There came by the post the loveliest thing that one could imagine a postman might bring! It came to me from a friends of mine, it came to me from my Valentine! Elizabeth Winton
If apples were pears, and peaches were plums, and roses had a different name; If tigers were bears, and fingers were thumbs, I'd love you just the same. Unknown
Coyotes Join Wildlife Migration to Cities
CHICAGO AREA IS HOME TO GROWING NUMBERS OF COYOTES
“A delicate balance definitely exists between good and bad impacts when coyotes come to town,” says Dr. Stan Gehrt, a wildlife biologist and professor at Ohio State University. “There’s no way to minimize how people feel when the family cat doesn’t come home.” Gehrt is in charge of ongoing studies to monitor urban coyotes in the Chicago area; studies started when he worked at the Max McGraw Wildlife Foundation in Dundee, Illinois. Gehrt began studies in Cook County when residents began noticing more coyotes in urban areas near fields and wild areas. A few cats and dogs disappeared, and biologists decided it was time to understand more about the situation. Coyotes once were rare in Illinois. As many as 30 years ago, coyote populations were low due to now-defunct eradication programs. Coyotes have proliferated since then, moving from the western U.S. into eastern habitat where wolves used to be. Coyotes are adaptable and can live almost anywhere. “Surprisingly, in Chicago there is plenty of food for coyotes,” Gehrt notes. “Coyotes help stem urban deer over-population -- a serious concern to vehicle drivers, gardeners and park managers. In some areas, coyotes take 70 to 80 percent of urban fawns each year. Also, anyone who has battled throngs of cranky Canada geese or slipped on a blanket of droppings in the park knows that geese often are a problem. Coyotes eat goose eggs, goslings and occasionally nesting adults.” He notes that people sometimes demand eradication of coyotes. But eliminating all coyotes is not practical, economical or workable. Research shows that once coyotes are removed, others quickly replace them. Therefore, widespread removal is a temporary solution. Steps for keeping pets safe, if your home is near coyote habitat, include:
Don’t feed any wild animals such as raccoons or deer, which encourages coyotes as well.
Keep cats indoors at all times.
Keep your dog on a leash.
Don’t leave cat or dog food outside.
Secure garbage in areas where coyotes can’t access it; keep yards clean of refuse and brush.
Do not let pets out at night unless accompanied by a person.
About 30 percent of country-living coyotes live to see a new year; in the city, that survival rate is 58 percent. Diseases have little impact on urban coyotes; their biggest cause of death is automobiles. For more information on coyotes in Illinois, contact Illinois DNR at 217-782-6384. Learn more about coyotes by visiting the Fur Hunting and Trapping in Illinois website at dnr.state.il.us/orc/wildlife
http://dnr.state.il.us/orc/wildlife/virtual_news/releases/070104_coyotes.htm
An elegant legal brief (a written argument submitted to a court) has all the harmony of great prose. Attorney and author Adam Freedman, in his January 29 Word Craft column in The Wall Street Journal, writes that at his old law firm "Does it sing?" was code for "Is your brief finished?" The key is boiling down your arguments to a single theme. If there is an obvious weakness, concede it upfront to clear the air and allow the judge to focus on the facts that support your theme.
Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805) is most famous outside Germany as the author of the ‘Ode to Joy’, set by Beethoven’s in his Ninth Symphony. Poet, playwright, writer on aesthetics, his most famous plays are The Robbers, Don Carlos, Wallenstein and William Tell. Schiller’s play, William Tell, was completed in 1804 and is known throughout the world as a hymn to, and archetypical dramatic expression of, self-liberation from tyranny. http://www.librislondon.co.uk/books/1870352866.html
Gnocchi is the name for a thick, soft, small dumpling that is a traditional dish in Italian food. It can be made of a number of different ingredients, though it is most traditionally composed of porridge-like dough that is cut up into small pieces and then cooked. It is served as both a side dish and as a main meal. The origins of gnocchi are probably Middle Eastern. While gnocchi is most commonly referred to as an Italian dish with mainly Italian origins, it is important to know the importance of the dish in other countries, namely in Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay. These countries had a high percentage of Italian immigrants at the start of the 20th century who brought gnocchi dishes along with them. Gnocchi became so popular here that a sort of holiday was created in its honor. This is a monthly "holiday" that occurs on the 29th day of each month, and it is called "Noquis del 29" or "Gnocchi of the 29th." http://www.ehow.com/about_4572254_does-gnocchi-come.html
Triskaidekaphobia (from Greek tris meaning "3", kai meaning "and", deka meaning "10" and phobia meaning "fear" or "morbid fear") is fear of the number 13; it is a superstition and related to a specific fear of Friday the 13th, called paraskevidekatriaphobia or friggatriskaidekaphobia.
The term was first used by I.H. Coriat in "Abnormal Psychology", 1910. Tetraphobia, fear of the number 4. In Korea, China and Japan, as well as in many other East-Asian and some Southeast-Asian countries, it is not uncommon for buildings (including offices, apartments, hotels) to lack floors with the number 4, and Finnish mobile phone manufacturer Nokia's 1xxx-9xxx series of mobile phones does not include any model numbers beginning with a 4. In China, this is because in Mandarin, the pronunciation of the word for "four" (四, sì) is a homophone to that of the word for "death" (死, sǐ). 17 is an unlucky number in Italy, because in Roman digits 17 is written XVII, that could be rearranged to "VIXI", which in Latin means "I have lived" but can be a euphemism for "I am dead." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triskaidekaphobia
Tuesday is considered, by many Greeks, to be the unluckiest day of the week. It was on Tuesday, May 29th, 1453 that the city of Constantinople was besieged and taken by the Ottoman Turks. The loss of life was considerable. Conversely, Greeks consider the number 13 (on its own) to be good luck. The ancient philosophy of Numerology considers 13 to be "the most selfless of all" and "love for the world revolves around" thirteen. The Celts also considered the number 13 to be related to good fortune. However, the combination of Tuesday and 13 as Tuesday the 13th of the month is considered a very unlucky day in Greek culture. Spanish speaking cultures fear "Martes Trece", Tuesday the 13th. http://everything2.com/title/Tuesday+the+13th
The 7th edition of Dietary Guidelines for Americans advises: Enjoy your food, but eat less. Avoid oversized portions. Make half your plate fruits and vegetables. Switch to fat-free or low-fat (1%) milk. Compare sodium in foods like soup, bread, and frozen meals – and choose the foods with lower numbers. Drink water instead of sugary drinks. The 2010 Dietary Guidelines is available at www.dietaryguidelines.gov. For more information on dietary guidelines, see www.health.gov/dietaryguidelines and www.healthfinder.gov/prevention
After two years of congestion decline — likely attributable to the economic crisis and the reduction in overall driving — commuters in 439 American cities experienced a rise in traffic in 2009. That’s according to this year’s Urban Mobility Report (pdf), published by the Texas Transportation Institute. The report found that congestion in 2009 cost commuters about $115 billion in unused time and fuel. I n personal terms, the average commuter lost $808 and 34 hours sitting in rush-hour. Residents of Chicago and Washington, D.C. experienced the year’s worst traffic, as measured in the report by annual hours delayed per commuter. People in both cities lost 70 hours to congestion, on average, in 2009. Other cities in the top 5 of the report’s “very large areas” — cities with populations greater than 3 million — were Los Angeles (63 hours), Houston (58), and San Francisco (49). Though the Urban Mobility Report is considered by some to be an industry standard for determining congestion, some analysts have found flaws in its method. An evaluation of last year’s report, performed by CEOs for Cities, often reached opposite conclusions about the traffic problem in certain large cities. The latest Urban Mobility Report boasts of an improved methodology that considers traffic speed data as well as volume data to provide a “more detailed picture of the problems facing urban travelers.” But some aren’t seeing much of a change. Streetsblog says this year’s report is filled with “maddening wrongness”. To be fair, the new report ranks cities by several metrics — with speed being just one. Still, CEOs for Cities doesn’t seem impressed with the changes either. Although it hasn’t performed a thorough analysis, its cursory review prompted a statement calling the new report a “flawed and misleading guide” (pdf).
http://www.infrastructurist.com/2011/01/24/new-report-ranks-congestion-in-americas-cities/
The Carnegie Museum of Art and the Milwaukee Art Museum have a friendly wager going on involving the temporary transfer of a French impressionist painting. PennFuture and Clean Wisconsin are playing dueling environmentalists in a Super Bowl fundraising challenge. Heck, even Bishop David Zubik (formerly the bishop of Green Bay) is working out a wager with the current bishop of Green Bay. The presidents of St. Vincent College in Latrobe and St. Norbert College in De Pere, Wis., announced a Super Bowl wager. At stake is cheese and sausage from Wisconsin and a bag of flour and loaf of bread from St. Vincent College's historic grist mill. Schoolchildren at St. Bernard School in Mt. Lebanon have bet that they can donate more cans of soup than their counterparts at St. Bernard School in Green Bay. At least 37 other Pittsburgh schools are also involved in soup-related competitions.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11032/1122038-455.stm
NASA's Kepler space telescope has upended a cornucopia of planet candidates on astronomy, including 54 in the "habitable zone" of their stars. The spacecraft eyeballs stars in the "Orion Spur" of our Milky Way galaxy, a lane of stars filled with sun-like stars. In 2009, mission chief scientist William Borucki of NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., suggested the space telescope would find 1,200 planets in four years. Yale astronomer Debra Fischer called the results "historic" and suggested about 80% would eventually prove to be planets, not mistakes.
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/sciencefair/post/2011/02/kepler-exoplanet-astronomers/1
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Labradors were invented, so to speak, in the fifteenth century. They were originally used as fishing dogs for the villagers of Newfoundland. Labs attained resistance to the cold waters of the North Atlantic by developing two distinct layers of hair - an inner layer of short fuzzy hair for insulation, and a longer guard hair for shedding water. They also developed webbed paws for swimming. Loyalty, dedication, and a wonderful temperament came standard. Genetic colors were black, yellow and chocolate. (See history of the Chocolate Lab for special information). By the 1800's Labs migrated to England and then on to the United States. Here, fishing was not the required task, but retrieving ducks took center stage. Hunters loved to show off their Labs, and worked with them diligently to develop their skills. Selective breeding kept the desire to retrieve coupled with a good nose in the lineages. Hunters began to hold events where their Labs were graded according to their performance against a set standard. These were called Hunt Tests. http://www.labpups.com/history-of-labrador-retrievers.htm As origins go, the one of Labradors (or Labrador Retriever as they are more correctly known) is rather remarkable--most people assume that the dog comes from Labrador. This, of course, is inaccurate. This breed's origins start in Newfoundland (the actual name 'Labrador' may come from the Labrador Current found nearby or the Portuguese word 'labrador', meaning laborer). Not so remarkable yet, but the difference between the Retriever's origins and other breeds is that no one is certain what dogs were crossed to create it. Most assume that the Greater Newfoundland played a part, but the rest is speculation. What is known is the instant popularity of the breed. http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/8-10-2006-105106.asp
January and February have a rhyming quality because in each word, the last four letters are the same, there are four syllables, and the emphasis is on the first syllable. September, October, November and December also have a rhyming quality because all words end in ber, and all except October end in ember. Also, all of these months have three syllables with the emphasis on the second syllable. Three months (April, July and August) have two syllables and three have one syllable (March, May and June).
