not there yet, but our
research leads to that.” Adrienne
LaFrance http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/12/what-makes-tom-hanks-look-like-tom-hanks/419238/
http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com Issue 1391
December 10, 2015 On this date in
1787, Thomas Hopkins
Gallaudet, American educator who founded American School for
the Deaf, was born. On this date in 1815, Ada Lovelace, English mathematician and computer scientist,
was born.
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