Q.
Who are the Philippines named for?
A. King Philip II Ferdinand Magellan was the first European
recorded to have landed in the Philippines.
He arrived in March 1521 during his circumnavigation of the globe. He claimed land for the king of Spain but was killed by a local chief. Following several more Spanish expeditions,
the first permanent settlement was established in Cebu in 1565. After defeating a local Muslim ruler, the
Spanish set up their capital at Manila in 1571, and they named their new colony
after King Philip II of Spain. http://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/History/Philippines-history.htm
Q. Who first
owned the Falklands? A. The
dispute over the south Atlantic islands has brewed for centuries. Britain and Argentina have both claimed
sovereignty. The root of the problem can
be traced to the celebrated Bulls of Donation by which the Borgia pope Alexander VI (1492-1503) exercised what medieval
doctrine still told him was a God-given right to divide between Spain and
Portugal all the distant lands that European navigators were starting to
discover. The lines he drew (they were
revised) went straight through what is now modern Portuguese-speaking Brazil,
leaving most of the South American mainland to the Spaniards, whose
conquistador armies had not yet arrived in Mexico or Peru. On the Spanish side of the line, still
undiscovered 400 miles off the future Argentinian coast, lay the cluster of
islands that the British would name after the naval entrepreneur Viscount
Falkland, and the French Les Îles Malouine after St Malo, the favoured
embarkation port of predatory privateers which--like their British
counterparts--attacked Spanish imperial trade for decades. The Spaniards later adapted the French name and
called them Las Malvinas. Some
authorities claim that a Portuguese voyage, with Amerigo Vespucci on board, first sighted the Falklands
around 1500--or that Magellan, another Portuguese, did. The British would later claim that their own
seadogs, Hawkins or Davis, found the uninhabited islands in the 1590s. A Dutch voyage under Sebald de Weert named
them the Sebaldines in 1600. https://www.theguardian.com/uk/blog/2012/feb/02/who-first-owned-falkland-islands
April 13, 2017 If you
do a Google search for "card catalog" it will likely return
Pinterest-worthy images of antique furniture for sale—boxy, wooden cabinets
with tiny drawers, great for storing knick-knacks, jewelry or art
supplies. But before these cabinets held
household objects, they held countless index cards—which, at the time, were the
pathways to knowledge and information. A
new book from the Library of Congress celebrates these catalogs as the analog
ancestor of the search engine. There's a
huge card catalog in the basement of the Library of Congress in Washington,
D.C. "There's tens of millions of
cards here," says Peter Devereaux, author of The Card Catalog: Books, Cards, and Literary Treasures. "It's a city block long." Some highlights from the Library of Congress'
collection include cards from Walt Whitman, Samuel Langhorne Clemens (you might
know him as Mark Twain), Margaret Mitchell, James Baldwin, William Faulkner ...
the list goes on and on. Some of the
cards are handwritten, others are typed with cross out marks and notes
scribbled in the margins. Handwritten
cards began to be standardized in the 1800s, when New York State Library
Director Melvil Dewey and inventor Thomas Edison perfected a handwriting style
called "library hand." Its
goal was to make the cards read the same no matter the library. Typewritten cards started appearing at the
end of the 19th century. Cataloging
wasn't always neat and tidy—even for the old Congressional Library. An Annual Report from 1897 depicted a chaotic
state of affairs: "The Library was
so congested, books were heaped up in so many crevices and out-of-the-way
corners, down in the crypt, hidden in darkness from access of observation, that
obtaining a volume, and especially, one out of the range of general reading,
was a question of time and patience.
Frequently, it depended upon the phenomenal memory of the distinguished
Librarian." That distinguished
librarian was Ainsworth Rand Spofford—who had his own "idiosyncratic"
approach to cataloging. He said that
without more space, he would be "presiding over the greatest chaos in
America." Spofford got his way, and
the library reorganized and expanded that same year. Andrew Limbong http://www.npr.org/2017/04/13/522606808/file-this-under-nostalgia-new-book-pays-tribute-to-the-library-card-catalog
Math is beautiful on a purely abstract level, quite apart from its ability to explain the
world. We all know that art, music and
nature are beautiful. They command the
senses and incite emotion. Their impact
is swift and visceral. How can a
mathematical idea inspire the same feelings?