2011 meteor showers http://www.theskyscrapers.org/meteors/
2011 astronomy calendar of celestial events contains dates for notable celestial events including moon phases, meteor showers, eclipses, occultations, oppositions, conjunctions, and other interesting events. Most of the astronomical events on this calendar can be seen with unaided eye, although some may require a good pair of binoculars for best viewing. http://www.seasky.org/astronomy/astronomy_calendar_2011.html
Daylight saving time (DST) has been a subject of recurring debate in the United States, the United Kingdom, and many other countries around the world for about a hundred years. Ancient civilizations were known to practice a similar process of the concept of DST where they would adjust their daily schedules in accordance to the sun, such as the Roman water clocks that used different scales for different months of the year. The idea of daylight saving time was first conceived by Benjamin Franklin in 1784 during his stay in Paris. He published an essay titled “An Economical Project for Diminishing the Cost of Light” that proposed to economize the use of candles by rising earlier to make use of the morning sunlight. Although many believe that Benjamin Franklin invented DST, some say that modern DST was first proposed in 1895 by George Vernon Hudson, an entomologist from New Zealand. Hudson presented a paper to the Wellington Philosophical Society that proposed a two-hour shift forward in October and a two-hour shift back in March. He followed up his proposal with an article in 1898, and although there was interest in the idea, it was never followed through. The invention of DST was mainly credited to William Willett in 1905 when he came up with the idea of moving the clocks forward in the summer to take advantage of the daylight in the mornings and the lighter evenings. His proposal suggested moving the clocks 20 minutes forward each of four Sundays in April, and switching them back by the same amount on four Sundays in September. Willett’s daylight saving plan caught the attention of Robert Pearce who introduced a bill to the House of Commons in February 1908. The first Daylight Saving Bill was drafted in 1909 and presented to Parliament several times and examined by a select committee. However, the bill was opposed by many, especially farmers and thus the bill was never made into a law. Willett died in 1915 without getting the chance to see his idea come to life. DST was first adopted to replace artificial lighting so they could save fuel for the war effort in Germany during World War I at 11:00pm (23:00) on April 30, 1916. It was quickly followed by Britain and many countries from both sides, including the United States. Many countries reverted back to standard time post-World War I, and it wasn’t until the next World War that DST would make its return to many countries in order to save vital energy resources for the war. President Franklin D. Roosevelt instituted year-round DST in the United States, called “War Time” during World War II from February 9, 1942 to September 30, 1945. The law was enforced 40 days after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and during this time, time zones were called “Eastern War Time”, “Central War Time”, and “Pacific War Time”. After the surrender of Japan in mid-August 1945, the time zones were relabeled “Peace Time”. Daylight saving was first recognized as an energy saving aspect during World War II when Double Summer Time was applied in Britain which moved the clocks two hours ahead of GMT during the summer and one hour ahead of GMT during the winter. http://www.timeanddate.com/time/dst/history.html
In the United States, clocks move ahead one hour at 2:00 A.M. on the second Sunday in March, daylight saving time begins--March 13 in 2011. Standard time resumes every year at 2:00 A.M. on the first Sunday in November when clocks move one hour back--November 6 in 2011. Arizona, and Hawaii do not observe DST.
Daylight saving time around the world in 2011 http://www.timeanddate.com/time/dst/2011.html
From muse reader: I wonder if your readers know that the book Catch 22 was originally named by Heller Catch 18? Heller's publishers were also publishing Leon Uris's book Mila 18,and so suggested the more "catchy" title.
If you enjoy Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, you may want to travel a few miles south to see Winterthur (pronounced “winter-tour”) museum of American decorative arts, founded by Henry Francis du Pont . Its 60-acre naturalistic garden is among the country’s best, and its research library serves scholars from around the world. http://www.winterthur.org/
Perceptions of Libraries, 2010: Context and Community While the economy was declining, the online activities of the information consumer were increasing. Seventy-seven percent (77%) of Americans were online, up 12% from 2005 (Internet World Stats, September 2010). comScore reported that a quarter of U.S. mobile phones are now smartphones that provide Internet access, a growth of 1,050% from 2005. Many of the online practices of young information consumers in 2005 were across all ages in 2010. Over 90% of Boomers used e-mail and search engines, and over 50% used a social networking site. In 2010, 68% of information consumers had a library card. For those Americans economically impacted, that rate was even higher—81%. Information consumers who have experienced a job impact were not just getting library cards at greater rates; they were using the library for more services and more often in 2010. And their perception of library value was significantly different from those not impacted—their perceived value was higher. http://www.oclc.org/reports/2010perceptions/2010perceptions_all.pdf
The best books I've ever read on clear writing have been aimed at lawyers; for instance, any edition of Plain English for Lawyers by Richard C. Wydick. For answering your grammar questions, there are two books called The Grammatical Lawyer. This week, a muse reader recommends: "Typography for Lawyers, Essential Tools for Polished & Persuasive Documents," by Matthew Butterick. It's not just for lawyers. Should be required reading for anyone who produces writings and I know you would enjoy it.
Remember: prepare, pare down, polish, persuade and package in an easy-to-read format.
Frank Cavestani and his wife fell behind on their Capital One credit card payments about a decade ago. Their accounts were subsequently closed by the lender, which wrote off about $2,000 in debt they couldn't pay. So it was more than a little strange when the Hollywood couple received a pair of bills from Cap One the other day for a combined $5,195.07 in debt and interest. Stranger still, when Cavestani contacted Cap One, he said a service rep told him the resurrecting of old loans is accommodated by recent credit card regulations approved by the Federal Reserve — even though most states have a statute of limitations for how long credit card debt can be pursued by a lender. In California's case, that statute of limitations is four years. Cavestani's debt dates back to 2000, which means Cap One can't sue him for failing to pay up.
Cap One spokeswoman Tatiana Stead essentially confirmed Cavestani's story. She said Cap One was complying with Section 226.5(b)(2) of the Federal Reserve's Regulation Z, which requires lenders to send a statement for each billing cycle. But it stipulates that "a periodic statement need not be sent for an account if the creditor deems it uncollectable, or if delinquency collection proceedings have been instituted." The regulation requires Cap One to send out statements for charged-off accounts, "regardless of whether we are still actively seeking to recover on the debt," Stead said. http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-lazarus-20110201,0,639051.column
January and February have a rhyming quality because in each word, the last four letters are the same, there are four syllables, and the emphasis is on the first syllable. September, October, November and December also have a rhyming quality because all words end in ber, and all except October end in ember. Also, all of these months have three syllables with the emphasis on the second syllable. Three months (April, July and August) have two syllables and three have one syllable (March, May and June).
2011 meteor showers http://www.theskyscrapers.org/meteors/
2011 astronomy calendar of celestial events contains dates for notable celestial events including moon phases, meteor showers, eclipses, occultations, oppositions, conjunctions, and other interesting events. Most of the astronomical events on this calendar can be seen with unaided eye, although some may require a good pair of binoculars for best viewing. http://www.seasky.org/astronomy/astronomy_calendar_2011.html
Daylight saving time (DST) has been a subject of recurring debate in the United States, the United Kingdom, and many other countries around the world for about a hundred years. Ancient civilizations were known to practice a similar process of the concept of DST where they would adjust their daily schedules in accordance to the sun, such as the Roman water clocks that used different scales for different months of the year. The idea of daylight saving time was first conceived by Benjamin Franklin in 1784 during his stay in Paris. He published an essay titled “An Economical Project for Diminishing the Cost of Light” that proposed to economize the use of candles by rising earlier to make use of the morning sunlight. Although many believe that Benjamin Franklin invented DST, some say that modern DST was first proposed in 1895 by George Vernon Hudson, an entomologist from New Zealand. Hudson presented a paper to the Wellington Philosophical Society that proposed a two-hour shift forward in October and a two-hour shift back in March. He followed up his proposal with an article in 1898, and although there was interest in the idea, it was never followed through. The invention of DST was mainly credited to William Willett in 1905 when he came up with the idea of moving the clocks forward in the summer to take advantage of the daylight in the mornings and the lighter evenings. His proposal suggested moving the clocks 20 minutes forward each of four Sundays in April, and switching them back by the same amount on four Sundays in September. Willett’s daylight saving plan caught the attention of Robert Pearce who introduced a bill to the House of Commons in February 1908. The first Daylight Saving Bill was drafted in 1909 and presented to Parliament several times and examined by a select committee. However, the bill was opposed by many, especially farmers and thus the bill was never made into a law. Willett died in 1915 without getting the chance to see his idea come to life. DST was first adopted to replace artificial lighting so they could save fuel for the war effort in Germany during World War I at 11:00pm (23:00) on April 30, 1916. It was quickly followed by Britain and many countries from both sides, including the United States. Many countries reverted back to standard time post-World War I, and it wasn’t until the next World War that DST would make its return to many countries in order to save vital energy resources for the war. President Franklin D. Roosevelt instituted year-round DST in the United States, called “War Time” during World War II from February 9, 1942 to September 30, 1945. The law was enforced 40 days after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and during this time, time zones were called “Eastern War Time”, “Central War Time”, and “Pacific War Time”. After the surrender of Japan in mid-August 1945, the time zones were relabeled “Peace Time”. Daylight saving was first recognized as an energy saving aspect during World War II when Double Summer Time was applied in Britain which moved the clocks two hours ahead of GMT during the summer and one hour ahead of GMT during the winter. http://www.timeanddate.com/time/dst/history.html
In the United States, clocks move ahead one hour at 2:00 A.M. on the second Sunday in March, daylight saving time begins--March 13 in 2011. Standard time resumes every year at 2:00 A.M. on the first Sunday in November when clocks move one hour back--November 6 in 2011. Arizona, and Hawaii do not observe DST.
Daylight saving time around the world in 2011 http://www.timeanddate.com/time/dst/2011.html
From muse reader: I wonder if your readers know that the book Catch 22 was originally named by Heller Catch 18? Heller's publishers were also publishing Leon Uris's book Mila 18,and so suggested the more "catchy" title.
