greenmail noun
In financial jargon, the practice of buying up enough stock in a company
to threaten a hostile take-over, thereby forcing the company's management to
buy the shares back at an inflated price if they are to retain control of the
business. Formed by substituting green
for the black of blackmail; unlike blackmail, greenmail remains within the law,
and it is backed by dollars ('greens').
This is not the first such alteration of the word blackmail: In the seventies there were a number of court
cases in the US in which the defence threatened to expose government secrets
unless charges were dropped, and these became known as greymail (or, in the US,
graymail) cases. http://list-english.ru/img/newpdf/dictpdf/4.pdf
Mathematical symbols Browse or choose from ten
tables at http://www.rapidtables.com/math/symbols/Basic_Math_Symbols.htm
Quotes About Books “Books are a uniquely portable magic.” ― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft “Books are the quietest and most constant of
friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most
patient of teachers.” ― Charles William Eliot “Only the very
weak-minded refuse to be influenced by literature and poetry.” ― Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Angel Find
over 6000 quotes at http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/books
The Cooper Union for
the Advancement of Science and Art,
commonly known as Cooper
Union or The
Cooper Union and informally referred to, especially during the 19th
century, as "the Cooper Institute", is a privately funded college located
in Cooper Square in
the East Village neighborhood
of Manhattan.
Inspired in 1830 when Peter Cooper learned about the
government-supported École Polytechnique in France, Cooper Union was established in 1859. The
school was built on a radical new model of American higher education based on
founder Peter Cooper's fundamental belief that an
education "equal to the best technology schools [then] established" should
be accessible to those who qualify, independent of their race, religion, sex,
wealth or social status, and should be "open and free to all". The
Cooper Union originally granted each admitted student a full-tuition
scholarship. Following its own financial crisis, the school decided
to abandon this policy starting in the Fall of 2014, but each incoming student
receives at least a half-tuition merit scholarship. A consent decree brokered
by the New York Attorney
General in New York Supreme
Court, and finalized in 2015, required the establishment of a Free
Education Committee with the responsibility to present a strategic plan, no
later than January 15, 2018, for consideration by the school's Board of
Trustees, who would then vote on it at their Board meeting in March 2018, to
allow the school to return to a sustainable tuition-free model.
The college is divided
into three schools: the Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture, the School of Art, and
the Albert Nerken School of Engineering. It
offers undergraduate and master's degree programs
exclusively in the fields of architecture, fine arts, and engineering.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooper_Union
THE OUTER BOROUGHS
Manhattan is just one of the five boroughs that make up the very Big
Apple. The others are Brooklyn, the
Bronx, Queens, and Staten Island. People
who live in the outer boroughs are sometimes (insultingly) referred to by
Manhattanites as "B&T" (bridge & tunnel), because they have
to cross a bridge or go through a tunnel to get to Manhattan. Queens is the largest borough in New York and
it's also the city's most ethnically diverse.
There are more languages spoken in its 109 square miles than anywhere
else on the planet. All that ethnicity
translates into an adventurous eater's paradise. http://www.frommers.com/destinations/new-york-city/663722
As Julia Child explains in Mastering the Art of French Cooking, pâté de
campagnes “vary in content and flavour throughout France, but always contain
pork liver, pork, and sometimes other meats, as well as pork fat, a binder and
the usual seasoning”. Pork shoulder, a
flavourful cut well marbled with fat, is the most popular base in the pâté
recipes I try, used by Raymond Blanc’s Foolproof French Cookery and Anthony Bourdain’s Les Halles Cookbook. Michel Roux’s The Essence of French Cooking
suggests pork neck and Julia Child “fat-and-lean fresh pork” such as
sausagemeat. Blanc also uses pork belly
and Child adds lean veal or chicken. Felicity
Cloake Find
a recipe for the "perfect country
pâté" at https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2014/sep/10/how-to-make-perfect-country-pate-recipe
Hocus-pocus A supposed magical charm previously uttered
by magicians. More recently a general
term for trickery or magic. From the
early 17th century onwards 'hocus pocus' (now more often spelled as a single
hyphenated word) has been used as an incantation by conjurers when performing
tricks. Hocus-pocus is now treated like
abracadabra, shazam and 'izzy-wizzy, let's get busy' that is, as stage patter,
used mostly by comedy magicians. When it
was first coined though magicians could reasonably have expected that such
exotic-sounding phrases would fool some of the audience into the believing that
mysterious forces were being conjured up.
In fact, now and then, these 'charms' provide that essential element
required for all conjuring tricks--distraction. The 1634 book 'Hocus Pocus Junior - The
Anatomy of Legerdemain' is the first reference in print that I can find to the
term. The author isn't named but was
later known just as Hocus Pocus after the book's title. Gary Martin
http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/hocus-pocus.html
The term hocus-pocus first appears as the name
of a juggler or magician in the early 17th century. From John Gee’s New Shreds
of the Old Snare, written in
1624: I alwayes thought they had their
rudiments from some iugling Hocas Pocas in a quart pot. The use of hocus-pocus as part of an
incantation dates to 1632. From Thomas
Randolph’s The Jealous Lovers of that
year: Hocus-pocus, here you shall have
me, and there you shall have me! Dave
Wilton http://www.wordorigins.org/index.php/site/comments/hocus_pocus/
The Iranian foreign ministry announced its opposition to the travel of the
American wrestlers to Iran, in retaliation for Trump’s visa ban, said Foreign
Ministry Spokesman Bahram Ghasemi on February 3, 2017. “The
question of whether issuing visa for the members of the Free-Style Wrestling
Team of the US was sent to a special committee at Iran’s foreign ministry, and
the committee, after examining the case, voiced its opposition with the travel
of the Free-Style Wrestling Team of the US to Iran,” said Bahram Ghasemi, the
Spokesman of Iran’s Foreign Ministry. The
diplomat stated that the policies undertaken by the new American administration
left no choice for the Iranian foreign ministry and the situation led to the
unwanted decision. The Free-Style
Wrestling world Cup is to be held in February 16-17, in Iranian western city of
Kermanshah.
Before the Patriots and Falcons duke it out in the Super
Bowl on
Sunday, February 5, 2017 Conan O’Brien held his own clash of the titans
for Conan on
February 2. Sports correspondent Erin
Andrews covered a special edition of “Clueless Gamer,” which brought in Tom
Brady, Rob Gronkowski, Dwight Freeney, Marshawn Lynch, and
LeGarrette Blount to play For Honor. Nick
Romano Read more and link to video of
the matches at http://ew.com/tv/2017/02/03/conan-super-bowl-clueless-gamer-tom-brady/
http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com Issue 1687
February 3, 2017 On this date in
1870, the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was
ratified, guaranteeing voting rights to citizens regardless of race. On this date in 1913, the Sixteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was
ratified, authorizing the Federal
government to
impose and collect an income tax.
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