Well, for one thing, there is something very appealing about the notion
of universal truth—especially at a time when people entertain the absurd idea
of alternative facts. The Pythagorean
theorem still holds, and pi is a transcendental number that will describe all
perfect circles for all time. But our
brains also appear to respond to mathematical beauty as they do to other
beautiful experiences. In a 2014 study,
Semir Zeki, a neuroscientist at University College London, and other
researchers used fM.R.I. scanners to observe the brains of 15 mathematicians
while they were thinking about various equations. The subjects were shown 60 mathematical
formulas two weeks before they were scanned and during and after the scan. They were also asked to rate their level of understanding
of each equation and their subjective emotional response to it, from ugly to
beautiful. The researchers found a
strong correlation between finding an equation beautiful and activation of the
medial orbitofrontal cortex, a region of the prefrontal cortex just behind the
eyes. This is the same area that has
been shown to light up when people find music or art beautiful, so it seems to
be a common neural signature of aesthetic experience.
Richard A. Friedman
Hamzeh AlMaaytah rarely sleeps, but when he does, it’s usually on the mattress hidden
behind a screen in the back of his bookshop.
Hamzeh, 36, is one of Amman’s most dedicated bookshop owners, and
certainly its most eccentric. He tends
to leap instead of walk, is prone to poetic pronouncements, and speaks most
often in Fusha, the literary form of Arabic, rather than the Jordanian dialect
typically used for daily speech. He
reveres the written word. In
response to text messages or Facebook posts he will send back a picture of his
handwritten answer. “There is so much
intimacy and knowledge in the handwriting of a friend,” he says, bemoaning that
his practice has yet to catch on. A
fourth-generation book owner, Hamzeh describes his work as a calling. “I run an emergency room for the mind,” he
explains, while sipping coffee near the entrance of the shop late one
morning. He wants to ensure there is
always a place in Jordan where one can access the healing power of books, no
matter the hour or the price. Hence the
mattress in the back. Hamzeh keeps his store open 24/7, a practice he inherited
from his father, who moved the family bookstore from Jerusalem to Amman before
the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. He’ll
occasionally get late-night relief from two former employees, a pair of Syrian
brothers who fled their native Homs. All
of his prices are negotiable, and he has both a generous loan policy and a
robust book exchange program, where patrons can swap any book they bring in for
one in the store. The shop, al-Maa
Bookstore or Mahall al-Maa in Arabic, is nestled right against the ancient
Roman Nymphaeum public water fountain, down the way from the Grand Husseini
Mosque and the local Sugar Market, on a street that was once the Amman
River. Al-maa means “water” and, like
the once-public fountain, Hamzeh wants his books to be as accessible as water. An underground well still bubbles at the
entrance. Shira Telushkin Read much more
and see pictures at http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/amman-jordan-24-hour-bookstore
April 27, 2017 (HealthDay
News) You can safely dispose of
potentially dangerous expired, unused and unwanted prescription drugs on
Saturday, April 29. The U.S. Drug
Enforcement Administration and local agencies are holding Take Back Day events
across the country. rop off your pills
or patches between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. The
service is free and anonymous, but take note: Needles, sharps and liquids will not be accepted. Last fall, more than 730,000 pounds of
prescription drugs were turned in at about 5,200 Take Back Day sites operated
by the DEA and more than 4,000 state and local law enforcement partners. In the 12 previous Take Back events, more
than 7.1 million pounds of pills were turned in, according to the DEA. Proper disposal of unwanted medicines is
important. Most abused prescription
drugs are obtained from family and friends, including from the home medicine
cabinet. They can lead to overdoses and
accidental poisonings. Once-common
methods of disposal, such as flushing medicines down the toilet or throwing
them in the trash, pose potential safety and health hazards, the DEA said. Search the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration database for a Take Back Day site near you. https://consumer.healthday.com/general-health-information-16/misc-drugs-news-218/april-29-is-national-prescription-drug-take-back-day-721832.html
http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com Issue 1700
April 28, 2017 On this date in 1947, Thor Heyerdahl and
five crew mates set out from Peru on
the Kon-Tiki to prove that Peruvian natives could
have settled Polynesia.
On this date in 1948, Igor Stravinsky conducted
the premier of his American ballet, Orpheus, in New York City at New York City
Center.
Thought of the Day The one thing that doesn't
abide by majority rule is a person's conscience. - Harper Lee, writer (28 Apr
1926-2016)
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