If you enjoy Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, you may want to travel a few miles south to see Winterthur (pronounced “winter-tour”) museum of American decorative arts, founded by Henry Francis du Pont . Its 60-acre naturalistic garden is among the country’s best, and its research library serves scholars from around the world. http://www.winterthur.org/
Perceptions of Libraries, 2010: Context and Community While the economy was declining, the online activities of the information consumer were increasing. Seventy-seven percent (77%) of Americans were online, up 12% from 2005 (Internet World Stats, September 2010). comScore reported that a quarter of U.S. mobile phones are now smartphones that provide Internet access, a growth of 1,050% from 2005. Many of the online practices of young information consumers in 2005 were across all ages in 2010. Over 90% of Boomers used e-mail and search engines, and over 50% used a social networking site. In 2010, 68% of information consumers had a library card. For those Americans economically impacted, that rate was even higher—81%. Information consumers who have experienced a job impact were not just getting library cards at greater rates; they were using the library for more services and more often in 2010. And their perception of library value was significantly different from those not impacted—their perceived value was higher. http://www.oclc.org/reports/2010perceptions/2010perceptions_all.pdf
The best books I've ever read on clear writing have been aimed at lawyers; for instance, any edition of Plain English for Lawyers by Richard C. Wydick. For answering your grammar questions, there are two books called The Grammatical Lawyer. This week, a muse reader recommends: "Typography for Lawyers, Essential Tools for Polished & Persuasive Documents," by Matthew Butterick. It's not just for lawyers. Should be required reading for anyone who produces writings and I know you would enjoy it.
Remember: prepare, pare down, polish, persuade and package in an easy-to-read format.
Frank Cavestani and his wife fell behind on their Capital One credit card payments about a decade ago. Their accounts were subsequently closed by the lender, which wrote off about $2,000 in debt they couldn't pay. So it was more than a little strange when the Hollywood couple received a pair of bills from Cap One the other day for a combined $5,195.07 in debt and interest. Stranger still, when Cavestani contacted Cap One, he said a service rep told him the resurrecting of old loans is accommodated by recent credit card regulations approved by the Federal Reserve — even though most states have a statute of limitations for how long credit card debt can be pursued by a lender. In California's case, that statute of limitations is four years. Cavestani's debt dates back to 2000, which means Cap One can't sue him for failing to pay up.
Cap One spokeswoman Tatiana Stead essentially confirmed Cavestani's story. She said Cap One was complying with Section 226.5(b)(2) of the Federal Reserve's Regulation Z, which requires lenders to send a statement for each billing cycle. But it stipulates that "a periodic statement need not be sent for an account if the creditor deems it uncollectable, or if delinquency collection proceedings have been instituted." The regulation requires Cap One to send out statements for charged-off accounts, "regardless of whether we are still actively seeking to recover on the debt," Stead said. http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-lazarus-20110201,0,639051.column
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Catch-22 is a satirical, historical novel by the American author Joseph Heller, first published in 1961. The novel, set during the later stages of World War II from 1944 onwards, is frequently cited as one of the great literary works of the twentieth century. It has a distinctive non-chronological style where events are described from different characters' points of view and out of sequence so that the time line develops along with the plot. The novel follows Yossarian, a U.S. Army Air Forces B-25 bombardier, and a number of other characters. Among other things, Catch-22 is a general critique of bureaucratic operation and reasoning. Resulting from its specific use in the book, the phrase "Catch-22" is common idiomatic usage meaning "a no-win situation" or "a double bind" of any type. Within the book, "Catch-22" is a military rule, the self-contradictory circular logic that, for example, prevents anyone from avoiding combat missions. In Heller's own words: There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he were sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle. Other forms of Catch-22 are invoked throughout the novel to justify various bureaucratic actions. At one point, victims of harassment by military police quote the MPs' explanation of one of Catch-22's provisions: "Catch-22 states that agents enforcing Catch-22 need not prove that Catch-22 actually contains whatever provision the accused violator is accused of violating." Another character explains: "Catch-22 says they have a right to do anything we can’t stop them from doing." The theme of a bureaucracy marginalizing the individual in an absurd way is similar to the world of Kafka's The Trial, and George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. The concept of 'doublethink' has definite echoes in Heller's work. Yossarian comes to realize that Catch-22 does not actually exist, but because the powers that be claim it does, and the world believes it does, it nevertheless has potent effects. Indeed, because it does not exist there is no way it can be repealed, undone, overthrown, or denounced. The combination of force with specious legalistic justification is one of the book's primary motifs. The motif of bureaucratic absurdity is further explored in 1994's Closing Time, Heller's sequel to Catch-22. This darker, slower-paced, apocalyptic novel explores the pre- and post-war lives of some of the major characters in Catch-22, with particular emphasis on the relationship between Yossarian and tailgunner Sammy Singer. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catch-22
From True Detectives by Jonathan Kellerman How about some water? Ice or room, bubbly or flat? Ice flat is fine.
Amusing words: Buzz, buzzword, buzzophere
Misuses of buzzwords
Thought-control via intentional vagueness. In management, by stating organization goals with opaque words of unclear meaning; their positive connotations prevent questioning of intent, especially when many buzzwords are used. (See newspeak)
To inflate the trivial to importance and stature.
To impress a judge or an examiner by seeming to know a legal psychologic theory or a quantum physics principle, by name-dropping it, e.g. "cognitive dissonance", the "Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle".
To camouflage chit-chat saying nothing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buzzword
Q: Why do we call some interstates "freeways" if they charge tolls?
A: The term "freeway" refers to how motorists enter and leave the highway, not to how the highway was financed. Freeways have grade separations at all railroads and public crossroads, with interchanges at selected crossroads. Traffic can enter or leave via the interchanges.
Toll roads incorporated into the Interstate System are freeways.
Federal Highway Administration
Q: What is "Zulu" time?
A: It is the same as Greenwich Mean Time, the time at the Royal Greenwich Observatory in Greenwich, England, at 0 degrees longitude. It is five hours earlier than standard time in Ohio. The term is mostly used by the military.
U.S. Navy.
Wondering? Then, just ask by e-mail to justask@thecourier.com, by fax to 419-427-8480, or by mail to Just Ask, The Courier, P.O. Box 609, Findlay, OH 45839. http://www.thecourier.com/Opinion/columns/2011/Jan/JU/ar_JU_013111.asp?d=013111,2011,Jan,31&c=c_13
Stephanie Kwolek’s research with high performance chemical compounds for the DuPont Company led to the development of a synthetic material called Kevlar which is five times stronger than the same weight of steel. Kevlar, patented by Kwolek in 1966, does not rust nor corrode and is extremely lightweight. Many police officers owe their lives to Stephanie Kwolek, for Kevlar is the material used in bullet proof vests. Other applications of the compound include underwater cables, brake linings, space vehicles, boats, parachutes, skis, and building materials. Stephanie Kwolek was born in New Kensington, Pennsylvania in 1923. Upon graduating in 1946 from the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie-Mellon University) with a bachelor’s degree, Stephanie Kwolek went to work as a chemist at the DuPont Company. She would ultimately obtain 28 patents during her 40-year tenure as a research scientist. In 1995, Stephanie Kwolek was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blkevlar.htm
E.I. DuPont de Nemours & Company once called Wallace Hume Carothers "one of the most brilliant organic chemists" the company had ever employed. In the nine years he spent working there, Carothers made contributions to the theory of organic chemistry that led to the invention of polymeric materials such as the synthetic materials nylon and neoprene, the first commercially successful synthetic rubber. Carothers grew up in Iowa, the son of a schoolteacher. After receiving a B.S. from Tarkio College, Carothers obtained his master's and doctor's degrees from the University of Illinois. After his graduation, Carothers became an instructor at Harvard, where he started experimenting with chemical structures of polymers with high molecular weight. In 1928, DuPont lured him away from Harvard to work in a new research lab in Wilmington, Del. for developing artificial materials. There, he investigated the structure of substances of high molecular weight and their formation by polymerization. The new super-polymer reached the market in 1937 in the form of toothbrush bristles advertised as superior to anything plucked from the hide of an animal. In 1938, DuPont went public, announcing the invention of nylon, "the first man-made organic textile fabric prepared entirely from new materials from the mineral kingdom." http://web.mit.edu/invent/iow/carothers.html
Exquisite flowers, majestic trees, dazzling fountains, extravagant conservatory, starlit theatre, thunderous organ—all describe the magic of Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, a horticultural showstopper where the gardening arts are encased in classic forms and enhanced by modern technology. Many generations helped create Longwood Gardens, but one individual—Pierre S. du Pont (1870-1954), industrialist, conservationist, farmer, designer, impresario, and philanthropist—made the most enduring contribution. Pierre du Pont was the great-grandson of Eleuthère Irénée du Pont (1771-1834), who arrived from France in 1800 and founded the E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company gunpowder works. Pierre turned the family business into a corporate empire in the early 20th century and used his resulting fortune to develop the Longwood property. More than 200 years earlier, the land had been inhabited by the native Lenni Lenape tribe who hunted, fished, and farmed the productive wilderness. In 1700, a Quaker family named Peirce purchased the property from William Penn and soon established a working farm. Joshua and Samuel Peirce began planting an arboretum on the farm in 1798. The farm was purchased in 1906 by Pierre du Pont so he could preserve the trees, and from 1907 until the 1930s Mr. du Pont created most of what is enjoyed today. The Longwood Organ will be re-inaugurated on February 4 and 5, 2011, after the second complete rebuilding in its 82-year history.
These activities are free with Gardens admission. Concerts are first-come, first-served seating.
Saturday, February 5, 2011
11am - 5 pm: Organ Touch Table Open
11:00 am: Organ Museum Talk
11:30 am: Player Organ Demonstration (computerized) http://www.longwoodgardens.org/TheStoryofLongwood_1_3_2_1_1.html
http://www.longwoodgardens.org/OrganFanFare.html
In 2011 the Chinese New Year falls on February 3 in the Year of the Rabbit. Here is information on the Chinese Lunar Calendar as well as an index to the Chinese Zodiac Signs and their associated characteristics. The Lunar Calendar & Chinese Zodiac
Non-Chinese Holidays in China Christmas Guide Valentine's Day American Thanksgiving http://gochina.about.com/od/chinesenewyear/p/ChineseNYGuide.htm
Parks are like poetry and music. They basically have no reason to exist--that is also what is so special about them. Our house in the north of Spain has three gardens. One is all mulberry, entirely natural. One is only 20% filled now. At the highest point there is an herb garden where I grow artichokes, vegetables and all kinds of tomatoes. In Spain there is a different tomato for every pasta, salad or sauce. These are comments by Adriaan Geuze. design director of West 8--a Dutch landscape firm based in Rotterdam with offices in Belgium, New York and Toronto. Wall Street Journal January 22-23, 2011 See images of West 8 designs at: http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&biw=1916&bih=874&gbv=2&tbs=isch%3A1&sa=1&q=%22west+8%22&aq=f&aqi=g3&aql=&oq=
On March 23, 2010, President Obama signed health care reform legislation: “The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.” Pub. L. No. 111-148, 124 Stat.119 (2010), as amended by the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010, Pub. L. No. 111-152, 124 Stat. 1029 (2010) (the “Act”). See 78-page order granting summary judgment issued by federal judge Roger Vinson January 31, 2011 at: http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/013111healthcareruling.pdf
Unlike a Virginia judge in December, Judge Vinson concluded that the insurance requirement was so “inextricably bound” to other provisions of the Affordable Care Act that its unconstitutionality required the invalidation of the entire law. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/01/us/01ruling.html?_r=1&hp
From True Detectives by Jonathan Kellerman How about some water? Ice or room, bubbly or flat? Ice flat is fine.
Amusing words: Buzz, buzzword, buzzophere
Misuses of buzzwords
Thought-control via intentional vagueness. In management, by stating organization goals with opaque words of unclear meaning; their positive connotations prevent questioning of intent, especially when many buzzwords are used. (See newspeak)
To inflate the trivial to importance and stature.
To impress a judge or an examiner by seeming to know a legal psychologic theory or a quantum physics principle, by name-dropping it, e.g. "cognitive dissonance", the "Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle".
To camouflage chit-chat saying nothing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buzzword
Q: Why do we call some interstates "freeways" if they charge tolls?
A: The term "freeway" refers to how motorists enter and leave the highway, not to how the highway was financed. Freeways have grade separations at all railroads and public crossroads, with interchanges at selected crossroads. Traffic can enter or leave via the interchanges.
Toll roads incorporated into the Interstate System are freeways.
Federal Highway Administration
Q: What is "Zulu" time?
A: It is the same as Greenwich Mean Time, the time at the Royal Greenwich Observatory in Greenwich, England, at 0 degrees longitude. It is five hours earlier than standard time in Ohio. The term is mostly used by the military.
U.S. Navy.
Wondering? Then, just ask by e-mail to justask@thecourier.com, by fax to 419-427-8480, or by mail to Just Ask, The Courier, P.O. Box 609, Findlay, OH 45839. http://www.thecourier.com/Opinion/columns/2011/Jan/JU/ar_JU_013111.asp?d=013111,2011,Jan,31&c=c_13
Stephanie Kwolek’s research with high performance chemical compounds for the DuPont Company led to the development of a synthetic material called Kevlar which is five times stronger than the same weight of steel. Kevlar, patented by Kwolek in 1966, does not rust nor corrode and is extremely lightweight. Many police officers owe their lives to Stephanie Kwolek, for Kevlar is the material used in bullet proof vests. Other applications of the compound include underwater cables, brake linings, space vehicles, boats, parachutes, skis, and building materials. Stephanie Kwolek was born in New Kensington, Pennsylvania in 1923. Upon graduating in 1946 from the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie-Mellon University) with a bachelor’s degree, Stephanie Kwolek went to work as a chemist at the DuPont Company. She would ultimately obtain 28 patents during her 40-year tenure as a research scientist. In 1995, Stephanie Kwolek was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blkevlar.htm
E.I. DuPont de Nemours & Company once called Wallace Hume Carothers "one of the most brilliant organic chemists" the company had ever employed. In the nine years he spent working there, Carothers made contributions to the theory of organic chemistry that led to the invention of polymeric materials such as the synthetic materials nylon and neoprene, the first commercially successful synthetic rubber. Carothers grew up in Iowa, the son of a schoolteacher. After receiving a B.S. from Tarkio College, Carothers obtained his master's and doctor's degrees from the University of Illinois. After his graduation, Carothers became an instructor at Harvard, where he started experimenting with chemical structures of polymers with high molecular weight. In 1928, DuPont lured him away from Harvard to work in a new research lab in Wilmington, Del. for developing artificial materials. There, he investigated the structure of substances of high molecular weight and their formation by polymerization. The new super-polymer reached the market in 1937 in the form of toothbrush bristles advertised as superior to anything plucked from the hide of an animal. In 1938, DuPont went public, announcing the invention of nylon, "the first man-made organic textile fabric prepared entirely from new materials from the mineral kingdom." http://web.mit.edu/invent/iow/carothers.html
Exquisite flowers, majestic trees, dazzling fountains, extravagant conservatory, starlit theatre, thunderous organ—all describe the magic of Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, a horticultural showstopper where the gardening arts are encased in classic forms and enhanced by modern technology. Many generations helped create Longwood Gardens, but one individual—Pierre S. du Pont (1870-1954), industrialist, conservationist, farmer, designer, impresario, and philanthropist—made the most enduring contribution. Pierre du Pont was the great-grandson of Eleuthère Irénée du Pont (1771-1834), who arrived from France in 1800 and founded the E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company gunpowder works. Pierre turned the family business into a corporate empire in the early 20th century and used his resulting fortune to develop the Longwood property. More than 200 years earlier, the land had been inhabited by the native Lenni Lenape tribe who hunted, fished, and farmed the productive wilderness. In 1700, a Quaker family named Peirce purchased the property from William Penn and soon established a working farm. Joshua and Samuel Peirce began planting an arboretum on the farm in 1798. The farm was purchased in 1906 by Pierre du Pont so he could preserve the trees, and from 1907 until the 1930s Mr. du Pont created most of what is enjoyed today. The Longwood Organ will be re-inaugurated on February 4 and 5, 2011, after the second complete rebuilding in its 82-year history.
These activities are free with Gardens admission. Concerts are first-come, first-served seating.
Saturday, February 5, 2011
11am - 5 pm: Organ Touch Table Open
11:00 am: Organ Museum Talk
11:30 am: Player Organ Demonstration (computerized) http://www.longwoodgardens.org/TheStoryofLongwood_1_3_2_1_1.html
http://www.longwoodgardens.org/OrganFanFare.html
In 2011 the Chinese New Year falls on February 3 in the Year of the Rabbit. Here is information on the Chinese Lunar Calendar as well as an index to the Chinese Zodiac Signs and their associated characteristics. The Lunar Calendar & Chinese Zodiac
Non-Chinese Holidays in China Christmas Guide Valentine's Day American Thanksgiving http://gochina.about.com/od/chinesenewyear/p/ChineseNYGuide.htm
Parks are like poetry and music. They basically have no reason to exist--that is also what is so special about them. Our house in the north of Spain has three gardens. One is all mulberry, entirely natural. One is only 20% filled now. At the highest point there is an herb garden where I grow artichokes, vegetables and all kinds of tomatoes. In Spain there is a different tomato for every pasta, salad or sauce. These are comments by Adriaan Geuze. design director of West 8--a Dutch landscape firm based in Rotterdam with offices in Belgium, New York and Toronto. Wall Street Journal January 22-23, 2011 See images of West 8 designs at: http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&biw=1916&bih=874&gbv=2&tbs=isch%3A1&sa=1&q=%22west+8%22&aq=f&aqi=g3&aql=&oq=
On March 23, 2010, President Obama signed health care reform legislation: “The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.” Pub. L. No. 111-148, 124 Stat.119 (2010), as amended by the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010, Pub. L. No. 111-152, 124 Stat. 1029 (2010) (the “Act”). See 78-page order granting summary judgment issued by federal judge Roger Vinson January 31, 2011 at: http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/013111healthcareruling.pdf
Unlike a Virginia judge in December, Judge Vinson concluded that the insurance requirement was so “inextricably bound” to other provisions of the Affordable Care Act that its unconstitutionality required the invalidation of the entire law. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/01/us/01ruling.html?_r=1&hp
Monday, January 31, 2011
Facebook is rolling out a new ad product that lets advertisers give prominent visibility to interactions a user’s friends have with a brand. “Sponsored Stories” can be built around user interactions with a brand’s applications, likes, location check-ins and page posts. Sponsored Stories are the same type of content that already appears in the main News Feed, only now brands have a way of making sure they’re visible, with promotion to a placement on the right side of the page. Facebook said Sponsored Stories would not increase the ad load on the site. Instead, they will displace ad messages that are purely promotional copy in favor of ads that report on user actions. “It’s about taking the word of mouth recommendations and endorsements that are happening across Facebook every day and increasing the distribution of those,” said Jim Squires, a product marketing lead at Facebook. Facebook hasn’t rolled out many new ad products recently, mostly because its ad system, which was originally panned, is working quite well. eMarketer estimates Facebook is on pace to double revenue this year, generating $4 billion. It is diversifying from ad revenue with its Facebook Credits virtual currency, which it is requiring social gaming companies use—and give Facebook a 30 percent cut on transactions. The move is part of Facebook’s efforts to provide more “social context” to its ads. A Facebook-Nielsen study found ads with such context—showing that a friend recently liked a brand, for example—improves ad effectiveness. Facebook already does this for many of its ad products, showing users which of their friends have liked a brand. Among new advertisers, Coke is using Sponsored Stories in order to highlight interactions with its “Coke Cheers” Facebook application. Other possibilities cited by Squires include a Starbucks campaign to highlight when a friend uses Facebook Places to check in at a Starbucks store. Facebook is not alone in blending paid and earned media. Twitter’s ad system does this to an extent by letting advertisers attach themselves to trending terms that already exist in Twitter.
http://www.adweek.com/aw/content_display/news/e3i48e8837b4923e4934c3485b9a37af20e?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+adweek%2Ftop-news+(Adweek.com+-+Top+News)
The Giselle or Peasant Foot: The main characteristic is that there are at least three toes of the same length and all the toes tend to be short. The width of the heel for this foot is medium to wide.
The Egyptian Foot: This type of foot has a longer big toe and the rest of the toes taper down from longest to shortest. This tends to be a narrow foot.
The Greek Foot: On this foot the second toe is longer than all the others and the width of the foot is narrow to medium. http://ezinearticles.com/?Different-Types-of-Feet-in-Relation-to-Ballet-Dancing&id=3790381
The long term misunderstanding and simplification of RIGHT vs. LEFT terminology in political discourse is responsible for the misconception that “The RIGHT” with its emphasis on traditional, nationalistic, conservative or religious values is inevitably a step in the direction of the FAR RIGHT "ending in Fascism." Yet history has demonstrated that both political extremes share a basic common appeal to the “masses” and depend on a collectivist ideology that glorifies abstractions such as "The Nation," "The People," "The Throne" or "The Working Class." On the eve of World War II, various so called “Right Wing” authoritarian regimes of the conservative, traditional, national and religious type (always considered by the Left to be "proto-Fascist") in Ethiopia (Emperor Haile Selassi), Austria (the “Clerical-Fascist” regime of Engelbert Dollfus and Kurt Schuschnigg), Poland (General Jozef Pilsudski and his successors), Yugoslavia (General Simovic and his supporters in the armed forces) and Greece (Ionnas Metaxas), all stood up and opposed Hitler and the Axis forces that threatened to blackmail, intimidate and subjugate their nations. All these leaders were labeled as “Fascist” by Soviet and Left-Wing propaganda up until the German invasion of the USSR in 1941. The Spanish Civil War has frequently been portrayed as an epic struggle between the forces of the LEFT (variously identified as progressive, liberal, socialist, internationalist, democratic and "anti-Fascist") and the RIGHT (labeled reactionary, conservative, religious, and "anti-democratic"). During the latter part of General Franco’s long 35-year rule, more and more speculation revolved around the question of who or exactly what type of regime would succeed him. Unlike Hitler and Mussolini, Franco survived World War II as well as the isolation of his country by the Allies, who at first considered him a remnant of the Fascist states aligned with the Axis powers. Franco, however, was a military man whose career in the army and arch-conservative views propelled him to lead the uprising against the Republic, but he did not establish a political party nor did he express open support for any of the various Catholic, conservative, monarchist and fascist parties who rallied to his cause. In order to understand both what happened during and after the Spanish Civil War, it is necessary to distinguish between the coalition of forces that supported both sides in the conflict. Franco’s supporters were divided between those who hoped for a return to the monarchy, rival wings of the Bourbon dynasty, moderates, conservatives and the Fascists. The Fascist but anti-monarchist forces of the Falange Española (Spanish Phalanx), had been founded by the extremely popular (and handsome) “martyred leader” (executed by the Republican forces) Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera (son of the dictator who ruled the country following World War I), wanted a republic, modeled after Mussolini’s Fascist Italy, and claimed to be the hero of Spain’s poor and dispossessed. He appealed to the working class and stressed that they had his full sympathy and understanding of the oppressive role played by the monarchy and landed aristocracy. Many conservative supporters of the church, military and monarchy were concerned as much by the leader of the Falange, Jose Antonio, (always referred to by his admirers and followers by his first names only) as by the Marxists and their myriad anarchist and socialist parties. The moderate conservative right, monarchist and centrist parties that opposed the Leftist “Popular Front” in the elections in 1936 refused to enter into an electoral alliance with the Falange which stood isolated. http://www.newenglishreview.org/custpage.cfm/frm/21484/sec_id/21484
The novel Winter in Madrid by C.J. Sansom depicts dangerous games and choices in Spain after the Spanish Civil War is over.
Action painting, sometimes called "gestural abstraction", is a style of painting in which paint is spontaneously dribbled, splashed or smeared onto the canvas, rather than being carefully applied. The resulting work often emphasizes the physical act of painting itself as an essential aspect of the finished work or concern of its artist. The style was widespread from the 1940s until the early 1960s, and is closely associated with abstract expressionism (some critics have used the terms "action painting" and "abstract expressionism" interchangeably). A comparison is often drawn between the American action painting and the French tachisme. The term was coined by the American critic Harold Rosenberg in 1952 and signaled a major shift in the aesthetic perspective of New York School painters and critics. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_painting
You've probably tried a number of optical 'tricks', such as staring at a red dot for some time, and then looking away at a plain white wall or piece of paper. You then 'see' a green dot. This is an illusion known as 'after-image'. The after-image is always the complementary color of the color you first stared at. If you use two complementary colors of equal intensity in a room you can create an uncomfortable effect. The eye doesn't know which one to concentrate on. The solution here is to tone down one of the colors. You could tint it (make it lighter) or shade it (make it darker). Colors based on the red/ orange/ yellow area of the color wheel appear (to most of us) as warm colors and inviting. They seem to 'come into' the room, and are termed advancing colors. On the other hand, violet-blue/ blue/ green-blue appear to recede from us and are known as receding colors. http://www.ideas-for-home-decorating.com/warm-colors.html
http://www.adweek.com/aw/content_display/news/e3i48e8837b4923e4934c3485b9a37af20e?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+adweek%2Ftop-news+(Adweek.com+-+Top+News)
The Giselle or Peasant Foot: The main characteristic is that there are at least three toes of the same length and all the toes tend to be short. The width of the heel for this foot is medium to wide.
The Egyptian Foot: This type of foot has a longer big toe and the rest of the toes taper down from longest to shortest. This tends to be a narrow foot.
The Greek Foot: On this foot the second toe is longer than all the others and the width of the foot is narrow to medium. http://ezinearticles.com/?Different-Types-of-Feet-in-Relation-to-Ballet-Dancing&id=3790381
The long term misunderstanding and simplification of RIGHT vs. LEFT terminology in political discourse is responsible for the misconception that “The RIGHT” with its emphasis on traditional, nationalistic, conservative or religious values is inevitably a step in the direction of the FAR RIGHT "ending in Fascism." Yet history has demonstrated that both political extremes share a basic common appeal to the “masses” and depend on a collectivist ideology that glorifies abstractions such as "The Nation," "The People," "The Throne" or "The Working Class." On the eve of World War II, various so called “Right Wing” authoritarian regimes of the conservative, traditional, national and religious type (always considered by the Left to be "proto-Fascist") in Ethiopia (Emperor Haile Selassi), Austria (the “Clerical-Fascist” regime of Engelbert Dollfus and Kurt Schuschnigg), Poland (General Jozef Pilsudski and his successors), Yugoslavia (General Simovic and his supporters in the armed forces) and Greece (Ionnas Metaxas), all stood up and opposed Hitler and the Axis forces that threatened to blackmail, intimidate and subjugate their nations. All these leaders were labeled as “Fascist” by Soviet and Left-Wing propaganda up until the German invasion of the USSR in 1941. The Spanish Civil War has frequently been portrayed as an epic struggle between the forces of the LEFT (variously identified as progressive, liberal, socialist, internationalist, democratic and "anti-Fascist") and the RIGHT (labeled reactionary, conservative, religious, and "anti-democratic"). During the latter part of General Franco’s long 35-year rule, more and more speculation revolved around the question of who or exactly what type of regime would succeed him. Unlike Hitler and Mussolini, Franco survived World War II as well as the isolation of his country by the Allies, who at first considered him a remnant of the Fascist states aligned with the Axis powers. Franco, however, was a military man whose career in the army and arch-conservative views propelled him to lead the uprising against the Republic, but he did not establish a political party nor did he express open support for any of the various Catholic, conservative, monarchist and fascist parties who rallied to his cause. In order to understand both what happened during and after the Spanish Civil War, it is necessary to distinguish between the coalition of forces that supported both sides in the conflict. Franco’s supporters were divided between those who hoped for a return to the monarchy, rival wings of the Bourbon dynasty, moderates, conservatives and the Fascists. The Fascist but anti-monarchist forces of the Falange Española (Spanish Phalanx), had been founded by the extremely popular (and handsome) “martyred leader” (executed by the Republican forces) Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera (son of the dictator who ruled the country following World War I), wanted a republic, modeled after Mussolini’s Fascist Italy, and claimed to be the hero of Spain’s poor and dispossessed. He appealed to the working class and stressed that they had his full sympathy and understanding of the oppressive role played by the monarchy and landed aristocracy. Many conservative supporters of the church, military and monarchy were concerned as much by the leader of the Falange, Jose Antonio, (always referred to by his admirers and followers by his first names only) as by the Marxists and their myriad anarchist and socialist parties. The moderate conservative right, monarchist and centrist parties that opposed the Leftist “Popular Front” in the elections in 1936 refused to enter into an electoral alliance with the Falange which stood isolated. http://www.newenglishreview.org/custpage.cfm/frm/21484/sec_id/21484
The novel Winter in Madrid by C.J. Sansom depicts dangerous games and choices in Spain after the Spanish Civil War is over.
Action painting, sometimes called "gestural abstraction", is a style of painting in which paint is spontaneously dribbled, splashed or smeared onto the canvas, rather than being carefully applied. The resulting work often emphasizes the physical act of painting itself as an essential aspect of the finished work or concern of its artist. The style was widespread from the 1940s until the early 1960s, and is closely associated with abstract expressionism (some critics have used the terms "action painting" and "abstract expressionism" interchangeably). A comparison is often drawn between the American action painting and the French tachisme. The term was coined by the American critic Harold Rosenberg in 1952 and signaled a major shift in the aesthetic perspective of New York School painters and critics. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_painting
You've probably tried a number of optical 'tricks', such as staring at a red dot for some time, and then looking away at a plain white wall or piece of paper. You then 'see' a green dot. This is an illusion known as 'after-image'. The after-image is always the complementary color of the color you first stared at. If you use two complementary colors of equal intensity in a room you can create an uncomfortable effect. The eye doesn't know which one to concentrate on. The solution here is to tone down one of the colors. You could tint it (make it lighter) or shade it (make it darker). Colors based on the red/ orange/ yellow area of the color wheel appear (to most of us) as warm colors and inviting. They seem to 'come into' the room, and are termed advancing colors. On the other hand, violet-blue/ blue/ green-blue appear to recede from us and are known as receding colors. http://www.ideas-for-home-decorating.com/warm-colors.html
Friday, January 28, 2011
A morpheme is a minimal meaningful language unit; it cannot be divided into smaller meaningful units. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&defl=en&q=define:morpheme&sa=X&ei=TiI0TdH9PMSt8AaczN3kCA&sqi=2&ved=0CBMQkAE
Because of their modifying function, qualifiers really are adverbs (words that modify a verb, adjective, or another adverb). Very, too, rather, even, much, fairly, quite, still, kind of, and sort of are qualifiers. Qualifiers can be a strong writing tool, especially when used for emphasis or clarification. They can help liven up language and ensure that the reader understands your meaning, but they can also cause wordiness. We use them often in speech, so it seems natural that they would flow in writing as well. But there are several strategies to avoid wordiness with qualifiers.
Qualifiers with Absolutes
One problem writers encounter when using qualifiers is that, many times, it is tempting to use a qualifier to modify a word that is already absolute in its meaning. Absolute words describe something as it is in a certain form or extreme state, thus they cannot take on a modifier.
Ex. The Christmas decorations looked absolutely perfect.
(Something that is perfect cannot be any more or less so, nor can it be, as this sentence seems to say, “perfectly perfect.”) Ex. Salvador Dali’s paintings strike most people as being very unique.
(Unique refers to something that is one of a kind, not something that can be measured in degrees of how one-of-a-kind it is.)
In each one of these sentences, the adjective after each qualifier already has a clear meaning. Writers should try to avoid using qualifiers with absolute words in most writing.
Imprecise Qualifiers
Writers may also have difficulty qualifying or intensifying imprecise adjectives when more precise meaning could be conveyed by choosing a different, more specific adjective instead. The technique to employ here is to draw on that extensive vocabulary we all have stored up. For example, rather than claiming to have read a really great book, what about an excellent or outstanding book? A very tired individual may instead feel exhausted or fatigued. Extremely upset may be exasperated or enraged or devastated depending on the context.
Replacing weak qualifier + adjective/adverb combinations with more specific words strengthens a writer’s voice and can even make ideas easier to understand. http://www.uhv.edu/ac/newsletters/writing/grammartip2008.06.10.htm
France's experimental-comic-book movement, OuBaPo, has been trying to revolutionize the genre for two decades. OuBaPo's members produced one book that could be read back-to-front; another that boiled down the 4,300 pages of Marcel Proust's voluminous "In Search of Lost Time" to six drawings; and one that told a single story—of how a man went to get something from the refrigerator—in 99 different ways. The exclusive group's nine current members live in France, the U.S., Spain and Switzerland. Thousands of OuBaPo books have been sold, and the drawings have been featured in several museum exhibitions. "They have opened the door to a vast artistic territory," says Julien Misserey, the organizer of an annual comic book symposium in France. The name OuBaPo abbreviates a long French phrase meaning Potential Comics Workshop. In France and other European countries, comics have long been considered more than child's play. Known in some circles as the "ninth art," after music, theater, dance, etc., comics have entertained French adults since the 19th century and today are a big business. In 2008, 7% of all books sold in France were comics, according to the French Publishers' Trade Union. That's the same market share held by elementary, secondary and high-school books. Academic study of comics also dates to the 19th century. A Swiss writer named Rodolphe Töpffer is considered by many to be the first comic-book theoretician, for the work he published on comic strips in 1845. French scholars came to grips with comic books in the middle of the 20th century. OuBaPo stands for Ouvroir de Bande-Dessinée Potentielle. It was founded in 1993 by a group of artists and a comic-book historian who used to hang out in a Parisian artists' studio called Nawak, French slang for "nonsense." Aspiring members can't apply to be part of the group; they have to be singled out and then unanimously approved by existing OuBaPo members. The collective was inspired by a French literary group called Ouvroir de littérature potentielle (the Experimental Literary Workshop), whose members write books using defined restrictions. In 1969, one member of the literary workshop wrote a book without using the letter "e." http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704515904576075980439410992.html
The publisher of The Wall Street Journal filed suit January 25 to overturn a decades-long court order barring public access to a confidential Medicare database. Dow Jones & Co says access to the database is essential to rooting out fraud and abuse in the government health-care program. The American Medical Association, the doctors’ trade group, successfully sued the government in 1979 to keep secret how much money individual doctors receive from Medicare, and the ruling still stands. The filing, made in Florida federal court, comes after a series of articles in the Journal about abuses of the Medicare system. The articles were based on computerized Medicare records that represent part of the broader database at the center of the 1979 case. Dow Jones, owned by News Corp., claims the 1979 injunction hampered the paper’s reporting since it limited its access to the data and its ability to name physicians and other providers. “It’s time to overturn an injunction that, for decades, has allowed some doctors to defraud Medicare free from public scrutiny,” Dow Jones general counsel Mark Jackson said in a statement. The AMA withstood at least two attempts to reverse the injunction in 2009. In one case, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled that under the Freedom of Information Act, physicians’ privacy interest outweighed the public interest in knowing how much doctors were collecting from Medicare. WSJ Law Blog January 26, 2011
To write with a broken pencil is pointless.
When fish are in schools they sometimes take debate.
A thief who stole a calendar got twelve months.
When the smog lifts in Los Angeles , U.C.L.A.
The professor discovered that her theory of earthquakes was on shaky ground.
The batteries were given out free of charge.
Local Area Network in Australia : The LAN down under.
A boiled egg is hard to beat.
Acupuncture: a jab well done.
Condo life is hard Her upstairs neighbors owned 66 percent of the building’s square footage, and so had a 66 percent voting stake in the association that governed its management. That meant they controlled what condo fees everyone in the three-unit building paid, what would or wouldn’t get done to the property’s common areas, and how much the association was willing to pay for that work. They left snippy notes at her door, turned down the thermostat during the day (she worked at home), and made her life a misery. Read her stories and those of others at: http://www.boston.com/realestate/news/articles/2011/01/23/home_sweet_hell_falling_into_the_condo_trap/ Click on single page at bottom for ease in reading.
Because of their modifying function, qualifiers really are adverbs (words that modify a verb, adjective, or another adverb). Very, too, rather, even, much, fairly, quite, still, kind of, and sort of are qualifiers. Qualifiers can be a strong writing tool, especially when used for emphasis or clarification. They can help liven up language and ensure that the reader understands your meaning, but they can also cause wordiness. We use them often in speech, so it seems natural that they would flow in writing as well. But there are several strategies to avoid wordiness with qualifiers.
Qualifiers with Absolutes
One problem writers encounter when using qualifiers is that, many times, it is tempting to use a qualifier to modify a word that is already absolute in its meaning. Absolute words describe something as it is in a certain form or extreme state, thus they cannot take on a modifier.
Ex. The Christmas decorations looked absolutely perfect.
(Something that is perfect cannot be any more or less so, nor can it be, as this sentence seems to say, “perfectly perfect.”) Ex. Salvador Dali’s paintings strike most people as being very unique.
(Unique refers to something that is one of a kind, not something that can be measured in degrees of how one-of-a-kind it is.)
In each one of these sentences, the adjective after each qualifier already has a clear meaning. Writers should try to avoid using qualifiers with absolute words in most writing.
Imprecise Qualifiers
Writers may also have difficulty qualifying or intensifying imprecise adjectives when more precise meaning could be conveyed by choosing a different, more specific adjective instead. The technique to employ here is to draw on that extensive vocabulary we all have stored up. For example, rather than claiming to have read a really great book, what about an excellent or outstanding book? A very tired individual may instead feel exhausted or fatigued. Extremely upset may be exasperated or enraged or devastated depending on the context.
Replacing weak qualifier + adjective/adverb combinations with more specific words strengthens a writer’s voice and can even make ideas easier to understand. http://www.uhv.edu/ac/newsletters/writing/grammartip2008.06.10.htm
France's experimental-comic-book movement, OuBaPo, has been trying to revolutionize the genre for two decades. OuBaPo's members produced one book that could be read back-to-front; another that boiled down the 4,300 pages of Marcel Proust's voluminous "In Search of Lost Time" to six drawings; and one that told a single story—of how a man went to get something from the refrigerator—in 99 different ways. The exclusive group's nine current members live in France, the U.S., Spain and Switzerland. Thousands of OuBaPo books have been sold, and the drawings have been featured in several museum exhibitions. "They have opened the door to a vast artistic territory," says Julien Misserey, the organizer of an annual comic book symposium in France. The name OuBaPo abbreviates a long French phrase meaning Potential Comics Workshop. In France and other European countries, comics have long been considered more than child's play. Known in some circles as the "ninth art," after music, theater, dance, etc., comics have entertained French adults since the 19th century and today are a big business. In 2008, 7% of all books sold in France were comics, according to the French Publishers' Trade Union. That's the same market share held by elementary, secondary and high-school books. Academic study of comics also dates to the 19th century. A Swiss writer named Rodolphe Töpffer is considered by many to be the first comic-book theoretician, for the work he published on comic strips in 1845. French scholars came to grips with comic books in the middle of the 20th century. OuBaPo stands for Ouvroir de Bande-Dessinée Potentielle. It was founded in 1993 by a group of artists and a comic-book historian who used to hang out in a Parisian artists' studio called Nawak, French slang for "nonsense." Aspiring members can't apply to be part of the group; they have to be singled out and then unanimously approved by existing OuBaPo members. The collective was inspired by a French literary group called Ouvroir de littérature potentielle (the Experimental Literary Workshop), whose members write books using defined restrictions. In 1969, one member of the literary workshop wrote a book without using the letter "e." http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704515904576075980439410992.html
The publisher of The Wall Street Journal filed suit January 25 to overturn a decades-long court order barring public access to a confidential Medicare database. Dow Jones & Co says access to the database is essential to rooting out fraud and abuse in the government health-care program. The American Medical Association, the doctors’ trade group, successfully sued the government in 1979 to keep secret how much money individual doctors receive from Medicare, and the ruling still stands. The filing, made in Florida federal court, comes after a series of articles in the Journal about abuses of the Medicare system. The articles were based on computerized Medicare records that represent part of the broader database at the center of the 1979 case. Dow Jones, owned by News Corp., claims the 1979 injunction hampered the paper’s reporting since it limited its access to the data and its ability to name physicians and other providers. “It’s time to overturn an injunction that, for decades, has allowed some doctors to defraud Medicare free from public scrutiny,” Dow Jones general counsel Mark Jackson said in a statement. The AMA withstood at least two attempts to reverse the injunction in 2009. In one case, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled that under the Freedom of Information Act, physicians’ privacy interest outweighed the public interest in knowing how much doctors were collecting from Medicare. WSJ Law Blog January 26, 2011
To write with a broken pencil is pointless.
When fish are in schools they sometimes take debate.
A thief who stole a calendar got twelve months.
When the smog lifts in Los Angeles , U.C.L.A.
The professor discovered that her theory of earthquakes was on shaky ground.
The batteries were given out free of charge.
Local Area Network in Australia : The LAN down under.
A boiled egg is hard to beat.
Acupuncture: a jab well done.
Condo life is hard Her upstairs neighbors owned 66 percent of the building’s square footage, and so had a 66 percent voting stake in the association that governed its management. That meant they controlled what condo fees everyone in the three-unit building paid, what would or wouldn’t get done to the property’s common areas, and how much the association was willing to pay for that work. They left snippy notes at her door, turned down the thermostat during the day (she worked at home), and made her life a misery. Read her stories and those of others at: http://www.boston.com/realestate/news/articles/2011/01/23/home_sweet_hell_falling_into_the_condo_trap/ Click on single page at bottom for ease in reading.
Thursday, January 27, 2011
2001: A Space Odyssey is a 1968 epic science fiction film produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick, and co-written by Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke. The film deals with thematic elements of human evolution, technology, artificial intelligence, and extraterrestrial life, and is notable for its scientific realism, pioneering special effects, ambiguous imagery that is open-ended to a point approaching surrealism, sound in place of traditional narrative techniques, and minimal use of dialogue. Music plays a crucial part in 2001, and not only because of the relatively sparse dialogue. From very early on in production, Kubrick decided that he wanted the film to be a primarily non-verbal experience, one that did not rely on the traditional techniques of narrative cinema, and in which music would play a vital role in evoking particular moods. About half the music in the film appears either before the first line of dialogue or after the final line. Almost no music is heard during any scenes with dialogue. In the early stages of production, Kubrick had actually commissioned a score for 2001 from noted Hollywood composer Alex North, who had written the score for Spartacus and also worked on Dr. Strangelove. However, on 2001 Kubrick did much of the filming and editing using, as his guides, the classical recordings which eventually became the music track. Kubrick decided to use these 'guide pieces' as the final musical soundtrack, and he abandoned North's score. Kubrick failed to inform North that his music had not been used and, to his dismay, North did not discover this until he saw the movie just before its release. What survives of North's soundtrack recordings has been released as a "limited edition" CD from Intrada Records. All the music North originally wrote was recorded commercially by North's friend and colleague Jerry Goldsmith with the National Philharmonic Orchestra and was released on Varèse Sarabande CDs shortly after Telarc's first theme release but before North's death. 2001 is particularly remembered for using pieces of Johann Strauss II's best-known waltz, An der schönen blauen Donau (On the Beautiful Blue Danube), during the extended space-station docking and lunar landing sequences, and the use of the opening from the Richard Strauss tone poem Also sprach Zarathustra (Usually translated as "Thus Spake Zarathustra" or occasionally "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" - the soundtrack album gives the former, the movie's credits give the latter). Composers Richard and Johann Strauss are not related. HAL's version of the popular song "Daisy Bell" (referred to by HAL as "Daisy" in the film) was inspired by a computer-synthesized arrangement by Max Mathews, which Arthur C. Clarke had heard in 1962 at the Bell Laboratories Murray Hill facility when he was, coincidentally, visiting friend and colleague John Pierce. At that time, a speech synthesis demonstration was being performed by physicist John Larry Kelly, Jr, by using an IBM 704 computer to synthesize speech. Kelly's voice recorder synthesizer vocoder recreated the song "Daisy Bell" ("Bicycle Built For Two"), with Max Mathews providing the musical accompaniment. Arthur C. Clarke was so impressed that he later used it in the screenplay and novel. Many foreign language versions of the film do not use the song "Daisy." In the French soundtrack to 2001, HAL sings the French folk song "Au Clair de la Lune" while being disconnected. In the German version, HAL sings the children's song "Hänschen Klein" ("Johnny Little") and in the Italian version HAL sings "Giro giro tondo." See awards, honors, mentions in top film lists, parodies and homages at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001:_A_Space_Odyssey_(film)
intromit (in-truh-MIT) verb tr. To enter, send, or admit. From Latin intromittere, from intro- (inwardly) + mittere (to send). Earliest documented use: 1600.
remonstrate (ri-MON-strayt, REM-uhn-) verb intr. To reason or plead in protest. From Latin remonstrare (to exhibit, demonstrate), from re- + monstrare (to show). Ultimately from the Indo-European root men- (to think), which is the source of mind, mnemonic, mosaic, music, mentor, money, mandarin, and mantra. Earliest documented use: 1601. A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg
FDA Needs to Reassess Its Approach to Protecting Consumers from False or Misleading Claims January 2011 report from Government Accountability Office. GAO-11-102 http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d11102.pdf
A muse reader has shared her new blog address with me. She started in December and has several postings in January as of this writing. See at: http://keepamericaworried.blogspot.com/
According to Lorrin Andrews, author of the first Hawaiian dictionary published in 1865, "kahuna" is a contraction of "kahu" (to cook, especially in an earth oven) and "ana" (a particle that adds "ing" to a word). So the base meaning by this idea is "a cooking." This doesn't make much sense until you learn that "kahu" also means "to tend an oven, or to take care of the cooking." Ancient Hawaiian thought, from our point of view, was very symbolic or figurative and a word for one type of activity or experience could be applied to other symbolically related activities or experiences. So "kahu," originally referring to taking care of an oven, became a general word for taking care of anything. Another possible origin for the word "kahuna," however, is that it is simply a combination of "kahu" (to take care of) and "na" (a particle that makes words into nouns). In that case, a basic translation of "kahuna" would be "a caretaker." Over time languages change and at some point "kahu" and "kahuna" both became nouns with somewhat different meanings. The word "kahu" came to refer not only to caretakers, but to what are now known as "care-givers," as well as to administrators, regents, pastors, masters and mistresses of households, dog-owners, and leaders of clubs, associations, orders and other groups. The word "kahuna," according to J.S. Emerson, an early observer of Hawaiian culture, "suggests more of the professional relation of the priest to the community." Andrews, mentioned above, defines a "kahuna" as "a general name applied to such persons as have a trade, an art, or who practice some profession." He says that some qualifying term is generally added, such as "kahuna lapa'au, a physician; kahuna pule, a priest; kahuna kalai la'au, a carpenter; kahuna kala, a silversmith." He also notes that "the word kahuna without any qualifying term (generally) refers to the priest or the person who offers sacrifices." Pukui and Elbert, authors of the modern standard Hawaiian dictionary, define a kahuna as a "priest, sorcerer, magician, wizard, minister, expert in any profession (whether male of female)." They add that under the 1845 laws of the Hawaiian kingdom doctors, surgeons and dentists were called kahuna. http://www.huna.org/html/kahuna.html
Aloha [Alo = presence, front, face] + [hā = breath] 'The presence of (Divine) Breath.' Aloha is a word in the Hawaiian language that has numerous meanings both as a single word and when used in context with other words. The most common uses are as a greeting, farewell or a salutation. Aloha is also commonly used to mean love. It can also be used to express compassion, regret or sympathy. http://gohawaii.about.com/od/glossary/g/aloha.htm
A nelogism is a word, term, or expression that has recently been invented in order to define a new meaning. For example, "wallpaper" originally referred only to the material you would use to cover a room's walls; now, it also refers to the colors or images that adorn your desktop. The rate of neologisms has increased dramatically with the introduction of new technology and the Internet, producing many of the words found in NetLingo (such as emoticon and netiquette). http://www.netlingo.com/word/neologism.php “Moasting” is a verb that combines the words moaning and boasting, especially used on Twitter. Find Web Slang, lingo, and acronyms used in chat rooms, Instant Messages, and Text Messaging, emoticons and special use of letters and numerals at: http://www.city-net.com/~ched/help/lingo/chatslang.html Unnecessary, overused and tiresome: BTW, FWIW, IMHO, IMO and JMO.
The most common given names of U.S. presidents are: George (3), John (4), William (4), and James (5). http://www.potus.com/
A female Cooper's hawk that spent a week trapped in the Library of Congress was safely captured January 26 and taken to a rehabilitation center in Virginia. The hawk caught the public's imagination as it eluded would-be rescuers and swooped over researchers' heads in the dome of the Thomas Jefferson Building's Main Reading Room. It even snatched frozen quail from a trap without being caught. The hawk probably flew in through a broken window Jan. 19, said Matt Raymond, the library's director of communications. Aa three-member team led by representatives of the Raptor Conservancy of Virginia captured the bird using a caged pair of starlings, named Frick and Frack, as bait. It took 25 minutes. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/26/AR2011012607541.html
intromit (in-truh-MIT) verb tr. To enter, send, or admit. From Latin intromittere, from intro- (inwardly) + mittere (to send). Earliest documented use: 1600.
remonstrate (ri-MON-strayt, REM-uhn-) verb intr. To reason or plead in protest. From Latin remonstrare (to exhibit, demonstrate), from re- + monstrare (to show). Ultimately from the Indo-European root men- (to think), which is the source of mind, mnemonic, mosaic, music, mentor, money, mandarin, and mantra. Earliest documented use: 1601. A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg
FDA Needs to Reassess Its Approach to Protecting Consumers from False or Misleading Claims January 2011 report from Government Accountability Office. GAO-11-102 http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d11102.pdf
A muse reader has shared her new blog address with me. She started in December and has several postings in January as of this writing. See at: http://keepamericaworried.blogspot.com/
According to Lorrin Andrews, author of the first Hawaiian dictionary published in 1865, "kahuna" is a contraction of "kahu" (to cook, especially in an earth oven) and "ana" (a particle that adds "ing" to a word). So the base meaning by this idea is "a cooking." This doesn't make much sense until you learn that "kahu" also means "to tend an oven, or to take care of the cooking." Ancient Hawaiian thought, from our point of view, was very symbolic or figurative and a word for one type of activity or experience could be applied to other symbolically related activities or experiences. So "kahu," originally referring to taking care of an oven, became a general word for taking care of anything. Another possible origin for the word "kahuna," however, is that it is simply a combination of "kahu" (to take care of) and "na" (a particle that makes words into nouns). In that case, a basic translation of "kahuna" would be "a caretaker." Over time languages change and at some point "kahu" and "kahuna" both became nouns with somewhat different meanings. The word "kahu" came to refer not only to caretakers, but to what are now known as "care-givers," as well as to administrators, regents, pastors, masters and mistresses of households, dog-owners, and leaders of clubs, associations, orders and other groups. The word "kahuna," according to J.S. Emerson, an early observer of Hawaiian culture, "suggests more of the professional relation of the priest to the community." Andrews, mentioned above, defines a "kahuna" as "a general name applied to such persons as have a trade, an art, or who practice some profession." He says that some qualifying term is generally added, such as "kahuna lapa'au, a physician; kahuna pule, a priest; kahuna kalai la'au, a carpenter; kahuna kala, a silversmith." He also notes that "the word kahuna without any qualifying term (generally) refers to the priest or the person who offers sacrifices." Pukui and Elbert, authors of the modern standard Hawaiian dictionary, define a kahuna as a "priest, sorcerer, magician, wizard, minister, expert in any profession (whether male of female)." They add that under the 1845 laws of the Hawaiian kingdom doctors, surgeons and dentists were called kahuna. http://www.huna.org/html/kahuna.html
Aloha [Alo = presence, front, face] + [hā = breath] 'The presence of (Divine) Breath.' Aloha is a word in the Hawaiian language that has numerous meanings both as a single word and when used in context with other words. The most common uses are as a greeting, farewell or a salutation. Aloha is also commonly used to mean love. It can also be used to express compassion, regret or sympathy. http://gohawaii.about.com/od/glossary/g/aloha.htm
A nelogism is a word, term, or expression that has recently been invented in order to define a new meaning. For example, "wallpaper" originally referred only to the material you would use to cover a room's walls; now, it also refers to the colors or images that adorn your desktop. The rate of neologisms has increased dramatically with the introduction of new technology and the Internet, producing many of the words found in NetLingo (such as emoticon and netiquette). http://www.netlingo.com/word/neologism.php “Moasting” is a verb that combines the words moaning and boasting, especially used on Twitter. Find Web Slang, lingo, and acronyms used in chat rooms, Instant Messages, and Text Messaging, emoticons and special use of letters and numerals at: http://www.city-net.com/~ched/help/lingo/chatslang.html Unnecessary, overused and tiresome: BTW, FWIW, IMHO, IMO and JMO.
The most common given names of U.S. presidents are: George (3), John (4), William (4), and James (5). http://www.potus.com/
A female Cooper's hawk that spent a week trapped in the Library of Congress was safely captured January 26 and taken to a rehabilitation center in Virginia. The hawk caught the public's imagination as it eluded would-be rescuers and swooped over researchers' heads in the dome of the Thomas Jefferson Building's Main Reading Room. It even snatched frozen quail from a trap without being caught. The hawk probably flew in through a broken window Jan. 19, said Matt Raymond, the library's director of communications. Aa three-member team led by representatives of the Raptor Conservancy of Virginia captured the bird using a caged pair of starlings, named Frick and Frack, as bait. It took 25 minutes. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/26/AR2011012607541.html
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
On Dateline NBC January 23, someone said that George W. Bush was the 44th president. That didn't sound right, so I checked a list and found that Barack Obama is the 44th president. Then I got curious--what is the most common first name? Answer is forthcoming.
The Nomura’s jellyfish is a monster to be reckoned with. It’s the size of a refrigerator — imagine a Frigidaire Gallery Premiere rather than a hotel minibar — and can exceed 450 pounds. For decades the hulking medusa was rarely encountered in its stomping grounds, the Sea of Japan. Only three times during the entire 20th century did numbers of the Nomura’s swell to such gigantic proportions that they seriously clogged fishing nets. Then something changed. Since 2002, the population has exploded — in jelly parlance, bloomed — six times. In 2005, a particularly bad year, the Sea of Japan brimmed with as many as 20 billion of the bobbing bags of blubber, bludgeoning fisheries with 30 billion yen in losses. Why has the Nomura’s jellyfish become a recurring nightmare? The answer could portend trouble for the world’s oceans. In recent years, populations of several jellyfish species have made inroads at the expense of their main competitor — fish — in a number of regions, including the Yellow Sea, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Black Sea. Overfishing and deteriorating coastal water quality are chief suspects in the rise of jellies. http://e360.yale.edu/feature/massive_outbreak_of_jellyfish_could_spell_trouble_for_fisheries/2359/
Here are the top candidates for longest word in the English language. One comes from Shakespeare (of course.) In Love's Labour's Lost, a clown named Costard, arrested for having unlawful fling with a milkmaid, gets to say honorificabilitudinitatibus. That's 27 letters. The word means something like "loaded with honors," but, suspiciously, it comes in the middle of a conversation about wordiness, so it might be a word created to be wordy.
Here's one you know better: antidisetablishmentarianism. It has 28 letters, but what is it? J ust a bundle of suffixes and prefixes piled up into a little attention-grabbing hummock. The most famous long word (at least in our times) is, of course, Disney's supercaliphragilisticexpialidocious. It uses 34 letters, but doesn't mean anything beyond giving Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke (and a slew of animated characters) something to dance to. Science writer Sam Kean, in his book The Disappearing Spoon, worked really hard on this and after much sleuthing, he landed on a word that comes not from dancing English nannies but from virus-hunting scientists. It's a protein, found in a virus, but this is a very dangerous, economically important virus, the first ever discovered--dreaded tobacco mosaic virus. It appeared in all its lettery splendor in 1964 in a reference source for chemists, "Chemical Abstracts." It is one thousand, one hundred and eighty five letters long. See the word at: http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2011/01/21/133052745/whats-the-longest-word-in-the-english-language
Feedback to A.Word.A.Day
From: Dan Fullerton Subject: Remonstrate
The word brings to mind the Flushing Remonstrance of 1657, when the word "remonstrate" was still fairly young. The Flushing Remonstrance was about religious freedom in the Dutch colony of New Holland, when the authorities in New Amsterdam prohibited the Quakers from residing and worshiping in Flushing. The Flushing town council went on record challenging Gov. Stuyvesant. When the town persisted in its openness to religious tolerance, several council members were tried for violating the law and one or two lost their lives. One who was executed, I believe, was the town clerk. It is precisely because of such public actions as this that the United States is a country in which religious tolerance is practiced.
From: Robert Payne Subject: Beau Geste
There's a 1924 P.C. Wren adventure novel, Beau Geste, which still floats around this culture's collective subconscious (especially in its filmed versions) and probably remains the word's best-known use. In the English novel, Beau Geste is the name of the heroic lead character. The French phrase "beau geste" also translates as "gracious gesture". But now that I know the word "geste" can also mean "notable adventures or exploits", this gives the novel's title another layer of meaning.
From: John Alzamora Subject: limn
Def: 1. To portray in words. 2. To draw or paint, especially in outline.
In Elizabethan England a limner was a miniaturist. In our Colonial and Federalist periods, limner was the name given to a portrait painter, often self-taught and itinerant and sometimes anonymous. A handful, however, acquired studio training and became quite famous and much in demand in their time, the most famous of which is perhaps Gilbert Stuart. See: Paintings from The Historic Hudson Valley Collection and What Is a Limner?, by S.E. Smith.
From: Dorothy S. Stewart Subject: limn
My favorite use of the word is in Francis Thompson's poem, "The Hound of Heaven": Must Thou char the wood ere Thou canst limn with it?
From: Tanvi Choudhary Subject: Theme: short words which are potent
I had once read these words somewhere as the 'Ten small words with the greatest meaning' -- "If it is to be, it is up to me." The moment I read the theme for this week, these words just struck me. They are small but potent, just like the theme.
Mothers and fathers used to bring up children: now they parent. Critics used to review plays: now they critique them. Athletes podium, executives flipchart, and almost everybody Googles. Watch out—you’ve been verbed. The English language is in a constant state of flux. New words are formed and old ones fall into disuse. But no trend has been more obtrusive in recent years than the changing of nouns into verbs. “Trend” itself (now used as a verb meaning “change or develop in a general direction”, as in “unemployment has been trending upwards”) is further evidence of—sorry, evidences—this phenomenon. It is found in all areas of life, though some are more productive than others. Financiers are never lacking in ingenuity: Investec recently forecast that “Better-balanced autumn ranges should allow Marks & Spencer to anniversary tougher comparisons”—whatever that may mean. Politics has come up with “to handbag” (a tribute to Lady Thatcher) and “to doughnut”—that is, to sit in a ring around a colleague making a parliamentary announcement, so that it is not clear to television viewers that the chamber is practically deserted. Verbing—or denominalisation, as it is known to grammarians—is not new. Steven Pinker, in his book “The Language Instinct” (1994), points out that “easy conversion of nouns to verbs has been part of English grammar for centuries; it is one of the processes that make English English.” Elizabethan writers revelled in it: Shakespeare’s Duke of York, in “Richard II” (c1595), says “Grace me no grace, nor uncle me no uncle”, and the 1552 Book of Common Prayer includes a service “commonly called the Churching of Women”.
There is a difference today, says Robert Groves, one of the editors of the new “Collins Dictionary of the English Language”. “Potential changes in our language are picked up and repeated faster than they would have been in the past, when print was the only mass communication medium, and fewer people were literate.” http://moreintelligentlife.com/content/ideas/anthony-gardner/youve-been-verbed
Nominees for 83rd Academy Awards http://www.oscars.org/awards/academyawards/83/nominees.html
The Nomura’s jellyfish is a monster to be reckoned with. It’s the size of a refrigerator — imagine a Frigidaire Gallery Premiere rather than a hotel minibar — and can exceed 450 pounds. For decades the hulking medusa was rarely encountered in its stomping grounds, the Sea of Japan. Only three times during the entire 20th century did numbers of the Nomura’s swell to such gigantic proportions that they seriously clogged fishing nets. Then something changed. Since 2002, the population has exploded — in jelly parlance, bloomed — six times. In 2005, a particularly bad year, the Sea of Japan brimmed with as many as 20 billion of the bobbing bags of blubber, bludgeoning fisheries with 30 billion yen in losses. Why has the Nomura’s jellyfish become a recurring nightmare? The answer could portend trouble for the world’s oceans. In recent years, populations of several jellyfish species have made inroads at the expense of their main competitor — fish — in a number of regions, including the Yellow Sea, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Black Sea. Overfishing and deteriorating coastal water quality are chief suspects in the rise of jellies. http://e360.yale.edu/feature/massive_outbreak_of_jellyfish_could_spell_trouble_for_fisheries/2359/
Here are the top candidates for longest word in the English language. One comes from Shakespeare (of course.) In Love's Labour's Lost, a clown named Costard, arrested for having unlawful fling with a milkmaid, gets to say honorificabilitudinitatibus. That's 27 letters. The word means something like "loaded with honors," but, suspiciously, it comes in the middle of a conversation about wordiness, so it might be a word created to be wordy.
Here's one you know better: antidisetablishmentarianism. It has 28 letters, but what is it? J ust a bundle of suffixes and prefixes piled up into a little attention-grabbing hummock. The most famous long word (at least in our times) is, of course, Disney's supercaliphragilisticexpialidocious. It uses 34 letters, but doesn't mean anything beyond giving Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke (and a slew of animated characters) something to dance to. Science writer Sam Kean, in his book The Disappearing Spoon, worked really hard on this and after much sleuthing, he landed on a word that comes not from dancing English nannies but from virus-hunting scientists. It's a protein, found in a virus, but this is a very dangerous, economically important virus, the first ever discovered--dreaded tobacco mosaic virus. It appeared in all its lettery splendor in 1964 in a reference source for chemists, "Chemical Abstracts." It is one thousand, one hundred and eighty five letters long. See the word at: http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2011/01/21/133052745/whats-the-longest-word-in-the-english-language
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From: Dan Fullerton Subject: Remonstrate
The word brings to mind the Flushing Remonstrance of 1657, when the word "remonstrate" was still fairly young. The Flushing Remonstrance was about religious freedom in the Dutch colony of New Holland, when the authorities in New Amsterdam prohibited the Quakers from residing and worshiping in Flushing. The Flushing town council went on record challenging Gov. Stuyvesant. When the town persisted in its openness to religious tolerance, several council members were tried for violating the law and one or two lost their lives. One who was executed, I believe, was the town clerk. It is precisely because of such public actions as this that the United States is a country in which religious tolerance is practiced.
From: Robert Payne Subject: Beau Geste
There's a 1924 P.C. Wren adventure novel, Beau Geste, which still floats around this culture's collective subconscious (especially in its filmed versions) and probably remains the word's best-known use. In the English novel, Beau Geste is the name of the heroic lead character. The French phrase "beau geste" also translates as "gracious gesture". But now that I know the word "geste" can also mean "notable adventures or exploits", this gives the novel's title another layer of meaning.
From: John Alzamora Subject: limn
Def: 1. To portray in words. 2. To draw or paint, especially in outline.
In Elizabethan England a limner was a miniaturist. In our Colonial and Federalist periods, limner was the name given to a portrait painter, often self-taught and itinerant and sometimes anonymous. A handful, however, acquired studio training and became quite famous and much in demand in their time, the most famous of which is perhaps Gilbert Stuart. See: Paintings from The Historic Hudson Valley Collection and What Is a Limner?, by S.E. Smith.
From: Dorothy S. Stewart Subject: limn
My favorite use of the word is in Francis Thompson's poem, "The Hound of Heaven": Must Thou char the wood ere Thou canst limn with it?
From: Tanvi Choudhary Subject: Theme: short words which are potent
I had once read these words somewhere as the 'Ten small words with the greatest meaning' -- "If it is to be, it is up to me." The moment I read the theme for this week, these words just struck me. They are small but potent, just like the theme.
Mothers and fathers used to bring up children: now they parent. Critics used to review plays: now they critique them. Athletes podium, executives flipchart, and almost everybody Googles. Watch out—you’ve been verbed. The English language is in a constant state of flux. New words are formed and old ones fall into disuse. But no trend has been more obtrusive in recent years than the changing of nouns into verbs. “Trend” itself (now used as a verb meaning “change or develop in a general direction”, as in “unemployment has been trending upwards”) is further evidence of—sorry, evidences—this phenomenon. It is found in all areas of life, though some are more productive than others. Financiers are never lacking in ingenuity: Investec recently forecast that “Better-balanced autumn ranges should allow Marks & Spencer to anniversary tougher comparisons”—whatever that may mean. Politics has come up with “to handbag” (a tribute to Lady Thatcher) and “to doughnut”—that is, to sit in a ring around a colleague making a parliamentary announcement, so that it is not clear to television viewers that the chamber is practically deserted. Verbing—or denominalisation, as it is known to grammarians—is not new. Steven Pinker, in his book “The Language Instinct” (1994), points out that “easy conversion of nouns to verbs has been part of English grammar for centuries; it is one of the processes that make English English.” Elizabethan writers revelled in it: Shakespeare’s Duke of York, in “Richard II” (c1595), says “Grace me no grace, nor uncle me no uncle”, and the 1552 Book of Common Prayer includes a service “commonly called the Churching of Women”.
There is a difference today, says Robert Groves, one of the editors of the new “Collins Dictionary of the English Language”. “Potential changes in our language are picked up and repeated faster than they would have been in the past, when print was the only mass communication medium, and fewer people were literate.” http://moreintelligentlife.com/content/ideas/anthony-gardner/youve-been-verbed
Nominees for 83rd Academy Awards http://www.oscars.org/awards/academyawards/83/nominees.html
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